By a Slow River Read Free

he’d do no more than gesticulate, before the roomful of regulars. Beautiful gestures, serious and dramatic, rendered even more eloquent by wine.
    The fat buttocks of Judge Mierck melted down over his hunting stool, a tripod in camel hide and ebony that had made a big impression on us the first few times he’d taken it out. “Souvenir of the colonies”: He’d spent three years chasing chicken thieves and grain poachers in Ethiopia or somewhere like that. He would fold and unfold it constantly at the scene of investigations, meditating on it like a painter before a model, brandishing it like a dandy with a cane, or slapping it against his side in the manner of a brigadier bracing himself for the charge.
    The judge listened to Bréchut while eating his eggs, which finally arrived in a steaming white towel. The servile policeman who had fetched them stood at attention. When the shells had accumulated at the foot of his hunting stool, the judge ground them with his heel while wiping his mouth with a big batiste handkerchief. You might have believed you were hearing the glass bones of some bird being broken. The debris of the little worlds stuck to his boot like a minuscule mosaic, while nearby, only a few steps away, Morning Glory still lay under the sodden wool.
    Bréchut had ended his account. The judge consumed that too without difficulty. “Well, well, well,” he said, getting up and straightening his shirtfront. He searched the landscape as though looking for his next thought. His Kronstadt hadn’t budged.
    The morning poured forth its light and its hours. All the men were set out like lead figurines. Berfuche’s nose was red and his eyes weepy. Grosspeil took on the color of the water. Crusty held his notebook, in which he’d already taken some notes, and sometimes as he scratched his sickly cheek the cold marbled it with white streaks. The egg bearer looked waxen. The mayor had left, very happy to return to the warmth of the town hall. He’d done his little duty; the rest didn’t concern him.
    The judge, no longer in a hurry, deeply snuffed the blue air, hopping slightly with his hands behind his back. He was savoring the moment and the place as we waited for Victor Desharet, the doctor from V. He was trying to inscribe it in the deepest recesses of his memory, where there were already quite a few still lifes and murder landscapes. It was his own museum; when he walked through it, I’m sure the thrills must have equaled those of the murderers. There’s such a thin line between hunter and beast.
    The doctor arrives: He and the judge are quite a pair. They’ve known each other since secondary school. They address each other as
tu,
but in their mouths the word is so curiously formed you might take it for the formal
vous
. They have a meal together often, at the Rébillon and other inns. It takes hours; they eat everything, but above all pork products and innards: head cheese, creamed tripe, breaded pig’s feet, brains, fried kidneys. Knowing each other for so long and wolfing down the same things, they’ve ended up looking rather alike: same complexion, same lavish folds under the neck, same belly, same eyes that seem to skim the world. They see no mud in the streets, nothing that in other men might provoke pity.
    Desharet pronounces the corpse a textbook case. You can see he’s worried about getting his gloves wet. And yet he too had known the little girl quite well. He touches the lips, raises the eyelids, exposes Morning Glory’s neck, and there everyone catches a first sight of the purple blotches ringing it like a garland. “Strangulation!” he declares.
    The conclusion didn’t require a degree from the Polytechnique; all the same, on this frosty morning next to the small body, when the word was said we winced as if someone had slapped us.
    “Well, well, well.” The judge seconds the observation, trying to contain his satisfaction at having his suspicion confirmed: a real case to sink his teeth