Daniel helped the boss with the hoist so he could lift up the dead Traction engine, the pistons rusted in place. They had to clean off the cobwebs that covered it, not to mention the bloodless, curled-up spiders that turned to dust between their fingers. Afterwards, they each went back to their separate tasks. Repairing the ignition on a 4C.V., then the brakes on an Aronde. The boss kept the Traction’s engine for himself. Right now, Daniel can hear him unblocking the nuts with the aid of a hammer, breathing loudly and grunting over his workbench.
He doesn’t talk much, the old man. His name is Claude Mesplet. He’s a stocky fellow, black-haired, with dark, almost grey skin. Thick arms. Legs like tree trunks. Never smiles. Or only with his eyes. A brighter gleam, a few deepened wrinkles. Only laughs when he’s drunk. He has to drink a lot for that to happen, and it’s quite impressive. Daniel has seen this several times, at New Year’s Eve parties, when they were kids, him and Irène, with Roselyne and Maurice. Times like that he would drink while he was talking, while he was cutting meat, pouring wine, serious and thoughtful, his smile constantly lighting up the corners of his eyes, being tender with Marguerite, his wife, whom everyone called Margot, and especially with their son, Joseph, who watched the table from his wheelchair, drool dribbling down his chin, hitting the table sometimes with his claw-like hands and grimacing smiles at anyone who turned to look at him. Smashed up before he was even born, his mother kicked repeatedly in the belly, in ’43, during four days of interrogation with Poinsot.
Just before midnight, it would happen, suddenly. Claude would begin to laugh. You couldn’t tell that he was rat-assed. He wasn’t the type who forgot how to walk after a few drinks. No hesitation in his movements. Even pissed, he could screw in platinum screws, dead straight, without a wall plug, with his eyes closed. He’d just begin to make a sort of convulsive squeaking noise, as if to himself, that he would try to suppress to start with, drowning it with another mouthful of booze. Then anything might set him off. A cork popping, a glass knocked over. One of Maurice’s cruel jokes. Roselyne telling a story about the factory. A kid looking at him. And then a cascade would pour over the table. The kind of sound that swept everyone along in its torrent. And Joseph would laugh with them too. He laughed just like they did, until he was in tears. It was a joyful way to start the year, when they hugged each other tight and wished each other the best in life.
He always has that serious, preoccupied expression on his face, Claude. Daniel calls him that, by this first name, even though he addresses him as vous. And Claude talks to him always in that calm voice, never shouting, even when a big diesel is running or when Norbert is straightening sheet metal with a sledgehammer. He speaks in a deep, husky voice that can somehow be heard through any racket. Within six months, Daniel knew the job. Claude had entrusted him with its secrets like a magician teaching his apprentice. In a quiet voice, often late at night or early in the morning before the garage opened. To start with, the technical terms, pronounced in an undertone over an engine whose occult workings and diabolical traps they described, sounded like a wizard’s incantation. Then, little by little, Daniel had taken up this chant, with snatches of it sometimes strangely illuminating the dark mysteries of grease and metal.
For the moment, the two of them have their heads inside the bonnet and the clanking of their tools does the talking for them. The cold is on their backs like a factory foreman railing at them to work faster. If they keep moving, at least they can shake those huge icy hands off their shoulders for a few seconds; if they keep busy, they can avoid thinking about it, can pretend they don’t care about that haunting presence. Then there’s something with the connecting rods, a problem that’s causing everything to short-circuit. It requires a certain patience, but it’s also intriguing. You wonder how you’re going to repair it or come up with some ingenious solution that won’t cost the client a fortune. You wipe your dirty hands and you put your gray matter to work. Thinking warms you up.
Norbert has gone to buy bread for their snack. Apparently he scared the woman at the bakery yesterday, with his bloody eye and his face marbled with bruises, and she felt so bad she gave him a pain au chocolat.
Claude always pays for the bread. Often he brings some pâté or the remains of a veal blanquette that the three of them share. He shares everything, the old man. A rare species, one of a dying breed. Daniel is well aware of this. He often talks about him to his friends, who sneer: “A boss is a boss, and that’s all. He’ll fuck you over eventually.” He has trouble contradicting them. There’s no shortage of examples. Everywhere he goes, he hears talk of this daily battle in the workshops, against the management minions, engineers, middle men, little Hitlers let loose among the machines, sniffing out workers who turn up late, barking about productivity, teeth bared, and how the men often feel like giving those sneaky, yapping little mutts a good kick in the teeth. “We’re going to make those bastards pay soon, believe me. We’ll shove it down their throats.” That was what Herrero, a loudmouthed Party member, said to him one day. “Thorez7 is showing them the way, and eventually the people will see the light and follow him.”
