The Little Man From Archangel (11 page)

Not only did they spend the afternoon in the courtyard but they lunched there as well, under the lime-tree branch which stretched over the Chaignes' garden wall and gave them some shade.

The whole length of the wall was covered by a vine, old and twisted, its leaves marked with rust, but it none the less produced each year a few bunches of acid grapes.

They had tried keeping a cat. They had had several. All of them, for some reason or other, had gone to seek a home elsewhere.

Gina didn't like dogs. Actually she didn't like any animals, and when they went for a walk in the country, she would eye the cows uneasily from a safe distance.

She didn't like the country either, nor taking walks. She had never wanted to learn to swim. She was only in her element when her extremely high heels came in contact with the hard smooth surface of a pavement, and she had in addition a horror of quiet streets like the one in which Clémence lived; she needed animation, noise, the many- coloured display of shop windows.

When they went to have a drink, she did not choose the spacious cafes of the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville, or the Place du Theatre, but the bars with juke boxes.

He had bought her a wireless set and on Sundays she would take it out into the yard, using an extension to plug it into the kitchen.

She hardly ever sewed, was content to keep her clothes and linen more or less in disrepair, and her blouses were often missing a button, while a good half of her petticoats had holes in them.

She used to read, listening to the music and smoking cigarettes, and sometimes in the middle of the afternoon she would go up to her bed- room, remove her dress and stretch out on top of the cover.

He read on this Sunday, too, in one of the two iron chairs which he had bought second-hand for use in the yard. He went back into the shop twice to change his book and in the end became interested in a work on the life of spiders. There was one in the corner, which he had known for a long time, and now and then he raised his eyes to observe it with renewed interest, like a man who has just made a discovery.

The post had brought him no news of Gina the day before or on Friday. He had been hoping, without believing it, that she would perhaps send him a word, and now he was beginning to realize that the idea was ridiculous.

From time to time, without interrupting his reading, his thoughts superimposed themselves on the printed text, without his losing the place. True they were not clear cut, consecutive thoughts. Various images came to his mind, such as that of Angèle, then, straightaway afterwards, for no reason, he pictured Gina lying naked on an iron bed, in a hotel bedroom.

Why an iron bed? And why, all round her, white-washed walls, like those in the country?

It was unlikely that she had taken refuge in the country, which she detested. She was certainly not alone. Since Wednesday evening when she had left she must have bought herself some underclothes, unless she had been content to wash her petticoat and brassiere at night and put them on again in the morning unironed.

Clémence, her husband and Poupou must have been with the Ancels, where the whole family used to gather and the youngest of the daughters, Martine, played the piano. They had a very large yard with, at the back, the shed Gina had talked about. She had not told him whether she had allowed the butcher to have her. Probably she had, but it was also probable that Ancel had not dared to go the whole way.

Twice during the afternoon he thought he heard the piano, the sound of which reached his backyard when the wind was in the right direction.

The Chaigne family had a car and were not at home on Sundays. Angèle used to sleep the entire afternoon while Louis, dressed in a navy blue suit, went to play skittles and did not return until he had made a tour of the town's cafes.

How did a young man like Frédo spend his time? Jonas had no idea. He was the only one in the family not to go to Mass and he was not to be seen all day.

At five o'clock a few old women passed by on their way to benediction and the bells rang out for a moment. Le Bouc's bar was closed. Jonas had made himself some coffee and, feeling slightly hungry, he nibbled a piece of cheese.

Nothing else happened. He had dined, after which, not having the heart to work, he had finished his book on spiders. It was only nine o'clock and he had gone for a stroll, closing the door behind him, had headed in the direction of the narrow canal where a lock-gate stood out black against the moonlit sky. Two narrow barges, of the Berry type, were moored to the quay and he could see rings forming around them on the surface of the water.

