The Lost Sailors Read Free Page B

quarter of Marseilles. Near the Vieux-Port. A former longshoreman named Toinou Bertani had bought it from its previous owner nearly three years earlier. At lunchtime, he served some twenty regulars. Simple but excellent Provençal cuisine. Diamantis liked to go there in the morning. He’d sit down on the terrace, under the plane trees, have two or three cups of coffee and read the newspaper.
    One day, Toinou had sat down at his table and said, “Can I offer you a
pastis
?”
    Up until that point, they’d only exchanged small talk. “Hi, how are you doing?” “Fine, and you?” “What’s up?” Just enough to make him feel more than an anonymous customer. The previous day, there’d been an article about the
Aldebaran
in the newspaper. With a picture of the crew. And Toinou had said to his wife, “Shit, that’s the guy who comes by for a coffee every morning.”
    â€œPoor man!” Rossana had concluded, after reading the article. “From what it says here, it can’t be much fun for them. On top of that, I don’t suppose they ever get a square meal.”
    Diamantis hadn’t refused the
pastis
—or Toinou’s invitation, after the third
pastis
, to share the dish of the day with them. “Seeing as how there’s enough for twenty . . .” That day, it was fresh pasta with a vegetable stew in olive oil. A treat. Toinou and Rossana had one dream: to open a “real” restaurant.
    â€œWe don’t want it to be too expensive,” Rossana had said. “Not like the restaurants down by the harbor. You know, if a worker looks at the tables on the terrace and sees they’ve put the little plates on top of the big plates, then he tells himself this is not for him.”
    It hadn’t taken Diamantis long to realize that they weren’t going to open their restaurant any time soon. Here they were happy to give credit. On principle.
    â€œWhen you’ve been a worker all your life, like me, the one thing you learn is that we’ve got to stick together. Let’s say you come in here, Diamantis, and you’re in the shit . . . You think I’d ask you to pay?”
    â€œYou’re going to be penniless at this rate.”
    â€œI’m nearly sixty. If I go bankrupt, I’ll retire. Simple as that. And if I don’t have enough, my son and daughter will help out!”
    Bruno and Mariette. Diamantis had already met them several times. Bruno, who was the spitting image of his father, had become a longshoreman, despite Toinou’s attempts to dissuade him. Mariette ran a small real-estate office on Rue Saint-Ferréol. A real Marseillaise. Cheerful and self-confident, with hazel eyes that weren’t easily fooled. Toinou, Rossana, Bruno and Mariette had become Diamantis’s family. He felt more at home with them than he did with Venetsanou, a cousin of his who lived in Marseilles.
    He’d visited Venetsanou once.
    Soon after he’d learned that the
Aldebaran
wouldn’t be putting to sea again in a hurry. He hadn’t seen him for ten years. He’d married a Greek girl born in Marseilles, they’d had three kids, and along with his brother-in-law he’d taken over his uncle’s small construction business and made it a big success. Since then, they’d been living in a little villa on Vallon Montebello, on the heights above the city, behind Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde.
    â€œIt’s nice here.”
    â€œYes, it’s a good neighborhood. And there’s a school around the corner that’s one of the best in the city. You can’t imagine how Marseilles has changed. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but it’s full of foreigners.”
    Diamantis thought he’d misheard. “Foreigners?”
    â€œDowntown is crawling with them. It’s true the mayor’s starting to clean things up, but in the meantime . . . For us, it’s quite simple, we just