The Hand Read online

  Georges Simenon

  * * *

  THE HAND

  Translated by LINDA COVERDALE

  Contents

  Part 1

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Part 2

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

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  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Georges Simenon was born on 12 February 1903 in Liège, Belgium, and died in 1989 in Lausanne, Switzerland, where he had lived for the latter part of his life.

  Written in 1968, The Hand takes its setting from the years Simenon had spent living at Shadow Rock Farm, in Lakeville, Connecticut, during the early 1950s.

  penguin classics

  The Hand

  ‘I love reading Simenon. He makes me think of Chekhov’

  —William Faulkner

  ‘A truly wonderful writer . . . marvellously readable – lucid, simple, absolutely in tune with the world he creates’

  —Muriel Spark

  ‘Few writers have ever conveyed with such a sure touch, the bleakness of human life’

  —A. N. Wilson

  ‘One of the greatest writers of the twentieth century . . . Simenon was unequalled at making us look inside, though the ability was masked by his brilliance at absorbing us obsessively in his stories’

  —Guardian

  ‘A novelist who entered his fictional world as if he were part of it’

  —Peter Ackroyd

  ‘The greatest of all, the most genuine novelist we have had in literature’

  —André Gide

  ‘Superb . . . The most addictive of writers . . . A unique teller of tales’

  —Observer

  ‘The mysteries of the human personality are revealed in all their disconcerting complexity’

  —Anita Brookner

  ‘A writer who, more than any other crime novelist, combined a high literary reputation with popular appeal’

  —P. D. James

  ‘A supreme writer . . . Unforgettable vividness’ —Independent

  ‘Compelling, remorseless, brilliant’

  —John Gray

  ‘Extraordinary masterpieces of the twentieth century’

  —John Banville

  PART ONE

  * * *

  1.

  I was sitting on the bench, in the barn. Not only was I aware of being there, in front of the sagging door that, with each swing, let in a gust of wind and snow, but I saw myself as clearly as in a mirror, noting the incongruity of my situation.

  The bench was a garden bench, painted red. We had three of them, which we put away for the winter along with the lawnmower, the garden tools and the window screens.

  The barn, also of wood painted red, had been a real barn a hundred years earlier, but was now nothing more than a vast shed.

  If I begin with that particular moment, it’s because it was a kind of awakening. I had not slept. Yet I was emerging, abruptly, into reality. Or was it a new reality that was beginning?

  But then, when does a man begin to . . . No! I will not let myself go down that slippery slope. I am a lawyer by profession and have the habit, some even say the mania, of precision.

  And yet, I don’t even know what time it might have been. Two o’clock? Three o’clock in the morning? At my feet, on the floor of beaten earth, the pink filament of the small flashlight was still shedding its last gleam without illuminating a thing any more. With cold, numb fingers, I was trying to strike a match to light my cigarette. I needed to smoke. It was like a sign of recovered reality.

  The smell of tobacco felt reassuring to me, and I stayed there, leaning forward, elbows on my knees, staring at the huge banging door that might collapse at any moment under the onslaught of the storm.

  I had been drunk. I probably still was, which has happened to me only twice in my life. I remembered everything, however, the way you remember a dream when laying scraps of it end to end.

  After a trip to Canada, the Sanders had come to spend the weekend with us. Ray is one of my oldest friends. We studied law together at Yale and, later, after our marriages, we had kept up the connection.

  So. That evening, Saturday 15 January, when the snow had already begun falling, I’d asked Ray:

  ‘How do you feel about coming along with us for drinks at old Ashbridge’s place?’

  ‘Harold Ashbridge, from Boston?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I thought he spent the winter down at his home in Florida . . .’

  ‘Ten years ago, he bought some property about twenty miles from here to play the gentleman farmer. He’s always there for Christmas and New Year’s and only goes off to Florida around mid-January, after a big party.’

  Ashbridge is one of the few men who impress me. As is Ray. There are others. Actually, they aren’t as rare as all that. Not to mention the women. Mona, for example, Ray’s wife, whom I always see as an exotic little animal, although as far as exotic goes, she’s barely one-quarter Italian by blood.

  ‘He doesn’t know me . . .’

  ‘At Ashbridge’s, you don’t need to know anybody.’

  Isabel was listening without saying a word. Isabel never intervenes in such moments. She is the docile wife par excellence. She does not protest. She simply watches you and passes judgement.

  At that point, there had been nothing to criticize in my behaviour. We went every year to that party at the Ashbridges’, which is like a professional obligation. Isabel did not point out that the snow was falling hard and that the drive up to North Hillsdale is a difficult one. In any case, the snowplough had certainly gone by.

  ‘What car are we taking?’

  ‘Mine,’ I said.

  And at the back of my mind – it’s only now that I discover this – there was a tiny ulterior motive.

  Ray works on Madison Avenue. He is a partner in one of the biggest ad agencies. I see him almost every time I go to New York and am familiar with his routine.

  Without being a drinker, he does need two or three double martinis before each meal, like almost all those in his profession who live on their nerves.

  ‘If he drinks a bit too much, at the party . . .’