He passed Clémence's, in the Rue des Deux-Ponts, and this time there was a light on the first floor. Did Clémence know something about Gina? Even if she did, she wouldn't tell him anything. He did not stop, as he was tempted to do, but passed quickly by, for the window was open and Reverdi, in shirt sleeves, was moving about the room talking.

The nearer he got to his home, the more the closed shutters in the streets, the deserted pavements, the silence, filled him with a sort of uneasiness, and he caught himself increasing his pace as if to flee from some indefinable menace.

Was it because others, like Gina, felt the same fear that they hurried into the garishly lighted bars, to seek the company of shouts and music?

He could see some of those bars in the distance, in the second part of the Rue Haute, on the same side as the Luxor, and he could just make out the couples along the walls.

He slept badly, still with the feeling of a threat, which had pursued him even into his bedroom. He had removed his spectacles and switched off the light when a memory had jangled in his brain, not exactly a personal memory, for the passage of time had confused the fragments of what he had seen and heard with what he had subsequently been told.

He was not six years old when the drama had occurred, and since then there had been no further sensational events in the town until the Marcel hold-up.

He was born in 1916, so it had taken place in 1922, and he was just starting to go to school. It must have been November. The Maison Bleue was already in existence, so called because the outside was painted in sky-blue from top to bottom.

It had not changed since then. It stood surmounted by a very steep roof, at the corner of the Rue des Prémontrés and the Square, just beside Ancel's butcher's shop, two houses from the fishmonger's where Jonas lived at the time.

The sign had not changed either. In letters of a darker blue than the facade was written:
'La Maison Bleue'.
Then, in smaller letters:
'Children's Clothing. Baby garments a speciality'.

The woman now known as the widow Lentin still had her husband at the time, a fair-haired man who wore long moustaches and who, since his wife ran the business, worked at odd jobs outside.

At certain periods, he could be seen sitting all day long on a chair in front of the house, and Jonas remembered a phrase he had heard frequently repeated:

'Lentin's having one of his bouts '

Gustave Lentin had fought in the Tonkin campaign, a name which Jonas had heard for the first time when people were talking of him, and which to Jonas seemed a terrible word. He had caught the fevers there, as the people of the Vieux-Marché put it. For weeks he was like any other man, with a rather dark, at times stormy look in his eyes, and he would embark on some job or other. Then it would get around that he was in bed, 'covered with an icy sweat and trembling in his limbs, his teeth clenched like a dead man's.'

Jonas had not invented this description. He did not know where he had heard it, but it had remained engraved on his memory. Doctor Lourel, since dead, who had worn a beard, came to see him twice a day, striding rapidly, his worn leather bag in his hand, and Jonas, from the pavement opposite, used to glue his eyes to the windows, wondering if Lentin was dying.

A few days later he would reappear, emaciated, his eyes sad and empty, and his wife would help him out onto his chair beside the doorway, would move him during the day, as the sun followed its course.

The shop did not belong to Lentin but to his parents-in-law, the Arnauds, who lived in the house with the couple. Madame Arnaud remained in Jonas' mind as a woman almost entirely round, with white hair gathered in a bun at the back of her head and so sparse that the pink of her skull showed through it.

He could not remember her husband.

But he had seen the crowd, one morning, as he was about to leave for school. There was a wind blowing that day. It was a market day. An ambulance and two other black cars were standing in front of the Maison Bleue and the crowd was shoving so much that one might have thought it was a riot, if it had not been for the oppressive silence which reigned.

Although his mother had dragged him away and assured him afterwards that he could not have seen anything, he was convinced, to this day, that he had seen on a stretcher carried by two male nurses in white smocks, a man with his throat cut. A woman was screaming, he was sure, in the house, in the way that mad women scream.

'You imagine you actually saw what you heard told afterwards.'

It was possible, but it was difficult to admit that that image had not really appeared before his eyes as a child.

