Time Is a Killer

by Michel Bussi

  He merely smiled.

  ‘Off you go, my princess, go back to the castle where you are imprisoned. Escape while your brave knight holds the witches at bay.’

  ~

  Clotilde drove, her eyes misted with tears, distorting the cliffs that slipped by as if diluted by the sea. At each bend in the road the Revellata Peninsula appeared, drowned in a fog that existed only in her eyes. The damp landscape was washed out, the wet electricity poles twisted, but Clotilde drove slowly, at less than thirty kilometres an hour, so that she could see the face of Maria-Chjara on the posters on every other pole.

  Eighties Concert, Tropi-Kalliste, 22 August, Oscelluccia beach.

  The day after tomorrow. The same formula as four days ago. Cervone had no reason to change a successful recipe, particularly for holiday-makers who rarely remained in the same place for a long time.

  But Clotilde couldn’t let such an opportunity go by. She had to go back and see the Italian singer once more. She had to find a way to talk to her, to get rid of the bodyguard outside her door, to make her admit what had happened with her brother Nicolas on 23 August 1989. Leaving the road, the damaged steering rod, their tacit silence. Only Maria-Chjara could confirm Cervone’s version of events. But how to make her do that? For the Italian, to confess was to acknowledge her own complicity, her direct responsibility for the deaths of three people, years after it had happened. She was bound to deny it. Even if by some miracle Clotilde managed to get close to her, she would deny it.

  She would never know the truth for certain.

  The tears were still flowing freely, and now she was driving at less than twenty kilometres per hour. A giant motor-home with an NL registration was getting impatient behind her, tail-gating her, apparently determined to push her towards the precipice if she slowed down any more. In a stupid reflex, as if to wipe away the watery landscape, she turned on her windscreen wipers.

  It was only then that Clotilde noticed the envelope wedged between the windscreen and the wiper. A flyer perhaps? The bit of paper, clinging to the windscreen only by one corner, flew off after it had gone back and forth once more.

  Clotilde braked hard.

  The motor-home blasted its horn even louder than the ferry coming into the port of Bastia, a redhead on the passenger seat insulted her in Dutch and all the children in the back seat pressed their noses to the door and studied her as if she were a curious animal.

  Clotilde didn’t care. She parked the Passat randomly in the gravel, with two wheels on the tarmac. Leaving the door open, she ran after the envelope, which was flitting from rock to rock. Eventually it caught on a bramble bush and she picked it up, scratching her forearms and cursing her insanity. Franck was right, she was losing all sense of perspective. Her emotions were becoming uncontrollable. She had almost killed herself over an advertisement, the special opening of a supermarket next Sunday, or a car-boot sale, a concert, perhaps even Maria-Chjara’s concert.

  All for a piece of paper.

  Her hands were trembling.

  The envelope was white, apart from two words:

  For Clo.

  It was a woman’s handwriting. Handwriting that she would have recognised anywhere.

  Her mother’s.

  39

  Monday, 21 August 1989, fifteenth day of the holidays

  Broken-crystal blue sky

  ‘I took your advice, Basile, I went to see the dolphins with Natale.’

  And I lay it on thick, believe me. The Euproctes bar is full to bursting, it’s drinks time, the Casanis and the Pietra are flowing and there are so many olives in bowls that all the trees on the east of the island must have been stripped bare.

  There are probably about twenty clients here. All men. So I tell them about my cruise on the Aryon, about Orophin, Idril and their little ones, Galdor and Tatië. I confirm that Natale speaks to them, he must be a bit of a magician, and I add on a bit from The Big Blue which none of them has seen apart from the youngest ones, perhaps, and they probably only remember Rosanna Arquette’s ski-jump nose and the freckles on her bottom.

  Go. Go and see, my love!3

  I’m cunning, I’ve prepared my story. I think I’ve startled them a bit, this army of hairy brutes, all bearded and paunchy, with the T-shirt that I’ve chosen deliberately – black and white, WWF in blood red and underneath it a decapitated panda.

