Read Online How's the Pain? by Pascal Garnier - Free Book Online Page A

down on the sand and laid his shoes out next to him as though waitingfor Father Christmas to fill them. A red ball bounced close by. A little boy and his father came running after it. They looked happy – the ball especially. With a burst of imagination, the sun had turned a hopelessly clear sky into an engaging spectacle, taking the lonely little cloud no storm had wanted and trimming it with gold.
     
    ‘All right?’
    Fiona loomed behind him in silhouette like a harbinger of doom, hunchbacked under her daughter’s grip.
    ‘What do you care? Where’s Bernard?’
    ‘Gone shopping. Can I sit down?’
    ‘It’s a beach, it’s public property.’
    She was wearing a red T-shirt and white shorts. She had nice legs. The little girl was staring at the horizon as solemnly as a child can contemplate such things. The sky and sea were coming together like the two edges of a bloody wound.
    ‘Bernard’s nice, isn’t he?’
    Simon made no comment.
    ‘Are you related?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Oh, I thought you were. It must be because he looks up to you. He walks the way you do, has the same frown … You end up looking like the people you’re fond of, don’t you think?’
    Simon was studying his feet, which were so pale they were practically blue, with a bunion on the left big toe and calloused nails. His ankles were ringed with the imprint ofhis sock elastic. He buried them in the still-warm sand. If he had been alone, he might have interred himself up to the neck.
    ‘Why don’t you like me?’
    ‘Why should I? I have no interest in you.’
    ‘Why did you get me out of that fix then?’
    ‘Because of Bernard. He would have made a pig’s ear of it. I didn’t have time to waste. Now, would you mind leaving me the hell alone?’
    ‘Fine! You were right to hide your feet, they’re disgusting.’
    Fiona’s buttocks left two perfectly round craters in the grey sand beside him.

 
    On the dot of eight o’clock, the TV news signature tune spread like a powder trail down the row of caravans, the newsreader’s chubby face replicated endlessly. It was a mild evening and most of the holidaymakers were eating outdoors. Bernard was at the stove, Fiona was laying the table and Simon was trying to outstare Violette, who was propped up with cushions on a camping chair. All around them, corks were popping, ripples of laughter broke out and cooking smells mingled in the evening air. The whole situation was so bizarre that Simon had not even tried to protest when Bernard told him there would be three and a half of them for dinner. There was nothing to be said, nothing to be done except sulk. He felt like a serious stage actor who had wandered onto the set of a slushy movie. He could not follow the plot, but it was too late to back out now. The mischievous director had already called, ‘Action!’
    Bernard brought over the mussels and doled out generous portions. He and Fiona were like an old married couple, sharing habits, exchanging knowing winks and making thoughtful gestures, with Fiona helping him as he struggled to open the mussels with his bandaged hand. Simon swallowed three or four and drank half the bottle of white wine by himself. His forehead creased in a frown, he sat wondering what casting error had landed him here, a stranger in paradise. By odd coincidence, it had just been announced on the news that Gloria Lasso had died. Her biggest hit was none other than ‘Étrangère au Paradis’, the soundtrack to the four years he had spent in the Aurès mountains of Algeria, hunting down fellagha militants. The song had been on wherever he went – in the barracks, in tents and in brothels, trickling from the transistor radios glued to every soldier’s ear, their stomachs heavy with nostalgia and warm beer.
    ‘Who was Gloria Lasso?’ asked Fiona.
    ‘Dunno. More mussels?’
    It all seemed so distant that Simon began to wonder if it had really happened. Most likely it had, since that was where he had learnt to kill. Everything