The Woman With the Bouquet Read Online Free PDF Page B

he had just reemerged, intact, from the green waves of the North Sea. It made me shiver.
    He misinterpreted my reaction.
    “You are frozen because of me!” he said. “I’m truly sorry.”
    “No, no, I’ll get over it quickly. Here, I’m going to light a fire.”
    “Shall I help you?”
    “Hands off! As long as you haven’t yet found a way to wear those afghans tied around you without danger of immodesty, I advise you to sit still on the sofa.”
    I was usually very bad at getting a fire going, but now there were sparks, and very quickly violent flames were licking the logs while I poured the tea.
    “I owe you an explanation,” he said, savoring the first sip.
    “You don’t owe me anything and I despise explanations.”
    “What happened, according to you?”
    “I don’t know. I’ll improvise: you were born this morning, you emerged from the waves.”
    “Or?”
    “You were being transported on a cargo ship full of slaves on its way to the Americas, then the ship was attacked by pirates, and it sank in the harbor at Ostend, but, miraculously, you managed to slip out of your shackles to swim to shore.”
    “Why was I reduced to slavery?”
    “A terrible misunderstanding. A judicial error.”
    “Oh, I see that you are on my side.”
    “Absolutely.”
    Cheered, he pointed to the thousands of books around us.
    “Are you a reader?”
    “Yes, I learned the alphabet a few years ago, and I’ve put it to good use.”
    “It’s not the alphabet that gives you such an imagination . . .”
    “I’ve been reproached so often for my imagination. As if it were a fault. What do you think?”
    “In you, I find it adorable,” he whispered, with a troubling smile.
    As a result, I fell silent. My inspiration had left me, giving way to anxiety. What on earth was I up to, all alone in my house, with a stranger whom I had found naked among the bushes? Logically, I should have been afraid. And, deep inside, I did have the feeling that I was facing danger.
    I tried to rationalize things somewhat.
    “How long had you been on the look-out for someone, hiding in the dunes?”
    “For hours. I had already collared two women out strolling, before you. They ran away before I could disclose anything. I frightened them.”
    “Your outfit, perhaps?”
    “Yes, my outfit. And yet, it really was the simplest thing I could find.”
    We both laughed wholeheartedly.
    “It was all my own fault,” he continued. “I’ve been staying for a few weeks with my family not far from here, and this morning I felt the need to go for a swim. I left the car behind the dunes, in a place that would be easy to find again, and then because there was no one about, absolutely no one, I left my clothes under a stone and went for a long swim. When I came back to shore, I could find neither the stone, nor my clothes, nor the car.”
    “Blown away? Stolen?”
    “I’m not sure that I came back to the same spot after my swim, because I only vaguely recognized things. What could look more like sand than sand?”
    “And more like a rock than a rock?”
    “Exactly! So that is why I did not suggest we look for my car behind the dunes, because I have no idea where it is.”
    “Absent-minded?”
    “The desire to swim naked in the sea is irresistible. The call of the open ocean.”
    “I understand.”
    And it was true: I did understand him. I guessed that he must be a solitary soul, like myself, to feel such intense exaltation in nature. And yet, a doubt crossed my mind.
    “You did intend to come back, did you not?”
    “When I left, yes. When I was floating out there, no. I wanted it never to end.”
    He looked at me closely then added, slowly, “I’m not the suicidal type, if that’s what you meant.”
    “It was.”
    “I flirt with danger, I seem to vibrate when I’m taking risks—probably some day I’ll do something foolhardy, and that will be it, but I have no desire to die.”
    “So you have more of a desire to live?”
    “That’s