Tropic Moon by Georges Simenon Page A

fixed on the white blur of his face. She watched him during meals from the counter where she sat. She watched him when he was playing belote or cards. And there was a judgment to her look, an indulgent one perhaps, but a judgment for all that.
    What did she think of him? That was what he wanted to know.
    â€œYou shouldn’t drink Pernod. It doesn’t do you any good.”
    But he drank it anyway. Because he was wrong and she was right!
    They’d had to wait for official papers to come from Paris before all the legal formalities could be concluded. The papers had arrived by boat five days earlier. Timar hadn’t wanted to go down to the pier to get them. From his room he’d spotted the steamship from France pulling into the outer harbor. He’d followed the course of the launch as it made its way to the shore.
    â€œSince the hotel has been sold, there’s nothing to keep us from leaving as soon as tomorrow,” Adèle had said. “Just a day by flatboat and we’ll be at the concession.”
    But they hadn’t left that day, or the day after, because Timar had thrown up difficulties, always finding an excuse, always slowing down the preparations.
    He was furious. Adèle’s eyes were fixed on him and he knew all too well what she was thinking. She thought he was scared, that now that it was time to leave Libreville he’d fallen prey to irrational panic, that he was hanging on to the little habits that had become his whole life. It was true. The café—which had seemed so hostile to begin with, which he had hated so much—he looked at it now through different eyes. He knew every last detail. Silly things seemed touching to him, like the native mask that hung on the pearl-gray wall. The mask was a glaring white. The wall had been whitewashed. The relationship between the two tones was remarkably fine and delicate.
    Only the polished brass bar made him feel safe, since it was just like the ones in any provincial café in France, with the same bottles, the same aperitifs and liqueurs.
    He was safe, but only for the length of his morning walk, when he’d pass through the market and pause for a moment to watch the fishermen pulling their boats onto the sand.
    Conversation went on humming around their table in the café. From time to time Adèle, motionless, replied to someone’s question. She had her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands, and she was keeping a close watch on Timar, who was going through cigarette after cigarette, angrily puffing out clouds of smoke.
    â€œHave you already got a load for the German cargo ship that comes in next month?”
    â€œMaybe,” Adèle would say.
    And she waved away the cloud of smoke that lay like a smudge over Timar’s face.
    Bouilloux joked around, accentuating the grotesqueness of his foot-high white toque. He’d decked it out with a tricolored cockade.
    â€œAllow me, dear friend, to pour you a glass of ambrosia. And how much does it cost me, this ambrosia? When I was a customer, I paid eighty francs a bottle. But now?”
    Everyone laughed. Bouilloux, encouraged, thought he’d risk something obscene.
    â€œWill madame be sleeping here tonight? With this young man? Boy, escort the prince and princess to their hall of mirrors!”
    Timar was the only one who didn’t laugh. And yet his discomfort was physical instead of moral, as if he’d taken a breath of polluted air. Sweat streamed down his forehead. He’d noticed that he sweated more than the others did, and he was ashamed of it. It seemed like a defect. Sometimes Adèle leaned over him in bed and wiped his chest off with a towel.
    â€œHow hot you are!”
    Her body was hot, too, but the heat didn’t have the same intensity to it. And her skin was always smooth.
    â€œYou’ll see—you’ll get used to it. When we’re there …”
    â€œThere” was deep in the jungle, but it