The Wind and the Rain Read online

  “I can hear you,” I said, frankly pretty annoyed that this man was talking to me as though I didn’t exist. I stared at Jean but he refused to even respond in kind.

  “I hope this one is reliable,” Jean said. I turned to Gunari and I saw he was unimpressed by the remark.

  “We sow the seeds Jean, we never know if the seed will prosper,” Gunari said.

  “I know, I know. Remember that unchecked pride consumes humility.” Jean said and Gunari opened his arms in resigned acceptance. I have no idea what they are talking about.

  “Things here have heated up, we plan to leave very soon no matter what actions you take Gunari. My cousin’s teenage son was beaten up by these...fascists. His eye-socket was fractured. It is not safe for us here,” Jean said.

  “OK,” Gunari nodded, “If you wish, that is your choice. I am not here to tell you what to do or not do,”

  “The candidate is a man named Ginesty. He runs a delivery business in Lyon but his headquarters are near here. I believe the people acting on his behalf are his employees, he is known for taking on former convicts and using them to intimidate councils into selecting his firm for contracts,”

  “Does he have a family?” Gunari asked.

  “No, he isn’t married. He cultivates an image of the playboy. He’s always being photographed in the newspapers with young models on his arm. All that money and all that pride, flaunting his immorality with unmarried girls,”

  “Well, we’ll try and find him tonight, I’ve got his address. We will come to see you tomorrow morning to confirm our plan,”

  It was time to leave so I headed out without saying anything and got straight into the car. Gunari said his goodbyes to Jean and joined me.

  “I don’t think he looked at me once,” I said. I didn’t want to say anything to Gunari but I couldn’t hold it in.

  “This is how the community can be Ana, all over Europe. Many of the older generations will only deal with men,”

  “It’s disrespectful,”

  “I agree but you can’t change peoples’ beliefs overnight,”

  I didn’t want to continue this conversation so I remained silent until Gunari asked me to check the map to find the grubby mayoral candidate Ginesty’s house. It took some time to find as he lived in the suburb of Brotteaux in the north of Lyon. I marked the street down for later as we were about to head to a speech Ginesty was giving at a community centre in Meyzieu. The area was run down and bore more of a resemblance to some of the toughest estates in Belgrade than the image of France that I held since I was a child.

  It was a mild early evening and a large crowd had turned out to hear Ginesty speak. A quick head count showed there must have been over a hundred people there. There was a boisterous atmosphere and on a couple of occasions earthy chants rose from the crowd. A large hoarding is visible at the back of the stage with Les Françaises aux Les Français! written on it alongside a large Front National logo.

  The crowd was composed wholly of white people. Some of the people had angry faces and I began to notice a few people eyeballing Gunari and me, the two dark interlopers. Ginesty was ten minutes late coming on, Gunari told me this was a standard tactic for politicians to keep people waiting and to help build the atmosphere.

  Another ten minutes passed and the crowd swelled even further. More songs could be heard around the crowd. “France for the French” was being bellowed by the younger members of the crowd. The atmosphere suited a football match rather than a political speech.

  Ginesty finally appeared from behind the hoarding with a fist raised in salute. The crowd erupted into almost animalistic shouting. Ginesty stood at the lectern with his arms out drinking in the adulation, a cross between a resurrected Jesus and a deeply untrustworthy second-hand car salesman. The roar of the crowd barely ceased as Ginesty tried to calm them down. His black hair was slicked back and he was wearing an expensive suit. I have to say he definitely looked the part of a politician. He moved to the microphone and the noise only slightly decreased.

  “Friends, please, I don’t deserve this welcome,” Ginesty said, his false humility was blatantly obvious to my eyes. He was clearly loving the attention and he was grinning, possibly in surprise at the reception. Eventually, the shouts and songs finally faded away and Ginesty addressed the crowd.

  “Thank you all for taking time from your busy lives to come here and listen to me. I am greatly humbled by the sight of so many concerned citizens. But I’m not only humbled I am also very disturbed. I am disturbed that so many people feel so appalled by the state of our once-great country. A nation of heroes. A nation that gave rise to Napoleon, that allowed Victor Hugo to write great novels, for Rodin to sculpt his masterpieces.

