Three Bedrooms in Manhattan (New York Review Books Classics) by Simenon Georges

Author:Simenon, Georges [Simenon, Georges]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 2011-11-23T05:00:00+00:00

6

THEY WOKE up very early though they didn’t realize it. They thought they must have slept for an eternity. Neither of them bothered to look at the clock.

Kay got up first to open the curtains, and she cried, “Look, François!”

For the first time since he’d lived here, he saw that the Jewish tailor wasn’t sitting cross-legged on his table. He was sitting in a chair like anyone else, an old straw-bottomed chair he must have brought with him from the far reaches of Poland or the Ukraine. With his elbows on the table, he was dipping thick slices of bread into a flowered porcelain bowl and looking placidly in front of him.

Over his head, the electric bulb, which at night he pulled over to his work area with a metal wire, was still on.

He was eating slowly, studiously, and in front of his eyes was nothing but a wall hung with scissors and patterns on thick gray paper.

Kay said, “He’s my friend. I have to find some way to make him happy.”

Because they both felt happy.

“Do you realize it’s not even seven yet?”

Neither felt at all tired. They felt nothing but an immense and profound sense of well-being, which made them smile, from time to time, at the most trivial things.

Watching her put on her clothes while he poured boiling water over the coffee, he thought out loud, “There must have been somebody in your friend’s apartment last night, since the light was on.”

“I’d be very surprised if Jessie had been able to come back.”

“You’d like to get your clothes, wouldn’t you?”

She still didn’t dare accept what she sensed was generosity.

“Listen,” he went on. “I’ll go back there with you. I’ll wait downstairs while you go up.”

“You think?”

He knew what was on her mind, that she might run into Enrico or even Ronald, Jessie’s husband. “Let’s go.”

And they went. It was so early in the morning that the street seemed different, unknown. No doubt they’d both been out that early before, but it was the first time they’d done it together. After their night wanderings along sidewalks and through bars, they felt washed clean by the morning freshness, with the messy city sprucing itself up for the new day.

“Look. There’s a window open. Go on up. I’ll wait here.”

“I’d rather you came with me, François. You don’t mind, do you?”

They climbed the stairway, which was clean, unostentatious, very proper. There were doormats in front of nearly every apartment, and on the second floor a cleaning lady polished a brass doorknob so energetically it made her ample breasts quiver.

He knew Kay was a little frightened. She must have thought it was some kind of test. Yet everything seemed obvious to him, the building ordinary, sober, unmysterious.

She rang the bell, and her lips trembled as she glanced his way, squeezing his hand for reassurance.

No one answered the bell, which echoed in the emptiness inside.

“What time is it?”

“Nine.”

“Do you mind?”

She rang the bell of the next apartment. A man of about sixty in

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