The Lost Sailors

by Jean-Claude Izzo

  “Come with me,” Mariette said. “We’re going to my place.”

  “Your place?”

  All she could do was repeat every word. Her head was about to explode. She was going crazy.

  “You’ll be able to rest. Sleep.”

  “Sleep. What about Amina?”

  Mariette looked at Diamantis. He wasn’t trying to hold back his tears, or to wipe them.

  “Later, Lalla.”

  “Yes, later.”

  Mariette closed the door on Lalla’s side and got in behind the wheel.

  “I’ll join you later.”

  “Later,” Lalla repeated.

  Mariette’s stroked Diamantis’s wet cheek, drew his face to her and placed her lips against his.

  “I’ll keep an eye on her,” she said. “And I’ll be thinking of you.”

  She drove off.

  Diamantis finally wiped his tears, then took a deep breath and walked toward the checkpoint. The watchman looked up.

  “Oh, it’s you. Anything wrong?”

  Diamantis shook his head, picked up the phone and called the police.

  Abdul was sitting on his bunk, his hands crossed on his knees, his shoulders drooping. His officer’s uniform was in a terrible state, torn in places. He was a pitiful sight. He looked up when Diamantis came in.

  “We’re going to say it was an accident. O.K., Abdul? It was an accident.”

  “Did you call the cops?” he asked, in a neutral voice.

  “Yes.”

  “Good,” he said. “That’s good.”

  He’d sobered up completely. But his eyes still shone with a strange gleam. He didn’t seem to see Diamantis. He looked at him but didn’t see him. There was nothing but that strange light deep in his eyes.

  He’s crazy, Diamantis thought. He’s gone crazy

  “Are you listening, Abdul? We’re going to say it was an accident. Do you understand? An accident.”

  “I killed him,” he said, without the least show of feeling.

  “It was an accident.”

  “He didn’t want me to fuck that slut. He wanted to keep her just for himself. Why, can you tell me that?”

  “I think she was stuck on him.”

  “Do you think so?”

  “I’m sure of it, Abdul.”

  “But she was just a whore. Just a whore. Like Hélène and the other one. What was her name, the other one?”

  “The other one? What other one?”

  “The one I fucked this afternoon. I don’t remember. It doesn’t matter.”

  “Lalla is . . .”

  He didn’t dare to say “my daughter.” What would be the point, now? He’d have to explain, tell him the whole story. He didn’t have time for that now. It didn’t make any difference anyway.

  “She’s a nice girl. Her life hasn’t been easy. Do you understand?”

  “Did you take her away?”

  “Yes. I don’t want her mixed up in this, Abdul. She’s suffered enough.” He looked at him. “I don’t want her mixed up in this. Do you understand? Tell me, do you understand?”

  Abdul nodded. Looking down at his crossed hands. As if he was praying. Maybe he was.

  “This has been enough for her. She shouldn’t suffer anymore. The cops, the questioning.”

  “Yes, you’re right. But I killed him, Diamantis. I killed him.”

  His voice had almost gone back to normal, found its timbre again. He was regaining his humanity. And his feelings. Pity. Remorse.

  Diamantis opened the closet, and took out a pair of linen pants and a shirt.

  “Get changed!”

  “I look ridiculous, don’t I?”

  “For fuck’s sake, get changed!”

  “I killed him,” he said, standing up. “What a dumb thing. My God, what a dumb thing to do.”

  They heard police sirens in the distance. An ambulance siren, too. They were coming closer.

  Abdul put his hand on Diamantis’s arm. He had put on the clean pants and shirt, and had smoothed his hair with his fingers. He looked like his old self again. His shoulders pulled back, his head held high.

  “It wasn’t an accident, Diamantis. I could never say that. It isn’t true. I hit him, you see. Several times. In the stomach, then on the chin and the nose. Over and over. He was crying, Diamantis. Nedim was crying. Begging me to stop. The girl, too. Lalla. She was trying to stop me hitting him. Pulling me by the waist, by the arms. I slapped her with the back of my hand, and sent her flying . . .”

