Solea (5 page)

I'd decided to check out the apartment she'd kept at the top of Cours Julien. She'd bought it for next to nothing in the seventies and now it was worth a fortune. Cours Julien was the hottest neighborhood in Marseilles. Nothing but restaurants, bars, cafés with live music, antique shops and fashion stores on both sides of the street, all the way up to the Notre Dame du Mont subway station. From seven onwards, it was the center of Marseilles nightlife.

“I knew it wouldn't last,” Fonfon had grunted.

“Fonfon, it's just this once.”

“O.K. . . . Anyway, there won't be many customers. They'll all have their asses in the water. Another coffee?”

“If it's not too much trouble.”

“Don't make that face! I'm only teasing. I don't know what the girls are doing to you these days, but when you get out of bed in the morning, you look like you've been run over by a steamroller.”

“It's not the girls, it's the
pastis
. I lost count last night.”

“When I said the girls, I meant the one I put in a taxi this morning.”

“Sonia.”

“Sonia, that's it. She seems nice.”

“Hold on, Fonfon! Don't you start now. Honorine already said that, no need to exaggerate.”

“I'm not exaggerating. I'm just telling you the way I see it. And instead of gallivanting off God knows where in this heat, you should do what I'm doing and take a nap. That way, tonight . . .”

“You're shutting the bar?”

“Can you see me waiting all damned afternoon for someone to come in and order a peppermint cordial? Why should I bother? Same tomorrow. And the day after. While this heat lasts, there's no point in making your life a misery. So take some time off, my friend. Go on, go to bed.”

 

I hadn't listened to Fonfon. I should have. I was exhausted. I pulled out a cassette by Mongo Santamaria and put it in the deck.
Mambo Terrifico
. At full volume. And I stepped on the accelerator, just to let a little fresh air into the car. But even with all the windows open, I was streaming with sweat. The beaches, from the Pointe-Rouge to the Rond-Point de David, were packed. Everyone in Marseilles was there, with their asses in the water, like Fonfon had said. He was right to close the bar. Even the movie theatres, which were air conditioned, weren't opening until five.

Less than half an hour later, I parked outside Babette's building. Summer in Marseilles is great. No traffic in town, no parking problems. I rang Madame Orsini's bell. She cleaned Babette's apartment when she was away, made sure everything was all right, and forwarded her mail. I'd phoned to make sure she was in.

“I'm not going anywhere, in this heat. Come any time you like.”

She opened the door. You couldn't be sure of Madame Orsini's age. It could have been anywhere between fifty and sixty. Depending on the hour of the day. Bleached blonde hair, not very tall, a little on the plump side. She was wearing a thin, loose-fitting dress, and when she stood against the light you could see the outline of her body. Judging by the look she gave me, I didn't think she'd have minded taking a little nap with me. I knew why Babette liked her. She was a maneater, too.

“Would you like something to drink?”

“No, thanks. Just the keys to the apartment.”

“That's a pity.” She smiled, and I smiled back. She handed me the keys. “I haven't heard from Babette in a while.”

“She's fine,” I lied. “Working hard.”

“Is she still in Rome?”

“Yes, with her lawyer.”

Madame Orsini looked at me in a curious way. “Oh . . . Oh, yes.”

 

I climbed six floors, and stopped outside Babette's door to catch my breath. The apartment was just as I remembered it. Magnificent. A huge picture window looking out over the Vieux-Port. With the islands of the Frioul in the distance. It was the first thing you saw when you came in, and it was so beautiful it took your breath away. I drank my fill. Because the rest of the place wasn't a pleasant sight. The apartment had been turned upside down. Someone had gotten there before me.

I broke out in a sweat. It was the heat, and the sudden presence of evil. The air became unbreathable. I went to the faucet in the kitchen, let the water run, and drank a big gulp of it.

I walked through the rooms. They had all been searched—thoroughly, it seemed to me, but not carefully. In the bedroom, I sat down on Babette's bed and lit a cigarette. I needed to think.

