Finally the tubular diva brought her song to a close, drank in the applause and joined her table of fans. An innocuous background CD came over the sound system, played low. Piers woke up, drained his glass and signalled to the waiter. Pointing at the case propped up against a chair, he said, “So you’re a musician?” Mouloud nodded. “What do you play?”
“The oud,” he said, figuring that would stop the interview in its tracks.
Piers’ face lit up. “Magnificent instrument. Ancient. Is it a bass? So you’re from Morocco? Or Algeria?”
Stupid questions got on Mouloud’s nerves. He looked at the door. “Ste. Cécile les Vignes.”
“Point taken. Okay. What’s your style? Rock? Hip hop?”
“Rai,” he said, thinking that would shut him up, but quite the opposite. It only got him interested. He started showing off, going on about chaabi, dropping names — Cheb Mimoun, Hanino — saying he collected their CDs and had been to a concert in Marrakesh. It all sounded spurious, like he was just trying to make conversation, but still Mouloud was curious to see how far an American could go without running out of patter. Then, of course, the questions. “Do you write your own stuff?”
Questions were annoying. He could go on all night if he let go. If he started talking about music he’d start feeling bad about Marseille, the time he could be having if he’d gone straight to Marseille, skipped this crazy detour, running after pain. He took a long slug of beer, stared at the glass and decided he couldn’t let this conversation go any further, even if Selim’s thugs were waiting for him outside. This was not the time to sit in the dark talking music with a man who deserved to be dead. He needed to figure out why Selim’s hoods were tracking him. What to do. More questions. Short, nasty answers didn’t seem to matter. Piers began to babble on about places and people he’d known. Mouloud resolved to resist the bait and eventually it worked, the monologue trailed off.
They sat in silence until a commotion at the singer’s table commanded attention. A guy with a camera started taking pictures. Buoyed by raucous laughter, the fans clustered around the singer and flashed their cheesy smiles. He was shooting fast from different angles, dancing. Suddenly he aimed the lens at them, dove in close and snapped Piers, then Mouloud, stepped back to catch them both. Mouloud swung his arm over his face. The man tossed his business card on the table. “Call me if you’re interested in prints,” he said. As if.
Piers pocketed the card, and start up again, his monologue about the Crusades. How the knights in shining armour had been dazzled by Islam. Inspired by the discovery of pure love, female beauty hidden behind the veil, they had dreamed up their own version, called courtly love. The world of the Harem, women beyond the reach of men’s lust, had inspired great verse. Poets killed themselves for courtly love. Chastity, fidelity, denial drove them mad. But what a death! Imagine the poor Christian sods, he said, going home to wives they’d acquired through business deals cooked up by their parents.
As he rambled on, he leaned in close until the scent of his body mingled with the words. Beneath sweat and beer, Mouloud detected a sweet, stale smell, like burning spices. It made his nose tingle. Piers went on and on about the Troubadours who raised love out of the depths of animal desire until it hovered close to heaven. A religious experience, he said, beyond the reach of poor dirty mortals, and anyway, wasn’t hopeless love the only love worth having? Petrarch’s the man, he said. The bard of hopeless love. The low drone of his voice bored through Mouloud’s head, words blurring with the strange scent, making him dizzy. He knew enough about Petrarch, could have said a thing or two but he was too spun out, couldn’t listen anymore.
Finally, the diva jumped up on stage to start into her second set. A blast of music put a stop to the deluge. Piers leaned back against the wall and stared into the crowd.
As if a tight grip had loosened, Mouloud seemed to wake up. His head cleared. He took a sip of beer and resolved to get a plan, face facts: the future with Selim was washed up.
Two girls slipped into a table next to theirs. One of them had long black hair and fine features. She laughed and for a moment he thought it was Magali. He glanced at Piers. He was looking at them too, thinking the same thought. Of course it wasn’t her. But the way the hair fell over her shoulders … As if on cue, Piers leaned in close and said, “Look, man. Keep away from Magali, okay?”
