Act of Passion by Georges Simenon Read Free Book Online

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    I'm lucky, for it seems I can't have children. But I'm scared to death of catching some filthy disease so I come around regularly for an examination, just to play safe...'
    I saw her once a month, sometimes oftener. She usually went to confession about the same time. A general house-cleaning, so to speak. Each time she would go through the same motions, would peel off her skin-tight drawers and stretch out on the couch.
    I could have had intercourse with her on her very first visit. But instead I spent months desiring her. I would think about it at night in bed. And, with eyes closed, I would take my wife while conjuring up Laurette's broad white thighs. I thought of it so much that I began watching for her visits and once, passing her on the square, I could not help launching, with a nervous laugh:
    'So, you don't come to see me any more?'
    Why I resisted so long, I don't know. Perhaps because of the exalted idea I entertained of my profession. Perhaps because I was born in fear.
    She came. She went through the ritual gestures, watching me with eyes full of curiosity which soon changed to amusement. She was only eighteen, scarcely more than a child herself, yet she looked upon me as a grown person looks upon a child whose thoughts she is able to read.
    I was very red and clumsy. I joked nervously:
    'Have you had a lot of them lately?'
    And I imagined all the men, most of whom I knew, pushing the laughing girl down under them.
    'I don't count them, you know. I take things as they come.'
    Then, suddenly frowning, as if an idea had just occurred to her:
    'Do I disgust you?'
    With that, I made up my mind. A second later I was on top of her, like a great animal, and it was the first time that I ever made love to a woman in my office. The first time also that I ever made love to a woman who, although not a professional, was totally without a sense of shame, who was only mindful of her pleasure and of mine, increasing both by every possible means and using the very crudest words.
    After Jeanne's death, Laurette continued to come to my office. Later on she came less often, for she became engaged, and to a very nice young fellow at that. But it didn't change her.
    Was my mother aware of what was going on between the mayor's chambermaid and myself? Today, I wonder. There are many questions like this which I ask myself now that I am on the other side, not only about my mother, but about almost everybody I have known.
    My mother has always moved about noiselessly, as though in church. Except when she went out, I can't remember ever seeing her in anything but bedroom slippers and I have never known any other woman able to come and go as she did, without a sound, without, so to speak, disturbing the air, so that as a small child I was often given a terrible fright when I ran into her, thinking her somewhere else.
    'Have you been there all the time?'
    How often I have pronounced those words, blushing as I did so!
    I don't accuse her of curiosity. I think, however, that she listened at doors, that she has always listened at doors. I even think that, if I told her so, she would not be the least bit ashamed. It is the natural result of the idea she has of her role in life, which is to protect. And in order to protect, one has to know.
    Did she know that I slept with Laurette before Jeanne's death? I am not sure. Afterwards, she could not have helped knowing. It is only now, after all this time, that I realize it. I can still hear her anxious voice saying:
    'It seems that when she is married, Laurette will go to live at La Rochelle with her husband who intends to open a shop again ...'
    There are so many things that I understand and among them some which frighten me, frighten me all the more because for years I lived without ever suspecting them! Have I really lived? I begin to wonder if I have, to think that I have spent my whole life in a waking dream.
    Everything was easy. Everything was regulated. My days followed each other