The Lost Sailors (7 page)

“Then I'll take you away and we'll live together.”

“You just want to fuck me, Nedim.”

“No. I—”

“And you're a liar! A real sailor!”

“No, Lalla—”

“Drop it, Nedim. Love at first sight, all that kind of thing. You want to fuck me. I understand. It's O.K.” The song finished, and she freed herself from him. “You should ask Gaby to dance.”

“I want to stay with you. Can I?”

“If you like. It was just a suggestion.”

They clung to each other for three slow Latin numbers. Fifteen hot minutes. Nedim had decided not to ask any more questions. He relaxed against Lalla, his cock hard again now against her stomach. The slow rhythm of their movements was almost as sweet as if she were jerking him off.

When they got back to their table, a short, plump woman of about sixty was standing by the booth, a full champagne glass in her hand. Her name was Gisèle. The manager of the Habana. Gaby was watching Nedim with an amused look in her eyes.

“Do you like it here?” Gisèle asked.

“It's O.K.”

Lalla's glass, which she had barely touched, was empty. She grabbed the bottle. It was empty, too.

“When I'm alone, I drink,” Gaby said, staring at Nedim. “How about another one?” She held out the bottle to Gisèle without waiting for an answer.

“Yes!” Lalla said. “I'm really thirsty.”

Nedim collapsed onto one of the seats.

“Another gin and tonic?” Gisèle asked.

“Champagne will be fine.”

He was screwed. Completely. More than anything, he felt as if he was without will. His eyes again met Gaby's. She still had that fucking smile on her lips. He felt like slapping her. Just to see if the bitch kept smiling.

“Will you dance with me?” she said.

Nedim didn't hear her. Everything was getting mixed up in his head. The alcohol and the desire. The desire to fuck Lalla and hit Gaby. He was losing his erection again, and he was overcome with sadness. He felt the way he did just after making love. Alone. And sad. And there was no ship waiting for him to help him forget he was just an idiot, lost in life. He looked at his watch.

“Shit!” he cried.

Four-ten. He had fifty minutes to get to the harbor. He stood up. Gaby was already standing. In front of him. She took him in her arms.

 

Perla marina que en hondos mares

Vive escondida entre corales . . .

 

One of Francisco Repilado's best songs.

“Let go of me. I have to split.”

“You've got a minute, haven't you? You paid for my bottle, you might as well take advantage.”

“Fuck off!” He pushed her away, roughly.

“Hey!” she cried. “That's enough of that!”

“What's going on?”

A big black guy had appeared. He was easily two heads taller than Nedim. A good twenty pounds heavier, too, and all of it muscle.

“Nothing,” Nedim said. “I think I'm going.”

“No problem, pal. No problem.”

Nedim had sobered up. He had to get out of here as quickly as possible. He mustn't miss his appointment with Pedrag. He had to leave Marseilles. Suddenly, he felt afraid. He realized he was the only person left in the club. No, there was another customer, leaning on the bar, talking to Lalla. She was sitting on a stool, her back to Nedim. The waiter served the man a glass of water. “A glass of water! The bitch!”

He went back to the booth to get his cigarettes. The bottle of champagne and the two full glasses seemed to mock him. He turned. Gaby was behind him. She handed him the check.

“Cash or credit card?”

 

Celaje tierno de allá de Oriente

Fresca violeta del mes de abril

 

One thousand eight hundred francs! Two bottles, one thousand eight hundred francs. He looked up at Gaby.

“The gin and tonic's thrown in,” she said.

“I don't have enough.”

He could hardly speak. His head was spinning. He felt groggy. He didn't even have the strength anymore to wonder how he was going to get out of here without rough stuff. And what about Pedrag? What was he going to do about Pedrag?

“We don't give credit.”

“I don't have enough,” he said again.

Gaby kept looking at him. He was starting to panic. He should have danced with her, he thought. He'd have sweet-talked her. He should have realized that, of the two of them, she was the one who made the decisions. Lalla had tried to make him see that, hadn't she? He'd have gotten away with one bottle. No shame. And no rough stuff.

“Doug! Can you come here a minute?”

The black guy reappeared as quickly as he'd disappeared earlier. “Yeah?”

“This idiot doesn't have enough.”

