Adrien Bosc - Constellation

The victims’ remains are covered in tent canvas, and the litters are carried down the mountain in procession. The rescuers stumble, slide on the viscous ground, the repatriation turns into a prolonged stations of the cross. The hurricane lanterns cast their smoky yellow light on the night watch. After a long section through a dense forest of cypresses, the valley opens out, the village of Algarvia is at the bottom. The bodies are laid one after another on the flagstones of the little church in the village center. As they are identified, they are placed in lead-lined whitewood coffins. In the spring, the church’s baroque façade is repainted in bright colors. On this All Hallows’ Eve, the headlights sweep across the building to reveal the weathered paint from last Pentecost. A first funeral vigil is organized. In the nave, by the light of candles and storm lanterns, the inhabitants of the village file past the victims to the continuous murmur of the Paternoster. The Portuguese prayers of the shepherds and their wives weave a long lament, “ Dai-lhes Senhor o eterno descanso ” (Give them, O Lord, eternal rest).

She had called, the Little Sparrow. In New York, with Marcel far away, she was dying of boredom and grief. She begged him over the phone to move up his date of departure, she couldn’t take it, she told him over and over. And why oblige her to suffer when nothing could be easier than to squeeze a few extra days out of the schedule by exchanging the slow boat for an express trip on the Constellation? Jo Longman, his manager, had groused like hell, but here they are driving the blue Pontiac to the airport. It will be up to Jo to wangle three last-minute seats on Air France’s F-BAZN. Despite the hurried departure, Marcel insists that they stop the car at L’Ambassade des Opéras on the rue Saint-Anne, the bar that serves as the gang’s headquarters, to say good-bye to the girls, Mado and Irène, and Jacquot the barman, and Néné. The day before, they’d been in Troyes for an exhibition match at the municipal amphitheater. Cerdan had promised to go three rounds with the golden boy of French boxing, Valère Benedetto, from Aix. He’d kept his word, and the cream of the Paris sporting world had traveled to the provincial city to see Cerdan climb into the ring one last time before his big fight with Jake LaMotta. Afterward, at the restaurant Aux Vins de Bourgogne, he said in his reedy voice: “I want to fight him and reclaim my title, and I’ll beat him.” A child’s voice, high-pitched and awkward, that jarred with his boxy frame and champion’s record. Comparable in strangeness to the brawling Blaise Cendrars’s fluty countertenor.

After his victory, Jake LaMotta had played hard-to-get. The Mafia’s protégé first canceled the return match, set for September 28, claiming an injury to his right shoulder. It took Jo Longman endless negotiations to get a new date from his impresarios, December 2, 1949, at Madison Square Garden. Marcel had his revenge within reach of his fists. He imagined himself battering his opponent with blows, trapping him against the ropes, making him pay for his disrespect with devastating combinations to his kidneys and chin. At the sound of the bell, he would erupt from his corner, throw himself on LaMotta, and knock him to the canvas. Not the shadow of a doubt. The great matadors are haunted by bulls they have faced. Toreros gone mad, they wake in the middle of the night, visited (or so they say) by a white bull. Some, according to legend, are discovered half-asleep, sword drawn, citing the bull that watches them from the corner of the room. Night terror, fatal omen. Marcel dreamed several times of the rematch. The ring is in the middle of an ancient arena. LaMotta watches him, takes his measure, dances, taunts him. The rounds go by, and Marcel can’t find the opening he needs, the deft feints of the Raging Bull confuse, exhaust him. Then, in the fifth round, always the fifth, he contains the white bull’s charge, upsets his timing, cuts his legs from under him, locks him between his two fists. An ideally placed right hook disorients his opponent, then two more shatter his wavering guard, two steps to the side and a swift uppercut, the death blow. Knocked to the canvas, LaMotta does not get up. To his daily training, Marcel adds the mental performance of this cathartic shadowboxing.

If only it were just LaMotta. If only Édith would show some patience. Boxing has its rules, and sometimes they are biased, but when you have a knockout, the hands go up, there’s no contesting it. Since he met Piaf, he has had to lie, make promises and retractions, advance and retreat, manage one woman, calm the other, the game is beyond him. In July, while he was at the Loch Sheldrake training camp near New York, training for the September match, Édith on a tour of North Africa spent three days in Casablanca. On his side of the Atlantic, three days of anxiety that she was going to have an apoplectic fit. His brother, Armand, was standing in for him, but he couldn’t protect Marcel from a scandal. A July 23 letter from Édith only partially reassured him. She was insisting that he make a choice:

My love ,

There, I’ve opened in Casablanca. The newspaper coverage really hurt me. First, we had to turn people away, and then I sang only fourteen songs. People thought it wasn’t very many, and I was genuinely afraid the Miami would collapse from all the foot stamping. Your brother Armand was there and his wife. I should warn you, his wife said to me, “I like you a lot, and I didn’t expect you to be pretty.” So, if she runs into your wife, that should make her happy. Anyway, the newspapers also wrote that I was pretty, tough luck for you. I’m proud for your sake, my love, I’d like to be the prettiest of them all, the most perfect, so that the day will never come when you stop loving me. That’s why I am making myself more beautiful and improving my mind. You’re so perfect and I want so much to be like you .

I heard that you’re going to build a villa in Casablanca for 10 million and that every time you come back here you settle in a little more. Sweetheart, that’s what kills me and makes me feel I don’t understand anything. Listen, I’m going to tell you something that may open your eyes. You know I’ve never gotten involved in any of this, but now I’ve got to speak out, because everyone comes to me saying that if I love you, I should open your eyes and put you on your guard. Darling, you need to make a decision, first for the children’s sake, and then for your own. You’re their father, and you also have to defend them. After your fight in September, you owe it to yourself to take stern measures on behalf of your kids. For my part, I’m going to suggest something that is perfectly feasible, something that will make both your kids and you happy. I’m going to nag you until you do something about it. You’re going to be astonished by all that I’m going to teach you. But now I know why God set me on your path, He would never have allowed me to do anything bad, and that’s why all the coincidences that surround us, which we find so astonishing, are not coincidences but signs from heaven that I should never leave you. And I’m sure that LaMotta is a call from God telling me to always be near you. Every time we are apart, you get a hard knock. Look at Delannoit and LaMotta. Then look at Zale, Turpin, Roach, you knocked all those guys out the same way. I am sure now that God wants me to be near you, as sure as I live. And I’ll tell you about other things that are so amazing it sometimes sends chills down my spine! I love you and my love is so strong that it protects you!