Malavita Read Free

Belle had kept up the academic standards of her early years at Montgomery High School in Newark, despite all the upheavals. It had been clear to her, from her earliest youth, that body and soul should enrich one another, exchanging energy and working in harmony. She was curious about everything at school, and concentrated on every subject. No teacher in the world, nor even her parents, could guess at her reason for this – which was to beautify herself. Warren, for his part, who was eight at the time, had learned French in the way you learn a tune, without thinking, without even wanting to. Psychological problems due to his uprooting had meant a year repeated as well as sessions with a child psychiatrist, who was never told the real reason for their leaving America. Nowadays he bore no trace of this, but he never missed an opportunity to remind his parents that he didn’t deserve this exile. Like all children of whom much is demanded, he had grown up faster than others, and had already established certain principles about life, from which he never departed. There lay within him, beneath the values that he preserved as the precious inheritance of his tribe, an old-world solemnity, in which were mingled both a sense of honour and an instinct for business.
    A group of girls from Belle’s class approached her, curious to inspect the new arrival. Mr Mangin, the history and geography teacher, came over to fetch them, and greeted Miss Belle Blake with a touch of ceremony. She left her brother, wishing him luck with a gesture incomprehensible to anyone not born south of Manhattan. Mme Arnaud came to tell Warren that his class didn’t start until nine and that he was to wait in the homework room. He chose instead to nose around the school, casing the joint and establishing the contours of his new prison. He went into the main building of the school, a circular building with spokes, known as “the daisy,” with a hall designed like a beehive, where the older children could hang out away from the homework room, smoke, pick each other up, put up posters and organize meetings – a sort of training ground for adult life. Warren found himself alone there, in front of a hot-drinks dispenser and a large sign advertising the school fête, which would take place on the 21st of June. He wandered down the corridors, opened a few doors, avoided some groups of adults, and ended up in a gymnasium where a basketball team was practising; he watched them for a while, intrigued as ever by the French lack of coordination. One of his happiest memories was going to a game between the Chicago Bulls and the New York Knicks, and seeing the living legend Michael Jordan flying from one basket to the other. It was enough to make you pine for your homeland for the rest of your life.
    A hand on his shoulder put an end to the daydreaming. It wasn’t a monitor or a teacher charged with bringing him back in line, it was a boy, about a head taller than he was, accompanied by two acolytes in loose, too large clothes. Warren was built like his father – small, dark and wiry, with controlled gestures and a natural economy of movement. You could see gravity in the still fixity of his stare. He appeared at first as the contemplative type, the sort whose first reaction is not to react. His own sister had assured him that he would one day become a handsome, greying, experienced-looking man, but that he would have to work hard to achieve that sort of appearance.
    â€œAre you the American?”
    As if brushing off a fly, Warren pushed off the hand, which belonged to the one he correctly guessed to be the leader. The two others, apparently his lieutenants, waited cautiously. Warren, despite his youth, recognized that tone of voice, the slightly unsure aggression, the attempt at authority on the off-chance that it might work, the testing of limits. It was the most cautious form of aggression, practised by cowards. Surprised for a moment,