French title: Le Déménagement
Year: 1967
Year Englished: 1968, tr. Christopher Sinclair-Stevenson
The Move a.k.a. The Neighbours - Georges Simenon
Emile Jovis uproots his family from a funky old apartment
in Paris, only to implant them in plastic box in a housing development situated
in the not quite suburbs, not quite country. In a bedroom painted not quite
ivory, not quite white, Emile tries to sleep but through the thin walls of the
cheapjack construction he hears the dirty words and rough sex of his neighbors.
They talk about a club, the Carillon Doré, and its strippers Irene and Alexa.
His eavesdropping makes Emile realize his discontent over
not only the move but his whole unlived life. His father, a mean atheist,
rigidly inculcated in Emile the religion of taking pains to fulfill social
duty. Be a good boy. Or else. Emile became a model employee and a paragon of
husband and father. He manages the Champs-Élysées branch of a travel agency
where he “sells holidays.”
But despite the outward success, eavesdropper Emile
realizes he is stuck in life, rah-rahing himself to be happy, that his wife and
son should be overjoyed – though he feels guilty that he has taken them away
from their friends at church and school. He feels the normal stress of a move
but his snooping has made plain to him that he has missed vast regions of life,
that he has never had contact with unimaginable people, living undreamed of lives.
Feeling the urge to get out of his rut and for once experiencing
life, our exemplar of the ordinary and mediocre seeks out the Carillon Doré. He
drinks too much. He feels invincible because he’s not used to hard liquor. He
talks too much, too out of character. He arouses the suspicion of the petty
gangsters that run and haunt the place. Unlike other Simenonian anti-heroes,
Emile never has a chance to find out that dropouts, crooks, artists and others
living on the margins are just human beings like himself, with the similar petty
desires and aversions.
The nightmare is vivid in parts but because Simenon is a
little too economical with the terse prose and cinematic treatment, the story goes
too fast and neither Emile nor his adversaries feel quite real. This novelette
is about 40 pages shorter than Simenon’s usual novelette. The story and tone
are familiar enough, given the reader has read a couple of Simenon’s
existential thrillers.
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