What I was looking for didn't exist. Babette was so unpredictable that even if she'd left an address book, I would simply have gotten lost in a maze of names, streets, towns and countries. The guy on the phone had come here first, before calling me. I was sure it was him. Them. The Mafia. The killers. They were looking for her and, like me, they'd started at the beginning. With where she lived. They must have found something that had pointed them in my direction. Then I remembered Madame Orsini's questions about Babette. And the way she'd looked at me. They'd been to see her, I was sure of that, too.

I stubbed out my cigarette in a hideous ashtray that said
Ricordo di Roma
. Madame Orsini owed me an explanation. I walked through the apartment again, as if hoping for a bright idea.

In the room Babette used as an office, I noticed two thick ring binders on the floor. I opened the first one. All the stories Babette had covered. Arranged by year. That was just like her. The sense that she was creating something durable. Her life's work. I smiled. And found myself skimming through the pages, going back through the years. Back to the day in March 1988 when she had come to interview me.

Her article was there. Half a page, with my photo in the middle, spread over two columns.

“Stop and search operations are commonplace,”
I'd said in answer to her first question.
“They're one of the things that foster feelings of rebelliousness in some young people, especially those young people who are experiencing the worst social deprivation. Police harassment legitimizes or reinforces a tendency toward delinquency, contributing to a situation in which young people are without guidelines and become chronically rebellious.

“Some young people start to feel they are all-powerful, which leads them to reject all authority and attempt to lay down the law in their projects. To them, the police are a symbol of this authority. But, in order to combat delinquency effectively, police conduct must be above reproach. Rap has become a means of expression for young people in the projects, for the very reason that it often attacks police harassment. In doing so, it shows that we still have a long way to go.”

My chiefs hadn't exactly appreciated my tirade. But they hadn't batted an eyelid. They knew my views. That was why they'd put me in charge of the Neighborhood Surveillance Squad in North Marseilles. There had been two major police blunders in quick succession. Lahaouri Ben Mohammed, a seventeen-year-old, had been killed during a routine identity check. There'd been trouble in the projects following that. Then, a few months later, the same thing had happened to another young man, Christian Dovero, the son of a taxi driver. This time the whole city was up in arms. “A Frenchman, dammit!” my superior had screamed. Calm had to be restored urgently. Even before Internal Affairs was called in. The prefecture had decided we needed to act differently, and talk differently. That was when they pulled me out of the hat. The miracle man.

It took me a while to realize that I was merely a puppet being manipulated. They were just waiting to get back to the tried and tested methods. The harassment, the beatings. To please those who clamored for greater security.

Now they'd gone back to those tried and tested methods. And twenty percent of the workforce voted for the National Front. The situation in North Marseilles had turned tense again. And was getting tenser every day. You just had to open the morning paper. Schools ransacked in Saint-André, attacks on night doctors in La Savine, or on municipal employees in La Castellane, night bus drivers threatened. And all the while, heroin, crack, and all that kind of crap were proliferating in the projects, making the kids feel they could do anything. And driving them crazy. “The two scourges of Marseilles,” the rappers of the band IAM kept crying, “are heroin and the National Front.” Anyone who'd spent any time among the young knew the explosion was coming.

I'd quit. I knew it was no solution. But you couldn't change the police overnight, in Marseilles or anywhere else. Whether you liked it or not, being a cop meant you had a history behind you. The roundup of Jews in the Vel' d'Hiv. The Algerians thrown in the Seine in October '61. A whole lot of things that had belatedly been admitted—though not yet officially. A whole lot of things that affected the way many cops dealt with the children of immigrants on a daily basis.

I'd long thought the same thing. And I'd started down what my colleagues called the slippery slope. Trying too hard to understand. To explain. To convince. “The youth counselor,” they nicknamed me at the neighborhood station house. When I was stripped of my functions, I told my chief that playing on people's subjective feelings of insecurity, instead of pursuing the objective goal of arresting the guilty, was a dangerous path to go down. He barely smiled. He didn't want to have anything more to do with me.

