Marseille Noir Read online

  He sighed again.

  “Okay, that’s all past . . . Jocelyne and Josette committed suicide, one by throwing herself off the Fausse-Monnaie Bridge, the other when she managed to escape from her room during one of her many stays at La Timone. She climbed up to the roof through the service stairway and jumped off. One three weeks after the other, after our mother died. Since then, Josephine’s been hospitalized full time with no chance of getting out. Seems she’s incurable. Sometimes they put her in a straitjacket.”

  He stopped talking abruptly, as if he were short of breath.

  “Jesus, a straitjacket, you hear that?” he said in a dull voice. “My sister in a straitjacket!” He took a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his eyes.

  I let a few seconds of silence go by out of decency, then said: “And . . . Josiane?”

  “Josiane? Let’s say her condition is a little less worrisome. All four of them went downhill as they got older, but her a little less than the others. Sure, she’s losing her marbles, but it’s not too serious yet. In any case, she’s the only sister I’ve got left, and I want to do anything I can to prevent her from being locked up in a mental hospital, but I can’t take care of her full time. And that’s what she needs. I don’t want a home nurse either. I’d hate to have someone I don’t know snooping around my place, you just never know. So you see, I’m kind of stuck.” He refilled our glasses. “You know, she still talks about you sometimes.”

  “About me?”

  “Actually, she doesn’t say your name because she certainly forgot it, but sometimes she talks about my buddy from the dead end, the one who lived across the street. Other than my parents, me, and my three other sisters, you’re the only one she mentions from time to time. But by the way,” he narrowed his eyes, “you see which one of the four we’re talking about, right?”

  “Uhh . . . yeah, I think so.”

  “You think so?” he snapped. “For chrissake, she gave you a blowjob in my house! You son of a bitch. She was the most gentle of the four, the most sensitive. She’s pure, she’s fragile. Very fragile! I swear, when I saw you getting a blowjob in our own living room, I almost killed you. If I’d been ten years older, I don’t think you’d be here today!”

  I shrank back. “But Ange . . . come on, I was a kid, just like you. It didn’t mean anything, I . . . I was caught off guard—I was only nine, I mean—”

  “Bullshit! You dishonored my sister. Basta!”

  The last word cracked like a wet whip. That’s when I fully realized how Sicilian he was. They don’t kid around with things like that in those families.

  “I kept that inside myself for twenty-five years, can you imagine? Never talked about it with her, ever . . . Anyway, she might’ve forgotten it the very next day, but you, I could never make you pay for it. Not that I didn’t want to—believe me, I did! But I remembered our games in the street. And then after my accident, I became a little more sentimental too. If I hadn’t crashed on those fucking rocks, who knows, you might not be here today. You’d have gotten a bullet in your head one day without knowing why.”

  I breathed in deeply. “Ange, what’re you driving at?”

  He stared at me again with his Sicilian-eagle look, a look that came from far away, a look heavy with tens of centuries of shepherds, of sailors, of wiry, dark, austere peasants for whom honor was the cement of life, whose curses and revenge never stopped, passed from one generation to the next, until the debt nobody really remembered anymore was finally paid, usually in blood and tears.

  “You have to take care of Josiane,” he said. “You owe her that much, at least. That’s the deal if you want to leave the business with my blessing. The only one I’m offering. Otherwise, it’s simple: you’re gonna get it.”

  * * *

  Twenty years went by. Marseille changed somewhat, on the surface: the renovation of La Joliette to attract rich tourists, the promotion of our historical heritage, the destruction of the horrible high-rise parking garages and bypasses that used to disfigure the downtown area, even the architecture of the new museum near the cathedral—all that’s very good, quite a success, I must admit—but it’s only on the outside; it’s a trompe l’oeil. Inside, nothing’s changed, or almost nothing. In any case, the ordinary people of Endoume are still the same.

