Solea (3 page)

“Shall we go outside?”

It was Hassan who'd introduced me to Perez one night. Perez was a painter. Fascinated by the magic of signs. We were the same age. His parents, originally from Almeria, had emigrated to Algeria after Franco's victory. That's where he was born. When Algeria became independent, none of the family had to think about what their nationality was. They would be Algerians.

Perez had left Algiers in 1993. A teacher at the School of Fine Arts, he was also one of the leaders of the Federation of Algerian Artists, Intellectuals and Scientists. When the death threats became more specific, his friends advised him to go away for a while. He'd been in Marseilles barely a week when he learned that the principal and his son had been murdered inside the school. He decided to stay in Marseilles, with his wife and children.

The thing that had immediately drawn me to him was his passion for the Tuareg. I didn't know the desert, but I knew the sea. To me, they were the same. We'd talked a lot about that. About the earth and the sea, the dust and the stars. One evening, he gave me a delicately moulded ring.

“It's from over there. The combination of points and lines is called the
Khaten
. It tells you what's going to happen to those you love who've gone away, and also what's going to happen to you in the future.” Perez had placed the ring in the palm of my hand.

“I think I'd rather not know.”

He had laughed. “Don't worry, Fabio. You have to know how to read the signs. The
Khat al R'mel
. Whatever it is, it's not going to happen in a hurry! But if it's written, it's written.”

I'd never worn a ring in my life. Not even my father's, after he died. I'd hesitated for a moment, then I'd put the ring on the fourth finger of my left hand. As if to seal my fate once and for all. That night, I'd thought, I was finally old enough.

 

Out on the sidewalk, with our glasses in our hands, we'd talked about this and that, then Perez had put his arm around my shoulder. “I need to ask you a favor.”

“Go ahead.”

“I'm expecting someone from Algeria. Could he stay with you? It'll only be for a week. My place isn't big enough.”

He looked straight at me with his dark eyes. My place wasn't all that much bigger. The cottage I'd inherited from my parents had only two rooms. A small bedroom and a big dining room cum kitchen. I'd refurbished the place as best I could. I'd kept things simple, not too much furniture. I felt good there. The terrace looked out onto the sea. At the bottom of a flight of eight steps was the boat, with a pointed stern, that I'd bought from Honorine, my neighbor. Perez knew that. I'd invited him and his wife and friends over for a meal several times.

“I'd feel safe, knowing he was with you,” he said.

Now I looked at him. “Of course, Didier. When's he coming?”

“I'm not sure yet. Tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, in a week. I really don't know. It's all a bit complicated. I'll call you.”

 

After he'd left, I'd gone back to my place at the bar and drunk with whoever was around, and with Hassan who was always happy to join in. I listened to the conversations. The music, too. Once the aperitif hour was over, Hassan would abandon Ferré for jazz. He always chose the tracks carefully. As if trying to find a sound to fit the mood of every moment. Death, the smell of it, was receding. No doubt about it, I preferred the smell of anise.

“I prefer the smell of anise,” I'd yelled at Hassan.

I was starting to get slightly drunk.

“Sure.”

He'd winked at me. He was a real friend. Miles Davis had launched into “Solea.” I loved that track. I'd been playing it constantly, at night, ever since Lole had left me.

“The
solea
,” she'd explained one evening, “is the backbone of flamenco singing.”

“Why don't you sing? Flamenco, jazz . . .”

I knew she had a great voice. A cousin of hers named Pedro had told me. But Lole had always refused to sing outside family gatherings.

“I haven't yet found what I'm looking for,” she'd replied, after a long silence. The same silence you had to find at the most intense moment of the
solea
. “You should have understood that by now, Fabio.”

“What should I have understood?”

She'd smiled sadly.

It was in the last few weeks of our life together. One of those nights when we'd tired ourselves out talking until the early hours, chain smoking and drinking Lagavulin.

“Explain it to me, Lole, what should I have understood?”

