The Islanders by Pascal Garnier Page B

he have let himself get into that state when he had Jeanne right there in front of him and should have grabbed her by the hand and taken her away, somewhere far from this seedy, sleazy atmosphere. Alcohol. It was down to the alcohol and Rodolphe, who had immediately identified Olivier’s weak spot. He was disgusted with himself. He felt like banging his head against the wall. He had just been reunited with his one true love and the best he could offer her was the pitiful sight of a raving alcoholic. All things considered, maybe it was better this way. The past was history and they had their own lives to go back to. The emotion of seeing her again had gone to his head. So many years had passed, they were not the people they once were. Those versions of themselves were dead and buried.
    Was Jeanne still Jeanne? Why should life, which spares no one, make an exception for her? The same thing happened every time he drank: he found himself spinning the tiniest incident into an epic novel. No doubt it was because his life was made up of a chain of banal events. The fact of the matter was the island had been submerged. He was now cut off from the beautiful story he preserved in a corner of his heart the way grandmothers keep their wedding tiaras in glass domes. Fate had intervened to take away his one pure place of refuge. He should never have come back to this shithole. Dirty, the whole place was dirty and old, even the daylight beginning to filter through the curtains. He had to do something to lift his mood, take a shower, for example. He threw off the covers, leapt out of bed and charged into the bathroom.
    Roland was kneeling on the tiled floor with his feet turned inand his head and arms dangling into the bathtub, from which an appalling stench of sick was rising.
    ‘Shit! What the fuck’s
he
doing here?’
    Olivier covered his nose with one hand and shook Roland with the other. The moron wasn’t moving.
    ‘Roland! Shit, Roland, wake up!’
    Still nothing. Olivier grabbed Roland under the arms and pulled him backwards. He screamed and dropped him when he saw his face.
    Roland’s skin was tinged purple, an enormous black tongue lolled between his blue lips and his glassy eyes were bulging out of his head. Olivier’s tie was knotted tightly around his neck.
    ‘No, this isn’t happening … it can’t be.’
    Olivier sprang out of the bathroom. He roamed the flat – for how long, he did not know – with his hands clamped over his mouth and his mind blazing, incapable of the slightest coherent thought. He was like a trapped bird flapping wildly around a room.
    He flung the kitchen window open and received a blast of icy morning air. He closed his eyes and waited for his mind to settle. Even though he knew he had not been hallucinating, he went back to the bathroom to check, peering in from the doorway, too afraid to go in. Roland was still there, his nightmarish head wedged between the bidet and the base of the sink, arms and legs splayed swastika-like, just as Olivier had left him.
    ‘What happened? What the hell happened?’
    No matter how hard he racked his brains, his memory stayed blank; he could not even remember how he had got home. Back when he was an alcoholic, he had often experienced blackouts, sometimes wiping out entire days. He had no idea where he had been or what he had done. People would tell him, ‘I saw you in such and such a place last night; you were wasted!’ and he wouldgo along with it without having a clue what they were referring to. It was quite frightening. He had always worried he might do something really stupid while he was out of it. And now … No, he couldn’t have! Besides, what reason could he have had for killing the poor sod? There was none, they had got on perfectly well … But alcohol has its own reasons, which reason doesn’t come into. What should he do, call the police? It was more than he could manage. Whom could he turn to? Odile?
    He went back into the bedroom and sat on