EBOLOWA 22

22

 

 

Paris, Tuesday.

 

     When you have only fear and beatings in your life you have to turn them to your advantage.  Marc Benet had got that much from childhood.  In order to survive the hell his mother called home he had learnt to keep his mind clear no matter what, and how to watch and wait.  Everything he knew about the world he had taught himself, except the skills of the blacksmith, but even those he’d felt in the marrow of his bones as if they’d been left there by his father. 

     In school he’d learnt nothing except how to fight dirty and hide hurt and now he used his injured hip to deflect pain and panic.  For him the bone and socket were a pestle and mortar where he would grind his feelings into dust, like his hatred for Foccart and the terror he felt for the safety of his precious daughter.  Years ago he’d used the same method to dull the agony over Monique’s death when he’d torn up ten thousand feet of Mount Cameroon, lengthening his stride to raise the pain to screaming pitch.

     But that night outside the piscine in Paris he had no mountain to climb and had headed instead for Sacré Couer, stamping his left foot forwards on the wet sidewalks to heighten the wrenching discomfort.  He couldn’t believe he’d been such a fool.  He knew he’d made a pact with the devil, staging a coup in Niger for a Swiss passport, but he should’ve realised that nothing Foccart did would be that simple.  The bastard had run rings round him, even needling him into losing control.  Watch and wait: his childhood self looked on in bleak dismay.

     For a while he had fumed in the shadows of the piscine with the single useless passport in his hand, but he slowly regained control by concentrating on Dayak’s wife and family.  They had been struck a sickening blow and now their lives were lost in darkness.  He had failed them, it was as straightforward as that: he knew about barbouzes like Dupin and should’ve done something.  Dayak’s blood was on his hands and nothing would ever wash them clean.

     He tried to think it through, chance and effect.  How many other lives had he stopped?  Berbers and Touregs in the desert, nameless men with families and futures obliterated.  Flesh and blood reduced to grief and desolation, the wrong men dead while a monster like Foccart survived to send others to an early grave.

     Rain drifted across the city from the west with a swirling wind and Marc’s hip protested all the more.  He was glad of the overcoat he’d left in the shabby basement room near the Gare du Nord.  It was rented from some cousin of Yasmin’s and he’d slipped in silently, left his case and then followed his nose upwards to Pigalle and Sacré Couer.  The view across to the Eiffel Tower was dramatic at night but he preferred the desert.  Even so, it gave him the space to think and Dayak wasn’t the only old friend preying on his mind.  He had to track Guy down - - and “tidy him up”.

     He’d told Pleven that he trusted Guy, like he was in a select elite, but now he wondered.  He wiped the rain off his face and closed his eyes: friendship and trust were not supposed to be subjected to such an extreme test.  He tapped his forehead hard and wracked his memory - - what did he really know about Guy, and what did he need to know to be able to report back to Foccart, job done?

     Marc remembered the first time they met.  Chance again: they’d coincided in front of a run down wooden shack in the port area of Douala, both of them thinking of putting a bit of a windfall into a new business.  They’d looked round together and saw the possibilities of joining forces and having enough money to avoid going cap in hand to a bank.  The impulse worked out and the shack became Le Frigat, the best club on the coast outside of Dakar and eventually good enough to appear in a fashion magazine in Paris as an exotic destination with great music and wild food.  Sure, reading between the lines they also said it was an upmarket whorehouse, but when had Paris bothered about things like that?  It made him and Guy a tidy income.

     Marc winced as the word came into his head and he tried to come to terms with Foccart’s trap, the ultimate betrayal.  Guy was a friend, trusted, as he’d told Pleven, not to crack under pressure and to pass himself off as an American.  It was always an American he’d imitate, a New Yorker or ‘a good old boy’ from the Deep South, and Marc remembered how he couldn’t bear to impersonate the British.  His passionate refusal seemed out of character but Marc had never bothered to figure out where it came from.  He just took it for granted as the impulse that drove Guy’s inspired campaign in the UN plebiscite in Cameroon and then into deep trouble in the Biafran War. 