Funny that he is thinking about that now, as he grapples with a nut, trying to fix a starter. The way? What way? Last night he dreamed that he was following a narrow path through a steep-sided rocky valley. He knew there were other men with him, but he couldn’t see them. Suddenly, someone jumped him and cut his throat with a knife. He woke up clutching his neck, feeling for the wound with his fingers. Algeria. It’s the first dream of this kind he’s had. He puts it down to the news report they saw the other day at the cinema, showing a patrol advancing carefully under a burning sun. It should also be said that, every evening, when he gets home, he goes to look at the kitchen table to see if the papers from the army have arrived, summoning him to the slaughter. And every evening, Roselyne says to him: “No, don’t worry, there’s nothing there.” Except he does worry, because one of these days, inevitably, there will be something waiting for him on the table. And when that happens, maybe Roselyne won’t dare say anything at all.
Around ten o’clock, they eat their snack. Canned meat, saucisson. The fresh bread smells good and crunches softly when they cut it, making them salivate. They don’t speak. They just reach out to the desired object, pass it on to whoever asks: knife, pâté, bottle of water. No alcohol here. Never. No wine, no beer.
According to the boss, booze is—after the bourgeoisie—the worker’s worst enemy. His beloved poison. One of those opiates that keep the people stupefied in poverty. Daniel thinks he’s exaggerating a bit, but he doesn’t really care because, apart from the occasional beer, he doesn’t drink anyway. He hates wine, says it smells too strong. The odors of cheap wine and cork that he sniffs sometimes rising from the wine cellars in the Chartrons district, as he cycles through, have put him off for good. He hates drunkards, and he thinks if they love their poverty, then let them wallow in it like they do in their vomit. He doesn’t really understand what the boss means when he talks about the opium of the people. Take Norbert’s father, for instance. No-one makes him drink until he can’t stand up every day; no-one makes him get so drunk that he terrorizes his wife and kids. The booze will kill him one day, and the sooner the better, before his son sticks a carving knife in his gut. His head smashed open on a sidewalk somewhere, or flattened under a truck’s wheels, his bicycle wrapped around him, the handlebars buried in his guts.
There are people who love their misery, who cultivate it, while others, who only ever wanted to live happy and peaceful little lives, are thrown into hell.
Something happens to interrupt his thoughts, as he lies under a sump filled with oil. At first he doesn’t understand what it is, and then he notices that the boss has stopped working at the bench and he sees his feet moving towards the door that opens on to the street. Someone is waiting at the threshold. Against the light, Daniel can make out the legs of two men facing each other. As Norbert is in the back of the garage, using a hammer to straighten out a bumper, he can’t hear what they’re saying, so he gets to his feet and recognizes the man the boss is talking to: the man who left his motorbike here the day before yesterday. Dressed the same way, hands in the pockets of his sheepskin coat, the lower part of his face covered by his scarf. Staring with the same intense yet absent gaze. His eyes like chasms. He gestures with his chin at the motorbike standing further off on its kickstand, and Daniel can tell that he is speaking almost without opening his mouth. The old man replies, waving his hands around, shrugging, probably explaining that they have a lot of work and that he won’t be able to fix his bike for several days yet. The man nods and his gaze flickers momentarily over the boss’ shoulder, searching the garage, and Daniel crouches down to avoid being seen. He can’t bear the thought of meeting those eyes, in which everything seems to be absorbed and to be lost, can’t even bear the feel of their gaze upon him.
Norbert stops hammering and Daniel shrinks even further, as if the silence has suddenly exposed him, and he watches all this through the windows of a Simca. He hears, “Sorry, that’s the best I can do,” and the stranger nods thoughtfully. The two men don’t say anything else. They look at each other and their breaths mingle in the cold air in fleeting little clouds. Mesplet shakes his head then pulls it back between his broad shoulders, arms hanging at his sides. Norbert starts making a din again and Daniel wants to wrench that damn hammer out of his hands so he can try to hear any other scraps of conversation that the two men might share. For now, they look like two statues, frozen in place by ice. The stranger doesn’t blink; he is absolutely still. Only the steam issuing from his mouth proves he is still alive. The boss stamps his feet, presumably growing impatient. Suddenly, without a word, the man turns on his heel and leaves. Daniel goes out onto the sidewalk and lights a cigarette, watching him walk away like he did the other day, the man’s tall, thin figure, his stiff-legged stride.
“Who’s that? What did he want?”
The boss does not reply. He stares unwaveringly at the long silhouette.
“Nothing,” he says finally. “He just wanted to know if we’d fixed his bike. Guy’s a pain in the ass.”
He scans the end of the street, where the man disappeared, as if fearing that he will reappear at any moment.
“He looked annoyed. Do you know him?”
