Saïd turns back the clock and pictures the patterns on the swimsuits, year after year. Last year, Céline had a turquoise one with pearls between her breasts. Jo’s was an old-fashioned dusky pink, a colour at odds with her angular body and incendiary aggressiveness. He suddenly feels old, too old for all that, and he’s got better things to do right now than jumping into the Sorgue in football shorts and getting soft-skinned girls to scream by making waves and splashing. That makes him a little sad, with a sweet, almost pleasant sadness. He wonders if the sisters will come without him this year. Actually, he’s not too old, no – he’s just telling himself stories to feel more like a man.
When he lights his cigarette he notices his hands are still shaking, but he’s rather pleased with himself when he sees the heap under the blanket through the tailgate. He knows an antique dealer who’ll pay three times as much as what he gave Manuel to buy the secretaire off him. And who’ll charge the first loaded tourist ten times as much: it’s the law of the market, supply and demand.
Moby Dick
Waves of hot air rush in through the windows of the pick-up truck and mix with some crackling, at times slow-motion Led Zeppelin: the car radio still plays outmoded cassette tapes – the vehicle is almost as old as its driver. Manuel will be thirty-eight next autumn, but he feels like he’s a thousand. Or twenty. A thousand from exhaustion, twenty from the rage. He tears down the road, northbound, in the opposite direction to his house, looking for somewhere anonymous to dump the rug. The green strip of fields as far as the eye can see does nothing to calm him down, nor do the cypress hedges. He wishes he could drive without needing to stop, eating up the miles while listening to his old idols, except he has to go back to the others at the building site. As a matter of fact, he should be there already. An hour late but five hundred in his pocket: not enough for his pride, but better than nothing.
He sees the grey containers on the side of the road, brakes abruptly and narrowly avoids being bumped by the car behind, which drives past with a blare of its horn. Manuel sticks a finger up at him through the open window and shouts a loud Fuck you! only he can hear. The tyres squeal violently and pebbles fly up against the radiator grille. Once the engine is off, the chords of “Moby Dick” reverberate inside the car: a friendly, almost heavy presence. The heat oppresses everything. Manuel wipes his forehead and the back of his neck with a dirty T-shirt lying on the passenger seat. He’s so wound up he’s feeling nauseous.
Taking the rug out of the pick-up truck takes less time than putting it in, but it’s hard in the ruthless sun. The overpowering smell of the litter containers in summer stings his throat. Rotting fruit, mainly. It’s true that the rug is crap, but how the hell does he know what’s valuable and what’s not? These stupid tourists are ready to pay a fortune for ugly old stuff he’d throw straight in the bin, so why not? Of course, if he had any money he wouldn’t waste his time on this shit. The rug partly unrolls along the containers. Manuel holds on to the red-and-black interlacing and the string fringe for a moment, then gives it an angry kick and turns around. He sits behind the wheel and feels the seat moist from his own sweat. The wheel is scorching. For one thing, if he had any money, he’d get a new car. Maybe he’d keep this old rust bucket as a souvenir, since they’ve been through a lot together, nights in the open air in the back, him and Séverine. Some unforgettable nights, actually.