ZKV 63: 'The constrictor'

 

ZKV63

 

THE CONSTRICTOR

 

Étienne, à chaque frisson de l’eau, recevait un léger coup de l’homme qu’il avait tué, le simple coudoiement d’un voisin qui rappelait sa présence. Et, toutes les fois, il tressaillait. Continuellement, il le voyait, gonflé, verdi, avec ses moustaches rouges, dans sa face broyée.

 

My grandad has various accoutrements in his fireplace. They hang on a stand with four hooks – a pair of tongs, a poker, a small scuttle and a round brush with a long handle. Next to the stand there lies a pair of bellows made of wood, leather and embossed brass that is fixed with tiny nails on each side, except for the dark wood of the two handles.

I’m sitting in the college library, in a deep armchair of shiny blue-black leather, one of two either side of a huge fireplace. It is 1962. I am reading a livre de poche edition of Zola’s Germinal and have reached the point where Étienne Lantier, in the flooded mine, is haunted by the floating corpse of Chaval, the man he has killed. 

I’m alone in the library. It is dark outside. And suddenly I feel my chest being squeezed like a pair of bellows. I have no breath to hold. My heart skips several beats. And since then I have been haunted by le voisin qui rappelle sa présence.