“I've got . . . maybe a thousand . . .”

Nedim collapsed on the seat, took out his money and started counting. Nine hundred and fifty. Doug leaned over and put his broad hands flat on the table. Nedim didn't dare look up. Keep a low profile, he told himself. Play the idiot, don't insist. He heard the girls laughing behind him, at the bar. Lalla and Gaby. And the other customer. He was laughing, too.

“What are we going to do?” Doug asked.

“I'll give you this and we'll be quits,” Nedim said. “It's all I have.”

“Do you have your papers?”

Nedim handed him his passport.

“Turkish.” He turned to the counter. “This asshole's Turkish.”

“They're all dickheads,” the guy at the bar said, and laughed.

Doug put the passport in his shirt pocket. “Are you a sailor?”

“On the
Aldebaran
,” Nedim said.

“When's your boat leaving?”

“It isn't.”

“So what are you doing, lugging your bag around?”

He couldn't answer that. He stood up. He had to get out of here. There was still a chance he could catch Pedrag. He'd sort things out with him. Once he was in the truck. Right now, the only thing that mattered was getting home. Not to Istanbul. No, home. To the mountains. The endless roads of Anatolia. His mother's face appeared in between him and Doug. This time, he told himself, I'll go visit Dad's grave. He'd always said he would, but never had. He'd never had time to go up there, to the plateau beyond the gorges of Bilecik.

His father's eyes were on him. Blue eyes, like his. Salih the blacksmith. Master Salih. He knew the five pillars of Islam by heart. People came to his forge to listen to him. He would hammer the iron and recite. And everyone would praise God as they left. “
Mâliki yevmiddîn iyyâke nabüdü ve iyyâke nestaîn, ihtinâssirât elmüstakîm
. . .” These strange, incomprehensible words, which he had forgotten, came back to him now. “It is You we adore, You whose help we ask, lead us in the Right Path . . .”

The Right Path.

Nedim shuddered. He couldn't remember the final amen. You always had to finish a prayer with an amen. His father was still looking at him. He saw himself standing in front of him as a child, stammering, scared that his father would deny him, disinherit him, if he forgot the words of the prayer. And cast him into the Hell of the unbelievers. “Hell must be like that,” Ali the woodcutter had said one evening, pointing at the forge. “The fires of Hell are not like the fires of this world,” his father had replied. “They're a thousand times hotter.”

A thousand times hotter. The Right Path. “
Bismillâh irrahmân irrahîm
. . .” Praise be to God . . . The words came back to him. He had to visit his father's grave.

“I have to get going,” he said, standing up.

Doug looked him up and down. There was no animosity in his eyes. There was no expression at all. As if he wasn't thinking. He didn't say a word.

Nedim glanced furtively toward the bar. Lalla and Gaby were still perched on their stools, chatting calmly with Gisèle, the barman, and the last customer. Nedim didn't exist for them anymore. He only existed for Doug.

Doug seized him by the neck with his big hand and squeezed. Nedim felt himself being lifted until his eyes were level with Doug's and only the tips of his toes touched the floor. He couldn't breathe. He suddenly felt hot. He wanted to vomit.

“So what are we going to do?” Doug asked, without raising his voice.

Doug's fingers were still around his neck. They were as hard as his eyes. Nedim could feel the pressure of the thumb and index finger under his jaw. All Doug's strength and violence seemed to be concentrated there, in that pressure. He felt hot again. His back was soaked with sweat.

“What are we going to do, huh?”

“Let go of me,” he managed to say.

“Let go of him!”

It was an order. Doug looked at Gisèle and relaxed his grip. Nedim's feet touched the floor again. He massaged his neck, and tried to get his breath back.

“What's the name of your tub?” Gisèle asked.

Nedim's eyes met Lalla's. She had turned slightly to face them. He was ashamed of himself. For being so pathetic.

“The
Aldebaran
. A freighter.”

“Doug will keep your passport. And your bag. You can come back for it later, tomorrow if you like. But you come back with the money you owe. O.K., asshole? Now, throw this piece of shit out.”

“My bag . . .”

 

Alma sublime para las almas

Que te comprendan, fiel como yo

 

The last words he heard. They weren't the worst.

