Frost: A Novel Read Free Page B

they’re afraid to take a single step outside. “A friend told me about the inn,” I said. How did a lie like that pass my lips? It was terribly easy, as though there was nothing easier than lying. And more and more. “I like visiting places I’m unfamiliar with,” I said, “I didn’t think twice about coming.”—“The air here has a terrible composition,” said the painter. “Suddenly circumstances will start to constrain your freedom of movement.” Why was it I had chosen this abode, and not another; there were other inns and pensions to be found. “And some down in the valley too. But they’re probably only for transients, people stopping for a single night.” It had all been my friend’s idea, I lied. I had traveled here, with a couple of addresses. “And your journey was without incident?” he asked me. I couldn’t think of anything that had happened on my journey. “You know,” he said, “when I travel, there are always incidents, mishaps.” Getting back to the village and the inn, he said: “I expect you’ve brought something to read, or something you’re working on with you. What have you got?”—“A novel of Henry James’s,” I said. “Henry James,” he said. “I came without books,” he said, “quite deliberately. That is, I’ve brought a couple of little things. But really just my Pascal.” He didn’t look at me the whole time, his walk was remarkably stooped. “Because I’ve shut up shop,” he said. “The way you do when you’ve seen your last customer out.” Then: “Here, it’s possible to make many observations that translate into cold, into self-loathing. If you like that: wherever there are people, you can observe them. Especially what they don’t do, which is to say, what does them in.” There was nothing here “deserving of the least respect.” It was all so unfathomably ugly and expensive. “I’m glad you dislike our landlady,” he said. “You’re absolutely right.” And he saidnothing more under that head. Not to have any pity, but follow one’s revulsion wherever it led, in many cases that was an ornament to reason. “She’s a monster,” he said. “You’ll get to meet a whole series of monsters here. Especially at the inn.” Did I have the ability to weigh up characters, a gift, “nothing to do with intelligence, which not many people have”? To imagine, say, a third character between two others, and so on … that was how he spent his time. “Not anymore. There is a chance,” he said, “that you might be intruded upon in the night. Then don’t be afraid: it will only be one of the innkeeper’s concubines who’s not familiar with the layout of the building. Or the knacker who seems to be night-blind. Broken bones and sprains of all types seem not to have prevented him from seeking out her bed at night.” The innkeeper favored everyone, except for himself, the painter. For instance, she would change the sheets every four or five days in all the rooms, except his. She never filled his glass properly, and if anyone asked her about him, she would come out with insolent lies. Only he had no proof, and so could not confront her. I said I didn’t believe the innkeeper would spread slanders about him. “She does, though,” he said; “she talks about me as if I were a dog. She says I wet my bed. When my back’s turned, she taps her head with her forefinger to indicate that I’m mad. She forgets there are such things as mirrors. Most people do.” She watered his milk. “And not just my milk either.” Quite apart from the fact that he suspected she had served him dogmeat and horsemeat for years. “She once told her children I was a cannibal. Since then her children have avoided me.” She had always read postcards addressed to him, and sometimes even steamed open his letters and absorbed their contents. “Time and again, she would know things I never told her.” Now he didn’t get any mailanymore. “No more.” He said: