Maurice Level - Thirty Hours with a Corpse, and Other Tales of the Grand Guignol

“If I weren’t crippled for life, I wouldn’t ask for anything.”

Thereupon she began to laugh, with shoulders raised and mallet held aloft. She was a handsome girl, and even a good girl, and more than once he had talked to her in the meadow, but now he reddened with anger.

“What is the matter with you all—dropping hints and poking your fun at me?”

She shrugged her shoulders.

“If I gossip it’s only for the fun of gossiping.”

He sat down near her, mollified, and listened as she beat her linen. Then, wanting to smoke, and unable to use his helpless hands, he asked her:

“Would you mind getting my pouch out of my pocket and filling my pipe for me?”

She wiped her hands on her apron, searched in his blouse, filled his pipe, struck a match and, shielding it with her hand, said jokingly:

“You’re lucky in meeting me.”

He bent forward to light his pipe. At the same moment she slipped on the bank, lost a sabot, threw up her arms and fell backward into the water.

Seeing her fall, Trache sprang up. She had sunk immediately, dragging her washtub after her, in a place where the water was deep and encumbered with weeds. Then her head reappeared, stretched out into the air, and she cried, already half choking:

“Your hand! Your hand!”

Trache stopped short, his pipe shaking in the corner of his mouth. Shriller, more despairingly came the cry:

“Your hand! I’m drowning. Help!…”

Some men in a neighboring field were running. But they were at a great distance and could only be seen as shadows moving over the corn.

Françoise sank again, rose, sank, rose once more. No sound came from her lips now: her face was terrible in its agony of supplication. Then she sank finally; the weeds, scattered in all directions, closed up again; their tangled network lay placid as before under the current. And that was all.

It was only after an hour’s search that the body was found, enmeshed in the river growth, the clothes floating over the head. Trache stamped on the ground.

“I, a man, and powerless to do anything!… Curses, curses on my miserable hands!”

They tried to calm him as they condoled with him on his wretched lot, accompanying him to his cottage in their desire to soothe. Seeing him approach in this way, his wife uttered a piercing cry. What new disaster had befallen her husband?… They told her of the catastrophe, and of his anguish at not being able to save Françoise, whereupon she joined her lamentations to his.

But when they were alone behind closed doors, taking off his hat with a brisk movement, Trache rubbed his benumbed hands, stretched out his fingers, worked his joints, drew forth his pouch full of coins, flung it on the table and said:

“No, damn it. A fine business if I had given her my hand and she had gone and chattered to Galot!… No! damn it…”

THE LOG fire was dying in the grate. About the whole room, lighted by a too heavily shaded lamp, there was something vaguely menacing that chilled my blood the moment I entered it.

My friend came forward. “I am glad to see you, very glad,” he said, holding out his hand.

He had aged and altered so that I hardly recognized him. Extending his hand in the direction of the fireplace, he said in a low voice, “My friend Janville… my wife.”

I discerned a very pale face and a slender form that bowed slightly, while a subdued voice, a melancholy, weary voice, murmured, “We are pleased to see you here, Monsieur.”

My friend offered me a chair. The white form relapsed into immobility; and silence, a deadened silence through which flitted indefinable thoughts, fell upon us.

I could think of nothing to say. These two had been man and wife for some months. They had been in love for years before they were free to marry. And this was how I found them now!

My friend broke the silence with a hesitating inquiry as to my health, and his thought seemed far from the words that fell from his lips.

“Fine,” I replied, and speaking lower, I added, “You are happy?”

“Yes,” he muttered.

His wife coughed slightly and rose.

“Forgive me, Monsieur, but I am a little tired. You will excuse me, I am sure…. Please do not go.”

She crossed the dining-room, presented her forehead to her husband, and left us.

My friend got up and paced the floor with long strides, gnawing his mustache, then, stopping abruptly before me, put his hand on my shoulder.

“I said I was happy. That’s a lie!”

I looked at him in mute astonishment.

“No doubt you think I am out of my mind,” he continued. “Not yet, but I’m likely to be before long…. Don’t you feel some sinister influence brooding over this house?”

“Your wife and you appear to be under some cloud, certainly. Some worry, no doubt, the importance of which you exaggerate.”

“No! No! No! There’s a horror hanging to these walls… there’s a terror creeping about these floors. Between my wife and me there’s the shadow of Crime… of Crime!

“As you know, she who today is my wife was for long months my mistress. You know how desperately I loved her… or rather you do not know… no one can know…. I worshipped her, that creature, worshipped her to the point of devotion… of frenzy. From the day she came into my life, there was no other life for me. She became a need in my nature, a flaw in my sanity, a vice in my blood.

“I thought of running away with her, of challenging the voice of scandal. But neither of us had any means. I had only my profession to support me. And our being together openly in Paris was not to be thought of… so I put aside honor, every moral scruple. To see her more frequently, I obtained an introduction to the husband. I cultivated his acquaintance, I came to be his constant guest, his intimate friend.

“I made that despicable third in a household who, under the shelter of its welcome, steals in cold blood from its master his peace and happiness.

“I spent my holidays with them. He was a great sportsman; while he was out in the woods and fields I passed my time with her.

“One day we two were startled by loud cries. I ran downstairs, and found the terrified servants gathered around the husband.

“Stretched upon a couch, he was fighting for breath with quick, short gasps, as he clutched at a wound in his abdomen.

“‘Ah, Monsieur,’ faltered the man who carried his game-bag, ‘how suddenly it happened! Monsieur had just shot a woodcock… it fell in the rushes, he ran toward the spot, and all in a moment, I don’t know how it happened, but I heard a report—a cry—and I saw Monsieur fall forward…. I brought him here.’

“I cut away the clothes and examined his injuries. The charge had plowed through his side. Blood flowed in jets from a terrible wound extending from above the hip to the thigh.

“Years of training made me regard him solely as a patient. I examined him as if it had been a hospital case. I even gave a sigh of satisfaction as I learned that his injuries were really superficial. The intestines did not appear to be involved, but on the wound’s internal surface a small artery was spurting freely.

“Hearing footsteps, I looked up, and saw Her standing in the doorway. A strange and unaccountable agony gripped my heart. It was with a great effort that I said, ‘Don’t come here…. Go away.’

“‘No,’ she said, and drew nearer.

“I could not take my eyes from hers—she had fascinated them. My finger still pressing upon the artery, the sufferer full in her view, I watched that look of hers as a man watches a dagger pointed at his throat, a wavering dagger, the gleam of which hypnotizes him.

“She drew still nearer, and a cloudy impotence fell upon my will. That look spoke things of terrible import. It seized upon my soul, that look; it spoke—no need of words to make me understand what it asked of me. It said: