Chourmo (15 page)

The purpose of the redevelopment was to remove the bad reputation that clung to these streets. But the people of Marseilles didn't come here for a stroll. Even those who'd been born here. As soon as they had any money coming in, they moved to the other side of the Vieux-Port. To Endoume and Vauban. To Castellane, Baille, Lodi. Or even further, to Saint-Tronc, Sainte-Marguerite, Le Cabot, La Valbarelle. The only time they ever ventured across the Canebière was when they went to the Bourse shopping mall. That was as far as they went. Beyond that, it wasn't their city anymore.

I'd grown up in these alleys, where Gélou had been “the most beautiful girl in the neigborhood.” With Manu and Ugo. And Lole, who was quite a bit younger than us, and quickly became the princess of our dreams. My heart was still on that side of Marseilles. In “this melting pot where the most amazing sauce in existence is simmering,” as Brauquier's friend Gabriel Audisio had called it. And nothing would change that. I belonged among the exiles. Three quarters of the inhabitants of this city could have said the same. But they didn't. Not enough of them to my taste. And yet that's what it meant to be a citizen of Marseilles. Knowing that you weren't born here by chance.

“If you have a heart,” my father said to me one day, “you never lose anything, wherever you go. You only find.” He'd been lucky enough to find Marseilles. And we'd stroll happily around the harbor. Surrounded by men talking about Yokohama, Shanghai or Diégo-Suarez. My mother would give him her arm and he'd hold my hand. I was still in short pants, with a fisherman's cap on my head. It was the beginning of the sixties. The happy years. Everyone was there in the evening, strolling along the embankment. With a pistachio ice cream. Or a pack of almonds or salt peanuts. Or—joy of joys—a cone of jujubes.

Even later, when life became harder, and he had to sell his beautiful Dauphine, he still thought the same. How often had I doubted him? His immigrant attitudes. Narrow and unambitious, I'd thought. Later, I'd read Dostoevsky's
The Brothers Karamazov
. Near the end of the novel, Alyosha says to Krassotkin, “You know, Kolia, you will be very unhappy in your life. But you will bless life on the whole, all the same.” Words that echoed in my heart, as if my father had spoken them. It was too late to thank him.

 

I was holding on to the railings around the construction site in front of the Vieille-Charité. A big hole, where Rue des Pistoles and Rue Rodillat had been. An underground parking garage had been planned but, as always happened when they dug around the Vieux-Port, the contractor had come across vestiges of ancient Phocea. This had once been the center of the walled city. The Greeks had built three temples on each of the
buttes
: the Moulins, the Carmes and Saint-Laurent. With a theater right next to the last temple, and an agora where Place de Lenche now is.

At least that was what Hocine Draoui had claimed in the extract from his speech at the conference on Marseilles that
Le Provençal
had reprinted next to the interview with Adrien Fabre. Draoui had backed up his theories with ancient sources, especially the writings of a Greek geographer named Strabon. Very little of these monuments has ever been unearthed. But as the newspaper commented, the start of excavations on Place Jules Verne, near the Vieux-Port, appeared to confirm his theories. All the area from there to the Vieille-Charité was like a cross-section through almost a thousand years of history, which underlined what a major city Massilia had been, and challenged the idea that it had declined after Caesar's conquest.

Work on the parking garage had immediately been suspended. Of course, the contractors hadn't been pleased. Something similar had already happened in the center of town. When the Bourse shopping mall was under construction, there had been long, tough negotiations. The excavations had revealed the walls of Massilia for the first time. Even so, the ugly concrete bunker had been given the go-ahead, in return for an area to be designated as a “garden of ruins.” So it was unlikely that anything or anybody could stop the parking garage from being built on Place du Général de Gaulle. As for the site in front of the Vieille-Charité, there must be a real trial of strength going on between the various parties.