“I told you, forget it. Anyway, since when do I have to tell you what I say to clients or what they say to me? Don’t you have any bloody work to do? Oh, you do? Well, do it then, and keep your mouth shut. I’m not paying you to stand out here and chat.”
Daniel gets the message. He signals to Norbert to make sure he doesn’t rub the boss up the wrong way with his sometimes depressing questions or his corny puns about dirty screws and not being able to fit his nozzle in the tank. All three of them work alone all morning, taking no notice of each other.
And then, around noon, the boss suddenly drops what he’s doing with the Traction, washes his hands, changes his clothes and announces that he has some shopping to do and he might be gone all afternoon. He tells Daniel to close the shop before six, there’s no point working overtime, they’re not in any hurry, tomorrow is another day, etc. There’s just old Mr. Gomez who’s coming to pick up his 2C.V., and it’s ready, the invoice is on the desk.
As soon as he’s gone, they close the big door and sit close to the stove. Norbert’s mother couldn’t make his lunch today, so they share Daniel’s. A dish of mutton and flageolet beans that they warm up. And, as Roselyne always makes too much, there’s plenty for both of them, taking turns to dig in with a spoon and then soaking up the last of the sauce with bread.
“What’s up with the boss?” Norbert asks, mouth full.
“If anyone asks, just say that you have no idea.”
The boy swallows greedily. As always, he hardly chews his food at all, as if afraid that someone will steal it from his mouth.
“You don’t have any idea either. Was it the guy who brought the bike?”
“For fuck’s sake, yeah, just go and warm up the coffee.”
Norbert marches off and fiddles around in front of the camping stove.
“All the same, he’s a strange-looking guy. I saw him earlier. He gives me the creeps. Don’t you find him scary?”
Daniel feels a shiver run through him. “No, why?”
Fear? No. It’s more like he’s going to faint. A sort of dizziness.
Fear is what he felt grip his throat at six years old, on a rooftop, sitting against a chimney, in the cold wind of a night that never ended. Fear is why he pissed himself when he heard the stampede of cops on the stairs, yelling out orders and hammering on doors, and when his mother held him close to her, moaning, telling him to be a good boy, wetting his face and neck with her tears and whispering words that he now can’t remember, just before his father hoisted him through a fanlight onto the roof and handed him a bit of bread in a paper bag and told him to wait there until someone came to get him.
The fear of feeling the house collapse beneath him. Or of falling off the roof as he leaned over to see if someone was coming. The fear of seeing night fall in silence as the birds fell asleep before Papa and Maman came back to take him in their arms and put him in bed, rock-a-bye baby, on a rooftop . . .
The fear that they will not come back.
He’s not afraid anymore.
So this man with his wrinkled, tormented face, with his eyes that search you or that seem always to be trying to see through you to something unattainable, he senses that he has come much further than all those sailors you see on the docks, shoulders and feet rolling, the great swell of the ocean still in their legs, because the ground is moving too much and can only be brought under control, the floor moored safely to the walls, by a few beers and a bottle of Scotch.
But him: stiff and thin and sharp-edged, like a statue made of sheet metal or glass. And those eyes, absent or hollow, that seem to want to pull you down into the depths of his whirlwind. Daniel met his gaze for only a few moments, but he cannot rid himself of that sensation of vertigo.
They go out on the sidewalk to drink their coffee and breathe the fresh air, almost mild as it blows in off the ocean before the rain arrives, and they smoke their cigarettes leaning against the iron door, feeling at peace and watching people walk past: workers going to the station warehouses, a few women weighed down by shopping bags. They hear a hooting train, the brakes of another train squealing. This din is carried on the wind from the south, along with metallic noises that they normally don’t hear.
While they talk, Daniel watches the end of the street because it seems to him that the man will reappear and walk straight towards him, staring into his eyes the whole time and forcing Daniel to follow him. This is exactly how he feels and when a figure turns that corner his heart shivers.
All afternoon, he is startled each time someone passes the door, whenever a faint shadow crosses the threshold of the garage. So he dives inside bonnets, he crawls under chassis, he bangs scrap metal sticky with black oil, he tries to wear himself out so he won’t think about it anymore, but nothing works. It is Norbert, at quarter to six, who yells out that they should call it a day, that he’s had enough. Besides, they can barely see what they’re doing by the feeble light of the bulbs hanging from the girders. Without inspection lamps, they have to grope around just to find an engine. So they push shut the big iron door, yelling in accompaniment to the awful grating noise it makes.
The rain is falling now, in a cold dust over the city, and Daniel takes a roundabout route through the drizzle of lights absorbed by the night, almost crashing a dozen times on the slippery cobblestones or getting knocked over by trucks whose drivers don’t see him. As soon as he can, after the cours du Médoc, he gets his head down and rides fast, maybe hoping to cleave through this wet fog and see it part before him like the Red Sea in The Ten Commandments, which he and Irène went to see on Sunday afternoon, dubbed in French in the large screening room with its columns and gilt decorations. But no miracle occurs and he arrives at the house swaddled in cold and damp.
