The Scapegoat Read Online Free PDF Page A

murmuring, ‘Magnificent, excellent!’ under his breath, obviously enjoying every moment of what soon turned out to be, from my own rather cautious standard, a hair-raising ride. When we had jumped one set of lights, and sent an old man leaping for his life, and forced a large Buick driven by an infuriated American into the side of the street, he proceeded to circle the town in order, so he explained, to try the car’s pace. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘it amuses me enormously to use other people’s possessions. It is one of life’s greatest pleasures.’ I closed my eyes as we took a corner like a bob-sleigh.
    ‘Meanwhile,’ he said, ‘you are probably dying of hunger?’
    ‘Not at all,’ I murmured. ‘I’m at your disposal.’ It struck me, as I spoke, that the French language was too fine, too polite.
    ‘I was thinking of taking you to the only restaurant where it is possible to eat superbly,’ he said, ‘but I have changed my mind. I am known there, and somehow I feel that tonight I want to be without identity. It isn’t every day that one comes face to face with oneself.’
    His words gave me the same sense of discomfort that I had experienced in the taxi. The likeness between us was not something that either of us wanted to show off in public. I realized suddenly that I did not wish to be seen with him. I did not want waiters to look at us. I felt in some way furtive and ashamed. The sensation was peculiar. He began to slow down as we approached the centre of the town.
    ‘Possibly,’ he said, ‘I won’t go home tonight after all, but take a room at a hotel.’ He seemed to be thinking aloud. I don’t believe he expected a reply. ‘After all,’ he went on, ‘by the time we have dined, it would be rather late to telephone for Gaston to bring in the car. And anyway, they are not expecting me.’
    I have made the same sort of excuses myself to put off facing something unpleasant. I wondered why he was not anxious to return.
    ‘And you,’ he said, turning to me as we waited for the lights to change, ‘after all, you may decide you do not want to go to la Grande-Trappe. You, too, could stay in a hotel.’
    His voice was odd. It was as though he was feeling his way towards some sort of agreement between us, some sort of solution to a problem that neither of us fully understood, and as he looked at me the expression in his eye was probing and at the same time evasive, masked.
    ‘Perhaps,’ I said. ‘I don’t know.’
    He drove through the centre of the town, an enthusiast no longer but preoccupied, and he did not draw up before either of the main hotels that I had noticed earlier in the day, but came to a quarter where the buildings appeared greyer, drabber, closer to the factories and warehouses. In the meaner streets were cheap pensions, dingy lodging-houses, and places for a night or an hour where passports were not demanded and questions never asked.
    ‘It is quieter here,’ he said, and I still could not tell whether he spoke to me or uttered his thoughts aloud. But I did not think much of his choice as he stopped the car in front of a shabby house sandwiched between others equally drab, above whose half-open door the word ‘Hotel’, in dim blue electric light, gave warning of its nature.
    ‘Sometimes,’ he said, ‘these places can be useful. One does not always want to run up against one’s friends.’
    I said nothing. He switched off the engine and opened the door.
    ‘Are you coming?’ he said.
    I had no desire to penetrate the mysteries of the
Tout Confort
that I saw advertised, in small letters, beneath the blue light, but I climbed out of the car and heaved his two valises from the boot.
    ‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘You go inside and book your room if you want to. I’d rather dine first and then decide what to do.’
    I was more inclined to my northern route – the drive to Mortagne, and then the side-road to the Abbaye de la Grande-Trappe.
    ‘As you like,’ he said,