The Family E-Book

Tonino Benacquista

• Herausgeber: Bitter Lemon Press
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Seitenzahl: 402

Beschreibung

The story is violent, pacy and full of black humour. Imagine the Soprano family arriving in France, or perhaps better, Ray Liotta, the snitch from ‘Goodfellas' settling down with his family in a small town in Normandy. Fred's cover is blown yet again. With the arrival of the shooters from Newark, he returns to the violence he misses so much.

Leseprobe

Tonino Benacquista, born in France of Italian immigrants, dropped out of film studies to finance his writing career. After being, in turn, museum nightwatchman, train guard on the Paris–Rome line and professional parasite on the Paris cocktail circuit, he is now a highly successful author of novels and film scripts. Benacquista won a César in 2006 for the script of Jacques Audiard’s The Beat That My Heart Skipped. Benacquista was introduced to English-speaking readers by Bitter Lemon Press with Holy Smoke, a darkly comic crime novel set in Paris and southern Italy. This critically acclaimed title was soon followed by the bestseller Someone Else and Framed, a satirical mystery novel set in the world of Parisian art galleries.

THE FAMILY

Tonino Benacquista

Translated by Emily Read

BITTER LEMON PRESS

LONDON

BITTER LEMON PRESS

www.bitterlemonpress.com

First published in French as Malavita by

Éditions Gallimard, Paris, 2004

This edition published in 2013 by Bitter Lemon Press,

37 Arundel Gardens, London W11 2LW

First published in the United Kingdom in 2010

as Badfellas by Bitter Lemon Press

This book is supported by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as part of the Burgess programme run by the Cultural Department of the French Embassy in London (www.frenchbooknews.com) and the French Ministry of Culture (Centre National du Livre). Publié avec le concours du Ministère des Affaires Etrangères (Programme Burgess) et du Ministère Français chargé de la Culture-Centre National du Livre.

© Éditions Gallimard, Paris, 2004

English translation © Emily Read, 2010

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without written permission of the publisher.

The moral rights of the author and the translator have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN eBook 978-1-908524-22-5

Typeset by Alma Books Ltd

The Family

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

1

They took possession of the house in the middle of the night.

Any other family would have seen it as a new start. The first morning of a new life – a new life in a new town. A rare moment that shouldn’t take place in the dark.

For the Blakes, however, it was a moonlight flit in reverse: they were moving in as discreetly as possible. Maggie, the mother, went in first, tapping her heels on the steps to scare away any lurking rats. She went through all the rooms, ending up in the cellar, which appeared to be clean and to have the perfect level of humidity for maturing wheels of Parmesan, or storing cases of Chianti. The father, Frederick, who had never felt at ease around rodents, allowed his wife to go ahead. He went round the outside of the house holding a flashlight, and ended up on a veranda piled high with old and rusty garden furniture, a warped ping-pong table and several shapes that were almost invisible in the darkness.

The daughter – Belle, aged seventeen – went upstairs into what would be her bedroom, a square, south-facing room looking out onto a maple tree and a bed of miraculously persistent white carnations – they looked like a constellation of stars in the night. She turned the bedhead to the north wall, moved the bedside table and began to visualize the walls covered with all the posters that had travelled with her over so many years and across so many borders. Belle’s mere presence made the place come alive. This was where she would henceforth sleep, do her revision, work on her movement and posture, sulk, dream, laugh and sometimes cry – all the things she had done every day of her adolescence. Warren, who was three years younger than her, checked out the next-door room without any real curiosity; he had no interest in views and harmonious layouts. All that mattered to him was having a supply of electricity and his own telephone line. Then, in less than a week, his complete mastery of the Internet would enable him to forget the French countryside, and even Europe, and provide him with the illusion of being back home, on the other side of the Atlantic, where he came from, and where he would one day return.

The villa had been built in 1900, of Norman brick and stone, decorated with a checked frieze across the façade, and festoons of blue-painted wood along the roof, which also had a sort of minaret overhanging the east–west angle of the house. The wrought-iron curlicues on the entrance gate made one want to visit what looked from a distance like a small baroque palace. However, at this time of night, the Blakes couldn’t have cared less about the aesthetics of the place, and were only concerned with its comfort. Despite its evident charm, the old building couldn’t conceal its shabbiness, and was certainly no substitute for the little jewel of modernity that had been their home long ago in Newark, New Jersey, USA.

All four of them now gathered in the drawing room, where, without a word, they removed the dust sheets which covered the armchairs, sofa, coffee table and as-yet-empty cupboards and shelves. Inside the red-and-black brick fireplace, which was big enough to roast a sheep, there was a plaque depicting two noblemen wrestling with a wild boar. Fred grabbed a whole lot of wooden knick-knacks from the cross-beam and threw them into the hearth. He always wanted to smash useless objects.

“Those fuck-ups forgot the TV again,” Warren said.