  It’s funny – or tragic – to recall those little details a few hours later. For fear that Ray might over-indulge, I was taking precautions, arranging to be the driver on the way home. Except that I was the one who had got drunk!

  At first, there were at least fifty people, if not more. An immense buffet was set out in the front hall, but all the doors were open, with people coming and going, even in the upstairs bedrooms, and bottles and glasses were everywhere.

  ‘May I introduce Mrs Ashbridge . . . Patricia, my friend Ray . . .’

  Patricia is only thirty. She is Ashbridge’s third wife. She’s very beautiful. Not beautiful like . . . I wouldn’t say like Isabel; my wife has never been truly beautiful. Besides, I always find it difficult to describe a woman and I automatically do so in relation to my wife.

  Isabel is tall, with a graceful figure, regular features and a slightly condescending smile, as if those with whom she is speaking were at fault in some way.

  Well, Patricia is the opposite. On the small side, like Mona. Even more of a brunette than she is, but with green eyes. And Patricia, she looks at you, fascinated, as if she desired nothing more than to learn your innermost thoughts or to confide her own to you.

  Isabel never conjures up the image of a bedroom. Now, Patricia – she always makes me think of a bed.

  They say . . . But I pay no attention to what people say. First of all, I don’t trust hearsay. And then, I instinctively loathe indiscretion, so I hate backbitin
g all the more.

  The Russels were there, the Dyers, the Collinses, the Greenes, the Hassbergers, the . . .

  ‘Ted! Hello!’

  ‘Dan! Hello!’

  People talk, drink, come, go, nibble things that taste like fish, turkey or beef . . . I had, I remember, a serious conversation off in the morning room with Bill Hassberger, who was thinking of sending me to Chicago to settle a legal matter.

  Those people are rich. For most of the year, don’t ask me why, they live in our little corner of Connecticut, but they have business interests more or less throughout the country.

  Compared to them, I’m a poor man. Dr Warren as well, with whom I chatted briefly. I was not drunk, far from it. I don’t know exactly when it all began.

  Or rather, as of a few seconds ago, I do know, because on my bench, where I’m having at least my fifth cigarette, I’m suddenly discovering in myself a curious lucidity.

  I went upstairs, for no reason, like others before and after me. I pushed open a door and quickly shut it, with just time enough to see Ray and Patricia in what wasn’t even a bedroom, but a bathroom, where they were making love, completely clothed.

  I may be forty-five years old, but that image made such an impression that I can still see it in minute detail. Patricia saw me, I’m sure of that. I would even swear that the look in her eyes was not embarrassment, but a kind of amused defiance.

  That’s very important. That image has considerable importance for me.

  Sitting on my bench, in the barn, I had only a presentiment of this, but later on I had plenty of time to think about it.

  I’m not claiming that it’s what drove me to drink, but it was about at that moment that I began draining all the glasses within reach. Isabel caught me, and I blushed, naturally.

  ‘It’s hot,’ I murmured.

  She did not advise me to be careful. She said nothing. She smiled, with her terrible smile that forgives or that . . .

  That what? Later. I’m not there yet. There are so many other things to work out!

  One summer, I decided to clean up the barn, intending to empty it, throw things away and neatly arrange what was worth keeping. After a few hours, overwhelmed, I sheepishly gave up.

  That’s a little like what happens with another inventory, the one I undertook in the very same barn that night. This time, however, I’ll finish the job, no matter what it costs and what I discover.

  Already there’s the image of Ray and Patricia to be properly filed away. And shortly afterwards, the look in old Ashbridge’s eyes. He’s no drunk, either, but a man who sips his drinks, especially after five in the afternoon. He’s a bit portly, and his big pale eyes are always moist.

  ‘Well, Donald?’

  The two of us weren’t far from the buffet, with several noisy groups around us. We could hear various conversations overlapping at the same time.

  Why did I have the impression that we found ourselves suddenly isolated, he and I? Confronting each other, that’s a better way to put it. For it was barely five minutes after the scene in the bathroom.

  He was looking at me calmly, but he was looking at me. I know exactly what I mean. Most of the time, especially in such encounters, you don’t really look at the other person. You know the person is there. You talk. You listen. You reply. You let your gaze wander to a face, a shoulder . . .

  He was looking at me, and the two words he’d just spoken took on the tenor of a question.

  ‘Well, Donald?’

  Well . . . what? Had he seen, too? Did he know that I had seen?

  He was neither gloomy nor threatening. He was not smiling, either. Was he jealous?

  Did he know that Patricia was in the habit of . . . I was the one who felt guilty as he continued.

  ‘Your friend Sanders is a remarkable fellow . . .’

  Some people left. We could see them, in the entryway, putting on their coats and rubber boots, which stood in a row all along a shelf. Each time the front door opened and closed it let in a gust of icy air.

  Then there was the sound of the wind, monotonous at first, blustery in bursts later on, and the guests began to look questioningly at one another.

  ‘It’s still snowing?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, then, we’re going to get a blizzard.’