I'd been aware that she was drifting away from me. A little more with every month that passed. Even her body was less open. The passion had gone from it. Our desires weren't leading anywhere new, just perpetuating an old love affair. Nostalgia for a love that might have been.

“There's nothing to explain, Fabio. That's the tragedy of life. You've been listening to flamenco for years, and you're still asking me what you should have understood.”

It was a letter, a letter from Babette, that had set everything in motion. I'd met Babette when I'd been appointed head of the Neighborhood Surveillance Squad in North Marseilles. She was just starting out as a journalist. It just happened to be her that her newspaper,
La Marseillaise
, had asked to interview this rare bird the police were sending to the front line, and we'd become lovers. “Seasonal lovers,” she liked to call us. Then one day, we'd become friends. Without ever having said that we loved each other.

Two years ago, she'd met an Italian lawyer named Gianni Simeone. Love at first sight. She'd followed him to Rome. Knowing her, I was sure love wasn't the only reason. I was right. Simeone's specialty was the Mafia. And for years, ever since she'd gone freelance, Babette's dream had been to write the most in-depth report yet attempted on the influence of the Mafia in the South of France.

Babette had told me all about it—how far she'd gotten with her work, what still remained to be done—when she'd come back to Marseilles to check out a few things in local business and political circles. We'd met three or four times, and talked over a grilled sea bass with fennel, at Paul's on Rue Saint-Saëns. One of the few restaurants in the harbor area, along with L'Oursin, which isn't a tourist trap. What I particularly liked was the way we met as lovers, even though we weren't. But I couldn't have said why. Couldn't have explained it to myself. Much less to Lole.

And when Lole came back from Seville, where she'd been visiting with her mother, I didn't tell her about Babette, or that we'd met a few times. Lole and I had known each other since we were teenagers. She'd loved Ugo. Then Manu. Then me. The last survivor of our dreams. I had no secrets from her. She knew about the women I'd loved and lost. But I'd never talked to her about Babette. Because what there had been between us—what there still was between us—was too complicated.

“Who is this Babette? Why did you tell her you love her?”

She'd opened a letter from Babette. It might have been chance, it might have been jealousy, it doesn't matter.
Why does the word “love” have to be so full of meaning?
Babette had written.
We've both said “I love you.”

“There's ‘I love you' and there's ‘I love you,'” I'd stammered.

“Say that again.”

It was so hard to explain. You could say “I love you” out of loyalty to a love that never really existed, and you could say “I love you” to express the truth of a relationship built on the thousand joys of everyday life.

I hadn't been frank with her. I'd tried to wriggle out of it, and only ended up digging a deeper hole for myself. And at the end of a beautiful summer night, I'd lost Lole. We were on my terrace, finishing a bottle of white wine from the Cinque Terre. A Vernazza, which some friends of ours had brought back with them.

“You know something?” she'd said. “When you can't live anymore, you have the right to die and make a last spark out of your own death.”

Since Lole had left, I'd thought a lot about those words. And I'd been looking desperately for that spark.

 

“What did you say?” Hassan had asked.

“Did I say something?”

“I thought you did.” He'd served another round, then leaned towards me and said, “What people have in their minds is sometimes clearer than what they say with their tongues.”

I should have called it a day, finished my drink and gone home. Taken the boat and sailed out to the Riou islands to watch the sun rise. I couldn't stand the thoughts that were going through my head. The smell of death had come back. With my fingertips, I touched the ring Perez had given me. I didn't know if that was a good or a bad omen.

Behind me, a curious conversation had started between a young man and a woman of about forty.

“Shit!” the young man had said, irritably. “You're just like Madame de Merteuil.”

“Who's that?”

“A character in a novel.
Les Liaisons dangereuses
.”

“Never heard of it. Are you trying to insult me?”

