The Little Man From Archangel

by Georges Simenon

  'I don't know yet.'

  It was starting all over again. He was floundering, no longer knowing what to reply to the questions that were being put to him, realizing that it would be worse tomorrow and worse still in the days to follow.

  What would happen, for example, if La Loute came to see her family and disclosed that Gina had not been to Bourges? It was unlikely, but he was envisaging everything. The woman everyone called La Loute was really Louise Hariel, and her parents kept the grain store in the market, just opposite Jonas, on the other side of the great roof.

  He had seen her, in the same way as he had seen Gina, running about among the crates when she was not yet ten. At that time, with her round face, her blue eyes with long lashes and her curly hair, she looked like a doll. It was odd, for her father was a thin, plain little man and her mother, in the drab background of the grain store, which faced north and never got the sun, looked like a dried-up old spinster.

  The two Hariels, man and wife, wore the same grey smock and, from living together, each behind their own counter, making the same movements, they had ended by resembling one another.

  La Loute had been the only one of the girls of the Square to be educated in a convent, which she had not left until the age of seventeen. She was also the best-dressed and her clothes were very lady-like. On Sundays when she went to High Mass with her parents, everyone used to turn round, and the mothers held up her deportment as an example to their daughters.

  For about two years she had worked as a secretary to the Privas Press, a business which had been flourishing for three generations, then, all of a sudden, it had been put about that she had found a better job in Bourges.

  Her parents didn't mention the subject. The two of them were the most cantankerous shopkeepers in the Old Market and many customers preferred to go all the way to the Rue de la Gare for their purchases.

  La Loute and Gina were good friends. With Clémence, the butchers' daughter, they had for long been an inseparable trio.

  At first people had said that La Loute was working with an architect in Bourges, then with a bachelor doctor with whom she had lived on marital terms.

  Various people had met her there, and there was talk of her expensive tastes, her fur coat. The latest news was that she had a baby Citroen, which had been seen outside her parents' door one evening.

  La Loute had not spent the night with them. The neighbours claimed to have heard raised voices, which was strange, for the Hariels hardly ever opened their mouths and someone had actually called them the two fish.

  To Jonas, Gina had contented herself with saying, on one of her returns from Bourges:

  'She leads her life as best she can and it's not easy for anyone.'

  After a moment's reflection she had added:

  'Poor girl. She's too kind.'

  Why too kind? Jonas had not inquired. He recognized that it was none of his business, that it was women's and even girls' gossip, that friends like Clémence, La Loute and Gina, when they got together, became schoolgirls again and had a right to their own secrets.

  Another time, Gina had said;

  'It's all plain sailing for some people.'

  Was she referring to Clémence, who had a young husband, a good-looking fellow, who had had the finest wedding in the Old Market?

  He himself wasn't young, nor a good-looking fellow, and all he had been able to offer was security. Had Gina really wanted security, peace, as she had said the first day?

  Where was she at that moment, with the stamps which she imagined she could sell without difficulty? Surely she could have had hardly any money on her, even if, without Jonas' knowledge, she had put some aside for the occasion? Her brother could not have given her anything either, because it was she who slipped him money from time to time.

  Because she had seen the prices in the catalogue she had told herself that she had only to call at any stamp dealer, in Paris or anywhere else, to sell them. It was true of certain of them, the ones only comparatively rare, but it was not the case for the valuable ones, like the 1849 Ceres.

  Stamp dealers, like diamond merchants, form a sort of confraternity throughout the world, and are more or less known to one another. They know, usually, in whose hands such and such a rare stamp is, and watch for a chance to acquire it for their customers.

  At least five of the stamps she had taken were known in this way. If she were to offer them for sale at any reputable dealers there was a good chance that the assistant would detain her on some pretext and telephone the police.

  She was in no danger of being put into prison, because she was his wife and theft is not recognized between married people. Even so they would start an inquiry and they would get into touch with him.

  Would it be in this way, on account of her ignorance, that her escapade would come to an end?

  He was not sure he would wish that. He didn't wish it. It hurt him to think of Gina's shame, her discomfiture, her rage.

  Wouldn't it be still worse if she were to entrust the sale to someone else? By now she was no longer alone, on that score he had no illusions. And this time it was not a question of some young male from the town whom she had not been able to resist following for a night or two.

  She had set off deliberately and her departure had been premeditated, organized at least twenty-four hours in advance. In other words, he had lived with her for twenty-four hours without realizing that it was probably the last day they would spend together.

  He was walking along the street now, with slow steps, and the bare space under the tile roof seemed immense, given over to a few men who were hosing it down and scrubbing the cement floor with brooms. Most of the shops were shut until two o'clock.

  He was shrinking from the moment of going into Le Bouc's to drink his coffee, for he didn't feel like speaking to anybody, least of all to answer any more questions. He was devoid of hatred, or bitterness. What was filling his heart was a sad, anxious, and almost serene tenderness, and he stopped for a good minute watching two puppies, one of them lying on its back in the sun, with its four paws waving in the air, playing at biting each other.