  ‘The most complicated part,’ I simper, overplaying an innocence at odds with my bloody clothing, ‘will not be to persuade the dolphins, it will be building the sanctuary.’

  The campers don’t care, they don’t believe in dolphin safaris any more than they believe in the resurrection of sea-calves.

  ‘I’m Corsican too, just like Natale Angeli, so concrete is out of the question. We need something else, different building materials, wood, glass, stone, it has to be beautiful! There’s no question of spoiling the site, the land belongs to Papé.’

  I love that. Calling my grandfather ‘Papé’ in front of all these men who are putting the world to rights, Corsica and the maquis, amid the scents of aniseed, myrtle and tobacco. I have the impression that for them Cassanu Idrissi is some kind of Major General whose name cannot be uttered without them being changed into stone. Then along I come, turning up on their island looking like a zombie, and calling their supreme emperor Papé!

  And just wait – I haven’t produced my secret weapon.

  ‘Luckily,’ I continue, ‘we’ll be working as a family. Papé can supply the land and my mother, who is an architect, will be able to build the house for the dolphins.’

  I hesitate to go any further. I’m worried that I’ll overdo it. But no, men who are quenching themselves like a herd of zebras around a watering-hole are rarely the most wily of animals.

  ‘I think my mother and Natale get on well. Is there a toilet here?’

  And down I go, perky as anything. The toilets at the bar are about three hundred steps down, at the end of an endless tunnel, almost as if they’d been built on the mainland. Except that I only go down ten steps and wait for the light to go out before going back up seven. Fine, I admit it, it’s a rubbish plan, it’s mean and borderline unhealthy. So in my defence, I want to confess everything.

  Yes, I am jealous! Yes, thinking about my mother totally makes me want to kill someone. Yes, I want to know if my mother is sleeping with Natale. Yes, I’d prefer Maman to belong completely to Papa and Natale to belong only to me. So, I wait, in the darkness, like a curious, slightly anxious little mouse.

  I don’t have to wait long. Men drinking in a herd tend to chat. In this regard the only difference between men and women is perhaps the amount of alcohol. And as soon as the subject of sex rears its head …

  A first voice launches in. A voice that’s slightly too high-pitched for a man from the maquis, with the intonation of a wailing baby, a bit like Elmer Fudd, Tex Avery’s stupid hunter.

  ‘Natale’s got a brass neck. Having a go at Cassanu’s daughter-in-law …’

  I hear collective laughter. A man with the nasal voice of a duck chimes in.

  ‘I have to say, Paul’s wife, she’d make me want to turn into a tree-hugger.’

  Slightly anxious silence around the bowls of pitted olives.

  ‘Those tree-huggers have been trying to reintroduce wolves back into the woods for over twenty years,’ Daffy Duck explains. ‘I wouldn’t mind getting my hands on her little wolf.’

  There’s more laughter, I’m not making it up. I recognise the voice of Basile, who tries to impose some kind of order.

  ‘Maybe he really does need an architect,’ the campsite boss suggests. ‘And even if Palma is getting a bit too close to that handsome Natale, she might have her reasons.’

  A mini-hunter who must be around my age and whose voice hasn’t yet broken dares to intervene in the grown-ups’ scrum. He has the voice of Tweety-Pie. But I thank him for it. He asks the question as if I had prompted him.

  ‘Why would she have her reasons?’

  Daffy Duck c
learly has another good line up his sleeve. He guffaws even before delivering his response, which seems to be one of his favourites.

  ‘Petiot, in this corner of the world there’s a proverb that says: In La Revellata the shepherds bring in their animals in the winter, and their wives in the summer, the moment Paul Idrissi steps off the ferry.’

  The laughter explodes in my face like a bomb.

  Elmer throws another grenade before I can bury my head, my face, my ears in my arms.

  ‘You’ve got to understand. Paul gets bored up there with all those Parisiennes hiding out in the Métro. We’ve got wild game all year round, here on the Island of Beauty.’

  ‘Well he’s certainly landed himself some of the most beautiful trophies, even though he only hunts for two months a year.’

