Faced with an impenetrable thicket, he left the river bank and decided, still grumbling to himself, to cut across a field of wheat. Although from an early age he had learned all there was to know about living off the wild fruits of the urban jungle, nobody had ever taught him patience and humility in the face of the natural world. Fred had always known how to reap without sowing, and to draw milk without feeding any cattle. Worried about getting lost, he now followed the local road for a good half a mile before coming to the sign he had been looking for: CARTEIX FRANCE, CHOLONG WORKS, WORKS STAFF ENTRANCE.
It was a new sign, quite small and already dirty, despite its colour, chosen to blend with the mud. Two tarmac paths had been built to allow access to the parking ground, one for the trucks, the other for the employees, and there was a sixteen-foot-high fence around the whole building, preventing all access to outsiders – Fred wondered who could possibly want any access. At the top of the main building, you could see the logo of the Carteix fertilizer company – a white oval following the shape of a C.
While trying to solve the problem of the malfunctions in his plumbing, Fred had shown patience, curiosity and real dedication, and he had been thrilled to discover these qualities within himself. The plumber Didier Fourcade’s unfortunate visit had been a challenge: he became determined to find out the truth about the tainted water supply. In the past, when Giovanni Manzoni had wanted answers, he would get them without necessarily having to resort to unnecessary violence. There were plenty of other possible methods, and you could always think of new ones; it was only the result that counted. How could he now accept the thought that things were being concealed from him? Of course he couldn’t, not with a Mafia past like his, during which he had often had to keep the most painful secrets. Not after having got to know the inner workings of the FBI. Not after having himself become a state secret. Not after having single-handedly stirred up anxiety in the intimate circles revolving around the White House. Who, nowadays, would dare keep from him the truth about a mystery as opaque as this murky water gushing out of his taps? Fred had enquired among the neighbours, who had all agreed that the problems with the water coincided with the arrival of the Carteix factory, and at first he had questioned this theory. Maggie had gone to the town hall, which had in turn sent her on to other plumbers who all knew about the problem, but not how to solve it. She asked Quintiliani to find out about the water refinery: nothing there, it was brand-new and top quality. Fred had become exasperated by all this inertia surrounding his water problem, and he had become determined to find, if not a culprit, at least some rational explanation. It was quite unbearable, the way he kept coming up against a brick wall each time he demanded explanations, and this feeling that he was speaking to hollow institutions, empty offices, agencies that just bounced you back and forth between them. This bureaucratic manner of just telling you to fuck off was driving him mad.
The local inhabitants in his area, who had suffered from the same insulting behaviour from the authorities, had drawn up a dossier of the steps they had taken so far. Even worse than the water, which often had the smell and texture of liquid manure, some of them had suffered various health problems, migraines and gastric troubles, and had formed a protest group. After several petitions, one of which had been addressed to the Ministry of the Environment, they had managed to extract, after long months of claims, the right to get the water analysed by the departmental laboratory, which found high levels of “coliform bacilli,” “high bacterial pollution” and “bacteriologically unsatisfactory water.” Seeing these results, the mayor found himself obliged to intervene, but, instead of ordering a serious enquiry into the causes of the pollution, he simply instructed the water board to pour chlorine into the water. Consequently the next analysis pronounced the water to be “sound” and that, for him, effectively closed the case. The residents finally agreed on a hypothesis, the only possible one, according to them. They had discovered that the Carteix factory, after blending chemical and natural fertilizer, washed the containers with water from the Avre and poured the contaminated water into underground containers. It seemed that these containers had faulty linings and that their contents were leaking into the water table, which in turn was supplying Cholong with drinking water.
Despite the complaints and threats of lawsuits, the residents of the Favorites district had not been successful. A legal procedure had now been dragging on for two years without anyone being too troubled – not the mayor, who seemed strangely uninterested, not the businessmen, not even the Health and Safety people, who claimed to be powerless. The Clairon de Cholong, worn out, had moved on to other news items. Bogged down and exhausted, the residents themselves had lost heart and were making fortunes for the sellers of bottled water.
Fred, who still had plenty of energy, wasn’t looking for a scapegoat, but more for some concrete reality to hook on to; then he would decide what to do. He was even perfectly happy to play the good citizen, conscious of his civic duty, who takes it upon himself to point out some mistake, some human error, or a technical malfunction that has escaped the experts. After all, he couldn’t care less about Carteix, or its claims, or the pollution it was creating. What did he, Fred, care about pollution, the state of the world and what the pursuit of profit had done to it? As far as he was concerned, the end justified the means, and the end was always the same – money – above and beyond everything, and would be so for ever. That notion had been his raison d’être for too long for him to think of changing it now. He didn’t particularly want to go poking his nose into anyone else’s business; those days were long past. All he wanted to know was this: did the Carteix factory have anything to do with the disgusting water coming out of his taps or not? The rumour was that it did, but he wanted to know for sure.