Four young archeologists, three boys and a girl, were working in the hole. They weren't in any hurry. A few old stones had been extricated from the yellowish earth: the wall of the original city. The archeologist didn't even have shovels or pickaxes. All they were doing was drawing up plans, marking the position of each stone. I was ready to bet my shirt that here too, the eventual winner would be concrete. As had happened in other places, once they'd finished the layout, they'd toast the site with a can of Coke or Kronenbourg and move on. Everything would be lost, except memory. The people of Marseilles will be happy enough. They all know what's under their feet, and they carry the history of their city in their hearts. It's their secret, and no tourist will ever be able to steal it.

Lole had also lived here, until she came to live with me. On the side of Rue des Pistoles that hadn't been demolished. The front of her building was as decayed as ever, covered with graffiti up to the second floor. The building seemed abandoned. All the shutters were closed. As I looked up at her windows, the billboard in front of the parking garage construction site caught my eye. Especially a name. The name of the architect. Adrien Fabre.

A coincidence, I told myself.

But I didn't believe in coincidence. Or in chance, or any of those things. When things happen, there's always a meaning, a reason. What could the architect of the parking garage and the lover of the Marseilles heritage possibly have to talk about? I wondered as I walked back along Rue du Petit-Puits. Did they get on as well as Fabre had claimed?

The floodgates had opened, and the questions poured out. The last of them was one I couldn't avoid. Had Fabre killed Hocine Draoui, and then Guitou because he could have identified him? It fitted. And confirmed my hunch that Fabre didn't know the kid had been in the house. Yet, even without knowing him, I couldn't imagine him killing Draoui, then Guitou. That didn't fit. Pulling the trigger once was hard enough, but then shooting again, at point blank range, and at a kid this time, that was something else. That was the kind of thing real killers did. Hitmen.

In any case, the house had been ransacked, which meant there must have been several people involved. That was obvious. Fabre may only have opened the door to them. That was more likely. But he had a cast-iron alibi, which Cûc and Mathias would confirm. They were together in Sanary. Of course, at night, in a good car, the journey took less than two hours. Even supposing that, why would Fabre have done it? It was a good question. But I couldn't see myself asking him directly. Or any other question, for that matter. Not yet, anyway.

 

Pavie's name was still on one of the mailboxes. The building was as run-down as the one where Lole had lived. The walls were flaking and there was a smell of cat piss. On the second floor, I knocked at the door. No reply. I knocked again, and called her name.

“Pavie!”

I turned the handle. The door opened. There was a smell of Indian incense. No light from outside. The room was in complete darkness.

“Pavie,” I said more softly.

I found the light switch, but it didn't work, so I used my cigarette lighter. I noticed a candle on the table, lit it, and raised it in front of my face. I was relieved. Pavie wasn't here. For a moment, I'd expected the worst. About a dozen candles were spread around the one room where she lived. The bed was a mattress on the floor. It had been made. There were no dirty dishes, either in the sink or on the small table near the window. Everything looked clean. I was even more relieved. Pavie might not be well, but she was holding out. For an ex-junkie, keeping things clean and tidy was a good sign.

These were only words, I knew. Sentimental platitudes. Ex-junkies often go through periods of depression. Worse, or almost worse, than when they were hooked. Pavie had been clean once before, when she met Arno. She'd wanted Arno. She'd run after him. For months. Wherever he went, she'd show up. He couldn't have a beer at the Balto in peace. One evening, there was a whole bunch of them, at a table. She was there, dogging his footsteps as usual. He'd finished his beer, and said, “Even with a condom, I don't fuck a girl who shoots up.”

“Then help me.”

That was all she'd said in reply. There were just the two of them left in the world. The others no longer mattered.

“Is that what you want?” he asked.

“I want you. That's what I want.”

“OK.”

He took her by the hand and led her out of the bar. He took her to his place, behind Saadna's scrap yard, and kept her there. For one month. Two months. He abandoned everything to take care of her. Even the bikes. He didn't leave her alone for a second. Every day he'd take her to the
calanques
along the Côte Bleue. Carry, Carro, Ensues, La Redonne. He'd force her to walk from one inlet to the next, to swim. He loved his Pavie. As she'd never been loved before.

But afterwards, she'd gone back to her old ways. After his death. Because life was shit after all.

