Gallic Noir: Volume 1 E-Book

Pascal Garnier

• Herausgeber: Pushkin Vertigo
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Serie: Gallic Noir
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 458

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

Written over a 15-year period from the mid '90s, Garnier's short novels feature a recurring set of themes, characters and settings, and reading them side by side allows the author's profound and darkly comic tapestry of human experience to be fully appreciated. Volume 1 includes The A26, in which a new Picardy motorway brings modernity close to a flat in which a brother and sister live together, haunted by terminal illness and the events of 1945; How's the Pain?, the tale of an ageing 'pest exterminator' taking on one last job on the French Riviera; and The Panda Theory, in which a stranger, Gabriel, arrives in a Breton town and befriends the locals ... but is he as angelic as he seems?

Leseprobe

Pascal GarnierPascal Garnier was born in Paris in 1949. The prize-winning author of over sixty books, he remains a leading figure in contemporary French literature, in the tradition of Georges Simenon. He died in 2010.

Melanie FlorenceMelanie Florence teaches at The University of Oxford and translates from the French.

Emily BoyceEmily Boyce is in-house translator and editor at Gallic Books.

‘Wonderful… Properly noir’ – Ian Rankin

‘Garnier plunges you into a bizarre, overheated world, seething death, writing, fictions and philosophy. He’s a trippy, sleazy, sly and classy read’ A. L. Kennedy

‘Horribly funny … appalling and bracing in equal measure. Masterful’ John Banville

‘Ennui, dislocation, alienation, estrangement - these are the colours on Garnier’s palette. His books are out there on their own: short, jagged and exhilarating’ Stanley Donwood

‘The combination of sudden violence, surreal touches and bone-dry humour have led to Garnier’s work being compared with the films of Tarantino and the Coen brothers’ Sunday Times

‘Deliciously dark … painfully funny’ New York Times

‘A mixture of Albert Camus and JG Ballard’ Financial Times

‘A brilliant exercise in grim and gripping irony; makes you grin as well as wince’ Sunday Telegraph

‘A master of the surreal noir thriller – Luis Buñuel meets Georges Simenon’ Times Literary Supplement

The A26

How’s the Pain?

The Panda Theory

‘Small but perfectly formed darkest noir fiction told in spare, mordant prose … Recounted with disconcerting matter of-factness, Garnier’s work is surreal and horrific in equal measure’ Guardian

‘Tense, strange, disconcerting and slyly funny’ Sunday Times

‘Combines a sense of the surreal with a ruthless wit’ The Observer

‘Devastating and brilliant’ Sunday Times

‘Bleak, often funny and never predictable’ The Observer

‘Reminiscent of Joe Orton and the more impish films of Alfred Hitchcock and Claude Chabrol’ Sunday Times

‘A guaranteed grisly thriller’ ShortList

‘Brief, brisk, ruthlessly entertaining … Garnier makes bleakness pleasurable’ John Powers, NPR

‘This is tough, bloody stuff, but put together with a cunning intelligence’ Sunday Times

‘Garnier’s world exists in the cracks and margins of ours; just off-key, often teetering on the surreal, yet all too plausible. His mordant literary edge makes these succinct novels stimulating and rewarding’ Sunday Times

The A26

How’s the Pain?

The Panda Theory

by Pascal Garnier

Pushkin Press

A Gallic Book

The A26

First published in France as L’A26 by Zulma, 1999

Copyright © Zulma, 1999

English translation copyright © Gallic Books 2013Translation supported by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs as part of the Burgess programme run by the Department of the French Embassy in London. www.frenchbooknews.comFirst published in Great Britain in 2013 by Gallic Books

How’s the Pain?

First published in France as Comment va la douleur? by Zulma, 2006

Copyright © Zulma, 2006

English translation copyright © Gallic Books 2012

First published in Great Britain in 2012 by Gallic Books

The Panda Theory

First published in France as La Théorie du panda by Zulma, 2008

Copyright © Zulma, 2008

English translation copyright © Gallic Books 2012

First published in Great Britain in 2012 by Gallic Books

This book is copyright under the Berne Convention

No reproduction without permission

All rights reserved

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-805336-03-7

Typeset in Fournier MT by Gallic Books

Printed in the UK by CPI (CR0 4YY)

The A26

How’s the Pain?

The Panda Theory

The A26

by Pascal Garnier

translated from the French by Melanie Florence

For Isa and Chantal

The third streetlamp at the end of the road had suddenly gone out. Yolande closed her eye, which was pressed up to the shutter. The echo of the white light went on pulsing on her retina for a few seconds. When she opened her eye again there was only a black hole in the sky over the dead streetlamp.

‘I’ve stared at it for too long, and the bulb’s gone.’ Yolande shuddered and left the window. She had been watching the street not through a gap in the shutter but through a hole made specially. In the entire house this was the only opening on the outside world. Depending on her mood, she called it the ‘bellybutton’ or the ‘world’s arsehole’.

Yolande could have been anywhere from twenty to seventy. She had the blurry texture and outlines of an old photograph. As if she were covered in a fine dust. Inside this wreck of an old woman there was a young girl. You would catch a glimpse of her sometimes in a way she had of sitting down, tugging her skirt over her knees, of running a hand through her hair, a surprisingly graceful movement in that wrinkled skin glove.

She had sat down at a table, an empty plate in front of her. Across the table another place was set. The ceiling lamp hung quite low, and was not strong enough to light up the rest of the dining room, which remained shrouded in darkness. You could sense, however, that it was cluttered with objects and pieces of furniture. All the air in the room seemed to be concentrated around the table, held within the cone of light shed by the lampshade. Yolande waited, bolt upright in her chair.

