because it was like clothes that have fallen in the hay in summer and keep scratching your neck and back all day long.
The previous night, after Xavier had left, Georges had spent a couple of lazy hours cleaning his Browning, using silicone to repair a frayed strap, brushing the buttons on his hunting jacket. The implements hadn’t been put away, and were still there, looking at him as if they’d warned him that today would be special and it would be better to stay home, that he should have made up some excuse to not go out boar hunting. He looked for the biscuit tin that he’d used to store ammunition as long as he could remember and took it into the kitchen. He put the kettle on, and the air smelled of gas and then burned match. While he was waiting, Georges began to organize the cartridges and bullets that got mixed up over time or just stayed there, on the windowsill and in the cutlery drawer, making the reality that no children lived in this house unmistakable. When he had all the 8x57s in a single pile, the kettle began to fret on the stove. Georges put a lemon tea bag in a thick glass, striped from use, and let two sugar cubes dissolve in the boiling water. With the biscuit tin in one hand and the glass of tea in the other, he went to sit beside the telephone. He took out the map of the Islands of Pleasure; for the first time he looked at it closely. Water flowed around a circle, and in the water two fish swam, one coming and one going, one trying endlessly to catch up to the other, but it was impossible to tell from the drawing which one was chasing and which escaping its pursuer. Georges turned the photocopy over and wrote on the back in pencil:
Charlotte Lemoine
Xavier Moré
Georges Lemoine (me)
Charlotte
Georges
Xavier (him)
To have lost her forever
Never to have been with her
He heard dogs barking, far away and distorted by the echo. Their house seemed different at night, and this silence, through which he usually slept, now stimulated him, made him tense and alert, aware of the whole world. He saw his reflection in the windowpane, translucent like a negative; he saw the shadow of the guns in their rack, like billiard cues, steady and disciplined. Perhaps overwhelmed by detail, in a mental atmosphere too similar to that of an opium addict, Georges did not pick up the phone at the first ring—he might have confused it with the barking, or he might not have heard it—and when he did, the black receiver fell asleep in his hand. Jean’s voice called from the other end of the line, serious, electronic, disconsolate.
“
Allô? Allô?
Madame Lemoine, are you there? Madame, I need to know, I need to speak with you. You’re the only one who might know.”
Georges realized that revealing his presence would be like surrendering. Accepting that Charlotte formed part of that small tragedy, that she’d had power over the life of a man who was not her husband, would be to discover that he and his wife had not lived alone all these years, that there had always been a specter between them. Then he also realized that all those precautions were futile. It was naive or ingenuous to believe that the past was capable of burying its dead. From this night on, Moré would appropriate part of the house: he would be a permanent lodger, someone Georges would see by just turning his head while smoking a cigar or brushing his teeth, someone who would watch him and his wife sleep, standing next to their bed wrapped up in his father’s green hunting jacket, until the end of time. Georges hung up the phone; he immediately unplugged it, yanking with such force that he broke the socket, leaving blue and red wires sticking out of the wall. He didn’t stand up; his legs would not have done his bidding. He thought he was unable to go upstairs, to confront Charlotte’s sadness, her silent tears, her likely guilt and perhaps her accusations. So he would stay faintheartedly downstairs, as he’d read about wolf hunters doing
The previous night, after Xavier had left, Georges had spent a couple of lazy hours cleaning his Browning, using silicone to repair a frayed strap, brushing the buttons on his hunting jacket. The implements hadn’t been put away, and were still there, looking at him as if they’d warned him that today would be special and it would be better to stay home, that he should have made up some excuse to not go out boar hunting. He looked for the biscuit tin that he’d used to store ammunition as long as he could remember and took it into the kitchen. He put the kettle on, and the air smelled of gas and then burned match. While he was waiting, Georges began to organize the cartridges and bullets that got mixed up over time or just stayed there, on the windowsill and in the cutlery drawer, making the reality that no children lived in this house unmistakable. When he had all the 8x57s in a single pile, the kettle began to fret on the stove. Georges put a lemon tea bag in a thick glass, striped from use, and let two sugar cubes dissolve in the boiling water. With the biscuit tin in one hand and the glass of tea in the other, he went to sit beside the telephone. He took out the map of the Islands of Pleasure; for the first time he looked at it closely. Water flowed around a circle, and in the water two fish swam, one coming and one going, one trying endlessly to catch up to the other, but it was impossible to tell from the drawing which one was chasing and which escaping its pursuer. Georges turned the photocopy over and wrote on the back in pencil:
Charlotte Lemoine
Xavier Moré
Georges Lemoine (me)
Charlotte
Georges
Xavier (him)
To have lost her forever
Never to have been with her
He heard dogs barking, far away and distorted by the echo. Their house seemed different at night, and this silence, through which he usually slept, now stimulated him, made him tense and alert, aware of the whole world. He saw his reflection in the windowpane, translucent like a negative; he saw the shadow of the guns in their rack, like billiard cues, steady and disciplined. Perhaps overwhelmed by detail, in a mental atmosphere too similar to that of an opium addict, Georges did not pick up the phone at the first ring—he might have confused it with the barking, or he might not have heard it—and when he did, the black receiver fell asleep in his hand. Jean’s voice called from the other end of the line, serious, electronic, disconsolate.
“
Allô? Allô?
Madame Lemoine, are you there? Madame, I need to know, I need to speak with you. You’re the only one who might know.”
Georges realized that revealing his presence would be like surrendering. Accepting that Charlotte formed part of that small tragedy, that she’d had power over the life of a man who was not her husband, would be to discover that he and his wife had not lived alone all these years, that there had always been a specter between them. Then he also realized that all those precautions were futile. It was naive or ingenuous to believe that the past was capable of burying its dead. From this night on, Moré would appropriate part of the house: he would be a permanent lodger, someone Georges would see by just turning his head while smoking a cigar or brushing his teeth, someone who would watch him and his wife sleep, standing next to their bed wrapped up in his father’s green hunting jacket, until the end of time. Georges hung up the phone; he immediately unplugged it, yanking with such force that he broke the socket, leaving blue and red wires sticking out of the wall. He didn’t stand up; his legs would not have done his bidding. He thought he was unable to go upstairs, to confront Charlotte’s sadness, her silent tears, her likely guilt and perhaps her accusations. So he would stay faintheartedly downstairs, as he’d read about wolf hunters doing
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