A Sun for the Dying

by Jean-Claude Izzo

  They were all hot, these women. Like Monique. But their hopes of finding a man for sex dwindled a little more every day. Like their hopes of finding work, or a better paid job if they were already in work. So they clung on to whatever lifelines they could find, however tenuous. Their children. The kindness of a clerk at the unemployment office. A lecherous wink from the head of their department. Even a greeting from a down-and-out at the entrance to the post office. Until the opportunity presented itself. A man, any man. Moments of victory over the long, sad, lonely nights. Moments stolen from time as it passed. Meaningless moments.

  “She’s your friend’s wife,” was all Rico had said in reply.

  “True. But the thing is, we don’t know how long that idiot Jo is going to be inside for. Maybe life, as they say. You know what the fucking law is like . . . And anyway,” he added with a smile, “she hasn’t had anything to get her teeth into for four months now!”

  “You don’t think Félix . . . she and Félix . . .”

  “She’d have told me.”

  Rico hadn’t insisted. Things had happened that day that he was only just becoming aware of.

  Dédé and Monique had come back just after noon from their trip to the supermarket.

  “Fucking one-horse town!” Dédé had cried, as he came in. “Finding a bar open in this town takes forever!”

  Dédé and Monique had had a few beers on their way home. Just to buck themselves up before facing the cold again.

  “We’re better off in here,” Monique had said with a laugh, opening the shopping bags.

  Ham, sausage and cheese for lunch. Pasta, ground meat and tomato sauce for dinner. Plus a bottle of Ricard, a twelve-pack of beers and six bottles of wine, which they had stuffed into Maeva’s stroller.

  “I got a good one,” Dédé had proclaimed, showing him a bottle. “Corbières.”

  Domaine du Capitoul, the label said. It smelled good: a hint of the South. But there was no comparison with a good Burgundy from the Côte Chalonnaise or the Côte de Beaune. Mercurey, Rully, Pommard, Volnay or Corton. The wines his friend Blandin had talked about.

  During his sleepless night, Rico thought again about the trip to Burgundy he had given up on. About all the things he hadn’t done in his life. All the things he hadn’t experienced. All the things that were now out of reach. Huddled on the couch, with a thick blanket over him, he was like an old man on his deathbed, drawing up a balance sheet of his life.

  The image of his mother dying in hospital came back to him. The memory of her pale, tearful eyes. Eyes that at last admitted how wrong she’d been to accept everything, endure everything, being in every way—her tastes, her opinions, even the way she dressed—a mere shadow of her husband. His father Raymond, who, barely six months after the funeral, had gotten married again, to a young cousin of his mother’s named Marie-Laure.

  “So what?” he had said, trying to justify himself. “I’m still young.”

  “That’s not what I’m blaming you for, you know that.”

  “If your mother hadn’t been sick, Marie-Laure and me . . . We’ve been seeing each other for more than five years . . . I love her, can’t you understand that?”

  Rico didn’t reply. Marie-Laure was his latest conquest, but she certainly wasn’t the first. He couldn’t forget the way his mother had cried her eyes out, some evenings when Raymond hadn’t come home.

  Rico’s silence embarrassed his father. He sighed, then continued, “I don’t have anything to be ashamed of. I stayed with your mother to the end, without fail!”

  “And every night, without fail, you fucked Marie-Laure! Isn’t that it?”

  “You have no right to talk to me like that!”

  All the things that had rankled with Rico for years were coming to a boil. His father’s selfishness. His smugness. The way he controlled other people’s lives. The way he decided what was good for him and bad for them.

  “Mother gave you everything. She always gave you everything. Just so you could succeed. Just so you could climb the fucking career ladder . . . You never gave her the chance to be . . . herself.”

  “Herself . . .” Raymond echoed, shaking his head wearily. “Her head was full of dreams out of trashy magazines. All that crap she used to read . . . I’ll tell you this, and I’m sorry if it shocks you, but I only put up with your mother because of you . . .”

  “Go on, say it! You sacrificed yourself for me, is that it?”