He began by walking round the factory, which seemed to be empty, although it was the middle of the week. He skirted the fencing alongside the delivery area, where he found a wall of pallets ten feet high. Then he emerged into an open-air dump filled with casks, and blue, red and white metal barrels painted with the logos of various oil and petrol companies. At the northern end of the factory, he saw carts loaded up with huge cubes wrapped in white plastic, which he took to be merchandise waiting to be loaded. A little further on, at the back of the main building, you could see three enormous metallic containers shaped like grain silos, the contents of which fed straight into the factory. Fred finished his round beside the locked gate of the staff entrance, whose car park was completely deserted.
And it seemed as though his crusade was going to end there.
Without a word, without a gesture, without a battle. No negotiation, no treaty, no convincing anyone, or being convinced. He would never find out what that bulky material was, or what use it was to anyone. He hadn’t seen a single soul, not even some employee, who of course would have sent him to his superior, who in turn would have sent him on to a director. Fred would have been quite prepared to go right to the top.
Overcome by a great wave of discouragement, he sat down on the gravel, leaning against the metal gateposts. He sat there for a while, with his arms crossed, thoughtful, deprived of his adversary, his plan of attack undermined. If he had learned a single thing from his career as a gangster, it was that behind any structure, no matter how forbidding, you would always find men. Men whose paths one might cross, men with names that everyone knew, men with faces, men invulnerable on the face of it, but still men, and therefore fallible.
The Carteix factory was one of many subsidiaries of a large group based in Paris, which was itself one of the subdivisions of a large conglomerate which had diversified into many different sectors, and was held in a network of other holdings, part of a web of interconnected partnerships, an empire which depended on the support of several governments, whose governing board did not even know of the existence of the insignificant Carteix factory, which could be sold off at any given moment, the victim of some random tidying up of the portfolio, some slimmi
ng down operation, some decision taken in a country that had never even heard of the Norman bocage.
Fred now understood it all: this world he was now condemned to live in, the world of so-called legality and morality, was in fact filled with traps set by faceless enemies, against whom any attempt at resistance would be pitiful.
And as long as this great corrugated iron wart filled with poisonous substances planted in the middle of the forest stood empty, as long as there was no hope of finding the big boss himself, Fred was faced with the one thing he dreaded the most – powerlessness.
Slumped there on the ground, he felt miserably human, small and worthless. And he hated having to face this fact.
*
Cholong-sur-Avre had never had a proper cinema. In each generation a volunteer had taken charge of a long-established cinema club housed in the main reception room in the town hall. Despite the gloomy prognostications of the officials (“It’s a lost battle!”), fifty stalwarts turned up twice a month, whatever the film, and that kept the whole operation going, and the doubters at bay. A retired teacher and cinema enthusiast, Alain Lemercier, booked the films, designed the flyers and led the debates that followed the screenings. His love of film seemed to spring in a direct line from the lives of those obsessive types who had divided up the countryside in the past, showing Marcel Carné and Sacha Guitry films in barns and town halls, crazy people who would go searching for audiences in fields and farm kitchens, and inviting them to watch without any thought of box-office receipts – nobody really paid much, that wasn’t the aim of the exercise. These wizards with their magic lanterns were amply repaid by the laughter at the appearance of Michel Simon in Boudu, and the tears at the end of The Grapes of Wrath. In memory of that tradition, Alain Lemercier had taken up the torch in Cholong. He would draw up programmes around particular directors, showing forgotten classics, pretexts for debates which kept most of the audience in their seats after the showing. Often he would arrange for a guest to come along, someone who could shed some particular light on the subject of a film; everybody remembered the evening which had filled a good half of the room – they had shown Chariots of Fire, the story of the rivalry between two middle-distance runners, and Alain had invited a local celebrity, Mr Mounier, whose career as a runner had had a late spurt during the Senior Olympics. And there had been another memorable evening when he had succeeded in persuading a specialist on gifted children to come up from Paris for a thrilling debate based around a film about an apparently retarded child who turned out to be highly gifted. And if the debate flagged, Alain would act as mediator, encouraging questions, and drawing out those who might have something to say on the subject.
The arrival of an American writer in Cholong now provided an excellent excuse for revisiting an American classic. Without any hesitation, Alain had picked up the telephone to invite Fred to come along, describing to him the great interest of his cinema club.
“It would be a great honour for us if you would agree to be our next guest.”
A debate in a cinema club? Fred? Fred, for whom it would be inconceivable to watch a film without a can of beer in his hand, and a “pause” button, to enable him to go and rummage around in the fridge? Fred, who was bored rigid by anything that didn’t contain explosions and gunfire; who always dropped off during the love scenes; who couldn’t read the subtitles and watch the film at the same time? A debate? In a cinema club?
“What’s the film?”
“I was thinking of Some Came Running, Vincente Minnelli, 1959.”
“That rings a bell . . . Is it Sinatra or Dean Martin?”
“Both.”
Alain, without realizing it, had gained a point. For a New Jersey Italian, and one connected to the Onorevole Società, Frankie and Dino were heroes.
“Remind me of the story.”
“It’s a writer, an army veteran, who comes back home with an unfinished novel. Everybody regards him as a failure, except his wife, who tries to encourage him.”
“Is the writer played by Sinatra?”
“Yes.”
