The pain woke Diamantis. A pain he couldn’t localize. He was lying on his back, his eyes wide open. The room was bathed in a gentle half-light. Behind the shutters, he could sense the heat. The daylight. He was alone in the bed, and he couldn’t hear any noise. Mariette and Laure must have left. It was probably late.
He turned his head to the left to look at the alarm clock. It was eight-fifty. Not as late as all that. He could still sleep a little. It would do him good. But the pain was too strong. His mouth felt dry and furry. Beside the alarm clock, in a conspicuous position, a glass of water. He smiled at this thoughtfulness. But he didn’t want water, he wanted coffee. Yes, a coffee wouldn’t go amiss.
He rolled onto his side, and it was as if the blows were raining down again on his back, his shoulders, his legs, his arms, just as hard as last night, on the street. Fuck! It took his breath away. He started to panic, the way he had last night. The fear rising in him made him want to pee. To pee and have a coffee.
“Come on, now, make an effort,” he said to himself. His body didn’t want to listen. His battered body refused to move, because it hurt. It was better to stay where he was, in bed. “But even in bed it hurts!” he argued with himself. “So if you get up . . .”
“Get up, take a leak, have a Dolipran.” He repeated it aloud, slowly, moving first one leg, then the other. He sat down on the edge of the bed. “Maybe even two Dolipran. Yes. And then go back to bed. All right?”
No, it wasn’t all right. Every movement was like a dagger being thrust into him. He really had to take a leak. All that beer he’d drunk last night. He was glad, though, that he hadn’t peed himself while they were beating him. No, that wouldn’t happen again. He’d been to the toilet before leaving the bar. It had become a reflex. However much in a hurry he was, he always peed before he went anywhere. Especially if he had to go on foot. Especially if it was night.
He managed to stand. For a fraction of a second. Then he bent double. His stomach was screaming. It was the fucking kicks. He looked for his underpants, but couldn’t find them. In fact, he couldn’t find any of his clothes. What did that matter right now? He moved forward like that, bent double. The toilet smelled of lavender. The smell was pleasant and sickening at the same time.
He dragged himself to the kitchen. The shutters were half closed. Everything was clean and tidy. Beside the cooker, a little Italian coffeemaker, a pack of coffee, a sugar bowl, a cup, a spoon. The box of Dolipran. His pack of cigarettes and his lighter. And a note from Mariette. Nice handwriting, large and round. Stay here and rest. See you later. Then Love, and the name and phone number of her doctor. Just in case . . .
The apartment exuded peace and gentleness. Happiness. He made the coffee. On the square, children were playing. Soccer, to judge by their shouts. He took two Dolipran with a mouthful of water, then refilled the glass and watered the basil on the window sill. The smell immediately spread. He loved that smell. It belonged to a calm, unhurried life.
He switched on the radio and sat down at the table. The news. With its share of violence and hate and death. Bosnia reminded him of Lebanon. And Rwanda was like Bosnia and Lebanon combined. Only worse. Much worse. Hitler had contaminated the world. At Hiroshima, the Americans had tested out horror on a mass scale. Yes, but even before that, the First World War had plunged mankind into a nightmare. And before and after were as alike as two peas in a pod.
That was the only thing men knew how to do: tear each other apart. You needed more money, so you robbed your neighbor. He called the cops. Or got out his rifle. Men killed each other over a woman, a car, a fence built in the wrong place, a piece of land trespassed on, a religion, a country. There was always someone who thought he was better than other people. Purer. More just. And beheaded, murdered, massacred. In the name of reason . . .
Diamantis changed stations. The same news, but with a commentary. In a part of Marseilles he didn’t know, a school had been ransacked by some of its pupils. People asked why. The principal. The teachers. The pupils’ parents . . . He switched off the radio. It was exhausting.
He had a second cup of coffee and smoked a cigarette, then leaned on the edge of the table to help himself to stand. Like an old man. He felt old. He dragged himself into the living room, and went to the stereo. He needed music. Santana, Bob Dylan, Khaled, Verdi, Tito Puente, the Rolling Stones . . . Mariette had eclectic tastes. He liked that. He found what he was looking for. Gianmaria Testa. His voice filled the apartment.
