The Lost Sailors (23 page)

Just then, Lalla came out of the bar. The sight of her almost knocked him back. She was wearing a white swimsuit that was just a little piece of cloth on top and another little piece of cloth at the bottom, the whole thing barely containing what she had on top and at the bottom. He remembered Aysel. She'd have her work cut out to make him forget Lalla's body. And yet, he forced himself to admit, it was Aysel he loved. He missed her all the more with Lalla in front of him like this. Well, almost. And that was probably only because Lalla, at that moment, seemed totally inaccessible.

She held out a pair of black swimming trunks. “Here, I think your little ass will fit into this.”

She laughed, and so did he.

“You have to get out of here,” Nedim said to himself again. But the prospect of going swimming with Lalla, with all the guys eyeing her up, aroused his pride. He liked the idea that they would think he was fucking her. And what the hell, if he acted as if it was true, it might yet happen.

 

Amina watched them as they walked away. Nedim had taken Lalla's hand to cross the beach. He let go of it only to enter the water. Life could be as simple as that. A man and a woman meeting. On a beach or in a bar, the way she and Diamantis had. They like each other, they fall in love. And life goes on.

Amina had the feeling that Lalla wasn't as indifferent to Nedim as all that. Even she had to admit he was quite cute. And there was something decent about him. They were the ones who weren't decent. Doing the work they did, hustling to make money for the Habana—in other words, to line Ricardo's pockets.

She lost sight of them once they were in the water. Ricardo. He had taken over her life. She'd become almost his slave. That was how much freedom she had. He may have kept her on a long chain, but it was a chain all the same, and he kept a tight, ruthless hold on it.

She hadn't been able to escape from Gisèle's. One of Ricardo's men, Dominique, had been there all the time, in the living room. That night, Ricardo had come to see her.

“Your boyfriend the sailor decided not to show up,” he announced.

“I don't believe you.”

“Believe what you want. But you won't be seeing him again in a hurry.”

“What did you do to him?” she asked, worried.

“Nothing bad. We just frightened him, that's all. Frightened him a lot.” He laughed. “He even shit himself.”

“You had no right to do that.”

He shrugged. He took out a cigarette case, offered her a cigarette, and lit it for her.

“I'll tell you this, Amina. You have a lot of things to learn. We'll talk about that soon. But remember one thing. Getting hit by my car was a walkover compared with getting caught by the guys who were after you. If they'd gotten hold of you, you wouldn't be in this bed now, you'd be six feet under. Just remember, you owe me your life.”

Later, she had found out who Ricardo was. One of the most important figures in the Marseilles underworld. One of the last survivors, too. Which meant he was a dangerous man. Either she became his mistress of the moment, or he'd have her walking the streets. Rue Curiol, at the top of the Canebière. Or Rue Tapis-Vert, or Rue Thubaneau, near Cours Belzunce. North African neighborhoods. The girls there worked at breakneck speed.

“Go to hell,” she had replied.

He'd slapped her, hard, but coldly, without any hate.

“Think about it.”

She had thought about it. She'd thought fast, especially after Ricardo accepted her one condition. She wanted to be safe from Schmidt. It made her nauseous just thinking about him, and his knife. Knowing he was on the streets took away any desire to walk them.

One morning, Ricardo brought in a newspaper. Schmidt's photo was all over the front page. He had been shot three times—twice in the stomach and once in the head—on his way home the previous evening. “A gangland slaying,” the paper called it. Amina didn't want to read what they wrote about him. All that mattered was that he was dead. That he'd died like a dog. It hadn't taken her long to realize that there was no such thing as justice, or pity. For one moment, she had thought of asking for her father's head. But she couldn't bring herself to do it. He was just a loser. All the bad things that had happened to her were his fault, but he was her father. What she did do was make sure he wouldn't hurt her mother again.

Amina helped her mother to rebuild her life, far away from him. A decent life. No more work as a cleaner. They set her up in a small detached house in Beaumont, the Italian neighborhood where Ricardo had uncles and cousins. Amina liked to visit with her, to have a coffee or a couscous, which was one of her specialties. Ricardo never went with her. He left her free to spend time alone with her mother.

