Free The Reader on the 6.27 by Jean-Paul Didierlaurent Page B

seemed higher than ever.

17
    Yvon greeted Guylain with three aptly chosen lines:
‘ Shoulder your long and energetic task,
The way that Destiny sees fit to ask,
Then suffer and so die without complaint. ’
    ‘“The Death of the Wolf”, Alfred de Vigny,’ Guylain shot back in the direction of the hut as he slid his thin frame through the huge doors to the works. Not a week went by without Yvon reciting those three lines. As Guylain walked through the door, he did not find Brunner in his usual position slouched against the Thing’s control panel. Instead, Brunner came forward to meet him and followed on his heels, pursuing him into the changing room. The lanky fellow was jumping up and down and laughing nervously. Watching him circle round him like an excitable puppy, Guylain realized at once that he had something to tell him.
    ‘What’s up, Lucien?’
    This was what Brunner had been waiting for. From his pocket he fished out a piece of paper with the company’s letterhead and waved it under Guylain’s nose with a broad grin:
    ‘It’s scheduled for May, Monsieur Vignolles. Five days in Bordeaux at the company’s expense.’ And the bastard had finally got his passport onto the next training course for a licence to operate the Zerstor. At last Brunner was going to fulfil his dream: starting up the wretched Thing. Guylain found it harder and harder to bear that psychopath’s rapturous grins each time he sent a new bucket of books down into hell. It had always been his view that an executioner was duty-bound to remain impassive and not to show his feelings. Giuseppe had taught him to consider the multitude purely as a whole. ‘Don’t dwell on the details, kiddo. It will be easier, you’ll see,’ he had advised. If ill luck had it that a book managed somehow to catch Guylain’s attention, then he would race to the Zerstor’s arse end and gaze into the grey pulp until the image etched on his retina disappeared. Brunner did the opposite. That bastard derived a perverse pleasure from taking a close interest in what he was destroying. He would sometimes pull out a copy from the mountain and flick through it contemptuously before ripping off the cover and flinging the remains into the greedy maw. He knew that this upset Guylain and he often laid it on thickly. Then his voice would crackle in the headphones through the interference.
    ‘Hey, Monsieur Vignolles, did you see, it’s last year’s Renaudot winner? They’ve still got their red wrap-around bands on!’
    When he did this, even though it was strictly against the regulations, Guylain would kill the radio link so as not to have to put up with Brunner’s despicable taunts. That morning, it took longer than usual for Guylain to lapse into the mindless state into which the Zerstor’s incessant pounding inescapably plunged him. Julie was there with him, snuggled cosily under his hard hat. At lunch break, he wandered over to Yvon’s hut and ate his way absently through a packet of savoury biscuits washed down with a cup of Yvon’s black tea. His chewing was accompanied by Victor Hugo’s Ruy Blas . Act III, Scene 2. Eyes closed, his head against the window that rattled at the sound of Yvon’s powerful voice, Guylain listened as the verses of the slave in love with his queen filled the metal shack. Then he had the brainwave of introducing Yvon Grimbert to Magnolia Court. With a smile, Guylain pictured the security guard recounting the convoluted plots of these tragedies from another era to an audience of spellbound Magnolias. The man deserved a real audience, albeit an audience made up of ailing old folk. Guylain waited until Yvon had finished his speech before broaching the idea.
    ‘Last Saturday, I went and gave a reading in a retirement home in Gagny. I’m going back this weekend. They’re delightful people. They want me to come every Saturday. So I was thinking, Monsieur Grimbert, that it would be nice if you came with me and read something to them as