Magnus by Sylvie Germain Read Free Book Online Page A

contaminate his body, imprison his youth. They hold his heart captive. He is the posthumous hostage of two predators whose death now guarantees them eternal impunity, and therefore a perpetual injustice to him. Whether or not there is any judgement to face in the hereafter does not concern him. It is here and now, before the world, that the mortified son would like to make his parents pay, and particularly his father.

    At the end of his third year of studies, he goes to Mexico for five weeks. This is the first journey he has made since emigrating to England and his first foray outside Europe. He goes off on his own to encounter, by himself, a country and a language that as yet he only knows through books and that torment him with caustic desire.
    When he arrives in this country he has the sense of finally meeting someone in the flesh after years of only hearing their voice. He encounters the vast, rugged, magnificent landmass of the language in which the bogus Felipe Gomez Herrera was entombed. After ten days in Mexico, he sets out for the state of Veracruz. He does not know what exactly he hopes to find there. He has no knowledge of where his father lies, or even if he was buried or cremated. He knows no one who could tell him about the fugitive’s last hours. His mother had announced only the brutal fact: the death of Clemens Dunkeltal by his own hand, with no other explanation. Then she had immured herself in her despair, so worn down by loneliness that little by little she died of it. So he wanders first of all through the town of Veracruz, its suburbs, port and shipyards. Sometimes he stops in the middle of the pavement, examines the facades of the houses, wondering if his father lived there, perhaps hid there. Or walking on the quayside, he watches the ships, one of which might in the past have carried the absconder. He scans the dark waters glinting with greasy brilliance in the harbour where rather than face justice that bastard, on his last legs and down to his last cent, maybe threw himself in. He juggles all day long with such hypotheses but settles on none of them.

    One evening, while drifting along in this way, he notices a woman walking down an avenue in front of him. Her step is confident, she has black hair plaited in a long thick braid, and terrific legs. Forgetful for a moment of his ruminations, he follows her for the sole pleasure of observing this figure that moves likes a dancer.
    At one point the woman steps off the pavement to cross the road, but hardly has she set foot on the highway than a car she has not seen comes speeding towards her. Adam rushes forward and manages just in time to grab her by the arm and pull her back. The reckless driver goes hurtling by, indifferent to the accident he almost caused. The woman is thoroughly dazed by the shock and the roar of the car, Adam is breathless. Eventually she says to him in English with a strong American accent, ‘Thank you, I think you just saved my life …’ Then, recovering herself, she repeats the same phrase in Spanish, searching for her words.
    The beautiful passer-by is Mary Gleanerstones. She comes from San Francisco and is spending a few days in Veracruz, accompanying her husband on a business trip. She absolutely insists on introducing Adam to Terence, her husband, whom she was on her way to join at their hotel, and she invites him to have dinner with them.

    The Gleanerstones are older than he is. Mary, who calls herself May, is about thirty, and her husband close to forty. His dark chestnut hair has gone completely white at the temples, and the whiteness of these two little wavy wisps soften his irregular-featured face. In the course of the evening Adam detects in Terence a discerning eye and delicacy of attention, ever alert behind his easy-going manner and sense of humour, and in May a mixture of toughness and passion, impatience and determination, pride and irony. With dark eyes, a very straight nose, strong widely-spaced cheekbones,