Solea by Jean-Claude Izzo, Howard Curtis Read Free Book Online

prefecture had decided we needed to act differently, and talk differently. That was when they pulled me out of the hat. The miracle man.
    It took me a while to realize that I was merely a puppet being manipulated. They were just waiting to get back to the tried and tested methods. The harassment, the beatings. To please those who clamored for greater security.
    Now they’d gone back to those tried and tested methods. And twenty percent of the workforce voted for the National Front. The situation in North Marseilles had turned tense again. And was getting tenser every day. You just had to open the morning paper. Schools ransacked in Saint-André, attacks on night doctors in La Savine, or on municipal employees in La Castellane, night bus drivers threatened. And all the while, heroin, crack, and all that kind of crap were proliferating in the projects, making the kids feel they could do anything. And driving them crazy. “The two scourges of Marseilles,” the rappers of the band IAM kept crying, “are heroin and the National Front.” Anyone who’d spent any time among the young knew the explosion was coming.
    I’d quit. I knew it was no solution. But you couldn’t change the police overnight, in Marseilles or anywhere else. Whether you liked it or not, being a cop meant you had a history behind you. The roundup of Jews in the Vel’ d’Hiv. The Algerians thrown in the Seine in October ’61. A whole lot of things that had belatedly been admitted—though not yet officially. A whole lot of things that affected the way many cops dealt with the children of immigrants on a daily basis.
    I’d long thought the same thing. And I’d started down what my colleagues called the slippery slope. Trying too hard to understand. To explain. To convince. “The youth counselor,” they nicknamed me at the neighborhood station house. When I was stripped of my functions, I told my chief that playing on people’s subjective feelings of insecurity, instead of pursuing the objective goal of arresting the guilty, was a dangerous path to go down. He barely smiled. He didn’t want to have anything more to do with me.
    These days, admittedly, the government was singing a different tune. They’d recognized that security wasn’t just a question of manpower and resources, but a question of methods. I was somewhat reassured to hear it said, finally, that security wasn’t an ideology, and that social reality had to be taken into account. But it was too late for me. I’d left the force and I’d never go back, even though I didn’t know how to do anything else.
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    I wanted to look through the article properly. As I took it out of its sleeve and unfolded it, a small sheet of yellowing paper fell out. On it, Babette had written:
Montale. Lots of charm, intelligent too.
I smiled. Good old Babette! I’d called her after the interview appeared. To thank her for quoting me accurately. She’d invited me to dinner. I guess she already had an ulterior motive. Why deny it? I was only too happy to accept—she was a real looker. But I never imagined that a young journalist would have any interest in seducing a cop who wasn’t so young anymore.
    Yes, I had to admit as I looked at my photo again, that Montale had lots of charm. I pulled a long face. That was a long time ago. Nearly ten years. My features were thicker and heavier now, and there were lines at the corners of my eyes and down my cheeks. The more time passed, the more worried I was by what I saw in the mirror every morning. Not only was I aging—which was only normal—it seemed to me I was aging badly. I’d talked about it to Lole one night.
    â€œWhat on earth are you dreaming up now?” she’d retorted.
    I wasn’t dreaming anything up.
    â€œDo you think I’m good-looking?”
    I couldn’t remember what she’d replied. In her head, she’d already left. For