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passed retirement age. Manu, Ugo and I started to go there when we were about sixteen. We never took girls there. It was just for us. Our hideout. We took all our treasures to the house. Books, record albums. We were inventing the world. A world in our own image, to match our own strengths. We’d spend whole days reading Ulysses’ adventures to each other. Then, when night fell, sitting silent on the rocks, we’d dream of mermaids with beautiful hair singing ‘among the black rocks all streaming with white foam.’ And we cursed those who’d killed the mermaids.
    Our taste for books came from Antonin, an old second-hand bookseller, an anarchist, whose shop was on Cours Julien. We’d cut classes to go see him. He’d tell us stories of adventurers and pirates. The Caribbean. The Red Sea. The South Seas... Sometimes, he’s stop, grab a book, and read us a passage. As if to prove that what he was telling us was true. Then he’d give it to us as a present. The first one was Conrad’s
Lord Jim
.
    That was where we also listened to Ray Charles for the first time. On Gélou’s old Teppaz. It was a 45 of the Newport concert.
What’d I Say
and
I Got a Woman
. Fantastic. We played the record over and over again, at full volume, until Honorine finally cracked.
    â€œMy God, you’re going to drive us crazy!” she cried from her terrace, her fists on her fat hips. She threatened to complain to my father. I knew perfectly well she hadn’t seen him since my mother died, but she was so furious, we believed she was quite capable of doing it. That calmed us down. And anyhow, we liked Honorine. She always worried about us. She’d come over to see ‘if we needed anything.’
    â€œDo your parents know where you are?”
    â€œOf course,” I’d reply.
    â€œAnd didn’t they make you a picnic?”
    â€œThey’re too poor.”
    We’d burst out laughing. She’d smile, shrug her shoulders, and leave. She understood us. She was like our mother, and we were the children she’d never had. Then she’d come back with a snack. Or fish soup, when we slept over on Saturday night. The fish was caught by her husband Toinou. Sometimes, he’d take us out in his boat. Each of us in turn. He was the one who gave me my taste for fishing. And now, I had his boat, the
Trémolino
, beneath my window.
    We came regularly to Les Goudes until the army separated us. We were together at first, during training. At Toulon, then at Fréjus, in the Colonial Army, among corporals with scars and medals up to their ears. Survivors of Indochina and Algeria who were still spoiling for a fight. Manu had stayed in Fréjus, Ugo left for Nouméa, and I left for Djibouti. After that, we weren’t the same anymore. We’d become men. Disillusioned and cynical. Slightly bitter too. We had nothing. We hadn’t even learned a trade. No future. Nothing but life. But a life without a future is worse than no life at all.
    We soon got tired of doing shitty little jobs. One morning, we went to see a Greek guy named Kouros, who owned a construction business in the Huveaune valley, on the road to Aubagne. We weren’t very keen, but this was one of those times when we had to make up our losses by working. The night before, we’d blown all our funds in a poker game. We had to get up early, take a bus, fake our way out of paying, scrounge smokes from a guy on the street. A real nightmare of a morning. The Greek offered us 142 francs and 57 centimes a week. Manu went white. It wasn’t so much the pitiful wage he couldn’t swallow, it was the 57 centimes.
    â€œAre you sure about the 57 centimes, Monsieur Kouros?”
    The boss looked at Manu as if he was an idiot, then at Ugo and me. We knew our Manu. It was obvious we’d gotten off to a bad start.
    â€œIt isn’t 56 or 58, is it? It’s really 57? 57 centimes?”
    Kouros confirmed