Back to the Classics #10

I read this book for the Back to the Classics Challenge 2020.

Classic with a Place in the Title:  Le petit homme d'Arkhangelsk was first published in French in 1956. Archangel is an old port city in the far north of European Russia.

The Little Man from Archangel – Georges Simenon

In a small provincial town where he sells old books and collects rare stamps, everyone knows Jonas Milk. In his early forties, of Russian-Jewish origin, he has always been a part of the market neighborhood, as he follows his daily routine from his shop to the cafe opposite. Married to the beautiful Gina, nearly twenty years his junior, they form a mismatched couple, but their neighbors wink eloquently, fully knowing her parents pressured the delinquent girl  into  marriage to the 40-year-old virgin so they could get some peace and quiet. Gina herself had warned Jonas off, but, of course, he didn’t listen, giddy with the sense his narrow life was going to change.

Life changes, as it always does, one fine day, out of the blue, when Gina disappears, taking with her several priceless stamps that Jonas knows she can’t sell because all the dealers know Jonas has priceless stamps and would call the cops. The neighborhood, however, notices Gina’s absence and, being the cunning merchant shits they are, become suspicious. Jonas, embarrassed that his tolerance of her serial cheating will become public knowledge, evades questions, claims Gina went to Bourges. Could the plump little man from Archangel, seeming harmless, have killed his wife? Poor Jonas, living in cocoon alive but not living is silently  shunned, accused by mere rumor of a crime he did not commit.

A reader could examine this novel as a typical existential critique of a life cravenly lived. But there’s also Simenon’s close examination of small social circles, in this case a humble neighborhood. Furthermore, we have another example of Simenon’s stock character – the little man, the ordinary guy, socially integrated in a certain milieu, but who, confounded by fate, victim of bad luck, of malice, of ignorance or of his own anxiety and depression, sees himself little by little banished from the only society he knows.

As in his other psychological thrillers, Simenon sets this novelette in a limited number of dreary spots: the dusty smelly bookshop, the cafe, the market. As always with Simenon, there are lots of smells: espresso, vegetables, armpits. The action happens inside the main character, in the darkness of his soul, where the most secret, the most frustrated, the most shameful feelings hide. What is fascinating in this story is that we are witnessing, on the one hand, the intimate drama of Jonas giving his assent to irrational ideas, but also his dismayed resignation the breakdown of communication and shattering of assumptions that cause to snap the wires that connect his brains and his sense of self-preservation.

Granted, it may not be the most cheerful reading in our days of outbreak and ennui. But this is a story rich in an atmosphere, without false twists, moving towards a painful conclusion.