Monsieur Monde Vanishes by Georges Simenon Page B

between the few customers, and every sound was detached, assumed importance: the exclamation of a card player, the click of billiard balls, the snap of the lid of the soiled-linen hamper as the waiter opened and closed it. The lights were switched on, but then, in the dusk, the slate-gray street proved a depressing sight, with its curious procession of men, women, and children, walking fast or slowly, brushing up against or pushing past one another, all strangers to the rest, each going God knows where and perhaps nowhere, while obese buses bore past their full loads of tight-packed humanity.
    â€œExcuse me.” The waiter, behind them, drew a heavy red curtain along its brass rod, and with a single gesture abolished the outside world.
    Monsieur Monde sighed, gazing at his glass of beer. He noticed that his companion’s fingers were clenched on her handbag. And he seemed to have to make a long journey through time and space to find the simple, commonplace words that he uttered at last, which blended with the banality of the setting:
    â€œShall we take the nine o’clock train?”
    She said nothing, but sat still; the fingers clutching the crocodile-skin bag relaxed. She lit a fresh cigarette, and it was later on, about seven o’clock, when the brasseries were full of customers drinking their apéritifs, that they went out, as grave and glum as a real married couple.

5
    From time to time he frowned. The stare of his pale eyes became more intense. These were the only visible signs of his anguish, and yet at such moments he felt out of his depth, and if he had not retained a certain self-respect he would have been capable of tapping the shiny walls of the compartment to make sure they really existed.
    He was in a train once more, a train that had the special smell of all night trains. Four of the compartments in the second-class carriage were dark, with drawn curtains, and when, a short while previously, looking for seats, he had opened doors at random, he had disturbed people who were sleeping.
    He stood in the corridor, leaning against the wall which bore a number on an enamel plate. He had drawn up the blind in front of him, and the window was dark, cold, and clammy; occasional lights could be seen in little stations along the coast; by chance, his carriage invariably stopped in front of the lamps marked “Gentlemen” and “Ladies.”
    He was smoking a cigarette. He was conscious of smoking it, of holding it between his fingers, of blowing out the smoke, and this was what was so baffling, so bewildering; he was conscious of everything, he kept on seeing himself without the intermediary of a mirror, he would catch sight of one of his own gestures or attitudes and feel almost certain that he recognized it.
    But he searched his memory in vain, he could not picture himself in any similar situation. Especially, without his mustache, and wearing a ready-made suit that somebody else had worn!
    Even that instinctive movement … half turning his head to glance at Julie, in the corner of the compartment, sometimes sitting with eyes closed as though asleep, and sometimes staring straight in front of her as though wrestling with some important problem.
    But Julie herself formed part of his memories. He felt no surprise at seeing her there. He recognized her. Perplexed, he resisted the notion of some previous existence.
    And yet, often, he was sure of it—he had always intended to note it down in the morning, but had never done so—three or four times at least he had dreamed the same dream, he had found himself repeatedly in a flat-bottomed boat with oars that were too long and too heavy to handle, in a landscape whose details he could recall even when awake and long after, a landscape he had never seen in real life, made up of greenish lagoons and hills of that purplish blue that one sees in the paintings of early Italian masters.
    Each time he had had that particular dream he had