By a Slow River Read Online Free PDF Page A

of peremptory hate toward the man they had to judge: their brother in bad luck—or derring-do.
    When Destinat’s voice could be heard in the courtroom, all murmurs ceased. The whole room seemed to check itself, as when you stop before a mirror and pull on your shirttail to make the collar stand straight; the room was looking at itself and holding its breath. Into this silence, the prosecutor would fling his opening remarks. Never more than five little sheets, whatever the case, whoever the accused. The prosecutor’s trick was simplicity itself. No swagger. A cold and meticulous depiction of the murder and the victim, that’s all. But that in itself is a lot, especially when you don’t omit a single detail. Most often, the medical examiner’s report was his gospel. He insisted on it. It was enough for him to read it out, his voice dwelling on the most trenchant particulars. He wouldn’t gloss over a single wound, not a gash, not the least laceration, much less a sliced throat or gaping belly. All of a sudden the public and the jurors would see before them images from far away, from the darkest underside, the emerging face of evil and its metamorphoses.
    It’s often said that we fear what we don’t know. But I say fear is born when one day we learn what we were unaware of only the night before. That was Destinat’s secret: Offhandedly, he would slip thoughts of things they didn’t want to live with under the noses of those complacent louts. The rest was child’s play. He could ask for the head, and the jury would serve it to him on a silver platter.
    After that, he would go have lunch at the Rébillon. “Another one cut down to size, Mr. Prosecutor!” Bourrache would show him to his table and pull out his chair for him with flourishes fit for a lord. Destinat would unfold the silverware, clink the knife handle against his glass. Judge Mierck would greet him mutely, and Destinat would return his greeting in kind. The two of them sat less than ten meters apart, each at his own table. Yet they never exchanged a word. Mierck ate with the care of a horse, his napkin tied around his neck like a stable groom, his fingers greasy with sauce, and his eyes already clouded by wine-vapor nymphs. As for the prosecutor, he was, as I say, well-bred. He cut his fish as though caressing it. The rain was still falling. Judge Mierck would gobble down his desserts. Morning Glory would be dozing near the great hearth, lulled by fatigue and the jig of the flames. The prosecutor would linger in the folds of his own vapid dream.
    Already, somewhere, a blade was being sharpened, a scaffold being raised.
    I’ve been told that Destinat’s talents and fortune could have taken him far. Instead, he planted himself for all his days in our town— in other words, nowhere—in a region where for years life reached us only as the murmur of a distant music, until one fine day it all crashed down on our heads and battered us horribly for a span of four years.
    The portrait of Clélis still adorned the entry hall of the château. Her smile watched the world change and sink into the abyss. She wore the garments of a lighthearted time that was no more. Over the years her pallor had disappeared, and the discolored varnishes shaded her cheeks a lukewarm pink. Each day Destinat passed by beneath her, a little more worn, himself only more faded, his gestures slowed and his gait more deliberate. The two of them moved even farther away from each other. Brutally, death spirits beautiful things away and yet keeps them intact. That is its true grandeur. We can’t fight it.
    Destinat so loved time that he could relish simply watching it go by, sometimes doing no more than sitting behind a window, on a chaise longue of rattan, or else on the bench atop a low manmade mound, covered with anemones and periwinkles, overlooking the lazy waters of the Guérlante and the more hurried stream of the small canal. At such times you might have taken him for a statue.
    For