After the War Read online

  “Take a good look in a mirror, you bitch. This can’t be the first time someone’s given you a good slap!”

  Darlac smiles as he contemplates this humiliated woman, with her necklace of black wire hanging heavily over her chest. Then, with a click of his tongue and a look of contempt, he walks towards the stairs, followed by the two others. They climb the stone steps almost soundlessly, their shoes squeaking faintly and Jeff wheezing a bit. On the second floor, they move slowly through the dark corridor, but the floorboards betray them at every step. Illuminated only by the stairwell lamp, they can hardly see each other. Darlac gives them the sign to stop moving and takes a pistol from under his armpit. For two minutes they remain like that outside the door of room eight, devoured by the darkness. Only the dimmest glimmer of light catches the skin of their faces. They are like immaterial creatures, shaped by the night. There is no sound but the rhythmic creaking of a mattress down the hallway. Pointing towards the source of this noise, Francis makes a floorboard creak.

  “Sounds like they’re . . .”

  “Shut up!”

  Whispering, faces close together. Then Darlac taps Jeff’s shoulder. The door and the walls vibrate as the fat man smashes his shoulder against the wood. The lock is torn free when he bangs the sole of his shoe into it, as if he’s about to climb the wall. Darlac charges into the darkness and instantly a body flies at him from his left, grunting as it pushes him into a wall, and a woman starts screaming. When the light comes on, he is sitting on the floor, trapped in the corner formed by a wardrobe and the wall, and a beanpole of a man is hitting him haphazardly, too close to put any real force into his punches, too quickly to aim properly. Darlac thrusts the barrel of his gun under the man’s chin, and the man puts up his hands, gets to his feet, steps backwards. Crabos is thin as death, a skeleton in pajamas, his grey hair disheveled. Jeff backhands him, and the beanpole is sent flying against the sink, knocking over a chair and smashing into the pipework. You half expect the stickman to snap in two or collapse into pieces.

  The woman lying on the bed has stopped screaming. because Francis has pressed a pillow over her face. She’s naked. She’s arching her back, twisting her body and kicking out, legs wide apart, and Jeff has a good look on the sly. For a few seconds the silence is total. Throughout the brothel, people have stopped breathing so they can hear what happens next. Francis lets go of the pillow and the girl sits up, pulling the sheet over her and hiding the lower part of her face. She is very young, quite pretty, no make-up.

  Francis holds his large, beringed hand above her head and quietly advises her to keep her mouth shut.

  Darlac goes over to the sink and grabs Crabos by the collar of his pajama top. He drags him to the middle of the room like a stick of dead wood then lays him on a bedside rug, grey with encrusted dust, which might have been trodden upon fifteen years ago by Kraut boots between patrols of the port. His pajama top has come open, the buttons torn off, and you can see his shoulders, his shoulder blades, his collarbone, you can see the vertebrae in his spine, you can see his ribcage, his skeletal frame covered by the pale cloth of his skin, pulled so tight you think it might tear. Darlac has seen this before, after the war, on stretchers in the concourse of the gare Saint-Jean: all those people who had failed to recover despite the best efforts of the doctors and who were being taken home, ravaged by dysentery and despair, to see if they would decide to start living again.

  He had looked at them curiously, those bodies that seemed barely alive, the immense eyes rolling back in their sockets as if from the bottom of an open grave. There had been something there that he hadn’t understood, that he would perhaps never understand, because he had been requisitioned to check these people’s identities just as, three years earlier, he had established and then zealously checked the identities of those same people during round-ups, had pushed healthy families out of their homes, seeing their eyes full of dread but alive and shining with all sorts of emotions, had slapped full cheeks and shoved powerful shoulders, had ordered buses and trucks to set off and had gone back into those buildings to search the empty apartments, to begin the inventory and the pillage.