     It wasn’t as if he was a fervent French patriot.  On the contrary: he was a pied noir, an outsider like Marc.  It had been an immediate bond between them as they’d clattered around the shell of Le Frigat, something shared no matter how different they were.  Guy was younger, educated, a prize-winning graduate of the Colege de Outre Mer with a powerful patron, while he was just a fucking gypsy with the most celebrated limp in France. 

     By 1960 they had drifted apart.  Marc didn’t want to dwell on why but as usual, Foccart’s intelligence was accurate: Guy had turned up in Niger not so long ago, a free-lance looking for work.  He was older and talking about going home and wanting Foccart off his back once and for all.  He wanted to go for his tia Pilar - - she’d never taken to the desert and had always dreamt of returning to the Asturias before she died. 

     He told Marc that after de Gaulle had sold them out his aunt had ended up in a pokey little terrace house in the 19^th.  It was closed off at one end with steps leading up to the park, which was okay in the summer but downright dangerous the rest of the year no matter how old you were.

 

*   *   *   *   *

 

     By lunchtime Marc’s hip was very sore but he had found that pokey little terrace.  Passage Gaultier - - a narrow cobbled street with stone steps at the north end leading onto Avenue Simon Bolivar and an entrance to the Park Buttes Chaumont.  He walked up and down examining the houses.  There were no front gardens and the doors gave straight onto the street.  Most of the windows were shuttered and in need of fresh paint.  Just as Guy had said, Passage Gaultier was certainly pokey, a far cry from the high skies and Mediterranean balm of Oran.

     He had a coffee in the Café de Belleville and weighed up the mood of the waiter.  A middle-aged man, overweight, with slicked down thinning hair and a sallow complexion.  Marc overpaid and waved away the change.

     “I’m looking for an old pal from the Legion,” he said, his wallet still very visible on the table.  “His aunt lives across the way in Passage Gaultier but I don’t know the number.”

     The waiter avoided his eye and glanced nervously in the direction of the bar.  “Sorry but I don’t live round here.”

     “You must have regulars who do.”

     He shrugged. 

     “She should stand out a bit,” Marc added.  “She’s a pied noir, must’ve been here at least ten years - - I bet the owner knows her.”

     The waiter picked up the zinc tray and said, “I’ll ask her.”

     A few minutes later a woman emerged from behind the bar.  Marc stood up and offered her his hand.  “I’m Marc Benet.  The lady’s nephew is my friend.  Their family was Spanish and he called her tia Pilar.”

     The woman looked him over and then shook his hand.  He was glad he’d had the chance to shave and smarten up.    “You can’t be too careful nowadays,” she said.

     “No of course not.”  He glanced at his watch.  “Maybe you’d prefer to accompany me?  If you can spare the time that is?”

     “No I’m afraid I can’t, but - - ” She half turned and waved the waiter over.  “Georges can show you.  It’ll only take a minute.”

     Marc thanked her and followed the waiter into the street. 

     “Madame must like the look of you,” he said gruffly.

     “A lot of people don’t.”

     “You look okay to me.”

     Marc grunted: if only.

     They stopped at the third house on the left, number 5.  There was no bell and Georges waited while Marc knocked on the door.  After a minute it opened a crack.

     “Madame Martin,” said Marc respectfully, “I’m a friend of Guy’s, his old partner - - ”

     There was no answer.

     “He might’ve mentioned me, Marc Benet, or maybe he called me Gitan, from Cameroon.  We owned a club together called Le Frigat.  He calls you tia Pilar.”

     The door opened.  A small woman dressed in black stood in front of him.  She smiled shyly.  “Yes, Guillermo told me about you and the club.”  Her French was drawn out with heavily accented Spanish vowels.

     They shook hands and Georges backed away, “I’d better get back.”

     Tia Pilar looked from one to the other.

     “Georges works at the Café,” said Marc, waving him off, “thanks.”

     Inside the house bore all the hallmarks of rented property with cheap furniture and worn carpets.  Several packing cases were stacked up in the corner and there were bare marks on the walls where pictures had hung.  Above the mantelpiece two framed photographs were still in place.

     Tia Pilar wiped her hands on her black apron.  “I’m sorry Monsieur, you must think me very rude not offering you anything, but I’m afraid I’ve just had lunch.”  She spread her hands wide and surveyed the chaos around her.  “I wasn’t really expecting visitors.”