That made me smile, and I asked Hassan to pour me another drink. That was when Sonia came in. Though I didn't know yet that her name was Sonia. She was a woman I'd seen a few times recently. The last time was in June, at a fishermen's festival in L'Estaque. We'd never spoken.

Sonia had made her way through the crowd to the bar and slipped in between another customer and me. Her body up against mine.

“Don't tell me you were looking for me.”

“Why?”

“Because someone already said that to me tonight.”

Her face lit up in a smile. “I wasn't looking for you. But I'm pleased to see you here.”

“So am I! Hassan, give the lady a drink.”

“The lady's name is Sonia,” he said.

And he poured her a whisky on the rocks. Without asking. As if she were a regular.

“Cheers, Sonia.”

We clinked glasses. Sonia's gray-blue eyes met mine. And the night took a different turn. I started getting a hard-on. Such a big one it almost hurt. I'd lost count of how many months it had been, but it was ages since I'd last slept with a woman. I think I'd almost forgotten what it was like to get a hard-on.

Other rounds followed. At the bar, then at a little table that had become free. Sonia's thigh up against mine. Burning me. I remember wondering why things always happen so fast. Falling in love. If only it happened when you were on top form, when you felt ready for the other person. I'd told myself it was impossible to control what happened in your life. I'd told myself a lot of things. But I couldn't remember any of them. Or anything Sonia had told me either.

I couldn't remember anything about the way that night had ended. And the phone was ringing.

 

The phone was ringing, making my temples throb. There was a thunderstorm inside my head. I made a huge effort and opened my eyes. I was lying naked on my bed.

The phone was still ringing. Shit! Why did I always forget to switch on the fucking answering machine?

I rolled over and reached out my arm.

“Yeah?”

“Montale.” A loathsome voice.

“You've got the wrong number,” I said, and hung up.

Less than a minute later, the phone rang again. The same loathsome voice. With a hint of an Italian accent.

“You see, it's the right number. Or would you rather we paid you a visit?”

This wasn't the kind of awakening I'd been dreaming of. But the guy's voice hit my body like an ice-cold shower. It sent a chill through me. I knew voices like that, I knew the kind of face that went with them, the kind of body, I even knew where they kept their guns.

I ordered the noise inside my head to stop. “I'm listening.”

“I have one question for you. Do you know the whereabouts of Babette Bellini?”

I wasn't in an ice-cold shower anymore. I was at the North Pole. I started shivering. I pulled up the sheet and wrapped it around me.

“Who is this?”

“Don't fuck around, Montale. Your girlfriend, the shit-stirrer, Babette. Do you know where she is?”

“She was in Rome,” I said, telling myself that if they were looking for her here it must mean she wasn't down there any more.

“She's not there anymore.”

“She must have forgotten to tell me.”

“Interesting,” the guy sneered.

There was silence. A silence so heavy, my ears started buzzing.

“Is that all?”

“Here's the deal, Montale. You do whatever you have to do, but you find your girlfriend for us. She has some things that belong to us and we'd like them back. Since you don't have anything to do all fucking day, it shouldn't take long, should it?”

“Go fuck yourself!”

“By the time I call you again, you won't be so high and mighty, Montale.” He hung up.

I'd been right. Life did stink of death.

O
n the table, next to my car keys, Sonia had left a note.
You were too plastered. A pity. Call me tonight. Bye.
Then her telephone number. Ten winning numbers. An invitation to happiness.

Sonia. I smiled, remembering her gray-blue eyes, her burning hot thigh against mine. And the way her face lit up when she smiled. They were my only memories of her, but they were good ones. I couldn't wait until tonight. Neither could my cock, straining inside my underwear just to think about it.

My head felt as heavy as a mountain. I hesitated between taking a shower and making coffee. It had to be coffee. And a cigarette. The first drag tore my insides out. I thought they were going to come out through my mouth. “Shit!” I said, and took another drag, for the sake of it. I heaved again, more violently than the first time, and the throbbing in my head started up again, louder than ever.