It was a month before she gave birth. Amina had hidden the fact that she was pregnant as long as possible from Ricardo, until it was too late to have an abortion. Fortunately, she hadn't gotten big too quickly.

“Who's the father?” he asked. “The sailor?”

“Yes.”

She expected to get a slap. But it didn't come.

“O.K.,” he said, after a moment's silence. “Your mother will bring up the child. I'll give her money for that.”

Lalla had grown up happy, a fake orphan coddled by her two “aunts.” Amina had given herself to Ricardo. It had been like diving into a deep sea, without being prepared for it. Living with him, she discovered, meant venturing far into a world that turned out to be as dangerous as it was fascinating. Being Ricardo's woman gave her power and comfort. Respect, too, and security. She was safe from harm. Her life had lost all meaning, but it was happier than the lives of thousands of others. A life of convenience, the way there were marriages of convenience. She got used to it.

Over the years, Ricardo wearied of her, of her body. You always weary of a life without love. She grew older, and so did he. He had other mistresses, not only in Marseilles but on the Riviera, too. And he had his troubles. There were gang wars. Over drugs, prostitution, illegal gambling. Over the real-estate sector, too, and procurement contracts, which meant control over politicians.

Ricardo had thrown in his lot with the Mafia, rather than the traditional Marseilles underworld, which had been weakened by internal conflict. But the Mafia wasn't one big happy
famiglia
either. It was rocked by internal rivalries. Jean-Louis Fargette, with whom he'd allied himself, had been killed in San Remo. Ricardo started living as if he were going to die tomorrow. He came back to Amina, because they were old lovers. He set her up in a villa on the heights of the Roucas Blanc. A pretty little villa looking out to sea. A paradise. All he asked was that she be there when he wanted her. They'd developed a strange relationship, almost a marriage, over the years. Twenty years. A lifetime.

Two years earlier, Ricardo had talked to her about Lalla. He had been to see her in Beaumont.

“If you touch her, I'll kill you.”

“I could do it if I wanted, and I wouldn't care if you killed me afterwards, Gaby. One of these days, they're going to kill me anyway . . . No, it isn't that. I'm too old to get involved with young girls. I want her to work with you at the Habana. The club isn't doing too well . . . The girls there are idiots. All they care about is getting laid for a thousand francs a pop, not working for me.”

“I want her to continue with her studies. You promised, Ricardo.”

“Gaby, she's no good at school. You know that. She isn't interested in anything. She's not like you. All she's interested in is going out and enjoying herself. One day, she's going to bring home one of those stupid young good-for nothings who parade up and down Cours Julien . . .”

“She's my daughter, Ricardo.”

“She doesn't know that.”

“I've been meaning to tell her. And who her father was. I've been thinking about it.”

“Gaby, stop . . . What are you playing at, huh? Love her, take care of her, that's the main thing. As for the rest . . . You can teach her, Gaby, and the two of you can get the club back on its feet . . . She'll earn exactly the same as you, O.K.?”

“I don't know.”

“You want a future for her. Make sure she has enough money. That's the only diploma you need nowadays. Can't you understand that, or do you need me to give you a lecture about unemployment, poverty, that kind of thing?”

“I have to talk to her about it. Know what she thinks.”

Ricardo looked at her. Over the years, Ricardo had discovered her true beauty, her intelligence, her sensitivity. He loved her. But these were the kind of things you couldn't say, or even think. If he hadn't been what he was—a gangster—the two of them might have been able to live a simple, happy life.

“She's already agreed,” he said, in as flat a voice as he could manage. “She's waiting for you to fetch her.”

“Bastard!” she cried. “Bastard!”

And she burst into sobs, for the first time since Diamantis had left.

 

She saw Lalla and Nedim come out of the water and drop onto the sand, exhausted but happy. They really looked like a happy couple. A loving couple. Amina felt tears welling up inside her, and she couldn't hold them back.

