The Hand

by Georges Simenon

  I promised myself to look into that. If anyone ought to profit from that, it was I . . .

  I almost fell asleep in my bath and was careful not to slip getting out of the tub, because I did not feel too sure of my movements.

  What would we do, all three of us? Going to bed wasn’t likely. Do you go to bed when the husband of a guest . . .

  No. We wouldn’t go to bed. Besides, the rooms were growing chilly, and I was shivering in my bathrobe. I chose some grey flannel pants and a thick pullover I usually wore only to shovel snow along the driveway.

  One of the two candles was finished, so I lit the second one and put on my slippers to head for the living room.

  ‘Do you know if there’s more wood in the cellar?’

  We hardly ever used any. We only had a fire in the fireplace when we had friends over. To get to the cellar we raised a trapdoor and went down a ladder, which complicated the fetching of any logs.

  ‘I think we still have some . . .’

  I looked automatically at the bottle of Scotch. When I’d left the two women, the bottle had been half full. Now it was almost empty.

  Isabel had followed my glance, evidently, and – again evidently – had understood.

  With another look, she gave me the answer, gazing at Mona asleep in her armchair, her face crimson. Her peignoir, in falling slightly open, had uncovered a bare knee.

  2.

  When I half-opened my eyes, I was lying on the couch in the living room, where someone had covered me with the red, blue and yellow plaid throw blanket. The sun was up, but its light shone only weakly through windowpanes thick with frozen snow.

  What first struck me, and had perhaps awakened me, was the familiar odour of ordinary mornings: the smell of coffee. Memories of the previous evening and night returned. I wondered if the electricity was back on. Turning my head a little, I caught sight of Isabel on her knees at the hearth.

  I had a really bad headache and was not pleased at having to tackle the reality of a new day. I would have liked to fall back asleep but, before I had time to close my eyes again, my wife asked:

  ‘Did you get some rest?’

  ‘I think so . . . Yes.’

  I got up and realized that I had been drunker than I’d thought. My whole body hurt, and I felt dizzy.

  ‘Coffee will be ready in a minute.’

  It was my turn to ask.

  ‘Did you sleep?’

  ‘I dozed . . .’

  Well, no. She had watched over the both of us, Mona and me. She had been magnificent, as always. It was in her nature to behave perfectly, whatever the circumstances.

  I imagined her, sitting up straight in her armchair, looking from one to the other of us, sometimes rising quietly to stoke the fire.

  Then, at the first glimmer of dawn, snuffing out the precious candle and going to the kitchen to look for the pot with the longest handle. While we were sleeping, she had thought of the coffee.

  ‘Where is Mona?’

  ‘She went to get dressed.’

  In the guest room, at the end of the corridor, with windows that looked out over the pond. I remembered the two blue leather suitcases that Ray had carried in the previous day, before the evening at the Ashbridges’ house.

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘It hasn’t sunk in yet . . .’

  I was listening to the storm, still as strong as when I had fallen asleep. Isabel poured me coffee in my usual cup; we each had our own cups, and mine was a little larger, because I drink lots of coffee.

  ‘We’ll have to bring up some wood.’

  There were no more logs in the basket to the right of the fireplace, and those burning there would soon crumble to ash.

  ‘I’ll go.’

  ‘You don’t want me to help you?’

  ‘No, no . . .’

  I understood. She’d glanced at me two or three times and knew I had a hangover. She knew everything. Why bother trying to deceive her?

  I finished my coffee, lit a cigarette, went into the little room next to the living room, the one we call the library because one wall is covered with books. Folding back the oval carpet, I uncovered the trapdoor; I lifted it and only then remembered that I would need a candle.

  All this is confused, unreal.

  ‘How many candles are left?’

  ‘Five. Just now, I got Hartford on the radio.’

  It’s the nearest big city.

  ‘Most of the countryside is in the same fix we are. They’re working everywhere to repair the lines, but there are still places they can’t get to.’

