Free The Lost Sailors by Jean-Claude Izzo, Howard Curtis Page A

“God be praised!” he had murmured, after coming.
    Aysel had hidden her face in her hands, still weeping. Slowly, he had taken her by the wrists and forced her to look at him.
    â€œYou’re mine now. Do you know that, Aysel? You’re mine. I’m going to tell your father. I took what was due to me. Don’t feel sorry about it, Aysel, because I love you.”
    Aysel had wept even more, and Nedim had fucked her a second time. Ignoring her pain, ignoring the blood trickling down her thigh. Because she was his now, she was his woman now.
    He had left that very evening. Back to sea. Without a word to anyone, leaving it to Aysel to tell her father about her shame.
    Â 
    The day before yesterday, he’d called his mother from a public booth.
    â€œAre you coming back for good?”
    â€œYes, for good.”
    There was a long silence.
    â€œIt’s been a rough winter,” she said. “The trees suffered from the cold.”
    â€œEven our mulberry tree?”
    â€œNo. But it’s like me, it’s not feeling so good.”
    â€œStop that, mother! You’ll live to be a hundred.”
    â€œIt’s not that, son. Emine hasn’t forgiven you.”
    â€œI don’t need his forgiveness. Aysel is mine. I’m going to marry her whether he likes it or not. And we’ll live as we want to.”
    Â 
    Pedrag had waited half an hour for him, he learned from a Spanish truck driver when he got to J4.
    â€œFor the same price, I’ll take you to Amsterdam,” the Spaniard said. “I’m leaving in twenty minutes. I just need to sort out the paperwork.”
    â€œFuck Amsterdam!”
    The Spaniard laughed. The sun was rising over the city. The storm, he said, had been terrible. He’d never seen anything like it. The ochre tower of the Fort Saint-Jean was bathed in pink light. But no one in the parking lot paid any attention. “All that beauty, all that life wasted,” Nedim thought.
    A hooker got out of a red Ford Fiesta. There was a sticker on the rear window that said
Proud to be a Marseillais
. She came toward Nedim and asked him for a cigarette. Thanks to the storm, she hadn’t had a single customer. She offered to give him a blow job for a hundred francs.
    Nedim laughed. “If I had a hundred francs, sweetheart, I’d take a taxi and get back to my ship.”
    â€œI’ll take you if you like.”
    She drove him to gate 3A of the dry docks, parking by a warehouse belonging to the Marseilles Naval Repair Company.
    â€œCould I have another cigarette?”
    They looked at each other. She wasn’t all that young. She could have been thirty, or fifty. Life had worn her out. A lined face. Flabby cheeks. A droopy chin.
    â€œHere you go,” he said, handing her three cigarettes. “Part of my fortune.”
    â€œIf you like, we can have a quickie.”
    He got out of the car and stepped into a puddle. “Shit!”
    She laughed. A laugh that didn’t bear any relation to her face. A teenager’s laugh. She seemed ten years younger. He leaned toward her and kissed her on the lips.
    â€œThanks,” he said.
    â€œI’m still at J4. Come see me.”
    At Gate 3A, things got complicated. Nedim didn’t have his entry card for the harbor. He told the watchman he’d lost his bag, his money, but he refused to let him in. He was a young guy who didn’t want to get into trouble. He had to stick to the rules. There’d been too many robberies on the waterfront lately. Nedim couldn’t stand it anymore. All he wanted was to sleep. To forget. To forget everything that had happened during the night. To forget Lalla’s body, Gaby’s fucking smile. To forget Pedrag, the road to Istanbul. To forget his village, the path leading there. To forget Aysel. Aysel. Anger welled in him again. Anger and hatred.
    â€œThe
Aldebaran
!” Nedim screamed. “The
Aldebaran
, dammit! That fucking boat