By showing up the way he had, Diamantis had swept away the house of cards that her life had been. She had to confide in someone, to liberate what was inside her. Who else could she do that with, if not him? She didn't believe in chance, but she did believe that destiny sometimes gave you a sign. It was time now. Time to tell the truth. What was the point of the truth, if it couldn't give a little happiness to those who have suffered?

O
n the Corniche, the cars were crawling along, fender to fender. Diamantis had forgotten—if he had ever really known it—that on summer evenings the people of Marseilles all rush to the beaches. Some went there just to have a drink on a café terrace, others to eat on the shore. Family outings, lovers strolling, friends meeting. From wherever in the city people came, they were bound sooner or later to end up in a jam, either on the Corniche, which runs alongside the harbor, or on Avenue du Prado, which is at a right angle to the beaches.

With his elbow on the open window, he tried to imagine the old road that once ran alongside the sea, served only by a streetcar. Toinou's wife, Rossana, had told him about it. She remembered it from her happy childhood. She had taken the streetcar only once.

“That was my parents' honeymoon, taking the streetcar and riding around the Corniche. It wasn't Venice, but it was just as beautiful. I don't think they'd ever been as far as that in their lives!”

That was what made Marseilles eternal. All these memories and anecdotes transmitted from father to son, like an inheritance. The history of Marseilles was in its people, not in its stones. Diamantis could imagine himself living here forever. With Mariette in his arms, also telling him her childhood memories, augmented by those of Toinou and Rossana.

“We belonged to the Boating Club of the Canal de la Douane,” Toinou had told him one lunchtime, as they sat eating grilled mullet. “In summer, we'd go out to Les Martigues, each family in its own boat. The first to arrive would reserve places for the others. We'd fish, dive to gather mussels and sea urchins . . . We had everything . . .”

He could have a boat here, too, Diamantis thought. Mikis could come. They would go fishing for tuna off the islands of the Frioul. They both loved fishing. On Psara, they often went all the way to the far eastern end of the island, to a place called the Groupers' Hole. They'd fish with a big sinker, using small herrings as bait. Sometimes they caught specimens of twenty-eight, thirty pounds.

“Do you fish?” he asked the taxi driver.

“There's nothing left here,” the man replied, grumpily. “No more fish, no more fishermen. Just fucking cars and motorists.”

And he gave an angry hoot on his horn, because the Fiat in front of him hadn't moved forward the seven or eight inches that had opened up in front of it. He put his head out the window.

“Hey, are you moving or what? I'm working here!”

Diamantis couldn't see the face of the Fiat driver. But he heard his reply.

“Yeah, and what's your sister up to?”

“Fucking jerk!” the taxi driver said.

He gave another blast on his horn, a long one. Everyone started hooting. Ten minutes of unrestrained noise. Then the drivers started cursing all those who, like them, couldn't wait to get to the sea.

Diamantis let his gaze wander over the surface of the water. He was trying everything he could not to think about his meeting with Amina. He recalled some reflections he'd put down recently in his notebook. About how poor most languages were in naming the sea. Only the Greeks had several words for it.
Hals
, salt, the sea as matter.
Pelagos
, the stretch of water, the sea as vision, as spectacle.
Pontos
, the sea as space and route.
Thalassa
, the sea as event.
Kolpos
, the whole of the maritime space, including the shore, the gulfs and bays . . .

What he saw in front of his eyes at the moment, moving more rapidly now, was all these words at the same time. The sea in all its definitions, the Mediterranean in all its names. Always greater than what it revealed of itself. Always older. Always more real. Beyond the myths.
Al-bahr al-rum
. The Egyptian name came back to him. He recalled that, for the Arabs, this sea was neither blue nor black, but
white
.

Al-bahr al-abyad
.

“This sea is deceptive,” he thought.

“Here you are,” the taxi driver said.

 

Nedim had been telling Lalla about his voyages. Right now he was recalling an adventure off Singapore, where ships advance in slow motion through the narrows between the Raffles Lighthouse and Buffalo Rock. Both were still in their swimming costumes. Lalla had agreed to have a gin and tonic too. To keep Nedim company.