Free Brodeck by Philippe Claudel Page A

The sound hadn’t stopped. It was still moving, slowly but steadily, sliding along the walls of the shed.
    This went on for a long time. Sometimes the sound stopped for a while and then started again. It moved around the perimeter of the shed, always advancing at the same slow pace. As I listened to it turning around me, I felt that I was caught in an invisible vise, and that an equally invisible hand was closing on me, slowly but surely.
    The sound traveled along each of the four walls, making a complete circuit around the shed and returning to the door. In the most absolute silence, I watched the metal door handle pivot downward. I thought about all the tales that Fedorine knows by heart, stories in which objects speak, châteaux cross mountains and plains in a single night, queens sleep for a thousand years, trees change into noble lords, roots spring from the earth and strangle people, and springs have the power to heal festering wounds and soothe overwhelming grief.
    The door opened, just barely, in the unbroken silence. I tried to shrink deeper into the corner, to envelop myself in darkness. I could see nothing. And I couldn’t hear my heart anymore. It was as if it had stopped beating, as if it too were waiting for something to happen. A hand took hold of the door and opened it wide. The moon stuck its face between two clouds. Göbbler’s body and bumpkinish head were outlined in the doorway. I was reminded of the silhouettes that street vendors in the Capital used to cut out; they worked in the big Albergeplatz market, scissoring smoke-blackened paper into the shapes of gnomes or monsters.
    A gust of wind rushed through the open doorway, carrying the scent of frozen snow. Göbbler stood unmoving, searching the shadows. I didn’t budge. I knew that he couldn’t see me where I was, nor for that matter could I see him, but I smelled his odor, an odor of henhouse and damp fowl.
    “Not gone to bed yet, Brodeck? You won’t answer me? But I know you’re there. I saw the light under your door, and I heard the typewriter …”
    In the darkness, his voice took on some odd intonations. “I’m watching you, Brodeck,” he said. “Be careful!”
    The door closed again, and Göbbler’s silhouette disappeared. For several seconds, I could hear his retreating footsteps. I imagined his heavy greased-leather boots and their muddy soles leaving dirty brown marks on the thin layer of snow.
    I stayed in my corner, unmoving, for a good while. I breathed as little as I could and told my heart to calm down. I spoke to it as one speaks to an animal.
    Outside, the wind began to blow harder. The shed started shaking. I was cold. All of a sudden, my fear gave way to anger. What did that chicken merchant want with me? And what was he up to, anyway? Did I watch his movements, or spy on his fat wife? Had he barged into my house without knocking just to make a few veiled threats? By what right? The fact that he’d joined the others in their awful deed didn’t make him a judge! The one real innocent among them all was me! It was me! The only one! The only one …
    The only one.
    Yes, I was the only one.
    As I said those words to myself, I suddenly heard how dangerous they sounded; to be innocent in the midst of the guilty was, after all, the same as being guilty in the midst of the innocent. Then it occurred to me to wonder why, on that famous night—the night of the Ereigniës— all the men of the village were in Schloss’s inn at the same time; all the men except me. I had never thought about that before. I’d never thought about it because until then I’d told myself, quite naïvely that I was lucky not to have been there, and I’d let it go at that. But they couldn’t all have just happened to decide, at the same time, to go over to the inn for a glass of wine or a mug of beer. If they were all there, it must have been because they had an appointment. An appointment from which I had been excluded. Why? Why?
    Another cold