by Michel Bussi
To persuade my Papé Cassanu. And believe me, if you don’t know me yet, I’ll do it!
*
* *
He closed the notebook and hid it under his jacket.
A killer, a game of death, according to Nicolas Idrissi, the master of the game.
That was the purest truth.
38
20 August 2016, 12 p.m.
Clotilde waited. Cervone Spinello had taken five minutes to emerge from the toilet. Perhaps he was freshening his make-up, or perhaps it was just a manoeuvre to keep her waiting. A few more minutes added to twenty-seven years. One last, mean act of revenge.
She turned toward Cervone as soon as he stepped into the corridor of the mobile home, making no attempt to hide her impatience. The campsite manager merely froze with a look of concern, pointing at the old German’s photographs.
‘Are you still sure you really want to know what happened?’
He didn’t wait for her answer, he didn’t look at Clotilde, but simply continued to stare at the pictures.
‘You remember, Clotilde, the night of the twenty-third of August, your brother Nicolas had suggested going to a nightclub, the Camargue, just past Calvi, while your parents spent the night at Casa di Stella. They were supposed to climb up there, leaving the Fuego parked on the road by Arcanu Farm. Nicolas had planned to borrow your parents’ car, in secret, and take everyone who could pile into it for a spin. You will also remember that his plan involved a Phase B, to leave all the others on the dance floor, while he reserved a sofa for himself and Maria-Chjara. With the help of mojitos and a few joints, he hoped to take his beautiful Italian to a place that might have been less comfortable, but was a lot more discreet. You remember all that, Clotilde?’
So far, yes.
‘Yes.’
‘And what happened next. How can I tell you? Nicolas didn’t go boasting about it. Certainly not in front of his beloved little sister. Because in fact Maria-Chjara was dragging her feet. Not about the sofa, the weed, the rum cocktails and what they wanted – both of them – to do afterwards. As far as that was concerned, Maria-Chjara was quite willing.’
His finger stopped again on the photograph of the campfire, Alga beach, Maria-Chjara with her head resting on Nicolas’s shoulder while he played the guitar. Cervone’s finger caressed the Italian girl’s long, loose black hair, then her short, low-cut white blouse, her skin bronzed by the day’s sun and the midnight fire.
‘No, Clotilde,’ he went on. ‘Maria-Chjara was dragging her feet for one reason only: the car. Nicolas didn’t have a licence. Only about ten hours of driving lessons and a few hundred outings in the car with his dad. It was as simple as that. Maria-Chjara was thinking about the narrow roads, the bends, the ravines, the stray wild animals; in short she was scared of getting herself killed.’
‘So they didn’t go.’
‘No, not on the evening of the twenty-third of August, you already know that, and you know why. What no one knows is what happened before that. To persuade Maria-Chjara, Nicolas suggested proving to her that it wasn’t dangerous.’
Slowly, Clotilde’s body froze; an army of invisible insects immobilising her feet.
‘A few hours before going up to Arcanu, your parents were very busy. Your mother was getting ready for her romantic evening, and your father, just back from a boat-trip, was going through a file that he wanted to discuss with Cassanu later. So it was the dream opportunity, the only opportunity, in fact. Your brother took the keys of the Fuego and asked Maria-Chjara to come with him for a little spin, just a few kilometres, down to Galéria, a few sharp bends, to show his sweetheart that he was in charge, that he didn’t need a bit of paper to be able to hold a steering wheel, that he was careful.’
The cannibal insects climbed up along Clotilde’s thighs. Others had managed to work their way into her lungs, and were spreading out in seething swarms to block her breathing.
‘They returned ten minutes later. Nicolas parked the Fuego in exactly the same spot. They both got out. I was in charge of reception at that moment, and I was the only one who saw.’
The insects, gathering at the top of her trachea, allowed her only a ridiculously thin whimper.
‘Saw what?’
‘I saw and I heard them. Nicolas bent down to look under the car before assuring Maria-Chjara: “There’s nothing, nothing at all.” When he brought his hands, black with grease and oil, close to her lacey white dress, Maria recoiled as if he had the plague, and let him have it with both barrels. I was listening. I worked out what had happened.’
