The Venice Train by Georges Simenon & Ros Schwartz

Author:Georges Simenon & Ros Schwartz [Simenon, Georges]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Random House UK
Published: 2022-06-02T00:00:00+00:00

Part Two

1

‘Poor Justin! You don’t look well. I hope you ate at Étienne’s and that he took good care of you.’

From the minute she arrived at the station on the Saturday, she’d been darting worried glances at him.

‘Have you been taking your liver medication regularly?’

It dated way back to his time as a teacher when his long battle against Mimoune had begun. He’d been all the more anxious since he saw no way out other than teaching, and he sensed that he wouldn’t be able to cope much longer. His stomach suffered the consequences. Their physician was already Doctor Bosson, who still treated the entire family.

But it wasn’t Bosson who had spoken of his liver, it was Dominique.

‘Don’t you find, Doctor, that he has a delicate liver?’

And since Bosson never contradicted anyone, he had nodded and grunted a vague:

‘He is perhaps a bit …’

He had prescribed a powder to be taken on waking and after each main meal. For months, Justin forgot to take it.

‘You need to be careful. You’re looking sallow again …’

It was funny being reunited with them, to see his daughter in a dress, more tanned than when he’d left, and Bib, who suddenly looked like a real little man.

He didn’t feel fully in tune with them, while they had a vague sense that something had changed, especially Dominique.

‘Did you go out a lot in the evenings?’

‘Once, with Bob.’

‘Did you come home late?’

‘At eleven. On the other nights, I was in bed by ten …’

‘Did Madame Léonard come every day to clean, as I asked her to?’

‘I suppose so. I didn’t see her, but by the time I got back in the evenings, everything was tidy …’

‘You haven’t had any trouble at the office?’

‘Not at all.’

He had to get used to it, to make a sort of readjustment.

Various trivial events had happened during the week, but he wasn’t allowed to talk about them. On the Tuesday, he’d bought La Tribune de Lausanne from a kiosk on the Champs-Élysées, had stuffed it in his pocket and gone into a café where, after ordering a drink, he’d gone to skim the newspaper in the toilet.

He couldn’t run the risk of being seen reading a Swiss newspaper, he who in his entire life had spent less than three hours in that country and had neither family nor friends there.

In the ‘Valais’ column there was some news, and his heart began to beat faster.

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