by Michel Bussi
And maybe slipping a lover into your trolley.
While weighing up the consequences of her resolutions, she couldn’t resist tweaking reason a little; a detour of less than thirty metres on the way back, taking Alley A rather than C, and passing by mobile home A31, just to see if Jakob Schreiber was there, if he’d had time to recover the photographs from that cloud of his.
Not to look at them: just to ask him.
Nobody there.
‘Jakob?’
Perhaps the old German was deaf? Perhaps he was listening to his tedious radio programme? Question seventy-two, win a trip to the moon.
‘Jakob?’
It wasn’t like the German to leave his house open like this. And yet it was hard to imagine that he might be hiding somewhere in the twenty-eight square metres of this cabin resting on breeze blocks. Strange … Clotilde reflected that if Herr Schreiber came back with his pétanque boules in his hand or his camera around his neck, she risked spoiling everything. The old German wasn’t the kind who’d be too happy about someone entering his place without permission; particularly if he’d spent part of the evening before looking for old photographs on your behalf.
Silly little fool, get out of here, go and peel your peppers, come back this afternoon, or tomorrow …
Clotilde was about to leave when her eye fell on one of the photographs stuck to the wall.
Her brother, Nicolas.
Clotilde walked over. In fact, among the hundreds of photographs taped to the walls of the mobile home, it wasn’t hard to spot the ones that covered the years he had spent there, from 1976 until 1989. Neither the tanned bodies nor the setting changed, the sea, the sand, the waves, Calvi citadel in the foreground, Cap Corse at the back; but the clothes, often nothing more than swimming costumes, clearly identified the decade in which each photograph was taken. The length of a pair of shorts, the brand of a swimming cap, the amount of breast or bottom covered by patterned fabric. It really was quite startling, in fact, so much change in the details of clothing, while apparently nothing else altered from one year to the next. Clotilde had always felt as if she got out the same clothes every June – the ones she’d put away the previous September.
Get out of here now, you silly fool.
She set down her shopping bag. She heard campers passing by outside.
In this particular picture, Nicolas was less than five years old. The photograph took her breath away. She saw herself too, in her mother’s arms; she was less than one, with cheeks as red as apples, a terrible little navy-blue hat with an elastic strap under her chin that looked as if it was annoying her, and chubby little feet that seemed only to have one desire, to walk in the hot sand or the cold water. No Papa in the photograph, she looked for him. She found him in another one: Nicolas was eleven and she was eight, it was the fifteenth of August, there were fireworks, and everyone at the campsite was standing on Oscelluccia beach. There was as yet no beach bar but among the sea of faces, Clotilde recognised an eighteen-year-old Natale, incredibly handsome, holding the hand of an amazing blonde with hair down to her bottom, a girl she had never seen before; she also recognised Basile Spinello, Sergeant Cesareu Garcia, Lisabetta and Speranza standing side by side.
She heard footsteps outside, very close by. On a campsite, you get used to that sense that your neighbours are inhabiting the same space as you. Her eyes continued to scan the wall of photographs. She had spotted others from the summer of ’89, she was sure. She recognised her mother’s black dress from Benoa, the one with the red roses that Papa had bought her in Calvi. The photograph must have been taken a few days before the accident.
‘Your mother was beautiful.’
Clotilde turned around with a start.
An icy hand settled on her bare shoulder.
‘Gently, now, Clotilde, gently. Really, don’t you think your mother was beautiful?’
The snake had slithered its way in, silently. What the hell was he doing here? Even worse, why wasn’t he asking her what she was up to? He should have been surprised to find her here. Instead, he seemed to be interested in everything apart from her, was anxiously studying every corner of the mobile home.
‘Is Jakob here?’ was all he asked.
Clotilde shook her head.
‘Damn it,’ Cervone swore. ‘What’s that Prussian up to? Serge, Christian and Maurice are waiting for him at the pétanque court. He’s never been late in thirty years.’