  On the other hand, what used to be called “the mob” is practically gone: modern, cynical free-market society got the better of it—and in this respect, yes, from my point of view, yes, it was better in the old days. Today, there are just a few bosses scattered here and there throughout the city and the suburbs, and they’re more and more vicious. But when all is said and done, maybe they haven’t changed that much. The rules and methods are just more violent and arbitrary, that’s all—although, relatively speaking, no more so than those of society as a whole. In fact, one might wonder what miracle could have prevented that generalized violence in human relationships, that extreme tension in the workplace, even in the streets, from spreading to all sectors of society, including what used to be called “the mob.” Like employees and executives, gangsters had to show “flexibility”: most of them turned into more or less respectable businessmen. New markets popped up. New rackets. New networks. You had to adapt. Ange was able to do it. He moved upward, and got much richer. But the “worker bees,” the invisible people, guys like me, they don’t see too much difference. The Milous and Doumés, for example, are still just as dumb, servile, and violent. Francis Girard, a.k.a. Le Blond, a.k.a. Hay-Head, and now called The Old Guy, was let out in 2005 for medical reasons, then arrested again in 2009 for dealing drugs. Today he’s still locked up in Baumettes prison.

  And for the rest, life goes on in town just as it did before. Like before, city hall tries to shove the poor out of the center of the city and it still doesn’t work. Like before, though not much more than before, the gangs are killing each other off slowly but surely and that has no more effect on the daily life of the people of Marseille than it did before, even if the media makes a big fuss about it. As ever, it’s too hot, as ever the wind blows too hard, as ever everybody speaks too loud and gets mad too fast but it doesn’t last, it smells just as bad in the summer, the streets are just as dirty, and on the whole, it doesn’t make a very good impression. It’s always been like that. All the clichés keep getting trotted out: Marseille is the city of excess, and that’s supposed to be what makes it as irritating as it is endearing.

  In Endoume, it seems nothing has really changed, aside from the franchise signs that replaced the little shop signs of my childhood, and the disappearance of Fornasero’s plumbing business right next to my place, and Bijaoui’s grocery store. I work with René Fabrizio: I sell cars for the Renault dealer in La Capelette. Nothing exciting, but still, it’s better than harassing bar owners to pay back their bets, and risk finding myself on a stretcher with two pieces of lead in my belly like my dad.

  No, actually, something did change: for the last twenty years, Josiane’s been living with me.

  She was happy to come back to the little street of her childhood. When we got there together, she clapped her hands and cried out in joy, like a little girl. She even flew into my arms, but even this didn’t cheer me up. I felt cornered, humiliated, reduced to nothing. I never would have thought I could live with someone I hadn’t chosen, especially someone who is relatively nuts. And yet I have. True, I didn’t really have a choice. I wouldn’t say we form a couple, but we live together without any clashes. When Ange wants to visit his sister, he calls me and we agree on a time when I can leave the house, because he doesn’t want to see us together.

  Josiane’s really more than “borderline,” but Ange was right: she’s gentle, sensitive, and very emotional. Incapable of caring for herself. Unfit for life in everyday society. Still beautiful, despite her age. Supple as a liana, slim, elegant. Easygoing. Silent, available, and discreet. Often miles away, her eyes lost gazing at the ceiling for hours on end, or contemplating an invisible spot while talking incomprehensibly in
a small, plaintive voice. She never asks anything of me, except to be home from time to time. I do in fact like her. Her presence is soothing. And now, after twenty years, I’ve grown attached to her. Through René Fabrizio, I found a kind of nurse who keeps her company when I’m not there, during the day when I’m working or in the evening when I feel like going out to see friends or flings. Sometimes she has a fit and starts crying and twisting her hair—graying now, but still prettily curled—between her long, slender fingers. Then she mumbles and walks over to me, gracefully swaying her hips.

  I never saw Ange Malatesta again.