  During his military service, in Djibouti, Rico had sent Raymond a letter. Telling him he’d always been a selfish bastard. “I kill myself for the two of you.” That was what he always said. “For the two of you.” But he’d never heard him say, “I love the two of you.” And he’d never said to him, “I love you.”

  “Go fuck yourself!” Rico had cried.

  They hadn’t seen each other for years. Or written. Or phoned. They’d sent him a card when Julien was born, but that had been Sophie’s idea. Even when he’d started to go downhill, Rico hadn’t turned to him. He was still too full of disgust for the man, and too ashamed of himself. It was only after six months of wandering and humiliation on the street that he had resigned himself and gone to Saint-Brieuc to see his father, as a last resort.

  He waited for him outside his office. The man who came quickly toward him seemed like a stranger. Or maybe it was the other way around. This man was still his father, but Rico ­wasn’t his son anymore. Instead of embracing him, his father held out his hand and Rico found himself shaking it, as if it were a stranger’s hand.

  “The thing you asked me over the phone,” Raymond began. “It isn’t possible.”

  They were sitting at a table at the Taverne du Chapeau-Rouge, near the cathedral.

  “I can’t lay my hands on fifty thousand francs, and I can’t borrow it. Marie-Laure and I have just bought a house in Auray. An old fisherman’s cottage. It needs a lot of work done on it . . .”

  Rico thought about his mother’s grave. He had gone to the cemetery before meeting his father, and had found the grave neglected, without flowers. He had felt a pang in his heart, seeing that gray tombstone with nothing on it, just the inscription: My beloved wife . . . My dearest mother . . . It had seemed to him even more squalid than death. Suffering and death. Sadness and death. He had gone back to town and bought a bunch of daisies with the little money he had in his pocket.

  “I dropped by the cemetery,” he said with mounting anger. All his old resentment had returned.

  “I haven’t had time to take care of it,” his father replied.

  They looked at each other. Defiantly.

  “What are you going to do now?” Raymond asked, finishing his beer.

  Rico stood up. “Do you really care?”

  His father made no attempt to stop him. He didn’t suggest he should come to the house and spend the evening with them, stay the night, stay a few days. They didn’t even shake hands.

  Everyone has his own life to live, Rico muttered, lighting a cigarette. As he smoked, he wondered if, when you came down to it, that was what life was: each person trying to hold on to what he has and survive in the middle of so much human stupidity . . . Maybe his father was right. Maybe Sophie was right. Wasn’t he the proof of that? He had gone under, whereas for them, everything had continued. Life. Love. Happiness.

  No, he thought, throwing back the blanket, that couldn’t be it. But what, then? What exactly had he done wrong? Not only him, but Dédé, Monique, Jo. And Félix. And what about guys like Titi, smart guys who’d read lots of books? If guys like Titi went under, it meant that something, somewhere, wasn’t right. But what, dammit?

  He remembered a song Titi liked to sing. It was an old song, and he couldn’t remember either the title or the name of the singer.

  It’s fake, it’s phony, it’s a sham

  It’s bogus, it’s tinsel, it’s a con

  It’s trash, it’s froth, it’s a trick

  It’s love, first it’s there, now it’s gone

  Love that’s
gone. That was it. Everywhere you looked. Between a husband and a wife. A father and his son. A ­brother and a sister. Two friends . . . And doors that close. Until, one day, the last one closes. The last door before hell.

  Hell was the street. Hell was poverty.

  How many like him were there, wandering the streets? Tramping the roads of France? No one bothered to count them anymore. Hundreds, it was said. Thousands. They only counted the dead these days, and then only in winter.

  “I think I might stay here a while,” Dédé had said, confidentially. “With her.”

  “O.K., but I’m leaving. Tomorrow, probably. I still want to get to Marseilles.”

  “There’s no rush, you know.”

  “I know.”

  They had poured themselves another round of Ricard, and Dédé, as if instinctively rediscovering the gestures of a lover, had stood up and gone to the kitchen to take Monique her drink. Rico had heard them clinking glasses, kissing, laughing.