‘I saw the school bus this morning. The children were wearing every colour imaginable. Getting off the bus, they were like sweets spilling out of a bag. No, it wasn’t this morning, it was yesterday, or maybe the day before. They really did look like sweets. It brightened up just then, a streak of blue between the clouds. In my day children weren’t dressed like that. You didn’t get all those fluorescent colours then, not anywhere. What else did I see? Any cars? Not many. Oh yes, there was the butcher this morning. I’m sure it was this morning. He comes every Sunday morning. I saw him parking, the old bastard. He’s always trying to see in. He’s been at it for years. He never sees anything, and he knows he never will.’

Beef, some stringy, some covered in fat, with a marrow bone to boil up for a pot-au-feu. It was ready, had been cooking away all day. Bub, bub, bubble. The pan lid was lifting, dribbling out greyish froth, a powerful smell, strong like sweat. ‘What else did I see?’

Yolande showed no surprise at hearing the three quick taps at the door and the key turning in the lock. Her brother had always knocked three times to let her know it was him. There was no point, since no one ever came. But he did it anyway.

Yolande was still sitting with an empty plate. The room was cold, the cooker was off. Bernard hung up his wet coat. Underneath he was wearing an SNCF uniform; he worked for the railways. He was around fifty, and looked like the sort of person you would ask for some small change, the time or directions in the street. He greeted his sister with a kiss on the back of the neck as he went round to take his place opposite her. Locking his fingers, he cracked his knuckles before unfolding his napkin. He had a yellowish complexion and big dark shadows under his eyes. His flattened hair showed the circular imprint of his cap.

‘Haven’t you started? You should have, it’s late.’

‘No, I was waiting for you. I was wondering when the school bus last went by.’

‘Saturday morning, I expect.’

‘You’ve got mud all over you. Is it raining?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh.’

They were both equally still, sitting upright in their chairs. They looked at each other without really seeing, asked questions without waiting for an answer.

‘I had a puncture coming home from the station, near the building site. It’s all churned up round there. You’d think the earth was spewing up mud. That’s their machinery, excavators, rollers, all that stuff. The work’s coming along quickly, but it’s creating havoc.’

‘Have you still got a temperature?’

‘Sometimes, but it passes. I’m taking the tablets the doctor gave me. I’m a bit tired, that’s all.’

‘Shall I serve up?’

‘If you like.’

Yolande took his plate and disappeared into the shadows. The ladle clanged against the side of the pot, and there was a sound of trickling juices. Yolande came back and handed the plate to Bernard. He took it, Yolande held on.

‘Have you been scared?’

Bernard looked away and gave the plate a gentle tug. ‘Yes, but it didn’t last. Give it here, I’m feeling better now.’

Yolande went back for her own food. From the shadows she said, without knowing whether it was a question or a statement, ‘You’ll get more and more scared.’

Bernard began to eat, mechanically.

‘That may be, I don’t know. Machon’s given me some new pills.’

Yolande ate in the same way, as if scooping water out of a boat.

‘I saw the butcher this morning. He tried to see in again.’

Bernard shrugged. ‘He can’t see anything.’

‘No, he can’t see anything.’

Then they stopped talking and finished their lukewarm pot-au-feu.

Through the closed shutters, shafts of light came in from the street, illuminating the chaos cluttering the dining room. A network of narrow passages tunnelled through the heaped-up jumble of furniture, books, clothing, all kinds of things, made it possible to get from one room to another provided you walked like an Egyptian. Stacks of newspapers and magazines just about managed to prop up this rubbish tip, which threatened to collapse at any moment.

At the table, Yolande had swept the used plates, cutlery and glasses from the evening before over to one corner. She was busy cutting pictures out of a magazine and sticking them on to pieces of cardboard to make a kind of jigsaw puzzle. By day the pendant lamp still oozed the same dead light as it did by night.

‘Bernard’s not gone to work today, he wasn’t up to it. He’s getting tireder and tireder, thinner and thinner. His body’s like this house, coming apart at the seams. Where am I going to put him when he’s dead? There’s not a bit of space left anywhere. We’ll get by, we’ve always got by, ever since I can remember. Nothing has ever left this house, even the toilet’s blocked up. We keep everything. Some day, we won’t need anything else, it’ll all be here, for ever.’

Yolande hummed to herself, to the accompaniment of mice scrabbling and Bernard’s laboured breathing in the room next door.

He was asleep or pretending to be. He was fiddling with a sparkling pendant on a gilt chain: ‘More than yesterday and much less than tomorrow.’ He wouldn’t be going back to the doctor’s. Even before setting foot in the consulting room he had known it was his final visit, almost a matter of courtesy. As usual, Machon had adopted specially for him the jovial manner which he found so irritating. But yesterday evening he’d struck more false notes than usual, stumbling over his words while looking in vain for the prompt. In short, when he’d sent Bernard away, his eyes had belied what his lips were saying.

‘It’s a question of attitude, Monsieur Bonnet, and of willpower. You’ve got to fight, and keep on fighting. In any case, you’ll see, two or three days from now and you’ll be feeling much better. Don’t forget now, take three in the morning, three at lunch time and three in the evening.’

It was true, on leaving Bernard had felt relief, but that had had nothing to do with the medication. These regular appointments with the doctor, for months now, had been eating away at him as much as his illness, a never-ending chore. He who had never been ill in his life had experienced something like profound humiliation at handing himself over body and soul to Dr Machon, despite knowing him well. Every Wednesday for years now, the doctor had caught the train to Lille to see his mother. They had ended up exchanging greetings and passing the time of day until there had grown up between them not a friendship exactly, but a very pleasant acquaintanceship. As soon as he’d begun to feel ill Bernard had quite naturally turned to him. He’d soon regretted it, he had become his patient. In front of the large Empire-style desk he’d always felt like a suspect stripped for questioning, one of life’s miscreants. These days whenever he met the doctor at the station he felt naked in front of him, completely at a loss.

Bernard had crumpled up the prescription and got behind the wheel of his car. There had been no puncture beside the building site.