He shrugged and lowered his eyes to the floor.
‘He’s past the age when you might follow a female tourist into the maquis, but we should still wait a bit longer before calling out the cavalry.’
Cervone examined the wall of photographs.
‘Maybe he just got fed up with always taking pictures of the same spot, and has gone off somewhere with his camera.’
Clotilde still didn’t reply, so Cervone carried on.
‘Because while the old kraut might be the most annoying client on the campsite, you have to admit he’s good at portraits. He can bring memories back to the surface better than if he’d filmed them. Look …’
Cervone pointed at another series of snaps.
A group of teenagers was standing around a campfire. Clotilde remembered that the photograph had been taken the day before the accident, late in the evening, on Alga beach. Nicolas was trying to play the guitar, with Maria-Chjara’s head resting on his shoulder; the whole tribe could be seen around the flames, Estefan with a djembe between his thighs, Hermann holding a violin, Aurélia gazing hungrily at the musicians with her olive eyes, and at Nicolas in particular.
‘Those were our years!’
Cervone seemed as happy as a little boy all of a sudden, but when he looked at Clotilde’s tight expression, he froze.
‘I’m sorry, Clotilde. I’m a total idiot sometimes.’
Sometimes …
‘Our years. I was thinking about my own teenage years, about the girls, the parties, but of course you …’
‘Forget it, Cervone. If I didn’t want to hear about it, I would never have come back to the Euproctes.’
‘Except that you want to know the truth.’
This time Clotilde stared at him intensely.
‘What do you know about the truth?’
Cervone nudged the door of the mobile home closed with his toe. In his hand he held a case of three rusting pétanque balls. If that was a weapon, Clotilde thought, she would be no match for it with her string bag and three peppers. She was forcing herself to be facetious, but she was worried. What was the boss of the campsite doing here? Had he followed her? If he tried to do anything to her in this construction of planks and sheet metal, she could always scream, and people would hear her. The first face that came into her mind was Franck’s, not Natale’s. Because Franck was closer. Stupidly, that was what she thought.
‘Look.’
In the gloomy mobile home, Cervone pointed at a photograph. In front of the cars parked in the Euproctes car park, some men were playing pétanque. Clotilde didn’t recognise them, but there it was, behind them. Unharmed. She trembled with the shock. The red Fuego.
‘Did you go and see Sergeant Garcia? I imagine he told you about his theory.’
Was Cervone aware? Did he know about the sabotaged steering system? Yet Cesareu Garcia had assured her that his investigation had remained confidential, that he had only informed Cassanu Idrissi. No one else. Not even his daughter. So what was Cervone Spinello’s part in this whole business?
Play for time.
‘What theory?’ Clotilde asked, trying to feign innocence.
The campsite manager smiled, without taking his eyes off the Fuego.
‘That the steering column of your father’s car failed. All of a sudden. And that it wasn’t just an unfortunate stroke of luck.’
And bang!
‘Except that the old sergeant doesn’t know everything,’ Cervone added.
Spinello’s finger ran across the photograph. His index finger stopped on a man with hi
s back to the camera.
‘Take a good look at your father. And look behind him, you can hardly see but …’
He was right. It was her father, picking up his pétanque balls. And a little way further back, between the players, it was impossible to miss him even if his whole body was almost entirely concealed from view.
Nicolas.
Her brother was not interested in the game. But he was in the parked car.
Cervone was delighted.
‘These pictures are unbelievable, don’t you think? If you take the time to study them, the foreground, the background, the expressions, the attitudes, they all tell a story. Almost all of them reveal a secret.’
‘What are you getting at, Cervone?’
His hand rested once more on her bare shoulder, as if he were about to lower the strap of her dress. As if he wanted to negotiate, but of course it was probably all just her imagination.
