Human Nature by Serge Joncour

Author:Serge Joncour
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gallic Books

Friday, 24 December 1999

Alexandre stared at the pellets of fertiliser in the sacks he had positioned against the tank of diesel. He thought back to that evening in April 1986. Back then, they still had the hideous grey telephone with its long, twisty cord. He’d spent two hours out in the hallway, bent over the small stand, then sitting down against wall, before actually lying stretched out on the tiled floor, listening so intently to Constanze’s voice that at times he felt he could smell her perfume.

She’d called him eventually, from Berlin. After five years. He heard from her at long last thanks to an explosion in a nuclear power plant. It was thanks to Chernobyl that he’d picked up the thread of a vanished love.

Without that calamity in the Soviet empire, she might never have called, never have contacted him. Without the radioactive cloud wafting across Europe, and the crazy uncertainty about the radiation it was spreading in its path, he might never have seen her again. But two days after the catastrophe, Constanze had telephoned. She wanted to know that everything was all right with him, and the countryside all around. She wanted to be sure that the meadows, and the trees, and more than anything the wild mint, were all still there. She was surprised to learn that, in France, everyone thought they were safe from the radioactive cloud, whereas in Germany and the other Nordic countries, people were panicking. There had been a rush on iodine tablets. But no one in France was worried – the government had reassured the population that the Alps formed a natural barrier to the cloud. Yet in the USSR the talk was of thousands dead. The cloud was a threat of the utmost seriousness; people were forbidden from going out in the rain; children were not to play outside; no one was to touch or eat salad leaves. Fruit and vegetables picked in the three days following the explosion were not to be eaten. These were the words that Alexandre heard Constanze speak, after five years of silence. She had been right all along to distrust nuclear power, and for all they knew, the problems it would cause were only beginning. She told him of the desire that had never left her, to live in the countryside one day. She dreamed of it constantly, now more than ever. Alexandre dared not believe what he was hearing, but more than anything, he was astounded just to hear her voice. He could never hear enough of it, and asked her a thousand questions. First of all, he wanted to know how her studies were going. She had carried on with biology, and law, and she was happier than ever with the choices she’d made, for reasons she could not tell him over the phone. That was why she wanted them to meet. In July, she was probably going to spend a week at Anton’s place – he was out of prison, and living on the high causse in Aveyron.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.