  He paused for breath.

  “After a while, you see, it wasn’t about the girl anymore. I’d stopped wanting to fuck her. It was him. Nedim. I couldn’t stand him anymore. I couldn’t stand his optimism. He was always happy. He always found a reason to be happy. Even when things were really bad. There was always some corner of his mind where he found things funny. Hope. The guy was full of hope. Full of life.”

  “Abdul . . .”

  “Wait . . . Listen to me. Hell, I really wish you and I could have talked. You’d have helped me. Listen to me . . . When I started hitting him, I realized I was hitting out at life, happiness, all those things. Not him. No, not him anymore, but all the things he represented, all the things I wasn’t, and have never been . . . Will never be, Diamantis. Fuck it, what did his parents dip him in when he was born, for him to be so happy to be alive? Huh? Do you know?”

  Diamantis was quite incapable of replying. His brain had stopped working.

  “Fuck it, Diamantis, give me an answer. An answer!” Abdul had grabbed hold of Diamantis’s shirt and was shaking him. “An answer! A simple answer!”

  Diamantis took Abdul’s fingers away from his shirt. One by one. Looking him straight in the eyes.

  “There’s no answer, Abdul. You either believe in happiness or you don’t. That’s all. I don’t know why you never believed in it.”

  “But you’re not like him, dammit. You have doubts, anxieties, fears.”

  “We’re all the only way we can be. More or less. It doesn’t stop us being happy, if we want to be.”

  Abdul was silent for a moment. “Do you think that’s why Cephea dumped me? Because I didn’t believe in happiness anymore?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “You have no idea . . .” He grabbed a piece of paper from his desk. “This is Cephea’s phone number. Her address. Her father’s phone number. I want you to talk to her. Tell her. Explain, if you can . . . And . . . Ask her, Diamantis. I need to know.”

  “Ask her what?”

  “If that was the reason. Because I didn’t believe in happiness anymore.”

  “O.K.,” he said.

  But Diamantis didn’t know if he would do what he promised. He didn’t know if he would ever see Abdul again. He didn’t know anything anymore. Or, rather, he knew one thing. That he, too, had a death on his conscience. And a daughter who needed him.

  “You know, I’ve always hurt the people around me. What happened with Nedim was the result of my hatred of other people. With other people, I’ve never . . . Even at home, with my family . . . Even with my father, Diamantis . . .”

  Abdul was starting to wallow in self-pity. Diamantis looked at him, torn between pity and contempt, and without waiting for him to finish his sentence left him and went out to see the cops. Their cars were in front of the Aldebaran now, sirens wailing.

  Day was breaking by the time they took Abdul away in handcuffs. Diamantis didn’t walk past him. He saw him from the back, going down the gangway, two cops in front and two behind.

  Down below, Abdul looked up toward the ship’s rail, as if he was trying to see Diamantis, but it was the stars he wanted to see, one last time. Cepheus. He didn’t even see Diamantis.

  The cops had questioned Abdul, then him. The ones he spoke to never mentioned Lalla’s name
. Diamantis assumed that Abdul had kept his word. He kept to his own version. They had organized a little party, and had drunk a lot. Then he had gone into town. He didn’t mention the car. They didn’t ask him how he’d gotten into town.

  In any case, the cops didn’t really give a fuck. They had the body and they had the killer. And plenty of other things to worry about. They took Diamantis’s statement by hand, and had him sign it. He was to present himself at the police station at four o’clock that afternoon. The ship would be put under seal. He had to leave immediately.

  Diamantis packed his things any which way, but made sure he didn’t forget his sea map or his notebook. He leafed through it. A sentence leaped out at him. Having been is a condition of being. “Yes,” he thought, putting away the notebook.

  “Nasty business,” the young cop waiting for him on the deck said. “Isn’t it? Nasty business.”

  Diamantis didn’t reply.

  “Quite a night,” the cop went on. He wanted to talk. “A gangster got shot tonight as well. A Mafia guy. In his own house, would you believe?”

