The Hanged Man of Saint-Pholien Read Online Free PDF

sometimes too much for him.
    â€˜He was very sweet to
     me …’
    Her expression became wistful; she was
     almost beautiful when she confessed, ‘I don’t think many men are like
     this: he would take me suddenly in his arms, looking so deeply into my eyes that it
     hurt. Then sometimes, out of the blue, he would push me away – I’ve never seen
     such a thing from anyone else – and he’d sigh to himself, “Yet I really
     am fond of you, my little Jeanne … ”
    â€˜Then it was over. He’d keep
     busy with this or that without giving me another glance, spend hours repairing a
     piece of furniture, making me something handy for housework, or fixing a clock.
    â€˜My mother didn’t much care
     for him, precisely because she understood that he wasn’t like other
     people.’
    â€˜Among his belongings,
     weren’t there some items he guarded with particular care?’
    â€˜How did you know?’
    She started, a touch frightened, and
     blurted out, ‘An old suit! Once he came home when I’d taken it from a
     cardboard box on top of the wardrobe and was brushing it. The suit would have been
     still good enough to wear around the house. I was even going to mend the tears.
     Louis grabbed it from me, he was furious, shouting cruel things, and that evening –
     you’d have sworn he hated me!
    â€˜We’d been married for a
     month. After that …’
    She sighed and looked at Maigret as if
     in apology for having nothing more for him than this poor story.
    â€˜He became
     more and more strange?’
    â€˜It isn’t his fault,
     I’m sure of that! I think he was ill, he worried so … We were often
     in the kitchen, and whenever we’d been happy for a little while, I used to see
     him change suddenly: he’d stop speaking, look at things – and me – with a
     nasty smile, and go and throw himself down on his bed without saying goodnight to
     me.’
    â€˜He had no friends?’
    â€˜No! No one ever came to see
     him.’
    â€˜He never travelled, received any
     letters?’
    â€˜No. And he didn’t like
     having people in our home. Once in a while, a neighbour who had no sewing machine
     would come over to use mine, and that was guaranteed to enrage Louis. But he
     didn’t become angry like everyone else, it was something shut up
     inside … and he was the one who seemed to suffer!
    â€˜When I told him we were going to
     have a child, he stared at me like a madman …
    â€˜That was when he started to
     drink, fits of it, binges, especially after the baby was born. And yet I know that
     he loved that child! Sometimes he used to gaze at him in adoration, the way he did
     with me at first …
    â€˜The next day, he’d come
     home drunk, lie down, lock the bedroom door and spend hours in there, whole
     days.
    â€˜The first few times, he’d
     cry and beg me to forgive him. Maybe if Mama hadn’t interfered I might have
     managed to keep him, but my mother tried to lecture him, and there were awful
     arguments. Especially when Louis went two or three days without going to work!
    â€˜Towards the end, we were
     desperately unhappy. You know what it’s like, don’t you? His temper got
     worse and
worse. My mother threw him out
     twice, to remind him that he wasn’t the lord and master there.
    â€˜But I just know that it
     wasn’t his fault! Something was pushing him, driving him! He would still look
     at me, or our son, in that old way I told you about …
    â€˜Only now not so often, and it
     didn’t last long. The final quarrel was dreadful. Mama was there. Louis had
     helped himself to some money from the shop, and she called him a thief. He went so
     pale, his eyes all red, as on his bad days, and a crazed look in those
     eyes …
    â€˜I can still see him coming closer
     as if to strangle me! I was