“And is it possible,” Herman went on, “is it possible that there’s someone living in one of those rooms at the moment?”
“Of course, there might be. Who can ever be sure there isn’t? At the moment,” the woman assured him, “I wouldn’t be surprised.”
She laughed a little, vaguely flirtatious. But Herman sensed she was taking particular care to put on a charming, carefree face because she wasn’t happy with his questions. He realized he shouldn’t have forced her to speak of her permanent tenants, who were obviously well known to everyone. Still, didn’t he have every right to seek some confirmation of what he’d felt upon running into Rose the evening before?
And now, at the hotel, Alfred was taking him to task for his behavior with the woman in the shoe shop, having heard of it even before Herman came back. Herman had committed a grave offense against good taste, said Alfred. He must never again question any villager on those phenomena; there was nothing remotely interesting about them. Then he smiled, triumphant:
“Didn’t I tell you you’d see them again?”
“But I want to talk to them,” said Herman.
“That’s impossible, they’re not going to answer you, that’s just how it is. And why bother them? From this point forward,” Alfred said solemnly, “you must try to be as perfectly happy in the village as they are in their eternal drifting—without cares, without ambitions, free of any binding relationship.” He lowered his voice. He was standing in Herman’s room with his back to the window, but Herman could see that the face across the way never took its eyes off him.
“We just have to stay, don’t you agree, it would be too terrible to abandon them,” Alfred whispered, his eyes damp.
4 – The days went by in the village, Herman no longer troubling to determine the date. Lying on his bed, hands clasped behind his neck, he watched the comings and goings through his open door, and that was all that occupied him for the day. When Charlotte went by he sat up, called out to her, and they exchanged a few words about the rain. Now he wished he’d accepted Alfred’s offer to have Charlotte serve him his breakfast. But ever since his meeting with Rose and the child, ever since he’d learned that they’d both taken up residence in the village, he’d noticed that Alfred seemed less bent on convincing him to stay, clearly thinking the matter was settled, so Herman feared that Charlotte’s services would end up on his bill rather than Alfred’s as Alfred had first suggested, back, as Herman remembered, when Alfred still had some reason to fear he might go home to Paris. And out of pure laziness Herman still hadn’t challenged the absurdly high rate he was being charged for his bed and board. He could easily imagine Charlotte’s mother asking an outrageous price for her daughter’s attentions. With calculated regularity she bemoaned the fact that she was still supporting her two adult children, deploring the dearth of career opportunities in the village, grimly portraying herself as ruined through the fault of those two jobless young people. And she strongly encouraged any contacts or connections they might forge here or there—Charlotte at the Relais, Gilbert on his excursions to the subprefecture—so strongly that it would have been difficult to break them off without her permission. She had, according to Alfred who didn’t trust her, the typical mindset of a village merchant.
She came looking for Herman, greeted him with a deep bow, and said:
“They’re holding the annual merchants’ dinner tonight, at the charcuterie, around eight o’clock. Would you do us the honor of joining us, dear Monsieur Herman?”
Still lying on his bed, he vaguely lifted his head and asked if the owner of the shoe store would be there.
“Of course, every shopkeeper, hotelier, and café owner in the village will be there, and so will the mayor. You’ll be a special guest, we’d so like to have you,” Charlotte’s mother purred.
She slipped out, certain of Herman’s consent, and her espadrilles slapped lazily down the stairs, a little sound now familiar and dear to Herman’s ear, like the sound of the rain.
That evening, he had to walk only a few steps to reach the neighboring charcuterie. Charlotte had pressed his one suit, a linen suit he’d been wearing since summer. He’d shaved for the occasion, and trimmed the hair on the back of his neck. He was excited by the invitation, but apprehensive. This, he understood, was an exceptional honor they were granting him, seeking his presence at a gathering to which only merchants were called. He believed they were even allowing the mayor a privilege that was in no way automatic, about which he had every reason to be flattered, mayor though he be. And he, Herman, a former Parisian, had earned this honor by his rigorously appropriate attitude, and also no doubt by his presumed ability to offer invaluable services of some sort—as a teacher full of wise counsel—even if at the moment he wasn’t working, and regularly showed himself in the most slovenly attire.
He opened the door to the closed shop, the little bells tinkling overhead. The charcutière immediately appeared and led him up the traditional narrow, winding staircase to the second floor. The other guests were already there, she told him, and Herman saw her tall mass of tightly bound, nearly white hair dimly luminescing in the darkness. He nervously stepped into the dining room, where a long table of twenty-five or thirty places had been set, and hurried to sit in the seat pointed out by his hostess, between Charlotte’s mother and the head of the village real-estate agency. The room was small and low-ceilinged, as was usual in houses in the center of the village, darkened by thick beams and meagerly windowed. The table completely filled the room, which was lit only by a floor lamp in the corner, so it took Herman some time to make out his tablemates’ faces. A fire was crackling in the oversized fireplace just behind the couple who ran the antique shop, both of them peering down their noses. The rain slapped the windowpanes, and the two satellite dishes recently installed on a slope of the roof knocked together in the furious wind.
Herman sat hunched on his chair, soaking wet. He was afraid he might not prove worthy of the honor they were paying him, not knowing what article of the code he should rely on here with the merchants—if he was supposed to jump straight into the conversation or wait to be spoken to. A faint whiff of mildew emanated from the woodwork, the old plaster.
“So my wife and son live in those people’s house,” thought Herman, troubled. “But how do they feel about having them there?”
He was sitting across from the shoe sellers. Did they have any idea who he was? Everyone in the village knew, but these two gave no sign that they realized they were sitting across from the closest relative of their eternal and possibly unwelcome guests.
“Are they going to charge me rent?” Herman wondered. “And what made Rose choose their house specifically?”
He looked back and forth from the man to the woman, trying to catch an eye, looking for some sign of complicity, a little nod to say, “Yes, they’re with us, come and see them, come see for yourself that they’re with us and they’re happy, and then why shouldn’t they talk to you, why wouldn’t they say something to you of all people?”
But when their eyes met Herman’s they were lit only by the brief glint of sociable, ritual acknowledgment that people here offered everyone. Sitting down at the table, Herman had given the same glance to each of the guests, along with a nod, even though he couldn’t yet quite see them. The tobacconists were there, and the director of the savings bank, the managers of the Co-op, the café and hotel owners, the two female pharmacists, the woman who ran the driving school, bakers, butchers, etc., and the mayor himself, sitting across the table not far from Herman, rather like him, Herman suddenly realized, in that they were both oddly sallow, slouching, shivering, and their hair was damp, the mayor’s indisputably lighter but of a redder blond, a less extraordinarily pallid blond than everyone else’s. And it struck Herman that like Alfred the mayor might dye his hair. Neither the mayor nor Herman sat up straight on his chair. The cold water hammering the windows seemed to physically lash them, and they were humbly bowing, defeated by the water, by the cold, by the fury of the driving rain. A drip hung perennially from Herman’s nose. Who would ever have thought, seeing the mayor so crumpled and trembling, that he held the administration of the whole village in his hand? His tablemates were sitting up straight and serene, the women bound tight, breasts flattened, shoulders high and padded, the flesh of their arms bulging pink and full from beneath the elastic of their short sleeves. Their brows were pale and shiny. Their tranquil blue-tinged gaze still troubled Herman with its coldness and coquetry.