  EXTREME UNCTION

  by FRANÇOIS THOMAZEAU

  Vélodrome Stadium

  It happened four times. André would come get me at Grandma’s on Wednesday mornings and take me to Vélodrome Stadium. On the way, in his big, brand-new German sedan, we wouldn’t exchange a word. He’d light up a cigarette, lower his window, stick out his arm, and cough all the way. At the stadium, a flunkey would open the gate for him and we’d park smack in the middle of the empty parking lot in front of the main entrance that said Jean Bouin. When there was someone there besides the guard, he’d politely say hello to André, lowering his eyes. Occasionally some bolder guys would throw out a, “Hi, Dédé.” And he’d cough to answer them.

  Then he’d pull me into an empty part of the stands, never the same one. We’d set our butts down on the blue seats, strangled by our scarves, with the tramontane wind howling at us. Way up in the stadium, above the railing where the crowd looks like it’s going to spill overboard on the nights when there’s a game, the seagulls would protest our presence. There were only the two of us, except for the raw-boned silhouette of an old guy in denim overalls leisurely pushing his lawnmower along the bands of light green grass. Once we’d sat, we’d stay there for a long time without saying anything, long enough for André to finish his Marlboro. Then he’d turn to me, look me in the eye, and start talking. He said anything that came into his mind: he liked Andalusian resorts in the fall, nightclubs at dawn—“when it’s time to stuff your cash in your pocket before you go home to bed,” nameless roadside hotels, empty stadiums frozen in silence. Hideouts.

  “That’s what my life is like, see.”

  I didn’t see anything, but André seemed happy to be there. Grandma had told me to be good. And try to be nice. So I acted as if I was happy too. He’d pass me potato chips in crumpled packs in the colors of our soccer team, the Olympique de Marseille. And I’d suck in the sickening foam of my cans of Coke.

  “You want me to tell you a story?”

  And every time, we were in for a good quarter of an hour. You’d think André was telling me a story before tucking me in.

  * * *

  The first time was in November and the cold was pinching my cheeks the way old ladies do to chubby babies. Dédé told me the story of a boxer. The way he was talking about him, with his fists squeezed against his chest, I had the feeling he’d known him. He was staring straight at some vague spot in the stands across the field.

  “Ray was great, see, a real champ. Good-looking too. A class act. You should’ve seen his mother Marie-Jeanne, the way she watched him. Like he was a little diamond her husband gave her. A pure fighter, a thoroughbred, with a dark look that put ice in your veins. His opponents were always afraid of him. The first time I saw him fight, it wasn’t far from here, in Huveaune Stadium, down below toward the Prado. At the time, boxing used to draw big crowds. There were thousands of us cheering him on. He should have been a Carpentier or a Cerdan. But then . . .” André stopped talking and pulled a Marlboro from his pocket without even taking out the pack. As if he was drawing a gun. “How old are you?”

  “Thirteen.”

  He nodded like he was taking stock of his dead memories. “Ray was hardly ten years older than you when he died. He could’ve become the strongest, the greatest. But then . . . boxing. It’s a tough life. It stops without warning. And his life stopped with Chickaoui, an Algerian tough guy they called Damage Man. It didn’t go well. It was fierce, violent, real butchery. As I’m talking to you, I can still hear the punches pounding Ray’s face. And I can still see the sweat and the blood spurting out all the way to the first row.” André raised his eyes, you’d think he was looking for a friend beyond the stands, out in the hills maybe.

  “It was in the stadium down on Prado. At that time there were still bulls there. The animal they sacrificed that day was Ray. He fell, he lost his mouthpiece and his belt—Champion of France. But he was still alive when the audience stood up. You can imagine the silence, like right now . . . Ten thousand people getting up together. Without saying a word.”

  No, I couldn’t imagine it. I’d never seen a boxing match, never seen a bullfight.

  “The next day when we learned he was dead, a huge crowd from all over Marseille flocked to the hospital. And the day of his funeral, there were four times as many people as there were at the fight. Jesus, did his mother cry. I swear, we were all crying . . .”

  The seagulls started screaming again. André straightened up. A strained smile crossed his face. More like a scar. I wondered if he’d been a boxer himself. He sure had the physique for the job.

  “Anyway . . . that’s why this section is called Ray Grassi. It’s in his honor. In honor of the boxer who died that day . . .”

