Free The Little Man From Archangel by Georges Simenon Page B

from Alyosha's birth. . .
    In 1917 it was the Phrygian cap of the Democratic Republic, with the two crossed sabres, then the stamps of Kerensky, on which a powerful hand was breaking a chain.
    1921, 1922 saw the advent of illustrations with harder, coarser lines, and from 1923 onwards the commemorations started once again, no longer of the Romanovs, but of the fourth anniversary of the October Revolution, the fifth anniversary of the Soviet Republic.
    Some more charity stamps at the time of the famine, then, with the U.S.S.R. pictures of workers, ploughmen, soldiers, the portrait of Lenin, in red and black for the first time in 1924.
    He did not soften or feel touched with nostalgia. It was more curiosity which had impelled him to assemble this collection of a far-off world and place them side by side-…
    A Samoyed village, or a group of Tajiks beside a cornfield plunged him into the same dreamland as a child with a book of holy pictures.
    The idea of going back there had never occurred to him, and it was not due to fear of the fate which might await him, nor, as with Shepilov, hatred for the Party, From the moment he had come of age, on the contrary, two years before the war, he had renounced his Nansen passport and become a naturalized Frenchman.
    France itself was too big for him. After school he had worked for several months in a bookshop in the Boulevard Saint-Michel and the Shepilovs had been unable to believe their ears when he had told them that he preferred to return to the Berry.
    He had gone back alone, had taken a furnished room with old Mademoiselle Buttereau, who had died during the war, and had gone to work as a clerk in Duret's bookshop, in the Rue de Bourges.
    It was still in existence. Old Duret had retired, almost gaga, but the two sons continued the business. It was the chief newsagent-bookshop in town and one of its windows was devoted to devotional objects.
    He had not yet taken to eating at Pepito's at that time, because it was too expensive. When the bookseller's shop where he now lived, had become vacant, he had moved in there as if the Rue de Bourges only a stone's throw away, had been too far.
    He was back once again in the heart of the Old Market of his childhood and everyone had recognized him.
    Gina's departure had suddenly destroyed this equilibrium, acquired by perseverance, with the same brutality as the Revolution, earlier on, had scattered his own family.
    He did not peruse the album to the end. He made himself a cup of coffee, went and removed the handle from the door, turned the key in the lock, shot the bolt, and a little while later went up to his room.
    It was, as always when there was no market, a quiet night, without any noise except for the occasional distant motor horn, and the even more distant rumble of a goods train.
    Alone in his bed, without the spectacles which made him look like a man, he huddled up like a frightened child and finally went to sleep, with a sad twist to his lips, one hand in the place where Gina ought to have been.
    When the sun woke him, coming into his room, the air was still as calm as ever and the bells of St. Cecilia's were sounding out the first Mass. All of a sudden he felt the void of his loneliness again, and he almost dressed without washing as sometimes happened before Gina's day. But he was intent at all costs on following the same routine as every other day, so that he even hesitated when he was being served his croissants at the baker's opposite.
    'Only three,' he filially murmured regretfully.
    'Isn't Gina there?'
    These people didn't know yet. True, they were almost new to the Square, where they had bought the business only five years before.
    'No. She's not there.'
    He was surprised not to be pressed, that the news was received with indifference.
    It was half-past seven. He hadn't closed the door to go across the Square. He never did. When he came back he had a shock, for a man rose before him and as he was walking with his eyes cast down,