The A26 by Pascal Garnier Page B

well. Every Wednesday for years now, the doctor had caught the train to Lille to see his mother. They had ended up exchanging greetings and passing the time of day until there had grown up between them not a friendship exactly, but a very pleasant acquaintanceship. As soon as he’d begun to feel ill Bernard had quite naturally turned to him. He’d soon regretted it, he had become his patient. Behind the large Empire-style desk he’d always felt like a suspect stripped for questioning, one of life’s miscreants. These days whenever he met the doctor at the station he felt naked in front of him, completely at a loss.
    Bernard had crumpled up the prescription and got behind the wheel of his car. There had been no puncture beside the building site.
    Spurts of water added whiskers to each side of his Renault 5. Bernard was discovering life in its most infinitesimal of guises. It was there, rounding out with yellow light each of the tiny raindrops starring the windscreen, million upon million of miniature light bulbs to illuminate so long a night. It was there too in the vibrations of the steering wheel in his hands, and in the dance of the windscreen wipers, which reminded him of the finale of a musical comedy. The anguish of doubt gave way to the strange nirvana of certainty. It was a matter of weeks, days, then. He had known for ages that he was dying, of course, but this evening he felt he had crossed a line. Deep down, these last months, it was hope which had made him sufferthe most. ‘Bernard Bonnet, your appeal has been refused.’ He felt liberated, he had nothing more to lose.
    Then in the beam of the headlamps, he had seen the redhead, thumbing a lift, caught in a mesh of rain and dark.
    ‘What an awful night!’
    ‘Three months at the most,’ he had thought. She smelt of wet dog. She wasn’t even twenty, surely.
    ‘I’ve missed the bus to Brissy. Are you going that way?’
    ‘I’m going nearby, I can drop you off there.’
    She had a big nose, big bust and big thighs and smelt of wide open spaces, the impetuousness of youth. Bernard’s uniform must have made her feel safe, as she was making herself at home, undoing her parka and shaking out her mop of red hair.
    ‘The next one’s not for half an hour, and I don’t want to wait. I’ll be eighteen in a month, and sitting my test. I’ve been saving up, and for a car as well. My brother-in-law’s going to sell me his – it’s a Renault 5, like yours.’
    ‘That’s nice.’
    ‘Don’t I know you? D’you work at the station?’
    ‘Yes.’
    The stripes on her trousers looked like scratches. She had sturdy thighs, and the same smell as Yolande when she came home late from the factory. Their father would thump his fist on the table.
    ‘Have you seen the time?’
    ‘Well, how d’you expect me to get home? There isn’t a bus any more. There’s a war on, haven’t you heard? What are we having to eat?’
    They always had the same, and she would always have some boyfriend waiting in the wings.
    ‘Why are you smiling?’
    ‘It’s you. You remind me of my sister when she was your age.’
    ‘Oh. What’s she called, your sister?’
    ‘Yolande.’
    ‘I’m Maryse. And what about you, what’s your first name?’
    ‘Bernard.’
    ‘Like my brother-in-law!’
    She was practically family. Nothing for it but … He had stopped thinking about his death. This girl was like his life, a huge gift which he hadn’t dared even begin to unwrap.
    ‘What does your sister do?’
    ‘Nothing.’
    ‘Housewife and mother, then?’
    ‘Something like that.’
    On each side of the road the houses dissolved in a wash of brown ink. A triangular yellow sign had appeared right in the middle of the road, forcing a diversion.
    ‘I’ve had it up to here with their ruddy motorway! We don’t need it, do we?’
    ‘The march of progress. If you’ll excuse me, I just have to stop for a few minutes, a call of —’
    ‘Got you!’
    The girl’s laughter had sounded in his