Free Monsieur Monde Vanishes by Georges Simenon Page B

drink.… You couldn’t even call him good-looking.
    â€œAll the same I fell for him, and that was my bad luck.… I don’t know how it happened.… In the beginning he used to threaten to kill himself if I didn’t do what he wanted, and he was always making scenes.
    â€œHe was so jealous that I never dared go out.… He even got jealous of my gentleman friend, and then life became impossible … . ‘Never mind, we’ll go away and I’ll have you all to myself,’ he kept saying. But I knew that he only earned two thousand francs a month and had to give part of that to his mother.
    â€œWell, he did what he’d said he’d do.… One evening he turned up, looking white as a sheet.… I was with my gentleman friend.… He sent the ground-floor tenant up to fetch me.…
    â€œ ‘Mademoiselle Julie,’ she told me, ‘will you come down for a moment?’ She’d realized, from the way he looked, that it was something serious.… He was standing there in the hall.… I can still picture him, beside the coatrack, under the colored light of the hall lamp.
    â€œ ‘Is he there?’ he growled between his teeth.
    â€œ ‘What’s the matter with you? Have you gone crazy?’
    â€œ ‘You’ve got to come at once.… We’re going to bolt.’
    â€œ ‘What?’
    â€œ ‘Bring whatever you can.… We’re taking the midnight train.… ’ And then he whispered—and his breath smelled of liquor: ‘I’ve taken the cashbox!’
    â€œThat was how it happened. What could I do? I told him to wait for me on the sidewalk. I went upstairs and told my friend that I’d just heard that my sister was having a baby and wanted me to come right away.…
    â€œHe suspected nothing, poor man.… He just looked disappointed, because of course, he hadn’t had anything yet that evening.…
    â€œ ‘Well, I’ll try to come tomorrow.’
    â€œ ‘That’s right. You come tomorrow.’
    â€œHe went off. I lifted the blind and saw Jean waiting for me under the gas lamp at the corner of the street.… I stuffed some things into my suitcase … I had only one.… I had to leave some perfectly good dresses behind, and three pairs of shoes.… We took the night train.… He was very frightened.… He saw policemen everywhere.… When we got to Paris he didn’t feel safe there, he wouldn’t even stay at a hotel, for fear of being asked for his identity card, and we took the next train to Marseilles.…
    â€œWhat could I have said to him? What’s done is done.…
    â€œWe got here at night.… We wandered about the streets with our luggage for at least an hour before he could bring himself to go into a hotel.”
    She was devouring her andouillette, smeared with mustard, and from time to time nibbling a sour gherkin.
    â€œHe fell sick right away.… I looked after him. At night he had nightmares and kept talking to himself, trying to get up; I had to hold him down, he struggled so.…
    â€œIt went on for a whole week. And d’you know how much he’d taken? Twenty-five thousand francs … With that, he was going to take a boat to South America … only there weren’t any in the port; all the ones on the list were sailing from Bordeaux.…
    â€œLast night I felt stifled. I’d had enough of it, I needed air, and I told him I was going out for an hour.… I ought to have guessed that, jealous as he was, he’d follow me.… I may even have guessed it.… But I couldn’t help myself.… Once outside I didn’t even turn back. Two streets beyond this—I don’t know the names of the streets—I saw a light like that of the Boule Rouge and I heard some music.… I had such a longing to dance that nothing could have stopped me. I went in.…”
    She turned