And Irène is there, as it happens, and she enfolds him with her huge green eyes and takes him in her arms in spite of the rainwater seeping and dripping from him. And he regrets that he cannot feel the shape or the warmth of her body because of his icy wrapping.
On the table, leaning against a glass, there is an envelope with red, white and blue bordering. Roselyne, standing in front of the sink, does not dare turn around.
After the meal, they talk about it in hushed voices, sitting in front of their empty plates. Normally Roselyne would clear the table as soon as dinner was over, but tonight she leaves everything where it is. Maurice has taken out a bottle of Armagnac and pours some into his own glass before offering it to Daniel, who watched him do it. It was good, the smell and the taste of the alcohol mixed with the remains of the coffee. The fire in his mouth was gently doused before descending in a blaze through his oesophagus and into his stomach. Then the flame began purring like a fire in a stove and the warmth rose up to his face.
He glides into intoxication and listens as they talk but says little himself because he feels as if he no longer knows what to say or think or do. In a few weeks, he will be at war. He has seen epics, marching columns, ambushes, heroic charges, men running low on ammo but not giving up, hand-to-hand fighting with knives or bayonets or rifle butts, lost patrols, battles in the jungle, faces glowing with sweat or covered with mud. Men cut down amid roaring gunfire and yowling bullets, scarlet-painted corpses thrown back into the arms of their friends, men who ignore their fear or cowards who redeem themselves at the end through self-sacrifice, loyal officers, generals who speak to the men like their sons and pinch their cheeks, I know you’re suffering, lads, but back home everyone is proud of you, and you have my trust because I know you will give everything, won’t you? Thank you, general, you can count on us, and the commander pretending to be friendly with his clear gaze and his greying temples. He’s seen it all in films, running all over Bordeaux since he was fourteen years old, and when he came out of the cinema he always felt bigger, his shoulders broader, and he took on the nonchalant and totally relaxed look of someone who’s seen it all and seems to trail bravery and horror in his wake.
In a few weeks, he will be at war. He might kill, he might die. This is the most important thing that has happened to him since. Since when? In fact, he doesn’t know if anything has ever happened to him before. He knows he is missing something and he feels it there, deep in his guts, between his sternum and his stomach. Like a hole. A ball of nothingness. Sometimes it hurts, twists in knots, it’s bitter and he spits it out or pukes up a few gobs of phlegm. War. Suddenly he is scared. But he wants to go and find out what he is scared of, despite everything that sickens him.
A bit like when children dare their friends to do things: walk as far as possible along the edge of a sidewalk, blindfolded. Smoke cigarettes from the wrong end. Ride down a flight of steps on a bike without braking. Put your hand in a fire.
Of course, Maurice has told him stories about his own war, in ’39, the waiting period in the Ardennes, cleaning machine guns, exercising, drills, and that bastard of a cabot-chef who yelled all the time and made them crawl in the dirt or run through the rain for the slightest misdemeanor. And then the first bombardments, in the distance, that approaching rumble, and staying up for nights on end, on patrol with fear in their guts, holding those old rifles from the first war that jammed so easily, and the first stiffs they’d found, two kilometers from there, four men all collapsed in a heap, blood and innards mixed, already stinking, he told Daniel all this, once only, on a night like this in fact, his voice trembling and his body utterly still while he spoke except for his fingers as they held his glass, his eyes wandering to the three of them sitting around the table, perhaps not even seeing them because it was all coming back to him, descending over his head like a mourning veil as behind each word poured images, smells and screams.
He described the winter, terrible, the frostbite, men huddled in holes around fire pits, the east wind that flushed them out of their shelters, roaring and biting, then blew on their green-wood fires turning them to smoke, the snow that fell for days on end, so thick and dense that they didn’t even see when a regiment of German tanks came upon them.
He didn’t fire a shot except for hunting, because for a long time the only warnings they got were those given by sentries who were sleep-dazed or drunk on hooch when they opened fire on deer who came early in the morning to break the crust of ice in the hope of finding grass.
The war approached them: they heard the rumble of artillery fire, felt it shake the earth sometimes with its heavy tread; they saw trucks full of corpses driving past, battalions retreating; they dived to the ground as German fighter planes flew overhead, seeming not even to notice them or perhaps simply ignoring this superfluous rank and file, already beaten. And then one day a colonel had given them the order to withdraw, to run away even, otherwise two Panzer regiments would roll right over them the next day, so they left and found themselves on sun-blasted roads, dying in their winter coats, pursued by columns of smoke that rose in the east. They were told to hand over their weapons and their kits and not to hang around but to go home because there was nothing more they could do here, that they would be demobilized later.