Io ti parlavo e tu eri già partito
E quello che dicevo non lo ascoltavi più.
La musica, il bicchiere le altre sere
Ti avrebbero legato qui ma non adesso.
Ti sento addosso e non ci sei . . .
Cradled by the music, Diamantis fell asleep trying to understand the words. Ti sento addosso e non ci sei . . . I feel you all over me and you aren’t there . . . You aren’t there. Why aren’t you there? Who isn’t there? When he opened his eyes, he saw Mariette’s face. The face of an angel, soft and round. Haloed by that luminous mass of hair. An apparition. She was smiling at him. The shutters were more open now. A ray of sunlight filtered into the room. Mariette glowed against the light.
He smiled at her. Then his eyelids closed again, involuntarily. His head was still heavy. His body must have been heavy, too, but he couldn’t feel it anymore. The pain had made it leaden. He was sweaty.
“How are you feeling?” he heard her ask.
He needed to wake up. Maybe if she put her hand on his forehead, it would help. Would do him good. Would stop the sweat trickling down his temples.
He nodded without replying and smiled at her again.
“You’re very hot,” she said, putting her hand on his forehead. The hand felt cool and light. Mariette was an oasis. He let the coolness spread through his body.
“I’m thirsty,” he said.
And his eyes closed again.
She helped him to take a shower. She soaped him, rinsed him, wiped him. His body was covered in bruises. Under the almost cold jet of water, life gradually came back to him. Things fell back into place. And the questions started to flood into his head again, just as the blood started coursing again through his veins, or into the pit of his cock when Mariette’s soapy hands moved from his stomach to his groin. She had gentle hands. He got a slight hard-on. He wanted her fingers to linger there for a few more moments. Or longer than that, if possible. But she made him turn around, unconcerned about his hard-on, and made no comment.
He told Mariette the whole story as he drank coffee. He was dressed in new clothes. She had bought him beige cotton pants, a white T-shirt, and even underpants.
“It’s not easy to get blood off clothes,” she’d said.
She thought he was a handsome man. Even with that purple patch, turning almost black now, under his eye.
“I must be a terrible sight.”
She laughed, stood up, went out, came back with a large pair of sunglasses, and put them on his nose. “There. Now you’re really handsome!”
She laughed again, and her laugh infected him. A moment of joy, another moment snatched from life. Life, which was there, outside, waiting impatiently for Diamantis to return. So that it could grab him all over again. With its questions, its doubts. Its laws and rules. Because you can’t leave life in the lurch. A door always has to be opened or closed. He wondered what he should do. Open the door, to find out what he had left behind? Or close the door behind him forever? What did he want? He wasn’t sure anymore. Take the blows? Get another beating? Or kill someone, maybe. Did Amina even remember him? Twenty years. Did he have to retrace his steps? And why? To confess that he had fled because he was scared to death. And tell her . . . Tell her what? “Look, I’m sorry about all this. I have my life now. You have yours.” Was he doing it for her or for him? And what about her? What did he expect her to say? “I forgive you, Diamantis. You can’t argue with the fear of death.” Wasn’t that what he was expecting? Just that. Her forgiveness. And once he was absolved, it didn’t matter to him how many men fucked her.
No. The questions bristled in his head.
Love means commitment, he thought. Amina had given him a lot. She’d given him everything. Her body and her dreams. She had believed in him. She had trusted him. She had placed her hopes in him. They hadn’t only fucked. With the impatience of desire, they had started to build something.
He was the second man Amina had slept with. She’d told him that quite openly. The first man who’d fucked her—that was how she’d put it, in a blank, uninflected voice—didn’t count. She had refused to talk about him. One day, maybe. On the boat taking him away from her, he had wondered if the guy who had taken her virginity might be her father. Or his pal the paratrooper. Or a friend of the paratrooper’s.
No. He couldn’t. Turning the page meant accepting that he hadn’t loved her. Love required courage, too. Twenty years didn’t make any difference. There was only the truth of feelings. His love. True or false.
His temples started throbbing. All these questions had brought the pain back. He could feel it moving up his spine, like an army of ants. It would go all the way up to his head, and he’d start to feel the blows again, inside. He had to make up his mind.