  Why I kept drinking, which was so unlike me, I still don’t understand. I went from one group to another; familiar faces began to seem different to me. I believe I even sneered and that Isabel saw me at it.

  A kind of uneasiness began to set in. Certain guests lived rather far away, some in New York, others in Massachusetts, and had up to forty miles to cover to get home.

  I was one of the last to go. I heard raised voices, exclamations whenever a group was leaving and a particularly violent blast entered the house.

  ‘In an hour there’ll be three feet of snow . . .’

  I don’t know who said that. Then Isabel took my arm in a relaxed way, like a good wife, quite naturally. I understood nevertheless that it was time for us to leave as well.

  ‘Where is Mona?’

  ‘She went to get her mink in Pat’s bedroom.’

  ‘And Ray?’

  Ray was in front of me, the everyday Ray, the Ray I’d been used to for twenty-five years.

  ‘Are we leaving?’ he asked.

  ‘I think so, yes.’

  ‘It seems you can’t see a thing in front of you.’

  I did not shake Patricia’s hand the way I had those other times. I admit that I made this somewhat obvious, that I took a perverse pleasure in doing so. Did old Ashbridge notice?

  ‘Get in the car, kids . . .’

  There were only three or four cars left out in the driveway. The already savage wind was blowing so much snow hard into our faces that we had to walk bent over.

  The two women climbed into the rear seats. I took the wheel, without Isabel asking me if I were in a fit state to drive. I was neither depressed nor tired. On the contrary, I felt pleasantly elated, and the roaring of the storm made me feel like singing.

  ‘And that’s one down!’

  ‘One what?’

  ‘Party . . . There’s still one left, next week at the Russels’, after which things will be quiet until the spring.’

  At times the windshield wipers jammed for a moment before starting up again. The snow streamed by in almost horizontal white stripes in front of the headlights, and I used the black line of the trees to guide me because the edges of the road were no longer visible.

  Behind me I could hear, in the warmth of the car and their fur coats, the two women exchanging banal remarks.

  ‘You weren’t too bored, Mona?’

  ‘Not at all. Patricia is charming . . . Actually, everyone was nice.’

  ‘In three days, they’ll be swimming in Florida.’

  ‘Ray and I think we’ll spend a few days in Miami next month . . .’

  I had to lean forwards to see ahead of me and several times I got out of the car to scrape ice off the windshield. The third time, I felt as if I would be carried off by the blizzard.

  We have them every winter, more or less powerful storms. We know the treacherous places, the snowdrift spots, the roads to avoid.

  How did we get back to Brentwood? Through Copake or Great Barrington? I couldn’t tell you.

  ‘This one is a beaut, Ray ol’ buddy . . .’

  A beautiful snowstorm. A true blizzard. When I turned on the radio, that was in fact the word they were using. Up by Albany, they were already talking about winds of more than sixty miles an hour, and hundreds of cars were snowed in on roads to the north.

  Instead of worrying me, the news excited me, as if I were welcoming with relief a little something extraordinary into my life.

  We were not talking much, Ray and I. He was staring straight ahead, frowning whenever the visibility dropped close to zero. Then, on purpose, I would drive faster.

  I had no score to settle with him. He was my friend. He hadn’t wronged me in any wa
y by making love with Patricia Ashbridge. I wasn’t in love with her. I wasn’t in love with any woman. I was content with Isabel. What score would I have had to settle?

  I had to spend a few minutes manoeuvring around a snowdrift and used one of the bags of sand we always keep in the car trunk in the winter. I had snow in my eyes, nose, ears, and some was getting in through the gaps in my clothing.

  ‘Where are we?’

  ‘Three more miles . . .’

  It was harder and harder to make any progress. Even though we’d seen three ploughs, the snow piled up as soon as they had passed, and our windshield wipers were now useless. I kept having to leave the car to scrape the windshield.

  ‘Are we still on the road?’

  Isabel’s voice was calm. She was asking the question, that’s all.

  ‘I assume so!’ I replied gaily.

  The truth was, I no longer knew. It was only in crossing the small stone bridge a mile from home that I regained my bearings. Except that, after the bridge, the snow had formed an actual wall in which the front of the car embedded itself.

  ‘That’s it, folks. Everyone out . . .’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Everyone out. The Chrysler is not a bulldozer. We’ll have to keep going on foot . . .’

  Ray looked at me, wondering if I was serious. Isabel had understood, since this had happened to us twice before.

  ‘Are you taking the flashlight?’

  I removed it from the glove compartment and switched it on. It had been some months, perhaps two years, since we last used it and, as we might have expected, it produced only a yellowish gleam.

  ‘Let’s go . . .’

  Things were still cheerful, at that moment. I can still see the women arm in arm, huddled forward, pressing on through the snow up ahead. I followed with the flashlight, and Ray walked silently beside me. No one said anything, actually. It was already rather hard to breathe in the blizzard without wasting more breath.

  Isabel fell, got gamely to her feet. Sometimes the two women vanished into the darkness. I would shout, my hand in front of my mouth to ward off the freezing air: ‘Yoo-hoo! . . . Yoo-hoo! . . .’