Lentin, it was afterwards learnt, suffered from the feeling of being a useless passenger in the house of his in-laws. Several times he was said to have let it be known that things would not go on as they were, and they had imagined suicide. They used to watch him. His wife sometimes followed in the street at a discreet distance.

That night he had not woken her up, even though he was racked with fever. She had been the first down, as usual, imagining him still sleeping and then, silently, a razor in his hand, he had gone into the bedroom of his father and mother-in-law and had cut their throats one after the other as he had seen done by the Tonkinese soldiers, and as, out there, he had perhaps done himself.

Only old Madame Arnaud had had time to cry out. Her daughter had rushed up the stairs, but when she reached the open door her husband had finished his work and, standing in the middle of the room and fixing her with a 'mad look', he had in turn severed his own carotid artery.

Madame Lentin was quite white now, diminutive, her hair as thin as her mother's, and she went on selling children's clothing and baby garments.

Why had Jonas thought of this drama just as he was dropping off to sleep? Because he had passed in front of the Maison Bleue a short while ago and had had a glimpse of a shadow behind the curtain?

It disturbed him. He forced himself to think of something else. As he was still not able to sleep after half an hour he got up to take a tablet of gardenal. In fact he took two, and the effect was almost immediate. Only towards four o'clock he awoke in the silence of the dawn and lay with his eyes open until it was time to get up.

He was stiff and uncomfortable. He almost decided against going to the baker for his
croissants
, as he was not hungry, but it was a form of discipline he had imposed on himself and he crossed the deserted Square, saw Angèle laying her baskets out on the pavement. Did she see him? Did she pretend not to see him?

'Three?' the baker's wife asked him from force of habit.

It annoyed him. He had the impression he was being spied on, and above all that the others knew things he did not. Ancel, without taking the cigarette from his lips, was unloading some sides of beef, which did not even cause him to stoop, and yet he must have been five or six years older than Jonas.

He ate, took out his boxes of books, decided to finish off the stock from the attic before going up to do his room, and at half-past nine he was still working, looking in a bibliography to see whether a dilapidated Maupassant which he had just found in the pile was a first edition.

Somebody came in and he did not immediately raise his eyes. He knew, by the silhouette, that it was a man, and the latter, without pressing him, was examining the books on a shelf.

When he finally looked up, Jonas recognized Police Inspector Basquin, to whom he had on many occasions sold books.

'Excuse me,' he stammered. 'I was busy with . . .'

'How are you, Monsieur Jonas?'

'All right. I'm all right.'

He could have sworn that Basquin had not come that morning to buy a book from him, more especially as he had one in his hand.

'And Gina?'

He reddened. It was unavoidable. The more he tried not to the more he reddened, and he felt his ears burning.

'I trust she's all right, too.'

Basquin was three or four years younger than he and had been born the far side of the canal, in a group of five or six houses surrounding the brickworks. He was fairly often to be seen at the market, and if ever one of the shopkeepers was robbed, it was nearly always he who took charge of it.

'Isn't she here?'

He hesitated, first said no, then, like a man plunging into the water, said all in one breath:

'She left on Wednesday evening telling me that she was going to look after the baby for Ancel's daughter, Clémence. Since then she hasn't come back and I've heard no news.'

It was a relief finally to let out the truth, to dispose once and for all of this fairy tale about the visit to Bourges, which was haunting him. Basquin looked a decent sort of fellow. Jonas had heard tell that he had five children, a very blonde wife with a sickly appearance, who in reality was more hardy than some women who appear outwardly strong.

In this way, often, in the Old Market, one learns the history of people one has never seen, by odds and ends of conversations picked up here and there. Jonas did not know Madame Basquin, who lived in a small new house on the edge of the town, but it was possible that he had seen her when she was doing her shopping, without realizing who she was.

The Inspector did not have a crafty look, as though he wanted to catch Jonas out. He was relaxed, familiar, as he stood by the counter, book in hand, like a customer talking about the rain or the fine weather.

'Did she take any luggage with her?'