‘Nothing, Clotilde. Nothing. I know you aren’t particularly fond of me, that you hate me as much as you loved my father. That in your eyes I represent more or less everything you missed in life, as if I were the incarnation of your lost dreams, the promises of youth which are extinguished one by one, the idiots who get all the power in a shitty world. But I’m not going to apologise for that, Clotilde. I’m not going to apologise for having made my own accommodation with life. Because I have no disappointments, Clotilde, I have no regrets.’ He stared at the picture of the campfire, before coming back to the game of pétanque in the car park. ‘I’m happier today than I ever was back then. The passing of time has made me more confident, more powerful, richer, even more handsome. So I’m not going to apologise, because I’ve sweated blood to get where I am. That’s why, if you don’t like me, it’s not reciprocal. I have no hatred, no bitterness, only sympathy for other people, the sympathy of someone who’s made a success of their life. Sympathy for you too.’
He set down the pétanque balls. Another palm was about to settle on another bare shoulder. Each of Cervone’s hands seemed to want to take a slightly greater risk in order to shock the other. She took a step backwards. Perhaps hitting him in the face with those peppers wouldn’t be such a bad idea after all.
‘It’s fine, Cervone. Spare me your little homily. What do you know?’
‘Don’t take this the wrong way, Clotilde. Believe me. And it’s up to you to answer a question, just one question. Do you really want to know the truth?’
‘Do you know it?’
‘You’re not in court, Clotilde. So take off the costume, remove the mask and just answer my question. Do you want to know the truth?’
‘About … about my parents’ accident? That bloody bolt? To know who tampered with it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you know?’
‘Yes, but you’re not going to like the answer. You’re not going to like the truth at all.’
‘In all these years, I’ve never really liked the lies either.’
He smiled and looked at the photographs one last time.
‘Sit down, Clotilde. Sit down. I’m going to tell you.’
II
Saint Rose’s Day
37
Monday, 21 August 1989, fifteenth day of the holidays
Mum’s-the-word-lotus-blue sky
It must have been almost noon. I was calmly sitting in my Sea-Calves’ grotto, in the cool, secretly reading The Never-Ending Story, with Dangerous Liaisons plonked under my bottom, when Nicolas came to get me. When he entered my grotto he was like a big bear blocking out the sunlight. To make me panic, for starters. And then to stop me reading. I was still able to take advantage of the darkness to quickly swap Bastien and his pudding-bowl hair for Valmont and the Marquise. As soon as Nico moved, his black silhouette parted from the sun that hung behind his back, like in a film, when the police inspector points the light straight into the eyes of the accused.
‘I need to talk to you, Clo.’
Well, go ahead then.
He assumes his serious face, which generally conceals some kind of monstrously idiotic plan.
‘I know you like snooping about, spying, playing the little mouse and writing everything down in your notebook, but this time you’ve got to stay out of it. I’m not saying you have to shut up, but you’ve got to stop trying to know.’
‘Trying to know what?’
I love driving my big brother mad.
‘Clo, I’m serious.’
He bends a little, as if weighed down by the revelation he’s about to make, or just trying not to bump his head on the roof of my grotto. The result is the same, the sun full in my face, and here my Chief Inspector adds:
‘I’m in love!’
Well, well, well …
‘Who with? Chjara?’
He didn’t like me calling her that, he only calls her Maria, or Mary, or MC, pronounced the English way, emcee.
And he didn’t like the way I looked at him, he didn’t like that one bit. As if he’d told our parents that he wanted to give up school to become a professional footballer. But I carried right on, waving my book in front of his nose.
‘You shouldn’t get the two things confused, brother dear, it isn’t love, it’s just excitement. Excitement among the boys because of the competition. Who’s going to be the first to touch her boobs.’
I love being vulgar with my big brother.
‘The guys definitely aren’t going to be in a hurry to touch a pair of fried eggs.’
The scum. I’ve copied that out because that’s exactly what he said. I hope you’re touched by my honesty, O reader on the other side of the galaxy.
So we moved on. I love making up with my big brother.
‘OK, then, Casanova, what do you want from me?’
