I read this book for the Mount TBR Reading Challenge hosted over
at My
Reader’s Block from January 1 – December 31, 2016. The challenge is to read
books that you already own.
French title: Le
Cheval Blanc
Year Englished: 1980
The White Horse
Inn – Georges Simenon
This 1938 novella opens with Maurice Arbelet, a petite bourgeoisie in Nevers (central
France), out on a weekend walk with wife Germaine and two sons, Emile and
Christian. At first, Simenon uses Emile to explore the subtleties of memory –
when they are old, what will kids remember of their parents and why? – but
Simenon’s focus changes once the young
family stops in Pouilly, near Neuilly, at the Hotel du Cheval Blanc of the
title.
Maurice (I
pronounce this how the British do, Morris) is immediately attracted by the
atmosphere of the hotel, struck at how very pleasant it seems. Indeed the first
chapter is a little masterpiece, a fine example of Simenon’s ability to portray
a milieu and its people.
And what people! Old Nine plumps her overweight body on a
stool and preps vegetables for the restaurant all day without stirring. One
maid, Theresa, is separated from her drunken husband and raising her young son
Henri, who is a budding psychotic. The other maid, Rose, is only 16, happily
living away from her drunken father though she must endure the wandering hands
and more from her boss. The proprietor Jean Fernande fondles and beds Rose (in
France the age of consent is 15) as Madame Fernande shuts her eyes to the
situation. Protecting a young female does not even enter Madame Fernande’s
mind, as she figures the affair does not mean anything and while banging a
young girl may make her drunken father angry and violent, it may also ward off Jean’s
periodic spells of rage at conventions and baffled despair that his life is
never going to change. Basically, all the people at The White Horse Inn live
the life of the inn’s dog, chained day and night to circumstances none of them
can change.
Maurice and Jermaine pull up short when they recognize
her Uncle Félix Drouin, the porter, handyman, and night watchman. When he lived
in the colonies, he was traumatized. Memories of the trauma have given him PTSD.
Plus, he is subject to recurrences of malaria. Their petite
bourgeoisie concern for appearances pinched, Maurice and Germaine fear that somebody else
will recognize him so they want him to go farther away from Nevers than
Pouilly.
Indeed, a pleasant spot, seemingly placid, is filled with
desperate people just as unable to communicate with each other as the rest of
humanity. They are the kind of people who figure not talking is better so as not
to reveal disagreeable things that are a lot harder to live with than silence.
A little time passes. One afternoon Maurice returns alone
to the inn. He’s hoping to flirt with Rose and persuade Uncle Felix to enter a kind
of nursing home run by monks. Felix ‘s reaction to the proposal is an illustration
of alienated, apathetic rage. Provoked by the conversation, Felix gets a
revolver, bent on fulfilling the promise to himself to kill somebody. Maurice
is injured in a fight to which he was only an innocent bystander.
So, given plenty of incident told in Simenon’s terse laconic
style, yet without plot, a discerning reader may find the novel somewhat
diffuse, without coherence, even if some sections are remarkable, especially
those that delineate the daily grind of The White Horse Inn.
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