“They said they’d bring it tomorrow,” said his mother.

“Really tomorrow, or tomorrow like last time?” asked Fred, just as worried as his son.

“Look, you two, I hope you’re not going to attack me every time there’s some object missing in this house. Why don’t you just ask them.”

“The TV isn’t just some object, Mom, it’s our connection to the outside world, the real world, outside this crumbling shack in this rat hole full of peasants we’re going to be lumbered with for years maybe. The TV is life, it’s my life, it’s us, it’s my country.”

Maggie and Frank suddenly felt guilty and couldn’t answer. They didn’t even challenge his bad language. They realized Warren had a right to be homesick. He had been just eight years old when events had forced them to leave America; of the four of them, he was the one who had suffered the most. Changing the subject, Belle asked what the town was called.

“Cholong-sur-Avre, Normandy!” Fred replied, making no attempt at a French accent. “Think of all the Americans who’ve heard of Normandy without knowing where the fuck it is in the world.”

“Apart from our boys landing here in ’44, what’s Normandy famous for?” asked Warren.

“Camembert,” the father ventured.

“We used to get that at Cagnes-sur-Mer, but we had the sun and the sea as well,” said Belle.

“We used to get it in Paris too, and that was Paris,” said Warren.

They all had happy memories of their arrival in the capital, six years earlier. Then circumstances had forced them to move down to the Côte d’Azur, where they had stayed for four years, until Fate had struck again, and they had ended up here in Cholong-sur-Avre in the Eure.

They then split up to explore the rooms they had not yet seen. Fred stopped in the kitchen, inspected the empty fridge, opened a few cupboards, put his hand on the ceramic ring. He was satisfied with the layout – he needed a huge amount of space for when he fancied making a tomato sauce – he stroked the wood of the butcher’s block, the tiling by the sink, the rush seats on the stools, and picked up a few knives, testing the blades with his fingernail. He always began by touching things, treating new places as if they were women.

In the bathroom, Belle struck poses in front of a splendid, slightly spotted mirror in an ancient mahogany frame surmounted by a little matt-glass rose-shaped lamp holding a naked light bulb. She loved her reflection there. Maggie, for her part, opened her bedroom windows wide, pulled the sheets out of their bags, pulled the blankets down from the top of the cupboard, sniffed them, decided they were clean, and unrolled them onto the bed. Only Warren went on wandering from room to room, asking:

“Has anyone seen the dog?”

The ash-grey Australian Cattle Dog, christened Malavita by Fred, had joined the Blake family as soon as it had arrived in France. Maggie had had three reasons for adopting this little hairy animal with sticking-up ears: she would be a popular welcome present to entertain the children, as well as a cheap way to buy their forgiveness and make them forget their exile. Thanks to her astonishing tact and discretion, she had easily made herself popular. She never barked, ate neatly, mostly at night, and spent most of her time asleep, usually in a cellar or laundry room. Once a day they thought she was dead, and the rest of the time just lost. Malavita led the life of a cat and no one could argue with that. Warren finally found her, as expected, in the cellar, between a boiler on pilot and a brand-new washing machine. Like the others, the animal had found her corner, and had been the first to go to sleep.

*

Life in France had not put an end to the breakfast ritual. Fred got up early in order to see his children go off with a full stomach, giving them his blessing, sometimes parting with some extra pocket money or an invaluable piece of advice about life, before going back to bed with a clear conscience the minute they were out of the door. At almost fifty, Frederick Blake had almost never had to start his day before twelve o’clock, and he could count on one hand the days when he had failed to achieve this. The worst of those particular days had been the funeral of his friend Jimmy, his companion-at-arms from the earliest days of his career – nobody had dared show Jimmy disrespect, even when he was dead. The bastard had chosen to have himself buried two hours away from Newark, and at ten in the morning. It had been a tiresome day, from beginning to end.

“No cereal, no toast, no peanut butter,” said Maggie. “You’ll have to make do with what I’ve got from the local baker – apple beignets. I’ll do the shopping this afternoon, so spare me the complaints for now.”

“That’s perfect, Mom,” said Belle.

Warren looked peeved and grabbed a beignet.

“Could somebody explain to me why the French, who are famous for their patisserie, have failed to invent the doughnut? It’s not hard, it’s just a beignet with a hole in the middle.”

Half-asleep and already exasperated by the thought of the day ahead, Fred asked if the hole added to the flavour.

“They’ve learned about cookies,” said Belle. “I’ve had some good ones.”

“Call those cookies?”

“I’ll make some doughnuts on Sunday, and cookies too,” said Maggie, to keep the peace.

“Do we know where the school is?” asked Fred, trying to take an interest in a daily routine that had hitherto passed him by.

“I’ve given them a map.”

“Go with them.”