  He remembered the smell of herrings, in the kitchen, the oven which Gina in her haste had not washed and to which bits of fish were sticking. He tried to remember what they had found to talk about at that last meal, but could not do so. Then he tried to recall the minute details of the day before, which he had spent like an ordinary day, when it was really the most important one in his life.

  One image came back to him: he was behind his counter, serving an old gentleman who didn't know exactly what he wanted when Gina, who had gone up a little earlier than usual to do her face, had come down in her red dress. It was one of last year's dresses, and this was the first time he had seen it this season; because Gina had put on weight it clung more closely than ever to her body.

  She had gone over to the doorway and into the triangle of sunlight, and he could never remember having seen her looking so lovely.

  He hadn't told her so because, when he paid her a compliment, she would shrug her shoulders irritably and sometimes her face would cloud over.

  Once she had countered, almost dryly:

  'Forget it! I'll be an old woman soon enough, for God's sake!'

  He thought he understood. He had no wish to analyse the matter any further. Obviously she meant that she was losing youth here in this old house which smelt of mouldering paper. It was doubtless an ironic way of reassuring him, of letting him know that they would be soon on equal terms and that he would no longer need to be afraid.

  'I'm going to go and say good-morning to Mama,' she had told him.

  Usually, at that hour, her visits to her mother's shop didn't last for long, for Angèle, harassed with customers, had no time to waste. But Gina had been absent for nearly an hour. When she had come back, she didn't come from the right, but from the left, in other words from the opposite direction to the house of her parents, and yet she was not carrying any parcels.

  She n
ever received any letters, it suddenly struck him. Not counting La Loute, she had several married friends who no longer lived in the town. Oughtn't she to have received at least a post-card from them now and again?

  The Post Office was in the Rue Haute, five minutes from Pepito's. Did she have her mail sent there poste restante? Or had she been to make a telephone call from the box?

  During the two years they had been married she had never mentioned Marcel, who had been sentenced to five years in prison. When she had gone off on her escapades, it was perforce with other men, which had led Jonas to suppose that she had forgotten about Jenot.

  It was at least six months since she had gone out in the evening on her own, except to look after Clémence's baby, and each time she had returned punctually. Besides, if she had seen a man, he would have noticed, for she was not a woman on whom love left no mark. He knew the look on her face when she had been with a man, her slack, shifty manner, and even the smell of her body which was not the same.

  Madame Hariel, the grain seller, stood behind her shop door with the handle removed, her pale face pressed to the glass panel, watching him as he wandered along the pavement like a man who does not know where he is going, and he finally headed in the direction of Le Bouc's bar. The latter was still at lunch with his wife in the back of the café, and they were finishing their black pudding.

  'Don't move,' he said, 'I've plenty of time.'

  It was the slack time of the day. Fernand, before having his lunch, had swept up the dirty sawdust and the red floor stones shone brightly, the house smelt of cleanliness.

  'Did you have lunch at Pepito's?'

  He nodded. Le Bouc had a bony face, and used to wear a blue apron. Except on Sundays and two or three times at the cinema, Jonas had never seen him in a coat.

  With his mouth full, he said as he went over to the percolator:

  'Louis asked me just now if I had seen Gina go past and I said I hadn't. He was having one of his bad bouts. It's a pity that a fine chap like him can't stop himself from drinking.'

  Jonas unwrapped his two lumps of sugar and held them in his hand, while waiting for his cup of coffee. He liked the smell of Le Bouc's bar, even though it was loaded with alcohol, just as he liked the smell of old books which reigned in his own house. He liked the smell of the market as well, especially during the fresh fruit season, and he sometimes strolled about among the stalls to breathe it in, at the same time keeping an eye on his bookshop from afar.

  Le Bouc had just said, referring to Louis:

  'A fine chap . . .'

  And Jonas noticed for the first time that it was an expression he often used. Ancel was a fine chap as well, and Benaiche the police constable, for whom the retailers filled a crate of provisions every morning, which his wife came to fetch at nine o'clock.

  Angèle, too, despite her shrewish temperament, was a fine woman.

  Everybody, around the Market, except perhaps for the Hariels, who shut themselves up in their own house as if to avoid God knows what contagion, greeted one another each morning with good humour and cordiality. Everybody also worked hard and respected hard work in others.

  Of Marcel, when the hold-up affair had come to light, they had said pityingly :

  'It's funny. Such a nice lad . . .'

  Then they had added:

  'It must be Indo-China that did it to him. That's no place for young lads.'

  If they spoke of La Loute and the mysterious life she led at Bourges, they didn't hold that against her either.

  'Girls today aren't what they used to be. Education's changed too.'

  As for Gina, she remained one of the most popular figures in the Market and when she passed by with a sway of her hips, a smile on her lips, her teeth sparkling, their faces would light up. They all followed her latest adventures. She had been seen one evening, when she was hardly seventeen, lying with a lorry driver on the back of a lorry.

  'Hullo there, Gina!' they used to call out to her.