     Marc shook his head, “no problem, really, thank you.  I just had mine too.”  In truth the coffee had been the only thing to pass his lips since his encounter with Foccart.  His interest in food had dwindled to nothing.

     “Sit down, please - - ” she said.

     Marc glanced at the stairway.  “Perhaps I could use your toilet?”

     “Of course.  Top of the stairs on your right.”

     He reached the top and closed the toilet door loudly before quietly checking the bedrooms.  There were open suitcases and cardboard boxes but no sign of Guy except a postcard on tia Pilar's bedside table of a modest cafe with green and white striped awning, "Cafe de la Gare" at Vernon.  On the back Guy had written two names, ISABELLA and PABLO, and the words "hablan Castellano".   He made a note of the number before returning to flush the toilet and wash his hands.

     Downstairs he crossed the room to the fireplace and gestured at a studio shot of two boys, one clearly Guy, sitting together with a woman bearing a striking resemblance to the woman before him.  She was younger and more vivacious but still in black. Marc vaguely remembered the Catholic rules for women in mourning: was it the death of a husband that counted the most?

     “That’s you and - - Guillermo, right?” he queried with a raised eyebrow.

     She nodded.  “And his brother Santiago," and an afterthought, "we call him Gui, the same as the French.  It was easier for him."

     “Sure.  I didn’t know he had a brother.  He never said.”

     “He wouldn’t.  Santiago was killed by the British.”  She sat down abruptly and gathered her hands tightly together in her lap.  “It was terrible.”

     “I’m sorry.  Guy never said a word.”

     “No.  It was such a shock.  I think he blamed himself.”

     “Why?”

     She shrugged a thin shoulder.  “Because he survived and it was his idea to go.”

     “Where?”

     “The French fleet in the harbour.  The date is carved into my soul, July 3rd 1940, the day the British attacked.  Santi was killed him outright by shrapnel in his back.”  Her eyes welled up and she made a furtive sign of the cross.  “If only I’d stopped them.  It was a miracle Gui was saved.”  She sniffed and dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief.

     Marc nodded.  It made sense.  The British had destroyed the French fleet before Vichy surrendered it to the Nazis.  No wonder Guy bore them a grudge.

     “Terrible,” he said.  They’d never shared memories from childhood.  “How old was he?”

     “1940,” she said, momentarily fazed and staring across at the photograph.  Her blue eyes, the same as Guy’s, were blank.  “Gui was eleven and Santiago sixteen, only two years after their mother died.”  She shook her head and wrung her hands as if it’d been yesterday.  “My sister Graciela was taken from us.  Cancer.”

     She wiped away the tears.  “I’m sorry Monsieur, but my sister had already lost her husband - - ” She blew her nose.  “Our family has suffered so much misfortune and I think Gui blamed himself for that as well.”

     “How?”

     She sighed heavily, “it was 1934, an insurgency against King Alfonso and General Franco sent in the cavalry.  Gui’s father, was trampled underfoot and afterwards he was convinced his father had been trying to save him, but the poor child was only five and we’ll never know what really happened.”

     Marc’s heart sank.  How could he inflict further pain on this family?  He knew Catholics didn’t believe in curses like gypsies but it looked as if somebody had born them the most horrific malice.

     “Poor Guy,” he said and looked away.  “You’re moving?”

     She brightened.  “Yes, we’re going home.  As soon as he gets back from Africa.”

     “Guy’s in Africa?”

     “Yes, Douala.  He said he had a few last things to sort out with your old club.”  Her eyes shone.  “Nobody could’ve been more of a son to me.”

     “When?”  Marc’s heart speeded up: was this an opportunity or a disaster?  “I mean when is he back?”

     “Sunday.”  She clapped her hands like a little girl and picked up a brochure.  “And we’re going to celebrate with a visit to Monet’s garden!  It’s supposed to be enchanting.”

     Marc glanced at the brochure. 

     “He’s been promising me for months!  Every time he’s been out to his bolthole.  That’s what he calls it!”  She looked girlishly coy.  “Where he hides from me.  Some cottage in the forest, like Hansel and Gretel.”

     Marc nodded: trust Guy to have a bolthole.