by Cédric Fabre
“They’re melting like popsicles. It’s not just drops on their mustaches. I’m not exaggerating, there’s practically as much sweat there as sauce on a Chinese spring roll. Chimneys like their cleavage must draw well, for sure. They’re fountain-chimneys! Amazing. If they let me do it I’ll change them into statues for Longchamp Park.
“And they’re nice, good manners, good girls talking to each other in low voices, laughing into each other’s ears, discretely even, Turkish delight syllables, smiling and happy, see, must’ve made two good arranged marriages; they’re on their way to their mother-in-law’s who has the A/C turned up to the max, and they sit down at the table and let-me-heat-up-the-meatballs and then they open their bags of lingerie to show everybody.
“Their breasts, let me tell you, there’s enough to make four or six with them, the husbands have a feast and so do we. Hey, don’t tell me we can’t spend five minutes admiring the wonders of nature. My kids I moderate on the junior forum, they’re not normal, they’re like infected, formatted by their porn movies, they can’t understand beauties like these.
“Last time, I’m not kidding, there’s one who writes in the forum: Hi everybody, so here’s my problem, I egaculated into my hand the other day and then tree days later I penatrated my girlfriend with my fingers, does she have a chance of being pregnant?
“What can you do with kids like that? And then the questions from his colleagues like: How much time does sperm live in the open air? And another: Open air’s like the normal air you have at home? Or like the air outside?
“They don’t know a thing, see, you got to explain what open air is! Lucky they know how to breathe. Me, I’m there for them, I answer, I explain, I say it’s good to ask questions when you don’t know something, but Jesus, that’s not not-knowing even, it’s something else, it’s a whole other dimension. Two weeks I been explaining sperm while the Danes are telling us we don’t have any left, and that’s what’s serious, the percentage of sperm per centiliter, what’s left of it compared to what we had before is nothing, and that asshole the other day with his stupid nickname, Angel of Darknitude, asking us: So guys, here’s my problem, I slept on my friends’ living room couch and I came without realizing it, so my underwear was dirty, I didn’t clean it and now I’m scared, if my girlfriend sits down on the couch naked and my sperm touches her vagina, is she going to get pregnant?
“That drives me nuts, see. How do they bring them up, they invent stuff like that? And then, they’re the ones who’ve gone to school. So just imagine the other ones, jerking off all over the Internet like total ignoramuses, going by their rule of three: blowjob, sodomy, and facial ejac. After that, don’t be surprised if they get even dumber than us.
* * *
“Okay, finally, the bus is taking off from the Réformés Canebière stop. That is, it stops revving up. That sound drives me up the wall, but it stops when the bus moves. After twenty yards the moron bus takes a sharp turn, making its way down rue des Abeilles to the Saint-Charles station. Parenthesis: the only station built on a hill. A real Marseille idea, that, just to brag a little, hey, you Parisians! Look how classy we are! You don’t have stations like that up there in your Nord-Pas-de-Calais. Us, we put our trains way up and we think it looks good. Besides, we plan to build the next one up on Mount Sainte-Victoire, with money from the Norwegian mafia.
“I can’t help looking at that nitwit pig, he keeps staring with his little snaky eyes, red from liquor, at the handles of the stroller so’s not to stare at her panties. She’s still holding the baby in her arms, maybe he’s hungry, maybe he wants his mother’s breast. What should I do, get up and smack him one as a preventive measure? I could, but people would get all worked up about it, they won’t understand I have good reasons to act that way. You never know what to do in these situations. The guy may have a knife. Maybe she’s coming back from tests, vaccinations for the kid. She’s all white, like women back in the day, when it was the fashion to look like some shitty milkman.
“The problem is, actually, between the slut and the saint, what do you do, since there’s only two models? Men and all my kids in the forum have to deal with that. Everything’s too dirty inside their heads. When you look at a girl’s mouth or eyes to make yourself come, you know there’s a problem. To get to screw whores after that, those assholes rob other poor schmucks; I’ve been a civil servant for twenty-five years and I’ve never seen such a low level, the Gang of Barbarians—that anti-Semitic gang who tortured that Jewish boy to death—that’s their mindset, there’s no sense of right or wrong anymore, a porn film in each hand, a Lamborghini for the big family wedding on the Vieux-Port, you can see them on Saturdays all dressed up for the occasion, big bikes and Porsches for show when they don’t have a penny in the bank.
