Chourmo (28 page)

“What was it then?”

“I don't know. Gino . . . Alex sometimes brought some weird guys with him. Well dressed guys, but with . . . bodyguards, I guess. Not the kind of people you took photos of! Gino didn't like having them in his restaurant. He said they were Mafia. He said you could tell as soon as you saw their faces. They were more real than in the movies!”

“Did he say anything to Narni?”

“No, can you imagine? Narni was a customer. When you run a restaurant, you don't make comments. You serve the food, that's all.”

“Did Gino's attitude toward him change at that point?”

She stubbed out her cigarette. It was a long time ago, but it was a period on which she hadn't yet turned the page. Even ten years later. In her head, there was probably a photo of Gino in a gold frame, with a rose placed beside it.

“Gino started getting nervous. Anxious. He'd wake up in the middle of the night. He said it was because we were working too hard. It was true, we never stopped. The restaurant was always full, and yet we weren't rolling in money. We made a living. Sometimes I got the feeling that we were making less than we had at first. Gino said the restaurant was like a treadmill. He started talking about selling. Moving somewhere else. Working less. He said we'd be just as happy.”

Gino and Gélou. Adrien Fabre and Cûc. The Mafia always took away with one hand what it gave with the other. There were no free rides. You couldn't escape the racket. Especially if the racketeer had built up your clientele for you. And it didn't matter who that clientele was. That was the way it worked everywhere. To a greater or lesser degree. Even in the smallest neighborhood bars from Marseilles to Menton. It might not be a lot. One undeclared pinball machine. Or two.

To make matters worse, Narni had been in love with the owner's wife. Gélou. My cousin. My Claudia Cardinale. Ten years ago, I remembered, she'd been even more beautiful than she was as a teenager. A mature woman, in full bloom. The way I like them.

“They had a little argument one night,” Gélou went on. “It's just come back to me. I don't know what it was about. Gino wouldn't tell me. Alex was eating alone, as he sometimes did. Gino sat down at his table, to have a glass of wine with him and chat. But Alex just finished his pasta and left. Without eating anything else. He barely said goodnight. But he looked at me, for a long time. Before he went out.”

“When was that?”

“A month before Gino was killed . . . Fabio!” she cried. “You don't mean to say that . . . ”

No, I didn't mean to say anything.

 

After that night, Narni didn't set foot in the restaurant again. He called Gélou, once. To tell her he had to go away on a trip but he'd be back soon. He didn't show up again until two days after Gino's death. Just in time for the funeral. He was around a lot at that time, helping Gélou with everything, advising her.

She told him she was planning to sell up and leave the area. To start all over again somewhere else. He helped her with that too. He was the one who handled the sale of the restaurant, and he managed to get a very good price. From a relative of his. Gradually, Gélou came to rely on him. More than on her family. Admittedly, once the sadness had passed, the family had minded its own business. Me included.

“You could have called me,” I protested.

“Yes, maybe. If I'd been alone. But Alex was there and . . . I didn't even need to ask.”

One day, almost a year later, Narni suggested a trip to Gap. He'd found a small business he was sure she'd like. And a villa, on the lower slopes of the Bayard pass, with a magnificent view of the valley. The children, he said, would be happy there. A new life.

They viewed the house, like a young couple looking for their first home. Laughing. Making plans, whispering. That night, instead of going back, they stayed in Gap for dinner. It got late. Narni suggested they spend the night there. The restaurant doubled as a hotel, and there were two rooms available. She found herself in his arms, without quite knowing how. But she didn't regret it.

“It had been such a long time . . . I . . . I couldn't live without a man. I thought I could, at first. But . . . I was thirty-eight, Fabio,” she said, as if apologizing. “The people around me didn't like the idea, especially in my family. But you don't live with your family. It isn't there at night when the kids have gone to bed, and you're alone in front of the TV.”

And this man was there, this man she'd known a long time, who'd waited for her. This elegant, self-confident man, who had no money worries. He'd told her he was a financial adviser for a Swiss company. Yes, there was something reassuring about Narni. A whole new future was being laid out for her. Not the one she'd dreamed of when she'd married Gino. But a damn sight better than the one she'd imagined when he died.

