The Red Collar by Jean Christophe Rufin

Author:Jean Christophe Rufin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Europa
Published: 2015-06-09T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER VI

Valentine didn’t want to go inside. She was standing by the door to the hotel. Although he was of no use to anyone before he’d had his coffee, Lantier had no trouble recognizing her. He wasn’t expecting her to visit, at least not so soon and not so early in the morning. But she must have been thinking all night, not had a moment’s sleep, and now here she was, her face unreadable, her mind made up.

“Good morning, Valentine,” he said, coming out onto the doorstep. “Come in and have some coffee.”

She was carrying a basket with both hands, holding it at arm’s length, with an embarrassed expression. Lantier thought of her father, the political agitator, whom Gabarre said she resembled. He was most likely the same sort of character, capable of setting fire to a bourgeois house but intimidated by an invitation to enter one. In the end he persuaded her and she went inside.

As he followed her along the hotel’s corridors, with their painted wallpaper and pictures on the walls, he grasped what held her back. At home, she was in keeping with her surroundings. Here, her coarse dress and wooden clogs made her look like a slattern.

He showed her to the back of the building, onto a small terrace where there were some garden chairs. She was less out of place in this outdoor setting than in the lounges with their decorative moldings.

He ordered a coffee. She didn’t want anything. This refusal seemed to demonstrate a determination not to accept anything from anyone she considered her enemy. Had it been more moderate, this principle might have seemed respectable and even formidable. Pushed to extremes and applied to the most insignificant things, such as a cup of coffee, there was something laughable and puerile about it.

She’d put her basket on the ground and was pretending to rifle through it, just to have something to do. When the serving girl had brought Lantier’s coffee and they were left alone, she glowered at Lantier and, with no preamble, cut straight to, “Actually, I do want to see him. And I want him to know.”

“I’ve suggested it to him but . . . ”

“That’s for sure, he’ll say no. But you mustn’t just ‘suggest’ it.”

She imitated the fluty way Lantier had said the word. This intonation alone was a gauge of the violent feelings that gripped her at the thought of the army.

“What exactly would you like me to say to him?”

“That I have to see him. It has to happen. And I want to.”

“Leave it with me. I’ll come to your house to bring you the answer myself if he changes his mind.”

“That won’t be necessary.”

“Why not?”

“I’ll stay in town in the meantime.”

Lantier showed his surprise with one raised eyebrow.

“There’s a woman I know who sells vegetables next to me in the market. She’ll put me up for as long as it takes. She lives behind the covered market.”

“Very well.”

“Is he allowed letters?”

“Yes, but the jailer opens them and reads them.

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