  “A nation that spawned the writings of Voltaire, Sartre and Rousseau that now spawns graffiti on trains saying ‘Kill the cops’ or ‘Arab power’. Has our nation sank so low that this has become acceptable?”

  The crowd responded with a unanimous shout of “No!”. Ginesty’s tone is cynical rather than angry. His reasonable tone contrasts with the ferocity of the crowd making his points appear more legitimate.

  “You may not know this but I moved to Meyzieu only three years ago. I arrived in this wonderful town after I was forced out of my home following the riots in Les Minguettes. My parents moved there after the war and set up a little bistro hoping for a peaceful life. However, years of abuse at the hands of foreigners sent them both to an early grave.”

  “None of that is true,” Gunari whispered to me. He barely averted his eyes from Ginesty, “His parents are both solicitors who have lived in Guillotière all of their lives,” I’m guessing Janko helped to supply this information.

  “I know you feel betrayed by the profligate socialists in the Élysée Palace. I know all you want is to feel safe in your homes and on the streets, I know all you desire is for public transport services that are on time and not vandalised with Arabic muck. And I agree! In fact, I don’t quite understand why these things aren’t at the top of the agenda for the bigwigs in Paris.”

  Ginesty’s voice started to morph from reasoned teacher to a loudmouth spitting venom. The crowd were devouring every word he said.

  “If you vote for me in two weeks as your mayor I guarantee I will do everything in my power to make all of your lives better. You are the backbone of this country, you are hard-working French people who pay your taxes and abide by the law.

  “I will ensure you can walk to the shops without being accosted by gangs of youths speaking filthy verlan slang. I will ensure you can catch a train without the fear of being pickpocketed by a team of teenage gypsy thieves. I will ensure you can visit your friends and family without African pimps trying to sell you an hour with one of their contaminated black whores.

  “For too long, Lyon and France have been a soft touch led by liberals and depraved homosexuals. The city is a cesspit of immigrants bringing with them crime and disease. And all they want is handouts. I say no, no, no!” A huge, primal roar erupts and reciprocates the shouts of “No!” and both Gunari and I flinch.

  “Do you want Meyzieu to be the new Vénissieux? Full of gangs of youths burning cars and smoking drugs? The police standing idly by whilst these deviant cultures infect our beautiful heritage. What happened there will be on your doorstep in the near future.

  “The time is right. I say it is high time that we remove the undesirable elements from the city of Lyon. Let us start with the Arabs! Send them back to Algeria where they can indulge in their backward Islamic customs as much as they want. Next, we will search every one of the traboules in the city amidst the rubbish and the rats and round up the gypsies and send them back to India. We have no need for their filthy traditions of theft or incest here.

  “This is France, do you hear me, foreigners? This is the nation of Vercingetorix and Charles Martel, of Joan of Arc and Charles de Gaulle and they didn’t rest until they had ejected the foreigners from our land. The land of the free French!”

  The noise wa
s unbearable. From every direction, I could hear remarks about Arabs, blacks, gypsies and Communists. Gunari gently nudged me and nodded his head towards the exit. We made our way out past snarling faces. Luckily people were so caught up in the emotion of the speech they were oblivious to two of their enemies sidling past them.

  We made it to the car which was parked up opposite the community centre and remained there until the speech ended barely five minutes later. People filed out of the centre and conversation was ablaze amongst the attendees. After a few minutes, we saw Ginesty stood outside chatting to an elderly couple. As he spoke a young blonde girl who can’t have been much older than me appeared at his side.

  She was so pretty it was barely believable. Simply clapping eyes on her beautiful face and confident demeanour made me conscious of my clumsy old spinster appearance. It’s funny how someone as beautiful as this girl could fall for someone who has spent the past half an hour spewing hate-filled shit out of his mouth.

