Paris Noir

LYDIE

I pull away from the pavement, dropping two Rastas in front of La Cigale. There’s a Gladiators comeback show on tonight. Then my taxi cruises into Square Anvers, picking up a scared blonde. She says she lives at La Madeleine.

Midnight.

In thirty minutes we’ll be alone among the taxis and motorbikes, speeding down the city’s streets. I take the wide boulevards, avoiding drunken louts staggering onto the tarmac, cans of beer in hand, and sleepy couples, cyclists without lights.

I’ll never forget Paris, all the cities I’ve driven through. Stockholm’s powdery snow. The strangled guitars of Barcelona’s Rambla del Raval. The shouts of restless rockers in Camden. The youngsters streaming with sweat in the port of Naples, about to sail for Ischia. The drizzle darkening Amsterdam’s windows. And I was forgetting Berlin: Berlin, its smell of warm beer in the nightclubs, leather gear and Lobotomie playing punk rock. All slip by under the wheels of my Citröen, between my fingers fiddling with my twenty-third Camel. The girl behind me moans on, talking about health and the environment, but I don’t give a shit. My cab’s my kingdom. I slam the brakes.

‘Get out, bitch.’

She gets out, shouting, while I tune in to Radio Nova: Solomon Burke pounds out ‘Don’t give up on me’. I can see him from here, Stetson glued to his head, in his regal attire, slumped on his king’s throne. I change into second, go back up to Barbes where the lights are smothered by kebab smells.

Glance in the rear-view mirror: a forty-five-year-old woman’s there, bags under her eyes, hair tumbling over her black biker’s jacket. The night is vast, the wind picks up under the elevated section of the Métro. Neon explodes in the dark. I park the Citröen round the corner from Virgin and go into Mekloufi’s bar.

SUGAR

I’ve got Roger in front of me and I already know what he’s going to say. A tirade about how I’ve got him by the balls on my walkie-talkie. Lomshi, next to me, thinks the same thing.

‘Right guys, I’ll give it to you straight: my balls are attached to your walkie-talkies. The deal’s going down in Square Saint-Bernard. Sugar, you’re covering rue Myrha and you, Lomshi, rue Stephenson. Is that clear?’

‘Got you, Roger.’

‘The slightest thing, you call me, that’s it. You’re the only ones on that frequency.’

‘How much are you dropping?’

‘Five hundred grams of coke. OK, get to your positions.’

I scarper to my bit of terrace on the fifth floor, just round the corner from the mosque on rue Myrha. Then my imperial eye sweeps the street. Nobody. So I take out my Colombian, my papers and my matches. And roll myself the spliff of the century. If Marley could see me with my Rasta hat, he’d be proud of me. I light it, inhaling the sweet smell. Vague glance down the street. I zone out, thinking about the cock fight the night before in the Sernam warehouses. I’d bet on a little runt with a gold comb the breeder called Chico. He was fighting a creature that was raised easy in the dust of the cock-fighting pit. After three minutes both of them were pissing blood and my breeder’d lost his beast who deserved a fortnight’s holiday in the country. But he was dead, doped with brandy, his neck broken by a country hick.

I must have dropped off as I found my joint singeing my jeans, which cost me a fortune at Diesel.

Shit, it’s coming back to me, the deal. I risk a glance over the concrete parapet and see five cops, two in plain clothes, who are shoving Roger against a wall and laughing, swinging the coke at arm’s length.

Fuck. The shame of it.

I crawl across the terrace like a road, tumble down the staircase and hurtle down the five flights, sick to the stomach with fear. As I reach the lobby, I see Roger whispering something to Lomshi, who’s just arrived. Lomshi’s my age, fifteen, he’s the lookout for all the Barbès dealers. Then he runs off towards the corner of rue Myrha and rue des Poissonniers. Running to tell all the drug barons hiding out at the Les Bees Salès bar.

The cops cuff Roger and bundle him into a car marked ‘Police’.

The fear of it.

Lookouts aren’t allowed to doze off. The walkie-talkie crackles in my right hand. I stash it in the fuse box in the hallway. Then leg it to the bottom of the street. I run down the street behind Saint-Bernard, think about doing a tour of Barbès, choosing the darkest, seediest streets. It’s not hard.

The cannabis slows me down.

I think of my sister, on the Tarterets estate.

Of my brother, Mamadou, working like a bastard at the post office, feeding the whole family.

I hear a Capelton reggae number, it’s doing my head in.

I think of the pile of money we made from the deal and deposited at the BNP.

And most of all, I clock the two guys running after me. A dark patch and I cut into rue Polonceau and jump over the fence around the square. Ten or so babes surround a rabble of boys playing football and swapping panini in the half-light. I crouch behind a bench and close my eyes. I don’t want to die.

LYDIE

The guy playing guitar at Mekloufi’s is known as Mimine and he knows three songs: ‘Black Eyes’, ‘Minor Swing’ and ‘Clouds’. When he’s finished those three, he turns to his accompanist, another guitarist, and they improvise. I still don’t get why they’ve got gypsies playing a Moroccan bar but who cares: the beer costs two euros, the music isn’t bad if you like Django Reinhardt and the boss cooks couscous for the regulars. Perfect.

The promotional clock tells us it’s 9 p.m. Through the cafèwindows, I check out the immigrants rushing back to their tiny freezing rooms, women in African robes and baggy-jeaned rappers jangling their two-carat bling.

I’m working till midnight tonight because Alex, the second driver, only picks the car up at 6 a.m. tomorrow morning. I throw ten euros on the table and stick my nose outside, just as a fine drizzle begins to fall. A young Senegalese woman decked out like a Christmas tree rushes towards me, waving her tresses.

‘Are you the taxi?’

I nod.

‘I’ll take it. I’m going to rue Polonceau.’

‘You’re kidding. Rue Polonceau’s three hundred metres away on foot, that works out a lot per hundred metres.’

‘I know, but I’m going to a birthday party and I don’t want to get my hair wet. Shall we go.’

I get into the cab, turn on the meter and tune into TSF which is playing ‘Paris Blues’, an old Terry Callier number that brings tears to my eyes. In five twists of the steering wheel I’m back up La Goutte J’Or, turning into rue Polonceau. The girl gets out at number 14. A bit further on, a whole group of mothers and kids leaving the square with old newspapers shielding their heads. I put the meter back to zero when a son of Jah – a teenager – throws himself on to the back seat, bent double.

‘Come on, grandma, get going!’

I half turn round and give him a professional slap. Little shit.

‘Hey, what was that for? Get a move on, I’m in a hurry.’

‘I’m not your servant, kiddo.’

‘OK, OK.’

Then I spot three black guys, dressed hip-hop style, making their way towards us. And swivel to look at the kid, who’s turning green.

Trembling, he holds out a twenty-euro note.

‘Go, lady, please.’

I move into first, but as I pass the black guys, they throw themselves on my bonnet, stopping me. Shit, it’s not the day for it.

I open the glove box and pull out the Beretta, putting on the safety catch. Then, pretty tense, I push the door open, waving my gun.

‘Touch the taxi and you get shot.’

‘Hey grandma, stay cool, we just want to pick up our friend in the back.’

‘He’s not your friend. Get back all three of you.’

SUGAR

I know those guys: three of the Barbès drugs boss’s henchmen. Look like rappers but they’ve got chickpeas for brains. I hear them whining to the taxi woman: they’re scared of her gun. I yank open the door and shout to the old girl:

‘Lady, it’s best to just go.’

She turns towards me and at the same time I get a knife in the shoulder. Shit, it burns. I quickly get back in, shouting, while the taxi woman shoots a few bullets into the air to frighten off the scum.

She gets behind the wheel.

‘It’s bleeding.’

‘Shut it, trouble.’

She throws the taxi into reverse, backs down La Goutte d’Or and we reach boulevard Barbès in the rain. And I think I’m dying.

‘A hospital…’

‘I know. Let me think.’

It’s not my day. My district’s a no-go area and my only chance is to get back to Tarterets to lie low and wait for them to forget me.

She’s turned on the radio and I recognise something by Dr Dre.

I see her eyes in the mirror.

‘Shit, it hurts.’

‘Don’t pull on the blade, it’s stopping the blood flow. I know Hôtel-Dieu well, we’ll go straight there. When we get there, you say nothing about my gun. You got knifed by some crazies in the street and I picked you up afterwards. Understood?’

‘You haven’t got a licence.’

‘I have but I don’t want any hassle. Who are those guys? And who are you?’

‘None of your business.’

She slams on the brakes. We’re at the corner of boulevard Saint Martin. Everything’s blurry under the rain which mists up the glass.

She walks round the cab and opens my door. She’s already soaked.

‘Get out, you moron.’

‘But why?’

‘I like to know who I’m dealing with.’

‘OK, I’ll tell you, but get a move on, I don’t want to die in a taxi.’

