Badfellas (3 page)

Maggie opened her pocket dictionary to look up
colombages
, and then checked it with the real thing by walking down Rue Gustave Roger; most of the houses, with their framework of beams, were unlike anything she had ever seen before. As she found her way to the centre of town – Cholong was shaped like a pentagon edged with four boulevards and a highway – Maggie walked down several streets built entirely of half-timbered houses, and she very much admired the prospect. With half an eye on the guidebook, she eventually, without really looking for it, found herself in the central square, the Place de la Libération, the heart of Cholong, a large space out of proportion with the narrow streets surrounding it. There were two restaurants, several cafés, a bakery, the tourist office, a newsagent and a few old buildings around the edge of a huge rectangular space, which served as a car park on non-market days. Maggie bought some local papers and settled down on the terrace of the café Roland Fresnel, ordering a long double espresso. She closed her eyes briefly and sighed, enjoying this all too rare moment of solitude. Time spent with the family was, of course, at the top of her list of priorities, but time away from them came a close second. Cup in hand, she leafed through a local newspaper, the
Dépêche de Cholong
, then the
Réveil Normand
, (the Eure edition); it was one
way of getting to know her new home country. On the front of the
Dépêche
was a photo of a gentleman of sixty-five, a native of Cholong, who had once been a regional middle-distance running champion, and who was now taking part in the Senior Olympics in Australia. Maggie was amused by the thought of this character, and read the article. She understood the main drift of it: here was a man with a lifelong passion for running, who had only just fulfilled his dream right at the end of his journey. As a young man, Mr Christian Mounier had been a just about passable runner. Now that he had reached retirement, he had become an international champion, competing on the other side of the world. Maggie wondered if life really could offer a chance to catch up, a last-minute opportunity to distinguish oneself. She dwelt on this problem just long enough to turn the page. There was a long list of local news stories: petty crimes, an attack on a garage owner, several burglaries in a neighbouring housing estate, one or two domestic quarrels and a few absurd pieces of hot air. Maggie couldn’t always follow the details, and wondered why editors always put all this gloomy and banal daily misery on the front pages of the paper. She deliberated over various possible answers to the question: perhaps local violence was what most interested those readers who loved to whip up feelings of fear and indignation in themselves. Or perhaps readers liked to feel that their town wasn’t quite as boring as it seemed, and had just as many incidents as any other. Or perhaps rural dwellers liked to be reminded that they suffered from all the inconveniences of town life without any of its advantages. And of course the final reason, the saddest and eternal truth – that nothing is more entertaining than the misery of others.

Back in Newark she had never read the local or national papers. Just opening one was too much of a challenge for her – she was much too afraid of what she might find leaping out at her, that she would come face to face with an all too familiar name or face. Uncomfortably reminded of her previous life, she leafed nervously through the rest of the papers, glancing at the weather forecast and the forthcoming events in the area, fairs, car-boot sales, a small art exhibition in the town hall. She gulped down her water. She was suddenly overcome by a sense of oppression, which was accentuated by a huge shadow that was darkening the square as the sun moved. It was that of Sainte Cecile, a church described as a jewel of Norman Gothic art. Maggie had pretended to ignore it, but now turned to face it.

The Brother 900 had been placed in the middle of the ping-pong table, which was itself now in the centre of the veranda, a geometrical symmetry carefully arranged by Frederick. He sat in front of the machine, gathering his thoughts, with the sun behind him. He slid a piece of paper – the whitest thing he had ever seen – into the carriage. One by one he checked the mother-of-pearl keys, now sparkling – dusted and then cleaned with liquid soap. He had even managed to soften a ribbon that had become as dry as hay by holding it over a pan of boiling water. He was now ready to make contact, alone and face to face with the machine. He had probably never opened a book, had always spoken in direct and unadorned language, and had never written anything more complex than an address on the back of
a matchbook.
Can you say anything on this machine?
he wondered, without taking his eyes off the keys.