“Besides, he was often away on business trips. In different parts of France, and all over Europe. And that was fine too. I was free. I could come and go as I pleased. Spend more time with the kids. Just when I was starting to miss Alex, he'd come back. No, Fabio, I haven't been unhappy these last ten years.”

Narni had gotten what he wanted. That was the one thing I couldn't deny. He'd loved Gélou so much, he'd been prepared to raise Gino's children. Was that why he'd killed him? Out of love? Or because Gino had decided not to cough up another centime? What did it matter? The guy was a hitman. He would have killed Gino anyway. Because Alexandre Narni was like everyone in the Mafia. What they wanted, they took, sooner or later. Power, money, women. Gélou. It only made me hate Narni even more. For daring to love her. For sullying her with all his crimes. With all the death he carried around in his head.

“What's going to happen now?” Gélou asked in a toneless voice.

She was a strong woman. But it was a lot for a woman to take in, all in one day. She had to rest before she broke down completely.

“You're going to rest.”

“Not at the hotel!” she cried, horrified.

“No. You're not going back there. Narni's like a mad dog now. He must know that I know. When you don't come back, he's sure to figure I told you everything. He'd kill anyone if he had to. Even you.”

She looked at me. I couldn't see her. From time to time, her face was lit momentarily by a passing car. I was pretty sure her eyes were empty now. Like the landscape after a tornado.

“I don't think so,” she said softly.

“You don't think what, Gélou?”

“That he could kill me.” She paused for breath. “One night, we'd just made love. He'd been away quite a long time. He'd come home very tired. Demoralized, it seemed to me. A little sad. He took me in his arms, tenderly. He could be tender, I liked that about him. ‘You know,' he said, ‘I'd prefer to lose everything rather than lose you.' He had tears in his eyes when he said that.”

Goddammit! I said to myself. Now I've heard everything in this fucking life. Even that. The story of a tender hitman. Gélou, Gélou, why did you let go of my hand that Sunday at the movies?

“The two of us should have married.”

I was talking bullshit.

She burst into tears and sheltered in my arms. On my chest, I felt her tears soaking my shirt, my skin. I knew they'd leave an indelible stain.

“I'm talking bullshit, Gélou. But I'm here. And I love you.”

“I love you too,” she said, sniffing. “But you weren't always there.”

“Narni's a killer. A dangerous guy. Maybe family life agreed with him. And maybe he really loved you. But it doesn't change anything. He's a professional killer. He'll stop at nothing. In a business like that, you don't shut up shop so easily. Killing is his job. He has to answer to people higher than him. Guys even more dangerous than he is. Guys who don't kill with guns, the way he does, but control politicians, industrialists, the army. Guys who don't care about human life . . . Narni can't afford to leave survivors. He couldn't let Guitou live. And he can't let you live. Or me . . . ”

I let my words hang in the air. I didn't expect anything from life anymore. But one day I'd imagined it the way it could be. And I'd ended up loving it. Without guilt, without remorse, without fear. Simply. Life is like truth. You take what you can get. You often get back what you've given. It was as simple as that. Rosa, the woman I'd lived with the longest, had said to me, before she left, that I had a limited vision of the world. It was true. But I was still alive, and it didn't take much to make me happy. Death wouldn't change anything.

I put my arm around Gélou's shoulders.

“What I'm saying, Gélou, is that I love you and I'm going to protect you from him. Until all this has been sorted out. But before that, I need you to kill him in your head. To destroy even the smallest scrap of affection you have for him. If you don't, I won't be able to help you.”

“That makes two men I'll have lost, Fabio,” she said, with an imploring look.

I still had the worst thing of all to say to her. I'd hoped I wouldn't have to.

“Gélou, imagine Guitou. He's just had his first night of love, with a beautiful girl. Then he hears strange noises in the house. Maybe a scream. The scream of someone being killed. Terrifying for anyone. No matter how old they are. Maybe Guitou and Naïma have been sleeping. Maybe they're making love again. Imagine their panic.