  “Uh-huh,” Diamantis said, concealing his interest in this news. “Someone well known?”

  “Apparently. Ricardo . . . Ricardo something. I’m new here, I don’t know everything.”

  It was Diamantis who had informed the cops.

  On Place de la République, he had stopped at a phone booth. He had just passed a police station, and he’d told himself he couldn’t leave the two bodies like that all night long. Amina and Ricardo. It wouldn’t be a pleasant sight for a cleaning woman, a neighbor, whoever. Two corpses in one house.

  “An anonymous phone call. ‘There are two bodies for you here,’ the guy said. Those words. Or something like that.”

  He laughed.

  “Right.”

  “Yes, two bodies. Him and his broad. It looks like we’ve got another gang war on our hands. Shall we go?”

  “Yes.”

  Diamantis let his gaze wander over the harbor. The sun was rising. It made a pale pink corona around the hills overlooking the city. A strange halo. Happiness, if it existed, had its source there. At the moment when the day is reborn.

  Monsters vanish away when dawn comes, he thought.

  EPILOGUE

  IT’S NOON IN MARSEILLES,

  AND LIFE GOES ON

  Cephea arrived at Marseilles-Provence airport in Marignane at ten fifty-five in the morning, on an Air Afrique flight.

  She had done a lot of thinking over the past few months. She had read Abdul’s last letters carefully. Especially the last one. It was so moving. Abdul, stuck on a boat that couldn’t move, was a lost man. If he couldn’t be a sailor, he was lost. The world scared him, like a child who wakes up in the night.

  She had finally understood that. It didn’t change anything. Her expectations, her anguish. How could they reconcile what each of them wanted without clipping each other’s wings? She hadn’t found an answer. She hadn’t come to any conclusion either. Except that she still loved Abdul. She had always loved him, and she was sure she would always love him.

  They had to talk, to explain things to each other. That was the most important thing. The most urgent thing, too. Of course, she was always the one who was ahead of him on this, who prompted discussions, explanations. That was the way it was. She had to admit it. But what shame was there in that? None. And, anyway, what did it matter? It was their life that was at stake. Not their love, their life.

  She had caught a plane. Because she had told herself that thinking about it wouldn’t get her anywhere. Thinking without him.

  The day before she left, she had visited Diouf the fortune-teller.

  “We should never stop searching,” he had said. “But what matters is the spirit in which we undertake our search.”

  She had pondered his words all night, and as soon as she woke up she had called the airline.

  Her father, Mamoudi, had gone with her to the airport. He had told her she was right to go to Abdul. It was what she had to do. Abdul was his friend. “A good father, a good husband . . .” “And a good lover,” Cephea had added, laughing. Yes, she loved Abdul.

  A taxi took Cephea directly to the offices of the Port Authority. The driver took the coast road. As they drove along the viaduct that ran parallel to the harbor, she searched for a ship that looked like the Aldebaran, but didn’t see any. She watched as the city advanced toward her. She was dazzled. Why had she never come here before? And why just now? She started to feel she was going to enjoy her stay in Marseilles. Abdul, who was so good at telling stories, would show her around. Make her love the city, maybe. If he hadn’t suffered too much by not being at sea.

  At the Port Authority, she asked where the Aldebaran was berthed. They sent her from one office to another. Then a young official introduced himself to her, led her to a small reception room, made her sit down, offered her a cup of coffee—which she refused—then informed her of what had happened the previous night. Captain Abdul Aziz, he told her, had been arrested for the murder of his radio operator, a young Turk whose name he had forgotten, following a fight.

  “I’m truly sorry,” he said, and advised her to go to the police.

  At the police station, she was told that her husband had been transferred to Les Baumettes prison early that morning, and that there was no chance she could talk to him today. Abdul had admitted the facts. She was given the name, address, and phone number of the lawyer who had been appointed to represent her husband, although of course, they told her, she could choose another lawyer if she wanted to. A list was available at the office of the Bar Association, in the Palace of Justice.