“The other day I went to see Dire Straits at the Dôme to relax. Dire Straits, those guys never get old, that Mark Knopfler’s still just as good, I’m telling you, the guy’s a pro, short as he is with his bandanna, he’s a giant. All the kids listening to their rap, they’d do better to listen to Dire Straits, there’s no way you can’t like them, impossible. Me, I’d be glad to take those kids to a concert, let them discover something different than their crappy music; I’d take them to the opera too, but who’d sign up if I posted the invitation on the site? Always the same ones, the ones who go already; I’m not particularly fond of faggots, but come on, guys like Sexion d’Assaut, they should put them in the slammer, that’s all they deserve. Kids don’t need that kind of example. With my wife, you know why we don’t live in the neighborhood anymore? Let me tell you: when you keep hearing La Belle de Mai is the poorest neighborhood in Europe even counting Greece, shit, enough already, my wife doesn’t want to be the poorest woman in Europe, me neither, and my children—you bet they don’t.
“My grandfather arrived in La Belle de Mai without knowing where he landed. It was the 1920s, when there was still work in France, when there were still workers. Remember that? Ever saw real workers, or are you too young? Imagine men with real hands, perfectly adapted to hold pickaxes, peasants in fact, who moved to cities and never counted the hours. Hey, all they knew was the sun, none of that RMI or RSA crap, the handouts those bums get from the government, no, they worked out of pride, not to die of hunger, with real muscles, not muscles from the gym club, not that display to screw the missus like in the Saturday-night movie.
“My grandfather, he got himself a factory job. He came from Tuscany, from Capoliveri, on the Island of Elba where Napoleon took a little vacation. Twenty years later, he could send for his wife, a great cook. After twenty years, you hear me? He wasn’t like the Kosovars and the gypsies from here. He didn’t make it to Marseille like a dog, didn’t send his kids out to beg or whore on the sidewalk, no, he worked hard, that’s all, and he didn’t buy the junk he needed at the Porte d’Aix market. And a long time after that he opened up a café, my father arrived, and here I am in front of you, and I can be proud, hold my head high.
“I’m telling you, the 49 is like the neighborhood. I don’t listen to the people who bitch about it anymore. On place Bernard Cadenat, the bus leans over and that’s when Katrina, the big fat Comorian, the star of our story, gets on. I call her Katrina but she must have another name, she’s a barrel, that woman, and in fact she has a barrel with her. Katrina’s the kind who always has a barrel with her, see. In case it might come in handy. Close to six feet, huge arms, huge legs, a discus thrower who’d also dabbled with weights and the hammer-throw. She’s all we needed! At least her man helps her hoist up her Jerrican. The bus sags with the new weight. The front tire no longer a rugby ball, but nearly the shape of a Frisbee. If the 49 was an elevator, with her, the Jerrican, and all of us, we’d break the Guinness record for excess weight.
“She elbows her way to the middle, sliding her Jerrican along, so the bus is balanced again. I don’t know what she has in there, but it looks impressive. I tell myself right away it’s food, some dish cooked in a special sauce maybe. I’m sitting in
the back, the boat rocks, I put on a playlist that works for the 49, tailor-made. Dire Straits, Simple Minds, the Scorpions, Queen. Now that should be called classical music these days. In a thousand years they’ll still be listening to Mark Knopfler. Maybe more than the Mozarts and the Ravels. Got nothing against them but I think they do a little too much Mozart and the rest. Make way for the young, for chrissake!
“My Sephardic friends get off at Jourdan Bonnardel, fine, but other people are getting on, shit, the bus is full, they’re all standing, talking about their problems, and I can hear only the guitars. My ears aren’t a garbage dump, I got myself Sony HD headphones, let them just try to rip them off, I’m well known here, they respect me, but sometimes they forget that this is the Italian neighborhood, don’t piss us off. Pasolini, Antonioni, Rossellini, and Paolo Conte, all Italians, and Freddy Mercury who sings like an Italian, he’s the English Luis Mariano.
“Dino Risi comedies! I can tell you, I didn’t spend my time in junior forums, and as far as girls with strollers, just try to touch them. We were animals, but with principles. It was the time of the black leather jackets, me, my jacket was sort of dark gray, I remember. I loved that jacket. Anyone bugged me, I had brass knucks, Greek philosophers we were not.
“We all went out armed, that’s what you did in those days. The kids today act like tough guys but they’re just acting, they act tough to be tough, like the Sheetrock at Boulanger’s. Real rough times, the eighties. They make me laugh now with their three stiffs a month. Just do the count again, son, back in the day it was a massacre, you wouldn’t set foot or hand in Belsunce, and your daughter went all the way around through Cassis to avoid the center, and that was before six p.m.
“I had my technique down pat. I bombarded the girls with words. You might say I was the talker of the gang. I was the one who worked my tongue before enjoying our rewards. And I was the first to get it: just Mediterranean imports we got back then, black, Arab. No Chinese for chrissake. Back in the day we got only solid stuff with a ten-year guarantee.
“In nightclubs, the other Emilio, my buddy, he always wanted a blowjob before coming out with a complete sentence. Real muscle, we kept him, but God, you should’ve seen that ape, he caused problems, nothing serious, but the problems rubbed off on us, and that was more serious. He’d take out his dick before he said good evening, he’d screw up our plans; after that I’d spend days trying to fix things; I found ways, like in Ridicule. Did you see the movie? You didn’t see it, you should. I’d talk their heads off, it made them all confused and the poor girls couldn’t understand anything anymore, they ended up doing all the stuff that would make you blush, on the rocks, under a boat, under the tarp covering the propeller of a freighter. My sentences had no end. They were like a thing that drills you and enters deep into your skin, you can’t get rid of it, an octopus or a giant sea urchin that sticks you where it hurts. On the Island of Elba the ancestors fished tuna and whales. But me, I’d adapted my instinct to rock sluts, and I had a feast, my arms were like fishnets.
“But at the same time I was going to school, I was serious, I stuck to it, I was sort of a hood, but a serious hood, respectful, mean in the good sense of the word. If I fucked up somebody, either he deserved it or it did him good, or both. Sometimes that puts things back in place. I even got my Bac that way, got my high school diploma while practicing all those extracurricular activities.
“My father programmed me to be a civil servant, he didn’t want me to take over the café that was waiting for him when we came back, serving pastis to zombies, no, he didn’t want that. His mother made him swear I’d be somebody. And since I was programmed by all of them and they all cared about me and were so supportive, not like my kids there who don’t have help from their family, I managed to become a civil servant for the city of Marseille.
“It’s all different now, trying to make something out of yourself. The assholes are in finance, in the big banks, the IMF fucks us on a daily basis, the kids get that all right, it makes them want to throw up and I can understand; when you’re screwed by Goldman Sachs you don’t exactly feel great about yourself, you don’t tell yourself how you’re gonna get revenge. You know you gotta get the hell out of here, but it’s all globalized now, where can you go, everything’s the same everywhere, same thing in every goddamn place, you’re in their radar, where’re you gonna go now so’s not to get screwed? Senegal? Senegal’s same as here, almost worse. You think it’s better to get screwed by black capitalists? There are none so distant that fate cannot bring together.
“I thought I’d leave, not for Givors but Lyon for instance, bust out of this zoo, this pile of assholes. Marseille is a net that drags up everybody’s shit. Nobody sorts it out. People turn round and round daily and they go crazy, of course. Frankly, if I didn’t have a cushy job at city hall taking care of all those disadvantaged kids I would’ve packed my bags fast, let me tell you, I wouldn’t be here anymore. But where, that’s the thing. The colonies now, they’re all corrupt, even for us there’s no fun in the world anymore. La Belle de Mai, I like it, I’m telling you. I take my ride on the 49, I observe, I know it well, in fact I know it perfectly. Where do you want me to go that’s better?