The sound of her name in this place was a violation. It made him want to puke. “Fuck yourself!” he murmured.
“That’s an option,” Piers snorted, reeling back. “Probably good advice.” He raised his glass and drained it. “Hey, take it easy. Don’t worry about me. I’m old enough to be her father. Yours too, for that matter.”
The candle on the table had burned down to a translucent pool of liquid wax in the bottom of a jar. Mouloud looked across at the grim stubble on his jaw. Lit from below it looked like the face of an animal. All he had to do was let his mind conjure that mouth pressed against her breasts and his chest filled with rage. She was trapped in Piers Le Gris’ mind, stripped bare. He tried conjuring Marseille, the horseshoe port full of boats, a gypsy band, the open sea, but all he could see was her with him.
The path to the door was cluttered with drinkers. He got up slowly, picked up his case and edged through the crowd, out the door.
It was a relief to escape the bar’s oppressive atmosphere. He hurried toward the other side of town, cutting through Place du Carem and turning down the narrow rue de la Palapharnerie toward a seedy stretch of crumbling walls covered with graffiti. The battered metal door leading up a stairway to his room was ajar. He stopped, wondering if his father might somehow have doubled back and be waiting. A tiny window in his room looked out on the back of the building. He decided to circle around and see if there was a light on before going up.
When he stepped into the alley, a fist shot out from the dark and grabbed his hair, hauling him into the light. The thug had been waiting. He recognized the snarling face, an ex-con, Remy. He’d seen him hanging around the market. Selim claimed he couldn’t be trusted. He was backed up by a massive fair-haired bruiser who held a length of pipe in both hands.
Mouloud stepped away and started to explain, but the accomplice thrust the pipe at his case and sent it flying into the street. It bounced to the ground, cracking open with a discordant twang. He reached inside his jacket for the gun but a second crack with the pipe caught his hand. The gun exploded with a deafening crack and fell on the pavement. His head swelled with pain.
From a second-storey window across the street, a woman swung open rusty shutters and shouted at them to move on. As Remy snatched up the gun, his accomplice thrust a calloused hand around Mouloud’s throat, lifted him off the pavement and slammed his face against the wall. All he could see was the thick bare arm and massive chest pinning him against cold stone. He heard shouts, then a thud followed by a sickening crunch. His attacker’s grip went limp. Mouloud turned around in time to see him teeter and groan. His eyes bulged. The look of shock stayed frozen on his face as he slid onto the pavement like a scorpion smeared under a flick of the heel. The instant happened in slow motion. Mouloud stood transfixed, watching life ooze out of him like a weightless fog, drifting up and away. From the distance, a shout, “Hey, chaabi.” He looked up. Piers Le Gris was standing beside the crumpled body. He reached down, scooped up a fist-sized cobblestone smeared with blood and fired it over a high wall into a clump of laurel bushes. A siren wailed in the distance. He picked up the gun.
“Give me that, it’s mine,” Mouloud said.
“You want to go to prison? Okay, stick around. Otherwise, run.”
The siren grew nearer. Mouloud looked at Piers, then at the delicate pear-shaped instrument lying in the gutter, strings ripped by the fall. His mother’s most prized possession. She’d taught him how to play. Slowly, as if he had all the time in the world, he put the rosewood antique back in the case. The sirens were closing in as
he walked away. Three sharp gunshots rang out behind, ugly blasts that burned his ears and made his skin crawl, but he kept walking at a steady pace, transfixed by an image of his attacker crumpled on the pavement, blood trickling from his mouth.
Of course he’d be blamed. Even if it was a demented writer who picked up the stone, the finger would be pointed at him. Turning the corner, he broke into a run.
Piers stood watching until Mouloud was out of sight. From behind came a thud. The police siren died. Everything went black.