  When Dédé had come back, he had said, again in a confidential tone, “You know, I listened to you the other night. You have to get that woman out of your mind. That Sophie.”

  “Why are you telling me that?”

  “Because that bitch ate your heart and spat it out. And now she’s doing the same to your head. She’s not worth it, in my opinion.”

  Rico was surprised to hear Dédé talk like that.

  “I tell you what she deserves . . . To get reamed by a stranger on a street corner.”

  Rico had smiled at the idea. “What difference would that make?”

  Dédé had shrugged. “How the hell should I know? That’s for you to say.”

  “The pasta’s ready!” Monique had called from the kitchen.

  Then she had joined them in the living room, with her glass in her hand. “Where’s Félix?”

  “He was here a while ago,” Dédé replied. He turned to Rico. “Did you see him go?”

  Rico did not reply. He remembered what Félix had told him that morning, “Coming and going’s no problem.” Félix was as silent and discreet as a shadow. Or a ghost. Their ghost.

  Rico had finished his cigarette. He stubbed it out, then poured himself a glass of wine. He filled it to the brim, without shaking. And drank it to the last drop. With his eyes closed. Sophie was naked in front of him. She was dancing, writhing. Arching her back. Offering him her lovely ass. He really wanted to strangle her, just as he had in his nightmare.

  11.

  THE SUN, THE SUN . . . BUT ALSO REGRET

  Outside, it was still dark. In the kitchen, Rico drank two large glasses of water, then started making coffee. He grabbed the bottle of Ricard and half filled the glass. He knocked it back, just like that, neat. The taste of the anis made him shudder. He grimaced, then poured himself another, smaller shot, which he drank after lighting a cigarette.

  There was no way he was going back to sleep now. He wasn’t sure he’d slept at all, maybe he’d only dozed a little. But he ­didn’t feel tired. He hadn’t had any more coughing fits, at least none as violent as that morning, and his back pain seemed to have subsided. “It’s the country air,” Félix had said, when they had gone down to the parking lot in the afternoon. “Towns kill you.”

  They had kicked the ball around in the snow. Félix was a real expert. He used his feet, his knees, his chest, his head. Rico had rediscovered a simple pleasure he hadn’t known since he was a child. Kicking a can. Dribbling with a big stone. Kicking a real ball. Soccer was another thing he’d given up. His father had never liked him to play. Not even in the high school team. It was too common, and it meant he’d mix with bad company. As a result, he had given up all sports. His father thought there was a kind of unhealthy machismo in sport. Instead, he’d enrolled him in the Boy Scouts. The children there were from respectable families, and they were taught how to function as a community. Starting with his first summer camp, Rico was initiated into forbidden pleasures. Timid caresses. Furtive kisses. Masturbation. It was the origin of his lifelong disgust with religion.

  “I’m good, aren’t I?” Félix kept saying, hopping from one foot to the another, as happy as a kid.

  “Have you ever played soccer? In a team?”

  “Amateur.”

  “You played as an amateur?”

  “No, I’m an amateur. I watch matches on TV.”

  It wasn’t impossible to have a conversation with Félix, but what he said wasn’t very coherent. Often, after two or three sentences—as Dédé had warned him—he’d bring the discussion to a close with the words “I’d rather not talk about it.”

  “I used to have a Vespa. A real one. My wife and I set off one day to ride all over France.”

  “And how was it?”

  “She didn’t like the Vespa. Or camping. So you see, I’d rather not talk about it.”

  “I understand.”

  “How about you?”

  “I never had a Vespa!”

  Félix had burst out laughing. He seemed pleased. “Go on! Go on, shoot!” he had cried, throwing the ball again.

  Next, Félix had decided he wanted to show him his cabin.

  They had walked for at least fifteen minutes, past snow-­covered fields. On the way there, the only footprints were those that Félix had left that morning. Several times, he had turned to Rico to make sure he was all right. And every time, Rico had thought he saw the lizard’s head smiling at the corner of Félix’s eye.

