Gallic Noir. Pascal Garnier

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СКАЧАТЬ sorry?’

      ‘My wife, Emma. She’s alive!’

      ‘Ah. That’s good. Have a good day, Monsieur.’

      The lights turned green and the lady roared off.

      He had broken down not far from his house, three kilometres perhaps, a distance he covered in driving rain with a bag of provisions in each hand. The fine cream linen suit was reduced to a sopping rag when he reached home, and as for the supple slip-ons, now clarted with mud, they might have been mistaken for common clogs. But what did it matter, since Emma would be back any time now?

      When he had put the foodstuffs in the fridge, he got back into his grubby but dry clothes. Recognising his protector’s usual scent, the cat came and snuggled up to him, clawing at the holey sweater and purring. The radio had little to impart, only that a hunter had shot the last she-bear in the Pyrenees ‘in legitimate self-defence’, and in a nursery school three five-year-old kids had battered a little girl of three to death after a sorry incident on the slide. The parents were asking themselves questions. Life, in other words. Brice felt feverish, his head heavy with a doubt which had newly occurred to him. What if he’d dreamed that phone call? It wouldn’t have been the first time he’d imagined something. Blurry-eyed, he looked at the table set for two, with candles which cast dancing shadows on the wall. To calm his nerves he had downed four vodkas. He went out like a light with his forehead resting on the tablecloth. He had bizarre dreams in which embryos kicked and punched one another, and meteorites bombarded the Great Bear in a great disturbance of the stars.

      He was woken with a start by the two notes of the doorbell. His teeth were chattering, a bumblebee in his head was trying desperately to get out, and his muscles were stretched taut like cords. Waves of shivers ran through him from head to toe. Nonetheless, powered by some unknown energy, he went to open the door, draped in a tartan rug like an old Indian man. Beneath her umbrella, Blanche seemed to have been parachuted out of the depths of the night on to his doorstep.

      ‘Good evening. I hope I’m not disturbing you?’

      ‘Er, no.’

      ‘I was worried. I’ve come round several times. You don’t look well.’

      ‘My car broke down. The rain. I must have caught a cold. Please, do come in.’

      Blanche was astonished to see the table set for two, the candles melted halfway down.

      ‘Are you expecting someone?’

      ‘Er … yes. That’s to say, no … Well, one’s always expecting someone. What can I get you? Tea? No, it’s too late. Champagne then!’

      His every action was clumsy; the rising fever made him tremble. The room had no right angles in it any more. His nose was running. He popped the cork.

      ‘What shall we drink to?’

      ‘I don’t know. To those who are here.’

      ‘To us, then?’

      ‘That’s right, to us.’

      They clinked glasses. Blanche was looking at him out of the corner of her eye, a weak smile on her lips.

      ‘How did you know I would come?’

      ‘I don’t know. Intuition, I should think.’

      ‘No, you were expecting someone else. Someone who won’t come.’

      ‘Not at all!’

      ‘Your wife?’

      ‘No … It’s just that I had a phone call and … Oh God, I don’t know. I think I’m going mad.’

      Fever and alcohol pearled his brow with sweat. He knocked over his glass – his hands no longer belonged to him. From the other side of the table, Blanche was looking at him, without a word. Her outlines had gone, she was dissolving into the cigarette smoke. He could see nothing now, or only distorted objects, things, stuff he would have been hard put to name. It was like the time before the end of the world, when everything was still just plans, drafts, rough sketches. Brice took off his glasses and rubbed the lenses vigorously, but it made no improvement.

      ‘Emma went off on an assignment more than two months ago. She was in the hotel in Egypt where they had that awful terrorist attack. They found her papers, and her things, but not her body. Everyone’s convinced she’s dead.’

      ‘Except you.’

      ‘Yes … Well, to begin with … but for some time now I’ve had doubts. So that phone call this morning … I don’t know what to think any more. I’m beginning to wonder whether I wasn’t dreaming.’

      ‘What did she say?’

      ‘It was a bad line. The call only lasted a few seconds …’

      ‘And you’re sure it was her?’

      ‘I don’t know. I’d have liked it …’

      Blanche stood up. Her face showed no compassion for him. She seemed as cold and smooth as a knife blade.

      ‘You should go to bed. I’ll ask Élie to come and pick you up in the morning so you can see about your car.’

      He woke up howling, his body crushed by the powerful coils of an anaconda. The cat leaped off his stomach, whiskers bristling like foils, while Brice struggled to free himself of the straitjacket his sleeping bag had become. The blue-tinged glow of a new day was seeping in beneath the garage door. It was going to take courage for him to face it. He had a stinking cold, of the sort that leaves you woozy for weeks on end. Shortly before ten, Élie rang the doorbell.

      The day was mild and soft. A cotton-wool sky was dabbing at the countryside. Scattered puddles reflected its emptiness. Élie’s reptilian head emerged from under the bonnet of Brice’s car as he wiped his hands on a filthy rag.

      ‘I thought it was the distributor with all this damp, but it must be something else. We’ll tow it to Loquet’s. He’s a good car mechanic, a pal, he won’t screw it up.’

      ‘It’s kind of you to go to so much trouble.’

      ‘It’s not me, it’s Blanche. Help me fix the tow bar then.’

      The seat of Élie’s van was as comfortable as a fakir’s bed of nails. Rusty springs poked out, drooling yellow foam. Several times Brice caught Élie looking at him from under the peak of his cap, and shaking his head.

      ‘It’s extraordinary!’

      ‘What is?’

      ‘How much you look like Louis, Blanche’s father.’

      ‘Yes, so it seems. I’ve been told that before. Did you know him well?’

      ‘We were born a week apart. We went through everything together, school, First Communion, the army …’

      ‘What was he like?’

      ‘Like you and me. A man.’

      ‘What СКАЧАТЬ