Consequences (22 page)

He hung up. As dusk unrolled like a veil of purple velvet to the level of the fiery horizon, three men armed with sharpened knives ran out of the kitchens and charged straight to the pickup truck that held the buck.

Everything was dexterously completed in a few minutes. These guys knew what they were doing. Each of them went back inside with a nice piece under his arm, a haunch of venison, pounds of cutlets, meat to cook up at the best price there was. They'd left the head; propped against the slatted side of the truck, it seemed to have turned in his direction.

He went out for a second, long enough to cover it with a white robe from the motel; then went back inside.

He sat down again near Myriam. The choice had been so terrible, so difficult. Being in love wasn't enough; being in love was no longer the foremost consideration. Moved by his feelings for her, he took her hand and kept it pressed against his lips; he was upset, but he also felt helpless, incapable of fighting himself. If he was proving to be so stupid, then no one could do anything about it, no one could save anybody from that much ignorance.

Moments of liberation followed moments of anguish. He got up again. This time, the path clearly seemed more difficult to follow, a lot longer, a lot more dangerous. He walked to the stove and turned on the gas, pulled up a chair to the table, and
sat down with his pencil and notebook. The gas was letting out a soft, sustained whistle. “Dear Marianne . . . ,” he wrote, then stopped there and kept still for a long moment. Time felt suspended.

Suddenly, their ship had foundered. Suddenly, it was no longer a question of ending their days together nor of supporting each other until the end of time; it was no longer a question of anything. “Dear Marianne . . .” This wasn't easy.

He thought again about the brother he'd almost had and who would obviously have kept all this from happening—would have prevailed against their mother's brain. Outside in the parking lot, less than three hundred feet from him, the robe covering the animal's head made a vaguely gleaming spot in the darkness. Even if you weren't superstitious, you couldn't see it as a good omen. Running over a buck never brought any good. The opposite, in fact. Truly, the opposite.

Inside, the view was of him slipping a cigarette between his lips and reaching for his lighter.

Outside, the view became the cottage exploding like a lit-up pumpkin, splashing the surrounding area with its golden light.

CATHERINE HÉLIE © EDITIONS GALLIMARD

Philippe Djian is the renowned
author of more than twenty novels, including
Assassins, Frictions, Impuretés,
and the bestseller
37º2 le matin,
published in the United States as
Betty Blue
and adapted for film by Jean-Jacques Beineix. A #1 bestseller in France in 2009,
Unforgivable
(
Impardonnables
) received Le Prix Jean Freustié, a prize given to a French author for a work in prose. Djian lives in Paris.

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Also by Philippe Djian

Unforgivable

(Translated from the French)

Impuretés

Frictions

Ça c'est un baiser

Vers chez les blancs

Sainte-Bob

Criminels

Assassins

Sotos

Lent dehors

Crocodiles

Échine

Maudit manège

Betty Blue

(Translated from the French)

Zone érogène

Bleu comme l'enfer

50 contre 1

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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2010 by Philippe Djian

English translation copyright © 2013 by Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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First Simon & Schuster trade paperback edition September 2013.

Originally published in French in 2010 by Éditions Gallimard.

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Cover design by Barbara DeWilde
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 978-1-4516-0759-8

ISBN 978-1-4516-0760-4 (ebook)