Read Villa Triste for Free Online

verge of springing into action and crushing Meinthe under a hail of fists. Meinthe stepped away from them and retreated toward the exit of the café, walking backward and never taking his eyes off them. They remained where they were, petrified under the grudging and yellowish light shed by the wall lamp.
    Now he’s crossing the station square, his coat collar turned up, his left hand clutching his scarf as if he’s suffered a neckwound. There’s a scanty snowfall. The flakes are so light and so thin that they float in the air. He turns into Rue Sommeiller and stops in front of the Regent. They’re showing a very old film called
La Dolce Vita
. Meinthe takes shelter under the movie theater’s awning and inspects the stills from the film, one by one, as he takes a cigarette holder out of his jacket pocket. He clamps the holder between his teeth and rummages through all his other pockets in search — no doubt — of a Camel. But there’s no cigarette to be found, and then his face is convulsed by tics, the same ones as before — the twitching in his left cheek, the thrusting of his chin — but slower and more painful now than they were a dozen years ago.
    He seems hesitant about which way to go: should he cross over and take Rue Vaugelas, which runs into Rue Royale, or should he continue on down Rue Sommeiller? A little below him, on the right, is the green-and-red sign of the Cintra. Meinthe stares at it, eyes asquint. CINTRA. The snowflakes swirling around those six letters turn green and red too. Green, the color of absinthe. Campari red … 
    He walks toward the oasis with arched back and stiff legs, and if he didn’t tense himself this way, he’d certainly slip and fall on the sidewalk, a disjointed puppet.
    The customer in the checked jacket is still there, but he’s no longer hitting on the barmaid. He’s sitting at a table in the back, beating time with his index finger and repeating, in a tiny voice that could be a very old woman’s: “And zim … Boom-boom … And zim … Boom-boom …” As for the barmaid, she’s reading a magazine. Meinthe hoists himself onto one of the stools and puts a hand on her forearm. “A light port, my dear,” he whispers.

5.
    I left the Lindens and moved into the Hermitage with her.
    One evening they came to get me, she and Meinthe. I’d just finished dinner, and I was waiting in the lounge, sitting quite close to the man with the sad spaniel’s face. The others were getting started on their canasta game. The women chatted with Madame Buffaz. Meinthe stopped in the doorway. He was wearing a very pale pink suit, and a dark green handkerchief bloomed from his breast pocket.
    The company turned toward him.
    “Ladies … gentlemen,” Meinthe murmured, bowing slightly. Then he walked over to me, stiffened, and said, “We’ll be waiting for you. You can have your baggage brought down.”
    Madame Buffaz asked me sharply, “Are you leaving us?”
    I lowered my eyes.
    “It had to happen sooner or later, Madame,” Meinthe answered, in a tone that brooked no opposition.
    “But he could at least have given us some advance notice.”
    I realized the woman was suddenly filled with hatred for me and wouldn’t have hesitated to turn me over to the police on the slightest pretext. The thought made me sad.
    “Madame,” Meinthe replied to her, “there’s nothing this young man can do, he’s just received orders signed bythe Queen of the Belgians.” They all stared at us aghast, clutching their cards in their hands. My usual neighbors in the dining room examined me with an air of simultaneous surprise and disgust, as if they’d just noticed that I didn’t belong to the human race.
    The allusion to the Queen of the Belgians had been received with a general murmur, and when Meinthe — no doubt wishing to stand up to Madame Buffaz, who was facing him with her arms crossed — repeated what he’d said, coming down hard on every syllable: “Do you understand me,