Chourmo by Jean-Claude Izzo, Howard Curtis Page A

years. I’d done my training there, as a conscript. I’d had a really bad time. I’d wiped Toulon off my map forever. And I certainly wasn’t going to change my mind now. In the last municipal elections, the city had gone over to the National Front. Maybe it was no worse than the previous administration. But it was just a matter of principle. Like with Saadna. I never drank with people who were filled with hate.
    â€œYou haven’t done anything stupid, I hope?” he went on, in a fatherly tone.
    I shrugged. “I’m too old for that.”
    â€œWhat I think is . . . Look, I know this is none of my business, but . . . I thought you were taking it easy, in your cottage. I thought Lole was treating you like a king.”
    â€œI am taking it easy, Félix. But without Lole. She left.”
    â€œI’m sorry,” he said. “I just thought. Seeing the two of you together last time . . . ”
    â€œLole loved Ugo. She loved Manu. And she loved me too. All in twenty years. I was the last.”
    â€œIt’s you she always loved.”
    â€œManu told me that once. A few days before he was shot down, right there, on your sidewalk. We’d been eating
aïoli
, you remember?”
    â€œHe was scared you’d steal her from him one day. He was sure the two of you would get together eventually.”
    â€œNobody steals Lole. Ugo couldn’t live without her. Neither could Manu. But I could. At least then. Not now.”
    There was a silence. Félix refilled our glasses.
    â€œHave to finish the bottle,” he said, slightly embarrassed.
    â€œYeah . . . If I’d been the first, everything would have been different. For her and me. For Ugo and Manu too. But I’m the last. Sure, we love each other. But it’s not easy to live in a museum, surrounded by memories. The people you’ve loved never die. They’re always with you . . . It’s like this city, you know, it exists because of all the people who’ve lived in it. All the people who’ve sweated, toiled and hoped in it. Out there on the streets, my mother and father are still alive.”
    â€œIt’s because they’re exiles.”
    â€œMarseilles is a city of exiles. It’ll always be the last port of call in the world. Its future belongs to those who arrive. Never to those who leave.”
    â€œOh, and what about those who stay?”
    â€œThey’re like people at sea, Félix. You never know if they’re alive or dead.”
    Like us, I thought, as I emptied my glass and waited for Félix to refill it.
    Which of course he promptly did.

7.

I N WHICH IT IS SUGGESTED THAT THE BLACK THREAD BE DISTINGUISHED FROM THE WHITE THREAD
    I ’d gotten home late, drunk a fair amount, smoked too much and slept badly. It was sure to be a lousy day.
    The weather, though, was glorious, the way it sometimes is in September, but only here. Beyond the Lubéron, or the Alpilles, it was already fall. In Marseilles, sometimes until the end of October, an aftertaste of summer lingers. All it took was a breeze, and the smells of thyme, mint and basil returned.
    That was how it smelled this morning. Mint and basil. Lole’s smells when we made love. I’d suddenly felt old and tired. Sad too. But I’m always that way when I’ve drunk too much, smoked too much and slept badly. I hadn’t had the courage to take the boat out. A bad sign. It hadn’t happened to me in a long time. Even after Lole left, I’d continued going out to sea.
    Every day I needed to distance myself from human beings. To recharge my batteries from the silence. The fishing was incidental. Like a tribute paid to the vastness of the sea. Far out there, on the open sea, you learned to be humble again. And by the time I came back to land, I was full of goodwill toward men.
    Lole knew that, and a lot of other things I’d left unspoken. She’d wait for me and we’d have lunch on the