Read Out of the Dark for Free Online

marching by. Cartau, Cartaud, Cartault, Cartaux, Carteau, Carteaud, Carteaux.

I WOKE UP at about eight o'clock: someone was knocking on the door to my room. It was Jacqueline. I must have had the haggard look of someone who hasn't slept well. She said she would wait for me outside.
    It was dark. I saw her from the window. She was sitting on the bench across the boulevard. She had turned up the collar of her leather jacket and buried her hands in her pockets to protect herself from the cold.
    We walked together toward the Seine and went into the last café before the Halle aux Vins. How was it that she was sitting there, across from me? The night before, getting out of Cartaud's car, I would never ha\'e dreamt this could happen so simply. I could only imagine spending many long afternoons waiting for her in the Café Dante, in vain. She explained that Van Bever had left for Athis-Mons to pick up their birth certificates so that they could get new passports. They had lost the old ones during a trip to Belgium three months earlier.
    She showed no sign of the indifference that had troubled me so much the night before, when I found them both with Cartaud. She seemed just as she had been before, in the moments we had spent together. I asked her if she was over her flu.
    She: shrugged. It was even colder than yesterday, and she was still wearing that thin leather jacket.
    'You should get a real coat,' I told her.
    She looked into my eyes and gave me a slightly mocking smile.
    'What do you think of as 'a real coat'?'
    I wasn't expecting that question. As if she wanted to reassure me, she said:
    'Anyway, winter's nearly over.'
    She was waiting for news from Majorca. And she expected to be hearing something any day now. She hoped to leave in the spring. Obviously, I would come with them, if l wanted to. I was relieved to hear her say it.
    'And Cartaud? What do you hear from him?'
    At the mention of the name Cartaud, she frowned. I had spoken in an ordinary tone of mice, like someone talking about the weather.
    'You remember his name?'
    'It's an easy name to remember.'
    And did he have a profession, this Cartaud? Yes, he worked in the office of a dental surgeon on the Boulevard Haussmann, next door to the Jacquemart-André Museum.
    With a nervous gesture, she lit a cigarette.
    'He might lend us money. That would be useful for our trip.'
    She seemed to be watching my reaction intently.
    'Is he rich?' I asked her.
    She smiled.
    'You were talking about a coat, just now… Well, I'll ask him to give me a fur coat …'
    She laid her hand on mine, as I had seen her do with Van Bever in the café on the Rue Cujas, and brought her face close to mine.
    'Don't worry: she said. 'I really don't like fur coats at all.'
    In my room, she drew the black curtains. I'd never done so before because the color of the curtains bothered me. Every morning the sunlight woke me up. Now the light was streaming through the gap between the curtains. It was strange to see her jacket and her clothes scattered over the floor. Much later, we fell asleep. Comings and goings in the stairway brought me back to consciousness, but I didn't move. She was still sleeping, her head against my shoulder. I looked at my wristwatch. It was two o'clock in the afternoon.
    As she left the room, she told me it would be best not to see each other tonight. Van Bever had probably been back from Athis-Mons for some time, and he was expecting her at their hotel on the Quai de la Tournelle. I didn't want to ask how she would explain her absence.
    When I was alone again, I felt as though I were back where I had been the night before: once again there was nothing I could be sure of, and I had no choice but to wait here, or at the Café Dante, or maybe to go by the Rue Cujas around one in the morning. And again, on Saturday, Van Bever would leave for Forges-les-Eaux or Dieppe, and we would walk him to the métro station. And if he let her stay in Paris, it would be exactly like before. And so