FOURTEEN
A SICK SENSATION OF FALLING, flailing, nothing to hang onto. And then it stopped. His first thought was, I’m blind. He rubbed his eyes but the darkness refused to take shape. Silence, broken by episodic growls, the rhythm of breathing and pounding in the distance. Thump-thump-thump. A rusty metallic odour, faint at first then overpowering. It occurred to him the sounds were his own heartbeat, his breathing. The smell was blood, his blood. He was inside his own body, there was no other room. A terrifying claustrophobia. I’m trapped in a coffin, he thought. He was fighting for air, chest heaving. His hands, helpful reliable appendages, reached out and grabbed the side of the bed—
The sensation produced a word, bed, the word rescued him. He could feel the edge, meaning he was lying down. Digging his elbows into a hard surface, he hoisted himself up, and in one quick movement swung his legs around till they dangled over the edge. The air was thinner, as though a higher altitude than it had been when he was lying down. Everything is amplified, he thought. The sound of breathing, thumping, like an old dog, struggling.
So I am not dead. No, whatever death is, this is not death.
His panic began to subside, like flood water seeping away.
I’m alive though possibly dying. The sensation of falling crept back but he stopped himself from thinking about it and the sensation went away. Wilfully breathing deeper, taking in more air, he became conscious finally of an inside and an out. He reached one hand in front of him, into the black. It moved slowly in an arc, as if equipped with radar, and stopped at a solid presence. Warm, damp breath on his fingers. The breathing disappeared, now he heard only the sound of someone waiting, thinking. A void bursting with expectation.
“Is that you?” he ventured. The words came out dry, like crumpled newsprint.
No answer. And yet the answer hung in the air.
Finally, a whisper with the weight of thunder, “It is I.”
He was overcome by an urge to cry, couldn’t stop. Deep childish sobs rose up from the bottom of his heart, spilling out into the darkness occupied by a whisper. He felt foolish. He felt good, let himself go for a few seconds, then quit. Blew his nose into the crook of his arm and gripped the side of the bed, steady, steady. A gulp of air. Whatever would come next would come anyway. He was empty, ready.
Minutes ticked by. The rhythm of their breathing fell into time, synchronized. The longer he listened, the more ridiculous it seemed, like dancing. They were doing it unconsciously, the rasping presence and his noisy lungs. He started thinking they could not continue like that, the overlapping breaths were taking his freedom away. Worse than falling, out of control. “Stop,” he snapped. “Please, stop it.”
“Petras.”
The word gripped him like an accusation. A hypodermic. The liquid form of the word entered his bloodstream and he felt warm, a good feeling, but at the same time a dangerous one. To be resisted at all costs. Haven’t heard my name spoken out loud in so long.
“It’s all right, all right, Petras. Don’t worry. It’s all right. Allllll right. Alllll—”
“Stop saying that!”
“Petras?”
“I didn’t mean—”
He broke off. Waited, fearful and sure the next words would be another it’s all right. The way his mother used to rub his forehead in a fever, her hand sliding across his brow, over and over and over until he wanted to scream. She meant well. He missed it now, the rubbing, the well-meaning. He missed everything about her and yet he did not wish her alive again. Nor the old man, no, he was better off dead. If there was one thing he was certain of, it was that we are not all together in death. We are all eternally apart. Otherwise, death means nothing. And that cannot be true. Death is the one certainty against which all other probabilities are measured. He’d had this conversation many times. He knew the dance, what was permitted and what was forbidden. He knew who had raised the questions in his mind. Who had access to his thoughts. One person only lived on the edge between here and the other place.
“Is that you, Père? Have you come for me? The rendezvous? Listen, I was there on time. I was in the right café, I’m sure. According to the letter …”
The answer, a deep sigh. He didn’t need to be told, he could sense recrimination coming. I’m sorry, he was about to say, but stopped.
“Petras, it is not important. Everything is … all right.”
A distinct iciness in the voice. Consolation was worse than accusation. Silence.
A dry cough. Followed by another. The same annoying cough that had once made silence hell. The presence beside him shifted, swallowed. Any attempt to stifle the cough was worse than the cough itself, reducing the atmosphere to irritation. Then, from nowhere, a statement delivered with a hint of accusation:
“You told that young girl everything.”
