The Circle Read Free Page A

making its way through, and someone furiously clearing the snow above him. A blinding light on his face, gulping fresh air by the lungful, his mouth gaping, until a face filled the open space. Hirtmann’s face. He burst out laughing, and said, ‘Bye, Martin,’ then filled up the hole again …
    Give or take a few variations, the dream always ended the same way.
    He had survived the avalanche. But in his nightmares, he died. And in a way, part of him had died up there that night.
    What was Hirtmann doing at that very moment? Where was he? With a shiver Servaz pictured the snowy landscape, its incredible majesty … the dizzying summits protecting the lost valley … the building with its thick walls … locks clanging at the end of a deserted corridor … And then that door with the familiar music.
    â€˜About time,’ said Pujol next to him.
    Servaz glanced distractedly at the screen. One player was leaving the pitch, another was replacing him. He gathered it was Anelka again. He looked at the upper left-hand corner of the screen: the seventy-first minute, and the score was still 0-0. Hence the tension that reigned in the bar. Next to him, a big man who must have weighed twenty stone and was sweating abundantly beneath his red beard, tapped him on the shoulder as if they were friends and blew in his face with his booze-heavy breath: ‘If I was the coach, I’d give ‘em a good kick up the arse to get ‘em moving, the wankers. What the fuck, they won’t even budge for the World Cup.’
    Servaz wondered if his neighbour was much in the habit of moving – apart from when he had to drag himself down here or go and fetch his six-packs at the corner shop.
    He wondered why he didn’t like watching sports on television. Was it because his ex-wife, Alexandra, unlike him, had never missed a match with her favourite team? They had been the kind of couple who, Servaz had suspected from day one, would not last long. Inspite of that, they got married and stuck it out for seven years. He still didn’t know how they could have taken so long to realise what was so obvious: they were as mismatched as a member of the Taliban and a supermodel. What did they have left today, other than their eighteen-year-old daughter? But he was proud of his daughter. Oh yes, he was proud. Even if he still hadn’t got used to her look, her body piercings and her hairstyle, it was in
his
footsteps Margot was following, not her mother’s. Like him, she liked to read and like him, she had qualified for the most prestigious literary prep school in the region. Marsac. The best students went there from miles around, some from as far away as Montpellier or Bordeaux.
    If he thought about it, he had to admit that at the age of forty-one he had only two focuses of interest in his life: his job and his daughter. And books … but books were something else, they were not merely a focus, they were his
entire
life.
    Was it enough? What were the lives of others made up of? He looked at the bottom of his glass, where there was nothing left but a few specks of foam, and he decided he’d had enough to drink for one evening. He felt a sudden urgent desire to pee and he wove his way to the door to the toilets. They were disgusting. A bald man had his back to him, and Servaz could hear his stream striking the urinal.
    â€˜That team is nothing but a bunch of no-hopers,’ said the man. ‘They’re a disgrace to watch.’
    He went back out without bothering to wash his hands. Servaz soaped and rinsed his own for a long time, dried them, and as he went back out he drew his right hand into his sleeve before taking hold of the door handle.
    A quick glance at the screen told him nothing had changed in his absence, even though the match was drawing to a close. The audience was a simmering volcano of frustration. Servaz figured that if things continued like this, there would be riots. He went back