Malavita (3 page)

“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 small-time 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 teammate. 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.