The People Opposite by Georges Simenon

Author:Georges Simenon [Simenon, Georges]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141998350
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2022-01-04T00:00:00+00:00

8

Next day, he did not say to Sonia any of the things he had promised himself he would, nor did he mention the man from Novorossisk.

During the night, he had sweated profusely, although he was only lightly covered, and this was happening more and more often. Sometimes he wondered if he had sweated like this in the past. He searched his memory. But he didn’t remember having woken up to damp sheets.

What he certainly didn’t remember was having got up feeling more tired than the night before. Yet now this happened every day. He would stay for a long while staring in front of him, before he felt he had enough strength to go on living. He had become ugly. There was a bitter taste in his mouth, a bitterness that was unfamiliar.

That morning, he felt the perspiration break out on his forehead and temples, merely from getting out of bed and walking towards the wash-basin. It was still raining. The draught that came through a crack in the window-frame smelled of moisture. He could guess at Kolin’s wife getting dressed, across the street, behind her curtains.

Adil Bey looked at himself in the mirror before picking up the jug and pouring water into the basin. He noticed once more that his beard was growing more thickly than before, then told himself that was impossible, and finally remembered that, on a dead man, the beard grows spectacularly fast.

He blew his nose and spat into his handkerchief. It was at that moment, without any transition, that everything changed for him, panic penetrated him to the marrow, stabbed his stomach, brought vomit to his throat.

He dared not look again at the pink-stained handkerchief. He peered fearfully at his face in the mirror. He heard the maid moving about in the office. Soon Sonia arrived, and the two women began talking in Russian, but he could not understand what they said, since they spoke too fast for him. He guessed at the handbag being placed on the mantelpiece, the black hat being hung on a peg, the waterproof boots being taken off.

When he entered the room in his crumpled pyjamas, his feet bare in sandals, Sonia gave a start. He noticed that and it pleased him to think he had frightened her.

‘Get me a doctor right away.’

‘Are you sick, Adil Bey?’

‘I don’t know.’

He did not shave or dress, did not even wipe his face, and each time he passed the wash-basin he stole a glance at his reflection. He managed to seem calm for a while. He would take a dozen paces, nodding his head, hands behind his back, then suddenly he would be seized by the same panic that had filled him at the sight of the handkerchief, and his jaws clenched with impatience. He stared at the door, as if he had the power to bring the doctor in at once.

‘But it’ll be a Russian doctor,’ he muttered.

A little later, he said out loud: ‘Well, we’ll see!’

And he went on talking to himself.

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