N
edim woke with a start. He had no idea what time it was. His watch had broken when he fell. He stretched, half-heartedly. He didn't feel up to anything. He looked around him and felt nothing but self-disgust. He closed his eyes again.

He had come back through the Vieux-Port, on the town-hall side. Walking very fast at first, then more slowly, with his hands in his pockets. Because there was no hurry anymore. The clock on the tower of the Accoules church said five-thirty. Pedrag must have been long gone. He had lit a cigarette and cursed them all. Pedrag was a dickhead. Lalla and Gaby were bitches. Gisèle was a whore. The big black guy in the Habana was a son of a bitch. He cursed the whole world. He was talking aloud, almost shouting. Assholes! Assholes! Assholes! All assholes! It brought tears to his eyes.

It was some days now since Nedim had come to an acceptance that he was going home. He'd told Ousbene all about it. Sailing wasn't really for him, he knew that now. He wasn't a sailor, he was a peasant. He missed the land. He missed his village, his house. The cypress trees along the edge of the garden. The hills he could see from his bedroom window. The stream he could hear flowing beyond the kitchen door. And at the top end of the village, his fiancée, Aysel. The girl his father had gone to ask for in marriage on his behalf, when he had come back from the Army. “My son,” he'd said to him, “you're the right age to start a family. Has your heart chosen?”

It wasn't Nedim's heart that had chosen, it was his body. His whole body. Aysel was the most beautiful girl in the village. Or in any of the neighboring villages. She was sixteen. All the boys had watched her grow up and blossom. They all dreamed about her. His childhood friend Osman should have married her. But Osman had died, crushed by a tree, the fool. And Nedim was the oldest boy in the village still to be unmarried. Aysel was his by right.

It was because of her that everything had taken a tragic turn. For him, and for his family. Aysel's father, Emine, didn't want to give his daughter to a boy without a job.

“I know you and I respect you,” he had answered his father. “Your family and your ancestors, too. I know Nedim is a good boy. He'll be a good husband and a good father. The dowry you're offering is perfectly acceptable, Salih. But Aysel is still young, and Nedim isn't working. I promise my daughter for your son. Come to see me again when he's earning a living.”

Emine had paused, then added, “One more thing, Salih. I don't want Nedim to take my daughter abroad. As most of our children do. It leads to nothing but death.”

Nedim had lost his temper with Emine, and his father and mother too. What gave them the right to treat the son of Salih the blacksmith, the son of Master Salih, that way?

He had desired Aysel ever since he'd come back to the village. She was beautiful, yes, but above all she was pure. Her body, her heart, her thoughts. You could see it in her eyes. She wasn't like the girls he'd met in Istanbul. Dressed like European girls, in miniskirts or jeans, chain-smoking. Girls whose one thought was to get laid. Whores.

Whores. They'd been his life in the four years since he'd left home. The reason he'd left was because his father had sided with Emine. But he didn't regret it. He'd fucked girls of all colors. All as beautiful as each other. Probably more beautiful than Aysel. But none of them had that light that Aysel had in her eyes. They fucked, and he fucked them. Without any emotion. On empty.

Emine had given him three years. The first two years, he had thought about Aysel constantly, being married to Aysel, Aysel's body, Aysel belonging to him and only him. It kept him busy on all his crossings. The sea took on a new meaning. Aysel's love. Every time they put in at a port, he'd send money to his family. Almost everything he'd earned. He kept just enough to get drunk and have a girl for the night. Alcohol and women weren't expensive, once you were outside Europe. In Saigon, he had found a girl for a week. For only ten dollars. It had been the most beautiful experience of his life. Her name was Huong. She did everything he asked of her. For ten dollars. She'd even have an orgasm when they fucked. And wash his clothes, too.

One day he'd returned to the village in an old French Army truck he'd bought in Istanbul. “That's what I'll do,” he'd said, “I'll be a haulage contractor.” He still remembered his arrival in the village. The poplars along the road, the bridge, the hill, the village street. He was a hero. On the way, he'd picked up the people coming home from the fields. Then he'd gone to Emine's house, to show Aysel the truck. “I'll take you in this to see the sea. The Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara. Our two seas, Aysel. With the Bosphorus in the middle.” She'd had tears in her eyes. A child's tears. And Nedim had told himself he'd soon be happy.