Bogged down in the melting snow, it took Maurice two weeks to get home. He helped bury people machine-gunned by Stukas by the side of the road, he pushed carts, he helped a bourgeois family by fixing their broken-down car in return for a lift—a hundred kilometers at an average of ten an hour through the crowds, sitting crushed in the back seat against an old granny in a state of shock, distraught and delirious, or sitting on the roof, his bloody feet macerating in his grunt’s boots.
He arrived at the house one morning and Roselyne screamed with terror and hid in a cupboard because she didn’t know it was him, bearded, stinking, covered in grime and blood, eyes crazed with weariness, because this creature could not be him, would never again be him, just some stranger that resembled him, returned from who knew where and capable of who knew what. He talked to her, leaning against the wobbly door, whispered sweet nothings to her, their secret words, like a code. He pronounced this open-sesame in a breathless voice, on the verge of fainting. Then he said, almost in a moan, that life would go on, because nothing was over, not the war or any other battle, not even a scrap of happiness torn from the brambles that had overrun everything, and so she opened the door and fell into his arms, unconscious and heavy, and him with no strength left, carried her, staggering, over to the bed.
Daniel listens to them as they advise him to try to land a cushy job somewhere, maybe in an office, or in Logistics, Maurice suggests, with your job you should hide out in a truck engine, like that you won’t have to walk into the wolf’s mouth. And there are people who like war, you know, so just leave it to them. Especially when it’s a war against the Algerian people, Irène adds. Most of the conscripts don’t know what they’ll be doing there or why they’re being sent. This isn’t your war, Daniel. It’s not our war.
Yeah, of course, he mutters, stunned by the chaos in his head. He would like to pour himself another Armagnac to send himself even further into the cotton-wool torpor that is muffling his brain, but he doesn’t dare, and anyway he dislikes drunkenness: he always feels sick, during and afterwards, tortured by the feeling that he is going to die, to puke up his heart and soul.
Bang, bang, bang. Someone at the door. They all jump. The sound echoes in the hallway. At this time of night? In weather like this? They look at each other.
“It must be Alain,” says Irène.
Daniel turns to her. Why Alain? Roselyne lowers her eyes.
He stands up and rushes into the hallway, grabbing his sheep-skin as he goes. Behind him, he hears Roselyne asking:
“Where are you going? Have you seen the weather?”
Alain is on the sidewalk, his cap pulled down over his eyes. Daniel closes the door softly behind him.
“Got any cash?”
“I got paid yesterday. What about you?”
“I’m O.K.”
They walk for a while without speaking. The last bus goes past just before the swing bridge and they watch its red tail lights fade into the distance along with the blurred glow through its steamed-up windows. A few street lamps shine weakly on the docks, and a few lit-up portholes are visible between the warehouses. The wind pushes them, bowing their necks. North-west. Daniel glances up at Alain, cigarette in his mouth, face shadowed by the visor of his cap.
“So?”
Alain shrugs. Sighs. Takes a drag on his cigarette and blows smoke out in front of him. It vanishes quickly.
“So I’ll get pissed . . .”
He shakes his head, as if to rid himself of the thoughts inside.
“Fuck. Shit,” he adds. “I won’t go.”
“How will you manage that? You’d be a deserter.”
They fall silent. Each lost in his own thoughts.
After the dockers’ employment offices, they make out a few luminous signs. They continue at the same pace, their shoulders bumping occasionally as they walk unsteadily over the slanting cobblestones. Outside a bar called Le Havre, they wait while two men emerge, laughing and speaking in a foreign language, then walk away hesitantly, heads bowed, clapping each other on the back and spitting on the ground.
“I’m going to find a ship,” Alain says suddenly.
“You’re mad. It’ll never work.”
“We’ll go to the Escale. My uncle told me I could find a guy he knows there. He used to go there pretty often when he was sailing. I’ve told you about him, haven’t I?”
Of course Daniel had heard all about Uncle Auguste, the family hero, the globetrotter with clothes and scars from all over the world who had weathered every storm, unfrozen the Baltic, drunk every bar dry before destroying it, knocked men out like a kid sending skittles tumbling at a funfair, visited every brothel between Copenhagen and Dakar, fucked all night long with ugly bloaters and beautiful women, spraying his dick with Polish vodka or Russian champagne to cool it down . . . Everyone in the neighborhood knew the stories about him. Back when he would still leave his house, tall and straight-backed and handsome, in spite of his scars—glassed in a brawl in Liverpool or Tangiers or Rotterdam, he couldn’t remember, and it changed all the time anyway—and sometimes he would sit at the bar in Mauricette’s, on rue Achard, at six in the morning, his worn-out woollen hat on his head, and recount his own legends to anyone who’d listen. There was always some guy to get him started on his drunken epics, and he would be off. But the poor sod knew how to tell a story—his dramatic timing had improved as his memory had faded—and the evenings when he turned up, the men who hung around there after eight o’clock, instead of going home and dozing off in a chair as they listened to the radio, preferred instead to let this woollen-hatted liar, who had, all the same, seen places they had never even dreamed of going, sweep them away on his words, and they sat silent and motionless over their drinks, by turns sneering and impressed.