  Darlac remembers all of this as he presses his gun into the hollow temple of Bertrand Maurac, aka Crabos, aka THE Crabos, so called by all the bastards in the gangs and in the police, because three cancers in fifteen years had not managed to finish him off, each one ending in spontaneous remission, but had left him this almost empty husk where perhaps even death himself could no longer find anything to scythe. The commissaire stands up and tells Jeff to keep an eye on him. The fat man stands in front of the Crabos, arms dangling. A whale contemplating a shipwreck reduced to its frame.

  Darlac puts his pistol in his shoulder holster and walks over to the bed. He tears away the sheet that was covering the girl, revealing her naked amid this crumpled chaos. Instinctively she curls up in a ball, then seems to relax and lies on her side, leaning on an elbow, one leg bent at the knee as if she’s posing for a painting. Doing her best to act tough.

  “How old are you? You look too young to be whoring for the walking dead here.”

  “I’m twenty-two. And I wasn’t whoring. We’re friends.”

  Darlac turns to the Crabos.

  “So you have friends, do you? Do you know anyone you haven’t fucked over or who hasn’t fucked you over? Do you know anyone who doesn’t want you dead, anyone who wouldn’t want to turn you into a lampshade before the cancer gets you? Well, fucking introduce them to me so I can shoot them in the fucking head!”

  “You’ll find out for yourself who they are and just how many friends I have, you ugly prick. When they take care of you, you’ll be in so much pain that you’ll offer up your whore of a mother to take your place.”

  A cracked voice. A larynx operation. Hollowed-out throat between two bluish tendons.

  Jeff turns his fat, squarish face towards Darlac. Forehead gleaming. He balls his fists. Darlac watches the Crabos, whose eyes stare up at him from that skin-covered death’s head, lips slick with spit, then he sighs and blinks and mutters, “Leave it,” and turns back to the naked slut on the bed.

  “Twenty-two, are you? Got your papers with you? What’s your name?”

  “Arlette. I’m sixteen.”

  “Where are your parents?”

  “Don’t know, don’t care.”

  “Fair enough. A life of prostitution and homelessness it is then. Get dressed sharpish, and let’s get out of here. You’ve got three minutes to cover your ass.”

  He turns back to the Crabos, who is still sitting on the floor.

  “You too. You’re coming with us. Get dressed. Chop-chop!”

  The man gets up. You can see his skeleton moving under his skin, poking and rolling. It looks as if it must hurt. He bends his dragon spine to pick up his things, and covers his body in clothing. Little by little, the horrors of his carcass are hidden beneath layers of fabric.

  “My parents, they live in Saint-Michel. Rue Saumenude, number thirty-four,” the girls says, now wearing a blue raincoat over a black dress. “They have five kids, and there’s no room for me anymore. And my dad doesn’t want me in his bed now cos he says I’m too old.”

  “Your dad’s a fucking idiot,” says the fat man. “He doesn’t know what he’s missing.”

  Francis shrugs, then looks at his watch. He does that all the time. Looking at his watch. Like a stationmaster.

  “We have to get out of here, Albert.”

  Darlac pauses to think, his eyes on the girl.

  “You go in the Crabos’ car and take the girl to the Couchots’ place. Tell Emile to keep her warm and leave her in peace. No work or anything. She doesn’t go out, she doesn’t speak to anyone. I’ll go to see them later and we’ll work out what to do with her then. Right now I’m going with Jeff and this bag of bones, and we’re going to have a little chat.”

  They clatter downstairs, pu
shing their prisoners in front of them, and pass a couple who get out of the way by shrinking back against the stone wall. Some four-eyed git in a hat and a Russian whore who looks away when she spots Darlac, then watches him walk away from behind. As soon as they hear the men’s footsteps in the lobby, she pushes her john ahead of her as if the stairs are on fire.

  They walk past the manageress without a glance. She holds a handkerchief to her mouth and pretends to ignore them too. At the corner of rue Saint-Rémi, they are surprised by a cold wind blowing up from the river, and all of them hunch their raised collars up over their necks. The girl looks tiny surrounded by these shadowy men, and for a few seconds no-one says a word, no-one moves, as if the icy air has turned them to statues or they’re afraid of the night.

