Reticence by Jean-Philippe Toussaint

Author:Jean-Philippe Toussaint [Toussaint, Jean-Philippe]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Literary, French Literature, Fiction
ISBN: 9781564787101
Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
Published: 2012-04-09T23:00:00+00:00

Now the villa was closed and silent, stretching out in the mist behind the wall of the property, and I stood in front of the gate, apparently alone on the road with my son beside me in his stroller. I’d taken out the three letters to Biaggi that I still had in my possession, and looking at them I saw that the brief dunking the night before had done them practically no damage at all. Fine, they looked like they’d gotten a bit wet, the paper was slightly crinkled and puffy in places and the ink had run somewhat on the envelopes, but they were still perfectly presentable, it seemed to me, at least presentable enough to be put back into the Biaggis’ mailbox without anyone suspecting they hadn’t been there since the mailman had delivered them, and, just as I was about to let them go—because I now wanted to get rid of them as quickly as possible—my hand froze and I sensed that passing shiver of dread I always felt before dropping letters into a mailbox, the second when I read the letter over in my mind, going over all the turns of phrase and mentally checking this or that word, suddenly wondering if I’ve spelled it correctly, or even questioning what I’d written, and, while my hand still had the option of pulling back, while only a few inches separated the letters from the box and all of these vague sensations blended inside me, it was at this moment that I let them go—my hand completed its movement and I let the three letters drop into the slot.

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