Cédric Fabre - Marseille Noir

I walk up and down the ghosts of streets that are no more and I hear shots from the 1930s, I can make out the knives cutting the throats of people who didn’t pay up. I go further on in time and am close to the sixties, when the neighborhood, finally rebuilt, was still used as a base for thugs from the French connection. At that time, Le Panier was a kind of Hell’s Kitchen looking over the Mediterranean, with its Dagos and Corsicans as powerful as the Gambinis and the Corleones. I walk in the blood of the past and the walls and cobblestones speak to me and scream violence, violence, violence.

I know, everything has changed, it’s now full of health food stores and artists of all kinds, art galleries and clothing stores, there are even Canadians who make bagels. It’s no longer Little Italy or the Bowery, it’s Soho or Greenwich Village. On a smaller scale, of course, with streets so narrow you can hear your neighbors belching across the way. So just imagine, when they turn the music up to the max.

I decided not to think about it anymore. A kid bumped into me as I turned a corner going up the stairs of the Accoules. I felt around in my pockets, nothing missing. You get paranoid fast in this neighborhood when you think about the past too much.

When I got back to my place, silence had finally filled the night; it must’ve been midnight, the hour of crime. At least.

I finally slept well that night. I dreamed of Carbone and Spirito, of Francis the Belgian and Gaëtan Zampa, firing away like mad, bumping off the dumb, aggressive kids in my class of seniors and my inconsiderate neighbors in the same bloodbath. Calmly, I’m telling you. As long as I was only whacking them in my dreams. I’m a calm man, everybody tells me nobody’s more laid-back than I am. But only if I’ve had a good night’s sleep, I say.

At school, it didn’t get any better. I’m too laid-back, that’s just it: they take advantage. Whoever tries to insult me most takes the prize. I’ve had it up to here with those little shits who won’t listen. When I talk about history they laugh, and when I teach geography they show me their backs. As if it didn’t matter; but here in this damn city more than anywhere else, they really should take an interest in the past. Just like they should know how the world works, the history of migrations, understand Marseille’s role in this human maelstrom. They come from all over, they’ve got roots in their Elsewhere. They’re all islands in their own heads, villages, but they act as if this has no connection to what I teach them. I could help them decipher who they are and why, help them find their way, but no, these morons would rather piss me off by making fun of my name: “LaMarca la Marquise! LaMarca la Marquise!” Yeah, that really cracks them up, and I’m not even gay, just single and vaguely intellectual. But all they see in me is a guy who’s not quite a man — contemptible. Just goes to show how mixed up they are.

Back at my place it’s no better: the morons across the street go on thinking they’re at a nightclub every other night.

I’m tired, I’m telling you. Knocked out.

And it’s been going on for months.

2

I don’t know if I’m dreaming or awake. I’ve got a book in my hand, a book like a weapon. A nice big weapon. A nice fat volume. At least six hundred pages. Yes, pages instead of punches. Bigger reach. Harder. Hit him, keep on hitting.

No, I really have the feeling that this time I’m not dreaming. I hit and hit again, I crush his throat under the thick spine of the book — a crime novel, in fact, what could be more fitting? I really think the guy’s dead, right there at my feet. I feel his pulse, nothing. I press my ear to his heart, silence. I wait. Nothing comes, no movement, no breathing. I took first aid classes long ago, I can recognize death when it’s there.

It’s here.

It’s crazy. I couldn’t have done that. Not me. I’m a calm guy, so calm. Nobody’s more laid-back than me. I’m the coolest, the most accommodating. Everybody says so. I didn’t kill anyone, it’s just impossible. Impossible.

But there’s no doubt about it, the guy here isn’t moving. He’s slumped right there with his back to the wall as if he had too much booze, all limp and soft, flat as a crepe, motionless. I can’t believe it.

What is this book anyway? I still have it in my hand. I read about fifty pages of it. Or tried to. With that racket, no way I could really read. Random by Mathieu Croizet. Heavy. I noticed on the back cover that the author is a lawyer. Hey, I could call him. The guy at my feet. we killed him together, right? If I need someone to defend me, I couldn’t do better than a lawyer for an accomplice.

I can’t believe it! Shit, man, wake up. Can’t say I was crazy about you, but that doesn’t mean I’d waste you like that, smash your throat with a big fat thriller. This is ridiculous.

Jesus, what the hell am I doing here? I came to ask the guy to turn off his fucking music. In this apartment, I’m telling you, they have a party three times a week. Like they’re the only people in the world, like their place is a nightclub, the assholes. For months it’s been like that; I completely lost it, lost hold of who I was, that calm cool cat, he split, like he’s not in me anymore.

I went downstairs at two thirty. I’d been pretty nice; after all, I hadn’t called the cops; I’d been patient, telling myself they were bound to stop sooner or later. And I saw them coming out of the building across the street one after the other, completely smashed on booze and weed. Yelling in the alley. Then disappearing into the night in a straggly single file. But that fucking music was always turned up to the max, I could hear it as if I was on their goddamn couch swilling whiskey-Cokes with them. I put my boots back on and walked out with the book in my hand, my keys in my pocket and my nerves on edge. I rang a bell at random. Some moron opened the door. I walked up to the floor above, to where the music was coming from. The door was half open. It’s funny, but on the landing of their floor the music wasn’t as loud as at my place. I shrugged. Assholes. A shaggy-haired guy opened the door all the way, laughing stupidly.

“Hi, man, you’re late. Everybody split already.”

“So why don’t you turn off your music? Let me tell you something, I live across the street and it’s starting to fuck me up, hearing your music all the time. Some people have to work, you know?”

“Hey, man, take it easy. It’s not late, nobody’s here now. It’s all cool!”

I looked at him, stunned. He’s telling me, me, it isn’t late? He’s telling me to be cool? Me, the most laid-back cat west of the Canebière? I began waving the book around in my hand and it hit his shoulder, but not too hard.

“Hey, man!”

“What, what’s the matter?” I said.

I couldn’t control my right hand anymore, and this time I smacked him right in the face with the book, intentionally. He backed away.

“You’re gonna stop your fucking music now, okay?”

The guy wasn’t moving anymore, his smile frozen across his face. Then the asshole started up again. “Hey, cool, man, be cool,” he said while trying to close the door.

I blocked it with the tip of my boot and pushed — the door with one hand, the joker with the other. And I walked in.

“Okay, deejay, where’s your fucking sound system?”

He’d collapsed onto the floor. Waved, pointing to a wall. I gave the hi-fi a good solid kick and swept it all away with a backhand chop of my book. His gear crashed to the floor, a nice wooden, well-varnished floor. Silence returned at last. You could hear a garbage truck going by down below, probably around the rue Caisserie. Urban bliss regained. If you perked up your ears you could almost get the backwash of waves in the Vieux-Port. Almost.