The Little Man From Archangel Read Free Page B

occupied, he listened to the noises of the market, which he tried to identify with the same meticulousness as he applied to the scrutiny of a postage stamp.
    He, too, had practically been born here. Not quite. Not like the others. But they talked to him in the mornings as they talked to one another, with the same familiar friendliness, and he had his place, so to speak, at Le Bouc's counter.
    Twice he heard Ancel the butcher's voice on the pavement arguing with a man delivering some quarters of beef, and there was a row about some mutton which was fairly infuriating him. Chaigne's grocery opposite opened later, and the next house belonged to the Palestris where Angèle, Gina's mother, was already at work.
    It was she who attended to the business. Louis, her husband, was a pleasant fellow, but he could not stop himself from drinking. So to keep him occupied they had bought him a three-wheeler and he delivered the orders, not only for his own shop, but for the market people who had no means of transport.
    It used to humiliate him. He didn't admit it. On the one hand he was content to spend the whole day out of his house, free to drink at his leisure. But on the other hand he was no dupe, and realized that he didn't count, that he was no longer the real head of the family, and this made him drink all the more.
    What ought Angèle to have done? Jonas had wondered to himself and had not found the answer.
    Gina had no respect for her father. When he came to see her between errands, she would put the bottle of wine and a glass down on the table, with the words:
    'There! Is that what you want?'
    He would pretend to laugh, to take it as a joke. He knew it was meant seriously and yet he did not resist the need to fill his glass, though he might call out on leaving:
    'You're a proper bitch!'
    Jonas tried not to be present when that happened. In front of him, Palestri felt even more humiliated, and that was perhaps one of the reasons why he had nearly as big a grudge against him as his son had.
    He rose at six, went down to make his coffee. He was always the first one down and in summer his first action was to open the door into the yard. Often Gina wasn't to be seen downstairs until about half-past seven or eight when the shop was already open.
    She liked to hang about in dressing-gown and slippers, her face glistening after her night's sleep, and it did not disturb her to be seen thus by strangers; she would go and stand on the doorstep, walk past the Chaigne's on her way to say good-morning to her mother, return with vegetables or fruit.
    "Morning, Gina!'
    "Morning, Pierrot!'
    She knew everybody, the wholesalers, the retailers, the heavy-lorry drivers as well as the country women who came to sell the produce from their gardens or their back-yards. As a little girl she used to run about with bare behind between the crates and baskets.
    She was no longer a little girl now. She was a woman of twenty-four and her friend Clémence had a child, while others had two or three.
    She had not come home and Jonas, with careful movements, was setting down his boxes in front of the shop window, rearranging the price tickets and going over to the baker opposite to buy some croissants. He always bought five, three for himself, two for his wife, and when they automatically wrapped them up for him in brown tissue paper, he did not protest.
    He could easily throw away the two extra croissants , and this gave him the idea of saying nothing, which, to him, meant not admitting that Gina had gone off without telling him.
    Besides, had she really gone off? When she left in the evening she was only wearing her red cotton dress, only had with her her patent-leather bag.
    She might come back in the course of the day, at any moment. Perhaps she was already there?
    Once again he tried to conjure the fates.
    'Gina!' he called, going inside, a note almost of delight in his voice.
    Then he ate alone, on a corner of the kitchen table, washed up his cup, his plate, and