“I didn’t! Did I? Maybe, but she hardly believed … Was she listening?”
“It’s all right, Petras. Good. Good. You should speak about the living more often. Speaking their name keeps them alive and fresh. Otherwise, they fester.”
I know, I know. It bothered him to be told what he already knew, and yet being taken by surprise left him weak. He shivered. A draught, as if a door had opened somewhere letting in a pale light, the room began to take shape. It was a small cell with a hard bed, a wooden door, a book-sized window with bars. His lips were cracked, caked with some kind of disgusting mixture of blood and pus. His back hurt, the pain spread until every muscle ached.
I’m going to lie down now, he thought. Get some sleep. But he didn’t. A sudden flood of nausea sent him reeling into the darkness and the sensation of falling came rushing back, except that this time the feeling was not unpleasant. It was real.
FIFTEEN
AFTER THREE DAYS WHEN Piers did not appear at breakfast, Nelly called her old friend Olivier Fare who had been the chief of police when they knew each other years ago. He still had contacts in the department and promised to make enquiries. True to his word, Fare called back later in the afternoon to report that no one by that name was on file, nor could the hospitals offer a clue. He’d gone as far as to contact Marseille. Before hanging up, he took the opportunity to ask how she was. Fine, she said.
Was Monsieur Le Gris a relative, he wanted to know.
No, an author.
He tried to prolong the conversation, asked if they might have dinner sometime. She was too distraught to indulge his chatter. Hanging up the phone, she wondered how hard he’d tried, whether he’d thought to ask the Gendarmerie, or simply restricted his investigation to a few old cronies in Avignon. By evening, she was beside herself with worry.
A firm believer in discretion, Nelly made a point never to enter the lodgers’ rooms. In the beginning, the agency had sent a young man over to inspect the premises. She could tell he wondered what her story was, did she really need the money, or was she just another lonely widow in search of company? His mute curiosity was irritating; she’d vowed to leave meddling to a cleaning lady who came in once a week. But the sudden disappearance of Piers Le Gris was unsettling. She needed tangible evidence of his existence.
His room gave off an eerie impression of flight, as if he’d left on impulse. The door to the armoire was ajar, the bed unmade. He’d left the cap off his fountain pen and books open on the table, a fat volume of philosophy by Meister Ekhardt beside an illustrated paperback, Capital Punishment
Through the Ages. She took a quick look at drawings of guillotines, hanging scaffolds and electric chairs, and put it down.
The furniture had been rearranged, the table moved to the centre of the room, covered with computer equipment, a maze of electrical wires, piles of files and open books. A stack of typed pages in English were marked with indecipherable comments in a flamboyant script. The bookshelves were overflowing, paperbacks and newspapers everywhere. The room seemed darker and smaller than she remembered. When Alphonse was alive it had been the master bedroom, dominated by a high double bed facing the window. She thought of the hours she’d spent bathing his burning skin with cool cloths, keeping an eye on the morphine drip. For a full year, his dying had usurped all else, though the effort had not been a chore. He was boundlessly grateful and never complained.
Sliding open the drawer in the table, she found a navy blue passport containing a picture of Piers’ unsmiling face. A relief. At least he hadn’t left France. But next to the photo was a strange name. Her first thought, it doesn’t suit him at all, surely a mistake. She studied the details: nationality, Canadian; birthplace, Montreal, 1955. Visa stamps from China, Japan, Thailand, Italy and France. Wedged between the middle pages was a snapshot of a young girl with light brown hair cut in a straight fringe, a sweet lop-sided smile, an unmistakeable resemblance to Piers.
She shut the drawer quickly. So, he had a child. The idea seemed implausible. Of course he would have a life elsewhere, but an unknown family and another name? His sudden absence was all the more unsettling. She hurried out, closed the door quietly and turned around to face Magali who was standing at the top of the stairs. “Is there any news?”
Embarrassed to be caught coming out of Piers’ room, Nelly managed a feeble no.
“Where could he be? I wonder if something has happened to him?”
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