He’s renting some hovel in the Cité Pourmann now, Auguste, where he lives as a hermit surrounded by African masks, the walls lined with magic necklaces and amulets brought back from his travels. He’s been there ever since a half-whore kid emptied his bank account and his heart and left him there, in the middle of his exotic museum, so she could get screwed by some little thug from the Saint-Pierre neighborhood.
Alain pushes Daniel by the shoulder and they enter the thick, dark warmth of a bar, peopled by shadows and voices and rugged faces around formica tables under red or black lampshades, and they walk up to the counter where they climb onto bar stools. The woman standing behind the counter is a Jayne Mansfield-style blonde in skintight black jodhpurs and a mauve sweater sparkling with a few silver threads. She watches the two boys sit down at the bar but doesn’t move, just continues smoking a cigarette, elbows on the bar, chatting with a small, thin, black-haired, shifty-looking man who keeps shooting sideways glances to spy on and weigh up everything that breathes in his vicinity. The two of them smile like wolves, teeth bared but eyes impassive. When the woman isn’t talking, her mouth subsides, pulling her face down, bitter little creases at the corners of her lips.
At the other end of the bar, two girls perched on stools talk with a bearded colossus who leans towards them because he can’t understand what they’re saying and they laugh as they repeat things into his ear and the man shakes his head and laughs in turn, taking advantage of the situation to put a hand behind their back, which they gently push away.
Alain has turned around to have a look at the roomful of customers, chatting and sometimes laughing.
“There’s a table free over there.”
“Why did we come here?”
Daniel examines the labels on the countless bottles ranged on shelves, amazed by the apparently infinite variety of drinks for pissheads.
“You think we’re supposed to serve ourselves?” Alain asks out loud.
“Just try it and see what happens,” hisses the blonde, her cigarette between her teeth.
The short-ass she’s talking with turns his dark, dangerous gaze on Alain.
“What’s up with him? Does he want some?”
“Forget it,” mutters Daniel. “We’ll go somewhere else. This place is full of assholes. Come on . . .”
He has already hopped off his stool when he sees the little big shot from the bar moving towards them. He’s got a crooked smile and you can tell he’s a nasty piece of work, a Rottweiler of a man, full of dirty tricks. Suddenly an empty bottle appears in his right hand.
Alain does not retreat. Daniel puts a hand on his shoulder and the two of them face up to him.
“What can I serve you, gentlemen?”
The man moves the bottle in a circle in front of him, the neck held tightly in his fist. He’s still smiling, sturdily set on his short legs. Silence in the bar. Hard to tell if anyone’s even breathing anymore. The two girls and their giant have moved back towards the jukebox, behind the wide leaves of a big ficus plant.
When the glass explodes on the corner of the bar, a sort of gulp tightens every throat in the room. The blonde walks up, dishcloth in hand.
“Come on, Christian. Let those jerk-offs leave.”
“No, they’re not leaving like that. What do you think? Did you hear the way they talked about me? Look at them trying to act tough, those fucking queers! I’m just going to take care of them nicely. Those little shits will remember Christian Penot. They’ll go home crying to their whore of a mother, begging her to sew up their faces.”
Then a man walks in and leans on the bar between the threatening dwarf and the two boys, saying excuse me to all three without looking at any of them. Straight away, he orders a double whisky. He’s dressed in a grey wool coat and he places his hat on the bar, after first, with a very absorbed air, pushing away a few shards of glass with his fingertips. Jayne Mansfield watches him, openmouthed, mechanically wiping a glass, chest swelled with surprise. Her eyes seek out Penot’s, but he is sticking out his neck and standing on tiptoes as he addresses the intruder.
“Hey, what’s-yer-face, can’t you tell you’re in the way? We’re in the middle of a discussion here.”
The man ignores him. He asks again for his whisky.
“Fuck off somewhere else, you asshole. Do you understand or do I need to draw you a picture?”
Without turning round, almost without moving, the man elbows him in the face. Penot takes three steps back, staggering on his heels, then crouches down, his face covered by his hand, blood pissing between his fingers. The blonde starts yelling. She’s waving a crank over the beer pumps and around her neck fake gemstones rattle as they clatter into each other. She says she’s going to call the cops but doesn’t, then starts uttering insults, her big mouth flapping. Around the room, people are getting to their feet. Chair legs scrape on the floor, glasses are knocked over. The stranger walks up to Penot, who’s still holding his broken bottle, and crushes his wrist underfoot. The dwarf lets go of the bottleneck, and the man kicks it away.
