“It’s a very nice face,” I stammered.
She looked like Maria Schneider in Last Tango in Paris. Same round face, same long, curly hair, only hers was black. Like her eyes, which were looking deep into mine. I went red.
I’d seen a lot of Leila these last few years. I knew more about her than her father did. We got into the habit of having lunch together once a week. She talked to me about her mother, who she’d barely known. She missed her. Time didn’t help. In fact, it only made it worse. Every year, when Driss’s birthday came around, all four of them had to find a way of getting through it.
“I think that’s why Driss has become, not bad exactly, but aggressive. Because of that curse. He has hatred in him. One day, my father said to me, ‘If I’d had a choice, I’d have chosen your mother.’ He said it to me, because I was the only one who could understand.”
“You know, my father said that too. But my mother pulled through. And here I am. An only child. It can be lonely.”
“Death is a lonely business.” She smiled. “It’s the title of a novel. Have you read it?”
I shook my head.
“It’s by Ray Bradbury. A detective story. I’ll lend it to you. You ought to read more contemporary novels.”
“They don’t interest me. They lack style.”
“This is Bradbury, Fabio!”
“OK, maybe Bradbury.”
And we’d launch into long discussions about literature. The future teacher and the self-taught cop. The only books I’d read were those we’d been given by old Antonin. Adventure stories, travel books. Poetry, too. Long forgotten Marseilles poets like Émile Sicard, Toursky, Gérald Neveu, Gabriel Audisio, and my favorite, Louis Brauquier.
The weekly lunch wasn’t enough anymore, and we started meeting one or two evenings a week. Whenever I wasn’t on duty, or she wasn’t baby-sitting. I’d go to fetch her in Aix, and we’d take in a movie, then go have dinner somewhere.
We launched on a major survey of foreign cuisines. Considering the number of restaurants between Aix and Marseilles, it was likely to take us many months. We gave stars to those we liked, black marks to those we didn’t. Top of our list was the Mille et une nuits, on Boulevard d’Athenes. You sat on pouffes and ate from a big brass platter, listening to raï. Moroccan cuisine. The most refined in North Africa. They served the best pigeon pastilla I’ve ever tasted.
That evening, I’d suggested Les Tamaris, a little Greek restaurant in a calanque called Samena, not far from my house. It was hot, with a thick, dry heat, typical of late August. We ordered simple things: cucumber salad with yoghurt, stuffed vine leaves, taramasalata, spicy kebabs grilled on vine shoots with a drizzle of olive oil, goat’s cheese. All washed down with a white Retsina.
We walked on the little shingly beach, then sat down on the rocks. It was a glorious night. In the distance, the Planier lighthouse revealed the cape. Leila laid her head on my shoulder. Her hair smelled of honey and spices. She slipped her arm beneath mine and took my hand. I shivered at the contact. I wasn’t quick enough to free myself from her grip. She began reciting a poem by Brauquier, in Arabic.
The shadows and the mystery are gone,
The spirit fled, and we are poor again;
And only sin can give us back the earth,
That makes our bodies move and sigh and strain.
“I translated it for you. I wanted you to hear it in my language.”
Part of that language was her voice. A voice as sweet as halva. I was moved. I turned my face to her, slowly, so that her head stayed on my shoulder and I could get drunk on her smell. I saw a glimmer in her dark eyes, the reflection of the moon on the water. I wanted to take her in my arms and hold her close and kiss her.
I was well aware, and so was she, that our increasingly frequent encounters had been leading up to this moment, and it was a moment I dreaded. I knew my own desires only too well. I knew how it would all end. In bed, then in tears. I’d never known anything but failures, one after the other. I was looking for a woman, and I had to find her, if she existed. But Leila wasn’t her. She was so young, and what I felt for her was only desire. I had no right to play with her. With her feelings. She was too good for that. I kissed her on the forehead. I felt her hand caress my thigh.
“Will you take me home with you?”
“I’ll take you back to Aix. I think that’s best for both of us. I’m just an old fool.”
“I like old fools.”
“Let it go, Leila. Find someone who isn’t a fool. Someone younger.”
On the drive back, I kept my eyes on the road. We didn’t look at each other once. Leila was smoking. I’d put on a Calvin Russel tape that I liked a lot. It was good to drive to. If I could, I’d have crossed the whole of Europe rather than take the turnoff that led to Aix. Russel was singing Rockin’ the Republicans. Leila, still without speaking, stopped the tape before Baby I Love You.
She put in another tape that I didn’t know. Arab music. An oud solo. The music she had dreamed of for this night with me. The sound of the oud spread through the car like an aroma. The peaceful aroma of an oasis. Dates, dried figs, almonds. I risked a look at her. Her skirt had ridden up her thighs. She was beautiful, beautiful for me. Yes, I desired her.
“You shouldn’t have done it,” she said just before she got out.
“Shouldn’t have done what?”
“Let me fall in love with you.”
She slammed the car door. Not violently. But there was sadness in the action, and the anger that goes with sadness. That was a year ago. We hadn’t seen each other since. She hadn’t called. I’d brooded over her absence. Two weeks ago, I’d received her master’s thesis in the mail, and a card with just four words: “For you. So long.”
“I’m going to find her, Mouloud. Don’t worry.”
I gave him my nicest smile. The smile of the good cop you can trust. I remembered something Leila had said, talking about her brothers. “When it’s late, and one of them hasn’t come home, we get worried. Anything can happen in this place.” Now it was my turn to be worried.
Rachid was alone in front of Block C12, sitting on a skateboard. He stood up when he saw me come out of the building, picked up his skateboard, and vanished into the lobby. I supposed he was telling me to go fuck myself and my mother. But I didn’t care. When I got to my car in the parking lot, I saw it didn’t have a single new scratch.
3.
IN WHICH THE MOST HONORABLE THING A SURVIVOR CAN DO IS SURVIVE
A heat haze enveloped Marseilles. I was driving along the highway, with the windows down. I’d put on a B. B. King tape. Full volume. Nothing but the music. I didn’t want to think. Not yet. All I wanted was to empty my head, to dispel the thoughts that were flooding in. I was on my way back from Aix and my worst fears had been confirmed. Leila really had disappeared.
I’d wandered through the empty faculty looking for the administration offices. I needed to know if Leila had gained her master’s before I went to the residence. The answer was yes. With distinction. It was after that that she’d disappeared. Her old red Fiat Panda was still in the parking lot. I’d glanced inside, but nothing had been left lying around. Either it had broken down—which I hadn’t checked—and she’d taken the bus, or someone had come to pick her up.
The super, a pudgy little man, his cap pulled down tight on his head, opened the door to Leila’s room for me. He remembered seeing her come in, but not go out again. He himself had left around six in the evening.
“She hasn’t done anything wrong, has she?”
“No, no. She’s disappeared.”
“Shit,” he said, scratching his head. “She’s a nice girl. Polite. Not like some of the French girls.”
“She is French.”
“That’s not what I meant, monsieur.”
He fell silent. I’d upset him. He stood by the door while I check
ed out the room. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular. I just wanted to make sure Leila hadn’t suddenly decided to fly off to Acapulco for a change of scenery. The bed had been made. Above the sink, a toothbrush, toothpaste, beauty products. In the closet, her things, neatly arranged. A bag of dirty washing. On a table, sheets of paper, notepads, and books.
The book I was looking for was here. Harbor Bar by Louis Brauquier. A first edition, from 1926, on pure laid Lafuma, published by the review Le Feu. Numbered 36. I’d given it to her as a present.
It was the first time I’d parted with one of the books I had in my house. They belonged to Manu and Ugo as much as to me. They were the great treasure of our teenage years. I’d often dreamed that one day they would bring the three of us back together. The day Manu and Ugo finally forgave me for being a cop. The day I admitted that it was easier to be a cop than a criminal and I could embrace them like long-lost brothers, with tears in my eyes. When that day came, I knew I’d read the poem by Brauquier that ended with these words:
For a long time I searched for you
Night of the lost night.
We’d discovered Brauquier’s poems in Antonin’s second-hand bookstore. Fresh Water for Ships, Beyond Suez, Freedom of the Seas. We were seventeen. Antonin was recovering from a heart attack. We stopped blowing our money on the pinball machines, and took it in turn to mind the store. It was a chance to indulge our grand passion, old books. The novels, travel books and poems I read had a particular smell. The smell of cellars. An almost spicy smell, a mixture of dust and grease. Verdigris. Books today don’t have a smell. They don’t even smell of print.
I’d found the original edition of Harbor Bar one morning, emptying some boxes Antonin had never opened, and taken it home with me. I leafed through the book, with its yellowed pages, closed it, and put it in my pocket. I looked at the super.
“I’m sorry for what I said earlier. I’m a bit on edge.”
He shrugged. He was the kind of guy who must be used to other people putting him down.
“Did you know her?”
I didn’t answer, but gave him my card. Just in case.
I’d opened the window and lowered the blind. I was exhausted. I was longing for a cold beer. But, before anything else, I had to do a report on Leila’s disappearance and pass it on to the missing persons bureau. Then Mouloud would need to sign a request for a search. I’d called him. I could hear the hopelessness in his voice, the sense of misery that grabs hold of you and won’t let you go. “We’ll find her.” That was all I could say. Behind the words, a chasm opened up. I imagined him sitting at his table, not moving, eyes staring into the distance.
Mouloud’s image gave way to Honorine’s, this morning, in her kitchen. I’d gone there at seven, to tell her about Ugo. I didn’t want her to find out from the newspapers. Auch’s squad had been very discreet. There was only a short paragraph on the inside pages. A dangerous criminal, wanted by the police of several countries, had been shot dead yesterday as he was getting ready to open fire on the police. There were a few details about his life, but no mention of why Ugo was considered dangerous, or what crimes he’d committed.
Zucca’s death had made the headlines. The journalists all kept to the same version. Zucca wasn’t a famous gangster like Mémé Guérini or, more recently, Gaëtan Zampa, Jacky Le Mat or Francis the Belgian. It wasn’t even certain he’d ever killed anyone, or maybe just one or two people, to prove himself. He was the son of a lawyer, and a lawyer himself. Basically, he was a manager. Since Zampa had killed himself in prison, he’d been running the Marseilles mafia’s empire. Steering well clear of family feuds or battles for territory.
His execution had gotten everyone nervous. Was it the start of a gang war? Marseilles really didn’t need this right now. The city’s economic downturn was already a heavy enough burden to bear. SNCM, the company that ran the ferry service to Corsica, was threatening to take its business elsewhere, Toulon for instance, or La Ciotat, a former naval shipyard 25 miles from Marseilles. For months, there’d been a dispute between the company and the longshoremen over their status. The longshoremen had had a monopoly of hiring and firing on the waterfront since 1947, but all that was in the balance now.
It was a trial of strength, and the city was holding its breath for the outcome. In all the other ports, they’d surrendered. Even if the city had to die, for the Marseilles longshoremen it was a question of honor. Honor was central to Marseilles life. “You have no honor,” was the worst insult you could say to someone. You could kill a man for the sake of honor. Your wife’s lover, the guy who’d insulted your mother, or wronged your sister.
That was why Ugo had come back. For the sake of honor. Manu’s honor. Lole’s honor. The honor of our youth, our shared friendship. Our memories.
“He shouldn’t have come back.”
Honorine had looked up from her coffee cup. I could see it in her eyes: that wasn’t the thing that was tormenting her. It was the trap I was walking into. Did I have honor? I was the last of the three. The one who inherited all the memories. Could a cop take the law into his own hands? Make sure justice was done? Did anyone even care about justice when it was just criminals killing criminals? That was what I saw in Honorine’s eyes. She was answering her own questions: yes, yes, yes again, and finally no. She could already see me lying in the gutter. With five bullets in my back, like Manu. Or three, like Ugo. Three or five, the number didn’t matter. Just one was enough to end up face down in the gutter. And that was something Honorine didn’t want. I was the last, the sole survivor. The most honorable thing a survivor could do was survive. If you stayed on your feet, stayed alive, you were the winner.
I’d left her sitting over her coffee. I’d looked at her. She looked the way my mother might have looked. She had the ravaged face of a woman who’d already lost two of her sons in a war that didn’t concern her. She turned away to look at the sea.
“He should have come to see me,” she’d said.
Since it opened, I’d only used Line 1 of the subway about ten times. Castellane to La Rose. From the hip neighborhoods—the new downtown—with their bars, restaurants and cinemas, to North Marseilles, which was a place you didn’t hang out in if you didn’t have to.
For the last few days, a group of Arab kids had been causing trouble on the line. Subway security was inclined to favor strong arm tactics. That was something all Arabs understood. The same old song. Except that it had never worked. Not on the subway, and not on the main line railroad. Every time heads were cracked, there’d been reprisals. A blockade on the Marseilles-Aix line, after the Septèmes-les-Vallons station, a year ago. Stones thrown at the train at the Frais-Vallon subway station, six months ago.
So I’d suggested the other method. Talking to the gang. In my own way. The subway cowboys had laughed. But for once, the management ignored them and gave me a free hand.
Pérol and Cerutti came with me. It was six in the evening. The ride was about to start. An hour before, I’d dropped by the garage where Driss worked. I wanted to talk to him about Leila.
He was just finishing for the day. While I waited for him, I talked to his boss. A firm believer in contracts for apprentices. Especially when the apprentices did as much work as the regular staff. And Driss pulled out all the stops when it came to work. He mainlined on axle grease. By evening he’d overdosed. It wasn’t as bad for you as crack or heroin. At least that’s what they said, and I believed it. But it screwed with your head all the same. Driss still had to prove himself. And don’t forget to say yes sir, no sir. And keep your mouth permanently shut, because, what the hell, he was only a dirty Arab, after all. For the moment, he was holding out.
I’d taken him to the bar on the corner. The Disque bleu. The bar was filthy, like its owner. You could see from his face that this was a place where Arabs were allowed to play the lottery and the tote and drink standing up. Even though I tried to give myself a va
guely Gary Cooper look, I almost had to show him my police badge in order to have two beers at a table. I was still too tanned for some people.
“Have you stopped training?” I said, coming back with the beers.
On my advice, he’d enrolled in a boxing gym in Saint-Louis, run by an old friend of mine named Georges Mavros. Georges had been a young hopeful, who, after winning a few fights, had had to choose between boxing and the woman he loved. He got married, and became a truck driver. By the time he found out that his wife was sleeping around whenever he was on the road, it was too late to be a champion. He dumped his wife and his job, sold what he had, and opened a gym.
Driss had all the qualities needed to be a good boxer. He had intelligence and passion. He could be as good as his idols, Stéphane Haccoun and Akim Tafer. Mavros would make him a champion. I truly believed that. But in that too he’d have to hold out.
“Too much work. The hours are too long. And the boss is like a sponge. He’s always on my back.”
“You didn’t phone. Mavros was expecting you.”
“Do you have any news about Leila?”
“That’s why I came to see you. Do you know if she has a boyfriend?”
He looked at me as if I was putting him on. “Aren’t you her guy?”
“I’m her friend. Just like I’m your friend.”
“I thought you were humping her.”
I almost hit him. There are certain expressions that make me throw up. That one in particular. Pleasure involves respect, and respect starts with words. That’s something I’ve always thought.
“I don’t hump women. I love them... Try to, anyhow...”
“And Leila?”
“What do you think?”
“I like you.”
“Then let it go. Young guys like you are a dime a dozen.”
“What does that mean?”
Total Chaos Page 6