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

“For a little vacation only, to the south of France.”

Legros smiled cautiously: “You’re lucky. I wish I were in your shoes. I’d like to take a vacation.”

“That will come, my man, that will come,” Guiret said absentmindedly.

“Not at my age. I’m lucky to have a job when times are so hard—” He sighed regretfully and meaningly, thinking of the tip. “So this is the trunk—” He grasped one of the handles, lifted the trunk from the floor, and then allowed it to fall back again with a thud: “It weighs something, all right!”

Barthe became if possible more pallid, and Guiret felt called upon to explain: “Our study books are in there, and books are heavy.”

“That’s right,” Legros agreed amiably.

“It’s not too heavy for you, is it?” Guiret asked anxiously.

“No, oh, no—” the concierge protested. “I am over sixty, but there are few men who can lift more than I. Give me a hand. As soon as I have it on my back I can go it alone. Take hold, will you, Monsieur Barthe?”

Barthe came forward weakly, but Guiret pushed him aside. “I’ll do it. Come on, let’s go, Monsieur Legros.”

But Legros straightened up, no longer offering his broad back.

“You know I would like to help you, Monsieur Guiret, but I have remembered—I cannot take the trunk down.”

“Why not?” both Guiret and Barthe asked as if with the same breath.

“You owe three months rent, that’s why. Oh, I understand how it is with students. One has money from home to pay and it goes for amusements. That’s not a crime with young men like you. But the proprietor is very strict on these matters. Last month when you sold that mahogany chest of drawers he pulled me up about it, said that nothing was to go out of here until you had paid your back bill.”

“But we are leaving the rest of our things here, the rug, the curtains, the pictures.”

“I know all that, but—just the same I cannot take the trunk down.”

“But we’re going to pay the rent before we leave.”

“Oh, that’s different! Why didn’t you say so?” He stooped over as if to take the trunk, then straightened up again, his hands on his back.

“It can’t be much more than two thousand francs—” Guiret said lightly, taking out his wallet.

“That I do not know,” Legros replied, somewhat indifferently. “I’ll give you three thousand and you can keep the change for yourself.”

“Oh, no, I could not do that, Monsieur.”

“Why not?”

“You know as well as I that the bill must be made out by the proprietor.”

“Very well, very well!” Guiret said impatiently. “Ask him to make it out, then.”

“But he is not in Paris.”

“Not in Paris?”

“He will not be back until day after tomorrow. You should have let me know before. This is not like a hotel by the day where the proprietor always sits in the office. The rents are by the month, you know that, and you are three months—”

“But we want to leave right away—”

The concierge shrugged then smiled again genially as a solution offered itself: “Why don’t you go, then, take your small baggage and leave the trunk behind? I will send you the bill, you can send the money, and then I will forward the trunk.”

“Yes, and how many days will that take?” Guiret muttered after a moment, without glancing at Barthe. “We will be a week without our books. No, you must telegraph the proprietor at once to send the bill. How long will it take for it to get around?”

“Twenty-four hours, or a day and a half at most.”

“I don’t know what else we can do,” Guiret agreed, in a tone that he tried to make nonchalant.

The concierge cocked his ear and listened. “I am wanted below,” he said, and went out.

As soon as the door closed Barthe gave way to a spasm of trembling. “We are lost,” he whispered.

“Don’t be stupid. We are delayed, that is all. We cannot help it. Tell me how we can help it?”

“We cannot,” Barthe agreed, without abandoning his hopeless manner.

“Then what is there to do but wait calmly?” Guiret asked with irritation. “We both run the same risk. If I can be calm, why can’t you?”

“If I could get out for a little fresh air—I’ll go down, take a few turns, it doesn’t matter where—”

“No?” Guiret questioned sarcastically. “I suppose it doesn’t matter where you go to behave like a fool and attract attention to yourself ?”

“Then come down with me. It would do you good, too, to get some air.”

“I’m all right. What’s wrong with me? Someone must stay here.”

“But it’s locked.”

“There’s blood here.”

“Where!” Barthe exclaimed, as if startled all over again.

“Don’t talk so loud. Here—on the rug. I’ve covered it with the big chair. But if Legros started to clean—”

“Yes. You’re right. But I—”

He watched Guiret as he crossed to the door, turned the key in the lock, and then put it in his pocket.

The interminable hours must be passing. It could not be that Time stood still. By an unhappy coincidence the clock on the mantel had stopped, and neither Guiret nor Barthe had had their own watches for months. They heard the hour of midday strike. Fatigue immobilized them, but fear and hunger kept them awake. They did not realize that they were hungry, and their physical exhaustion was so great that there was no place for remorse.

Guiret would get up now and then, go into his bedroom, and wash his hands. He did this when Barthe stared at the trunk, Barthe who thought at one time that he saw the cover move. Guiret would stay in the bedroom until he believed that Barthe was not looking at the trunk, and then to justify his brisk return he would say:

“Did you speak, Armand?”

The first time, Barthe leaped to his feet and cried out nervously: “I didn’t speak, no, I didn’t say anything—no!”

After that he did not respond to the question. Somehow it seemed to mark an indefinite passage of time.

Suddenly Guiret burst out unexpectedly in a thin voice: “Will the day never end?”

Immediately he regretted his words, for Barthe passed into a sort of muffled hysteria. He threw himself downward on the divan, rolling his head among the pillows.

“Legros must have heard by now,” Guiret said cheerfully, trying to calm him. “Surely he will show up any moment now. Don’t let him find you like this.”

Barthe did not seem to hear. He remained face downward among the silken pillows, his shoulders lifting and falling with spasmodic shivers.

A little later Guiret spoke again: “It will be dark soon.” And again he regretted his words and resolved to remain silent. Barthe repeated the words with new terror: “Yes, you are right, it will be dark soon.”

The day seemed eternal. At last the shadows descended the length of the windows and gathered in the corners of the room. One by one the chairs became blurred, the trunk, however, in the middle of the room remaining visible, illuminated by a beam of light that seemed to come from nowhere. Guiret got up and went to the window and located the light from an apartment house window. He sighed and sat down again.

For a while the darkness brought peace to both of them, for it blotted out the trunk. Barthe tried to forget that it was there and succeeded until the obscurity suddenly became peopled with ghosts. He got up jerkily and fumbled about for the cord that lighted the reading lamp.

They faced each other again. The day was over, yes, but the night as many hours long was before them. Barthe stretched himself on the divan, turning toward the wall. His breathing became regular in sleep, then he lurched up with a choking gasp, awakened by the beginning of a nightmare that started with the events of the day before unrolling in memory toward that time when he had bent over her where she lay on the rug, and saw that she was dead.