“You know who I am?” the man asks, leaning over him.
Penot shakes his head. He’s holding his nose, and above his cupped hand his eyes roll, wide-eyed with panic. A kick in the ribs forces a squeal from him.
“So you don’t know who I am, huh? But I know you. I even know where you live. I know about the little girls too. See? I know. There are loads of people who know. Once they get past ten or eleven, you think they’re too old, don’t you?”
Penot closes his eyes. His face is covered with blood.
“But the cops turn a blind eye because you’re a snitch, right? And then there’s your brother, who was a pig, and a right bastard too, during the Occupation. So they don’t care, do they? They let you get away with the shit you do to little kids. But now your brother’s had his throat slit, they won’t have so many reasons to cover for you, will they?”
The man kicks him in the ribs with the point of his boot.
“Now fuck off. And you’d better take care, if you don’t want to end up like your asshole of a brother.”
Penot starts to get up as the blonde hands him a wet dishcloth to wipe his face. She helps him to his feet and accompanies him to the door, murmuring a few words of consolation. She is taller than him in her high heels, and looks like an adult cuddling a child who’s banged his head into a door.
“It’s alright, it’s over. There’ll be no scrap tonight,” the man tells the other customers. “That piece of shit just needed calming down. The next round’s on me.”
He rummages in his pocket and pulls out a wad of banknotes that he drops on the counter. People start chatting again, mezza voce. No-one dares move very much. And yet there are some big, strapping lads in here, their coat sleeves bulging with muscle, men with chests like percherons. Dockers, sailors, tough bastards. But all of them know a fight between gangsters when they see it: it’s as dangerous as a nest of snakes. You’d have to be mad to get mixed up in it.
Daniel’s hand is still draped on his friend’s shoulder. He does not move. He’s wondering who this man is with his greying hair and his impassive violence. Constructing theories, searching his memory. Nothing. The man turns towards them, with a smile of fake friendliness. You can tell he’s not the type of man who’s often in a good mood, with his long face, his broken nose, his dark thick brows, and those of eyes of his, sunk deep in his face, maybe grey, or blue. Not the kind of man you’d invite for a drink after hitting him in the belly. Above all, he is big, and his shoulders move with the supple solidity of a boxer.
“What are you drinking, lads?”
The blonde picks up the cash without a word then starts pouring. Three whiskies for these gentlemen. After that, she rushes between tables to water the troops.
“Thanks,” says Alain, lifting his glass. “We were up shit creek there.”
“He’d have slashed your faces. He’s a vicious bastard.”
“Why did you help us?” Daniel asks. “I mean . . .”
The man squints as he looks Alain up and down.
“You’re Auguste’s nephew, aren’t you? He told me you’d be here. And you must have come here to see me. Anyway, I wasn’t going to let that piece of shit shine up his ego by cutting you two to pieces. We all know that cunt here. He’s pure poison.”
“Is it true what you said about him?”
“What? The little girls? Course it’s true. He’s already been in the nick for that. It runs in the Penot family, that sort of shit. His brother was one of Poinsot’s henchmen here—you know, the French Gestapo. They had their torture chamber on the cours du Chapeau-Rouge. And that one, he used to get girls for the Krauts, and he’d have them himself beforehand. He’s the kind of man who indulges his vices fully when circumstances permit. And during the Occupation, all sorts of filth was permitted. Those bastards were like flowers growing in horseshit.”
Daniel tries to remember if Maurice has already told him about this. Poinsot? No, there’s nothing. He asks the man how he knows all this.
Jayne Mansfield is back behind the counter, listening as she pours drinks. The man shoots a look in her direction.
“Because I was there. Besides, loads of people know. They just keep their mouths shut.”
“Where were you?”
“Never you mind about that.”
They drink in silence. Daniel feels himself losing it a bit. Esophagus burning, eyes blurred with tears. He watches Alain, who’s squinting into the bottom of his glass, back hunched, almost slumped on the counter. Behind him, the conversations and the laughter are now nothing more than a murmur buzzing in his head. He feels hot, and he starts sweating in this sticky atmosphere, the air thick with smoke and warmth.
“What about you?” the man says. “What are you doing here? Oh yeah, I forgot: Algeria, huh?”
Alain drains his whisky and takes a deep breath before replying.
“Yeah. We’re trying to find a bit of courage before they send us to the slaughter. In three weeks.”
The man nods.
“What a pile of shit.”
“He told you, my uncle?”
“Yes. But it won’t be easy. I know a quartermaster on a Norwegian ship who owes me. He’s coming in tomorrow—it’s good timing. I’ll go and see him. He’ll be here three days, the time it takes to unload. Sometimes he takes an apprentice, for a month or two. You’ll be peeling potatoes and cleaning the bogs, but at least you won’t get your bollocks cut off. They’re going to Germany, Poland, Denmark, and England too. No-one will bother asking for your papers there, except in Poland, where you should stay on board. I’ll need a photo and thirty thousand francs. That’s how much it costs for fake I.D.”
Alain turns his back on Daniel and rummages in his pocket for his wallet. Photo, money. He counts the notes. Daniel moves between them so he can hear and see better and maybe be noticed, but neither of them pays any attention to his presence.
“That’s quite a bit,” he says.
“Don’t worry, I’ve been saving. I wanted to buy a motorbike, but I think that can wait.”
The photos and the money vanish into the man’s trouser pocket. He checks his watch.
“I’d better get going. The day after tomorrow is Thursday. I’ll meet you at six in the evening at the Bambi Bar, a bit further on, near the cours du Médoc. I’ll introduce you to that guy. It’s a prossie bar, you’ll see, but he likes it, he’s a regular there. I’m Jacky, by the way.”
He gets up, shakes hands with them both and leaves. Daniel looks around. A panoramic sweep. Surely all this is just a backdrop, with a few extras waiting for the director to shout “Cut!” so they can leave the set and go home? He wishes he had his frame with him so he could contain the scene and give himself the illusion that he is controlling it, but he can more or less imagine what it would look like: a desolate vision, under a wan light. Alain remains motionless, staring vacantly at the mirror behind the bar, where the bottles are multiplied. Further off, Jayne Mansfield is smoking a cigarette and sipping at a glass of port, heavy-lidded, her mascara damp.
Daniel pushes his glass away and turns up his collar.
“I think I’ve seen enough for tonight. I’m going home.”
Outside, the wind blows into his face. It has stopped raining but he shrinks inside himself, hands in pockets, and does not see the sodden city glowing weakly around him, its lights almost extinguished. Alain is running behind him but he does not slow down to wait for him.
“Shit, what’s up with you?”
“Nothing. You’re not taking the same boat as me. Much good may it do you.”
“I’m not going to Algeria. There’s no way I’m going to risk my neck for those colonialist assholes.”
“You’ve spent too long listening to Sara. You’ll be a deserter.”
“No. A conscientious objector it’s called. I wouldn’t even set foot in that hell. Anyway, Sara’s right. We’re just cannon fodder, for the government. All wars are the same. What about you? Are you really going? Just like that, unquestioningly? Didn’t Irène say anything?”
“We’ve already talked this to death. You know perfectly well what I think about all that. But what you’re doing is pointless. Better just to go there and do what we can.”
“Oh yeah? And what exactly do you think we can do, over there? Sabotage the trucks? Block up the missile launchers with pamphlets? Or maybe you’re going to gun down your own officers? In three months you’ll be like they are. You’ve seen the others, you know what they say. Either that or you’ll go to jail, and you’ll be no use to anyone then.”
“We can make the others aware that—”
“No. The war—this war—when it gets hold of you, it’s as if you’ve gone mad. It eats you alive. Have you seen the men who came back? Perez? Bernard? You remember what he was saying, Perez, before he left, with that big gob of his? And the blocked trains, and the C.R.S.8? What was the point of all that?”
Daniel cannot think of a reply. Perez, a tough man and a supporter of both the C.G.T.9 and the Party, had wanted to foment rebellion among the conscripts in order to bring the war to an end. He found himself trekking through the jebel, setting fire to villages, plus other things that he refused to talk about. In fact, he didn’t talk much at all anymore, and slept even less, or so it was said.
“I don’t know.”
Alain grabs his shoulder and shakes him.
“Let’s talk about it another time. We’re not going to fall out, are we?”
Daniel shoves him away. They burst out laughing then start walking again without speaking. When they cross the swing bridge, Daniel looks over at the ships berthed in the wet docks.
“I hope it works out, your ship. I want to hear all about the ports and the sea. And the girls . . .”
After the swing bridge, they are swallowed up by the darker street and they begin speaking and laughing more quietly, as if in this gloom they dare not make any noise for fear of extinguishing the few sad lamps suspended above the cobblestones.
7 Maurice Thorez, leader of the French Communist Party from 1930 until his death in 1964.
8 The Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité is the riot control division and general reserve of the French National Police. It was infiltrated by Communists in the late 1940s, just after its inception, but their influence was reduced thereafter.
9 Confédération Générale du Travail, a major French trade union, affiliated to the Communist Party. During the Algerian war, it supported Algerian aspirations for independence.