Tropic Moon (18 page)

“Yes, an orange soda. Indeed! Didn't they forbid me whiskey? Whiskey doesn't exist!”

He said it without conviction, however. There were times like that—he was completely calm and collected, entirely self-possessed, and he saw things in the cold light of day.

But he couldn't! Not yet! Or then … Maybe, for example, he was capable of suddenly jumping overboard! And yet he knew that he never would.

The ship's bow gracefully split the gray-blue sea. You could sit in the shade in the terrace of the bar. A sailor was painting the inside of the air shafts red.

Timar promised to be good. With Blanche and everyone in La Rochelle and La Pallice. He'd see the ships leaving for Africa. And the young people. And the government officials.

But he wouldn't say a thing, nothing at all. Only sometimes at night, and only at night, he'd suffer from moonstroke—his attack, as they'd say—and that would help him, in the emptiness of his bed, to find once again the too-white flesh of Adèle, and the stifling atmosphere, and the aftertaste of sweat, and the smell of the black paddlers, while his wife in her nightgown brewed him a cup of herbal tea.

People continued to turn their backs on him. But he was so calm and so good at putting one and one together without any problem or even a trace of worry that he felt obliged to toy with them a bit, if only for show: he would look them in the face with his small, feverish, ironic eyes and he would say out loud, “Africa doesn't exist.”

He took care to pace the deck for another quarter of an hour, always repeating, “Africa—it doesn't exist. Africa …”

THIS IS A NEW YORK REVIEW BOOK

PUBLISHED BY THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS

435 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014

www.nyrb.com

Copyright © 1933 by Georges Simenon Limited, a Chorion company

Introduction copyright © 2005 by Norman Rush

All rights reserved.

Cover image: The Lapa Neighborhood at Night; © Vantoen Pereira, Jr.

Cover design: Katy Homans

The Library of Congress has cataloged the earlier printing as follows:

Simenon, Georges, 1903–

 [Coup de lune. English]

 Tropic moon / by Georges Simenon ; introduction by Norman Rush ; translated by Marc Romano.

  p. cm. — (New York Review Books classics)

 ISBN 1-59017-111-x (alk. paper)

 I. Romano, Marc. II. Title. III. Series.

 PQ2637.I53C613 2005

 843'.912—dc22

2005006143

eISBN 978-1-59017-562-0
v1.0

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