Free Solea by Jean-Claude Izzo, Howard Curtis Page B

my old neighborhood, the Panier. My hangout in the days when I was a cop.
    â€œThat’s where I learned to swim,” I said to her, pointing to the harbor entrance.
    She smiled. She had just joined me at the foot of the Fort Saint-Jean. Striding up to me with a cigarette in her mouth. She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, like the day before. They were off-white this time. Her auburn hair was drawn back behind her neck in a little bun. Deep in her dark hazel eyes, there was a wicked gleam. She could easily pass for about thirty. But she must be at least ten years older.
    I pointed to the other shore. “You had to swim across and then back if you wanted to show you were a man. And have any chance of making out with girls.”
    She smiled again. Revealing, this time, two pretty dimples in her cheeks.
    In front of us, three elderly couples with weatherbeaten skin were getting ready to dive into the water. They were regulars. This was where they bathed, not on the beach. Out of loyalty to their own youth, I supposed. For a long time, Ugo, Manu and I had continued coming here to swim. Lole, who rarely bathed, would come and join us, bringing a snack. We’d lie on the flat stones and dry off listening to her reading her favourite lines from
Exile
by Saint-John Perse.
    Â 
    . . . we’ll head more than one cortege, singing yesterday, singing elsewhere, singing evil at its birth
    And the splendor of life going into exile interminably this year.
    Â 
    The elderly people dived into the water—the women wearing white caps—and swam toward the Pharo cove, with confident, skillful strokes. They weren’t showing off. They didn’t have to impress anyone anymore. They impressed themselves.
    I watched them as they swam. I was willing to bet they’d all met here when they were sixteen or seventeen. Six friends, three men and three women. And now they were growing old together. Enjoying the simple pleasure of feeling the sun on their skin. That was what life here was all about. Loyalty to the simplest actions.
    â€œIs that what you like, making out with girls?”
    â€œI’m past all that,” I replied, as seriously as possible.
    â€œOh, right,” she replied, just as seriously. “That’s hard to believe.”
    â€œIf you’re talking about Sonia . . .”
    â€œNo. I’m talking about the way you look at me. Not many men are so direct.”
    â€œI have a weakness for beautiful women.”
    She burst out laughing. The same laugh she’d had on the phone. A frank laugh, like water flowing from a hollow. Harsh but warm. “I’m not what people call a beautiful woman.”
    â€œAll women say that, until a man seduces them.”
    â€œYou seem to know a lot about it.”
    I was disoriented by the turn the conversation was taking. What the hell are you saying? I asked myself. She looked hard at me, and I felt awkward suddenly. She certainly knew how to get people to talk.
    â€œI know a little,” I said. “Shall we walk, captain?”
    â€œCall me Hélène. Yes, I’d like that.”
    Â 
    We walked alongside the sea until we reached the outer harbor of La Joliette. Facing the Sainte-Marie lighthouse. Like me, she loved this spot, from where you could see the ferries and the freighters going in and out. And like me, she was worried by all the plans for the port. There was one word on the lips of the politicians and the technocrats. Euroméditerranée. Everyone, even those who’d been born here, like the current mayor, was looking toward Europe. Northern Europe, of course. Capital: Brussels.
    The only future for Marseilles lay in rejecting its own history. That’s what we were being told. All this talk about redeveloping the port was a way of saying that we had to finish with the port as it was today—the symbol of a bygone glory. Even the Marseilles longshoremen, tough as they were, had come around in the end.
    So