The Little Man From Archangel Read online

  At half-past twelve she hadn't come back and Milk, in bed but still wearing his glasses, was staring at the ceiling with melancholy patience.

  He was not anxious yet. He might have been, for it had happened before that she did not come in, and once she had stayed away for three whole days.

  On her return she had not given him any explanation. She could not have been very proud of herself, at heart. Her face was drawn, her eyes tired, she had seemed to carry an alien smell about her, but as she passed in front of him she had none the less drawn herself up to toss him a look of defiance.

  He had said nothing to her. What was the use? What could he have said? On the contrary, he had been softer, more attentive than usual, and two evenings later it was she who had suggested a walk along the canal, where she had slipped her hand into his arm.

  She was not a bad girl. She did not hate him, like her brother Frédo. He was convinced that she was doing her best to be a good wife, and that she was grateful to him for having married her.

  Twice or three times he gave a start on hearing noises, but it was the mice downstairs, of which he had given up trying to rid himself. All round the Market, where hung such delicious smells, where so many appetizing victuals were piled, the walls were riddled with warrens forming a secret city for the rodents.

  Fortunately both rats and mice found sufficient to eat outside not to be tempted to set on the books, so that Jonas no longer bothered with them. Occasionally the mice ran about the bedroom while he and Gina were in bed, they came right up to the foot of the bed as if curious to see human beings sleeping, and they had lost their fear of the human voice.

  A motor-bike belonging to the young Chenu, from the fishmongers', came to a halt on the far side of the square, then the silence returned and the church clock struck the quarter, then one o'clock, and only then did Jonas get up and go over to the straw-bottomed chair where he had laid his clothes.

  The first time it had happened, he had run about the town, ashamed, searching in the dark corners, looking into the window of the only bar still open in the neighbourhood of the factory.

  Today there was a possible explanation. Perhaps Poupou, Clémence's baby, was ill and Gina had stayed on to help out?

  He dressed, still hoping, went downstairs, glanced into the kitchen which was empty and smelt of cold herring. He picked up his hat on his way through his office, walked out of the house locking the door behind him.

  And what if Gina hadn't got a key? If she came back while he was away? If she was returning from Clémence's by another route.

  He decided to turn the key in the lock once more, so that she could let herself in again. The sky was clear above the vast slate roof, with a few clouds gleaming in the moonlight. Some way off a couple were walking along the Rue de Bourges and the air was so still that in spite of the distance, he could hear each remark they exchanged.

  As far as the Rue des Deux-Ponts he met nobody, saw only one lighted window, possibly someone waiting like him, or an invalid, someone in pain?

  He was disturbed by the noise of his shoes on the pavings and it gave him the feeling of an intruder.

  He knew the Reverdis' house, the second on the left after the corner, and he could see at once that there was no light on the floor the young couple occupied.

  What was the use of ringing, starting a disturbance, giving rise to questions which no one could answer?

  Perhaps Gina had gone back home after all. It was more than likely that she had lied, that she had not been to Clémence's, that the young couple had not been to the cinema at all.

  He remembered that she had not taken a book with her as she used to do when she went to look after Poupou and it had also struck him that she took her black patent-leather bag.

  For no particular reason he stood for a good five minutes on the edge of the pavement, gazing at the windows behind which there were people sleeping, then he moved off almost on tiptoe.

  When he reached the Place du Vieux-Marché an enormous lorry from Moulins, the first of the day, was almost blocking the Rue des Prémontrés and the driver was asleep in the cab with his mouth wide open.

  In his doorway he called:

  'Gina!'

  As if to conjure fate, he tried to speak in a natural voice, without betraying anxiety.

  'Are you there, Gina?'

  He locked the door again and bolted it, hesitated whether to make a fresh cup of coffee, decided against it and went up to his room and got back into bed.

  If he slept, he was not conscious of doing so. He had left the light on for no reason and an hour went by before he removed his spectacles, without which he could see only a vague, misty world. He heard some other lorries arriving, the slamming of doors, crates and boxes being stacked on the ground.

  He also heard Fernand Le Bouc opening his bar, then the first vans of the retailers.

  Gina hadn't come back. Gina wouldn't be coming back.

  He must have dropped off to sleep, because he didn't notice the transition from night to day. At one moment there was still a darkness pierced by the lights of the market, then suddenly there had been sunshine in the bedroom and on the bed.

  With a hesitant hand he felt the place beside him, and, of course, it was empty. Usually Gina was warm, lying like a gun dog, and she had a strong feminine smell. Sometimes in her sleep she would turn over sharply and, one thigh over Jonas' thigh, press on it hard, breathing more and more heavily as she did so.

  He decided not to go down, nor to get up before the right time, to follow the same routine as every other day. He did not go to sleep again and, to keep his mind occupied, he listened to the noises of the market, which he tried to identify with the same meticulousness as he applied to the scrutiny of a postage stamp.

  He, too, had practically been born here. Not quite. Not like the others. But they talked to him in the mornings as they talked to one another, with the same familiar friendliness, and he had his place, so to speak, at Le Bouc's counter.