  The cabin was a garden shed. At the edge of a grove of trees.

  “Good, isn’t it?”

  Inside, a camp bed and a large sleeping bag. On a crate, a camp stove, an Italian coffee maker and an iron cup. A jerry can full of water in a corner. And pinned up on a wall, a photo of Sophie Marceau, topless.

  “My wife,” Félix had said, with a hint of admiration. Then he laughed. “Well, not her . . . My wife always wanted to look like her. Ever since high school . . .”

  He had waited for a question from Rico. But all Rico had said was, “She has beautiful breasts”—adding in a slightly mocking tone, “But I guess you’d rather not talk about it.”

  Félix had smiled. “That’s right. Best not to talk about it.” Instead, he’d started talking about the farmer he worked for. He was a young guy, he had said. Like him. He’d been a bum too before settling here.

  “His name’s Norbert. He was on the road for years . . . Driving a motor bike. An old one. He still has it. He sometimes lends it to me . . . but only to drive in the country.”

  The farm was a few minutes from the cabin. It was quite small.

  “Hey, you’re not going to believe this, but he met his wife, Anne, at a soup kitchen! She was a voluntary worker . . . She’s cute, Anne,” he had added, thoughtfully. “Not quite like Sophie Marceau, but . . .”

  “And is his farm doing O.K.?”

  “Norbert told me he’s a hundred and fifty thousand francs in debt. Crazy, isn’t it? The tractor, the van . . . I’d be scared. Wouldn’t you?”

  Rico thought about the money he had borrowed. About the day he had signed the contract of their house in Rothéneuf. A million and a half. All their savings had gone into it. And ­thirty years to pay it off. It had all gone up in smoke. Nothing but ashes now. Lost forever. A dream that had died.

  “As long as they’re happy,” he had replied.

  Félix had nodded in agreement. “I don’t suppose you have time to find out, when you’re working hard. But they’re nice . . .”

  Félix stared out over the snowy landscape. The lizard’s head squinted at the farm. At that simple life that might be happiness. Two people who love each other. Smoke rose from the chimney of the old farmhouse, as if in a child’s drawing. Love, loving each other, was the only thing worth betting on.

  “Aren’t you cold?” Félix had asked him on the way back.

  The sky had become overcast, and it had started to snow again. Rico had come to a halt, and stood there, lost in thought, remembering the first time he had seen snow, as a child. Standing at
the edge of a field. The flakes falling faster and faster, thicker and thicker, onto the palm of his outstretched hand. He had laughed. He had roared with laughter.

  “No,” Rico had replied. “No, it won’t always be cold.”

  Rico poured himself another cup of coffee, and lit another cigarette. The night seemed endless. He wished Titi were around, to tell him stories. Titi loved telling stories. Things he had lived through. Novels he had read.

  He did that sometimes, when they were on their bench on Square des Batignolles, and they couldn’t think of anything to say to each other. When the silence between them was too heavy while life went on around them. Mothers chattering away and smiling. Children running, shouting, laughing, crying. Pieces of dry bread being thrown to the ducks, down on the pond. Teenagers, mostly high school kids cutting classes, lying under the trees, kissing greedily, shamelessly. The old man with the mane of white hair waiting patiently for his wife who would never return . . .

  Titi had talked about Lord Jim by Conrad, The Trembling of a Leaf by Somerset Maugham, The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene. Rico had never been sure if these were real novels, or just stories that Titi made up as he went along. So he had been surprised one day when Titi had started telling the story of Treasure Island.

  “I’ve read that one! When I was a boy. Who did you say it was by?”

  “Robert Louis Stevenson. My favorite.”

  “Go on, tell me about it!”

  But Titi wasn’t here anymore. And the stories that kept going through Rico’s head, the stories he would tell himself, were his own. He knew it was time to let everything back in. It didn’t matter now. He was at the end of his tether, and the only person to blame was himself. Not Sophie. Not Malika. Not even Julie.