  A couple of tough looking security types also joined them and after a long animated conversation, the old couple sloped off into the night presumably to waffle on about thieving gypsy kids. Ginesty and the blonde girl walked down the street away from us and his two heavies followed.

  “Let’s drive to his house and wait there, we won’t be able to get close to him now,” Gunari said. He drove off towards the city of Lyon and it took us half an hour to arrive there. Ginesty’s claims that he lived in Meyzieu were clearly nonsense as his place was in one of Lyon’s leafy suburbs.

  He lived in a modern low rise apartment block on the Boulevard des Belges opposite a large park. As we sat in the car on the street outside his block devising a plan, I spotted him. He was swaggering down the street towards us dressed in jeans and sports jacket animatedly chatting to a young man. I nudged Gunari who grunted.

  The two men entered the apartment block and the foyer light flashed on automatically. Through the window, I saw the two men climbing up the stairs. As they were going up Ginesty suddenly slapped the young man’s bottom. His friend turned around towards him and smiled. Ginesty then stood level with the young man and they began kissing in a very intense manner. I was shocked at the window shenanigans and in truth, I wasn’t sure I actually saw that.

  “Did I actually see that?” I said to Gunari.

  “Yes. Yes, you did,” he replied. Gunari was smiling.

  “What are you smiling for?” I asked. Gunari didn’t respond to the question. Instead, he beckoned me to follow him out of the car. I glanced up at the top window and I saw the two men entering his apartment.

  “Have you got your camera?” Gunari asked. I opened the back door and grabbed my Polaroid OneStep that Janko had bought me for my birthday in October. I had been snapping photos with it for the last two months. Gunari led us through the gate to the apartments then turned to me and said:

  “How are your climbing skills?”

  “I’ve climbed the occasional tree,” I replied. I raised my eyes up to the third floor where Ginesty lived.

  “Do you want to go up and take a look at what is happening in there?” Gunari said and I nodded and straight away began pulling myself up to the first-floor balcony. Luckily it was a modern building with loads of ledges to grab on to.

  I clambered to the first storey with ease, then stood on the balcony wall and leapt up to the next level. Again, this was straightforward. I needed to get to Ginesty’s floor above but I had to avoid making any noise or being spotted. The level I was now stood on ranged over two windows. On the floor above, the mezzanine only covered the left-hand window where the living room was situated. The right-hand window, probably the view from a bedroom, had no balcony.

  The light was on in the left-hand window but not the right-hand window so it was most likely they were still in the living room. I decided to go for it and climb to their level. Once I was up there I could devise a plan, or hide.

  I jumped and grabbed the balcony wall and pulled up my head up to look in. I saw Ginesty pouring a couple of drinks from a glass decanter. Ginesty walked over and handed his young friend a glass. My arms began to slightly ache but the pain vanished when I saw Ginesty strip off to his white underpants. His companion slid off the sofa and was on his knees where he took off Ginesty’s pants and started doing things to him. The kind of things that I’ve never witnessed on my time here on earth.

  This was easily the most surreal moment of my life, hanging off a balcony in Lyon watching two men kissing and touching each other. I pulled my right leg up onto the deck and hung on there like you would cling to a ship if someone was trying to hurl you overboard.

  One of my arms was now free and I started taking snaps of the now naked couple. They were engrossed in their nude adventures, so I threw myself over the wall onto the cold floor. I slithered over to the living room outside wall where I managed to stand up.

  For the next twenty minutes, I took more photos and saw things that I can probably never unsee. I checked the photos and they were very clear, probably too clear for the sensitive amongst us. I sneakily leapt over the balcony and scrambled down to see Gunari.

  “Come on, let’s go,” I said and handed the Polaroids to Gunari.

  “Top work, Ana,” Gunari replied. He was cycling through the photos and grinning.

  In the morning, we returned to the camp and met up with Jean again. We were sat in the motorhome. The conversation meandered for an hour or so as Gunari and Jean talked about friends, most of whom it seemed had died from a variety of awful illnesses or perplexing accidents. During this time I don’t think Jean looked in my direction once.