  Twice he heard Ancel the butcher's voice on the pavement arguing with a man delivering some quarters of beef, and there was a row about some mutton which was fairly infuriating him. Chaigne's grocery opposite opened later, and the next house belonged to the Palestris where Angèle, Gina's mother, was already at work.

  It was she who attended to the business. Louis, her husband, was a pleasant fellow, but he could not stop himself from drinking. So to keep him occupied they had bought him a three-wheeler and he delivered the orders, not only for his own shop, but for the market people who had no means of transport.

  It used to humiliate him. He didn't admit it. On the one hand he was content to spend the whole day out of his house, free to drink at his leisure. But on the other hand he was no dupe, and realized that he didn't count, that he was no longer the real head of the family, and this made him drink all the more.

  What ought Angèle to have done? Jonas had wondered to himself and had not found the answer.

  Gina had no respect for her father. When he came to see her between errands, she would put the bottle of wine and a glass down on the table, with the words:

  'There! Is that what you want?'

  He would pretend to laugh, to take it as a joke. He knew it was meant seriously and yet he did not resist the need to fill his glass, though he might call out on leaving:

  'You're a proper bitch!'

  Jonas tried not to be present when that happened. In front of him, Palestri felt even more humiliated, and that was perhaps one of the reasons why he had nearly as big a grudge against him as his son had.

  He rose at six, went down to make his coffee. He was always the first one down and in summer his first action was to open the door into the yard. Often Gina wasn't to be seen downstairs until about half-past seven or eight when the shop was already open.

  She liked to hang about in dressing-gown and slippers, her face glistening after her night's sleep, and it did not disturb her to be seen thus by strangers; she would go and stand on the doorst
ep, walk past the Chaigne's on her way to say good-morning to her mother, return with vegetables or fruit.

  "Morning, Gina!'

  "Morning, Pierrot!'

  She knew everybody, the wholesalers, the retailers, the heavy-lorry drivers as well as the country women who came to sell the produce from their gardens or their back-yards. As a little girl she used to run about with bare behind between the crates and baskets.

  She was no longer a little girl now. She was a woman of twenty-four and her friend Clémence had a child, while others had two or three.

  She had not come home and Jonas, with careful movements, was setting down his boxes in front of the shop window, rearranging the price tickets and going over to the baker opposite to buy some croissants. He always bought five, three for himself, two for his wife, and when they automatically wrapped them up for him in brown tissue paper, he did not protest.

  He could easily throw away the two extra croissants, and this gave him the idea of saying nothing, which, to him, meant not admitting that Gina had gone off without telling him.

  Besides, had she really gone off? When she left in the evening she was only wearing her red cotton dress, only had with her her patent-leather bag.

  She might come back in the course of the day, at any moment. Perhaps she was already there?

  Once again he tried to conjure the fates.

  'Gina!' he called, going inside, a note almost of delight in his voice.

  Then he ate alone, on a corner of the kitchen table, washed up his cup, his plate, and swept up the crumbs from the croissants. To set his mind at rest he went upstairs to make sure that his wife's suitcase was still in the cupboard. She only possessed that one. The day before, when he was having his coffee at Le Bouc's, for example, she could have taken her case out of the house and left it somewhere.

  The postman called and it whiled away a little time reading the post, glancing cursorily over the stamps he had ordered from Cairo.

  Then all of a sudden it was ten o'clock and he went round to Fernand Le Bouc's, as he did every other morning.

  'How's Gina?'

  'She's all right.'

  'I was wondering if she was ill. I haven't seen her this morning.'

  Why hadn't he answered anything else rather than:

  'She's gone to Bourges.'

  He was angry with himself for this clumsy mistake. She might come back in half an hour, in an hour, and how would his reply be interpreted then?

  A girl who sold flowers not far from the shop came rushing in to change her book, as she did every morning, for she read a novel a day.

  'Is this a good one?'

  He said it was. She always chose the same kind of book whose gaudy covers were a guarantee of the contents.

  'Gina not here?'

  'Not at the moment.'

  'Is she all right?'

  'Yes.'

  An idea suddenly occurred to him, which made him blush, for he was ashamed of distrusting other people, of what he called evil thoughts about them. As soon as the little florist departed he went up to his room, opened the wardrobe with the mirrors at the back of which, under his and Gina's clothes which were hanging there, he kept a steel strong box bought at Viroulet's.

  The safe was in its place and Jonas had to make an effort to go any further, take the key from his pocket and insert it in the lock.

  If Gina had returned at that moment he would have fainted for shame.

  But Gina did not return and no doubt she would not be returning so soon.

  The transparent envelopes containing his rarest stamps, among others the Trinidad five cents blue of 1847, with the picture of the steamer Lady McLeod, had vanished.

  II

  He was still standing in front of the wardrobe with the mirrors, with beads of sweat on his upper lip, when he heard footsteps in the shop, then in the little room. It was rare for him to close the outside door in summer, for the house, built in depth, was ill-ventilated. Standing stock still, he waited for the male or female voice of a customer to call:

  'Anyone there?'