  ‘He could let his friends have a look in, some scraps for the hounds.’

  Carpet bombing. The walls are collapsing around me. A siren sounds, but I can’t move, can’t escape, can’t take refuge in a shelter. An airtight box. Nothing but silence.

  Basile’s voice emerges through the fog.

  ‘But Palma is pretty …’

  ‘Yeah,’ Daffy is off again. ‘He showed her his dolphins, and she showed him her whales, the ones in the top of her swimsuit.’

  Loud laughter. Laughter raining down on my shredded body.

  ‘Still,’ Elmer chips in, ‘Natale could have found someone younger. And more importantly, less married.’

  A sudden silence.

  ‘Shush,’ a voice murmurs.

  For a moment I think they’ve spotted me. But no, a second later I hear the cries of a baby. The only new-born baby I know of is the little disabled one that his grandmother, who does the housekeeping at Papé and Mamy’s house, pushes around the place in a pram.

  It’s over.

  No more noise.

  I go on down, stumbling on each step of the black staircase. I plunge into the endless tunnel, an eternity, I tiptoe through all that remains of my childhood, and by the time I reach the toilets a whole lifetime has almost passed by. I lock myself in, as if I’ve crossed to the other side of the Mediterranean, of humanity, of the Milky Way. I sit down on the toilet seat without turning the light on, relying only on the faint light that trickles in; I take out my notebook and transcribe all the words that have just exploded out there, in black, I draw letters with feet, as if they were alive and swarming.

  I copy them out.

  Lines and lines. To punish myself. To expiate the guilt of my family.

  Write them out. Write them out for me a million times.

  My father is cheating on my mother.

  My father is cheating on my mother.

  My father is cheating on my mother.

  My father is cheating on my mother.

  My father is cheating on my mother.

  *

  * *

  There were three pages like that.

  He flicked through them, amused.

  If this diary was published one day, how much of that would the publisher dare to keep?

  3 Dialogue from the film, The Big Blue, directed by Luc Besson, © 1988, Gaumont.

  40

  20 August 2016, 3 p.m.

  Cars passed, sounding their horns as they swerved towards the precipice, insulting the oblivious owner of the Passat that was parked halfway across the winding coastal road. Clotilde didn’t hear them.

  She held the envelope in her hand, thunderstruck. Gently, she opened it.

  She read it slowly, like a child in its first year at primary school reading the words of a retired teacher.

  My Clo,

  Thank you, thank you for agreeing to do that. Thank you for standing under the oak tree. Otherwise I don’t know if I would have recognised you. You have grown into a very pretty woman. Your daughter too, perhaps even more beautiful. She looks like me, I think. At least she looks like the woman I once was.

  I would so like to talk to you.

  This evening. It’s possible this evening, if you can do it.

  Around midnight, go and stand at the bottom of the path that leads to the Casa di Stella.

  Wait there. He will come and guide you.

  Wrap yourself up, it’s bound to be a bit cold.

  He will lead you to my dark room. I won’t be able to open the door. But perhaps the walls will be thin enough for me to be able to hear your voice.

  Until midnight. By the light of Betelgeuse.

  Kisses,

  P.

  ~

  For the rest of the day, Clotilde forced herself to be cheerful.

  Franck hadn’t said anything about her silence over lunch, about her sudden desire to visit her parents’ grave, about her mood swings, her mobile phone and the messages he could have read there. The afternoon passed like a day’s leave in wartime, slowly, without any real enjoyment. Staying at the beach until she grew bored, coming back on foot, hanging up the wet towels, sweeping the sand from the terrace, peeling fruit to make a fruit salad and finding this time almost pleasant, losing herself in the everyday tasks that usually riled her.

  Clotilde even went and rested a hand on Franck’s shoulder. She found the sight of him almost touching, as he knelt down to fight the colonies of ants that were opening up new routes to the breakfast shelves; Franck putting everything in order, blocking up holes, the sugar, coffee, the biscuits, checking the impenetrability of all the packets and retying the knots on all the bags. A little boy almost helpless in the face of the cunning and perseverance of insects.

