Read Online Monsieur Monde Vanishes by Georges Simenon - Free Book Online

between the thighs) she tiptoed, after a moment’s hesitation, into the bathroom, where she behaved as if there had not been a man in the next room.
    She came back wrapped in a faded blue dressing gown, and her eyes were still misty, her lips pursed with nausea.
    â€œI feel ill …” she sighed as she lay down.
    Then, as he tucked the bedclothes around her: “I’m fagged.”
    She fell asleep directly, curled up in a ball, her head right at the bottom of the pillow so that only her bleached hair could be seen. A few minutes later she was snoring, and Monsieur Monde crept noiselessly back to his room to put on his jacket and overcoat, for he had felt cold.
    Not long after he had settled down in the armchair beside the bed he noticed light shining through the cracks in the Venetian blinds. Noises began, some in the hotel, others outside. Particularly outside, the sound of engines trying to start up, motorboat engines as he realized, for he heard the splash of oars in the water, and the boats in the Old Port knocking together; a factory whistle blew; sirens, in the distance, in the harbor where steamships and cargo boats lay, were moaning interminably.
    He switched off the electric lamp that he had left burning, and the bright streaks of the Venetian blinds patterned the floor.
    The sun was shining. He wanted to look. Standing at the window, he tried to peer between the slats of the shutters, but could make out only thin slivers of things, part of the trolley pole of a passing streetcar for instance, some pink and purple shells on a little cart.
    The girl had stopped snoring. She had flung off the covers and now her cheeks were crimson, her lips puffed, her whole face distorted with suffering. The gleam of her skin counteracted the effect of her makeup, so that she no longer seemed the same woman; this was a far more human face, very youthful, very poor, and rather common. She must have been born in some shanty in the outskirts of the city; as a small child she probably sat, with bare bottom and running nose, on some stone doorstep, and later ran about the streets on her way back from the elementary school.
    One after the other, the guests were leaving the hotel; cars were passing in the street, and all the bars must be open by now, while in the still-empty brasseries the waiters were sprinkling sawdust on the gray floors and polishing the windows.
    He had time to wash and dress. He went into his own room, after making sure that his companion was still asleep. He drew up the blinds and flung the windows wide open, in spite of the tingling cold of the morning air, and he felt life come pouring in; he could see the blue water, white rocks in the distance, a boat with a red-ringed funnel putting out to sea, leaving a wake of incredible whiteness.
    He had forgotten the immense sea, and the sand, and the sun, and the secrets he had whispered to them, and if a faint aftertaste of tears still lingered, he was ashamed of it.
    Why had they given him a room without a bathroom, when he longed for clean water to stream over his body and purify it? Probably because of his clothes, those drab, badly cut clothes in which he now felt so ill at ease.
    He had brought no razor, no soap, no toothbrush. He rang. A page knocked at his door. He felt reluctant to entrust this errand to him, to give up the imminent realization of his dream.
    â€œWill you go and buy me …” And while he waited for the return of the uniformed messenger, whom he could see hopping along the sidewalk, he looked at the sea, which was no longer last night’s sea, which had become a harbor furrowed by motorboats and where fishermen were sinking their nets.
    For a long time, dazzled by the morning light, he stared at the drawbridge, whose gigantic metal carcass blocked out the horizon and on which, from a distance, he could just make out minute human figures.

4
    Monsieur Monde had waited, because it seemed to him impossible to do otherwise.