The Little Man From Archangel

by Georges Simenon

  At that particular moment he had decided nothing, at least not consciously, and it was when his gaze alighted on a clothes line stretched between the house and the Chaignes' wall that his thoughts took a definite shape.

  He had come by a long road, from Archangel to here, by way of Moscow, Yalta and Constantinople to finish up in an old house in the Market Place. His father had gone back again. Then his mother.

  'I insist on this one at least remaining!' Constantin Milk had said, pointing to Jonas at the moment of setting out on his adventure.

  Now it was his turn. His decision was taken, but he still finished his cheese and bread with his eye first on the clothes line, which was made of twisted steel wire, then on the branch of the lime-tree which projected from the grocer's garden next door. One of the two iron chairs stood, by chance, directly beneath the branch.

  It was true, as he had told the inspector, that he had never possessed a weapon and had a horror of all violence, so much so that the noise of children's pistols in the Square made him jump each time he heard it.

  He was reflecting, wondering whether he had anything still to do upstairs, or in the shop or the little room.

  He had nothing left to do anywhere. They hadn't understood him, or else he hadn't understood the others, and this latest misunderstanding was now beyond all hope of being cleared up.

  He had a momentary impulse to explain everything in a letter, but it was a last vanity of which he was ashamed, and he rejected the idea.

  He had some difficulty in undoing the knots by which the metal cord was attached and he had to fetch the pliers from the kitchen drawer. He was not sad, nor bitter. He felt, on the contrary, a serenity which he had never known before.

  He was thinking of Gina, and now it was no longer Gina as other people saw her and as she saw herself, it was a disembodied Gina, confused in his mind with the image he had created of his sister Doussia, a woman such as probably does not exist: Woman.

  Would she find out that he had died because of her? He was trying to lie to himself again, and it made him blush. It was not on her account that he was departing, it was on his own account, perhaps in fact it was because he had been forced, in his own eyes, to stoop too far.

  Could he go on living after what he had discovered about himself and about the others?

  He climbed onto the iron chair to attach the cord to the branch of the tree and grazed his finger-tip on a loose strand of wire; it bled, and he sucked it, as he used to do when he was a little boy.

  Although you could see the kitchen door from the Palestris' window, from the bedroom that used to be Gina's, the Chaignes' party wall blocked the view from where he was standing. All he had to do now was to make a slip knot and he used the pliers so as to be sure that it would hold.

  A hot nausea suddenly rose to his head at the sight of the loop which hung suspended, and he wiped his brow and upper lip, had difficulty in swallowing his saliva.

  He felt ridiculous standing on the iron chair, hesitating, trembling, seized with panic at the thought of the physical pain which he was going to feel, and worse still, of the slow choking, of the struggle which his body, hanging in mid-air, would instinctively make against suffocation.

  What was preventing him from living, after all? The sun would continue to shine, the rain to fall, the Square to be filled with the sounds and smells of market day. He was still capable of making himself coffee, alone in the kitchen, listening to the songs of the birds.

  The blackbird, just then, his blackbird, came and perched on the box where the chives were growing, beside a tuft of thyme, and as he watched it hopping about, Jonas' eyes filled with tears.

  There was no need for him to die. Nobody was forcing him. With patience and an extra effort of humility, he could still come to terms with himself.

  He stepped down from the iron chair and suddenly ran into the house in order to flee from the temptation, to be sure of not turning back. He struck a match over the gas ring, poured some water into the kettle to make himself some coffee.

  He would find good reasons for acting as he was. Who could tell? Perhaps Gina would come back one day and would need him. Even the people from the market would understand, in the end. Hadn't Le Bouc already shown signs of embarrassment?

  In the semi-darkness of the cupboard, he ground the coffee-mill, which was fixed to the wall. It was a china mill, with a Dutch landscape in blue on a white background, and a picture of a windmill. He had never been to Holland. He, who as a baby had covered such immense distances, had never travelled since, as though he had been afraid of losing his place in the Old Market.

  He would be patient. The superintendent, Basquin had told him, was an intelligent man.

  Already the smell of coffee was doing him good, while the steam misted over his glasses. He mused to himself, whether he would have kept his glasses on to hang himself, then he thought of Doussia again, telling himself that perhaps it was thanks to her that he had not taken the final step.

  He did not dare to return to the yard to undo the knot. The alarm- clock, on the mantelpiece, pointed to ten to two and it comforted him to hear its familiar tick.

  He would come to terms with himself, avoid thinking about certain subjects. He felt an urge to see his Russian stamps again, as though to cling onto something, and taking his cup with him, he went and sat down at his desk in the little room.

  Was he a coward? Would he regret not having done today what he had decided to do? If life became too burdensome later on, would he still have the courage to do it?

  There was nobody in sight outside. The Square was empty. The clock of St. Cecilia's struck two and according to the rites, he ought to have replaced the handle in the door.