Fred had never found an interlocutor he could respect.
The lie is already in the ear of the listener
, he thought. He had been obsessed with the idea of telling his version of the truth ever since the result of the trial which had obliged him to flee to Europe. Nobody had really tried to understand his evidence, not the psychiatrists, not the lawyers, not his ex-friends, nor any of the other well-intentioned people: everybody just saw him as a monster, and felt entitled to judge him. This machine wouldn’t do that, it would take everything on board, the good and the bad, the inadmissible and the unsayable, the unjust and the horrible – because they were all true, that was what was so incredible, these lumps of fact which nobody wanted to accept were all real. If one word followed another, he could select them all himself, with nobody suggesting anything. And nobody forbidding him anything either.

In the beginning was the word; somebody had said that to him long ago. Now, forty years later, he had been offered the opportunity to verify that saying. In the beginning there would certainly be one particular word; all the rest would follow.

He raised his forefinger and hit a light-blue, just visible g, then an i, then looked around for an o, then a v, and, getting bolder, found an a with his little finger, then two ns, with two different fingers, finishing off, with the forefinger again, with an i. He read it through, pleased that he hadn’t made any mistakes.

The young Blakes had obtained permission to have lunch together. Belle searched for her brother in the playground, and finally found him under the covered part, with his new classmates. It looked as though he knew them; in fact he was interrogating them.

“I’m hungry,” she said.

He followed his sister to a table where they found two plates full of mixed crudités. The refectory was so exactly like the one in Cagnes that they had no comment to make about it.

“We’re not far from home,” he said, “we could go home for lunch.”

“And find Mom with her head in the fridge, wondering what to give us, and Dad in his pyjamas in front of the TV. No thanks.”

Warren began to eat, starting with what he liked best, the cucumber, while Belle started with what she liked least, the beetroot. She noticed a blue mark on her brother’s eyebrow.

“What’s that on your eye?”

“Oh nothing – I was just showing off on the basketball court. What are your classmates like?”

“The girls seem quite cool, not sure about the boys. I had to introduce myself. I…”

Warren didn’t listen to the rest, his mind was far away, puzzling over questions that had been bothering him ever since the attack. He had made enquiries and gathered information, not so much about the small-time racketeers, but about others, the ones who might help him turn the predator into prey, the executioner into a victim, just as he had seen it done by so many of
his uncles and cousins before him. It was in his blood. He had spent the rest of the morning asking innocuous questions about everybody. Who was that one? What was that one called? Which one is his brother? Then he had struck up acquaintances with some of them, obtaining information without them noticing. He had even taken a few notes to remind himself of the picture he was building up. Bit by bit the accumulation of detail was beginning to make some kind of sense, but only to him.

The one with the limp has a father who’s a mechanic, who works in the garage of the father of the one in 3C, who’s about to be chucked out. The captain of the basketball team will do anything to get a better mark in maths, and he’s friends with the big guy in 2A3 who’s in love with the class rep. The class rep is best friends with the motherfucker who took my 10 euros, and his sidekick is scared stiff of the tech teacher, who’s married to the daughter of the owner of the office where his father works. The four guys in
Terminale B
who always hang out together are organizing the end-of-term show and want the limping guy’s sound stuff, the smallest one is good at maths and is the mortal enemy of the shit who hit me
.

The problem had been solved, at least according to his logic, before the pudding came. And Belle hadn’t stopped talking.

Still sitting on the terrace, reading the guidebook, Maggie ordered a second cup of coffee.

She could have simply got up and gone over to the church, all of whose details she now knew, walked into the nave, faced the crucifix, spoken to the figure of Christ. She could have prayed and contemplated in the way she used to before meeting Frederick, in the days when he was still called Giovanni. After marrying him, there was never again any question of raising her eyes before a cross, or even of entering a holy place. By kissing Giovanni on the lips, she had spat in the face of Christ. By agreeing to marry the man of her life, she had insulted her God, and her God had a reputation for never forgetting and for liking to be repaid.

“You know, Giovanni, when it’s very hot in summer, I like to keep a very light blanket over me,” she often used to say to him. “You think you don’t need it, but you do, especially at night. Well, believing in God, for me, was that light blanket, and you’ve taken it away from me.”

Now, twenty years later, she was very rarely tempted to re-engage in any sort of dialogue or negotiation with God. She didn’t quite know if it was her who had changed or God. In the end she had felt that she no longer needed that light blanket.