  And no doubt they envied the good fortune of the men who had slept with her. Many of them had tried. Some had succeeded. Nobody held it against her for being what she was. They were nearer to being grateful, for without her the Vieux-Marché would not have been quite what it was.

  'Is it true that she took the morning bus?' asked Le Bouc, returning to his place at the table.

  As Jonas made no reply, he took his silence to mean that he was correct, and went on:

  'In that case, she will have been with my niece, Gaston's daughter, who's gone to see a new specialist.'

  Jonas knew her. She was a young girl with a pretty but anaemic face who had a deformed hip and in order to walk had to thrust the right-hand side of her body forward. She was seventeen years old.

  Since the age of twelve, she had been in the hands of specialists, who had made her undergo various courses of treatment. She had been operated on two or three times without any appreciable success and, at about the age of fifteen, she had spent an entire year in plaster.

  She remained sweet and cheerful and her mother came several times a week to change books for her, sentimental novels which she chose carefully herself, out of fear that one of the characters might have been crippled as she was.

  'Is her mother with her?'

  'No. She went by herself. Gina will have kept her company.'

  'Is she coming back this evening?'

  'On the five o'clock bus.'

  So, then, they would know that Gina had not gone to Bourges. What would he say to Louis when he came to demand an explanation?

  For the Palestri family would certainly want explanations from him. They had entrusted their daughter to him, and considered him henceforth responsible for her.

  Incapable of looking after her, living in fear of a scandal which might at any moment break out, Angèle had thrust her into his arms. It was that, to put it bluntly, that she had come to do when she had talked to him about a place for her daughter with the assistant manager of the factory. The story may have been true, but she had taken advantage of it.

  Even now he was grateful to her for it, for his life without Gina had had no flavour; it was a little as if he had not lived before.

  What intrigued him was what had happened in the Palestri family during that period. That there had been discussions there was no question. Frédo's attitude was not in any doubt either, and he must have argued with his parents that they were pushing his sister into the arms of an old man.

  But Louis? Did he, too, prefer to see his daughter chasing men than married to Jonas?

  'It looks as if we're in for a hot summer. That's what the almanack says, anyway. Storms next week.'

  He wiped his spectacles which the steam of his coffee had misted over and stood there for a moment like an owl in the sun, blinking his pink eyelids. It was rare for him to take off his glasses in public; he didn't know exactly why he had done so, for he had never found himself in this position before. It gave him a sense of inferiority, rather as when one dreams that one is stark naked or trouserless in the middle of a crowd.

  Gina used to see him like this every day and perhaps that was why she treated him differently from the others. His thick lenses, not rimmed with metal or tortoise-shell, worked both ways. While they enabled him to observe the minutest details of the world outside, they enlarged his pupils for other people and gave them a fixed look, a hardness which in reality they did not possess.

  Once, standing in his doorway, he had heard a small boy who was passing say to his mother:

  'Hasn't that man got large eyes!'

  Actually his eyes weren't large. It was the glasses which gave them a globular appearance.

  'See you later,' he sighed, after counting out his coins and putting them on the counter.

  'See you later. Good afternoon.'

  At around five o'clock Le Bouc would close his bar, for in the afternoon few customers came. If he stayed open it was mainly for the convenience of his neighbours. The day before a market he would go to bed at eight
in the evening so as to be up at three next morning.

  Tomorrow, Friday, there was no market. Every other day, four days in the week to be precise, the space beneath the tiled roof stood empty and served as a parking place for cars and a playground for children.

  For the last two or three weeks, the children were to be seen charging about on roller skates which made a screeching sound for miles around, then, as if they had been given the word, they changed their game and took up skittles, spinning-tops or yo-yos. It followed a rhythm, like the seasons, only more mysterious, for it was impossible to tell where the decision came from and the vendor at the bazaar in the Rue Haute was taken by surprise every time.

  'I want a kite, please.'

  He would sell ten, twenty, in the space of two days, order others and then only sell one for the rest of the year.

  Taking his keys from his pocket reminded Jonas of the steel strongbox and Gina's departure. He encountered the smell of the house again, and the atmosphere was stale, now that the sun no longer fell on its front. He took out the two book-boxes, mounted on legs with castors, then stood in the middle of the shop, not knowing what to do with himself.

  Yet he had spent many years like this, alone, and had never suffered from it. Had not even noticed that there was something missing.

  What did he do in the old days, at this time? He sometimes would read, behind the counter. He had read a great deal, not only novels, but works on the most varied subjects, sometimes the most unexpected ones, ranging from political economy to the report of an archaeological excavation. Everything interested him. He would pick out at random a book on mechanics, for example, thinking only to glance over a couple of pages, and then read it from cover to cover. He had read in this way, from the first page to the last, The History of the Consulate and the Empire, as he had read, before selling them to a lawyer, twenty-one odd volumes of nineteenth-century trials.

  He particularly liked works on geography, ones following a region from its geological formation right up to its economic and cultural expansion.

  His stamps acted as reference marks. The names of countries, sovereigns and dictators, did not evoke in his mind a brightly coloured map or photographs, but a delicate vignette enclosed in a transparent packet.