  It no longer had the same importance as it had before, and he had plenty of time to return to his old habits bit by bit. He opened the drawer and took out the album, on the first page of which he had gummed a photograph of his father and mother outside their fish-mongery. He had taken it with a cheap camera which he had been given for Christmas at the age of eleven. He was just going to turn over the page when a shadow outlined itself against the shop-window. A woman he did not know was knocking at the door, trying to see inside, surprised to find the shop shut.

  He thought it was a customer and almost did not open the door. It was a working-class woman about forty years old, and she must have borne several children and worked hard all her life, for one could see in her the deformities, the lassitude of women of that type, grown old before their time.

  Shielding her eyes with her hand, she was peering into the obscurity' of the shop, and in the end he rose to his feet, almost out of charity.

  'I was afraid there was nobody at home,' she said, looking at him curiously.

  He said quietly:

  'I was working.'

  'You are Gina's husband?'

  'Yes.'

  'Is it true they mean to arrest you?'

  'I don't know.'

  'They told me so this morning, and I wondered if I would be too late.'

  'Won't you sit down?' he said, pointing to a chair.

  'I haven't time. I must get back to the hotel. They don't know I've come out yet, as I took the back door. The management's new in the business and seem to think they've got to be strict.'

  He listened without understanding.

  'I work as a chambermaid at the Commercial Hotel. Do you know it?'

  It was there that he had attended the wedding reception of Ancel's daughter. The walls were painted in imitation marble and the hall was bedecked with green plants.

  'Before my husband went to the factory I used to live in this area, at the corner of the Rue Gambetta and the Rue des Saules. I knew Gina well when she must have been about fifteen years old. That's why I recognized her at once when she came to the hotel.'

  'When has she been to the hotel?'

  'Several times. Each time the traveller from Paris comes here, that's to say nearly every two weeks. It's been going on for months now. He's call
ed Thierry, Jacques Thierry. I looked up his name in the register, and he's in chemical products. Seems he's an engineer, though he's still young. I'd bet he's not yet thirty. He's married and has two lovely children, I know because to start with he always puts a photo of his family on the bedside table. His wife's a blonde. His eldest, a boy, is five or six, like my youngest.

  'I don't know where he met Gina but one afternoon I saw him in the corridor with her and she went into his bedroom.

  'Since then, every time he's come, she stops in to see him at the hotel for an hour or two, all according, and I'm the last one to be in the dark about what goes on, since it's me that has to remake the bed. Begging your pardon for telling you, but they say you've been in trouble and I thought it might be better for you to know.

  'Gina was like that at fifteen, if that's any consolation, and I should add something that you perhaps don't know but I'm told by people who ought to know, and that is that her mother was the same before her.'

  'Did she go to the hotel on Wednesday last week?'

  'Yes. Around half-past two. When they told me the story, this morning, I wasn't sure of the day and went and looked it the register. He arrived early on Tuesday and left again on Wednesday evening.'

  'By train?'

  'No. He always comes by car. I gather he has other factories to visit on his way.'

  'Were they together a long time, on Wednesday?'

  'Same as usual,' she replied, with a shrug.

  'What dress was she wearing?'

  'A red dress. You couldn't help noticing.'

  He had wanted to be sure.

  'Now I would rather not get mixed in the affair because as I told you before, the management's got its own ideas. But if they really mean to put you in prison and there isn't any other way, I will repeat what I've told you.'

  'You haven't got the address of this man in Paris?'

  'I copied it down on a piece of paper and brought it with me.'

  She seemed surprised to see him so unmoved and so gloomy, when she must have expected him to feel relieved.

  'It's number 27, Rue Championnet. I don't suppose he'll have taken her home. When I think of his wife, who looks so delicate, and his children . . ,'

  'I am most grateful to you.'

  'My name is Berthe Lenoir, in case you need me. I would rather no-one came to the hotel. We live in the housing estate opposite the factory, the second block on the right, the one with blue shutters.'

  He thanked her again and, when he was left alone, felt more disconcerted than ever, rather like a prisoner who, recovering his freedom after many long years, does not know what to do with it.

  He could furnish them with proof now that he had not disposed of Gina and that he had not thrown her body into the canal. What surprised him most was what he had been told about the man she had gone off with, for he did not correspond to the type she usually chose.

  Their affair had been going on for about six months and during the whole of that time she had not run away once.

  Was she in love with him? And he, was he going to break up his household? Given her situation, why had Gina taken the stamps?

  Mechanically he had put on his hat and was heading for the door, in order to go to the police station. This seemed to him to be the only logical thing to do. It could do no harm to Gina who, the moment the complaint was withdrawn, had nothing to answer the police for. He would not claim back his stamps. They had nothing against her lover either.

  It was a curious sensation to find himself on the pavement once more, in the sun, which was even hotter than in the morning, and to pass Le Bouc's, telling himself that he would be going back there again.

  For there was nothing to stop him going back. The people of the market would soon find out what had happened and instead of holding it against him, would be sorry for him. They would be a bit ashamed at first, for having deserted him so quickly, but it only needed a few days for everything to be once again as it had been in the past, and for them to call out cheerfully:

  'Good-morning, Monsieur Jonas!'

  Would Angèle be cross with him for not having kept a better watch on her daughter? Had she been able to do so herself, before Gina's marriage?

