Adam Haberberg Read Free

fresh lick of paint, you can make a few home improvements here and there but as for the whole bulk of it, you can't shift it anymore. Adam doesn't call Albert again. Albert's with Mar-tine. Without Martine, Adam would have said: I forgot, catastrophic weekend on the Cotentin. And hung up. Without Martine the remark held water. Without Martine, Albert would have called back: I never liked the Cotentin, you need to cut it out. And hung up. Without Martine they would have had this vital exchange. Albert has Martine, who massages his feet and cooks him veal sweetbreads, I have Irene, who hates me. Do you want a wife who massagesyour feet and cooks you veal sweetbreads? he thinks, contemplating the aggressive redbrick walls of the big cats' house. Adam admits the water pistol was a mistake. The water pistol was an open invitation to madness in the car. But madness in the car was better than the silence of death, in any case madness had quickly taken over in the back, even without the water pistol, and soon in the front as well, for no one can endure shouting and absurd arguments combined with an absurd refusal to react and he in his turn had started yelling absurdly when the older boy had whined, look what he's just done, Daddy, he's made crumbs all over the car, let's play at spitting, the younger one had said, he's gross, the older one had shouted, hitting him, he's spitting at me. I'm doing a hundred in the rain, Adam had bellowed, if you don't stop that racket I'll smash us all to smithereens. Madness had reigned in the car after the water pistol had been put away in Irene's handbag, while she continued to stare silently and with an uncommonly stiff neck at vistas of warehouses, billboards, and corrugated iron. Why had she not simply said, boys, the pistol will travel in my bag, it will reappear on the beach at Saint-Vaast-la-Hougue, in a mild and even slightly complicit voice, a voice that would mildly have implied, he's a terrible one, your daddy. But the mild voice no longer exists.
    In the kingdom of the couple the mild voice with no memory is no more. Adam thinks again about that analogy between couples and houses, an idiotic analogy, like all analogies, what can Goncharki know about couples, drunks have no business putting forward theories on any subject, even though drunks have a greater lust for theories than anyone else. Apparently the ostrich is a great seducer, he's just read this. The male ostrich has a harem, which he apparently assembles after performing an irresistible courtship display. And you, poor creatures, thinks Adam, observing the pair alone behind the wire netting, do you occasionally make some kind of wild display, you poor creatures, trembling there under the drizzle in that cement enclosure? Irene would have liked to live in the shadow of a man. For Irene a successful life would have been subordinating her own to a man's success. That was what Irene had dreamed of, to be a powerful man's bondwoman. Being a vilified writer's wife was for Irene the worst possible scenario. Before he was vilified, Irene had supported him with all her strength, she had stimulated and encouraged him, she had everywhere extolled his excellence, and she had, Adam thinks, truly believed in his excellence. Could she go back on this? Could she accept society's verdict without going back on her own? Not least becausesociety's verdict doesn't come all at once. Society's verdict is insidious. The first book had had a mainly favorable reception. The second had been totally demolished. The latest had been ignored by everyone except Theodore Onfray, who had alluded with a note of skepticism to the miraculous praise accorded to the first. Irene was trapped, it was her duty to maintain solidarity with the vilified poet against the world. She whose most secret dream was to sacrifice herself for a man. To sacrifice herself for a man who won recognition would have been a kind of achievement for Irene, she would never, in any case, have