“We’ll manage, Mom,” said Warren. “We’ll even go faster without a map. We’ve got a sort of radar in our heads – you find yourself in any street in the world with a satchel on your back, and a little inner voice warns you: ‘Not there, it’s that way’, and you meet more and more shapes with satchels going the same way, until you all plunge into a sort of black hole. It’s a law of physics.”

“If you could only be so motivated in the classroom,” said Maggie.

That was the signal to go. They all kissed each other, said they’d see each other at the end of the afternoon, and the first day began. Each one, for various reasons, held back the thousands of questions on the tips of their tongues, and accepted the situation as if it made some sense.

Maggie and Fred found themselves alone in a suddenly silent kitchen.

“What about your day?” he asked first.

“The usual. I’ll look around the town, see what there is to see, find the shops. I’ll be back about six with the shopping. What about you?”

“Oh, me…”

Behind that “oh, me” she could hear a silent litany, sentences she knew by heart even though they were never actually spoken: oh me, I’ll just spend the day wondering what we’re doing here, and then I’ll pretend to do something, as usual, but what?… That’s the problem.

“Try not to hang around all day in your dressing gown.”

“Because of the neighbours?”

“No, because of your morale.”

“My morale’s fine, Maggie, I’m just a bit disorientated, I always take longer to adapt than you.”

“What will we say if we run into any neighbours?”

“Don’t know yet, just smile for the time being, we’ve got a couple of days to come up with an idea.”

“Quintiliani says we mustn’t mention Cagnes, we must say we came from Menton; I’ve told the kids.”

“As if that creep had to spell it out.”

To avoid a painful conversation, Maggie went upstairs while Fred made himself feel good by clearing the table. He could now see the garden in daylight through the window: it had a well-kept lawn apart from a few maple leaves, a green metal bench, a gravel path and a lean-to sheltering an abandoned barbecue. He suddenly remembered his nocturnal visit to the veranda and its strange, rather pleasant atmosphere. He suddenly had to see it again in daylight, before doing anything else. As if there was anything else to do.

It was March, and the weather was mild and bright. Maggie hesitated for a moment over a suitable outfit for her first visit to the town. She was very dark, with a matt complexion and black eyes, and normally wore brown and ochre colours. Today she chose beige jodhpur-style trousers, a grey long-sleeved T-shirt and a cotton cable-stitch sweater. She went downstairs, with a little knapsack over her shoulder, glanced around briefly, looking for her husband, shouted, “See you this evening!” and left the house, unanswered.

Fred went onto the already sunny veranda, where he detected a soft smell of moss and dry wood – a pile of logs left behind by the previous tenants. The blinds over the bay window made stripes of sunshine along the length of the room. Fred pretended these were rays from heaven, and entertained himself by exposing his body to them. The room gave onto the garden, but was protected from the elements and covered pretty well forty square yards. He went over to the dump in the corner and started clearing out all the old stuff cluttering it up and blocking off space and light. He opened the French windows and started throwing all the forgotten possessions of the unknown family out onto the gravel: a television set from another era, some plates and copper pans, grubby telephone directories, a wheel-less bike and a pile of other objects, quite understandably abandoned. Fred took great pleasure in chucking it all out, muttering “Trash!” and “Junk!” each time he hurled a piece out of his sight. Finally he picked up a small grey-green bakelite case, and was about to hurl it out with the gesture of a discus-thrower. But then he suddenly felt curious about its contents and, placing it on the ping-pong table, prised open the two rusty fasteners and opened the lid. Black metal. Mother-of-pearl keys. European keyboard. Automatic return. The machine had a name too: Brother 900, 1964 model.

Fred now held a typewriter in his hands for the first time in his life. He weighed it as he had done his children when they were born. He turned it around, examining its contours and angles, and its visible machinery, which was both splendidly obsolete and strangely complicated, full of pistons, sprockets and clever ironmongery. With the tips of his fingers he stroked the surface of the keys – r t y u – tried to recognize them just by feel, and then with his whole hand he caressed the metal frame. He held the spool and tried to unwind the ribbon, sniffing it to see if he could smell the ink, which he couldn’t. He hit the n key and then several others, faster and faster until they tangled together. He excitedly untangled them, then placed all his fingers haphazardly on the keys, and there, standing in the pink light of the veranda, with his dressing gown half open and his eyes shut, he felt overcome by a strange and unknown feeling.

