journey. The heat was overpowering. Opposite the tiny white and pink station building there lay an endless avenue grey with dust, lined with ugly palms and new-built blocks. A few minutes after the train had come in, after the sparse cars and bicycles had left, the town returned to a state of total silence.
They left their cases in left luggage. They went down the avenue, which was called Avenue Bourguiba. After
about three hundred yards they came upon a restaurant. A sizable wall-mounted adjustable ventilator hummed jerkily. On greasy tables with oil-cloth tablecloths a few dozen flies had congregated; a stubble-chinned waiter nonchalantly flicked them away with a napkin. For two hundred francs they had a meal of tuna salad and veal cutlet.
Then they looked for a hotel, booked a room, had their cases brought over. They washed their hands and faces, lay down for a moment, changed, and went back down. Sylvie went to the Technical College, Jérôme waited outside on a bench. Towards four o'clock, Sfax began slowly to reawaken. Hundreds of children appeared, then veiled women, policemen dressed in grey poplin, beggars, carts, donkeys, spotless bourgeois .
Sylvie emerged with her timetable in her hand. They carried on walking. They drank a can of beer and ate olives and salted almonds. Barkers were selling the day before yesterday's Figaro. They had arrived.
The next day Sylvie made the acquaintance of some of her new colleagues, who helped them find a flat. It consisted of three huge rooms with high ceilings and was absolutely bare: a long passageway led to a small square room from which five doors opened, three of them to the bedrooms, one to a bathroom and one to a vast kitchen. Two balconies looked out onto a small fishing harbour, south channel A dock, which offered some resemblance to Saint-Tropez, and onto a foul-smelling lagoon. They took their first steps in the Arab quarter, bought a metal bedstead, a horse-hair mattress, two cane chairs, four rope stools, two tables, a thick yellow raffia mat with sparse decorations in red.
Then Sylvie began teaching. Day by day they settled in. Their trunks, which had been shipped as freight, arrived. They unpacked books, records, the record-player, the trinkets. With large sheets of red, grey and green blotting paper they made lampshades. They bought long planks of barely planed wood and twelve-hole bricks, and they covered two-thirds of the walls with bookshelves. On all the walls they stuck dozens of reproductions and on a prominently-positioned wallboard they pinned photographs of all their friends.
It was a cold and dismal dwelling. With its too-high walls painted with a brownish sort of yellow distemper which kept flaking off in large pieces, with its large, uniform, colourless tiles on all the floors, with its unusable volume, the flat was altogether too big and too bare for them to be able to live in it. There would have had to be five or six of them, a group of good friends drinking, eating, talking. But they were on their own, and lost. The living room, containing the camp bed on which they had put a small mattress and a colourful bedspread, the thick raffia mat strewn with a few cushions, and, above all, the books (the row of collected works in the Pléiade editions, the run of periodicals, the four Tisné volumes), the trinkets, the records, the large mariner's chart, The Great Parade , all the things which not so long ago had constituted the decor of their other life, all the things which took them back from this universe of sand and stone to Rue de Quatrefages, to the tree that stayed green for so long, to the little gardens - the living room, at least, still exuded a little warmth. Lying flat on the mat, with a tiny cup of Turkish coffee at their sides, they would listen to the Kreutzer Sonata , the Archduke , Death and the Maiden , and it was as though the music (which in this large and sparsely furnished room, almost as large as a hall, acquired stunning
They left their cases in left luggage. They went down the avenue, which was called Avenue Bourguiba. After
about three hundred yards they came upon a restaurant. A sizable wall-mounted adjustable ventilator hummed jerkily. On greasy tables with oil-cloth tablecloths a few dozen flies had congregated; a stubble-chinned waiter nonchalantly flicked them away with a napkin. For two hundred francs they had a meal of tuna salad and veal cutlet.
Then they looked for a hotel, booked a room, had their cases brought over. They washed their hands and faces, lay down for a moment, changed, and went back down. Sylvie went to the Technical College, Jérôme waited outside on a bench. Towards four o'clock, Sfax began slowly to reawaken. Hundreds of children appeared, then veiled women, policemen dressed in grey poplin, beggars, carts, donkeys, spotless bourgeois .
Sylvie emerged with her timetable in her hand. They carried on walking. They drank a can of beer and ate olives and salted almonds. Barkers were selling the day before yesterday's Figaro. They had arrived.
The next day Sylvie made the acquaintance of some of her new colleagues, who helped them find a flat. It consisted of three huge rooms with high ceilings and was absolutely bare: a long passageway led to a small square room from which five doors opened, three of them to the bedrooms, one to a bathroom and one to a vast kitchen. Two balconies looked out onto a small fishing harbour, south channel A dock, which offered some resemblance to Saint-Tropez, and onto a foul-smelling lagoon. They took their first steps in the Arab quarter, bought a metal bedstead, a horse-hair mattress, two cane chairs, four rope stools, two tables, a thick yellow raffia mat with sparse decorations in red.
Then Sylvie began teaching. Day by day they settled in. Their trunks, which had been shipped as freight, arrived. They unpacked books, records, the record-player, the trinkets. With large sheets of red, grey and green blotting paper they made lampshades. They bought long planks of barely planed wood and twelve-hole bricks, and they covered two-thirds of the walls with bookshelves. On all the walls they stuck dozens of reproductions and on a prominently-positioned wallboard they pinned photographs of all their friends.
It was a cold and dismal dwelling. With its too-high walls painted with a brownish sort of yellow distemper which kept flaking off in large pieces, with its large, uniform, colourless tiles on all the floors, with its unusable volume, the flat was altogether too big and too bare for them to be able to live in it. There would have had to be five or six of them, a group of good friends drinking, eating, talking. But they were on their own, and lost. The living room, containing the camp bed on which they had put a small mattress and a colourful bedspread, the thick raffia mat strewn with a few cushions, and, above all, the books (the row of collected works in the Pléiade editions, the run of periodicals, the four Tisné volumes), the trinkets, the records, the large mariner's chart, The Great Parade , all the things which not so long ago had constituted the decor of their other life, all the things which took them back from this universe of sand and stone to Rue de Quatrefages, to the tree that stayed green for so long, to the little gardens - the living room, at least, still exuded a little warmth. Lying flat on the mat, with a tiny cup of Turkish coffee at their sides, they would listen to the Kreutzer Sonata , the Archduke , Death and the Maiden , and it was as though the music (which in this large and sparsely furnished room, almost as large as a hall, acquired stunning
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