  I imagined the men, outside in the blizzard, climbing the poles, and the tow trucks making their way through the ever-thicker snow.

  I descended the ladder, holding my candle, and went towards the back of the cellar carved out of the bedrock, the yellow rock that had given its name to the former farm. I was tempted to sit down to be alone, so that I could think.

  But think about what? It was over. There was nothing more to think.

  Now I had to bring up some wood.

  My memory of that morning is vaguely sinister, like certain Sundays of my childhood, when rain kept me inside and I didn’t know what to do with myself. Then I would feel that people and things were not where they should be, that sounds were different, both those in the street and those inside. I felt at a loss, with a small knot of anguish in the deepest part of me.

  That reminds me of a silly detail. My father would lie in bed longer than on other days, and sometimes I’d see him shave. He came and went, wearing an old bathrobe, and his smell was different, like the smell of my parents’ bedroom, perhaps because it was tidied up only later in the day.

  ‘Good morning, Donald . . . Did you manage to sleep a little?’

  ‘Yes, thanks. And you?’

  ‘Me, you know . . .’

  She was wearing black slacks and a yellow sweater. Hair and make-up just so, she was smoking a cigarette with a weary air while stirring her spoon in her cup.

  ‘What are we going to do?’

  She was just making conversation, carelessly, watching the flames.

  ‘I think, at a pinch, that I can fix you some fried eggs. There are eggs in the fridge . . .’

  ‘I’m not hungry.’

  ‘Neither am I. If there’s any more coffee . . .’

  Coffee, cigarettes: as far as I was concerned, that was all I wanted. I went to peek out the door, which I had to hold tightly against the blowing snow, and could barely recognize our surroundings.

  The snow formed waves more than a yard high. It was still falling, as heavily as during the night, and you could hardly see the red mass of the barn.

  ‘You think we could try?’ Isabel asked me.

  Try what? Going to look for Ray?

  ‘I’ll put on my boots and sheepskin jacket . . .’

  ‘I’ll go with you.’

  ‘Me too.’

  All this made no sense, and I knew it. I felt like telling them quietly: ‘It’s useless to look for Ray. I killed him.’

  Because I remembered having killed him. I remembered everything that had happened on the bench, everything I had thought. Why was my wife constantly darting glances at me?

  In her eyes, I’d done some drinking, of course. That’s not a crime. A man has the right, twice in his life, to get drunk. I had picked the wrong evening, but I’d had no way of knowing that.

  Besides, it was Ray’s fault. If he hadn’t dragged Patricia into the upstairs bathroom . . .

  Tough luck! I was going to pretend again. I put on my boots. I put on my sheepskin jacket. Isabel did the same, telling Mona:

  ‘No, no, you stay here. Someone has to keep the fire going.’

  We walked side by side, basically pushing ourselves through the snow, which piled up in front of us as we tried to advance. The cold stiffened our faces. My head was spinning, and I was afraid every instant that I would collapse, worn out. I didn’t want to be the first to give up.

  ‘It’s useless
,’ Isabel finally decided.

  Before going inside, we scraped clear one of the windows so we would now have some view of the outdoors. Mona had returned to her place by the fire and asked us no questions.

  She was listening to the radio. Hartford was announcing that roofs had been torn off, that hundreds of drivers were trapped on the roads. They mentioned the places most affected, but Brentwood was not among them.

  ‘We still have to eat . . .’

  Making up her mind, Isabel went off to the kitchen, and we were left side by side, Mona and I. I wonder if that was really the first time that we’d found ourselves alone in a room. Anyway, I thought it was, and that gave me an uneasy pleasure.

  How old was she? Thirty-five? Older? She had done some theatre, a while back, and a bit of television. Her father was a playwright. He wrote successful musical comedies and had had a rather tumultuous life until his death three or four years back.

  What was mysterious about Mona? Nothing. She was a woman like any other. Before marrying Ray, she must have had some affairs.

