Three Bedrooms in Manhattan by Georges Simenon Read Free Book Online Page A

cracked now and then, and deftly she drew out their pleasure in being just the two of them, alone together, separate from the rest of the world.
    When at last she finished, there was a silence that filled with the sounds drifting in off the street.
    They listened to them with astonishment. Then she asked again, much more softly this time: “Are you happy?”
    Did he really say the words that came next, or did they simply echo inside him?
    â€œI’ve never been happier in my life.”

3
    I T WAS AN odd sensation. She was speaking. He was moved by what she was saying. But not for a moment did he lose his clarity of mind. He said to himself, She’s lying!
    He was sure she was lying. Maybe she wasn’t making it all up, though he felt she was capable of that. But she was certainly lying by distorting, exaggerating, or leaving things out.
    Two or three times she poured herself a drink. He stopped counting. He knew now that this was her hour and that the whiskey kept her going, and he pictured her on other nights, with other men, drinking to keep her spirits up, talking, endlessly talking, in that husky, alluring voice.
    Did she tell them exactly the same things? Did she sound just as sincere?
    What was most surprising was that he didn’t care. He didn’t hold it against her.
    She told him about her husband, a Hungarian, Count Larski. She said she’d been married when she was nineteen. And already she told a lie, or half a lie, since she claimed she’d been a virgin. She went on about how brutal he’d been on their wedding night, forgetting that a little earlier she’d spoken about a romance she’d had at seventeen.
    He was suffering, not because of the lies but because of the images they brought up. If he resented her for anything, it was for dirtying herself in his eyes with a shamelessness that bordered on insolence.
    Was the whiskey making her talk like this? There were moments when he said to himself, coldly: She’s a three-o’clock woman, a woman who never wants to go to bed, who has to keep her emotions at fever pitch no matter how, who has to drink, smoke, and talk until she falls into a man’s arms out of sheer nervous exhaustion.
    And yet he stayed. He hadn’t the slightest urge to run away. The more clear-sighted he became, the more he realized that Kay was indispensable to him, and he gave himself up to that fact.
    That was it exactly. Gave himself up. He couldn’t tell at what moment the decision had been made, but it was decided. He wouldn’t struggle, no matter what he found out.
    Why didn’t she shut up? It would have been so simple. He would have put his arms around her. He would have whispered, “We’re starting all over again—none of that matters.”
    Starting all over again from zero. The two of them. Two lives from zero.
    From time to time she would break off, “You’re not listening.”
    â€œYes, I am.”
    â€œYou’re listening, but you’re thinking about something else at the same time.”
    He was thinking about himself, her, everything. He was himself and someone watching himself. He loved her and still he judged her without mercy.
    She said: “We lived in Berlin for two years. My husband was an attaché at the Hungarian embassy. It was there, or more exactly in Swansee, by the lake, that my daughter was born. Her name is Michelle. Do you like the name Michelle?”
    She didn’t wait for an answer.
    â€œPoor Michelle! She’s with one of her aunts, a sister of Larski’s who never married and who lives in a huge castle a hundred kilometers from Buda.”
    He didn’t like the huge romantic castle, which may or may not in fact have existed. He asked himself, How many men has she told this story to?
    He scowled and she noticed.
    â€œIs the story of my life boring you?”
    â€œNot at all.”
    It was probably all necessary, like the last cigarette he was