*

In order to retain a semblance of dignity in the playground, surrounded as they were by a thousand curious stares, Belle and Warren chatted to each other in English, exaggerating their New Jersey accent. Speaking French wasn’t a problem for them; after six years they spoke it a great deal better than their parents, and had even begun to replace English expressions with French turns of phrase. However, in exceptional circumstances, such as those of this particular morning, they found it convenient to revert to a more private way of talking – it was a way of reminding themselves of their own story and where they had come from. They had arrived on the dot of eight at Mme Arnaud’s office; she was the education advisor at the Lycée Jules-Vallès, and she asked them to wait in the playground for a moment before introducing each of them to their class teacher. Belle and Warren were starting at the school at the end of the second term, when everybody’s fate had long been decided. The third term would just have to be a springboard for the following year, when she would do her baccalauréat, and he would go into seconde. Belle had kept up the academic standards of her early years at Montgomery High School in Newark, despite all the upheavals. It had been clear to her, from her earliest youth, that body and soul should enrich one another, exchanging energy and working in harmony. She was curious about everything at school, and concentrated on every subject. No teacher in the world, nor even her parents, could guess at her reason for this – which was to beautify herself. Warren, for his part, who was eight at the time, had learned French in the way you learn a tune, without thinking, without even wanting to. Psychological problems due to his uprooting had meant a year repeated as well as sessions with a child psychiatrist, who was never told the real reason for their leaving America. Nowadays he bore no trace of this, but he never missed an opportunity to remind his parents that he didn’t deserve this exile. Like all children of whom much is demanded, he had grown up faster than others, and had already established certain principles about life, from which he never departed. There lay within him, beneath the values that he preserved as the precious inheritance of his tribe, an old-world solemnity, in which were mingled both a sense of honour and an instinct for business.

A group of girls from Belle’s class approached her, curious to inspect the new arrival. Mr Mangin, the history and geography teacher, came over to fetch them, and greeted Miss Belle Blake with a touch of ceremony. She left her brother, wishing him luck with a gesture incomprehensible to anyone not born south of Manhattan. Mme Arnaud came to tell Warren that his class didn’t start until nine and that he was to wait in the homework room. He chose instead to nose around the school, casing the joint and establishing the contours of his new prison. He went into the main building of the school, a circular building with spokes, known as “the daisy”, with a hall designed like a beehive, where the older children could hang out away from the homework room, smoke, pick each other up, put up posters and organize meetings – a sort of training ground for adult life. Warren found himself alone there, in front of a hot-drinks dispenser and a large sign advertising the school fête, which would take place on the 21st of June. He wandered down the corridors, opened a few doors, avoided some groups of adults, and ended up in a gymnasium where a basketball team was practising; he watched them for a while, intrigued as ever by the French lack of coordination. One of his happiest memories was going to a game between the Chicago Bulls and the New York Knicks, and seeing the living legend Michael Jordan flying from one basket to the other. It was enough to make you pine for your homeland for the rest of your life.

A hand on his shoulder put an end to the daydreaming. It wasn’t a monitor or a teacher charged with bringing him back in line, it was a boy, about a head taller than he was, accompanied by two acolytes in loose, too large clothes. Warren was built like his father – small, dark and wiry, with controlled gestures and a natural economy of movement. You could see gravity in the still fixity of his stare. He appeared at first as the contemplative type, the sort whose first reaction is not to react. His own sister had assured him that he would one day become a handsome, greying, experienced-looking man, but that he would have to work hard to achieve that sort of appearance.

“Are you the American?”

As if brushing off a fly, Warren pushed off the hand, which belonged to the one he correctly guessed to be the leader. The two others, apparently his lieutenants, waited cautiously. Warren, despite his youth, recognized that tone of voice, the slightly unsure aggression, the attempt at authority on the off-chance that it might work, the testing of limits. It was the most cautious form of aggression, practised by cowards. Surprised for a moment, the American boy hesitated before answering. In any case, it wasn’t really a question, and whatever it was that these three wanted, they certainly weren’t there just by chance. Why me? he wondered. Why had they picked on him, as soon as he had arrived? How had he, in less than half an hour, become the object of this vague and foolish threat, which was about to become more concrete, encouraged by his silence? He knew the answer, with a knowledge that was beyond his years.

“What do you want from me?”

“You’re American. You must be rich.”

“Cut the bullshit and tell me how your business works.”

“What d’your parents do?”

“None of your fucking business. What’s your little racket? Extortion? Piece work or contract work? How many of you – three, six, twenty? What do you reinvest in?”

“?…”

“Nil organization. Thought so.”

None of the three could understand a word of what he had said, nor where this confidence came from. The leader felt somehow insulted. He looked around, pulled Warren to the end of an empty corridor leading to the refectory and pushed him so hard that he fell onto a low wall.

“Don’t fuck with me, new boy.”

Then all three got together to shut him up, with knees in his ribs and wild punches in the general direction of his face. Finally one of them sat on his chest, went through his pockets and found a ten-euro note. They then demanded from a red and breathless Warren the same sum the next day as an entrance fee to the Lycée Jules-Vallès. Holding back tears, he promised not to forget.

Warren never forgot.

*

Cholong-sur-Avre is an old medieval stronghold, lying like a jewel in the bocage. It reached its apogee at the end of the Hundred Years War, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and nowadays counts seven thousand inhabitants. With its half-timbered houses, eighteenth-century mansions and streets bordered by canals, Cholong-sur-Avre is a remarkably well-preserved architectural gem.