Serge and I had found her in the Balto. Having a coffee. We'd been searching for her for two weeks. A boy had tipped us off. “She's turning tricks in cellars. She'll go with anybody for three hundred francs.” Barely the price of a bad fix.

In the Balto, that day, it was if she'd been waiting for us, in a way. We were her last hope. A last effort before the final plunge. In two weeks, she'd aged at least twenty years. She was watching TV, slumped over the table. Hollow cheeks, a glum expression. Her curly hair lank. Her clothes filthy.

“What are you doing here?” I asked her, stupidly.

“As you can see, watching TV. I'm waiting for the news. They say the Pope's dead.”

“We've been looking for you everywhere,” Serge said.

“Oh, yeah. Can I have your sugar?” she asked him when Rico, the owner, brought Serge a coffee. “You're no Einsteins, you two. Especially not you, and you're a cop. We could all disappear, and you wouldn't be able to find us. All of us, you hear. But why would anyone want to look for us anyway? Right?”

“Stop!” I said.

“You want me to stop, buy me a sandwich. I haven't eaten anything since yesterday. I'm not like you. Nobody feeds me. You've got the State to feed you. If we weren't here, screwing up, you'd all starve to death.”

The sandwich came, and she stopped talking. Serge went on the attack.

“There are two solutions, Pavie. Either you go back to the édouard-Toulouse psychiatric clinic of your own free will. Or Fabio and I have you admitted to hospital. On medical grounds. You know how it works. We can always find a reason.”

We'd been discussing it for several days. I wasn't crazy about the idea. But I couldn't think of anything better to counter Serge's arguments. “For decades, psychiatric clinics have been used as retirement homes for old people without money. Right? Well, now they're the only places that'll welcome twenty-year-old down and outs. Alcoholics, junkies, people with AIDS . . . It's the only kind of safe refuge they have. You follow me?”

Sure I followed him. But it only made me more aware of our limitations. He and I together weren't Arno. We didn't have enough love. We couldn't be there for her all the time. There were thousands of Pavies, and we were just bureaucrats, enforcing the lesser of two evils.

I said amen to the priest.

“I saw Lily again,” Pavie said, with her mouth full. “She's expecting a baby. She's getting married. She's really happy, she is.” There was a gleam in her eyes, like in the old days. It was as if she were expecting that baby herself. “Her guy's great. He owns a GTI. He's handsome. He has a mustache. He looks like . . . ”

She burst into tears.

“It's all right, it's all right,” Serge said, putting his arm around her shoulders. “We're here.”

“I know,” she murmured. “Without you, I'd go off the rails completely. And Arno wouldn't like that, would he?”

“No, he wouldn't like that,” I'd said.

Yes, they were only words. Only ever words.

Since then, she'd had several stays at the clinic. Every time she showed up at the Balto, Rico would call us and we'd come running. We had an arrangement with him. And Pavie knew all about it. It was her lifeline. It wasn't a solution, I knew. But we didn't have any solutions. Just throw her back into an institution. Every time.

The last time I'd seen Pavie was just over a year earlier. She was working in the fruit and vegetable section of the Géant Casino supermarket in La Valentine, in East Marseilles. She seemed to be better. In good shape. I'd suggested we go for a drink the next day. She'd jumped at the idea. I'd waited for her around three. She hadn't showed up. If she doesn't want to see you, I'd told myself, that's fine. But I hadn't gone back to the supermarket to make sure. My days and nights were taken up with Lole.

With the candle in my hand, I was searching every nook and cranny of the room. I felt a presence behind me. I turned.

“What are you doing here?”

A tall black guy was standing in the doorway. He looked like a nightclub bouncer. Not much more than twenty. I felt like replying that I'd seen a light and come in. But I wasn't sure he'd think that was funny.

“I've come to see Pavie.”

“Who are you, man?”

“A friend of hers. Fabio.”

“Never heard of you.”

“A friend of Serge's too.”

He relaxed. Maybe I still had a chance of getting out the door on both legs.

“The cop.”

“I thought I'd find her here,” I said, without picking him up on that. For a lot of people, I'd be “the cop” for the rest of my life.