The Snow Was Dirty (Penguin Classics) by Georges Simenon

Author:Georges Simenon [Simenon, Georges]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2018-04-17T04:00:00+00:00

4.

It’s the eighteenth day. He’s holding out. He will hold out. He’s discovered that it’s all a matter of holding out, and that if he does he’ll get one over on them. Is it really about getting one over on them? That’s another problem, one that he will solve when the time comes. He has done a lot of thinking. Too much. Thinking can be dangerous, too. You have to be very strict with yourself. Thinking that he’ll get one over on them simply means that he will get out of this. And the expression ‘get out of this’ doesn’t just refer to the place where he is.

It’s amazing the way people outside use words without thinking about their real meaning. He may not be very educated, but there are lots like him, they are in the majority, and he realizes now that he has always been content to use words approximately.

This question of the meaning of words took him two days. He might come back to it.

Anyway, it’s the eighteenth day, and that’s something he’s absolutely certain of. He’s made sure it’s something he’s absolutely certain of. He’s chosen an almost empty portion of wall and every morning he draws a line with his thumbnail. It’s more difficult than you might think. Not drawing the line, even though his nail is already quite worn down. But drawing only one. Making sure you have drawn it. The wall is covered in plaster, which makes it easier. What wasn’t easy was finding a clean spot, because of all the others who have been here before him.

Nor – and this is another of his discoveries – must you start having qualms, questioning everything, because here there is a tendency to doubt, and he has realized that once you start doubting, you’re lost.

He will get to the bottom of the problem all by himself, provided he is disciplined, provided he doesn’t allow himself to start daydreaming. You have to become strict about certain things. For example, the last morning he spent outside, he didn’t know the date. He knew it without knowing it. He isn’t sure of it. So that, even if he can guarantee that he has been here for eighteen days, he wouldn’t dare swear, within a day or two, to the date he arrived.

This is how you live.

More than likely it is the seventh of January. Although it could be the eighth. As far as what came before is concerned, he lacks indisputable points of reference; but here, he is prepared to swear by his lines.

If he holds out, if he doesn’t let himself go, if he concentrates sufficiently – though without concentrating too much – it won’t take him long to understand, and it will all be over.

That reminds him of a dream he has had several times. There are several of those, but the most obvious is the one about flight. He rises off the ground. Not in the open air, in a garden or a street, but always in a room, and in the presence of witnesses who can’t fly.

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