Authors: Georges Simenon
The Widow (20 page)
“Yes ⦔
It was Jean who had just said yes after having said no. He was conscious of having registered a deed of utmost importance. He had said yes because he no longer had the courage to deny, to keep up the farce, to go up to the loft, and there, alone in his bed, to be seized as on other nights by cold sweats, waiting for what could not fail to come to pass.
“Jean! What did you say?”
She could see he was not himself. He was too calm, his look withdrawn.
“Jean! You love her?”
“Yes.”
“And you've slept with her?”
“Yes.”
He smiled timidly, as if to apologize.
“Jean! It can't be. Tell me it's not trueâ¦. Jean!”
She had thrown back the bedclothes. Her bandages were bared. Never had he noticed so clearly the bit of fur on her cheek.
“Don't leave, Jean! Listen! ⦠I must explainâ¦. You must tell meâ¦. How could it have happened?”
Why upset herself like this? Was he getting worked up? His head was clear, perfectly clear! He could see every detail of the room, including the curtain billowing as if there were someone behind it; he got up to turn down the wick because the lamp smoked.
“It happened in the shed, near the rabbits.”
“Listen, Jean. I'll go down on my knees. Do you hear? I'll grovel at your feet. I know I'm an old woman, a pitiful old woman with no right to hopeâ¦. But if only you knewâ¦. All my life ⦔
She was on her knees, on the floor.
“Don't look at me like thatâ¦. Listenâ¦. ”
How was he looking at her? Calmly. Never had he looked at her so calmly.
“Just promise me not to see her again. I'll make them leave. I'll find a way to make them leave ⦔
“
Every person condemned to death shall be
⦔
He smiled a pallid smile.
“Why are you smiling? Am I so silly? I'll do anything you want. I'll give youâ¦. Listen! The money I told you about ⦠Take it! It's yours! What am I saying? Don't smileâ¦. ”
He was not smiling. It was a twist his lip took of itself. He was sad, really. Or rather morose.
Since it had to be, he accepted the inevitable. She had ended up by clutching his leg and she still groveled on the floor, while he thought he could hear a voice reciting:
“
Men condemned to forced labor shall be set to the hardest possible work; they shall wear an iron ball at their ankles
⦔
Of course! Of course! It was the only thing to do! He had known it for a long time! It had been foreordained! And was it not the simplest way?
“
Any murder committed with premeditation or preceded by ambush is defined as assassination
⦔
He had not premeditated it. It was not his fault! And there was no ambushâ¦.
“I'm not feeling well, Jean. Help me to get up, to get back into bedâ¦. You absolutely must understand. Ever since I was fourteen ⦔
What about him?
“What are you looking for? ⦠Jean! You frighten meâ¦. Jean! Look at me. Say something to meâ¦. ”
“What?”
“I don't knowâ¦. I ⦠Jean!”
He had found the hammer, the hammer he had brought up when Tati moved into the room and he'd pulled down the fruit shelves.
“Jean! I beg youâ¦. ”
What good would it be? It would only start all over again! And then again, and again! He had had enough.
“I've had enough! Enough! Enough!” he shouted suddenly. “Do you hear me? Do you hear me, everybody? I've had enough! ⦔
He had struck perhaps three or four blows on the skull bruised as it already was, when he began to wonder, with Tati lying inert before him, whether Françoise's people had not heard him shout. He went to the window, his hammer in his hand. He saw that no light showed in the house in the brickyard. It was raining.
Tati was still moving slightly. She had kept her eyes open.
Wearily, he struck two or three more blows, then, grabbing the pillow off the bed, put it over her face.
His knees trembled. His mouth was dry, and there was an emptiness in his chest.
This time, he was familiar with the Code. It made him almost smile and it was half aloud that he recited Article 314, the famous article that had given Maître Fagonet such a deal of trouble.
“
Murder shall entail the death penalty when it precedes, accompanies or follows another crime
.”
This time, he would not need to lie. Unless he took the money hidden in the torso of the dressmaker's dummyâ¦.
Who knows? Perhaps they'd put him in the same cell?
Zézette had come to see him once, in the visiting room. Would Félicie come too?
He left the lamp alight, went downstairs in the dark, and felt on the mantelpiece for matches. His hand encountered Couderc's pipe. He wanted to smoke a pipe. But first he must have a drink. He was thirsty. He was hungry.
He lit the lamp. He noticed that the pendulum of the clock was about to stop and he carefully wound up the brass weight.
There, that would do for another eight days!
He cut himself a slice of ham, opened the cupboard to get out some bread, and frowned as he thought he heard a noise up above.
No! She was well and truly dead!
It was all over!
All he had to do now was to eat, to drink his bottle of white wine, smoke the old man's pipe, and waitâ¦.
The rain was falling outside, pattering on the leaves, making rings on the surface of the canal. Astride his straw-bottomed chair, he looked in front of him and once in a while uttered words under his breath.
“I'll tell them she did it deliberately ⦠because she did do it deliberately! ⦠From the very first day ⦔
He was walking along the main road, in the sun, a tiny shadow at his feet, and he moved with easy strides from the shadow of one tree to the shadow of the next, through diamond-shaped patches of sunshineâ¦.
He had signaled a car that had not stoppedâ¦.
Oh well!
Then the big red bus had come panting up the slope ⦠and Tati had looked at him with screwed-up eyes.
Suddenly he got up. He had just thought of something. He opened the door into the yard. A leaden day was breaking. And now he went to the incubator from which came a cheeping sound. Some chicks had hatched. Others were struggling out of their broken shells and yet others were just beginning to peck at their prison walls.
“Tati would have been pleasedâ¦. ”
Was it white wine he had drunk? Two bottles stood on the table, both empty. The second was the bottle of brandy.
“I must go and tell Félicie. It's Félicie who will ⦔
He fell down, sank into the depths, slept.
And, toward ten o'clock, when the gendarmes arrived on their bicycles, summoned by Françoise, who was worried by the silence of the house, a silence broken only by the lowing and kicking of the cows in the shed, it took them some time to find him, stretched out near the pan he used each morning to mix the mash for the poultry.
He was sleeping, a fly on his cheek, his lips parted, puffed out like a child's, like Félicie's, and from them escaped a breath reeking of drink.
They woke him by kicking him in the face and legs. He grimaced, opened his eyes, recognized the gendarmes.
“Oh yes ⦔ he said, making an effort to get up.
Then he begged them: “Don't hit meâ¦. ”
And finally, standing, swaying on his feet: “I'm tiredâ¦. I'm so tired! ⦔
Nieul-sur-Mer
,
May 1, 1940
THIS IS A NEW YORK REVIEW BOOK
PUBLISHED BY THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS
435 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014
Copyright © 1942 Georges Simenon Limited (a Chorion company)
Introduction copyright © 2008 by Paul Theroux
All rights reserved.
Cover photograph: Dora Maar, Portrait of a Blond Woman, Aged 30; © 2008 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris
Cover design: Katy Homans
The Library of Congress has cataloged the earlier printing as follows:
Simenon, Georges, 1903â1989.
[Veuve Couderc. English]
The widow / by Georges Simenon; introduction by Paul Theroux; translated by John Petrie.
    p. cm. â (New York Review Books classics)
ISBN 978-1-59017-261-2 (alk. paper)
I. Petrie, John. II. Title.
PQ2637.I53V4513 2008
843'.912âdc22
2007047811
eISBN 978-1-59017-563-7
v1.0
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