At last she starts up again. This woman’s stressing me out. With all the hassle I’ve got, I didn’t need this too.

‘Right, explain.’

So I describe my glamorous life in the square. Of course I don’t give names. I say I went into a diabetic coma on the terrace in rue Myrha. Rashid my neighbour’s got diabetes.

‘You don’t look like a diabetic. You were smoking dope and off your head, I reckon.’

‘I was not. I can control my drugs.’

‘Oh yeah, you’re in control. And now you’ve got all the dealers in Barbès on your arse, wanting to avenge their friend.’

I don’t answer but she’s right. We reach A &E, there are lights flashing, ambulances drive to and fro in front of the taxi. The knife digs into my shoulder when I move. Taxi woman turns to me and pushes back the blonde hair hanging over her eyes.

‘What’s his name, this dealer you didn’t warn?’

‘Why?’

‘Just curious.’

‘Roger.’

‘Roger who?’

‘Solal. You know him?’

She turns back to her steering wheel, leans back on her seat and says in a thin voice:

‘He’s my son. I knew it.’

Shit, what luck. I don’t know what to say. The shame of it.

Roger’s mother.

‘Get out, now.’

‘Uh, I’m…’

‘Get out!’

I quickly get out of the car, bent over like an old man, and walk slowly towards A &E, so as not to dislodge the knife.

LYDIE

Looking to pick up, I’m back on boulevard Sebastopol. And I realise: I never took the kid’s money. Roger’s face appears on my windscreen. A man. now. But it’s the child I still see. The child who cried at the physio’s, wheezing with broncheolitis. The child who held his breath, pretending to drown, leaving me gasping on the edge of swimming pools in the Essonne. Roger, going under a lorry with his bike, hiding his lacerated, stitched face from me. Roger at the Marley concert shouting ‘No woman no cry,’ mouthing the words in English, eyes shining with joy.

And now, Roger in a cell in La Goutte d’Or, destined for Fleury-Mérogis. I go back up towards Barbès Métro station: Mekloufi’s is still open. I park the car twenty metres away and go in.

Mimine is settling into an impro, picking up the melody from place de Brouckère. He’s learning new tunes, that’s good. I sit myself at the bar and ask for a Kronenbourg. Thinking of my boy. A few minutes later, I go down to the phone booth in the basement and call Patrick, my ex’s, number.

‘It’s me, I’m calling from Barbès.’

‘Lydie. D’you know what time it is? What’s going on?’

‘It’s not good. I picked up a young black kid and we were held up. He was knifed and Roger’s been busted with a load of coke on rue Myrha.’

‘Good God, Lydie, I live in Nice, remember?’

‘I know.’

‘He’s my kid, but he chose you. He chose Paris. Listen, I’m not saying it’s your fault.’

‘It’s always the parents’ fault.’

‘I quit the drugs squad in Nice. They offered me organised crime, it’s more hands on. You want me to put a call in for Roger?’

‘I haven’t seen him in six months. But yeah, I think we’ve got to do all we can. He’s at La Goutte d’Or, d’you know anyone there?’

‘The captain, Delpierre; I’ll call him, he owes me one.’

‘Thanks. I’ll finish my beer and go and find my darling boy. It’s good to hear your voice.’

‘And yours. Keep me in touch. Ciao Lydie.’

Now I’m walking towards the dark, narrow Goutte d’Or. Yes, I’m walking towards Roger – a man, it’s true. The kind of guy I’d have hated at twenty. I think of Patrick, cosy and warm on the coast, of the years I’ve spent in city streets, of the bad smells in the early morning, the bad food, the bad fucks. Of the guys I ditched, of life’s irony which made me save Roger’s lookout’s arse. The dozy police station is 200 metres away when suddenly I see two black guys in Tacchini tracksuits coming towards me. And I recognise them.

‘So, grandma, gonna show us your gun? We didn’t have time to see the make.’

I step out of the way to avoid them. We’re alone. As I walk faster, the bigger one’s hand stops me.

His body’s glued to mine and the bastard hisses in my ear:

‘You, you’re just pretending, but I’m for real.’

And he sinks a knife in my back. Christ, my legs give way, my head hits the edge of the pavement. I hear their steps retreating. I try to shout but there’s some kind of bubble between my lips. I think of all the things I haven’t done, the froth on a beer, triumphant jazz, the cops I’ll never see again. That’s the good news. My body shrinks. I say ‘Roger’.

And then.

And then I say nothing.

Translation © Lulu Norman and Ros Schwartz