Free Sunday by Georges Simenon Page A

steep track was not wide enough for two cars. The van was enough to block it. If a car came up or down, it would be obliged to hoot.
    On foot, he ducked beneath the trees, caught the sound of children's voices somewhere, arrived panting at the Flat Stone, and found nobody there.
    He was na'ive enough to wait a good ten minutes, telling himself that Nancy had perhaps been delayed, and he finally turned away to go back to his car, arrived soon afterwards in the hall where his wife was at her place, still making up the accounts, which was her share of the communal work.
    She did not raise her head. He didn't question her. In the kitchen, it seemed to him that Madame Lavaud looked a little strange, but, as Berthe could hear them, he asked her nothing.
    He would find out in the end. In a moment he would hear the voice of the Englishwoman clamouring for her aperitif. Time passed. The residents were sitting down to lunch. Berthe was seeing to an Italian couple who wanted a table in the shade.
    While the hors d'oeuvre was being served, he ran up to the first floor, taking the stairs four at a time, opened Nancy's door and understood. Her cases were no longer there. The furniture had been put back into place, and the room had been turned out and aired so as to expel even her smell.
    It was not until towards five o'clock, when Berthe had gone upstairs to show some new guests to their room, that he had looked inquiringly at Madame Lavaud, and she had not misunderstood the unspoken question.
    'Your wife threw her out.'
    That was all. He had never seen Nancy again. There remained only a somewhat confused memory. Three days, like days of fever, which he had lived without clearly knowing what was happening to him.
    Yet those three days were to have their importance, rather like a scratch which turns septic.
    He came to reflect more often than before:
    'She has bought me. 5
    For a month he had had no sexual relations with his wife, who, besides, had not insisted. Sometimes, seeing her head bent over their bills, he wondered whether she loved him, whether she felt anything towards him apart from a sense of ownership. This still troubled him. He would have liked to find an answer to the question. He would have liked above all to be able to tell himself she did not love him.
    Everything would have become easier. He would have felt freer. Another six months elapsed, of life without incident, of daily routine, before Pascali appeared one morning in the kitchen doorway, with his daughter at his side.
    'Is your wife in, Monsieur Emile?'
    'She'll be down in a minute.'
    Berthe used to sleep late in the morning, had her breakfast sent up to her room and lingered over her toilet, no doubt realizing a girlhood dream.
    Emile, who had recognized the young girl in black whom he had glimpsed occasionally in the plantation, had not wondered about this visit. To be more accurate, he had told himself that Berthe had called in the builder to do some repairs, for it was she who saw to that side of things.
    He could still picture Pascali sitting in a corner, cap in hand, with his white hair which, in the gloom, gave him a kind of halo. The girl remained standing.
    'Give him a glass of wine, Madame Lavaud.'
    It was autumn. The grape harvest was over and Emile was busy preparing a blackbird pate. It was one of his specialities.
    He had realized from the beginning that he must concentrate on local dishes and he had studied them with care. If his bouillabaisse was nothing out of the ordinary, since he did not always have the right fish to hand, and also because of the cost price of making it, his calamary risotto, for instance, was famous among the gourmets of Cannes and Nice, who often made the trip, on Sundays, just to eat it.
    His blackbird pate was no less renowned, as was his stuffed baby rabbit, for which he refused to reveal the recipe.
    Had not Nancy, who was very fond of her food, told him seriously and, he was convinced, without a trace of sarcasm:
    'If you