Clotilde gulped. Thousands of little feet were crowding into her throat, climbing along her temples, piercing her eardrums with their stings in a deafening buzz. But not deafening enough. Not enough to cover the words she would never have wanted to hear.
‘Nicolas had crashed. After less than three bends he had carried straight on and scraped the undercarriage of the Fuego against the rocks of the Capo Cavallo belvedere. Nicolas had had to stop and reverse, without knowing what the car was rubbing against, what was twisting, what was tearing beneath the bonnet, beneath the wheels, with an unbearable noise of crunching metal that was lost among the mountains.’
Spit. Vomit. Dissolve the insects in a great magma of gastric acid.
‘I only made the connection a few days later, when some local guys started talking about a disconnected steering rod, a twisted bolt, a sheared-off nut.’
Clotilde threw up in front of him, over the old linoleum tiles of the mobile home, over her bags, the peppers and the marinaded beef, over her shoes. Cervone didn’t look away.
Don’t believe it.
Don’t imagine for one second that it might be true.
That Nicolas might have chosen to say nothing, not realised the danger, preferring instead to put the car keys back in secret and not be yelled at.
‘You wanted the truth, Clotilde. You asked me for it. I’m sorry.’
The image of Nicolas appeared in front of her eyes, his face, a few moments before impact, just before the Fuego hung weightlessly in the void. That stubborn impression that had pursued her all these years: that Nicolas knew. That Nicolas had been aware of something she didn’t know. Nicolas hadn’t looked surprised when the car hadn’t turned, as if he’d known why they were going to die.
Of course, that explained everything.
He was the one who had killed them all.
~
‘Aren’t you having anything?’
There was a hint of irony in Franck’s question.
Clotilde had thrown everything away, peppers, stufatu ribs, exotic fruits. The promised wifely feast had turned into a jumble of cubes of ham, sliced tomatoes and tinned sweetcorn.
Franck had given Valou 20 euros to go to reception and get a tray of chips, a coffee Magnum, a strawberry Cornetto and Clo, what would she like?
‘Thanks. Nothing for me.’
Clotilde had decided not to speak. Not straight away. Not now. Not like this.
There was only one thing she wanted to do.
Melt into strong arms. Beat her fists against a manly chest, weep a torrent of tears into the hollow of a shoulder, curse life while screaming into the ear of someone who would, in return, murmur calming words of love. Abandon herself completely to a man who would understand, who would say nothing and simply love her.
Franck wasn’t that man.
She got to her feet, stacked the plates, cleared the table, picked up a sponge, a basin and a cloth.
‘I’m going to my parents’ grave. After doing the washing up. The Marcone Belvedere. I won’t be long.’
~
The Corsicans believe in ghosts. Their graves are proof of this. Why else would they build such monumental crypts? Family mausoleums sometimes even more imposing than the houses they once lived in? Why else would they reserve the most splendid settings for these sumptuous second homes, where seven generations of skeletons live squeezed together? Why would they reserve the most beautiful panoramas fo
r their graveyards if not so that the dead could enjoy the mist rolling in above the crashing waves, the bell-towers silhouetted against the hillside. The sunsets over Calvi citadel. At least the ones who can afford it, not the ones relegated to the rear of the graveyard, resting amid stones in the full glare of the sun, in the rows prone to flooding and rockfalls, where each storm threatens to cover the graves with a fresh layer of mud, or carry the coffins away.
The crypt of the Idrissi family could resist the weather for an eternity. It rose proudly above the wall of the Marcone cemetery, with its azure-blue dome, its Corinthian columns, so that no one passing along the coastal road could forget that name and its glorious ancestry. Among the oldest Idrissi forebears were an admiral (1760–1823), a member of parliament (1812–1887), a mayor (1876–1917), Clotilde’s great-grandfather, Pancrace (1898–1979).
