Babylon by Yasmina Reza

Author:Yasmina Reza
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: murder romance, detective novel, police procedure novel, literary crime, woman author, french murder, murder novel, mystery novel, humor novel, police procedural, french crime, french novel, french playwright, woman playwright, playwright, literature in translation, literary fiction in translation, literary fiction, memory fiction, fiction in translation, translation, women in translation, mystery in translation, crime in translation, crime and mystery, murder mystery, novel in translation, crime novel, Prix Renaudot
ISBN: 9781609808334
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Published: 2018-07-12T18:00:00+00:00

Jean-Lino doesn’t know what to do. Leave her stewing and go have his smoke, or stay and try to smooth things over. She was sitting at her desk, a little antique writing table in the living room, she’d put on her glasses and was reading her emails on the laptop with the look of a woman getting back to things worth her interest. He’d never seen her do her mail at night. Making up looks like a long haul. He decides to go out and have his smoke. He puts on his biker jacket and leaves. He takes the stairs down. Reaching our floor, he hears the sound of voices. People are leaving our apartment and standing around on the landing to wait for the elevator. He thinks my sister and Serge are probably in the group. He hears laughter, hears my charming voice (the word he used). Even though the door separating the stairwell from the landing is closed, he moves back up a few steps to avoid being seen. He has lost all confidence. He’s ashamed. An hour earlier he’d been part of that merry band, he’d felt included, maybe even appreciated at certain points. Now he doesn’t even want to risk running into any of them downstairs. Even when these people have left, others might still come along. When he hears the elevator set off and our apartment door close, he climbs back up to the fifth floor. He sits down on the highest step, on the worn carpeting, and lights his cigarette. It’s the first time he’s smoked in the stairwell. He’d never thought of it before. He thinks back over the evening. He smiles as he reviews the good moments, he didn’t feel the mockery when he was making people laugh, but maybe he’s naïve. He and Lydie—they aren’t used to going out, at least not to this sort of gathering. At the beginning, they’d been a little shy, but they’d soon felt comfortable. He’s no longer sure of anything. All he knows is that he was happy and now he isn’t. And that somebody did something that deprived him of his high spirits. I understood him better than anyone, he’d found somebody to talk to. My father didn’t know how to lose his temper without hitting. At dinner once when I was feeling cheerful, I spiked up a potato from the platter with a knife and stuck the thing whole into my mouth. I got a smack instantly and I still feel the scorch of it today. Not because he’d hit me—I was used to that—but because he had shot down my high spirits. Jean-Lino has a sense of some injustice. He sees himself, doubled over on the top step in his leather jacket, in the horrid light of the stairwell. Lydie’s words about Rémi come back to him. He had managed to avoid hearing them too well; he’d had a few drinks and that helped. But everything was gone, vanished—the pleasure, the euphoria.

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