The Islanders Read Online Free PDF Page A

closer, he tried to recall the names of his teachers and classmates. Some of them came back to him: Monsieur Mauduit, Madame Le Breton, Vidal, Joly, Langlois … He saw himself too, satchel bulging with heavy textbooks, exercise books and gym kit, waiting for bus B … His mind was warming up but he felt as if he was delving into someone else’s memories.
    His first death had come the year he turned fourteen and he had not stopped dying and being reborn ever since. Amazing –only in Versailles could you see the words ‘Long Live the King!’ graffitied on the school walls. The front gates were locked but he could see through them to the dome of the chapel across the main courtyard, where pupils and teachers gathered to lift the flag every 11 November. The cassowary feathers of the Saint-Cyrien cadets hung limply in the inevitable rain. He was sorry not to feel anything at all. Funny the lengths the brain goes to in order to protect the body.
    He began walking back into town by way of Rue de la Paroisse and stopped to warm up in a café on Place du Marché. Since giving up drink, he never knew what to order. He didn’t feel like a coffee, and couldn’t make up his mind between a Viandox and a tomato juice. With a dash of Tabasco, tomato juice was the beverage that most resembled alcohol. For the first time in ages, he really fancied a drink. He put too much Tabasco in and made himself choke. All around him, people were talking too loudly, laughing annoyingly. Since his teens, he had never loved anyone. Since then, he had never been anything but a pleasant yet indifferent passenger through life. Odile didn’t ask for more, which explained why they got on so well. In conversation, he played his cards close to his chest. People either took him for a snob or a harmless idiot, or both. It was all the same to him.
    Was it the incongruity of the situation, or had he spent too long outside Lycée Hoche? He felt ill at ease, on edge, as if haunted by something he could not control. He struggled to get a grip on himself. The transition from the arctic conditions outside to the warmth of the café had been abrupt … Was he coming down with a fever? That was all he needed. He gritted his teeth, mentally shook himself and left the café.
     
    Jeanne had spent all day lying around in her dressing gown and slippers with a cigarette hanging from her mouth, grazing on fruit, keeping one eye on the TV and the other on a trashydetective novel. She loved duvet days. Rodolphe had left early that morning and not been back since. Around four o’clock, she finally decided it was time for a bath. Standing in front of the mirror with wet hair slicked either side of her sharp-featured face, she thought she bore a resemblance to Cruella De Vil, who would soon be making her annual onscreen appearance as the Christmas holidays loomed. She was not troubled by the likeness to a baddie. In fact she felt a certain degree of pride in belonging to the family of reprobates denounced in films and novels. They alone carried the misery of the world on their shoulders, and in her eyes they were a hundred times more worthy of respect than the fresh-faced heroes who moulded God in their own image. She, however, was not cruel. Her pupils judged her strict but fair, and her colleagues courteous but cold.
    She had gone from being slim to skinny, as others went from chubby to fat. And yet she denied herself nothing, had a healthy appetite and was rarely ill – the odd cold, nothing serious. Food just went straight through her. She asked herself how long it had been since she last had sex, but could not answer. Years … Sometimes in dreams. Her belly had always been flat and would remain so, her bony hips sticking out either side. People said men preferred women with a bit of meat on them. That was rubbish; they liked whatever they could get. She didn’t hold it against them, not that she had been with many: three, including a teenager and a woman she spent almost