Maggie opened her pocket dictionary to look up colombages, and then checked it with the real thing by walking down Rue Gustave Roger; most of the houses, with their framework of beams, were unlike anything she had ever seen before. As she found her way to the centre of town – Cholong was shaped like a pentagon edged with four boulevards and a highway – Maggie walked down several streets built entirely of half-timbered houses, and she very much admired the prospect. With half an eye on the guidebook, she eventually, without really looking for it, found herself in the central square, the Place de la Libération, the heart of Cholong, a large space out of proportion with the narrow streets surrounding it. There were two restaurants, several cafés, a bakery, the tourist office, a newsagent and a few old buildings around the edge of a huge rectangular space, which served as a car park on non-market days. Maggie bought some local papers and settled down on the terrace of the café Roland Fresnel, ordering a long double espresso. She closed her eyes briefly and sighed, enjoying this all too rare moment of solitude. Time spent with the family was, of course, at the top of her list of priorities, but time away from them came a close second. Cup in hand, she leafed through a local newspaper, the Dépêche de Cholong, then the Réveil Normand, (the Eure edition); it was one way of getting to know her new home country. On the front of the Dépêche was a photo of a gentleman of sixty-five, a native of Cholong, who had once been a regional middle-distance running champion, and who was now taking part in the Senior Olympics in Australia. Maggie was amused by the thought of this character, and read the article. She understood the main drift of it: here was a man with a lifelong passion for running, who had only just fulfilled his dream right at the end of his journey. As a young man, Mr Christian Mounier had been a just about passable runner. Now that he had reached retirement, he had become an international champion, competing on the other side of the world. Maggie wondered if life really could offer a chance to catch up, a last-minute opportunity to distinguish oneself. She dwelt on this problem just long enough to turn the page. There was a long list of local news stories: petty crimes, an attack on a garage owner, several burglaries in a neighbouring housing estate, one or two domestic quarrels and a few absurd pieces of hot air. Maggie couldn’t always follow the details, and wondered why editors always put all this gloomy and banal daily misery on the front pages of the paper. She deliberated over various possible answers to the question: perhaps local violence was what most interested those readers who loved to whip up feelings of fear and indignation in themselves. Or perhaps readers liked to feel that their town wasn’t quite as boring as it seemed, and had just as many incidents as any other. Or perhaps rural dwellers liked to be reminded that they suffered from all the inconveniences of town life without any of its advantages. And of course the final reason, the saddest and eternal truth – that nothing is more entertaining than the misery of others.

Back in Newark she had never read the local or national papers. Just opening one was too much of a challenge for her – she was much too afraid of what she might find leaping out at her, that she would come face to face with an all too familiar name or face. Uncomfortably reminded of her previous life, she leafed nervously through the rest of the papers, glancing at the weather forecast and the forthcoming events in the area, fairs, car-boot sales, a small art exhibition in the town hall. She gulped down her water. She was suddenly overcome by a sense of oppression, which was accentuated by a huge shadow that was darkening the square as the sun moved. It was that of Sainte Cecile, a church described as a jewel of Norman Gothic art. Maggie had pretended to ignore it, but now turned to face it.

*

The Brother 900 had been placed in the middle of the ping-pong table, which was itself now in the centre of the veranda, a geometrical symmetry carefully arranged by Frederick. He sat in front of the machine, gathering his thoughts, with the sun behind him. He slid a piece of paper – the whitest thing he had ever seen – into the carriage. One by one he checked the mother-of-pearl keys, now sparkling – dusted and then cleaned with liquid soap. He had even managed to soften a ribbon that had become as dry as hay by holding it over a pan of boiling water. He was now ready to make contact, alone and face to face with the machine. He had probably never opened a book, had always spoken in direct and unadorned language, and had never written anything more complex than an address on the back of a matchbook. Can you say anything on this machine? he wondered, without taking his eyes off the keys.

Fred had never found an interlocutor he could respect. The lie is already in the ear of the listener, he thought. He had been obsessed with the idea of telling his version of the truth ever since the result of the trial which had obliged him to flee to Europe. Nobody had really tried to understand his evidence, not the psychiatrists, not the lawyers, not his ex-friends, nor any of the other well-intentioned people: everybody just saw him as a monster, and felt entitled to judge him. This machine wouldn’t do that, it would take everything on board, the good and the bad, the inadmissible and the unsayable, the unjust and the horrible – because they were all true, that was what was so incredible, these lumps of fact which nobody wanted to accept were all real. If one word followed another, he could select them all himself, with nobody suggesting anything. And nobody forbidding him anything either.

In the beginning was the word; somebody had said that to him long ago. Now, forty years later, he had been offered the opportunity to verify that saying. In the beginning there would certainly be one particular word; all the rest would follow.