  Gunari finally told Jean that we had some information he may be interested in. Jean raised a quizzical eyebrow and I tossed the Polaroids across the table.

  Jean was fascinated by the extremely graphic pictures of two men engaged in rather vigorous explicit acts. One of the photos clearly showed the face of a handsome middle age man kissing a young lad who didn’t look much older than me.

  “Oh, this is exactly what we need,” Jean smiled.

  “And there was me thinking we might need to burn down a warehouse or two tonight,” Gunari replied. This was easily the most jovial mood I had seen from Gunari.

  That night we returned to Ginesty’s apartment. Almost identically to last night, we saw Ginesty walking along the street with a young lad. It may even have been a different boy from the night before. We exited the car and followed behind them towards the apartment block entrance. Ginesty even held the door open for us as we followed him inside. His realisation that something was amiss occurred as we followed him to the top floor. Gunari had already noticed that there was only one apartment up here.

  Ginesty turned around and came face to face with Gunari’s pistol.

  “My God,” he said calmly. Gunari pointed towards his door and Ginesty unlocked it and the four of us entered.

  “I don’t need to tell you,” Gunari whispered, “If you try anything stupid, I will blow your brains out with immediate effect,”

  Ginesty nodded and led the way into a large living space with an amazing all-white kitchen attached. He sat down on an off-white leather sofa and told his friend to sit on the chair opposite. I noticed the youngster had pissed himself and tears were rolling down his cheeks. He looked at me and I smiled sympathetically despite the situation.

  “You are making a big mistake,” Ginesty said, his composure returning although his face was covered in a layer of sweat.

  “This isn’t a Hollywood film, Mr Ginesty, so keep your mouth shut.” Gunari barked at him. Ginesty flinched and his demeanour visibly went from cockily composed to utterly terrified. I glanced at the young lad and he was struggling to cease crying.

  “Listen, I can get you some money or anything else you need,” Ginesty begged. He actually clasped his hands together, submitting to Gunari. It looked false, a piece of acting by an insincere politician.

  “I don’t need anything from, you lowlife. I have heard about the wicked crime
s you are perpetrating on the Roma community here in Meyzieu. I am visiting you to tell you that you need to cease your bigotry and violence against my people,”

  “Of course, of course. I only said those things as it’s what people want to hear. You know what the people around here are like?”

  “Mr Ginesty, you can drop the false modesty. I know you and I know how you operate. Sycophancy, duplicity and insinuations will not work with me and our demands are not up for negotiation.” Ginesty dropped to his knees with hands pleading with Gunari. Yet again, I remained wholly unconvinced by his performance.

  “You will no longer make any public remarks about, or discriminate against, the Roma community. You will no longer instigate, or support any acts of violence upon the Roma community. Am I clear?”

  “I promise I won’t, I promise,”

  Gunari started to walk away and I kept my eyes on Ginesty, a smile creeping on his lips as the pretence began to peel away.

  “Of course,” Gunari turned around again to face Ginesty. “If every single one of our demands isn’t adhered to, the copies of these photographs will be sent to all of your employees, all of your potential voters and your friends and family,”

  Gunari threw down the photographs and Ginesty examined them. His face was rigid. He seemed to be staring through the photos and through the floor straight into the bowels of his own personal hell. Finally, he forced his head up to look at us in the doorway. He simply nodded his head in broken defeat. His boyfriend stretched over and laid a hand on his arm which Ginesty lamely batted away. Gunari picked up the photos and placed them back in his coat pocket.

  I opened the door and Gunari and I left. The strangest wave of tempered exultation came over me, it was hard to explain. Vastly energised, yet hollowed out.

  “I felt sorry for Ginesty at the end,” I said to Gunari as we sat back in the car, and then rushed to the second part of the sentence “I know he was an awful man and he deserved it,“

  “Don’t lose that humanity Ana,” Gunari said, surprising me, “No one is all good and nobody is all bad. This is a man who has continually made decisions to make himself more powerful or richer by exploiting others. In the grand scheme, he isn’t the worst person we have dealt with. However, his behaviour needed to be corrected,”