The Sermon on the Fall of Rome, стр. 46

Judith dried her tears.

“Do.”

He was certain he would never see her again. He did not know that he would soon understand how much those wounding words overflowed with love, for nobody had loved him, nor ever would love him, like Judith, and several weeks later, in the night of pillage and blood that would reduce the world to ashes, it was of Judith that he would think and it would be to her that he would turn, again regardless of the time, immediately after calling Aurélie. The world was not suffering from the presence of foreign bodies but from its own inner decay, the sickness of ancient empires, and so Judith’s departure solved nothing. After a few days Rym handed in her notice and no one thought of keeping her on. She had become sullen and bitter, since the night of the search she had been on very bad terms with Agnès and Izaskun and she could no longer bear the thought of possibly rubbing shoulders with the person who had robbed her of her future. Gratas was charged with replacing her at the till but it was not easy for him to concentrate on his work with Virginie constantly coming to toy with him, so they now had to reckon with the presence of two couples on heat whose combined efforts disturbed the smooth running of the business. Libero wore himself out with a whole range of reactions, from entreaties to threats, but in vain. Pierre-Emmanuel delighted in infuriating him, he would give orders to Izaskun who obeyed them with servile haste, as if he were the boss, he would summon her to the microphone and thrust the full length of his tongue into her mouth, as well as giving her buttocks an energetic massage, and Libero was on the brink of a nervous breakdown.

“That little bastard! I’ll end up smashing his head in.”

Pierre-Emmanuel had perfected his little game developed in the days of Annie, which took the form of provoking the frustration of the luckless by presenting them with the spectacle of his own sexual fulfillment. Virgile Ordioni was his favorite victim. He showered him with intimate confidences, he asked him with mock ingenuousness what he would like to do with a woman if he could manage to find himself alone with one, offering for Virgile’s consideration a spectrum of practices, each more salacious than the last, from among which he was supposed to indicate what his preference was, Virgile laughed, choking on his own saliva, he went purple and Libero again tried to intervene.

“Why don’t you leave him alone?”

and Pierre-Emmanuel protested his good faith and friendship, patting Virgile on the shoulder, who hastened to support him.

“Oh, let him be! He’s a good guy, he is.”

Pierre-Emmanuel was not a good guy, Libero knew very well, but he did not want to be so cruel as to open Virgile’s eyes to his tormentor’s true nature and went back to the counter, hissing between his teeth,

“Little bastard,”

bearing the bitter cross of his resentment until closing time. He would go down to the town with Matthieu, who delayed for as long as he could the moment of going back to his childhood bedroom, the exile to which Izaskun’s inconstancy had condemned him, they would do the rounds of the clubs, sometimes sleeping with tourists on the beach or in parking lots, and went back to the village at dawn, drunk as lords, their foreheads pressed against the windshield of their car, as it zigzagged along the edge of the precipice. Toward the end of August Vincent Leandri invited them out to a restaurant and they left Gratas in charge of the bar. The town was beginning to empty of its tourists, a pleasant breeze was blowing over the harbor, life seemed sweet and they were enjoying the relief of spending a whole evening well away from the bar. They were not worrying about what might be going on there and if Gratas and Pierre-Emmanuel were to decide to hold an orgy on the billiard table, they could screw themselves silly as far as they were concerned and good luck to them. They ate lobster and drank white wine and Vincent suggested they go for a drink at the bar owned by the friend who had introduced them to Annie. To get away from the village only to end up in a strip club did not seem like a tremendously appropriate idea but they wanted to oblige Vincent. The friend once again welcomed them with open arms and immediately treated them to a bottle of champagne. In one corner of the room bathed in scarlet light the girls were chatting as they waited for customers. A great fat oaf came in and settled at the other end of the counter, where a girl came and joined him. Snatches of their conversation reached Matthieu, the fat oaf was trying to impress, uttering idiotic remarks and coming out with appalling jokes to which the girl responded with laughter so forced that it sounded almost insulting and Matthieu recognized Rym’s voice. It was her indeed, in a black dress and high-heeled shoes, her face disfigured by makeup. Matthieu pointed her out to Libero and they were about to get up from their stools to go and greet her when she stopped them in their tracks by focusing a fixed stare on them before slowly turning away and starting to laugh again as if nothing had happened. They did not stir. The champagne was growing warm in their glasses. The fat oaf ordered a bottle and went to get comfortable in a private alcove. Rym prepared a tray, an ice bucket and two glasses, and went to join him there. She gave Matthieu and Libero one last look before drawing shut a pair of thick red curtains.

“Let’s go.”

In the car Vincent tried to be reassuring, that’s how life was, there was not much to be done about it and still less