He raised his forefinger and hit a light-blue, just visible g, then an i, then looked around for an o, then a v, and, getting bolder, found an a with his little finger, then two ns, with two different fingers, finishing off, with the forefinger again, with an i. He read it through, pleased that he hadn’t made any mistakes.

giovanni

*

The young Blakes had obtained permission to have lunch together. Belle searched for her brother in the playground, and finally found him under the covered part, with his new classmates. It looked as though he knew them; in fact he was interrogating them.

“I’m hungry,” she said.

He followed his sister to a table where they found two plates full of mixed crudités. The refectory was so exactly like the one in Cagnes that they had no comment to make about it.

“We’re not far from home,” he said, “we could go home for lunch.”

“And find Mom with her head in the fridge, wondering what to give us, and Dad in his pyjamas in front of the TV. No thanks.”

Warren began to eat, starting with what he liked best, the cucumber, while Belle started with what she liked least, the beetroot. She noticed a blue mark on her brother’s eyebrow.

“What’s that on your eye?”

“Oh nothing – I was just showing off on the basketball court. What are your classmates like?”

“The girls seem quite cool, not sure about the boys. I had to introduce myself. I…”

Warren didn’t listen to the rest, his mind was far away, puzzling over questions that had been bothering him ever since the attack. He had made enquiries and gathered information, not so much about the smalltime racketeers, but about others, the ones who might help him turn the predator into prey, the executioner into a victim, just as he had seen it done by so many of his uncles and cousins before him. It was in his blood. He had spent the rest of the morning asking innocuous questions about everybody. Who was that one? What was that one called? Which one is his brother? Then he had struck up acquaintances with some of them, obtaining information without them noticing. He had even taken a few notes to remind himself of the picture he was building up. Bit by bit the accumulation of detail was beginning to make some kind of sense, but only to him.

The one with the limp has a father who’s a mechanic, who works in the garage of the father of the one in 3C, who’s about to be chucked out. The captain of the basketball team will do anything to get a better mark in maths, and he’s friends with the big guy in 2A3 who’s in love with the class rep. The class rep is best friends with the motherfucker who took my 10 euros, and his sidekick is scared stiff of the tech teacher, who’s married to the daughter of the owner of the office where his father works. The four guys in Terminale B who always hang out together are organizing the end-of-term show and want the limping guy’s sound stuff, the smallest one is good at maths and is the mortal enemy of the shit who hit me.

The problem had been solved, at least according to his logic, before the pudding came. And Belle hadn’t stopped talking.

*

Still sitting on the terrace, reading the guidebook, Maggie ordered a second cup of coffee.

The tympanum is decorated with paintings of the Virgin Mary and the martyrdom of Saint Cecilia, who was beheaded in Rome in 232 AD. The massive wooden doors are carved with representations of work in the fields in the four seasons. The porch is surmounted by a pinnacled double tower.

She could have simply got up and gone over to the church, all of whose details she now knew, walked into the nave, faced the crucifix, spoken to the figure of Christ. She could have prayed and contemplated in the way she used to before meeting Frederick, in the days when he was still called Giovanni. After marrying him, there was never again any question of raising her eyes before a cross, or even of entering a holy place. By kissing Giovanni on the lips, she had spat in the face of Christ. By agreeing to marry the man of her life, she had insulted her God, and her God had a reputation for never forgetting and for liking to be repaid.

“You know, Giovanni, when it’s very hot in summer, I like to keep a very light blanket over me,” she often used to say to him. “You think you don’t need it, but you do, especially at night. Well, believing in God, for me, was that light blanket, and you’ve taken it away from me.”

Now, twenty years later, she was very rarely tempted to re-engage in any sort of dialogue or negotiation with God. She didn’t quite know if it was her who had changed or God. In the end she had felt that she no longer needed that light blanket.

*

In a concrete shed next to the stadium, the gymnastics teacher, Mme Barbet, searched the games-equipment cupboard for something for the new girl to wear.

“They didn’t tell me I had to bring my gym things.”

“You weren’t to know. Here, try that.”

Belle was given a pair of navy-blue boy’s shorts. She put them on, tightening the cord. She kept her running shoes on, the same sort as she had been used to wearing in Newark, and pulled on a lemon-yellow vest with the number 4 on it.

“It comes down to my knees.”

“I haven’t got anything smaller.”

Despite her efforts, Belle couldn’t prevent her red bra from showing under the vest straps. She hesitated before joining the others.

“It’s only girls,” said Mme Barbet, who didn’t think it was important.

Belle followed her onto the basketball court, where the girls were already practising, looking forward to seeing an American in action. They threw her a ball; she bounced it two or three times on the ground, as she had seen them do, and passed it to the nearest team mate. Belle had never taken any interest in sport, and hardly knew the rules of basketball. So where did it spring from, this grace of a champion, this ease in new situations, this natural gift for hitherto unknown movements? Where did her natural elegance come from? The casual way in which she could put on clothes that didn’t suit her and then look fantastic in them? The relaxed way she dealt with situations which others would have found stressful? In her absurd, almost ridiculous outfit, Belle looked superb, right at the centre of the game.