Spurts of water added whiskers to each side of his Renault 5. Bernard was discovering life in its tiniest forms. It was there, rounding out with yellow light each of the droplets of rain starring the windscreen, million upon million of miniature light bulbs to illuminate so long a night. It was there too in the vibrations of the steering wheel in his hands, and in the dance of the windscreen wipers, which reminded him of the finale of a musical comedy. The anguish of doubt gave way to the strange nirvana of certainty. It was a matter of weeks, days, then. He had known for ages that he was dying, of course, but this evening he felt he had crossed a line. Deep down, these last months, it was hope which had made him suffer the most. ‘Bernard Bonnet, your appeal has been refused.’ He felt liberated, he had nothing more to lose.

Then in the beam of the headlamps, he had seen the redhead, thumbing a lift, caught in a mesh of rain and dark.

‘What an awful night!’

‘Three months at the most,’ he had thought. She smelt of wet dog. She wasn’t even twenty, surely.

‘I’ve missed the bus to Brissy. Are you going that way?’

‘I’m going nearby, I can drop you off there.’ She had a big nose, big bust and big thighs and smelt of wide open spaces, the impetuousness of youth. Bernard’s uniform must have made her feel safe, as she was making herself at home, undoing her parka and shaking out her mop of red hair.

‘The next one’s not for half an hour, and I don’t want to wait. I’ll be eighteen in a month, and sitting my test. I’ve been saving up, and for a car as well. My brother-in-law’s going to sell me his – it’s a Renault 5, like yours.’

‘That’s nice.’

‘Don’t I know you? D’you work at the station?’

‘Yes.’

The stripes on her trousers looked like scratches. She had sturdy thighs, and the same smell as Yolande when she came home late from the factory. Their father would thump his fist on the table.

‘Have you seen the time?’

‘Well, how d’you expect me to get home? There isn’t a bus any more. There’s a war on, haven’t you heard? What are we having to eat?’

They always had the same, and she would always have some boyfriend waiting in the wings.

‘Why are you smiling?’

‘Because you remind me of my sister when she was your age.’

‘Oh. What’s she called, your sister?’

‘Yolande.’

‘I’m Maryse. And what about you, what’s your name?’

‘Bernard.’

‘Like my brother-in-law!’ She was practically family. Nothing for it but … He had stopped thinking about his death. This girl was like his life, a huge gift which he hadn’t dared even begin to unwrap.

‘What does your sister do?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Housewife and mother, then?’

‘Something like that.’

On each side of the road the houses dissolved in a wash of brown ink. A triangular yellow sign had appeared right in the middle of the road, forcing a diversion.

‘The fucking motorway, it’s driving me mad! We don’t need it, do we?’

‘The march of progress. If you’ll excuse me, I just have to stop for a few minutes, a call of—’

‘Got it!’

The girl’s laughter had sounded in his ear like the tinkling of the doorbell when you’re not expecting a visitor. The rain had eased off and was now little more than a drizzle, the tears of a star freshening his face. Standing squarely in the mud, he had urinated against a concrete block bristling with metal rods. Work on the motorway had begun at the same time as his pain. With a wry smile, he noted how fast it was progressing. The arched back of the unfinished A26 soared like a diving board into the violet sky. A star had appeared between two banks of cloud. His hard-on was so big that he hadn’t been able to do up his flies again. On the way back to the car his feet made a squelching sound with every step.

‘I’m sorry, I’ve dropped my watch. There’s a torch in the glove compartment.’

‘Would you like some help?’

‘That would be good. Thank you.’

The pair of them had waded about in the mud, Maryse’s backside just a few centimetres from Bernard’s nose. A whole life right in front of him. The girl had made a sound like a deflating balloon when he had jumped on her. Lying on top of her wildly flailing body, he held her head down in a puddle. It had gone on for quite some time, the girl was sturdy. But the grip of Bernard’s hand on the back of her neck had finally proved too much for Maryse’s ‘nearly’ eighteen years. ‘Strong as death! I’m as strong as death!’ His eyes were like a hound’s when it bays at the moon. The water in the puddle became calm again. Soon it reflected nothing but a sky empty save for one quivering star. Bernard had loosened his grip. A slender gilt chain had got twisted round his wrist, at its end a small disc inscribed ‘More than yesterday and much less than tomorrow’.

The hardest part had been dragging her to the far side of the building site. There he had heaved the body into one of the holes which would be filled in with vast quantities of concrete the next day, and covered her with earth. Maryse no longer existed, had never existed perhaps.

Bernard let the chain drop back on to his belly. It was unbelievably heavy. He thought he would give it to Yolande as a present. What would become of her without him? Nothing. She had stopped ‘becoming’ the best part of fifty years ago.

She would go on, every morning knitting the little scrap of life which she then unravelled every night, tirelessly, without ever thinking there might be an end.

‘Bernard, there’s the grocer’s van!’

‘I’m tired, Yoyo. Do you really need something?’

‘Yes! Those little chocolate biscuits with the animals on. Please …’

‘OK. Give me my coat, will you?’

‘Get a few packets, just in case.’

Since Monday evening there has been no news of young Maryse L., born on 4 April 1975 in Brissy. The young woman was last seen close to the Jean-Jaurès bus stop. She is described as one metre sixty-four centimetres tall, of medium build, etc. Anyone with information should contact the police in …

Bernard did not think the photo was a good likeness.

Newspaper photos never looked like anything, or rather they all looked alike, sharing a family resemblance, hangdog and miserable. The papers said any old thing. They never had anything very interesting to report, so they told lies. There wasn’t so much as two lines to be said about the girl. Apart from a handful of individuals, no one knew Maryse existed. Her death made no difference. What album had they dug that photo out of? She couldn’t be more than twelve in it. The silly smile of the young girl turned his stomach.

‘Oh Bernard, you haven’t eaten a thing! That’s no good, and you know you like shepherd’s pie.’

