Emmanuel Bove: Henri Duchemin and His Shadows

The clock chimed four times, although the hands pointed to nine.

Henri Duchemin sensed that these strangers were harboring unkind thoughts. He checked to make sure the cotton plugging his ears had not fallen out and, shaking out his overcoat, walked to the door that, as he opened it, briefly caused the light from the restaurant to bathe the opposite side of the dark street.

The rain dripped from the painted cast-iron street lamps. The shimmering sidewalks seemed to be moving. The lamps of cars and taxis were dim.

He went into a café. The awning, battered by the wind, threw down sheets of water.

Condensation was everywhere, dulling the glasses, the counter, the electric light bulbs. Some customers had drawn on the mirrors.

Henri Duchemin ordered a coffee, a very hot coffee, which he swallowed in one gulp before the sugar had a chance to dissolve.

A woman in a damp fur coat was drinking milk that must have been sweetened by the red of her lips. Her heavily made-up eyes remained continually open, like a doll’s.

“What a sad Christmas Eve!” she said.

Henri Duchemin knew that certain women spoke to men to ask for money, but he preferred not to think about it, remaining hopeful of some new experience.

“Yes, what a sad Christmas Eve indeed!”

He watched the door, afraid that his neighbor, Monsieur Leleu, would come in. If he did, he would sit down right there beside him and without a doubt take his place.

“You must be bored, Monsieur.”

“Oh, I am, but don’t be offended. If you knew how I’m suffering. I’d like so much to open my heart. I’m a stranger in your eyes. Be patient. I shall tell you the story of my life. It’s a very sad story.”

He was so happy to be speaking that he seemed younger. He was sure he would be liked and this gave him confidence. He was about to go on when the woman burst out laughing:

“Don’t be ridiculous. If you’re so unhappy, just kill yourself.”

Henri Duchemin blushed. For a minute he tried to find a way to respond. When he could not, he got up and went out, his heart heavy with bitterness.

The rain whipped his face, reviving him. Two rows of gas lamps converged at the end of an avenue. The heads of the passersby touched the fabric of their umbrellas.

Kill myself! She’s out of her mind, he thought. The world is so cruel.

His damp trousers clung to his thighs. His feet slid in his shoes that leaked even when the sidewalks were hosed down in summer. He saw nothing, not even the streams of rainwater swallowed up by the sewers with the gentle sounds of a small waterfall.

At last he recognized a small recessed lot cluttered with tarred pipes where he often would come to watch the men at work while he warmed himself over a brazier.

He had arrived home.

The wind was so strong as he opened the door that it felt as if someone wanted to prevent him from going in.

Henri Duchemin climbed the stairway slowly and then, once inside his room, gently closed the door so as not to wake Monsieur Leleu.

When he lit the lamp, it revealed a disorder that surprised him—he had forgotten the housework had not been done.

The items of furniture, with their shadow twins, seemed to touch one another. Icy air crept beneath the window, stirring the curtains. The damp blistered the ceiling plaster. The wallpaper flapped like old posters. The unmade bed was cold. When the wind rattled the door, the lock squeaked.

“Kill myself, come now, she’s lost her mind!”

To drive the woman from his memory, Henri Duchemin paced the room, counting his steps, elated to find the same number going and coming. He then noticed that his intake of breath was sharper when he faced away from the lamp.

The shutters, unhinged by the wind, slammed so violently against the wall that he was afraid the neighbors would complain.

He opened the window wide: the flame of the lamp flickered, the curtains rose behind him like ghosts, a tram ticket flew around the room.

Across the street he saw a lit window and, through the blinds, a woman’s shadow gesticulating.

Leaning out, his hair tangled in the wind, his hands blackened by the window sill, Henri Duchemin spied on this woman. He stood still and his eyes were so wide that his pupils seemed smaller in the middle of so much white.

But the light went out. Hoping she would turn on a light at another window, he waited. The night was black. The wind, burrowing in his sleeves, chilled his body. The rain shimmered around a street lamp.

He closed the window and, motionless in front of the only armchair, he saw women everywhere, in the depths of the walls, standing on his bed, languidly waving their arms. No, he would not kill himself. At forty a man is still young and can, if he perseveres, become rich.

Henri Duchemin dreamed of supplicants, of owning houses, of freedom. But once his imagination had calmed down, it seemed the disorder of his room had grown, in contrast as it was with his reveries.

A mirror in a bamboo frame reflected his face. He forgot everything and, talking to himself, gazed at his reflection to see what he looked like when he spoke.

The flame was becoming so weak that now it lit only the table. It flickered on its wick. Suddenly it went out.

Henri Duchemin, groping for matches, knocked over objects he did not recognize.

Weary from searching, he sat in the armchair and closed his eyes so as not to see the darkness.

The warmth from his body was slowly drying his clothes. He felt better. Soon it seemed to him that the floor was slipping away beneath his feet and that his legs were swinging in the void, like those of a child on a chair.

He had been sleeping for a long time when he felt the heat of a flame on his cheek, a little like someone’s breath.

He opened his eyes.

Monsieur Leleu was beside him holding a lamp.

Monsieur Leleu was a calm fifty-year-old man who lived in poverty. He was interested in the lives of criminals and always sided with the police. He read the local crime news but never detective novels because he felt uncomfortable reading tales of things that did not exist.

“Are you asleep, Duchemin?”

“No.”

Monsieur Leleu set his lamp on the fireplace mantel. It continued to light the floor.

“I need to speak with you, Henri.”

Monsieur Leleu stroked his beard, honing it to a point.

“Do you remember the woman in the café?”

“Yes.”

“You have to do what she told you.”

“Kill myself?”

“Yes.”

“You think I must?”

“Yes, because you are unhappy.”

The rain, driven by the wind, relentlessly bombarded the windowpanes.

“But I wouldn’t dare.”

“Why not, Henri? I’ve brought you a rope. The slipknot has been made. You see, everything is ready. I’ll come back once you’re dead; that way, no one will suspect me.”

Monsieur Leleu rose.

“You’ll come back once I’m dead!”

“Yes. I’ll wake the other tenants. Adieu . I’ll leave you the lamp; I’ll retrieve it later.”

Monsieur Leleu went out without a sound.

Left alone, Henri Duchemin rubbed his eyes, looked at the lamp and, realizing he wasn’t dreaming, wanted to write down his last thoughts. But he did not know what to say.

Suddenly, either because he was afraid of dying or because he feared Monsieur Leleu would return, he decided to flee.

He blew out the lamp, checking that the flame was really extinguished, and left.

* * *

Although Monsieur Leleu’s door was closed, Henri Duchemin walked on tiptoe.

Outside, the cold air gnawed at a nerve in one of his teeth. The slope of the street made him want to run. The bubbles floating on the puddles did not burst because they did not move.