The four tennis players in the distance didn’t miss a trick. They stopped their game and came over to grip the netting and gaze at the quivering red bra, which undulated innocently with every one of Belle’s movements.

*

It was nearly four, and there was no longer any point in Frederick getting out of his dressing gown. It was no longer the symbol of his idleness, it was his new work uniform. Now he could exhibit himself with impunity – untidy and unshaven, trailing around in slippers all day – and soon there would be many more little allowances to be made. He took a few steps out into the garden, walking with the demeanour of the Sun King towards the sound of secateurs coming from behind the neighbouring hedge; he could distinguish the shape of a man pruning his roses. They shook hands through the trellis and examined one another for a moment.

“Roses – they need attention all the time,” the man said, to break the silence.

Frederick didn’t know what to say, except:

“We’re American – we moved in yesterday.”

“…Americans?”

“Is that good or bad?”

“Why did you choose France?”

“Me and my family, we travel a lot, because of my job.”

This was what Frederick had been working towards. He had come out into the garden with the sole purpose of saying a word, a single word. Since finding the Brother 900, he couldn’t wait to introduce the world to the new Frederick Blake.

“So – what’s your job?”

“I’m a writer.”

“A writer?”

There followed a delicious moment.

“That’s fascinating, a writer… Novels, I suppose?”

Fred had anticipated the question:

“Oh no, that might come later. For the moment I write history. I’ve been commissioned to write a book on the Normandy landings, that’s why I’m here.”

As he spoke, he stood slightly turned away, with an elbow on the fence, and a false air of humility, intoxicated by his new and rapidly inflating status. By introducing himself as a writer, Frederick Blake thought he had solved all his problems. A writer, that made perfect sense, why hadn’t he thought of it before? In Cagnes, for example, or even in Paris. Quintiliani would think it was a brilliant idea.

The neighbour looked around for his wife so that he could introduce the new writer neighbour.

“Yes, the landings… You never get tired of hearing about those days. Here in Cholong we’re a bit far away from where the main operation was.”

“The book will be a sort of homage to our marines,” said Fred, to cut the conversation short. “And by the way, my wife and I are going to organize a barbecue, to get to know everyone, so please pass the word around.”

“Marines? I thought there were only GIs in the landings.”

“I want to write about the whole army, starting with the navy. Anyway, don’t forget about the barbecue, eh?”

“I suppose you’ll have a chapter about Operation Overlord?”

“?…”

“There were something like seven hundred ships, weren’t there?”

“A Friday would be perfect, next week if you like, or the one after, we’ll be expecting you.”

Fred slipped back towards the veranda. He was beginning to wish that he wrote novels.

*

At around five, when school was over, Warren was still seething over the loss of his pocket money. All the things he could have done with the money… Well, what exactly? He could have chewed some gum, read an intergalactic war comic called Gamefight, gone to see another American film full of “fuck”s – but what else? As a passport to minor pleasures, the ten euros didn’t amount to much, he had to admit that. On the other hand, it meant an enormous amount in terms of humiliation, pain and loss of dignity. After leaving the gates of the lycée, Warren mingled with different groups, recognizing some of the faces, getting himself introduced to new ones, shaking hands and making deals with some of the “big ones” from the senior form, the football team especially, who had become local heroes since their victory in the regional league.

Give them what they need most.

Warren, from the vantage point of his fourteen years, had learned one lesson from his elders. To Archimedes’ proposition: “Give me a fixed point and a lever, and I will lift up the world”, he preferred a variation perfected by his forebears: “Give me some money and a gun, and I will rule the world”. It was just a question of time and organization. In order to achieve synergy and increase complementarity, all he needed to do was to know how to listen, discover each person’s limits, spot the gaps in their lives, and decide how much to charge for filling them. The more solid the base he could build up, the quicker he would rise to power. The pyramid would build itself and raise him up to the stars.

For the moment it was a question of wielding the carrot – the stick would come later. Most of the pupils left the gates, some of them trailing towards the café, a few lingering to wait for the ones who came out at six. Amongst those was a group of seven boys gathered around Warren.

The biggest one needed better marks in maths so as not to repeat the year, but his parents couldn’t afford private lessons. The toughest, a winger in the rugby team, would do anything to be friends with Laetitia’s brother, who was standing next to Warren. The brother in question would do anything to own the autograph of Paolo Rossi, which was in the possession of Simon from 1B. Simon from 1B was quite willing to surrender it in exchange for help with a personal vendetta against the boy who had targeted Warren. Another one, regarded as the lycée oddball, a mostly gentle boy who sometimes suffered from violent explosions, would give anything he had to be included in a group, any group, to be part of a gang, to no longer be the eternal outsider – and Warren was offering him this possibility. And the last two had joined the group for reasons they preferred not to divulge in front of Warren, who couldn’t have cared less what they were.

