Gallic Noir. Pascal Garnier

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СКАЧАТЬ pool to pool it seethed, leaped, splashed the mineral formations, proud in its opulence, intoxicated with bubbles, furious, foaming. His eyes filled with tears. Deafened by the tumult of the ceaselessly roaring torrent, he moved forward cautiously on to the slippery rock in the slim hope of weighing the emerald liquid in his hand. Hold water! Pathetic scrap of a man. No sooner had he skimmed it with his fingertips than he lost his footing. Then it was coming down on him with its full weight, sweeping him along in its depths with bursts of laughter. Gasping as the cold bit, Brice struggled against the current, but it was so strong that after a few seconds he gave up the fight. He felt strangely relieved, as if he had been waiting for this moment since birth. He was tired of fighting, tired of facing up. Perhaps this was where Emma was waiting for him. He needed only to let himself go. In a whirlpool his foot hit a stone and pain ripped him out of the kind of torpor in which he was sinking. His hand shot out of the foam and clutched a root.

      Crouching on the corner of a rock, shaking, stupefied, he watched his hat swirling away to vanish on the glistening back of a waterfall, whose thundering waters plummeted a good ten metres on to jagged rocks beneath.

      Shamefaced, teeth chattering, he limped back towards the village.

      Luckily the chemist’s shop was still open. Its green cross shone out against the rust-coloured sky. The pharmacist was busy attending to a customer. Taking in his pitiful state with one glance, she slipped out from behind the counter and rushed over to Brice.

      ‘What on earth’s happened to you, you poor man?’

      ‘I fell, up by the spring. I must have sprained something.’

      ‘I’ll just finish serving this customer and I’ll be right with you.’

      Her gentle smile warmed his heart. He would have quite liked to call her ‘Maman’. The pharmacy smelled clean, of toothpaste and safety. With a sigh of relief, he stretched out his injured leg. The customer in question was none other than the strange girl he had met at Martine’s hair salon.

      ‘This is the last time, Blanche. You must go back to the doctor’s. I can’t give you any more of your medication if you don’t have a prescription. Do you understand?’

      ‘Yes. Two packets.’

      ‘No, Blanche. One, and then you come back with a prescription.’

      ‘All right, one.’

      Blanche’s voice was, well, colourless, a wisp of a voice, barely audible, as if a ventriloquist were making her speak. As she was about to leave, she froze in front of Brice.

      ‘What a waste of time.’

      ‘I’m sorry?’

      ‘I waited and waited.’

      ‘You must be mistaken, I—’

      ‘Come now, that’s not kind. I’ve been worried. Well …’

      She pursed her lips and shrugged, fiddling nervously with her little pearly purse. White stockings, white coat, white hat, white gloves. Only her eyes were black, as black as coal, almost aglow. Whipping a card from her pocket, she held it out with a feverish hand.

      ‘Tomorrow, five o’clock, for tea.’

      Without waiting for him to reply, she left the chemist’s, as stiffly as a wooden soldier. The pharmacist crouched down in front of him. The gaping neck of her overall revealed two huge breasts, like the smooth rocks forming the mouth of the spring.

      ‘That’s quite a sprain you have there. I’ll put some ointment on and bandage it, but perhaps you should have it X-rayed as well.’

      ‘All right. Tell me, who was that, the white lady?’

      ‘Ah. Blanche Montéléger, from the big house on the edge of the village. She’s a little … eccentric. I thought you knew each other.’

      ‘No.’

      ‘It’s just that you look so much like her late father. I’m not hurting you, I hope?’

      ‘No, not at all.’

      The card was not printed but handwritten in curly old-fashioned script. No address or phone number, just Blanche Montéléger.

      Emma and Brice had been arguing non-stop since the moment they woke up, about everything and, especially, about nothing. It was the first time this had happened to them and neither knew the reason for it now. Maybe it was because of the storm which was circling over the city without ever getting round to breaking. Every object seemed to be charged with electricity and made their hair stand on end as soon as they touched it.

      ‘I’ve told you a hundred times to put the bread away in the basket. It dries out and gets thrown away, and I hate waste.’

      ‘And you might change the toilet roll instead of leaving half a sheet.’

      ‘The way you slam doors!’

      ‘Could you turn the sound down? It’s unbearable!’

      Once they had exhausted their whole stock of petty comments, each of them retreated into a stubborn silence which only increased their sense of unease. They paced around the flat like clockwork figures, brushing past each other in the corridors, avoiding looking at each other, ashamed, aware of the ridiculousness of the situation but unable to act normally. It was as if they had been replaced by grotesque doubles. It was a very difficult day, damp with sorrow, clouded by doubt, with that panicky fear of a child who has let go of its mother’s hand. In the evening, when the storm finally broke, they fell into each other’s arms. It had happened only once in ten years of marriage and yet this was the day he now found himself missing. How he would have loved to relive it, ten, a hundred, a thousand times!

      Rolled up in his filthy sleeping bag on the creaky camp bed, amid the horrendous tip the garage had become, Brice felt like a boxer alone in the ring, up against himself. He needed to hit something, it didn’t matter what. In spite of his swollen ankle he grabbed the five-kilo sledgehammer and headed for the kitchen. Emma had intended knocking down the wall between it and the dining room to make a kitchen-diner – far more sociable, she thought.

      With the first blow, he felt as if the whole house were buckling at the knees and groaning, like an ox under the slaughterman’s hammer. The impact reverberated through the shaft of the sledgehammer before spreading through him from head to foot. The vibrations went on for a good ten seconds. In the sink, a stack of plates collapsed. Horrified, he took in the terrible wound he had inflicted on the wall. Beneath the fragments of plaster, the pink flesh of the brick was visible and a long fissure ran from ceiling to floor. He had struck as hard as he could but the poor old wall was still standing. He had to finish it off. He gritted his teeth, closed his eyes and began pounding with all his might like a madman until, having hit empty space, carried along by the momentum of the tool, he circled on the spot like a hammer-thrower before collapsing on to the heap of rubble, wild-eyed and dazed. His ankle was swollen to twice its size. Plaster dust was gathering in his nose, making him want to throw up like after the first line of heroin. Without meaning to, he had created an almost perfectly circular hole through which the dining-room table and chairs could be seen, stock still and startled, like a flock whose rumination has been interrupted by a passing tourist. It was the first time he had knocked down a wall. His first wall … He didn’t know whether he should feel proud or sorry. СКАЧАТЬ