The President by Georges Simenon

Author:Georges Simenon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Melville House
Published: 2011-09-21T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 5

WITHOUT NEEDING TO OPEN HIS EYES he knew it was still night, and that the little flat lamp was shedding a faint light in one corner of the room, like a tiny moon. He also knew that something unusual was happening, though he couldn’t have said what, something missing, a lack, rather than something too much, and when he had roused up sufficiently he realized that what had disturbed him was the silence surrounding the house after the storm that had been raging for days, as though all at once the universe had ceased to vibrate.

There was a ray of light under the door into the study, he could see it through the tiny slit between his eyelids. To see the time by his alarm clock he would have to turn his head, and he didn’t feel like moving.

He listened. There was someone moving in the next room, without excessive caution, not furtively, and he recognized the sound of logs being dumped on the hearth and the familiar crackle of the kindling. When the smell of the burning wood began to reach his nostrils, not before, he called out:

“Emile!”

The chauffeur opened the door; he had not yet shaved or put on his white jacket, and the sleepless night had clouded his eyes.

“Did you call, sir?”

“What time is it?”

“A few minutes past five. It suddenly turned cold, late in the night, and now it feels like frost. So I’m starting the fire. Did I wake you?”

“No.”

After a short silence, Emile remarked:

“So you see, nobody came, after all.”

The old man repeated:

“Nobody came, you’re right.”

“Would you like your tea right away?”

From his bed he could watch the flames leaping in the study fireplace.

“Yes, please.”

Then, as Emile reached the door, he called him back:

“Open the shutters first, if you don’t mind.”

Just as, in the evening, he liked to cloak himself in solitude, in the morning he was eager to resume contact with life, eager in an anxious, almost frightened way.

Day was still far off, there was no sign of dawn, and yet the night was not black but white, and a light, pale-colored vapor, which was actually fog, had time to float into the room while Emile leaned out to push back the shutters.

“The cold’s as sharp as midwinter, and later on, with this damp rising as though the ground were a sponge, we shan’t be able to see as far as the garden gate.”

During this brief contact with the outer world they had heard the foghorn wailing, muted, in the distance. At some point during the night the wind had fallen to a flat calm, but ordinary life, in abeyance during the tempest of the last few days, had not yet got under way again and the countryside still lay, as it were, in limbo.

“I’ll bring your tea in five minutes.”

Coffee had been forbidden, and now he was only allowed weak tea. Of all the privations he had to endure, this was the only one he found painful, and he sometimes went

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