  But the steps went on into the kitchen, where the visitor waited before returning to the foot of the stairway. It was a man's step, heavy, dragging slightly, and Jonas, rooted to the spot, was wondering whether the stranger was going to climb the stairs, when the harsh voice of his father-in-law grated up the staircase:

  'You there, Gina?'

  Why was he seized with panic, as if he had been caught out? Without shutting the steel box, he pushed the wardrobe doors too, hesitating whether to go down or let it be thought that there was nobody at home. A footstep sounded on the bottom stair. The voice called again:

  'Gina!'

  Only then did he stammer out:

  'I'll be down in a moment.'

  Before leaving the room he had time to see in the mirror that his face had reddened.

  By that hour, however, Palestri was not yet drunk. Even in the evenings he never reached the point of reeling. Early in the morning his eyes would be slightly red and bleary, and he had a tumbledown look, but after a glass or two of marc, or rather grappa, its Italian version, he was no longer entirely steady.

  He did not only drink grappa, which Le Bouc bought especially for him, but everything he was offered or whatever he could find in the other bars where he dropped in.

  When Jonas came down, his pupils were beginning to lose their lustre and his face was flushed.

  ''Where's Gina?' he asked, looking in the direction of the kitchen where he had expected to find her.

  It surprised him as well to see his son-in-law coming down from the first floor when there was nobody downstairs, and he seemed to be waiting for some explanation. Jonas had not had the time to reflect. Just as a short while before at Fernand's, he had been caught on the wrong foot. And since he had mentioned Bourges once already, was it not better to continue?

  He felt a need to defend himself, even though he had done nothing.

  Palestri overawed him with his roughness, his great desiccated, gnarled body standing there.

  He stammered:

  'She's gone to Bourges.'

  He realized that he was not convincing, that his eyes, behind the thick lenses, must appear to be avoiding the other's gaze.

  'To see La Loute?'

  'That's what she said.'

  'Did she say good-bye to her mother?'

  'I don't know . . .'

  Like a coward, he was retreating towards the kitchen, and as Gina used to do, took the bottle of red wine from the cupboard, put it on the wax tablecloth with a glass beside it.

  'When did she go?'

  Later he was to ask himself why, from that moment onwards, he acted as if he were guilty. He remembered, for example, his wife's suitcase in the cupboard. If she had gone the day before to see her friend, she would have taken the case with her. So she must have left the house that same day.

  That is why he replied:

  'This morning.'

  Louis had stretched out his hand to the glass he had poured himself, but seemed to be hesitating suspiciously before drinking from it.

  'By the 7.10 bus?'

  There was only that one before the half-past eleven bus, which had not yet gone through. So Jonas was forced to answer yes.

  It was stupid. He was becoming caught up in a web of lies, which were bound to lead to others, and from which he would never be able to extricate himself. At seven in the morning the market was almost deserted. It was the time of the lull between the wholesalers and the ordinary customers. Gina's mother would certainly have seen her daughter passing, and in any case the girl would have gone into the shop to say good-morning to her.

  Other people would have seen her as well. There are some streets where people stay in their houses as if in water-tight compartments and each scarcely knows his neighbour. The Place du Vieux-Marché was different, it was rather like a barracks where the doors remained open and people knew from hour to hour what was going on in the family next door.

 
; Why did Palestri eye his son-in-law suspiciously? Wasn't it because he looked as if he were lying? At all events he emptied his glass, in a gulp, wiped his mouth with his usual gesture, similar to that of the butcher, but did not go away immediately: he was gazing round him at the kitchen and Jonas thought he understood the reason for the contraction of his eyebrows.

  There was something unnatural, that morning, in the atmosphere of the house. It was too tidy. There was nothing lying about, there was no sense of disarray that Gina always left behind her.

  "Bye!' he finally mumbled, heading for the door of the shop.

  He added, as if for his own benefit:

  'I'll tell her mother she's gone. When's she coming back?'

  'I don't know.'

  Would it have been better for Jonas to have called him back and confessed the truth, told him that his daughter had gone off, taking his valuable stamps with her?

  The ones downstairs, in the drawers of the desk, were only the common or garden stamps he bought by the packet, and the ones he had already sorted, which he was swapping or selling to schoolboys.

  The strong-box, on the other hand, contained till the day before a veritable fortune, the rare stamps which he had discovered, by dint of patience and flair, over more than twenty-five years, for he had first taken an interest in stamps while at school.

  One specimen alone, the pearl of his collection, a French stamp of 1849 with the head of Ceres on a bright vermilion ground, was worth, at the catalogue valuation, six hundred thousand francs.

  The Trinidad stamp, with the steamer Lady McLeod, was assessed at three hundred thousand francs, and he possessed others of considerable value, such as the Puerto Rican two peseta pink with the overprinted surcharge, for which he was being offered thirty-five thousand francs.