Sunday Read Free Page A

flowers set in the middle of the tables. The flower market was in full swing as well. Emile needed to buy some. The van was filling up gradually and the hands of the clock moving slowly forward, bringing nearer the hour when he would have to act.
    There had been no single beginning, but several. And one of these, no doubt, was what had happened one afternoon in the attic.
    Ada had been working at La Bastide for nearly two years and must, therefore, have been eighteen. He was not yet thirty. He had never taken any interest in her, except, every now and then, to look at her with a frown and wonder what she was thinking.
    You could give her any job to do without her complaining. She didn't work fast and she was not thorough, but nobody had any control over her, for when one made a remark to her, or when Berthe got angry with her, she remained as blank as a wall.
    He remembered various scenes, with Berthe, exasperated, finally screaming at her, half hysterically:
    'Look at me when I am speaking to you!'
    Ada would gaze at her with dark, empty eyes.
    'Do you hear me?'
    She would not flinch.
    'Say "Yes, madam." '
    She would repeat, indifferently:
    'Yes, madam.'
    'Couldn't you be a little more polite?'
    Emile almost believed that if his wife lost her temper so easily, it was because she could not succeed in reducing Ada to tears.
    'Supposing I threw you out of the house?'
    Still the stone wall.
    'I shall speak to your father about it . . .'
    As for Emile, he had become accustomed to her, but rather in the way he would have become accustomed to the presence of a dog in the house. A dog does not speak either, does not always do what one would like to see it do.
    Then, one afternoon when Berthe was away, he had gone up to the attic, without ulterior motives, because he was looking for Ada and she did not answer, and when he had come down again he did not know whether to be pleased or frightened by what had just taken place.
    At any rate, he knew no more about her than before, and understood her perhaps less than ever.
    He remembered above all a look which he had never seen in a woman before, rather similar to the look of an animal at the approach of a man.
    That was three years ago now. Gould he claim to know her better, and was this called love?
    If a beginning is strictly necessary, then this was one among many others.
    But as far as Berthe was concerned, the beginning was not to be found till two years later, at siesta time, on June 15th; he recalled the date, the hour, the smallest details.
    Was it still important? Was it not all past and done with? He had had the time, in eleven months, to think about it, and yet he had been scarcely ever worried about it.
    Even today, it did not disturb him unreasonably. He was not excited. He regretted nothing. He was not scared either.
    A certain impatience, yes, which made him drink his coffee too hot at Justin's bar. A trembling of the fingers, as had happened this morning in the kitchen, and a floating sensation in the chest. But that could occur just as well when he was out fishing for boulantin and had a good catch at the end of his line.
    And the sensation of unreality was familiar to him. When you are at sea, early in the morning, aboard a pointu, alone on the water which shines and breathes with a monotonous rhythm, you are no longer completely yourself, and it may happen that all this blue and this inhuman peace inspire you with a kind of anguish.
    The Forville market was the same as on other Sundays, with its familiar faces, its noises, its smells. And yet was it not rather as if he had surveyed the scene through a mirror?
    For several hours now he had not formed part with the rest of the world. This evening, tomorrow, he would once again be a man like the others. Not quite like them.
    He must not think. One should never go over again what has been decided once and for all.
    He had told Ada, without giving her any details:
    'Next Sunday . . .'
    It was now that Sunday. Everything was