‘I have, Jacqueline, I’ve had some. I’m just a bit out of sorts, that’s all.’

‘I can see that. You haven’t touched your food. Have you seen Machon again?’

‘Yes, on Monday. Everything’s fine.’

‘Everything’s fine, my foot!’

Jacqueline put her pile of plates down on the corner of the table and ran her hand over her face as if removing an invisible spider’s web. She had had this habit ever since they’d been at primary school together. Jacqueline was his best friend. They might have got married, had children, a dog, a caravan, the most modest of lives but a life even so. But there was Yolande. Jacqueline had waited for a long time, and then married Roland. They had the restaurant across from the station.

‘Are you coming on Sunday, for Serge’s First Communion?’

‘I don’t know, maybe.’

‘But you’ve got to. He’d be hurt … I suppose you’re fretting about Yolande, is that it?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Of course you are! She’ll take advantage of you for your whole life, that one! Why don’t you put her in a home? It’s about time you started taking care of yourself. Have you looked in a mirror recently?’

‘You know perfectly well that’s impossible. She’s not capable of—’

‘Give me a light, will you? Yes, Roland, I’m coming, just a second! He’s a bloody nuisance, that one. Can’t do a damn thing for himself. It’s a mess, isn’t it?’

‘Please don’t start, Jacqueline.’

‘What? What would we have left if we no longer had our regrets?’

‘Remorse, perhaps.’

‘Sometimes I think I might prefer that. At least it would mean we’d done things.’

‘Things? They don’t leave much of a trace behind them.’

‘Well, did you want to leave pyramids behind you? Things aren’t just stuff made of stone, your churches, castles, monuments! It’s the little things, like when you used to go fishing in bomb craters, smoking your first cheap cigarette round the back of the bike sheds, all the things we said we were going to do even if we already knew we’d never do them … I’ll be right there, I said! Please come on Sunday, just for me.’

‘All right, I’ll be there.’

Jacqueline got up with a sigh. She could almost have supported the tray on her ample bosom, leaving her hands free to carry other plates, other dishes. It must feel good to lie sleeping on those breasts, like being on a cloud. A long time past, down by the canal, the weather was hot. You could smell fresh grass. He had laid his cheek on Jacqueline’s white breast. Beneath the thin stuff of her blouse he could feel her quivering, giving off a fragrant dew. Fish were jumping, snapping at dragonflies. The air was alive with a thousand tiny things. One of them had said, ‘This is nice, isn’t it?’

The small fluorescent green letters on the screen were no longer making proper words. They were now just long wiggly caterpillars, line upon line of them.

‘Is something wrong, Bernard?’

‘No, a spot of dizziness, that’s all. It must be the new pills. Take over from me, François. I’m just nipping out for a breath of air.’

‘Of course. Why don’t you take some time off?’

‘I’ll think about it.’

Where did those rails along the platforms go? Not all that far. They joined up again over there, behind the warehouses, the end of the world was within arm’s reach. Everything was rusty here, down to the ballast stones, even the grass clinging to life beside the track. The railway had left its mark, a lengthy scar with dried blood at the edges. Sitting on a trolley, Bernard ran his fingers over his face, feeling the rows of teeth, the angle of the jaw. Beneath the pallid, soft skin a death’s head was hiding, like the one on a pirate flag or the labels of particular bottles at the pharmacy, with two crossbones behind. So what if it was ugly here, it was still the richest landscape on earth. You could make a life here. It was all there ahead of him, rails leading to more rails, on and on to infinity. François was right, he would take some leave. Actually, he would leave. Like old Fernand the year before. But he’d been retiring. He was old. He had gone off with a fishing rod under his arm, a cuckoo clock and a return ticket to Arcachon, first class. Bernard would never go to Arcachon. To tell the truth, he didn’t give two hoots about Arcachon, there were so many places in the world where one would never set foot. What was there, anyway? A dune, a big Dune of Pilat which looked just like the desert, they said. It was people who’d never been there who said that. Everything looked like everything else, people couldn’t help comparing the things they knew to the things they didn’t know, so they could say they did know, that they’d been round the world without leaving their armchair. Six of one and half a dozen of the other, no cause for regrets. No gifts for sick employees, they’d prefer them just to clear off, preferably without a trace. Illness really annoyed them, it was bad for business, and they took a dim view of it. It lowered the troops’ morale.

‘Oh my poor Bonnet, and with your poor sister too! How much time off do you want?’

Taking his cap between thumb and forefinger, Bernard sent it flying somewhere over the containers, like a frisbee. He had another one in the locker room. No harm done. The wind caressed his baldness. In the early days, when Yolande’s hair had begun to grow back he’d loved running his hand over her head. All the little hairs standing upright had given him a feeling like electricity in his palm. Her hair had grown back pure white. Yet she was only twenty. The shock of it, no doubt. Before that it was blonde, red blonde, Titian she used to call it.

WITH SEVEN CENTIMETRES OF HAIR

I have already told you how hard-working the Germans are. They make clothes and chocolate out of wood, and make lots of things from all sorts of materials which have not been used until now. They have now discovered it is possible to make felt hats out of the hair cut off by the hairdresser. It is likewise possible to make rugs from these hair clippings. Since hair has to be a certain length for this, however, people are not allowed to have it cut before it reaches this length. If the hairdressers are diligent and collect up the hair carefully, in one year almost 300,000 kilos of hair will be obtained. That sounds like a lot of hats and quite a few rugs.

There it was in black and white, in the girls’ own annual La Semaine de Suzette, under the heading ‘Suzette across the world’, an old copy from 1932, worn to a shine, stained and yellowing, like everything from that era. Despite knowing it by heart, Yolande loved to spend hours leafing through it. She had done all the crosswords, every rebus and sewn the entire wardrobe for Bleuette (a 29-centimetre doll with real curled hair, eyes that shut, and unbreakable posable head). She loved the smell it gave off when the pages were opened, a musty smell of old biscuits. The Germans would be back. She wasn’t especially waiting for them but she knew they’d be back.

It was the drop of water falling on her newly shaven head which had hurt her the most, a deafening sound like the stroke of a gong which had stayed with her ever since. As for everything else, she had let them get on with it, like a sheep, there was nothing else to be done with morons like that. For as long as they kept her in the café, amidst their yelling, she had been outside her body. She was a past master at switching off, what with her bastard of a father who would bawl her out for the slightest thing. She’d had enough time to practise. But on leaving the Café de la Gare, after they’d let her go, plop!, a large drop filled with all the absurdities of the past four years. It was as though the sky had been holding itself back ever since they’d dragged her out of her house, so as to fall in on her with all its might in that drop.

Yolande didn’t even remember the Boche’s name. To tell the truth, it wasn’t so much for what she’d done with him that they’d shaved her head, more for what she’d refused to do with some of her ‘barbers’.

What did it matter anyway? She had never liked them, they had never liked her. It had let her get shot of the damned lot of them once and for all. Besides, they must all be dead by now. But what had he been playing at in the lav for the past hour?

‘Bernard, what are you doing in there?’

‘Trying to unblock the toilet. How many times have I told you not to use newspaper!’

‘I didn’t have anything else. You forgot to get bog roll when you were at Auchan.’

‘There’s tissues.’

‘They’re no use to me, there’s nothing to read on them.’

The sound of the flush drowned out Bernard’s reply. He emerged from the toilet, wiping his hands. He was wearing a white shirt, the collar gaping wide round his thin neck.

‘What are you dressed up like that for? Are you going to a wedding?’

‘No, it’s Jacqueline’s nephew’s First Communion. I told you that last night.’

‘You didn’t tell me a thing. You’re always up to something behind my back.’

‘For one thing, I did tell you, and for another, I’m not up to anything. I’m going to the Communion, that’s all.’

‘So basically you’re going to get sloshed and let her sucker of a husband foot the bill.’

‘Yoyo, that’s enough. I won’t be staying long. I’m done in but I’ve got no choice. I won’t be late back. The toilet’s unblocked and I’m begging you, please don’t put any more newspaper in there.’

Yolande shrugged and buried herself in La Semaine de Suzette again. Bernard rolled down his sleeves, slipped on his jacket and planted a kiss on his sister’s neck.

‘Come on now, don’t sulk – I’ve got a present for you.’

The pendant on its gilt chain was dangling over the annual like a pendulum. Catlike, Yolande caught at it.

‘What does that mean, “More than yesterday and much less than tomorrow”? Is it about the blocked toilet?’

‘No, it means I love you more than yesterday and much less than tomorrow.’

‘You’re going to love me less tomorrow?’

‘No, it’s the other way round.’

‘It’s beyond me. Can you put it on for me?’

Bernard’s fingers fumbled with the clasp. Strange, the skin on Yolande’s neck wasn’t an old lady’s but a baby’s, all soft, warm little folds.

‘You’re very beautiful.’

Yolande put the pendant into her mouth. ‘I used to have one with the Virgin Mary, a blue one, it tasted of electric wire. At school when you went for an X-ray, you had to put it in your mouth so they didn’t see the Virgin Mary in your bones. This one doesn’t taste of anything.’

‘See you later, Yolande.’

The countryside, accustomed to low skies and drizzle, looked ill at ease in its Sunday best in the sunlight. The bricks were too red, the sky too blue, the grass too green. It was as if Nature felt embarrassed at being so extravagantly made up. She was quite still, as if for the camera, except for the occasional crow hopping about in the middle of a field. At the wheel of his car Bernard was feeling good, for the first time in a long while. He loved these expanses of brown stretching as far as the eye could see, you could almost fancy you were by the sea. He passed a motorcyclist at the roadside, leaning against his bike. He was smoking a cigarette, at right angles to the line of the horizon. There was no house nearby. Here was a chap who had simply said to himself, ‘I know what, I’ll stop here for a cigarette because this is absolutely the best place in the world for that.’ It was over in seconds, just the time it took for the motorcyclist’s image to disappear in the rear-view mirror, but Bernard felt every bit of that man’s happiness in his own body: ‘I feel good.’

‘And what about me? What will become of me while Yolande’s still here?’ He realised he had never asked himself that question before. He would very much have liked to be a biker stopped at the roadside for eternity. No doubt Yolande had never asked herself that question either.

She didn’t care, had never cared about anything but herself. It couldn’t really be called egotism, she had simply never been aware of other people. They were bit parts, at most, even her brother. When she had come home with her head shaven, never to leave the house again, she had appeared relieved, her face serene like that of a young nun. They didn’t want her any more, and she had never wanted them. At last things were clear, ordered, everyone in their place. She had never wanted anything but this cat’s life of cosseting and food.

Bernard slowed down as he passed the works on the A26. The pillars supporting the slip road had advanced a few steps. RIP Maryse.

‘Now, Bernard, that’s not an empty glass, is it?’

‘Yes, but I’m fine, thanks.’

Roland’s eyes looked like two blobs of phlegm, pastis yellow shot through with red.

‘It’s lovely to see the young ones having fun, so full of life!’In the back room of the café, where the tables had been arranged in a horseshoe, the young ones were jigging to one of the summer’s hits. The acrylic of the girls’ little skirts was stretched out of shape over their bulging thighs. The boys, a glint in their eye, were blowing themselves a smoke screen to hide their acne and drinking out of cans. Jacqueline, hair dishevelled, was zigzagging amongst the dancers with a tray in her outstretched hand. She looked like a statue carrying its upturned plinth.

‘She’s not bad, even now, huh?’

‘No.’

‘Even with a few miles on the clock she’s still a catch, don’t you think?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m telling you, Bernard, not only am I not angry with you, I feel sorry for you. Yes, I do, don’t argue. What’s more, out of all the men who’ve come sniffing around after her, you’re the one I like best. You are! Because you’re going to kick the bucket soon – before me. Not by much maybe, but before me.’

Roland’s brow was dripping with sweat. The few hairs he had left were plastered to his temples. He’d been a very good footballer, the best goalkeeper Subligny had ever had, and had inherited the café-restaurant from his parents.

‘I had to tell you, Bernard – it may not seem like it but I respect you. Look, if you want to, you can have her right here and now, before my very eyes, and I won’t say a thing. Scout’s honour.’

‘You’re talking rubbish, Roland. You’re drunk.’

‘Not at all! You’ll see. Jacqueline! Hey, Jacqueline!’

‘What’s the matter with you? You must be out of your mind, yelling like that!’

‘He won’t believe I respect him! Do your business, you two, and I won’t so much as raise my little finger. Go on!’

‘You must be mad! There are children present!’

‘So, there’s children. They’ve got to learn the facts of life, haven’t they? Like on the farm, the pigs with the sows, and the mares with the … I don’t know what, but that’s nature’s way, isn’t it, shit!’

‘Be quiet! It’s you who’s the pig – clear off, you’re ruining it all.’

The music had stopped, and so had the dancers. Some of them were sniggering behind their hands, others rolled their eyes. Only Serge, whose Communion they were celebrating, still moved around between them on his brand-new Rollerblades.

‘I’ve got to go, Jacqueline.’

‘No, you don’t, that’s stupid.’

‘It doesn’t matter. It’s not because of him, I’m just tired. I was leaving anyway. Say goodbye to Serge from me.’

Out in the car park Bernard rubbed his eyes. The red sphere of the setting sun was pulsing on his retina.

Someone knocked on the window.

‘Hello. Which direction are you going?’

The girl was made up like someone from a silent film, hair all over the place, black and red, like a kid disguised as a witch.

‘Towards Arras, but I’m turning off in six kilometres.’

‘That’ll still be a help. Could you give me a lift?’

‘If you like.’

She was wearing such a lot of heavy perfume, she needn’t have bothered getting dressed.

‘On Sundays, the buses … Is it all right if I smoke?’

‘Of course.’

The girl lit a cigarette. The smoke lingered above their heads. They weren’t saying anything. Bernard was driving slowly. The sky took on streaks of purple and mauve.

‘It’s pretty. All this silence does you good.’

‘Yes, it’s like staring into a fire in the grate.’

‘Wasn’t there a war here?’

‘That’s right. The Great War and the other one. It’s taken a while for it to look alive again.’

‘Do you remember the war?’

‘Just a little. I was young then.’

‘All our lives we’ve heard people talking about it on TV, all over the world, but we can’t really take it in. We’re not quite sure it exists. It’s like fairytale monsters, and ogres and death. We know it exists but we don’t believe in it. We doubt everything, even ourselves. We’re never quite sure we’re not in a video game.’

‘Does that bother you?’

‘No, you just have to get used to it. I spotted you just now during the shouting match. You were different from the others. Me too. I’d come with a mate of the boyfriend of … well, whatever, it’s a shame, he was cute. You look so sad … it’s nice.’

‘I’m not sad.’

‘You look it.’

The sound the girl’s stockings made as she crossed her legs caused him to jerk the wheel. But he was very swiftly back in control. She had noticed. He could just imagine the smile on her face as she crushed her cigarette end in the ashtray.

‘What do you do for a living?’

‘I’m going to drop you off here.’

‘Really?’

‘Really.’

Bernard parked on the verge. A car hooted as it went by. The lower part of the sky was turquoise with a tinge of gold right at the top.

‘OK, well, thanks a lot anyway.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Vanessa.’

‘Goodbye, Vanessa. Very nice to have met you.’

Vanessa, the motorcyclist, Jacqueline, all of them in the rear-view mirror, in one small piece of mirror which saw things back to front. A life wasn’t very much, not much at all. Giving, taking away. It was so easy. Sometimes death spares people.

Yolande was making pancakes, dozens of them, building them up into an enormous stack. There were enough to feed at least fifty. It was her only way of combating the successive waves of ‘outside’ which had been beating against the walls of the house non-stop since the morning. For almost two hours now she had been busy, frying pan in hand at the stove. To begin with, she had counted them, as people count sheep to fall asleep, but then it had become mechanical, like breathing: a ladle of batter, turn the pan, wait, toss the pancake, wait, put it on the pile, a ladle of batter, turn the pan … They were like the skin of faces, faces she could put names to: Lyse, Fernand, Camille … She saw them go past one after the other, the way they used to lean over her cradle, gigantic, stinking of beer or cheap perfume, and belching out their slobbering coochie-coos, disgusting. Even then she had hated them, was nothing to do with them. She had only had to look at her father’s face or her mother’s belly to know for certain that she did not come from ‘that’. Each time she tossed a pancake bubbling with dark craters, she said, ‘Nice one.’

An hour after Bernard had gone out, the clock-radio in his room had come on by itself: ‘Stock market news now, and all week the CAC 40 has been on a continual Yolande had jumped in her chair. She had been in the middle of copying a map of France, concentrating, tongue sticking out, on making a good job of the shades of blue along the coast with a coloured pencil.

‘Who’s that? Who’s there?’

She had taken the poker from where it hung on the handle of the stove and burst into Bernard’s room, brandishing it aloft. The metallic voice coming from the small plastic box by the unmade bed had metamorphosed into an unbearable loud rasping with the first blow of the poker. But the creature was not dead and Yolande had had to finish it off with her heel to silence it for good. It had been some time before her nerves recovered and she was able to pick up her pencil again to draw the outline of Finistère.

