Read Online Invisible Love by Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt, Howard Curtis - Free Book Online Page A

feeling sadness, I was weak with admiration.
    My first impulse was to revere that spectacular, grandiose, logical comclusion: Samuel and his dog had been a couple to the end! That double death struck me as flagrantly romantic. There was no doubt that the death of one had called for the death of the other. And as was their wont, they had acted in concert, abandoning life almost simultaneously, both suffering a violent demise.
    Then I recovered my self-control and reprimanded myself for my thoughts:
Don’t be ridiculous. No one’s ever killed himself because his dog was run over by a car. Samuel may have been planning suicide for ages, but put it off as long as he did in order to take care of his companion. Once the dog was gone, he carried out his plan . . . Or maybe, just after Argos’s accident, Samuel learned that he was suffering from an incurable illness, and wanted to spare himself a long, drawn-out death . . . Yes, yes, it must be something like that . . . A series of coincidences!
He didn’t kill himself for grief. No one’s ever committed suicide because his dog was run over.
    The more I denied that hypothesis, the more sensible and self-evident it seemed.
    Irritably, my head heavy, I decided not to go straight home but headed instead for the Pétrelle, just to pay tribute to our friend Samuel by commemorating his memory with my fellow villagers.
    Unfortunately, public rumor was even more inflamed than my imagination: at the bar, at the tables, along the broad sidewalk where, in spite of the cold, the regulars had come out to drink their beer, everyone thought that Dr. Heymann had taken his own life because of what had happened to his dog.
    â€œIf you’d seen him when he picked the animal up from the road, all in pieces like that . . . It was terrifying.”
    â€œHe must have been distraught.”
    â€œNo, he was filled with hatred! He kept screaming ‘No!’ and spitting at the sky, with his eyes all bloodshot, then he turned to us as we approached him and I really thought he was going to kill us all! I mean we hadn’t done anything, but the way he looked at us . . . If he’d had daggers instead of eyes, we’d have all been goners.”
    â€œWhere was this?”
    â€œThe Villers Road, after the Tronchons’ farm.”
    â€œAnd who did it?”
    â€œNobody knows. He drove straight off.”
    â€œThat dog was clever, though. It avoided cars and never ran away from its master.”
    â€œMaryse, his housekeeper, told me they were both looking at mushrooms at the side of the ditch when a truck passed at top speed, missing the doctor by a hair’s breadth but hitting Argos full on in the pelvis. The dog was torn to pieces. The truck driver must have seen them, but didn’t swerve by an inch to avoid them. A real bastard!”
    â€œThere are some stupid people around!”
    â€œPoor animal.”
    â€œPoor animal and poor doctor.”
    â€œBut then to go and blow his brains out afterwards!”
    â€œYou can’t argue with grief.”
    â€œAll the same!”
    â€œDammit, Heymann was a doctor—he’d seen people die before and never killed himself.”
    â€œWell, maybe he loved his dog more than he loved people . . . ”
    â€œI’m afraid you’re right.”
    â€œStop! He’d already lost other dogs. Whenever one of them died, he didn’t think twice, he’d just go out and buy a new one. In fact, people were shocked that he didn’t wait longer.”
    â€œMaybe this Argos was better than the others.”
    â€œOr else the doctor was getting tired.”
    â€œHold on a minute! The other dogs all died normally, of old age. Not turned into mincemeat by a hit-and-run driver!”
    â€œAll the same, I think it’s a bit weird to love dogs so much, and you’ll never persuade me otherwise.”
    â€œTo love dogs so much or people so