The Corsicans believe in ghosts. Their graves are proof of this. Why else would they build such monumental crypts? Family mausoleums sometimes even more imposing than the houses they once lived in? Why else would they reserve the most splendid settings for these sumptuous second homes, where seven generations of skeletons live squeezed together? Why would they reserve the most beautiful panoramas for their graveyards if not so that the dead could enjoy the mist rolling in above the crashing waves, the bell-towers silhouetted against the hillside. The sunsets over Calvi citadel. At least the ones who can afford it, not the ones relegated to the rear of the graveyard, resting amid stones in the full glare of the sun, in the rows prone to flooding and rockfalls, where each storm threatens to cover the graves with a fresh layer of mud, or carry the coffins away.

The crypt of the Idrissi family could resist the weather for an eternity. It rose proudly above the wall of the Marcone cemetery, with its azure-blue dome, its Corinthian columns, so that no one passing along the coastal road could forget that name and its glorious ancestry. Among the oldest Idrissi forebears were an admiral (1760–1823), a member of parliament (1812–1887), a mayor (1876–1917), Clotilde’s great-grandfather, Pancrace (1898–1979).

And three ordinary people:

Paul Idrissi (1945–1989)

Palma Idrissi (1947–1989)

Nicolas Idrissi (1971–1989)

Natale was waiting just inside the cemetery, invisible from the road, in the shadow of the limestone-and-plaster wall. Clotilde fell into his arms, kissed him, wept wept wept, and finally collapsed beneath the nearest tree, a yew whose trunk was twisted by the wind from the sea, heedless of the flat needles pricking the bare flesh of her thighs. The cemetery was deserted, apart from an old woman bent over the furthest graves, struggling with the watering can that she had just filled from the fountain.