These days, admittedly, the government was singing a different tune. They'd recognized that security wasn't just a question of manpower and resources, but a question of methods. I was somewhat reassured to hear it said, finally, that security wasn't an ideology, and that social reality had to be taken into account. But it was too late for me. I'd left the force and I'd never go back, even though I didn't know how to do anything else.

 

I wanted to look through the article properly. As I took it out of its sleeve and unfolded it, a small sheet of yellowing paper fell out. On it, Babette had written:
Montale. Lots of charm, intelligent too.
I smiled. Good old Babette! I'd called her after the interview appeared. To thank her for quoting me accurately. She'd invited me to dinner. I guess she already had an ulterior motive. Why deny it? I was only too happy to accept—she was a real looker. But I never imagined that a young journalist would have any interest in seducing a cop who wasn't so young anymore.

Yes, I had to admit as I looked at my photo again, that Montale had lots of charm. I pulled a long face. That was a long time ago. Nearly ten years. My features were thicker and heavier now, and there were lines at the corners of my eyes and down my cheeks. The more time passed, the more worried I was by what I saw in the mirror every morning. Not only was I aging—which was only normal—it seemed to me I was aging badly. I'd talked about it to Lole one night.

“What on earth are you dreaming up now?” she'd retorted.

I wasn't dreaming anything up.

“Do you think I'm good-looking?”

I couldn't remember what she'd replied. In her head, she'd already left. For another life. Another man, in another place. A life that would be beautiful. A man who'd be good-looking.

Later, I'd seen a photo of her friend in a magazine—even in my head, I didn't dare speak the guy's name—and yes, he was good-looking. Thin, with a gaunt face, bushy hair, sparkling eyes, and a nice mouth, rather pursed to my taste, but nice all the same. The opposite of me. I'd hated that photo, especially when I thought of Lole putting it in her billfold instead of mine. That had really hurt. You're jealous, I'd told myself. It was a feeling I hated. But yes, I was jealous. And I felt sick at heart just thinking of Lole taking that photo, or another one, out of her billfold and looking at it, whenever he was away from her for a few days, or even just for a few hours.

It was one of those damned nights when you lie awake in bed and everything is magnified out of all proportion and you can't think properly, can't see straight. It had happened several times before, with other women. But never so painfully, so intensely. Lole was leaving, and my life would lose all meaning. Had already lost all meaning

My photo was looking back at me. I needed a beer. We're only good looking in other people's eyes. In the eyes of the person who loves us. One day, you can't tell the other person he or she is good-looking anymore, because love has gone and you're not desirable yourself. Then you can put on your nicest shirt, cut your hair, grow your moustache, it won't make any difference. All you'll get is “Oh, it suits you” instead of what you're really hoping for, which is “You look so handsome”—words that promise pleasure and rumpled sheets.

I put the article back in its sleeve and closed the binder. I felt suffocated. I lingered for a moment in front of the mirror at the entrance. I seemed to hear Sonia's laughter. Did I still have any of my charm left? Did I still have a future as a lover? I pulled a long face, the way only I knew how. Then I turned and picked up Babette's binders. Reading her articles, I told myself, would take my mind off things.

 

“I decided I'd like a beer after all,” I said as soon as Madame Orsini opened the door.

“Oh. O.K.”

This time there was no innuendo in her voice, and she was avoiding my eyes.

“I don't know if it's cold.”

“It doesn't matter.”

We were face to face. I was holding the keys to Babette's apartment in my hand.

“Did you find what you were looking for?” she asked, jutting her chin at the two binders.

“Maybe.”

“Oh.”

The silence that followed was heavy and damp.

“Is she in any trouble?” Madame Orsini asked at last.

“What makes you think that?”

“The police came. I don't like that.”

“The police?”

Another silence, as stifling as before. I had the taste of the first mouthful of beer in my mouth. She was avoiding my eyes again. There was a hint of fear deep in hers.