Dark Summer in Bordeaux Read Online Free PDF

could I do? He did say she wasn’t married, or he believed she wasn’t, but that was all, he shut up like a clam, except that he smiled, clearly taking pleasure in denying me any information. A bastard, as you said. It was all a waste of time.’

VI
    The German officer was leaving the bookshop as Alain arrived. Indeed they almost collided in the doorway. Amazingly he apologised and then stood aside to let Alain enter. It had been raining and Alain took off his coat and shook it. The lock of hair that fell over his left eye dripped water down his cheek.
    ‘That chap again,’ he said, ‘did he buy anything this time?’
    ‘Not today,’ Léon said, ‘though he sometimes does. He’s very keen on what he calls “good French literature”.’
    ‘Only on that?’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘Nothing really. It’s just suspicious the way he’s always hanging around.’
    ‘I think he’s just bored.’
    ‘I suppose a lot of them are. There’s a young officer who is billeted on a family in our building. He’s quite a decent fellow really. My brother has long conversations with him on the staircase.’
    ‘How is your brother?’
    ‘He’s all right. We don’t agree, however.’
    ‘What about?’
    ‘Things. Politics. He believes in Vichy’s claptrap, the National Revolution and all that. He says we must take this opportunity to effect a moral regeneration of France. It’s all nonsense. He talks about the iniquity of the money power and Jewish capitalism.’
    ‘I’m a Jew,’ Léon said, ‘remember. I don’t notice myself having much money, let alone money power.’
    ‘And yet the strange thing is that Dominique’s nature is sweet, much sweeter than mine.’
    ‘I’ll make some coffee.’
    From the back room he watched Alain as he waited for the water to boil in the Neapolitan coffee-pot. His friend was frowning; he thought, he’s really disturbed by this quarrel with his brother, that’s why he’s come here today. Nobody means more to me and yet every time I see him I feel more alone. He thought of how Schussmann had run his finger along the line of his jaw, and told him again, in German, that he had beautiful eyes, and had said, “You really are such a charming boy, I do wish you would consent to have dinner with me one evening.” More, surely, was implied in that choice of verb, consent. I can’t have what I want and I am being pressed to have what I don’t want. And then he thought of the warning the superintendent had given him and felt uneasy, even afraid. A net was closing around him.
    ‘What’s this you’ve been writing?’
    ‘It’s a story. Don’t read it, please, not in its present state, or I’m afraid I’ll never finish it.’
    Don’t read it at all, he thought, it’s too revealing.
    He brought the coffee through, lit a cigarette, and, taking it from his lips, handed it to Alain. It was as close as he dared come to intimacy. He lit another for himself, and said, ‘Henri has an old duplicating machine. I found it in the store-room. It hasn’t been used for years, I should think. I thought we might . . . ’ ‘Might what?’
    ‘Do something with it. It’s the only resistance possible just now.’

VII
    The old man who looked like a colonel but had been a professor of literature was playing chess with his grandson, Michel, when the maid showed Lannes into the study.
    ‘I apologise for calling on you unannounced,’ he said, ‘and I’m sorry to interrupt your game. Pray continue, I’m happy to wait.’
    ‘Not at all,’ the professor said. ‘One of the beauties of chess is that one can lay the board aside and resume at the same point whenever one wishes.’
    The boy turned in his chair and looked at Lannes, then got to his feet and made to leave the room. Was there suspicion in his gaze? Or animosity?
    Lannes said, ‘There’s no call to go on my account. There’s nothing confidential in what I’ve come to ask your grandfather. By the way, is your friend Sigi –