She Who Was No More by Pierre Boileau Page B

surface is another world that it makes you giddy to think of? Much the same as the fog game, wasn’t it? And you wanted Mireille to play it too. Now you are tempted in turn. You envy her, don’t you?
    Ravinel wandered for a long, long time, not caring where his legs carried him. Coming to the Seine, he trudged along by the side of the stone parapet, which came nearly up to his shoulder. In front of him was a bridge, a far-flung arch beneath which the lights were reflected in oily swirls. The town seemed abandoned. The thin wind smelt of locks and waterways. And Mireille was somewhere, mixed up with the night. They couldn’t meet, for they lived on different planes, in different elements. He hadn’t yet done the crossing. But they could signal to each other like ships that pass on the trade routes.
    ‘Mireille!’
    He spoke the word softly. He couldn’t wait any longer. He was in a hurry to cross the frontier too, to smash the mirror.

SEVEN
    When he woke up, Ravinel recognized the hotel bedroom. He remembered walking for hours on end. Then he recalled the image of Mireille and heaved a sigh. It took him several minutes, however, to decide that it was probably Sunday. It was indeed certain, because Lucienne was arriving by the twelve-something train. She must already be in the train. What was he to do to fill in the time? What could one do on a Sunday? A dead day, a day on which you could only mark time. And he was in a hurry to forge ahead.
    Nine o’clock.
    He got up and dressed, then drew back the threadbare curtain that concealed the window. A gray sky. Roofs. A few skylights, some of them still painted blue, a relic of the blackout. Certainly not an inspiring view. Downstairs he paid his bill to an old woman in curlers. It wasn’t till he was on the pavement that he realized he was in the neighborhood of the central market, within a stone’s throw of where Germain lived.
    Why shouldn’t he fill in the time there?
    Mireille’s brother lived in a flat on the fourth floor. A dark staircase. The lights didn’t work, and Ravinel had to grope his way up as best he could. Sunday smells. Sunday noises. Behind their doors, people hummed a tune or switched on the wireless, thinking of the afternoon’s football game or the movie they’d go to in the evening. On one landing he couldhear the hiss of milk boiling over, on another some howling brats. A man with an overcoat slipped on over his pajamas came downstairs leading a dog. It was all very intimate and Ravinel had the feeling of being out of it.
    On the fourth floor, he found the key in the door. It was always left there, but Ravinel never took any notice of it. He knocked. It was Germain who came to let him in.
    ‘Why, Fernand! How are you?’
    ‘All right, thanks. And you?’
    ‘Not too good… Excuse the mess: I’ve only just got up. Now you’re here, you’ll have a cup of coffee. Yes, yes. Of course you will.’
    He led Ravinel into the dining room, pulled out a chair for him, and swept away a dressing gown that was lying there.
    ‘And Marthe?’
    ‘She’s gone to church, but she’ll soon be back. Sit down, old boy… You’re in fine form, Mireille’s been telling me. Wish I could say the same of myself… By the way, you haven’t seen my latest X-rays. Here, help yourself to some coffee, while I go and fetch them.’
    There was a medicinal smell lingering in the air. Eucalyptus mixed with something else. And near the coffeepot was a little saucepan with a hypodermic syringe in it and some needles. What a bore! He wished he hadn’t come. Germain was pottering about in the bedroom, occasionally shouting out something to his brother-in-law.
    ‘You’ll see. They’re beauties. As the doctor says, with proper treatment…’
    When you marry you think you’re marrying a wife, but you’re really marrying a family. That at any rate was what it seemedlike to Ravinel. He’d married Germain’s germs, Germain’s private worries, Germain’s experiences