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.“That photograph you talked about, the one that was pinned up in the room, you said Lili was going to get it for you?”“Yes.”“But she hasn’t, yet?”I looked at him.“No …” I answered.I took three steps.“It’s in Old Mother’s bag.”“And you haven’t tried to get it?”“No.Why, should I have?”He nodded, and I went off toward the harbor.I followed the people walking along the road.Most of them were families, with children.A noisy, happy little crowd.I stopped outside the farm so I would not be caught among them.A sick ewe was stretched out in front of the barn door.The Stork’s father had separated her from the others.For two days, she had been tied with a rope to a nail.Almost outside.The cats were circling around her.The sow went nowhere near her.She could smell death.She didn’t like it.At midnight, they set off the fireworks.Young men climbed on to boats and tossed flowers on to the water.The waves buoyed the flowers.Projectors lit them.The air was mild.I was not sure whether I felt good.I think I was feeling the need to be with someone.I wandered round on the quay for a moment.I went back up into my room.Late in the night, I heard an accordion, dance music from the square had started up again, and I thought that Lambert would probably not be able to sleep.La Hague, a few hours before the rain.Stormy weather.My skin can sense the smell of sulfur.It always could.It can sense the lightning coming, hours before the first flashes.That is the way it is with skin.Some skin.I got up late.It felt too good in the sheets.I could not tear myself away.Max was beneath the shelter, by his boat.He was ready to go to sea, that is what he said, just a matter of choosing the right day.“Will you take me as far as the lighthouse?” I asked him, leaning out of my window.He looked up.“The currents have the dangerousness of the breaking waves.No one can go.”“But people used to go, before?”He scratched his chin and looked at the lighthouse.The currents were black, as if they had been spewed out by the night.“I have to ask Raphaël.”When I went up to him, he was frowning.He was putting his tools away.“I always ask Raphaël, for everything.”I did not insist.I went down to the shore.A little bird with a yellow beak was pecking at sand fleas.The solitary imprint of my soles.My shadow, insignificant, on the road.Morgane came up to meet me.“Why don’t you move on?” she said at last.I hesitated before replying.“I feel good here … These few square miles are enough for me.”I was lying.They were not enough.They were no longer enough.“And you?”“I’ll never leave without Raphaël.”“And the boy I saw you with at the fête?”“That was nothing.He’s from Beaumont.”We came back along the quay.The sea was coming.We could hear the water lapping.“The fellow who gives me work said that later, if I like, I can buy a moped and come and sell dresses in his boutique in Cherbourg.”“Haven’t you got your license?”“No, but I do know how to drive.”I looked at her.The wind was blowing her hair on to her face.A little bubble of saliva was trapped in the fold of her lip.She was beautiful.I did not feel jealous.At another time, no doubt, her youth would have been unbearable.“Are you looking at me?”“You’re beautiful.”“I’m getting old,” she said, making a face.“Certainly you are!”“I’m going to be thirty, do you realize!”It made me laugh.She cocked her head to one side.“Still, I think I ought to lose weight … Don’t you think?”“I don’t know …”“Neither do I, that’s why I don’t, as long as I don’t know.”“It’s going to rain,” I said.She looked out toward the lighthouse.We went through the garden and into the house.She took the rat out of her pocket and put it on the sofa.She went over to the window.“It’s not raining …”“It’s just that the sky is so gray.”“Gray, that doesn’t mean rain.”She sat down at the table, looked over her latest crown, adjusting what was not right.She did not feel like working.She said, “I’m fed up with doing this!”She went and stood next to the window.The rat climbed on to the table, and went into its box.I picked up a pearl.The rat showed its teeth.“Now it’s raining,” she said.She turned to me.“You were with him yesterday …”“Yes.”She picked up her crown.“What did you do?”“Nothing.”She cut the thread with her teeth.She threaded several pearls one after the other, tying knots in between them.Strands of hair swept across her face.She tucked them back, but they were rebellious strands, and they fell forward again.I liked watching her, her hands around the pearls.She eventually put the diadem down.She looked down at her hands.Her nails, the skin gnawed.“Sometimes, I think I should get away from here.”Her eyes filled with tears.Drowning for an instant, and then the tears spilled over.She crushed them with the back of her sleeve.It happened so suddenly.There were tears on the table, too.She tried to erase it all with a smile.She spread her hands.“I can’t do a thing without him.”What could I say to her? I wanted to put my hand on hers.She withdrew.She did not want me to touch her.That is what we all believe, that we will never be able to manage without the other person
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