the dog inside scratching at the door. They wanted to let it out, but the door was locked, so the boy told his sister to stay where she was and be good while he went round to the other side of the house and snuck in through a back window. He didn’t come out again. When the mother came home from work and saw the note, and found her daughter alone on the front step and her son nowhere to be seen, she realized something wasn’t right, the whole situation seemed sketchy.
She dropped her daughter round at ours and asked my mother to look after her. I remember being hacked off because she cried the whole time.
At first, we heard nothing. Then we heard the mother scream. Then the ambulance sirens. Then the police sirens. I went outside to find out what was going on, but I couldn’t see anything much, just a bunch of people on the lawn crowding around a stretcher with a sheet over it.
Later, Madame Lombard told my mother that when she went into the house, she found her son standing, frozen in the kitchen, staring at the body of his father, which wasn’t a pretty sight. Apparently the dog’s muzzle was smeared with blood up to its ears. On the other hand, the floor was spotless, he’d licked the tiles clean. And his master’s skull while he was about it. There was not a drop of blood, not a sliver of bone, not a lump of brain. It was perfect. Clean as a new pin.
I think the dog had to be put down or something.
It sent the wife completely off her rocker. From then on, any time she saw a dog in the street she’d shriek at the kids Get over here! Quick! Quiiiick! scaring them so much they nearly shat themselves.
Especially seeing as how the son was already pretty messed up by the experience.
Whereas if the father had simply written: Come in, I’ve shot myself, like Albert Camus, it would have spared the kid a nasty surprise.
But you can’t always think of everything.
M ARGUERITTE got through reading me The Plague in a couple of days. I mean, not all of it, obviously. Just extracts. And I have to say that mostly it was really good. With characters so completely twisted you had to wonder where Camus came up with them. The guy called Grand, for example, the one who wants to write a novel, except he writes the same sentence over and over, just changing a couple of words. It reminded me of The Shining , you know, the movie with Jack Nicholson, where the character types the same sentence hundreds of times on this battered old typewriter before he starts breaking down doors with an axe. There’s another story that scared me witless. He’s really good at playing psychos, Jack Nicholson.
Anyway, to get back to the book, one thing is certain, which is that the days Margueritte and I spent reading The Plague, time passed a lot quicker around the bench.
One day, she said to me:
“You’re a true reader, Germain, I can tell…”
At the time, it made me laugh because, me and books, well, you know…
Thing is, she was serious. She told me that reading starts with listening. Me, I would have thought it started with reading. But she said: No, no, don’t you believe it, Germain. To cultivate a love of reading in children, you have to read to them aloud. And she explained that if you did it properly,they were hooked, like it was a drug. Then, as they grow up, they need books. I was astonished, but, thinking about it I realized it made sense. If someone had read me stories as a kid, I might have spent more time reading books instead of getting myself in trouble because I was bored.
That’s why the day she gave me the book I was really pleased, even if I was embarrassed too, because in my innermost self— see also: in one’s heart of hearts, deep inside —I knew I would never read it, because it was too long and far too complicated.
She handed it to me, just like that, as she was getting up to leave, and she said:
“I’ve marked the passages we read together in pencil. Just as a reminder.”
I said, OK, thanks.
She dropped her daughter round at ours and asked my mother to look after her. I remember being hacked off because she cried the whole time.
At first, we heard nothing. Then we heard the mother scream. Then the ambulance sirens. Then the police sirens. I went outside to find out what was going on, but I couldn’t see anything much, just a bunch of people on the lawn crowding around a stretcher with a sheet over it.
Later, Madame Lombard told my mother that when she went into the house, she found her son standing, frozen in the kitchen, staring at the body of his father, which wasn’t a pretty sight. Apparently the dog’s muzzle was smeared with blood up to its ears. On the other hand, the floor was spotless, he’d licked the tiles clean. And his master’s skull while he was about it. There was not a drop of blood, not a sliver of bone, not a lump of brain. It was perfect. Clean as a new pin.
I think the dog had to be put down or something.
It sent the wife completely off her rocker. From then on, any time she saw a dog in the street she’d shriek at the kids Get over here! Quick! Quiiiick! scaring them so much they nearly shat themselves.
Especially seeing as how the son was already pretty messed up by the experience.
Whereas if the father had simply written: Come in, I’ve shot myself, like Albert Camus, it would have spared the kid a nasty surprise.
But you can’t always think of everything.
M ARGUERITTE got through reading me The Plague in a couple of days. I mean, not all of it, obviously. Just extracts. And I have to say that mostly it was really good. With characters so completely twisted you had to wonder where Camus came up with them. The guy called Grand, for example, the one who wants to write a novel, except he writes the same sentence over and over, just changing a couple of words. It reminded me of The Shining , you know, the movie with Jack Nicholson, where the character types the same sentence hundreds of times on this battered old typewriter before he starts breaking down doors with an axe. There’s another story that scared me witless. He’s really good at playing psychos, Jack Nicholson.
Anyway, to get back to the book, one thing is certain, which is that the days Margueritte and I spent reading The Plague, time passed a lot quicker around the bench.
One day, she said to me:
“You’re a true reader, Germain, I can tell…”
At the time, it made me laugh because, me and books, well, you know…
Thing is, she was serious. She told me that reading starts with listening. Me, I would have thought it started with reading. But she said: No, no, don’t you believe it, Germain. To cultivate a love of reading in children, you have to read to them aloud. And she explained that if you did it properly,they were hooked, like it was a drug. Then, as they grow up, they need books. I was astonished, but, thinking about it I realized it made sense. If someone had read me stories as a kid, I might have spent more time reading books instead of getting myself in trouble because I was bored.
That’s why the day she gave me the book I was really pleased, even if I was embarrassed too, because in my innermost self— see also: in one’s heart of hearts, deep inside —I knew I would never read it, because it was too long and far too complicated.
She handed it to me, just like that, as she was getting up to leave, and she said:
“I’ve marked the passages we read together in pencil. Just as a reminder.”
I said, OK, thanks.
Similar Books
