The Sermon on the Fall of Rome, стр. 48

could she have said to him? How do you walk away from a person with whom you have no quarrel, whom you wish you did not have to walk away from? What could they have done other than exchange foolish remarks? And she was afraid that if she saw him again her desire to remain with him might persuade her to postpone her departure pointlessly. She did not leave him a letter. She did not want to leave him anything other than her absence, because it was by her absence that she would always haunt Massinissa, just as a kiss from a vanished princess forever haunted the Numidian king who bore his name. She called her mother to say she would be in Paris that evening. At the airport she did not allow herself the least gloom as she went through the departure routines. She looked at the Balearic Islands through the window and when she saw the coast of Provence she dried her reddened eyes. Claudie had prepared a meal for her.

“Are you alright, Aurélie? You look tired.”

She replied that everything was fine, kissed her mother and went to sleep in her childhood room. At four o’clock in the morning the ringing of her cell phone brought her out of a dream in which a strange wind was blowing across her body and slowly burying her beneath the sand and she knew she ought to seek shelter but did not want to withdraw from the warm caress of this wind, a caress so gentle that she was still thinking about it as she picked up the telephone. She heard gasps, sobs, choking and then Matthieu’s voice.

“Aurélie! Aurélie!”

He kept saying her name over and over again and could not stop weeping.

There were no barbarian hordes. Not a single Vandal or Visigoth horseman. It was just that Libero no longer wanted to run the bar. He would wait till the end of the summer season or until mid-autumn, he would find work for the girls, a proper job, and then he would help his brother, Sauveur, and Virgile Ordioni on the farm, or he would go back to his studies, he didn’t know, but he no longer wanted to run the bar. He didn’t like what it had become. Matthieu felt as if he had been betrayed. What was he to do? Libero shrugged his shoulders.

“Can you see yourself spending a lifetime here? The procession of girls trooping through, always the same stupid girls. The little bastards like Colonna. The drunks. The hangovers. It’s a crap job. A job that turns you into an idiot. You can’t live off human idiocy. I thought you could, but you can’t because you end up even more idiotic than the rest. Honestly, Matthieu, can you see yourself staying here? in five years’ time? Ten years?”

But Matthieu could see himself staying there perfectly well. In fact he was utterly incapable of imagining a different future. It was true the summer season had been difficult, but they were over the worst now. They couldn’t just walk away like that, after all, it was good what they’d done for the village, everything had been so dead before, they’d brought life back to it, people came now, they were happy, they couldn’t chuck it all in just because of one rather difficult season.

“The people you’re talking about are suckers who come here and spend all their cash to get laid by girls they’re never going to get laid by anyway, and who are too stupid to go straight to the whores. Sometimes I think I prefer things here when it’s dead. And anyway I’m tired. And I want to be able to look myself in the eye in the mirror.”

What was all this nonsense about not being able to look himself in the eye in a mirror? Was the wretched state of things in the world their fault? They were neither crooks nor pimps and, even if they closed the bar, lots of girls would still be going on the game. If Rym had finally found her vocation as a whore what could they do about it? Wasn’t this a tendency they all had anyway, like Izaskun?

“Don’t talk shit, Matthieu. Not you.”

It was the last Saturday evening in August. Pierre-Emmanuel’s friends from Corte had come to take part in a big late night concert. They set up the sound system on the terrace, the customers took their seats and Virgile Ordioni unloaded the charcuterie from his van. At half past midnight the musicians put down their instruments and left the stage to applause. They positioned themselves at the counter beside Virgile, who was drinking eau de vie in a corner while waiting for Libero to have a little time to come and keep him company. Pierre-Emmanuel patted Virgile on the shoulder.

“Well, well, what a pleasure to see you! Bernard, a drink for me, and a drink for my friend Virgile!”

Libero was out on the terrace chatting with a family of Italians. From time to time he glanced inside the bar. When Izaskun passed close by Pierre-Emmanuel he caught her by the waist and kissed her on the neck. She gave a shrill little cry. Libero went inside.

“Izaskun, get on with your work, damn it. Bernard, you go and deal with the sandwiches on the terrace. I’m taking over from you.”

Libero sat down on the stool behind the till and leaned over toward Pierre-Emmanuel.

“I’ve told you a hundred times. Let her get on with her work and wait till closing time before you get off. That’s not too difficult to understand, is it?”

Pierre-Emmanuel put his hands up in a gesture of surrender.

“Ah! It’s so hard when you’re in love! Have you ever been in love, Virgile? Tell us about it.”

And now all the men from Corte insisted on hearing about Virgile Ordioni’s love life, he laughed and said there wasn’t much to tell, but they refused to