The Krull House by Georges Simenon

Author:Georges Simenon
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141986777
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2018-03-22T04:00:00+00:00

8.

It was 6.55. On the rectilinear canal, transformed in places into a tunnel by the foliage joining overhead, a few boats were still moving between the green embankments and the rows of trees, some with engines thudding, others drawn slowly by horses, all bathed in the same peace of the evening, the same oblique pink sun setting ablaze the windows of a white house amid the greenery and casting on the ground the outsized shadow of a little girl leading a dappled percheron.

The engine of the Centaure throbbed as it hurried towards the lock at Tilly. The water was split in two. The walls came closer, and the bargee hooted his siren several times, because he could see the lock-keeper, his winch in his hand, walking back to his house.

Shielding his eyes with his hand, the lock-keeper watched the Centaure arrive, consulted his big silver watch and at last resigned himself to slowly opening the gates.

It was three reaches upstream of the Krull house, some seven to eight kilometres. The Tilly lock was the least popular with the bargees, because of its oval basin and its side sluices that let out too much water at once and caused eddies.

The family on the Centaure wanted to get to the village above the lock by nightfall. The bargee’s wife stood in the bow, letting out the steel rope little by little as they advanced.

People had said a hundred times:

‘There’s going to be disaster at the Tilly lock one of these days! A barge will have to go down before the Highways Department makes up its mind to do something about it!’

The disaster happened. Did the woman let the rope out too fast? The barge was pushed away from the wall by the eddies and advanced at least one metre, enough for its bow to get lodged on the concrete, from which the water was receding.

The woman cried out. The bargee ran to the bow. The lock-keeper bent over, but it was already too late: the Centaure, whose bow was almost completely out of the water, was slowly breaking in two.

It was carrying cement.

At the other end of the straight line and the two rows of trees, the Krulls had no inkling of any of this and carried on with their lives as if nothing had happened on the canal.

Just as the accident was taking place, Hans, who had temporarily had enough of the kitchen, the lounge and the shop, was standing at the door of the yard, lighting a cigarette. Throwing away the match, he looked at the low, whitewashed wall that separated the yard from the Guérins’ garden. Above the wall, he saw the head of a little boy who was standing there motionless, perched on something or other, a ladder or a barrel, staring at him wide-eyed.

‘Louis!’ a woman’s voice cried.

The boy didn’t move. He wanted to keep looking, as if dumb-founded at the sight in front of him.

‘Louis! Will you come down? I forbid you to look into those people’s house!’

The door to the workshop was open.

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