The rugby player knew where the three gangsters always hung out after school – a park, which they regarded as their private territory and to which they controlled access. Less than ten minutes later, the three were on the ground. One had vomited, the other was writhing in pain, and their leader was on his knees, sobbing like a baby. Warren told them to bring a hundred euros the next morning, by 8. The sum would double with each half-day’s delay. Terrified of angering him again, they thanked him, keeping their eyes to the ground. Warren could see already that these three would become his most faithful sidekicks if that was what he wanted. Once an enemy had paid homage, you had to allow this escape route.

If Warren hadn’t been able to build up the foundation of his enterprise that evening, he would have sorted things out with those three on his own, with just a baseball bat. And he would have explained to anyone who had tried to stop him that life had offered him no other choice.

*

Maggie went into the shop in the avenue de la Gare, picked up a red basket, pushed through the gate and looked for the refrigerated section. She was tempted to buy some escalopes with cream and mushrooms to make a change from her usual cooking. Unlike Frederick, Maggie was one of those people who, when in Rome, did as the Romans did. Having immersed herself in the local press and architecture, she was now prepared to explore local cuisine, and risk the fury of her family at the dinner table. But she did, by reflex, go to the pasta shelves, and studied the no. 5 and no. 7 spaghetti, the green tagliatelle, the penne and a whole range of shells and vermicelli that she had never quite seen the point of. Feeling slightly guilty, she picked up a packet of spaghetti and a tin of peeled tomatoes, in case her menfolk complained. Before heading for the cash desk, she asked a shop girl where she might find peanut butter.

“What?”

“Peanut butter. Perhaps I’m not pronouncing it right.”

The young woman called the manager, a man in blue overalls.

“Peanut butter,” she repeated. “Peanut butter.”

“I understood.”

Like every morning, this man had been up at six to receive the deliveries and unload them into the storeroom. He had then logged the staff arrivals, motivated his troops and greeted the first customers. In the afternoon he had met two wholesalers, and been to the bank. Between four and six, he had personally rearranged the chocolate and biscuit section and checked the resupply, which hadn’t been properly done. In other words, the day had gone smoothly. Until now, when this unknown woman had come in asking for a product he hadn’t got.

“Put yourself in my place, madam. I can’t stock all the odd things people ask me for. Tequila, surimi, fresh sage, buffalo mozzarella, chutney, peanut butter, God knows what else. It would just rot in the storeroom until it got past its sell-by date.”

“I just wondered. So sorry.”

Maggie went off to the back of the shop, embarrassed at having created a sense of awkwardness over something that wasn’t worth it. The peanut butter wasn’t the slightest bit urgent, her son had plenty of time to make fancy sandwiches – she had simply wanted to do something nice for him on the first day of school. She quite understood the manager’s point of view. Nothing was more exasperating than tourists with their food fads, and all those others who turned food into some sort of nostalgic icon, or stupid chauvinistic symbol. She had hated the sight of her compatriots in Paris crowding into fast-food outlets, complaining that they couldn’t find the sort of food they stuffed themselves with all the rest of the year. She saw it as a sign of terrible disrespect for the country they were visiting, particularly if, as in her case, it was providing her with an asylum.

She thought no more of it, and continued around the shop, filling her basket, stopping at the drinks shelf.

“Peanut butter…”

“And then you wonder why one American in five is obese.”

“And Coca-Cola…”

The voices were close by, just behind the stack where Maggie was reaching down for a pack of beer. She couldn’t help listening to the hushed conversation between the manager and two of his customers.

“I’ve got nothing against them, but they certainly make themselves at home wherever they are.”

“Of course there were the landings. But we’ve been invaded ever since!”

“In our day, and for our generation, it was nylon stockings and chewing gum, but what about our children?”

“Mine dresses like them, enjoys the same things, listens to the same music.”

“The worst thing is the food they eat. I cook something they like, and all they can think of is to leave the table as quick as they can and rush off to McDonalds.”

Maggie felt hurt. By treating her as a typical American, they had cast doubt on all her goodwill and efforts at integration. It was a cruel irony, particularly for somebody who had been cast out of her country and had lost her civic rights.

“They’ve got no taste in anything, that’s for sure.”

“Barbarians. I know, I’ve been there.”

“And if you tried to settle there,” the manager concluded, “just imagine how that would go down!”

Maggie had suffered enough in the past from all the sidelong glances, the muttering behind her back, the general sarcasm when she appeared in public, the wild rumours which were impossible to disprove. This unlucky threesome had unwittingly stirred up all these memories. The paradox was that if they had invited her to join in their conversation, she would have agreed with a lot of what they said.

“And they want to be the masters of the universe?”