Nagasaki by Emily Boyce Éric Faye Read Free Book Online Page B

stronger, the risk of slipping up even higher. My biggest fear was that I might shout out during a nightmare. He would have had the shock of his life hearing his cupboard scream. Having given myself away, I would have had to come up with an explanation; he would have kicked me out in the middle of the night or kept me there and called the police. To begin with, I could hardly sleep, scaredstiff I was going to lose this haven where I was rebuilding myself, recovering from the bumps and bruises life had given me. Of course, I could tell myself I didn’t often have nightmares. It must have been several years since I last had one and I was a long way from my past worries here. But who knows what’s going to float back up to the surface? A hidden door can suddenly open in the night, letting the baddies in to take their revenge for being banished from your waking thoughts. You thought you’d seen the last of them, but they were only waiting for the clocks to strike midnight before reappearing in our night-time dramas, getting down from their Trojan horses and sowing terror around them.
    In the kitchen I had to be even more attentive, to the point of obsession. Most of the time, I helped myself to food from the bins behind a local 24-hour self-service café which, by throwing out products barely past their sell-by-date, was unwittingly keeping me fed. When there was torrential rain, or if I wasn’t feeling well, I drew modestly on my host’s supplies, making do with rice or pasta. I took nothing he would miss. Almostnothing. Very rarely, I gave in to the temptation of a yogurt or a drop of fruit juice. That’s all. With time, I had come round to his tastes; I even appreciated them.
    But careful as I was, did he really notice nothing? I sometimes told myself he had found me out but was putting up with me.
And
was putting up with me. And, or but? Either way, he was working around me, the way people sometimes live alongside a mouse for a while: out of curiosity or pity. Then one day they get the traps out and the mouse is gone before you can say cheese.
    In the space of a year, however, there was only one red alert. It was an afternoon in springtime, at a time of day when theoretically there should have been no need to keep an ear out. I didn’t hear him come home early. The sun was so nice on the tatamis! Just right, not a ray too much. I was reading a novel I had picked at random from the bookcase in the living room. It was based on the idea of doubles and I couldn’t put it down. I was lost to the world; I didn’t hear the cars driving round the centre or the little Shiba yapping next door. That’s when he opened the front door. The vibration ofhis footsteps on the floor warned me just in time. I disappeared inside the oshiire; the sliding door was open just wide enough. My leap wasn’t human but an animal act, precise and soundless. A few steps more and he came into my room. I held my breath, terrified he would notice me. My final hour in this paradise had come for certain. I was wrong … A few seconds later, he put a large cardboard box down on top of the tatamis. So his coming into the room had nothing to do with me. I began to breathe again, very softly. A thin stream of air. He could have flung open the closet to put the box away inside, but he didn’t. Instead, he took out a computer and various accessories.
    All the time he was standing there, I only saw him in profile. His appearance up close didn’t really surprise me since I had glimpsed him on the street at a distance before letting myself into his house: dull-looking, nothing special.
A decent sort
. There are hundreds of people with the same kind of nondescript face in every city. Before he had come in, I had managed to slide the door of the oshiire back across, so I was able to get a good look at him through the narrow opening withoutfear of being seen. There were not two metres between us. And while he stood there, I studied him intently. He was