“The children left and they were right. I don’t hold it against them, it’s the way things are, I can tell you that as a Frenchman you’re always an immigrant everywhere, we’re all in the same boat. Me, I’m already on the other side of the tracks, see, it’s progress, being in the Longchamp sideshows I made progress. They put those stupid giant arty plaques in the tunnel. Designed with our money by all those asshole artists from la Friche. That must have cost us morons a pretty penny. They think they’re improving our reality with the black stuff from the exhaust. They think the plaques will distract us, make us think of something else. But me, ever since they’ve been up there in the tunnel, I can tell you I see the filth behind them five times more. I can smell it through every pore. All those jokers gathered together in what used to be our factory. Instead of giving work to the kids, they make us panels to hide the ugly stuff, so we shouldn’t be so mad; but there’s no jobs, I don’t give a shit about your art, first get rid of those parasites, then put workers there instead. That’s what you’ll do if you want me to be happy, neighborhood kids who need a job, who want to work, and there’re plenty of them for chrissake! Then you can do whatever you feel like, bring over bums from Vietnam to paint the tunnels, as many as you like for all I care.
“I’m not against art, I even like it, but hey, great art, real painting like in the Renaissance, not their vulturish concepts. Me, I’m as racist about that kind of bastard as about the riffraff that smashes up cars. My father was born here, my grandfather was not even twenty when he landed, and at that time the French government didn’t lecture us with those Picassos who come show off at the factory. Artists had their dignity then, they respected work, and besides, they were all Communists, like us, they loved the people, and whether you were Italian or Spanish or Armenian you were the people first, but now there’s no more people, no more solidarity, it’s every man for himself because everybody talks on behalf of the people.
“Way things work now, I can see the multinationals decide what we get to eat. They don’t give a shit about us, they just want to suck our blood, fuck us, and throw us into the sea. Back in the day there was respect, now you’re constantly insulted, like on line at Mickey D’s. Not that I don’t like Mickey D’s. Sometimes I even go to the one in Saint-Charles, it’s convenient and you can eat outside. But I don’t like being treated like a dog. Even if my kids in the forum are savages, which they are, I refuse to accept them being treated like dogs, I can’t accept that, even if they don’t deserve much and they’re dumb as shit and they don’t want to do anything—you can’t leave them like that. Let’s start by getting rid of the worst, all the new ones on the list, and try to take care of the ones who can be saved, the ones who speak a little French already and aren’t surviving on scraps alone.
* * *
“Okay, we’re arriving at Clovis Hugues, just in front of the bakery, you know, before the bus turns and goes back down. It’s a very sharp turn, so the driver gives a big twist to his wheel, and to hold on, fat Katrina grabs the Jerrican, but it isn’t heavy enough to hold her, I see everything like in slow motion, the can wants to stay flat on the floor but she grabs it as she falls, she grabs it like a treasure. And before collapsing like a crepe, a nice dark buckwheat crepe, her big body taking a good dive into space—normally only NASA sees stuff like this—the Jerrican goes bumping into one of the poles and now, fuck, the lid pops off, the thing opens, and now we’re in the Philippines, the liquid spills out and there’s a tidal wave on the bus! But not water, better than that, Comoros Katrina goes further than everybody, she beats all the Hurricane Cynthias, she cooks everything with oil.
“It spreads out, the first to go sliding is that pig, the one who was sniffing the chador, and that’s nice to see. He does a whole figure-skating routine next to the stroller, incredible. He just discovered he has talent, he breaks his back and liquid spurts all over. After her dive, the Comorian next to him is now bleeding from the nose, she’s emptying out, she apologizes to everybody, she says I’ll clean it all up! I’ll clean it all up! Mr. Driver, I’m a cleaning woman, don’t worry! But how can you expect to clean up all that oil? You’d have to round up all the Ajax in the neighborhood. To top it all, an oil smelling of fish, all spotted with grease and veggie leftovers.
“Now the driver starts yelling: What’s going on back there for chrissake? He turns around, see, and instead of heads all he sees are feet, sneakers, babouches, everybody ass over heels, a total massacre. And then I don’t know what gets into him, he loses it. I see him opening the door of his cabin. I feel he doesn’t understand what’s happening but he wants to be with us, he wants to join the party. And now all it takes is a second of course, oooops, as soon as he sets a foot down, and it’s even more violent, bang! Rabbit punch on the door, and smack down into the oil. Excuse me, driver! Katrina yells again. I’m so sorry! I’m gonna clean everything up! But he doesn’t care anymore, he has slipped into the other world.