  Darlac thinks. He looks far ahead, out towards the docks, staring unflinchingly into the east wind. No-one moves. His two henchmen watch him, awaiting his orders like soldiers in a commando unit.

  “Where’s your car?”

  The Crabos answers him through gritted teeth, shivering under his sailor jacket.

  “Place du Parlement. It’s a grey Chambord.”

  Understanding what they want, he rummages inside his pocket, brings out the keys and hands them to Francis. They go their separate ways without a word. The wind whistles in their ears, and when Darlac and Jeff collapse onto the seats of the 403, they sigh with relief, while the Crabos shrinks against the inside of the door, eyes closed and arms crossed. Darlac takes the wheel.

  “Where are we going?” the Crabos asks.

  “Spain. Isn’t that where you wanted to go?”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Same bloke who told us where you were shacking up. Lulu de Kléber. You know him? Lucien Potier.”

  “Right. That cunt. I guessed as much.”

  “He won’t be snitching on anyone else,” Jeff remarks.

  The Crabos sits up in his seat.

  “You . . .”

  Darlac quickly gives Jeff a warning look to shut him up. Silence. They drive past the docks and the Pierre Bridge. The city is empty, its darkness punctuated by dimly glowing bulbs hung from wires over the streets.

  “Why did you do that?”

  “So you know we’re not pissing about. We didn’t like what you did to Penot. So we put a few holes in that piece of shit Lulu. This way, you don’t have to.”

  “I should have slaughtered Penot in ’46, when I found him. But we had an arrangement with Destang back then. The business had to start up again on a sound basis. But for this one, I’m not your man. I didn’t do anything to that asshole, even if I’d happily piss on his rotting corpse now. And I didn’t ask anyone else to do the job, because it’s nothing to do with me anymore. Can you get that into your thick cop’s head?”

  He goes silent, out of breath now. Gives a little cough. Wipes the sweat from his forehead.

  Darlac turns towards him, leaning on his seat.

  “What’s up with you? Cancer back, is it?”

  “What do you fucking care?”

  Darlac shrugs.

  “I don’t. If you piss off to Spain to die, I’ll happily pay for your train ticket. First class.”

  “Oh yeah? Well, make it a return ticket. I’ll die here because this is where I’m from and this is where my folks died.”

  They start up again, driving straight then turning at the Grand Théâtre to head south to the docks.

  “Where are you taking me?”

  “We’ll drop you at the station. Don’t you want to go to Spain?”

  The Crabos wipes condensation from the window and looks out at the city as if he doesn’t recognize it.

  “Have you got a cigarette? I left mine in the hotel room.”

  Jeff starts fumbling around in his coat pocket, but Darlac flashes him a look from the corner of his eye, so the fat man stops moving. Neither of them says a word.

  The Crabos shivers. He raises his collar and shrinks against the back of the seat.

  “Why don’t you kill me?”

  “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? I bet you’re too weak to even take a shit now. No. You never set foot in Bordeaux again. Do some pimping in Valencia or sell hash in Algeciras or die in Toledo. Or just go fuck yourself, for all I care. But catch your train, cos I don’t want to see you or even hear about you here anymore. You’ll be fine for money down there, I’m sure—you’ll get your postal orders, and you must have some put aside already. The judge will slap an arrest warrant on your head tomorrow morning. You’re blacklisted in Bordeaux now, shithead. We’ve got you for pimping—and now you’re an accessory to murder too. And that’s without even mentioning the drugs. Come back, and you’ll have me and Destang on your back—and believe me, if Destang gets hold of you first, you’ll end up in the river, chopped into so many fucking pieces that the prawns will have you for breakfast. And listen, when you’re down there, you call me, you give me your address, and you keep me informed about everything that’s moving between France and Spain. Whores, drugs, all of it. If I don’t hear from you, we’ll take care of your daughter. It must be expensive, that fancy boarding school she goes to in Nice? Well, I know some people who’ll give her work. You can’t put a price on a good education, can you?”

  The Crabos mutters a shitload of swear words as he bangs his head against the window.

  “Why don’t you just kill me?”

  Darlac lights a cigarette. He blows smoke out through his mouth, through his nose, with a long weary sigh, just as he pulls in next to the curb.

  “I just told you why. Besides, you’re already dead. Alright, time to piss off now.”

  They are parked opposite the gare Saint-Jean, outside a café that spills too much light inside the car, the brightness broken up by the fast-moving shadows of people walking past. The Crabos watches all this with astonishment, his mouth half open. He slowly opens the door and gets out, but remains standing there for a few seconds, one hand still resting on the door handle, looking around him at the bustle of the night. Then he softly closes the door and they watch his frail figure move away along the sidewalk, very slowly, step by step, as if he might collapse at any moment.

  2

  He stops suddenly in front of the gates of the port, his bicycle between his legs, and remains there, stunned. With his balaclava and his sheepskin coat with the collar turned up and the mittens on his hands gripping the handlebars, only his eyes are visible. He observes the blaring traffic of cars and trucks, intoxicated by the din they make, grinding his teeth as axels groan and bodies shake over the large cobblestones of the cours de la Martinique. He feels the dull rumble in his legs as a train trundles slowly past endless rows of warehouses, accompanied on foot by a man swinging a lantern in his hand. The city buzzes and trembles in his flesh.

  He looks at all this as if the landscape had appeared suddenly out of darkness and he was now encircled by a film set that had miraculously materialised. His eyes are wide with amazement. His frozen figure is painted black in this night that is already fading before the vast pale gold gleam rising over the Garonne, above the blanket of mist that lies on the water. Above all these early morning stirrings, the greyish-green street lamps, hung from wires, are blown casually about in the weak north wind, their dim lights fading. The young man hunches his shoulders.

  His name is Daniel and he is twenty years old.

  Often, as now, he finds himself wondering what he’s doing here. The feeling can come over him anywhere. At dances, in buses, at the cinema. In the midst of noise and chatter. In spite of friends and laughter. When it happens, he stops whatever he’s doing and looks around unseeingly, listens uncomprehendingly to the humans that surround him. Their agitation, their frenzied trample, their crazy trajectories like insects caught between window and curtain. In these moments he feels horribly light, transparent, barely even existent, dissolved in the air, with bei
ngs and objects passing through him as if he’s a ghost, a revenant that no longer knows where it has returned from, only that it’s terrified to have left there.

  Or he freezes and looks up at the dawn sky, clear and faded, rubbed clean by a cold wind. This pure emptiness, crossed occasionally by a rushing bird, tightens his heart and renews, each day, the wonder of the light that lifts up the lid of night. In these instants of happy contemplation, time seems to suddenly contract, to become as dense and painful as a bullet.

  And then the feeling leaves him, of course. Because life is all around, so strong and noisy.

  Above the warehouses, he can see the jibs of cranes bending over boats. They look like iron witches rummaging through the upturned bellies of those lumbering monsters that the river has thrown against the wharf. It’s high tide, so he can make out the top of a forecastle, the glimmers of the gangway, the mast bristling with aerials and the black-and-blue chimney bearing the arms of the Delmas-Vieljeux company. Some days the tide was so high that he imagined they might all drift into the city, their huge prows slicing into stone, digging out canals in place of the dark streets.

  But the cold is penetrating deep into his flesh and his stomach suddenly feels as if it’s full of snow, so Daniel shakes himself, smacking his arms, ridding himself of his dark thoughts and the frost that has settled over him. Then he starts pedaling over the cruel cobblestones, insides shuddering, arms stiff as he grips the handlebars, manoeuvring his way between train tracks and cobbles and potholes. The bike jingles as it jumps, and even the bell, which hasn’t worked for months, sometimes chimes amid the spluttering uproar of traffic. From time to time, the little bag he carries over his shoulders, containing his overalls wrapped around his lunch box, slips down his back and he has to hitch it up again. He rides past the port, no longer even seeing that interminable parade of warehouses behind miles of fences; head down, eyes watering from the cold, he charges blindly ahead until he reaches the station.