  Clotilde left her hand on his bare shoulder. In her gesture there was some guilt, some fear and a great deal of strategy. Not with regard to Natale, not at that moment; but with regard to her midnight assignation.

  All of this was in her voice as well.

  ‘You just need to give me some time, Franck. I’ll explain it all to you, soon. I’ve received some information. Some new information.’

  She hesitated a little, too long perhaps; Franck turned his back to her, still crouching down, talking to the ants.

  ‘No ghost stories this time, Franck, I can assure you. Nothing but the truth. Some old photographs, evidence, and the cruel truth.’

  She paused, then bent down and kissed him on the back of the neck. At that moment, strangely, the gesture felt sincere. More so than before; than before she had a lover. Franck turned around and stared at her for a long time, as if he were trying to decipher her thoughts, to observe the colonies of ants running through the brain of this mad woman he had married; as if he were thinking to himself that she might be protected from her delirious ideas, too, if they could be stored in hermetically sealed sachets.

  ‘As you wish, Clo. As you wish.’

  ~

  Was it a trap?

  Clotilde was lost in her thoughts.

  ‘Will you pass me the mayonnaise, Maman?’

  Around midnight, go and stand at the bottom of the path that leads to the Casa di Stella.

  Wait there. He will come and guide you.

  ‘Girls, are you still up for sailing tomorrow?’

  I would so like to talk to you.

  This evening. It’s possible this evening, if you can do it.

  Was this some horrible new trap she was about to tumble into? A sequence of questions circled in her head, questions that someone had deliberately provoked, in an ordered way and with premeditation: that first envelope in bungalow C29, her stolen papers, that dog bearing the same name as the one she had owned in a different life, that table laid out for breakfast, the letter on her windscreen.

  ‘Clo, Valou, did you hear me? I reserved the 470 for the day. You’ll love it. The wind, the silence, the freedom …’

  Cervone’s revelations didn’t answer any of these questions, even if they continued to crush her heart, even if she was haunted by the last expression she saw on Nicolas’s face, the expression that she was now able to comprehend: he had understood that he was a murderer and, in the same second, that he was going to die, t
hat he would be executed. Might there be an explanation that connected those two insanities; Nicolas’s plan to seduce Maria-Chjara and the letters from beyond?

  Only one, Clotilde thought. More insane than anything.

  Her mother was still alive.

  ~

  11 p.m.

  Franck, after spending the evening checking his compass, his marine charts, his perfect little sailor’s manual, had gone to bed. They were getting up early the following day. Almost six months ago, he had booked the 470 for the twenty-first of August. Franck had left nothing to chance, he had obtained the papers he needed, done some training and, for a large chunk of the previous day, he had revised. Clotilde sat counting the lines of her novel, like watching the grains fall through an hourglass, letting her thoughts wander as she studied her husband. When you knew them well, adventurers must be quite boring people. Meticulous characters who left no room for chance, for the unknown, the unforeseen, whether they were climbers, surfers or skippers.

  She watched her husband fold his napkin in four, put away the dustpan and brush, delicately put on his cap.

  The reverse wasn’t true.

  Not all meticulous types were adventurers.

  ‘Shall we go to bed?’

  Franck had just finished ticking off his checklist for being a sailor for a day.

  ‘Coming, I’ll follow you. I just want to read for a bit longer.’

  ‘We have to get up early tomorrow, Clo.’

  A barely veiled reproach. Clotilde took it with a smile. She was startled by her own confidence. By the ease with which she lied, or at least didn’t tell the whole truth.

  ‘I know. Tomorrow, you’re going to give me a day sunbathing naked on the deck of your boat, with an attentive man serving me frozen mojitos. That is the deal we made when you booked this last winter, isn’t it? You haven’t forgotten, my darling?’

  11.45 p.m.

  Clotilde set her book down on the table, leaving behind the cup of tea that she had barely tasted, as if to suggest that she wasn’t far away. Franck was already snoring.