Jean-Patrick Manchette: Fatale

As Aimée was going back to her studio apartment she noticed that a door some twenty meters farther down the corridor was ajar; peering out curiously from it was a little old lady, wearing a great deal of jewelry, who disappeared as Aimée entered her own room and closed herself in.

Once inside, Aimée drew the predominantly red plaid curtains and stripped naked. For nearly an hour she did exercises standing up and lying down on the floor, toning her muscles and making use in particular of her chest expanders. She streamed with sweat. She took out a thick piece of corkboard, placed it on the bed, and struck it repeatedly with the edge of first her right and then her left hand, likewise with each of her elbows. Setting aside the corkboard, she picked up a foam cylinder twenty centimeters long and twelve in diameter. Holding it in one hand, she adopted the lotus position. After a moment of relaxation, she kneaded it for a few minutes. Then, with both hands, she squeezed the cylinder tightly, reducing its diameter to just a few centimeters at the points where she was grasping it; she locked her muscles in this position and stayed quite still. A nervous twitch tugged at the sweaty skin at the corner of her mouth. Finally she put everything away and took a bath.

Lying in her hot bath, she opened the crime novel she had bought. She read ten pages. It took her six or seven minutes. She put the book down, masturbated, washed, and got out of the water. For a moment, in the bathroom mirror, she looked at her slim, seductive body. She dressed carefully; she aimed to please.

At four o’clock she left the Seagull Apartments and went shopping in the center of town for various items of clothing, all simple, all pretty, all rather expensive. She then proceeded to the Jules Ferry Leisure and Culture Center, on the east side of town, in the middle of a kind of municipal complex of recent vintage. There she signed up for fencing and Oriental martial-arts classes. She was directed to places where she could go to play golf, play tennis, ride horseback, and the like. Then, pedaling furiously, the young woman returned to her studio apartment and dropped off her purchases before leaving right away on foot, heading for the harbor, where the inauguration of the new fish market had already been under way for a few minutes.

Long and low, the gray cement structures of the market stood on a kind of peninsula flanked by two docking basins of unequal size. When Aimée arrived, a miniature throng had gathered at the entrance to the market precinct. From inside the market hall came bursts of monotone speech, then applause, and some of the folk outside applauded too, though not very loudly and not for very long. Aimée threaded her way through the knots of people peering inside with amused if not derisive looks. The people outside were poor, and odors of sweat and wine-laden breath rose into the brisk, briny, salubrious breeze.

The well-to-do were inside the building, or more accurately beneath a sort of immense curved awning overhanging the quayside. Two gloved policemen stood yawning at the entrance to the complex. They did not stop Aimée as she passed them and went under the immense awning. A platform had been set up in front of the cold-storage rooms, and on it a table with a large green canopy draped above. At the table sat middle-aged men in three-piece suits, with red faces and hair slick with lotion. In front of the table a local official, who had a little black mustache and was wearing pinstriped pants and a red-white-and-blue scarf, stood reading (or rather mumbling) a speech from five or six sheets of typescript.

“We have come together,” this town worthy was saying, “to hail the dawn of a beautiful era! I have combed the archives of Bléville, gentlemen, and combed them thoroughly! And believe me, my dear fellow citizens, I had to go very far back in time before I found a record of a coming together, such as this one, of all the vital forces of Bléville in order to accomplish a task of general interest, a task capable of toppling the barriers of social class because it genuinely contributes to the prosperity of all, of workers, of business owners, of those in the service sector-all tightly bound together.”

Aimée made her way through the scattered audience. She scanned the various groups and easily spotted Lindquist. She approached discreetly, not looking directly at him. He did not notice her. The place smelt of eau de cologne, tobacco, salt, and cement dust. There were few society women present. All the men wore ties except for three or four fish porters in freshly ironed shirts and cloth caps with large peaks. In a corner were twenty or so women workers in yellow blouses and little caps that made them look like nurses or exploited female labor in China. Lindquist suddenly recognized Aimée. Without hesitation he beckoned to her. She joined him. He introduced her to two couples who were with him, the Rougneux and the Tobies.

“Indeed I was obliged,” said the worthy, “to go as far back as the sad year of 1871! In 1871 the Bléville chamber of commerce, whose centenary coincided-how could I forget it? — with the assumption of my own municipal duties, in 1871, I say, the chamber of commerce enthusiastically underwrote the construction…”

“Delighted, a great pleasure, how nice, how very nice to meet you,” Aimée and the Rougneux and the Tobies were saying meanwhile, their forearms crisscrossing as hands were thrust forward for shaking. “Well, well, how very charming, do you play bridge? Yes? Ah ha! some new blood at last!” They went on for some time in this vein.

“…the construction of the old market hall,” the worthy continued, “which today makes way in turn for this new hall in the center of which I stand at this very moment.”

The Rougneux owned the bookstore where Aimée had bought her crime novel. The wife was thin and pale and wore a violet suit with a large gold brooch at the lapel and a string of cultured pearls around her neck. Her husband was thickset, the back of his neck close-shaven, his head large and cylindrical with a hairline low on his brow, and behind thick-lensed spectacles he had big glassy eyes. The Tobies were pharmacists, tall, thin, gray, and affable in a timid sort of way.

“Oh, look,” said Lindquist to Aimée, “here is someone your age.” And with that he introduced her to the senior manager Moutet, who had a good ten years on Aimée, sported a red mustache and a tobacco-brown suit, and worked at L and L Enterprises.

Aimée was far from bored. She distributed smiles; she offered opinions. Nobody was listening to the town worthy on the platform, who was now paying tribute to the New Fish Market Initiative Committee, whose members he named, beginning with Messrs. Lorque and Lenverguez of L and L Enterprises, and including M. Tobie, M. Rougneux, and M. Moutet.

“Nor should we forget these gentlemen’s lovely wives,” he added.

About ten meters from the group with whom Aimée was chatting, a guy of about thirty was looking at the young woman and smiling. He went on smiling as he came over to her.

“Sinistrat,” he told Aimée. “Dr. Claude Sinistrat. Let me introduce myself, because I know that that old Huguenot is not going to do it.”

“Oh, come off it, Sinistrat,” said Lindquist.

“Delighted,” said Aimée.

Sinistrat was tall and broad-shouldered, and by no means devoid of charm; his gestures were brusque and he had a big face, curly blond hair, and even teeth.

“I saw your opinion piece in the Dépêche de Bléville ,” said Aimée.

“I didn’t pull any punches, did I?” Sinistrat puffed his chest out.

“Sinistrat,” said Lindquist, “you are a scoundrel. And let me tell you-”

The realtor broke off. He was staring at something that his interlocutors could not see, somewhere in the crowd. He pursed his lips.