  ‘All this seems so unreal to me, Donald . . .’

  I looked at her and found her touching. I would have liked to take her in my arms, hold her close, stroke her hair. Were those the actions of a Donald Dodd?

  ‘It seems that way to me, too.’

  ‘You risked your life, last night, leaving to look for him . . .’

  I kept quiet. I wasn’t ashamed. Deep down, I was enjoying this moment of intimacy.

  ‘Ray was a great guy,’ she murmured a little later.

  She was speaking of him as if he were someone already far away, with, I thought, a sort of detachment.

  After a fairly long silence, she added, ‘We got along well, the two of us . . .’

  Isabel returned with a pan and some eggs.

  ‘This is the easiest thing to prepare. There’s some ham in the fridge, for whoever wants some.’

  As she had in the morning, she knelt down before the hearth, where she managed to settle the pan on an even keel.

  What were people doing in the other houses? The same thing, probably. Except that not everyone had a fireplace, or wood. The Ashbridges would definitely be obliged to postpone their departure for Florida.

  And the girls, off at Adams? Did they have anything to heat with, up there? I reassured myself: Litchfield was a rather important town, and there had been no mention of power outages in the towns.

  ‘The most powerful blizzard in seventy-two years . . .’

  After the news, the radio went back to singing, and I turned the dial.

  We had to eat quite close to the fire because at a few yards away you could already feel the bitter cold.

  Why Isabel? . . . For as long as we’ve known each other, as I’ve said, she has constantly looked at me in a certain way, but it seemed to me that on that morning there was something different.

  I even had the feeling, at one point, that her look meant: ‘I know.’

  Without anger. Not like an accusation. Like a simple observation.

  ‘I know you and I know.’

  It’s true that my hangover was not going away and that at least twice I almost went off to throw up my lunch. I was anxious to drink something to get me back on my feet. I didn’t dare.

  Why? Always questions. I’ve spent my life asking myself questions – not many, a few, some rather idiotic – without ever finding satisfactory answers.

  I’m a man. Isabel had found it normal, the previous evening, to see about fifty men and women drink beyond all measure. Well, I had almost felt that I should sneak those glasses I was grabbing from the tables and draining on the fly.

  Why?

  She had been the first, when we arrived home, to pour a Scotch for Mona, even though she was a woman, while I had waited a long time before daring to get myself one.

  What was preventing me, now, from opening the liquor cabinet, taking out a bottle and fetching a glass from the kitchen? I needed a drink. I was literally staggering. I had no desire to get drunk, wanted only to steady my nerves.

  It took me more than half an hour and even then, I cheated.

  ‘Wouldn’t you like a Scotch, Mona?’

  She looked at Isabel as if to ask permission, as if my offer didn’t count.

  ‘Perhaps it would do me some good?’

  ‘How about you, Isabel?’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  Outside of the evenings we spend at parties or giving one at our house, I usually drink only a single whisky a day, after getting home from the office for dinner. Isabel often has one with me, quite a weak one, it’s true.

  She is not a puritan. She does not criticize either people who drink or those of our friends who lead more or less irregular lives.

  So, why that fear, for God’s sake? Because anyone might have thought that I was afraid of her. Afraid of what? Of a reproach? She had never reproached me for anything. What then? Afraid of a look? The way I was scared, as a child, of the look in my mother’s eyes?

  Isabel is not my mother. I am her husband, and we have had two children together. She never undertakes anything without asking my advice.

  She is nothing like the pushy, dominating woman so many husbands complain about and when we are with other people, she always leaves the talking to me.

  She is calm, quite simply. Serene. Wouldn’t that word explain everything?

  ‘Cheers, Mona . . .’

  ‘Cheers, Donald . . . And to you, Isabel . . .’

  Mona wasn’t trying to put on a show of grief. Perhaps she was suffering, but it must not have been a wrenching sorrow. She had said, as if truly from her heart: ‘Ray was a great guy.’

