“How well these people stand up to the weather,” Herman said to himself, gripped with fear and slightly ashamed of his own debilitation. Sitting next to him, the enormous, wan real-estate agent leaned over and whispered in his ear:
“That house of yours on the plateau, I might be able to help you unload it. Why don’t you stop by the agency and see me?”
He smelled of sweat, to Herman’s surprise and admiration, he who never perspired now.
“Yes,” said Herman, “I might want to sell it.”
“Oh, it’s not going to be snapped up just like that, I don’t know what we’ll get for it, could be a pittance,” the other man hastened to add.
But Herman only shrugged; it made no difference to him. Aperitifs had been served, and he realized that the talk had turned to local affairs, which the merchants seemed to consider it their duty to deal with. The baker jotted down the suggested solutions in a notebook. Everyone spoke in calm, quiet tones. Only Herman and the mayor stretched their necks to hear, and even then Herman could make out nothing more than an occasional snippet. They were discussing a family whose three children had to be removed at once from the dangerous influence of their alcoholic, depraved parents. The woman who ran the gift shop earnestly offered her testimony: Those people had bought two pornographic videos from her in two weeks. Worse—added the fishmonger who’d seen this as he passed by their window one evening—they watched them as a family, right in front of the children, all of them sitting around the kitchen table just after dinner, and the parents drank like it was a contest, and the father got so red and so agitated that the worst was to be feared.
“Well,” said the gift shop owner, “I won’t sell to them anymore.”
They didn’t have a car, so they couldn’t go to L. in search of more films. They would simply have to be watched to be sure they didn’t order them through the mail. The postman could be questioned. They turned next to the matter of a banishment from the village. Some young man, renting from the real-estate agent for two thousand francs a month, who’d moved here from a neighboring village to do summer work for the Parisians (gardening, running errands), now found himself without work or money. He’d stopped paying his rent, complaining it was too high. The real-estate agent wanted to be rid of him. After a brief deliberation, it was decided, as Herman understood it, that the young man would be expelled from the village. The owner of the Café du Commerce, the barber, and Charlotte’s father would go wake him at dawn, immobilize him, drive him some twenty kilometers from the village, and forbid him to come back. There had been four such banishments in ten years, all successful, always involving recent arrivals who thought they could dig themselves out of dire financial straits by protesting the prices charged in the village.
“We don’t put up with that here,” said the real-estate agent in Herman’s ear.
He rolled up his shirtsleeves, puffing loudly. Meanwhile, Herman couldn’t get warm. He thought he could feel his waterlogged brain dripping onto the walls of his skull, water trickling all through his body with nowhere to drain. He was comforted to see that the mayor had crossed his arms over his chest in hopes of warming himself a little.
“There’s one more case to settle,” said the baker, who had already filled up several pages in her notebook.
Then:
“This is a delicate matter.”
She’d learned from the social worker that the V. girl, thirteen, was accusing her stepfather of regular, routine violations of her person. He thought he had every right, he scarcely even tried to hide it.
“So you understand, this is about V.,” said the baker woman after a silence.
And Herman had the impression that for some unspoken reason his tablemates were reluctant to take action against this V., whatever misdeeds he might be guilty of. The grocer sighed and promised he’d deal with it; his daughter knew the V. girl well. Relieved, the baker woman closed her notebook. Vol-au-vents and platters of charcuterie were brought in.
“The fire is bright, the flames are leaping, but it only warms the antiquarians’ backs, it’s so cold in here, so damp!” Herman said to himself.
Now he was afraid staying to the end of the meal might take a serious toll on him. His nostrils were stinging from the smell of mildew and must. Suddenly the door opened and someone quietly came in. It was the form, the being who had been peering at Herman since his first day at the Relais; it was Alfred’s vanished wife, now living in the charcutiers’ house. She was wearing an old-fashioned floral print summer dress. Smiling and silent, she glided all around the table, gently passed behind Herman, bowing right and left, infinitely amiable, the little sandals on her feet scarcely touching the ground—they whisked over it like a breeze. Seeing her up close for the first time, Herman thought she looked sad and tired beneath her endless smiles; she seemed old before her time. Troubled, anxious, he realized that no matter what he’d heard about these beings’ ineffable happiness she was a lost soul, and, behind her little window all day long, the very image of boredom and despair.
Every guest gave her a quick nod, then paid her no further attention, though she went right on smiling and curtseying.
“Why,” Herman wondered, bothered by their dismissiveness, “why did she want to stay on here, why didn’t she go home to Paris? They—yes, that’s it exactly—they don’t even care that she’s here, they don’t see anything sacred about her, any more than a live-in maid.”
Herman thought he felt the being touch him on the shoulder as she passed by. He didn’t dare smile at her or look at her any longer than the others. But he felt like his heart was seeping and withering. The smell of the room now mingled with his disgust at the very fleshly odor of the real-estate agent, who sweated abundantly as he ate. Someone complained that the Parisians hadn’t brought in as much money this year as the summers before. They hemmed and hawed before they bought anything of any value, the antiquarians groused. Yes, it was the same at the charcuterie, they’d bought far fewer terrines of this or that.
A painful compassion clenched Herman’s throat, and as he looked at the woman he felt certain that the delicate, undulating silhouettes of Rose and the child that he’d glimpsed a week or two before only seemed to be happy, that their pale, serene, detached, smiling faces hid an inconsolable sorrow. Alfred’s wife went on strolling around the table, she couldn’t bring herself to leave. Her smile grew brighter and wider as she inspired ever more indifference among the dinner guests, who at the moment were intently calculating (the baker had gotten out her notebook again) how much pork, how much beef, poultry, and fish the Parisians had ingested this summer compared to last. One thing was certain: they’d eaten less than usual. There was worry in the air—suppose that trend continued?
“Rose wanted to stay,” Herman mused, “she wanted to spend all eternity in the village, but if that turns out to have been a mistake, she still won’t be going home, or me either. This is where we’re from now, but how to get used to the water? The mayor and I are literally liquefying, I can see it, our flesh going spongy, we’ll never have the fine strong build that people have around here, the dry hair, the skin beaded with sweat. And yet I’ve got to stay, I’ve got to make a place for myself here.”