Amina looked at her watch. She’d given up hope that Diamantis would come. She was meeting Ricardo at seven-thirty at Le Son des Guitares, on Place de l’Opéra. “We’ll have an aperitif and then go have dinner somewhere.” She couldn’t get out of it. Not after last night, when they were supposed to have dinner at Le Mas with a couple of friends and she hadn’t showed up. She hadn’t been able to face it. She was still reeling from the shock of seeing Diamantis.
“Didn’t you want to go for a swim?” she asked Lalla.
She wanted to be alone. It was a nuisance that Lalla and Nedim were here. She needed to think, not to keep up a conversation.
“Aren’t you going?”
She shrugged. “Maybe . . . You two, go.”
She looked at Nedim, then Lalla. Lalla ought to understand that she wanted to be alone.
“But I don’t have any trunks,” Nedim said.
“They hire them out,” Lalla said. “Leave it to me.”
She stood up and went inside the bar. Nedim couldn’t help watching her, greedily, as she walked away. Shit, maybe once they were in the water, he could put his hand on her ass.
“You’re going to ruin your eyes,” Amina joked.
“There are worse things in life than that!” he replied. “And it’s free.”
Amina smiled. There was something she liked about this guy. A kind of natural sincerity. You just couldn’t hate him, even if you couldn’t stand a single thing he said or did. She knew she had a tendency to reduce men to their lowest common denominator. Because for most men, women were either bimbos to be fucked or just plain bitches. That was their world. A simplistic world, which inevitably led to tragedy and death. She was sure Nedim thought that way. And yet Diamantis seemed to like him. Why else would he have gotten involved in his affairs? Why would he have taken on his debts?
“She’s my daughter.”
She hadn’t meant to tell him that, it just slipped out. Because of Nedim’s sincerity, which she found touching. How long was it since she had last taken the time to listen to a man with any other thought in mind than screwing him out of as much money as possible? They all told the same stories. They lied. To other people, and to themselves. None of them was capable of telling the truth, even for a second. But maybe that was all down to her job. What was the point in telling the truth to a hostess in a cocktail bar?
Nedim looked at her, stunned. “I don’t believe you,” he said.
What was she talking about? Lalla, her daughter? Why was she telling him that? Shit, what the fuck did he care whose daughter Lalla was? They shouldn’t drag him into stuff like this, it only confused him. He couldn’t eye Lalla up the way he’d been doing, if this other woman was her mother. He’d feel embarrassed.
He looked at Amina. He was angry now. Surely, when you had a daughter like that, you did what you could to make sure she didn’t become a hustler too? True, they weren’t hookers. But all the same! What kind of an upbringing was that? Would he do that to his own daughter? What if he opened that club in Istanbul with Lalla? Surely not. He hoped she wouldn’t do the same if they had a daughter together. He might be stupid, but all the same . . .
Amina patted Nedim on the thigh, pretending to be friendly. “Hey, I only said that to see your face. Have you known Diamantis long?” she went on as if nothing had happened.
“This was the first time we worked together . . . It’s a pity.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m not going to sea anymore. I’m going home.”
“What about him?”
“How should I know? He doesn’t say much. About himself, I mean.”
“Is he married?”
Diamantis still hadn’t arrived, and all the questions she wanted to ask him were coming out, impatient for answers, after the years of silence that had followed their missed appointment in the Bar du Cap. How many times had she wondered what had become of Diamantis? How many times had she caught herself imagining them meeting by chance on a street in Marseilles—always supposing they recognized each other?
“I thought you knew him,” Nedim said.
Why the hell was Lalla taking so long with his trunks? He didn’t like the turn the conversation had taken. This woman was making him feel uncomfortable again. She was too dominating. He knew she wasn’t making fun of him anymore, but it was worse now that she was serious. He couldn’t play the fool with her now, or even with Lalla. Shit, what the hell was he doing here with these two women, waiting for Diamantis? He didn’t really know what this was all about, and that bothered him. He’d say he had to take a leak, and get out of here. In any case, it wasn’t him they were after, it was Diamantis. So let Diamantis deal with it. If he came. He might not even show up. Maybe he didn’t want to see these girls. Especially Amina.
He stood up. “I have to take a leak,” he said.
Amina put her hand on his arm to detain him. “Nedim,” she said. “You mustn’t be afraid. I’m not going to do anything to hurt your friend. Or you. What happened between us the other night was . . . That was different. We were doing our job. It just happened to be you, that’s all.”
“I’m not afraid,” he lied.
“O.K., then. Go take your leak.”
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?