  He shoved his fists into his pockets and got up. I don’t know if it was the cold or the early hour, but he was clearing his throat as if a cat had slipped into it and was trying to get out.

  Every time, we went for a pizza. There was a pizzeria in the stadium. And they knew André there. People called him Dédé and watched him out of the corner of their eyes as if they were afraid of I don’t know what. He would go behind the bar and help himself to peanuts and glasses of pastis as if he were at home. The pizza was pretty good. I’d always order a “Royal.” He would smile at me as we ate and we’d laugh because we realized we both left the black olives at the edge of the plate. And then André would drive me back to Grandma’s.

  * * *

  The second time was just before Christmas; he gave me a present. A blue-and-white Olympique de Marseille scarf. It wasn’t so much a luxury because we were freezing our butts off, even more than the first time. I even think it snowed the next day. It was so cold the gulls stayed nice and cozy in their nests. Me, all I thought about when André was telling me one of his stories again was the pizza. We had climbed up the bleachers facing the stands we sat in the first time. In fact, I was trying to find the row we were in before. I was telling myself that André should be taking me to an actual game. What with the action and all, it would have been a lot warmer. And well-known as he apparently was, we would’ve been treated to the VIP booths. I had asked Grandma if he was the owner of the Olympique de Marseille. She’d shrugged and spat on the ground.

  This time, he talked about a little guy with a mustache who could run faster than anyone else in the world. Dédé was tracing big circles around the stadium with his finger, as if he was still seeing a track there.

  “And the worst was, he smoked, can you believe it? Yes, Jean Bouin smoked. But that didn’t stop him from beating everybody,” he said, lighting a Marlboro. “I didn’t know him, of course. It was in 1912 that he won the silver at the Olympics. Behind a Finn who beat him at the finish line. But I knew a guy in le Chapitre who’d known his mother well. And especially his stepfather, who was a real bastard. A guy named Galdini, who skimmed money off his back, made him run for the bread and then dropped him as soon as he could screw the mother without Jean bugging him. Oh, sorry . . .”

  I motioned that it was okay, he could talk, I was young but I knew a thing or two.

  “Jean Bouin. He left home at sixteen. About three years older than you. To break all the world records, see.”

  I asked André why Jean Bouin had a stepfather and he answered that his real father died when he was one. A little like me . . . my mom died practically when I was born. And I never even had a stepf
ather.

  “A lot of time, orphans make good,” Dédé said. “It makes you want to fight.”

  I wanted to ask what he knew about that, but I’m not a moron. I understood they named our part of the stands Jean Bouin because of his achievements. And I also understood that André wanted to tell me something but couldn’t bring himself to do it.

  “So how did he die?”

  “In the First World War, at twenty-eight. They said he ran to the front with a French flag under his arm yelling, Vive la France! It looked good in the papers . . . Actually, he and his buddies were wasted by French artillery fire. Friendly fire, as they say today.”

  That time I ordered a tiramisu at the pizzeria. I wondered if we would go through every section in the stadium, but I didn’t ask. I knew grown-ups had their own absurd logic. They gave a lot of importance to a whole bunch of stuff that didn’t have any. Memories. Regrets. And I had the impression that André liked things to be done a certain way. He yelled at the waiter because he was too slow bringing over the spicy oil.

  As for me, I didn’t like sports much. Grandma signed me up in a Judo club a few years ago, but I didn’t stick with it. Just a soccer game from time to time on the little square. But even that . . . I wasn’t good enough and I didn’t really like it that much. I thought of that because I had the feeling André was going to ask about it. But he didn’t. He was a man who talked a lot, but didn’t say much of anything. I said so to Grandma and she answered, “That’s Marseille for you: here, they talk a lot, but they never say what counts.”

  * * *

  The third time, we were at the beginning of the new year. I was going on fourteen. André didn’t open the window but that didn’t stop him from coughing. On the other hand, he didn’t light up a cigarette until we got to the stands. He savored the first puffs of his Marlboro as if they were his last.