The ‘nose of France’ was so hard to manage, with all the little ins and outs of the coastline from Saint-Brieuc to Vannes. She had always got ten out of ten for her maps; they would be pinned up in the classroom they were so beautiful. For that she’d needed to sharpen her coloured pencils really well and wet their points with spit. It was Brittany Yolande took the greatest pains over, because of the holidays. There were cousins in Pénerf, a little village near Vannes. Yolande used to have a thin frock in embroidered muslin from St Gallen, with tulle trim at the shoulders and waist, and a sky-blue straw cloche hat. But most of the time she would be in her bathing suit, barefoot, spattered with sand up to her knees. Every day, crowds of workers would pour out of excursion trains for their first visit to the seaside. Only the villa residents held themselves aloof from this display of overwhelming joy. It seemed as if the holidays would never end, like the Paradise they learnt about at First Communion classes. Yolande had a constant humming in her head. Perhaps it was from pressing seashells to her ear, or maybe the water from all the swimming. Yannick had white-blond hair, dry as straw. They would have play fights with sticky seaweed, and, squealing wildly, feel for each other with outstretched arms, under cover of the foam. That was the first time she had kissed using her tongue. For everything it was the first time.

A thudding at the door had ripped through the iridescent haze of her holidays at Pénerf. Her pencil point had snapped clean off on the south of Brittany. Yolande had pressed her eye up to the world’s arsehole; two women, one stout and the other small, were rummaging in the letter box. They had waited, while Yolande held her breath. She had rumbled them, they were Boches disguised as French. Unless they were the girls from the Resistance done up to look like Boches … You could never tell, there was no difference. Either way, playing dead was the thing if you wanted to stay alive. The two women had taken a step back and then moved off. Yolande had waited for a long time before retrieving the piece of paper from the letter box: ‘Do you know the Bible?’ Yolande hadn’t read to the end of the text because it was obviously written in code, the proof being that it was signed ‘The Jehovah’s Witnesses’. What a bunch of losers! There would never be witnesses at her trial, because there would never be a trial. Bernard had promised her that. But they kept on trying all the same; they needed guilty people, even guilty people who were innocent, to fuel their morbid obsession with stamping out clandestine goings-on. That being so, she had to be on her guard; they would be back, they always were. That was her day shot to pieces. The only way to ward off the misfortune was to make pancakes, pancakes and more pancakes.

‘You mustn’t upset yourself, Bonnet. We are all …’ His boss had searched for the appropriate word – ‘Mortal? Alike?’ – but held back, from embarrassment, perhaps, or fear. ‘OK. Have some rest and come back to us soon.’

Right, that was sorted, indefinite sick leave. It seemed just like any other day, however. Bernard felt no worse than the day before. Decidedly better in fact. The two days after Serge’s First Communion had been a veritable agony: vomiting, migraines, an intense feeling of malaise. Then, on making this decision, a sort of respite. ‘It’s a question of attitude, Monsieur Bonnet,’ Machon said. Perhaps he was right; they were mysterious, the body and the mind. Of those two days spent at the mercy of Yolande’s whims and the vagaries of his physical condition, all he had left was ‘room’ in his life, ‘room’ like in a garment which is too big. Someone who knew about such things had once told him you shouldn’t be able to see any light between two good dancers. His dancing days were over, and that was that, except with Yolande, of course, for the light had never been visible between them. As for his boss and his colleagues, he knew he wouldn’t be seeing them again. It was no sadder than casting off an old pair of slippers. In taking leave, he had married death, and death fitted him like a glove. Sorrow came from denial – that was why life had so often made him suffer. Now he would say ‘yes’ to everything, good and bad, sunshine and grey skies alike; this November afternoon it was the latter.

Sitting behind the wheel of his car in the station car park, he felt desperately free. Doubtless this was how someone felt on the first day of unemployment: ‘I could go here, or there, do nothing, go home and be bored stiff, go mad …’ The excess of freedom knocked him sideways. Maybe he should start collecting stamps, or keep pigeons like the retired men in these parts? Or build model ships? It was too much, too …

An urgent rapping on the window made him jump. Roland’s face, squashed up against the glass, looked strangely distorted, like a portrait by Bacon, streaming with rain.

‘Bernard, help me! Féfé’s just been run over by a lorry.’

‘Who?’

‘Féfé, my gun dog. Let me in.’

A smell of frying came off Roland as he got in beside Bernard. His eyes were glassy from tears and the rain. ‘Shit, shit, shit!’

Bernard let him drum his fingers on the dashboard.

‘He’s one of a kind, that dog!’

‘Calm down. What’s going on?’

‘My parents just phoned. I left Féfé with them for the weekend. I told them to keep him tied up! He always goes chasing after lorries!’

‘Is he dead?’

‘If only! I have to go and finish him off. I’m not brave enough. I saw you getting into your car and thought you …’

‘I’d what?’

‘Well … that you’d be able to … Don’t make me do this on my own.’

Roland was leaking all over, from his eyes, nose and hair. He was the last of that ridiculous breed, the Sunday huntsmen who shoot at anything that moves, or not, as the case might be (he was the one to thank for the shot-riddled ‘Caution. Children’ sign on the way into the village), and now he was crying over his Féfé, half flattened by a lorry. A man who would swear on his deathbed that he loved animals. His own. He was a stupid, sad bastard, but at this moment Bernard could not bring himself to treat him as such. He knew he was a stupid bastard, a stupid bastard who hated him, but a stupid bastard who was weeping, the way the sky weeps, sometimes.

‘Why me?’

‘I couldn’t bring myself to pull the trigger. Féfé and I … I just couldn’t. But you know death.’

‘Not yet, I don’t.’

‘You’ve seen it. I can tell you’ve seen it!’

‘You’re still drunk, Roland.’

‘True, but it’s because I’m suffering. You’re the only one who can do it. Bernard, please …’

‘Where d’your parents live?’

‘Over by Brissy.’

