“I know everything I have to know about your case,” the mayor said with a smile. “What I don’t know is what you’re hoping for from me.”
Herman simply wanted to introduce himself to the leading figure in the village; to make sure his case was known; in short, to take the steps required by the most basic rules of civic life: he told him that. At the same time, if the mayor had any thoughts on his problem, he would be glad to hear them. And he sat down facing him on a metal chair, his thighs, like the mayor’s, slightly magnified and deformed through the desk’s glass. The mayor sighed, as if steeling himself to say something unpleasant. And what follows he threw out all at one go, not looking at Herman, but still maintaining the slightly precious, affable, congenial air he would never have dreamed of abandoning, even if he could. It was obvious, he declared, obvious indeed to everyone here—Alfred included, no matter what he might have told Herman—that Herman would never again see his wife and his child as he knew them, in their customary, untransfigured form, speaking as they spoke in their ordinary lives. No, Herman had to renounce all hope of ever again seeing his wife and his child that way. This had happened before, and it was the same every time. Nothing set Herman’s case apart from the others. No one here felt any surprise at what had befallen him, much less troubled themselves over it for long, and when they saw the missing pair on the village streets or, who knows, on the roads in the hills, they would simply say hello to them, without fear or surprise or any particular joy. They might not even bother to tell Herman. Because there was nothing at all interesting about it, in any real sense.
“But, I mean, will they be alive?” asked Herman, his voice shaking a little.
“In a way,” answered the mayor.
He looked at his watch. Herman understood that the time set aside for this meeting was strictly limited. He realized that he shouldn’t try to eat into the time allotted to the next hopeful, that he should be satisfied with whatever he was told and stay patient and polite.
“In a way,” the mayor repeated.
As if doing Herman a great favor, he explained: They would be alive, but only in the manner of the woman who peers into the Relais, whom Alfred must have told Herman was “the mother of the present charcutière.” What Alfred didn’t say, and what the mayor now allowed himself to divulge on the theory that Herman wouldn’t have gone much longer not knowing it, is that in all likelihood the face belonged to Alfred’s wife, who’d come with him for a vacation in the village fourteen years before and had never been seen again, except in her current role and her current setting, smiling and peering at the rear façade of the Relais day and night from a tiny window that was indeed located over the charcuterie, in what must be an uninhabited room, a sort of storage area, in the charcutiers’ apartment. But no one could see any point in asking questions about that room. Pleasant, never intrusive, that face, that being had chosen to settle in with them. She always behaved herself and knew the ways of the village, which is all that mattered. Some of the villagers recognized her as Alfred’s wife—he’d reported her disappearance way back when—and then she appeared at the window three weeks afterward, fresh and discreet. Who would ever have thought of even mentioning it to Alfred? He’d rather not have it spread around that it was his wife, his wife’s face. He had every right. Everyone understood his reticence. But they knew the truth. But they didn’t bother themselves with that truth in any way. Now and then—rarely—someone spotted Alfred’s vanished wife in the village, on the main square. They said hello to her, kept walking, nothing more.
“Does she answer?” asked Herman.
No, of course not. Didn’t Herman understand, asked the mayor in surprise, that he was talking about emanations, not people? About visible, gracious souls, not bodies and minds?
Herman let out a little laugh. An awkward silence ensued. Although clearly bored with the discussion of things that ordinarily needed no explaining, the mayor seemed politely insistent on telling Herman everything he knew, as if, thought Herman, he was a villager now, and had to be taught.
“And why does what happens happen?” Herman asked meekly.
A brief flash of gratification further brightened the mayor’s almost transparent eyes. He couldn’t tell him anything certain, but his opinion was this: in the cases he knew best, though Herman’s wasn’t yet among them, one of the spouses felt an insurmountable repulsion when it came time to start back to Paris on the thirty-first of August. On one pretext or another, that person got away from the house, set off into the countryside or came down to the village in the no doubt half-aware hope that something would happen to prevent the return. Their distress in that moment, thought the mayor, must have been intense. And then they were seen again some time later, in the airy form Herman had observed in Alfred’s wife, and—most importantly—bound for all time to the village. The abandoned wife or husband generally stayed. Some left for home, but the stubborn soul never did go back to Paris. It settled into the village or in some quiet spot on the plateau; it showed itself or it didn’t. Those beings’ personalities varied. They were never a nuisance—yes, people were fond of them. And they’re so discreet, why get hung up on them? The mayor assured Herman that people forgot about them like they forgot about the rain, like they forgot about the stones and the grass by the roadsides.
“Is it really because they suddenly can’t stand the thought of Paris?” asked Herman. “Why would that be?”
“I have no idea, I don’t know Paris,” said the mayor.
He added that, in his opinion, the repugnance for Paris and the longing to stay that transformed those afflicted with what he called village sickness into pure evanescences might, without either one’s knowing it, have met a similar repugnance and a similar longing, only a little less powerful, in the other partner, who for that reason adapted without difficulty to the new state of affairs, and, like Alfred, no longer seriously considered trying to change it. Who knows, the mayor went on with a sly smile, maybe Alfred had endeavored to inspire that illness in his wife, not having the courage and will to enter the floating state himself? But the souls were happy—the mayor could assure Herman of that. They had what they’d pined for as captives of the practical world: an eternal, peaceful existence in the village, a knowledge of the off-season far from Paris, and the constant rain, and the comfort it brings. Gloating, the mayor asked:
“Have you noticed, Monsieur Herman, you can’t even see the hills anymore! By the eighth or ninth of September the horizon disappears, everything’s gray; this is nowhere, we’re in the very middle of nowhere!”
Seeing Herman smile but make no reply, he added by way of conclusion that if all this interested him he had only to wait for the gliding, impalpable forms of Rose and the little boy to appear, though they might very well stay hidden. He said again that he thought he recognized Herman as one of those husbands who wouldn’t be going home.
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Herman protested weakly.
If he did stay, and if he needed money, the mayor could find him work giving math lessons to the shopkeepers’ children—private lessons being greatly sought-after in the village at the moment, primarily for the touch of prestige they conferred.