The Mahé Circle Read Online Free PDF Page B

wife … There’s these papers to sign, and I don’t know what else, but the mayor wants you
there.”
    â€˜Well, he just goes on drinking. Has the bottle of plonk in front of him. We help ourselves, Gène and me, he just lets us, he goes on drinking, pays us no attention at all.
    â€˜â€œHe’s always like this?” I asks the boss, “when he comes in here?”
    â€˜â€œEvery time.”
    â€˜â€œWhere does he sleep?”
    â€˜â€œDon’t ask me. When I turf him out, he goes away. Must go to some other bar.”
    â€˜So I says to Gène:
    â€˜â€œWhat d’you think, what’ll we do?”
    â€˜Because, see, it was nearly midnight. And I know his crafty little ways, he could have got away from us.
    â€˜â€œDamn it all,” I says to Gène. “Don’t you want to sleep in a bed tonight?”
    â€˜Gène’s wife’s not around, is she? No? OK. So we got him by the shoulders. He let us, and we kept telling him:
    â€˜â€œYou got to sober up, pal, because your wife’s dead. Dead, do you understand?”
    â€˜Well, we couldn’t just walk the streets all night. So we took him up the Ramparts. To Flore’s place, know what I mean? And there’s these sailors there, and a few girls, without a stitch on … Even … Eh
Gène, we played the pianola, didn’t we, and we stayed there, right?
    â€˜â€œGot to feed him coffee to sober him up,” that’s what I told the madam, “on account of his wife’s died. And that’s why we’re here, come to that.”
    â€˜Only, him! Yeah, you, clown face! Don’t look so innocent! Soon as we had our backs turned, he’s swallowed down our drinks! Then when he’d had the coffee, he started throwing it up all over the place, even got some on my
trousers, and the old girl was for chucking us out. And it was this tart, dark girl she was and fat – ask Gène what she looks like – that went and fetched some ether from her room …’
    â€˜You finished yet, Gustave? What’ll we do with him?’
    â€˜We’d better take him to the town hall. Come on, Frans, come with me,’ said the mayor. ‘Not drunk now, are you?’
    The man shook his head and walked off alongside the
mayor in the blue overall, while Polyte and a few other men followed behind, still passing comments.
    â€˜Where’ve they put her?’
    â€˜In the lock-up.’
    â€˜It’ll stink the place out, like it did before. Have to disinfect it, like last time. Remember old Mouchi? Say, doctor, they ever tell you about old Mouchi? This old fellow, so old, no one knew when he came to the island. Sort of
Italian, he was, you couldn’t always understand what he was on about. Once a year, in the spring, he used to shave off his hair and his beard with the shears you use for sheep, and then you wouldn’t recognize him, you’d think he was a priest. And then the rest of the year
he let it grow, so you couldn’t hardly see his eyes out of all the bristles. Every afternoon, he’d go to sleep on a bench, in the square. He had a room of some sort, just by the barber’s. Nobody’d ever been in there. Anyway, one day, people said Mouchi hadn’t
been out of his place for a week. So we go to fetch the mayor, the other one, the one before this one, and he says:
    â€˜â€œPolyte, you go in to Mouchi’s and take a look.”
    â€˜And when we opened the door, all these fleas jumped out at us, we had to run back out. And there he was, Mouchi, naked as the day he was born, long, long beard and hair, like I said, and stark naked, standing up at the table, leaning over
it, and he was dead! Couldn’t go in, because of the vermin. We had to get a sulphate spreader we use for the vines. And we filled it full of formalin, and we puffed it out in front of us to go in. And when somebody touched him, he