Fred, a bit perturbed, said he’d think about it. He hung up, and then stayed by the telephone, which, sure enough, immediately rang again.
“Hello, Fred?”
“Which one is this, Pluto or Goofy?”
“Di Cicco. What’s this ‘I’ll think about it’ business? Are you mad?”
“I don’t talk to minions, pass that on to Quintiliani, tell him to ring me.”
And he slammed down the receiver, feeling humiliated. Given the up-to-the-minute technology at Caputo and Di Cicco’s disposal, Quint’s return call wouldn’t take more than a minute, wherever he might be on the planet. In the past, in order to trap him and force him to confess, the FBI had used parabolic antennae, lasers, satellites, microphones that could fit inside a beauty spot, cameras in spectacle arms and hundreds of other gadgets that even James Bond scriptwriters had never thought of.
“Tell me Fred, have you gone mad?” Quint said.
“I didn’t want to offend that nice fellow and make myself unpopular.”
“Unpopular? I wouldn’t give much for your popularity if those people knew who you were, the great crook and murderer Giovanni Manzoni. You’re not a writer, Fred, you’re nothing more than a scumbag who’s managed to save his skin, don’t ever forget that.”
Fred and Tom had long ago run out of insults for one another, and these verbal jousts were mere formalities. The game they were really playing demanded great precision and constant inventiveness.
“There’s one thing that completely escapes me,” Tom went on, “and that’s how on earth you could take part in a debate of any sort. It’s just not your thing.”
He was right, of course. A debate, an exchange of ideas? It was true, the words “exchange” and “ideas” could not have been more foreign to him. For Giovanni Manzoni, eloquence sprang from the business end of a crowbar, and dialectical satisfaction was generally best achieved through the sort of sophisticated arguments deployed by blow torches and electric drills. Fred would have been happy to have sent Alain Lemercier packing, if he hadn’t brought up this story about “a writer whom everyone regards as a failure.” What could he say? Who else, for miles around, would be better placed than Fred to deal with such a subject? In order to become a writer, it wasn’t enough to just write, you had to have genuine writer’s problems. And these days Fred knew all there was to know about the sufferings of a man, alone in his lair, telling his story, searching for truths that are often too uncomfortable to be told.
“I’m going to watch the video of the film first, Tom, and I’ll prepare lots of interesting things to say. And you can come along to the showing, I’ll say you’re a friend. In exchange, I promise to give a completely accurate picture of you in my memoirs.”
Quintiliani, taken aback by such a sneaky argument, just burst out laughing.
*
Maggie was not planning to come to either the film show or the debate. She had spent a long afternoon toiling over the administration at the Secours Populaire (processing donations, bringing the accounts up to date, planning ahead), and now she was busy working as a volunteer at a soup kitchen for eighty people in the refectory of the Evreux Technical Institute. She stood behind a counter of Formica tables, filling the plates of the hungry and wondering how much pea soup she would have to dole out before she had paid her debt to society. She felt like a Red Cross nurse on the battlefield, simultaneously serving and cooking, loading and unloading vans, greeting people and washing up, like an athlete trying to break some record. Indeed, for her, charitable work was like some sort of sporting discipline – you had to warm up, do the exercise, and then accelerate – and if you trained regularly enough, you could become a champion. When the refectory was finally empty, she had to admit it to herself: there was a certain pleasure to be had from giving one’s all. Armed with a sponge, she attacked the empty co
ntainers with self-denying energy. She allowed her hands to be scratched, grazed, crushed and bruised. After all, there were famous precedents for this.
*
In the semi-darkness of the great room, the audience awaited Alain Lemercier’s introductory speech. The fifty people, the core, who always turned up, whatever the programme, had become, in doing so, a true club. They would not have missed this ritual for anything, the sort of shared communion that you could no longer find elsewhere, as well as the emotion you could only feel in front of the big screen. And after it was over they were all the more appreciative of the return to reality and the after-show drinks. The simple act of leaving their cosy sitting rooms and TVs to go and watch a film had become, in their eyes, an act of defiance.
Thomas Quintiliani and Frederick Blake sat side by side at the back of the hall. They were finding it hard to conceal their emotions – one excitement, the other apprehension. The FBI man was dreading the prospect of his snitch having to undergo even the mildest of questioning. But at the same time he realized that Fred’s insertion into the local community would be perceived as a good result by his superiors. In a perverse way, the fake respectability of this supposed writer was proof that he, Tom Quint, had succeeded in turning an ex-con into a respectable citizen, and in a country like France – in other words he had performed a miracle. Fred, for his part, had watched a video of the film several times in order to prepare for the debate, and he felt ready to expound the modest thesis he had prepared, and had prepared answers to all the questions he was bound to be asked. He had even planned to begin his presentation with a quote that Warren had found on the Internet: “Wives of writers will never understand that when they appear to be just looking out of the window, they’re actually working.” This summed up, for him, the total incomprehension of his family for his work, and their insidious way of denigrating his status as an author. This evening, before his first official audience, he would take his revenge on all those who doubted the genuine nature of his calling. And Tom Quintiliani, his greatest enemy in the world, would be the only witness.
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