“Oh, why not?” thought Herman, submerged in his deep lethargy.
Tired of this talk, he abruptly changed the subject to his missing family, and asked what might become of them and of himself. To his own surprise, he was racked by a dry sob. But could he even quite remember what Rose and the boy looked like? He could not—little more than their first names. He could very precisely picture the vague, indifferent expression that sometimes dulled Métilde’s eyes, he knew everything down to the exact tone of the dismissive little “oh” that would escape Gilbert’s suddenly slack lips.
“What has to happen will happen,” one or the other of them would invariably say.
They showed no sign of discomfort, at most mild surprise that Herman was revisiting a closed subject, with what might have struck them as a sort of impropriety.
“Alfred wouldn’t be happy with me,” Herman would tell himself.
Nonetheless, just once, Métilde let slip a word that Herman turned over and over in his mind without quite managing to connect it to his problem, though his problem was precisely what she was talking about. She said something about the many avatars in this damp region. Gilbert yawned, so Métilde dutifully perked up and announced that the local want ads were always asking for people with the Vocational Training Certificate, and once you had that in your hand, no, you’d have no problem finding a job in L. that paid eight thousand francs after taxes.
Herman choked down the rest of his wine and said his goodbyes. Through his weariness, he was grateful to Métilde for enlivening the past hour with her cheerful chatter and the pretty sight of her cheeks pinkening with every mention of the Vocational Training Certificate, etc.
Later, beneath his umbrella, his thoughts turned to the avatars, but focused, sustained reflection was growing hard for him, as he had so few occasions to practice it. He caught himself daydreaming or vacantly gazing at the dark shop windows, imagining the merchant women at home, wondering if among family they permitted themselves to liberate their customarily compressed and flattened breasts just a little. After eight, the streets were deserted. Low, narrow windows between the timbers, dim lights, not a sound filtering out, not even a television. Herman hurried to the Relais, almost embarrassed at the thought of being seen outside at that hour.
“Ah, I was waiting for you,” Alfred always said, sitting on Herman’s bed, ten minutes after dinner was done.
“I stopped by Métilde’s,” Herman would answer.
But Alfred knew every move he made, like everyone in the village, Herman supposed. And so—though as time went by he found it less and less disagreeable, more and more inoffensive—he had to endure the assault of Alfred’s impetuous friendship, his eagerness to hear Herman tell him he was happy and felt himself becoming a genuine villager who didn’t miss Paris at all in spite of the constant rain, and the little there was to do, and the solid gray sky masking the hills on all sides. And once Herman obediently acknowledged his contentment and the relative tranquility of his mind, Alfred would triumphantly promise he’d be reunited with Rose and the child, possibly soon—although he himself couldn’t say—but when he did, the meeting might not bring him any more joy than he would feel next summer, when, in the streets of the village they had only come to for shopping (for lavish, impulsive grocery purchases), he would once again see all the Parisian vacationers. The wife and the child would remind him of life in the capital, and Alfred was convinced that Herman would in fact look away, out of boredom and disgust with that existence.
“Well, why not?” thought Herman, trying to make out the face of the old woman across the way, the mother of the present charcutière.
The president’s prediction no longer offended him, scarcely interested him. Now he knew Alfred dyed or bleached his hair to match the intense blondness around him, since his eyebrows were still black and thick, like the hairs that darkened his wrists and upper hands. Out of pure affection for Herman, Alfred regularly offered to have Charlotte serve him breakfast, as she did his, at no added expense.
“No, no, never,” Herman would answer, feeling the burden of Alfred’s solicitude, Alfred’s eagerness to see him make full use of Charlotte like he did, and for the sake of Herman’s comfort and pleasure, Alfred would be perfectly prepared to secretly pay off the mother for Charlotte’s added labor.
“And why would he do that?” Herman limply asked himself.
Because he was trying to keep him there in the village, to keep him rhapsodizing several times a day over the excellent life to be had here, but Herman didn’t need Alfred, didn’t need Alfred’s devoted attention to the perfect repose of his soul, to feel a gratitude toward the off-season village for what it was giving him—a progressive indifference to action and mental labor—and so Herman, idle and drowsing, his half-closed eyes vaguely registering the pretentious little flowers interlaced on the ceiling, came to think that vitality is in no way a necessity, nor is a certain sort of happiness made up of varied activities, heart-felt affections, and a comfortable, discreet wealth, like he’d known until recently with Rose in the fourteenth arrondissement of Paris. But neither did he want that Parisian life to be taken away from him, he felt no contempt for it. It was just that, for the moment, he was powerfully drawn to the possibility of an indolent but not ignoble, serenely oblivious degeneration. Charlotte didn’t think she had to be saved, but was she right? Nothing was less certain, but he felt his friendship for her growing.
2 – With Métilde’s intercession, he’d gotten his name on the list for an audience with the mayor, having accepted that he had to wait his turn. And now a meeting had been scheduled, and the day had come. He wearily made his way to the town hall, no longer convinced that his problem deserved a place among the cases requiring urgent attention. Hadn’t they already made it very clear that his situation was of no particular interest? He gave his name at the front desk, then climbed the stairs alone to the mayor’s office, which occupied the whole second floor. There he had to identify himself to another secretary, who would verify the rationale behind his request for an interview and usher him in when the time came. Herman recognized her immediately: she was his one-time neighbor on the plateau, the farmwoman, the first person he’d gone to see to ask about Rose. She gave him a wide, detached smile and in a precise voice told him she knew why he’d come to see the mayor and in all honesty didn’t think it was sufficient grounds to disturb him, but she would let Herman in all the same, taking into account the friendships he’d made in this very building, among the employees.
“So you don’t work at the farm anymore?” asked Herman, for whom this reunion was not a pleasant one.
He remembered losing his composure in front of her, and he was ashamed.
“When the cold weather comes I switch to the town hall,” she explained laconically.
Then she stood up to open the mayor’s door, announced, “Monsieur Herman,” and with a graceful one-handed wave showed him in.
It was an enormous room of ultramodern décor, exactly like downstairs. The mayor was sitting at a large desk made of a single plate of glass, no papers or pencils before him. But his serious air and stern posture made an impression on Herman, who forced himself to shake off his apathy.