Read Online The Lost Sailors by Jean-Claude Izzo, Howard Curtis - Free Book Online Page B

slightly to face them. He was ashamed of himself. For being so pathetic.
    â€œThe
Aldebaran
. A freighter.”
    â€œDoug will keep your passport. And your bag. You can come back for it later, tomorrow if you like. But you come back with the money you owe. O.K., asshole? Now, throw this piece of shit out.”
    â€œMy bag . . .”
    Â 
    Alma sublime para las almas
    Que te comprendan, fiel como yo
    Â 
    The last words he heard. They weren’t the worst.

7.
SUNSHINE AFTER RAIN, BUT NEVER WITHOUT TEARS
    N edim woke with a start. He had no idea what time it was. His watch had broken when he fell. He stretched, half-heartedly. He didn’t feel up to anything. He looked around him and felt nothing but self-disgust. He closed his eyes again.
    He had come back through the Vieux-Port, on the town-hall side. Walking very fast at first, then more slowly, with his hands in his pockets. Because there was no hurry anymore. The clock on the tower of the Accoules church said five-thirty. Pedrag must have been long gone. He had lit a cigarette and cursed them all. Pedrag was a dickhead. Lalla and Gaby were bitches. Gisèle was a whore. The big black guy in the Habana was a son of a bitch. He cursed the whole world. He was talking aloud, almost shouting. Assholes! Assholes! Assholes! All assholes! It brought tears to his eyes.
    It was some days now since Nedim had come to an acceptance that he was going home. He’d told Ousbene all about it. Sailing wasn’t really for him, he knew that now. He wasn’t a sailor, he was a peasant. He missed the land. He missed his village, his house. The cypress trees along the edge of the garden. The hills he could see from his bedroom window. The stream he could hear flowing beyond the kitchen door. And at the top end of the village, his fiancée, Aysel. The girl his father had gone to ask for in marriage on his behalf, when he had come back from the Army. “My son,” he’d said to him, “you’re the right age to start a family. Has your heart chosen?”
    It wasn’t Nedim’s heart that had chosen, it was his body. His whole body. Aysel was the most beautiful girl in the village. Or in any of the neighboring villages. She was sixteen. All the boys had watched her grow up and blossom. They all dreamed about her. His childhood friend Osman should have married her. But Osman had died, crushed by a tree, the fool. And Nedim was the oldest boy in the village still to be unmarried. Aysel was his by right.
    It was because of her that everything had taken a tragic turn. For him, and for his family. Aysel’s father, Emine, didn’t want to give his daughter to a boy without a job.
    â€œI know you and I respect you,” he had answered his father. “Your family and your ancestors, too. I know Nedim is a good boy. He’ll be a good husband and a good father. The dowry you’re offering is perfectly acceptable, Salih. But Aysel is still young, and Nedim isn’t working. I promise my daughter for your son. Come to see me again when he’s earning a living.”
    Emine had paused, then added, “One more thing, Salih. I don’t want Nedim to take my daughter abroad. As most of our children do. It leads to nothing but death.”
    Nedim had lost his temper with Emine, and his father and mother too. What gave them the right to treat the son of Salih the blacksmith, the son of Master Salih, that way?
    He had desired Aysel ever since he’d come back to the village. She was beautiful, yes, but above all she was pure. Her body, her heart, her thoughts. You could see it in her eyes. She wasn’t like the girls he’d met in Istanbul. Dressed like European girls, in miniskirts or jeans, chain-smoking. Girls whose one thought was to get laid. Whores.
    Whores. They’d been his life in the four years since he’d left home. The reason he’d left was because his father had sided with Emine. But he didn’t regret