Classic in
Translation. The translator of this novel was a British scholar of French
literature and an editor of the Penguin Classics series. Perhaps to augment his
not-great salary as a Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford, he translated
numerous Simenon novels such as Maigret
at the Crossroads, Maigret
Goes Home, and Maigret Meets a
Milord. The book reviewed here appears to be the only non-Maigret novel he
Englished.
French title: Le
Veuf
Published: 1959
Englished: 1982, Robert Baldick
The Widower –
Georges Simenon
In this 1959 noir, Simenon presents a compact examination
of distress, tragic and throbbing like something by Ligeti. He
returns to his perennial situation of a man living a routine existence, serenely
deluded that he’s reached nirvana only to have an unexpected event
expose his meagre existence for the desert that it is. Blind spots – his are so
opaque he can't see himself as a man of silence, withdrawal, and highly-strung tightness. Therefore, he can't see that his own wife is
fighting demons of her own, the least of which is her desire not to
upset her blissfully ignorant husband.
Arriving home from his work as a commercial designer,
Bernard Jeantet is worried not to find his wife waiting for him in their modest
apartment in the Porte Saint-Denis. He learns from the police, after two days
of suspense, that she has poisoned herself in a room of a luxurious furnished
hotel on the Champs-Elysées. Jeantet is disturbed by how she staged doing away
with herself - white dress, flowers, champagne – and by the realization she
spent every Wednesday with a “friend” in the room. Per strict policy, the hotel cannot
reveal the name of the “friend.”
Jeantet is told by chambermaid that a copper on the scene
picked up the note his wife had left. He wants the letter very badly indeed, convinced
that it will explain to him the motive of an act which he seeks to understand.
Wasn’t Jeanne happy since he had married her after patching her up and
harboring her, eight years earlier, when she was cuffed around on the street by
her pimp?
Settling uneasily into his widowerhood, Jeantet ponders,
for the first time, his life with Jeanne in their poky apartment, her
indifference to housekeeping, the mediocrity of an existence made up of
monotony and uneventful tranquility. They have zilch contact with other people save
her relationship with a Miss Couvert, old lady who lives on the top floor with
Pierre, a boy of 10 years that she raises.
An unwanted conversation with Miss Couvert brings out the
woman’s assertion that “Jeanne did not even try to be happy.” She makes other revelations
that, shall we say, give Jeantet pause. They also dispel Jeantet’s obsession to
get hold of the suicide note. As the psychological novels sometimes do, this
one ends on a hopeful note, that Jeantet taking a small step toward human contact and assuming adult responsibilities to himself and others.
Click on the year
published to go to the review of the existential noir pulp.
No comments:
Post a Comment