And three ordinary people:
Paul Idrissi (1945–1989)
Palma Idrissi (1947–1989)
Nicolas Idrissi (1971–1989)
Natale was waiting just inside the cemetery, invisible from the road, in the shadow of the limestone-and-plaster wall. Clotilde fell into his arms, kissed him, wept wept wept, and finally collapsed beneath the nearest tree, a yew whose trunk was twisted by the wind from the sea, heedless of the flat needles pricking the bare flesh of her thighs. The cemetery was deserted, apart from an old woman bent over the furthest graves, struggling with the watering can that she had just filled from the fountain.
Only then did Clotilde speak. Natale sat next to her, holding her hand. Their bodies didn’t touch, only their fingers remained connected. Clotilde let everything come spilling out. Cesareu Garcia’s revelations about her parents’ car, her life which was nothing but a big dark room, the unravelling of her love for Franck, the daughter who was escaping her, who would never be like her, so much so that she found herself wondering whether she really did love her, and then the past as well, that past that was like a cannonball, the mother of whom she was so jealous, the father whom she worshipped, the guy who talked to dolphins, whom she had never forgotten (just after saying this she kissed him), and her big brother Nicolas, her big brother who had opened up a path through life for her, sweeping away the dust in front of her, carrying her on his back when the hill was too steep, teaching her shortcuts, her brother who had abandoned her there, at La Revellata, who had asked her to keep a secret, who hadn’t dared to speak, who had silently got into a car that was a death-trap, without being conscious of it. A lack of awareness, that was what it was, a lack of consciousness.
Clotilde poured out all her fears, all her resentments, as if they weighed a ton and it was only by expelling them that she could become light again, a balloon. And Natale’s hand held her the way you would hold a helium balloon, a little too tightly, the way you might hold a creature that was worryingly frail.
The Idrissi family plot was covered with flowers. A bunch of wild roses, lilies, orchids, most of them freshly cut. It was the most colourful site in the whole cemetery. Cassanu and Lisabetta were not the kind to let the Idrissi ghosts, from that distant admiral to their only son, catch the scent of faded flowers in brackish water. In front of them, in the blazing sun, the old woman with the watering can was approaching.
Clotilde kept wondering, as she twisted Natale’s fingers, her balloon body seeming to want to regain its freedom, why Nicolas hadn’t said anything. Sensible, well-behaved Nicolas, Nicolas the anvil who bore the blows of everyone and everything, Nicolas the model, Nicolas straight as an I and round as an O, Nicolas the handsome, the kind, Nicolas who had everything going for him. Why had Nicolas stolen the keys of the Fuego? Driven the car without a licence? Conceived that crazy plan to visit a nightclub?
The answer was simple, cruel, pitiful, contemptible, dirty.
For a tart. To impress a girl he didn’t even love. To hold a pair of breasts in his hands. To stuff his penis into a vagina that was being withheld from others but perhaps not from him. Because Nicolas, brainy Nicolas, was just a little animal, like all other men, and all of his principles, the whole of his education, all his reading and all his knowledge, meant nothing when faced with those tanned curves, those two panther eyes gazing into his, those lips imparting mute promises. Yes, it was as ridiculous as that. Nicolas had killed her father and her mother, he had killed himself, he had sentenced Clotilde to a life sentence, all in order to possess a girl for the first time, a girl who didn’t deserve him, and not even a girl, just her body, an object, a doll at best.
She saw again the frightened expression on Maria-Chjara’s face as she stood in the door of her dressing room, the evening when Clotilde had said Nicolas’s name and mentioned the accident. Her silence. Her denial. Her flight. She understood, she understood now how great a burden that secret must have been for Maria-Chjara. She, who hadn’t asked for any of it; yet who had provoked it all. She, who had done nothing but throw aside the stub of her cigarette. What fault of hers was it if the sun shone, if the wind blew on the dry grass, and the dead wood?
Arsonist and innocent, all at the same time.
You can’t condemn an object, not even a doll.
‘Promise me, Natale. Promise me that not all men are like that. Promise me that …’
Their lips stopped a few centimetres apart.
‘Excuse me.’
The old woman’s watering can left behind her a trail of droplets that disappeared as if by magic a few seconds later into the ochre clay path. It was then that Clotilde recognised her face, framed by a black veil the same colour as her dress.