“What do you think I should do?” he asked Mariette finally.
She looked him up and down. She wasn’t smiling now. She was very serious. “Do you really want me to tell you?”
She had listened to his story and understood all the things that were troubling him. She was moved by him. He was a strong man. Even his doubts didn’t detract from his strength. He might wander, but he never took his eyes off the course he had fixed for himself. She remembered his description of Odysseus when they were talking in the pizzeria yesterday. “Driven by a quiet heroism appropriate to a world that is perfectly human.”
Diamantis had something of Odysseus about him. He seemed to live his own tragedy to the full. Because he was basically free. And tragedy always began with the assertion of freedom.
She answered him in exactly the way he didn’t want to hear. Or couldn’t hear anymore. She said, with all the love for him that she felt growing in her, “Forget the past, Diamantis. Drop it. That’s what I think you should do. And I also think you should leave that ship. What the hell does it matter to you? If you want to go back to sea, go back to sea. But don’t stay on board that ship, brooding.”
She put all her tenderness into these words. Trying to convince herself, as she spoke, that he would listen to her, that he would say, “Yes, you’re right.” Then she added, because that was also something that had to be said, “You can stay here. It won’t be any problem. Stay as long as you like. Laure and I will manage,” she added, to put him at its ease. “She can sleep with me, and you can use her room.”
“You’re right,” he said.
He knew she was right.
“Yes, you’re right.”
She didn’t believe him.
“But . . . I have to go back to the ship. They must be worried.”
His eyes avoided Mariette’s for a moment. But there was no point, he thought. He shouldn’t lie to her. He looked straight at her.
“I’m not sure yet, Mariette. I’m not sure.”
“I’ll drive you over there.”
She drove him as far as the checkpoint.
“Will you be O.K.?” she asked, opening the door for him.
They hadn’t spoken since they’d gotten in the car.
“Five hundred yards,” he said, trying to make a joke of it. “I’ll survive.”
Then he took her arm and drew her aside. “It’s that one over there, you see? The Aldebaran. It looks like any other freighter. No better, no worse. It’s my only real home in the world. At least for today. There’ll be another one tomorrow . . .”
He turned to look at her. She was beautiful. Not like Amina. Or Melina. He might not even have noticed her on the street, if he hadn’t known Toinou, if he hadn’t looked into her eyes the other afternoon. But standing here in front of him, with the emotion of the moment overwhelming her, and her eyes that didn’t flinch, in spite of everything, yes, here and now, she was the most beautiful woman he had ever met.
He took her in his arms and buried his face in her hair. There was the same smell in her hair that he had breathed in all night on his pillow. A smell that already belonged to him.
“I’ve heard everything you said, Mariette . . . But I don’t know . . . I really don’t know . . . I need . . .”
She wasn’t looking at him anymore. She was looking at the Aldebaran. As if it might take to sea.
Again, Diamantis made an attempt at a joke. “You have my dirty clothes as security, even my underpants!”
He quickly freed himself from her, kissed her furtively on the lips, and walked toward the checkpoint. Without turning around.
He showed the watchman the card giving him access to the harbor. The young man stared at him. His eyes came to rest on Diamantis’ sunglasses, and the purple mark.
“Diamantis,” he said.
Diamantis lifted his glasses to give him a real eyeful.
“Nice,” he said, and added, “I have a message for you.”
He handed him a small white envelope. Inside was a visiting card. On it, a scrawled message. 2 P.M. I’m at the Flots-Bleus, Prophète Beach. Until seven. Come. Amina. Amina. His heart started pounding. He turned and saw Mariette’s car drive away.
The watchman hadn’t taken his eyes off him.
“When were you given this?”
“Less than an hour ago.”
“By a woman?”
Just to know if Amina had come all the way here. He was angry at himself already for having missed her.
“A young woman. Arab, something like that.” The watchman winked conspiratorially. “Really nice figure.”
Diamantis was disappointed. “Thanks,” he said, thinking hard. “A young woman? How young?”
“Twenty at the most. Your friend seemed to know her.”
“My friend?”
“You know, the Turk. The one who came back. He even went off with her.”
Diamantis was completely at a loss. “Wait a minute. Tell me that again, slowly.”