Black and white like an old Chaplin film, minus the laughs. The sky could not decide whether to be bright or not. Most annoying. They parked outside Roland’s parents’ place, a once elegant house, which had been revamped with garden gnomes and fake wells made from tyres, like something out of a bad novel. Roland emerged, carrying a .22 rifle.

‘Over there, by the bridge.’

Bernard parked. As they got out, Roland handed him the gun. They walked along the verge, the grass green against a backdrop of grey sky. It was a little slippery. In a dip in the bank, the tan and white dog, with a vacant look and his tongue lolling, was lying stretched out on his side. His back legs were now just a wet mush of hair and blood.

‘Oh damn! Kill him, kill him!’

Bernard aimed the barrel at the back of the animal’s ear, as it looked up at him, eyes growing dim. Why me?

It was a small rifle and the noise it made going off was no louder than a fart under the bedclothes. One click – and lights out. The dog’s head fell back on to the soft grass. A gully of green … foaming trough of light …

Behind Bernard, Roland was busy throwing up.

‘What do we do now?’

‘Bin bag. In the car …’

Bernard took charge of everything. The dog was nothing but a piece of rubbish.

‘What next?’

‘How should I know? Better dig a hole.’

‘Go on then.’

‘Bloody hell, you’re cruel!’

‘I’m a killer not a gravedigger. There’s a spade in the boot – off you go.’ Nowhere, here was nowhere. Unconsciously, while Roland was digging a hole for his dog, Bernard adopted the stance of the motorcyclist at the roadside. He smoked a cigarette; the sun was not there, however, and nor was the serenity which had made that moment special. At best, there was the complicity between two killers, one of them too cowardly to do the deed. The cigarette butt he flicked down on the wet tarmac was out in less than three seconds.

‘I’m done. We can go.’

Roland was green, the colour of goose shit. ‘That’s another reason you’ll have to be angry with me.’

‘What?’

‘I’m the person who killed your dog. Who will you have to complain about once I’m gone?’

‘There’s always someone. Do you think you’re the only man who’s screwed Jacqueline?’

Bernard smiled. If nothing else, humans were marvellously resourceful.

Getting out of the car outside the restaurant, Roland did not say thank you. He ran off, jacket up over his head, a hunched figure. People never said thank you to those who did their dirty work for them.

He already knew which dog he would buy next.

The same, no doubt. Roland always bought the same car, and if Jacqueline were to die he would find another one. A Nadine or a Martine maybe, but a Jacqueline even so. There are people like that, who think they can make things last for ever if they try hard enough.

For the past hour, Bernard had been driving around aimlessly, turning left here and right there, as luck or misfortune would have it. He had no idea where he was going but one thing he was sure about, he had no desire to go home, not straight away. Like a fly trapped under a glass he was looking for the way out while knowing only too well that none existed. As when he had left the station he felt burdened by the excess of freedom he was unable to use. Signposts pointed him in different directions: Lens, Liévin, Noeux-les-Mines, Béthune … but they were traps, leading only to fields of mud crushed under the weight of the impending dark. Occasionally he passed through villages, brown brick houses set out like Lego belonging to a child devoid of imagination, blank windows hung with lace curtains depicting a pair of peacocks face-to-face or else plump cherubs in the same pose, and roofs topped with TV aerials resembling giant dragonflies. Who could possibly stop off in one of them, unless he had broken down? And yet people lived there, had their joys and sorrows no less than those who lived in picture-postcard landscapes drenched in sunlight and azure. In those parts you would stop to buy regional pottery, local honey or to visit an old Romanesque church. Here there was nothing but home-brewed beer and war memorials of a soldier pointing his bayonet towards an indifferent sky, framed by four artillery shells with chains between them.

But you can’t continue going nowhere for long, especially when night is falling, and so Bernard convinced himself he felt like eating moules-frites beside the station in Lille. It was years since he’d done that. He smiled at his own audacity. There was Yolande, it was true, but how could he let her know since she never answered the phone? In any case, she wasn’t aware of the passage of time. And anyway, stuff Yolande, stuff Roland’s dog, stuff it all! Illness made you self-centred, that was its greatest advantage.

He didn’t order moules-frites but doughy, cheesy flammekueche. Inside Aux Brasseurs, once he had tucked himself away in a corner, he had felt so overwhelmed by all the noise, the belching and smoking throng – it was like something out of Breughel – that when the waiter had come to take his order he had asked for the same as the people at the next table, just to keep things simple. By now he was ruing his rashness. He hadn’t even got a newspaper to read to make him look in command of the situation. This was taking ages, he’d already looked through the menu a dozen times. The clientele here were groups of friends or at least couples. Hang on, there was another man on his own. He even thought he recognised him as the travelling salesman who was cutting a swathe through the area, persuading lonely housewives to buy lingerie on credit, much to their husbands’ anger. The man was eating mussels with no concern for the fact his loud slurping was getting on the other diners’ nerves. He had the dispassionate and ice-cool air of a bounty hunter in a western. Or maybe it wasn’t him after all. As a result of looking at people, since he had nothing else to do, Bernard ended up recognising everyone. That was odd, but not as improbable as all that. He had never left the area, and had seen a lot of people pass through the station. That said, no one recognised him. It was all an illusion, a whirl of faces seen here and there, a fug of beer and cigarette smoke. You rub shoulders with the whole world in a lifetime, but forget people again as you go along, like friends you make on holiday – you promise to keep in touch only to consign them to oblivion at once. How could it be otherwise? You’d need ten lifetimes to keep on top of all that. Besides, at the end of the day, we only need a few satellites to make up our galaxy. All stars are alike. That old pal Robert we were so fond of, who was lost in the mists of time, reappears one fine day calling himself Raoul or François or …

‘Flammekueche with lardons!’

‘For me, please.’

‘Another beer?’

‘Umm … all right.’

‘Excuse me, Monsieur, but there’s a lady on her own looking for a table, and there aren’t any free. Would you mind if she shared yours?’

‘Well, no, I …’