“So they get out of bed. And Guitou, your son, who's a man now, does something not every man would have done. But he does it, because Naïma is watching him. Because Naïma is absolutely terrified. Because he's afraid for her. He opens the door. And what does he see? That bastard Narni. The guy who's always lecturing him about whites, blacks and Arabs. The guy who sometimes beats your boy so badly, he gives him bruises that are still there more than two weeks later. The guy who sleeps with his mother. Who does with his mother what he himself has just done with Naïma.

“Imagine Guitou's eyes at that moment, Gélou. The hate in them, and the fear too. Because he knows he doesn't stand a chance. And imagine Narni's eyes. Seeing the boy in front of him. The boy who's been defying him for years, who despises him. Imagine it, Gélou. I want you to have all these horrible pictures in your head! Your son in his underwear. And Narni with his gun. On the point of shooting. Without hesitation. In the right place. With a steady hand. A single bullet, Gélou. A single fucking bullet!”

“Stop!” she sobbed.

Her fingers clutched at my shirt. She was close to hysterics. But I had to go on.

“No, you have to listen to me, Gélou. Imagine Guitou again. Falling, smashing his forehead on the stone steps. His blood gushing. Which of the two do you think thought about you at that moment? In that fraction of a second after the bullet left the gun and before it lodged in Guitou's heart? I want you to put all that in your head and keep it there. Otherwise, you'll never be able to sleep again. For the rest of your life. You have to see Guitou. And you have to see Narni as he fires that gun. I'm going to kill him, Gélou.”

“No!” she screamed through her sobs. “No! Not you!”

“Someone has to do it. To obliterate all that. Not to forget. You'll never be able to forget, and neither will I. No, just to clean up the mess. Clear a space around us. In our heads. In our hearts. It's the only way we can even think of surviving.”

Gélou clung to me. It was like when we were teenagers, huddled in the same bed, telling each other scary stories. But the stories had caught up with us. They were real. We could go to sleep, of course, holding each other tight, the way we used to. Snug and warm. But we knew that when we woke up, the horror would still be there.

The horror had a face. And a name.

Narni.

Without saying another word, I started the car. I'd reached the point where I couldn't wait anymore. I drove quite quickly through the little streets, which were almost deserted at this hour.

It was still like a village here, full of old houses, some of them from colonial times. There was one, in a Moorish style, that I liked a lot. The kind you see at El Biar, in the hills above Algiers. It was abandoned, like quite a few of them. The windows of these houses no longer looked out, as they once had, on vast grounds, on gardens, but on concrete apartment blocks.

We climbed some more. Gélou let me drive. She didn't care where I took her. Then the huge golden Buddha appeared on the side of the hill, bathed in moonlight, towering majestically, serenely, over the city. The temple, which was relatively new, housed a center for Buddhist studies. Cûc was waiting for us there. With Naïma and Mathias.

This was where she'd hidden them. It was Cûc's secret garden. The place she came to find shelter whenever things weren't going well. Where she came to think, to meditate. To reconnect with her roots. With the land where her heart was. Where it'd always be. Vietnam.

I didn't believe in any god. But this was a sacred place. A place of purity. There was nothing wrong once in a while, I told myself, in breathing pure air. Gélou would be fine here. With them. They'd all lost something in this affair. Cûc a husband. Mathias a friend. Naïma a lover. And Gélou everything. They'd know how to take care of her. They'd know how to take care of themselves. To heal their wounds.

A monk greeted us at the entrance. Gélou huddled in my arms. I kissed her on the forehead. She looked up at me. There was a kind of veil over her eyes, a veil that was about to be torn.

“There's one more thing I have to tell you.”

And I knew it was going to be something I didn't want to hear.

I
drove back in the Saab. I'd switched on the radio and found a station playing tango. Edmundo Riveiro was singing
Garuffa
. It was the music that best matched my mood. My heart was like a bandoneon after what Gélou had just told me. But I didn't want to think about that. I wanted to dismiss her last words, to push them as far from me as I could. Even to forget them.