  Was that not revealing? A fellow something like a pal, a good friend with whom one has travelled a while through life in as pleasant a way as possible.

  That was also what was attracting me. For a long time, I had had a sense of that peaceful and indulgent understanding between them.

  Ray had wanted Patricia Ashbridge and he had taken her, without worrying – I’m sure of that now – about whether his wife would learn of it or not.

  ‘I think the wind is dying down . . .’

  Our ears were so used to the noise of the storm that we noticed the slightest change. It was true: we were still a long way from silence, but the intensity of the sound had dropped, and, looking out of the window we’d tried to scrape clear, I thought the flakes were falling almost vertically, although just as thickly.

  Emergency teams were working all over the area to clear the roads, and ambulances were trying to get through to reportedly dozens of dead and injured.

  ‘I wonder what will happen . . .’

  It was Mona talking, as if asking herself the question. The snow would not melt for several weeks. Once the roads were cleared, they would deal with our access road. Then crews would undoubtedly come to look for Ray’s body.

  And after that? Ray and Mona had a handsome apartment in one of the most pleasant and elegant neighbourhoods of Manhattan, in Sutton Place by the East River.

  Would she return to live there alone? Would she try to get work again in the theatre, in television?

  She had been right, a little earlier. It was all unreal, incomprehensible. And I, during my meditation on the bench in the barn, I had not thought for one instant about Mona’s future.

  I had killed Ray, so be it. I had taken revenge in a rather foul and cowardly way, without worrying about the consequences.

  In reality, I had not killed anyone. It was useless to boast. I could have floundered around in the snow for the rest of the night with absolutely no chance of finding my friend.

  I had killed in thought. In intention. Not even in intention, because that would have required a cold-bloodedness I had not possessed at that moment.

  ‘Maybe we should bring mattresses in front of the fire and try to sleep?’ suggested Isabel. ‘Not you, Mona. Let Donald and me do it.’

  We went to the guest bedroom for that mattress, and then upstairs
to get the two girls’ mattresses, which were narrow and light.

  I wondered somewhat foolishly if we were going to place them side by side, thus making a kind of huge bed on which all three of us would sleep, and I’m sure Isabel guessed what I was thinking.

  She left about the same space between the mattresses that usually separates twin beds, and then she went to get some blankets.

  I could be mistaken. I probably am. During the short time in which we were again alone, Mona looked at me, then at the mattresses. Was she wondering which would be hers and which mine? Was there, I won’t say a temptation, but some vague notion in the back of her mind?

  After Isabel had returned and spread out the blankets, we hesitated for a second. And, this time, I am certain of what I am saying. Isabel did not just happen to choose the mattress on the right, leaving me the one in the middle, and saving the one on the left for Mona.

  She was putting me, on purpose, between the two of them. This meant: ‘You see! I have confidence . . .’

  In me or in Mona?

  True, it might also mean: ‘I’m leaving you free. I have always left you free.’

  Or even: ‘You really wouldn’t dare . . .’

  It was just past noon, and we all three tried to get some sleep. The last thing I remember was Mona’s hand, on the parquet floor, between our two mattresses. That morning, in my sleepy state, was taking on an extraordinary significance. For a long while, I wondered if I would dare reach out my hand to touch her as if by accident.

  I was not in love. It was the gesture that counted, the audacity of the gesture. I felt that it would be a deliverance. But my mind must already have been fogging over because the image of the hand turned into that of a dog I recognized, the dog owned by one of our neighbours when I was twelve.

  I must have been asleep.

  The electricity came back on shortly after ten o’clock that evening, and it was a curious sight to see all the lamps in the house suddenly turn on by themselves while the candle kept burning, almost ridiculous with its reddish flame.

  We looked at one another, relieved, as if it were the end of all our problems, all our sorrows.

  I went down into the cellar to turn the heat back on; when I came upstairs again, Isabel was trying out the telephone.