  Only Frédo would not change his attitude, but there was a very small chance of Frédo becoming reconciled with the human race. He would sooner or later go off, God knows where, far away from the Vieux-Marché which he hated, and would be just as unhappy somewhere else.

  He very nearly went into Fernand's there and then, as if it were all forgotten already, then he told himself that it was too soon, and set off up the Rue Haute.

  He was convinced that Gina would come back, as she had always done before, only more marked this time, and that then she would need him.

  Hadn't everything become easy? He would go into the police station, walk over to the black wooden counter dividing the first room in two.

  'I want to speak to Superintendent Devaux, please.'

  'What name?'

  Unless it was the same sergeant as that morning, who would be sure to recognize him.

  'Jonas Milk.'

  For here they called him Milk. It hardly mattered, this time, if they kept him waiting. The superintendent would be surprised. His first thought would be that he had resolved to make a clean breast of everything.

  'I know where my wife is,' Jonas would announce. He would provide him with the name and address of the chambermaid and advise him not to go and see her at the hotel; he would also hand over the piece of paper with the address of the traveller in chemical goods.

  'You can check up, but I must insist on their not being troubled. Madame Thierry may very well know nothing, and there's no point in telling her the truth.'

  Would they understand him this time? Were they going to look on him again as a man from another planet? Or would they at last condescend to consider him as a human being, like other human beings?

  The Rue Haute, at that hour, was almost deserted. In the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville the costermongers' carts had disappeared and a few pigeons were still foraging among the cobblestones.

  He saw the bird-cages in the distance, opposite the police station, but he could not hear the cock crowing.

  That morning in the superintendent's office he had fainted for the first time in his life and it had not been an unpleasant sensation; it had even seemed to him at one moment that his body no longer weighed anything, as if he were in the process of becoming disembodied. At the moment of losing consciousness he had thought of Doussia.

  He was slowing his pace without realizing. He had only another twenty yards to cover and he could see distinctly the round eyes of the parrot on its perch. A policeman came out of the station and mounted a bicycle, possibly on his way to deliver a summons on coarse paper like the one he had received the day before.

  Was it really the day before? It seemed such a long way off! Hadn't he lived since then, almost as much as during the rest of his existence?

  He had stopped ten paces from the door with the blue lantern above it and, with his eyes wide open, stood staring at nothing. A boy of about fifteen who was running by collided with him, almost knocked him down, and he just caught hold of his glasses in time. What would have happened if they had broken on the pavement?

  The bird-seller, wearing a dark grey smock like an ironmonger's, was watching him, wondering perhaps if he had been taken ill, and Jonas turned about, once again crossed the Square with the small cobblestones and went down the Rue Haute.

  Pepito, who was sweeping out his restaurant with his door open, saw him pass. So did Le Bouc. There was only a little girl with very fair hair, who was playing dolls all by herself beneath the slate roofs of the Old Market, to watch him as he removed the handle from his door.

  IX

  It was a dull grey day. A small lorry was parking, two of its wheels on the pavement, opposite the bookseller's shop. The baker's wife hadn't noticed that he had not appeared that morning to buy his three croissants. The boy
who had taken a book on bees the week before and was bringing in his fifty francs, tried to open the door and looked inside without seeing anything. At a quarter past ten, in Le Bouc's, Ancel remarked: 'Odd! Jonas hasn't been in this morning.' He had added, but without malice: 'Little bastard!' Le Bouc had said nothing.

  It was only at eleven o'clock that, in Angèle's shop, a woman who had tried to go in the shop to buy a book had asked: 'Is your son-in-law ill?'

  Angèle had retorted, leaning over a basket of spinach, with her great behind in the air:

  'If he is, I hope he croaks!'

  Which had not prevented her from asking:

  'Why do you say that?'

  'His shop's shut.'

  'Can they have arrested him already?'

  A little while later, when she was free of customers, she went to have a look for herself, pressed her face to the window, but everything appeared to be in order within the house except for Jonas' hat, which stood on a straw-bottomed chair.

  'Have you seen Jonas, Mélanie?' she asked, on her way past the Chaignes. 'Not this morning.'

  When Louis came back, and parked his three-wheeler, she told him: 'It seems that Jonas has been arrested.'

  'So much the better.'

  'The handle isn't in the door and I couldn't see anything going on inside.'

  Louis went for a drink at Le Bouc's. 'They've arrested Jonas.'

  Constable Benaiche was there, having a glass of white wine. 'Who?'

  'The police, I presume.'

  Benaiche frowned, shrugged his shoulders, said: 'Strange.'

  Then he emptied his glass. 'I didn't hear anything up at the station.'

  The only one to seem uneasy was Le Bouc. He said nothing, but after a few minutes' thought, he retired to the back room where there was a telephone by the lavatory door. 'Get me the police station, please.'

  'The number's ringing now.'

  'Police here.'

  He recognized the sergeant's voice. 'That you Jouve?'

  'Who's that?'

  'Le Bouc. I say, is it true that you've arrested Jonas?'