Speranza. The witch from Arcanu. Orsu’s grandmother. Lisabetta and Cassanu’s daily helper.
Without deigning to glance at them. Speranza emptied the water from one of the five vases placed on the grave, delicately removed the flowers one by one, filled the vase with fresh water, then rearranged the flowers, pulling off a few leaves and cutting withered stems with a pair of secateurs that she took from the depths of her pocket. She then moved slowly on to the second bouquet.
Suddenly, as if her precise, mechanical gestures had masked an intense hesitation, she turned around.
Her words rattled the silence.
‘You shouldn’t be here!’
Clotilde shivered.
Speranza was looking solely at her, as if Natale didn’t exist. She put down the watering can, and slowly ran her fingers over the letters carved on the mausoleum.
Palma Idrissi (1947–1989)
‘Nor should she.’
Those first words seemed to have been the hardest for Speranza to spit out, like bubbles building up behind a cork. The ones that followed came like an explosion.
‘She shouldn’t be here. Her name doesn’t belong here, engraved with the rest of the Idrissi family. I’m not the one who is the streia, the witch of the mountain, that’s your mother! You know nothing, you weren’t even born,’ she crossed herself quickly, ‘but your mother cast a spell on him.’
Speranza’s eyes stared at the name of Paul Idrissi inscribed on the tomb.
‘Believe me, women are capable of that. Your mother cast a spell on your father, and once she had him in her power, she stole him from us. She took him away, caught in her net, far away from all those who loved him.’
Far away, Clotilde thought, meant the Vexin, whether hunchbacked or not, north of Paris, where he went to sell hectares of lawn. She hadn’t guessed to what extent her father’s choice might have been difficult for his family to accept.
Natale gripped her hand, careful and reassuring, without intervening. Speranza furiously emptied the water from the second vase; faded petals settled like confetti on her black dress.
‘If your father hadn’t met her,’ Speranza continued, brandishing her secateurs, ‘he would have married here. He would have had children here. He would have started a family here. If your mother hadn’t emerged from hell to steal him away, then return here with him …’
Her hand decapitated three roses, two orange lilies and a wild orchid. H
er voice grew calmer for the first time.
‘It’s not your fault, Clotilde. You’re a stranger here. You don’t know anything about Corsica. You’re not like your mother. Your daughter is. Your tall daughter is like her, and she will become a witch too. But you have your father’s eyes, his way of looking at things, of believing in things that other people don’t believe in. I’m not angry with you.’
For the first time, Speranza’s eyes settled on Natale. Her wrinkled hand nervously clenched the secateurs, which opened and closed in mid-air as if to cut off the oxygen that they were breathing. Then, suddenly, she aimed the blade at the marble of the tomb, and slid it screeching across the stone, trying to erase the name of Palma Idrissi. The steel of the secateurs left a white scar on the grey stone, splintering some of the letters: the A, and the M.
The old woman’s eyes rose to the name carved above it.
Paul Idrissi
Once again Speranza crossed herself.
‘Paul should have lived here, if your mother hadn’t killed him. He should have lived here, do you hear me? Lived here. Not come back here to die.’
~
Natale walked Clotilde to the car. Old Speranza was still cursing Palma’s memory as they left the cemetery, as if they were being chased away by a deranged spirit.
They kissed for a long time by the open door of the Passat. The concrete parapet that lined the road made it look like a station platform, it was almost as if a whistle was about to blow, signalling the departure of a train. Clotilde summoned the strength to joke about it.
‘My mother doesn’t seem to have been very well liked here. Not while she was alive, or during her life as a ghost. You were the only Corsican who loved her, from the sound of it.’
‘Not the only one. Your father loved her too.’
Touché!
‘I’ve got to go.’
One last kiss on the platform.
‘I understand. I’ll call you.’
She risked one last question. After all, she was the one driving the train.
‘The hatred of the Corsicans, Natale, the hatred of the Corsicans towards my mother when you and she were, let’s say, close. Your abandoned boat. Your marriage to a policeman’s daughter, does that have anything to do with this story? With this burden, this pressure, with the curses that all the old women of Corsica have threatened to put on you?’