‘Nothing … Nothing, just stay out from under my feet, keep your distance, don’t draw Maman and Papa’s attention to me. Or, if necessary, keep them away from me, tell them fibs when I’m not there, say we’re playing guitar on Oscelluccia beach or building a shack in the Belloni woods with Filip and Estefan, I don’t care, I’m just asking you to cover for me for two days, until the evening of the twenty-third.’
‘Saint Rose’s day? What’s happening then? Are you going to go and pick a bunch of rosa canina, like Papa did? The winner’s bouquet? The big prize on the tombola? After the lambada, are you going to play put-it-there? Put it there in the Chjara-pussy?’
I really love being vulgar with my brother. He can’t say a thing, he’s the one who taught me.
‘That night I’m going to slip away, little sister of mine, and you are not going to discover my true destination. Maybe in a year or two we’ll let you have the black box.’
‘When you’re married to your Chjara, with a string of brats? Is that it?’
Nico changes position, masking the sun from me once more and switching to negative mode.
Just a shadow.
‘That’s right. We’ll invite you.’
I don’t want to push it.
‘Mm right … Are you absolutely sure?’
‘Of what?’
‘Of being the first to pluck that little orchid? There’s some pretty fierce competition, isn’t there?’
‘Yes, I’m sure!’
‘And your rivals?’
‘It’s like a game of chess, sweetie, you have to have a strategy, to be thinking a few moves ahead.’
‘Can you explain it to me? Your strategy?’
The shadow bends down and sits beside me, wraps me up in its protection. Nicolas has taught me everything, he’s opening up a path through the maquis of my life.
‘I use cunning, O sister of mine. You know, like in that book you’re pretending to read, Dangerous Liaisons. I plot, I come up with a plan, I have a diagram in my head, a simple diagram. It’s a circle, with the first names of the entire gang, one guy one girl, one guy one girl, one guy one girl, and arrows linking them up, like in that game where everyone has to kill someone while being killed by someone else. It’s crazy how easy it is,
you just have to whisper to a girl that another guy is after her, or to a guy that a girl has noticed him, and bang, you’ve made your move. I’ve hooked up Aurélia, who would have liked to go out with me, with Hermann the cyclops, who would rather have gone out with Maria. And as Maria quite liked Cervone, even if I don’t get what she sees in Spinello junior, I’ve hooked up that daddy’s boy with a daddy’s girl, who’s fresher than you think: Aurélia. And there you have it, full circle.’
Aurélia! With her holier-than-thou attitude and those big eyebrows of hers, she’s ready to bang anything that moves? While with her fuck-me-now look, Maria-Chjara won’t sleep with anyone but my Nicolas? Isn’t he just putting on a film in his head, my campsite Valmont? In my opinion, his fairy fingers aren’t anywhere near plucking her string.
Even if he thinks they are.
‘So you promise? You’ll help me? You’ll cover for me?’
‘If it was the other way round, if I had a boyfriend, would you do that for me?’
‘I will do. As soon as you grow a pair of breasts.’
The total bastard!
I love throwing myself at him and pretending to punch him. Usually in my bedroom, I throw all my soft toys in his face, but here I haven’t got anything. So I have no choice but to jump on him for a play-fight.
OK, big brother. I’ll grant you your two days of freedom, until the twenty-third of August. Normally I would have promised all kinds of things and spied on you anyway, but this time I don’t care. I don’t care about your teenage circle in which everyone wants to go out with everyone else. And that’s the right word, by the way. Go out. It doesn’t really matter who goes out with who. What matters is getting right out of that circle. So I’ll leave you guys to sit playing postman’s knock.
One o’clock, the postman hasn’t been … Two o’clock, three o’clock …
I’ve got better things to do. I have a contract!
A kiss on the cheek.
From a man who isn’t about to go into any circle, who will never be locked away, who will teach me the meaning of true freedom.
I have a contract. I have a mission. Natale Angeli gave it to me.