The Hand Read online

  I could not bear her eyes any more. I would sometimes look away. I had already stopped brushing her cheek in the morning and evening. She had not mentioned it. I may be wrong, but I think there might have been a glimmer of hope in her eyes.

  If I was reacting like that, wasn’t it because I’d been affected? Indifferent, I would have continued the routine without noticing anything, without finding it painful.

  It was practically a declaration of war. I was becoming her enemy, an enemy who lived in the house, next to her, ate at the same table, slept in the same room.

  The month of May had begun gloriously, with days as warm as summertime. I was already wearing my cotton suit, my straw hat.

  At the office, the air conditioning was on. Mornings, before I went there, I would dive into the pool and I did the same after coming home in the evening.

  Isabel had adopted other hours; not once had she been in the pool at the same time as I was.

  ‘Have you a lot of work?’

  ‘Enough to keep me busy and pay our bills . . .’

  The house, which we owned, was worth around 60,000 dollars. Many years earlier, I had taken out life insurance for 100,000 dollars, which had seemed an enormous sum at the time, because I was only just starting out.

  Every year, I bought a few stocks.

  If I were to go off alone, without saying anything, to melt into the anonymous swarm, neither my wife nor my daughters would find themselves in financial difficulties.

  Go where? At night, in my bed, I sometimes thought of the man in Central Park, the one sleeping on a bench at noon, his mouth open, in view of passers-by.

  He needed no one. Nor did he need to pretend. He did not worry about people’s opinions, good manners, what must be done or not done.

  And whenever the police picked him up, he could go back to his snoring.

  I wasn’t obliged to take such a deep plunge. I could have . . .

  But why? I had already escaped, in situ, in a way. I had cut the strings. The marionette was still moving, but no one was manipulating it any longer.

  Except Isabel. She was there, lying on her back in her bed, silent, listening to my breathing, guessing at my phantoms. She was waiting for the moment when, giving up, I would get up to go and take my two sleeping tablets. These days, I needed two. Soon, I would need three. Was it more serious than drinking?

  I had been tempted to drink. Sometimes, when I looked at the liquor cabinet, I wanted to grab the first bottle at hand and drink straight from it, no doubt like the guy in Central Park.

  Exactly what was she waiting for? For me to begin screaming with rage? Or pain? Or . . .

  I was not screaming, and so she provoked me. When I would get up to take my tablets, she might ask me in a soft voice, as if speaking to a child or a sick person:

  ‘You’re not sleeping, Donald?’

  She could see that I wasn’t sleeping, right? I wasn’t a sleepwalker. So, why ask me that question?

  ‘Maybe you should go and see Warren . . .’

  Oh sure! Sure! She was trying to convince me that I was ill. She must have been convincing others, too.

  ‘He’s going through a difficult period, I don’t know why . . . Dr Warren doesn’t understand at all . . . He believes that it’s a mental problem . . .’

  The guy who has a mental illness . . .

  I could get the picture perfectly, in people’s minds, the sympathetic faces. I had already been the guy who had a mistress and might soon get divorced. Now I was the husband who is getting weird.

  ‘Just yesterday, I passed him in the street, and he didn’t recognize me . . .’

  As if I tried to recognize the faceless people who go by!

  She was depraved. I’m not the one who is busy drawing up a dossier. She is. Patiently, in minute detail, the way you weave a tapestry. She does sometimes do exactly that. Two of the living-room chairs are upholstered in her handiwork.

  She weaves . . . She weaves . . .

  And she watches me ferociously while waiting for me to crack up.

  Isn’t she afraid?

  4.

  I am calm, with a lucidity that I believe few men have attained. This is not a speech for the defence. I am not looking to exonerate myself. I am not writing this for anyone in particular.

  It is three o’clock in the morning. Today is 27 May, and the day was stiflingly hot. Nothing out of the ordinary happened. I had a lot of work at the office and I completed it conscientiously. By the way, I now know that my secretary is pregnant; after a few months’ leave, however, she intends to come back to work.

  That is no longer of any importance to me, but it will be to Higgins.

  Last night, as soon as I went to bed, my sheets became damp, because we don’t have air conditioning. The complicated arrangement of the rooms in the house makes it almost impossible to install.

  At half past midnight I was not asleep and went to take my two tablets. She did not speak to me but she followed me with her wide-open eyes. She literally caught me right when I got out of bed, watched me head for the bathroom and, when I came out, there were her eyes, waiting to lead me back to bed.

  Sleep did not come. The tablets have lost their power. I don’t dare increase the dose without Warren’s advice, and I’m not eager to see Warren at the moment.

  She is lying on her back. So am I. My eyes are open, because it’s even worse when I close them and I can hear my heart beat.

  I could, if I listened hard, hear hers.

  Two hours have passed. It’s unbelievable how many images can scroll through a brain in two hours. The one I saw most again was the hand, on the living-room floor.

  I wonder why that hand has taken on such importance. I have held the entire body in my arms. I know it in its most minute details, in all kinds of light.

  No! It’s the hand that comes back to me, on the floor, near my mattress. I turned on the bedside lamp, got up and went to the bathroom.

  ‘Don’t you feel well, Donald?’

  Because I don’t usually get up twice.

  I swallowed another tablet, then one more, to have done with this insomnia.

  When I went back into the bedroom, she was sitting on her bed and looking at me.

  Hadn’t she almost reached her goal? Hadn’t she just heard the first crack?

  I did not think anything over. The action was spontaneous, and I performed it calmly. Opening the night-table drawer, I grabbed the revolver.

  She was still looking at me, without frowning. She was still defying me.

  Wasn’t my first thought to point the gun at myself, as Ray had been tempted to do?

  Probably. I wouldn’t dare swear to it.

  She looked at the short barrel, then at my face. What I am sure of is this: a smile flickered over her face, and there was, in her blue eyes, a gleam of triumph.

  I shot at the chest and felt no emotion. The eyes were still staring at me, motionless, so then I fired two more shots.

  In those eyes.

  I will telephone Lieutenant Olsen to tell him what has happened. People will talk about a crime of passion, and there will certainly be questions about Mona, who has nothing to do with it.

  They’ll have me examined by a psychiatrist.

  What difference will it make to me to be in prison, since I have been there all my life?

  I’ve just called Olsen. He did not seem too surprised. He said, ‘I’m coming right away . . .’

  And he added:

  ‘Above all, don’t do anything foolish . . .’

  THE BEGINNING

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  PENGUIN CLASSICS

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  Penguin Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com

  First published in French as La main by Presse de la Cité 2016

  This translation first published 2016

  Copyright © Georges Simenon Limited, 1968

  Translation copyright © Linda Coverdale, 2016

  GEORGES SIMENON ® Simenon.tm

  MAIGRET ® Georges Simenon Limited

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  Cover photograph by Weegee (Arthur Fellig)/International Center of Photography/Getty Images.

  ISBN: 978-0-141-98451-3