Read Online A Fine Passage by France Daigle - Free Book Online

everything. What would they have understood of the wanderings of the man who’d shown no sign of reading? She preferred not to know. From now on, she needs to maintain her own point of view. This evening, dancing in her father’s arms, Claudia, not wishing to precipitate anything, tries very hard to continue to be the young girl she was. Walking towards the table, where her mother sits watching them return from the dance floor, she’s far from sure she has succeeded.
    SATURDAY Evaluation
    â€œ DOES HE SEEM a bit cuckoo to you?”
    â€œNot really. Seems nice to me. You’d think he was one of us.”
    â€œThat’s true. I know exactly what you mean. He doesn’t yap on and on about everything and anything.”
    The man who’d shown no sign of reading has left the compartment to get some coffee.
    â€œHow long do you suppose he’ll stick around with us, then?”
    Terry shrugs. “His bag’s not very big, is it?”
    â€œI like his coat. That’s the sort you ought to have.”
    Terry looks at the coat hanging on a hook.
    â€œLooks long to me.”
    Carmen grabs a tail between her fingers, rubs the cloth lightly. She gets up and reads the label inside the collar.
    â€œJust what I was thinking. Cashmere.”
    Carmen sits back down, takes Terry’s hand in hers, and inhales a deep, happy breath as she watches the scenery flow by.
    â€œIt’s exciting, though, wouldn’t you say?”
    Hans whistles softly as he takes his time fitting the final bits into the puzzle. Fewer than two dozen pieces lie close at hand. They are coloured blue, grey, and green, and they make up the sky in the top right-hand corner of the image. Since his last appointment with the woman with the chewed-up cuticles, he has devoted virtually all of his waking time to the puzzle. He no longer knows if he is completing it for the sake of pleasure or simply to be done with it. He feels that he has already moved on to something else. The time spent fitting all the pieces together has nevertheless allowed him to think, to let his mind wander. He’s watched hundreds of possibilities flare up brightly, only to let them drift off to their separate fates. One of these, however, has continually resurfaced, and Hans knows very well that it is in this direction that he must act.
    Claudia finishes emptying her suitcases. She put away most of her things the day after she got back, but she didn’t have the heart to eliminate these last traces of her trip.
    â€œHere, it’s yours. Humour is almost as important as love. I would say the two often go hand in hand.”
    Again the pope-rabbi, and again seated next to her! Claudia had thought she was dreaming.
    In the end, because it was easier that way, she had accepted the small book of jokes on the theme of God that the pope-rabbi offered her. He’d read a few pages, smiling, and later burst out laughing. That’s when he turned to Claudia to tell her the joke. Claudia, unsure whether she got it, laughed out of politeness, but without really giving the impression that she’d understood.
    Then, in a sudden generous impulse, the pope-rabbi had offered her the book.
    Someone’s at the door. Hans recognizes the knock of his Spanish-speaking neighbour, the one who’s always asking to borrow matches. The first time he came, Hans gave him the only matches he had. The second time, a few days later, Hans told him he had none and the fellow had run off in embarrassment, only to return with a packet a few minutes later. Possibly he thought that no one could manage without matches. Through this relationship based on matches, the neighbour and Hans saw each other several times a week. It had become a game, an easy and innocent way to express their friendship, as a result of which Hans had developed the habit of maintaining a provision of matches.
    Hans opens the door, steps over to a small cupboard to pick up a book of matches,