She Who Was No More Read Online Free PDF Page B

bluesleeping cars and dining cars. He could see them rumbling with a leisurely rhythm through a clear, bright, starry night, a night in which there was no shame…
    The punch left an aftertaste of caramel in his mouth. His mind was full of distant travel.
    ‘We’re closing now, Monsieur.’
    It was now Ravinel’s turn to throw some coins onto the table. He wouldn’t take the change. With a lordly sweep of his arm he brushed aside the waiter, brushed aside the past, and dived at the revolving doors, which for a moment caught him in their arms and discharged him on the pavement. There he stopped for a moment, leaning against the wall. His thoughts were in a turmoil. For no reason at all a word came to his lips. Tipperary. Something the English have a song about. What on earth would it mean?

THREE
    Only a day and a half to wait. Only a day. And now only a matter of hours. Ravinel had expected the wait to be terrible, but it hadn’t been. Not in the least. Though, in a way, it had been worse—interminable and dreary. Time seemed to have lost its sense of proportion. Someone starting to do a five-year sentence might feel like that about time. And if it was a life sentence… But Ravinel banished the thought. Why should those words keep teasing him like an obstinate fly?
    He drank a lot. Not to attract attention. Nor to get drunk. Simply to make the time pass a bit quicker. It’s extraordinary how quickly an hour can slip away between two glasses of brandy. You don’t have to think of anything particularly interesting—with the most commonplace details it’s just the same. The hotel he’d stopped at last night, for instance. An awful bed. Still more awful the coffee in the morning. People coming and going all night long, and trains whistling. He ought to have left Nantes. Gone on a trip, to Redon for instance, or Anceny. He had been unable to leave, however. Each morning he had woken up in the wrong frame of mind. Everything seemed sharp and crystal clear—and utterly discouraging. Weighing his chances, they appeared so small that it simply wasn’t worth while putting up a struggle. It wasn’t till ten o’clock that confidence suddenly returned. A glow of light that made everything look different, the pros as well as the cons. By the time he bargedinto the Café Français, he was in a different mood altogether and could greet his friends breezily. There were always two or three of them there drinking coffee laced with rum.
    ‘Hallo, Fernand!’
    ‘I say! You’re looking queer…’
    So his looks betrayed something. Not much, though. It was easy to invent a reason. Toothache. A bad night.
    ‘I had one last year,’ said Tamisier. ‘A molar. God! What pain!… I could have thrown myself out of the window.’
    Ravinel listened gravely. Really, it was astonishingly easy to lie. You just said you had toothache, and the next minute you almost believed it yourself. With Mireille, for example, the other evening… Other evening indeed! Last night, to be exact! Impossible! It seemed ages ago.
    No. It wasn’t merely a question of time. It was more complicated than that. You’d suddenly become another man leading another life. Like an actor. With this difference, that when the curtain falls the actor is back where he was. Whereas…
    ‘What’s this new reel of yours like? The Rotor. Is there anything in it? I saw an ad for it in the Pêche Illustrée .’
    ‘It’s not bad. Not bad at all. Particularly for sea fishing.’
    That was the day after . A November morning with wet pavements and a pallid sun trying to shine through the fog. From time to time a streetcar swept round the bend just outside the café, its wheels screeching against the rails. It wasn’t an unpleasant sound, however—at least not to Ravinel’s ear.
    ‘All well at home?’
    ‘Fine, thanks.’
    Was that a lie? Not really. It all depended on who was speaking, the old man or the new.
    ‘Not much of a life,’ remarked Belloeil. ‘Always on the