  Cephea asked the policeman if Diamantis, the first mate of the ship, was still in Marseilles. Yes, he was still here. He hadn’t yet been given permission to leave the city. The cop gave her the address that Diamantis had left with them.

  She left the building. Her head felt empty. She stood there for a time, in the sun, not knowing what to do. She lit a cigarette and walked a few yards, lost in thought, along Rue de l’Evêché. The whole thing seemed unreal. It was a nightmare, and she’d soon wake up from it. Then her cigarette burned her fingers, and she realized she wasn’t asleep. Abdul really had killed a man, he was in prison, and she was alone here, in Marseilles.

  She found herself on a noisy thoroughfare, Boulevard des Dames. She was hot and thirsty, but didn’t dare go into a bar, or even sit on a terrace. She had the feeling everyone was looking at her. Especially men, very insistently. She was starting to feel numb with fatigue. There was nothing else to think about or discuss. Life had decided for them. Abdul had left on his longest journey. Without asking her opinion, without even warning her in advance.

  The time would seem long without him. She didn’t know what she would do with the days, the months, the years to come. She didn’t know what she would do with her body, which was desperate for him. She was all at sea, unsure of the future.

  Cephea hailed a taxi and asked the driver to take her to Place des Moulins. The man grumbled because it was such a short distance. She could easily walk it. She apologized, said she didn’t know Marseilles, she’d only just arrived.

  The driver took her all the same. But he set off in the opposite direction, and took her all around the old quarter. A grand tour. Via Place Lenche, Rue Caisserie, Rue Méry, Rue de la République, and Rue François Moisson. And back almost to the spot where he had started from fifteen minutes earlier. She was sure she’d gone around in a circle, but didn’t say anything.

  She just hoped that Diamantis would be there. She needed to talk to someone who would listen to her, who’d be gentle and friendly. She needed someone to hug her. Her heart was swelling, and was about to explode. From what Abdul had told her in his letters, Diamantis was his friend. He trusted him for his reticence and his discretion.

  A friend. She had a really urgent need for a friend to tell he
r troubles to.

  The ride cost her seventy francs. Cephea paid without comment, didn’t leave a tip, and slammed the door as she got out.

  “Go back where you came from, half-breed!” the driver cried.

  She didn’t hear him.

  She rang the doorbell.

  Mariette’s kitchen was fragrant with the smell of basil. The shutters were drawn against the blazing noonday sun, and the light in the room was diffuse. There was a sense of well-being that seemed as if it would never end. Life went on.

  Diamantis, Lalla, and Mariette were drinking their umpteenth coffee and chain-smoking. None of them had had a good night’s sleep. Diamantis had just told them the whole story. He hadn’t left out the slightest detail. He felt lighter at last. He was waiting for their reaction, but they didn’t have any.

  Lalla let her head drop onto Diamantis’s shoulder, and closed her eyes. He hugged her to him. Mariette ruffled Diamantis’s hair tenderly, then went off to her bedroom to find more cigarettes. Diamantis watched her as she walked out. He hadn’t looked for Mariette. It was she who had come to him, like a ship meeting a lost sailor. He really wanted to set sail with her, to make that voyage.

  The doorbell rang.

  “I’ll go,” Diamantis said.

  He planted a kiss on Lalla’s forehead and went to the door.

  He recognized Cephea immediately. She was just the way Abdul had described her. Apart from the tears. Two big tears running down her cheeks.

  “I’m Diamantis,” he said. “Come in. We’ve just made coffee.”

  He took her by the shoulders, with the respect and tenderness owed to women who’ve been hurt.

  It is normal to say that a novel is a work of fiction. The story you have just read is no exception. It was entirely invented by the author, and the characters are also purely imaginary. But the reality exists. The reality of what is happening more and more frequently to sailors in various ports in France. From Marseilles to Rouen, many freighters are trapped in port, even now. The crews, often foreigners, live on board in very difficult conditions, in spite of the unfailing support shown them. My concern in this book has been to salute their courage and their patience.