The pitards, p.1
The Pitards, page 1
Georges Simenon
* * *
THE PITARDS
Translated by DAVID BELLOS
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Follow Penguin
1
In the shipping news column in the Journal de Rouen, under ‘Departures’:
‘Tonnerre-de-Dieu, under Captain Lannec, to Hamburg, with 500 tonnes mixed cargo …’
From Rouen pilot station to Villequier pilot station, by telephone:
‘In two hours you’ll have the Tonnerre-de-Dieu with 3m50 freeboard. Tell the bos’n his cousin from Paimpol has just turned up and sends greetings …’
‘Ahoy! The Picardie we told you was coming upriver has anchored at La Vacquerie instead.’
‘Storm brewing over your way?’
‘Blowing up nicely.’
For the third time, Mathilde Lannec put her hand to her mouth and deposited on the edge of her plate a blob of greenish string from the runner beans she’d been chewing.
Lannec pretended not to notice his wife’s behaviour or the sigh she gave to express her view of the meal, but a moment later he couldn’t help exchanging a glance with Mathias, his chief engineer, who’d been as quiet as the grave throughout dinner.
There were four of them at the mess table: Mathias, Émile Lannec, his wife Mathilde and Paul, the radio operator with a glass eye, who was barely more talkative than his colleague.
Moinard, the chief mate, was on watch on the bridge, and because the rain was coming down in sheets the second mate had been sent to the forecastle as lookout man.
‘You ought to have stronger lights put in,’ Mathilde decreed as the beef stew was served.
To tell the truth, the mess room was poorly lit. You could even stare at the yellow filaments in the bulbs without hurting your eyes. Lannec shot a glance at the chief engineer, who scratched his head.
‘Sorry, but I don’t have any other lightbulbs on board.’
‘Remember to buy some when we get to Hamburg.’
‘I’m afraid the wiring won’t take higher wattage.’
Madame Lannec fell silent, but her frown said what she was thinking. Were they trying to make fun of her? Not really. But something of that sort hung in the air.
Her husband was in a strange mood. She had not often seen him so playful or, more exactly, detached.
For instance, when she was staring at a glass smeared with finger marks, Lannec called out:
‘Campois!’
Campois was the steward. As he was from Fécamp, he was called ‘le Fécampois’, Campois for short.
‘Take care to wipe the glassware, won’t you?’
He said it so gently and ironically that it sounded more like a compliment than a reprimand.
The radiator was scorching hot. Now and again the engineer listened hard to the rhythm of the pistons, which made the bulkheads rattle.
Lannec, on the other hand, pricked up his ears at the grating sound of the wheelhouse chains.
‘We’re heading into the Heurtanville bend,’ he declared.
Or else:
‘We’re abreast of the Meule light.’
He couldn’t see a thing. The curtains were drawn over the rain-streaked portholes, and the atmosphere was so humid that drops of water ran down the enamel-painted bulkheads like beads of sweat.
Because Madame Lannec was present, the one-eyed radio operator and the chief engineer put on collars and ties for dinner, but Lannec couldn’t bring himself to dress up. His thick blue worsted pea-jacket was open over his shirt, showing up the pot belly that his sturdy appetite had given him. He had his elbows on the table and was leaning forwards to eat his soup.
There was a familiar odour in the air, a compound of cooking smells, engine oil, and the sweat of the four men whose quarters opened directly on to the mess room.
‘I’ll be back in five minutes,’ Lannec said as he stood up, grabbing his oilskins on his way out.
They were approaching Villequier. The freighter had slowed down to take on a new river pilot. Despite his oilskins, Captain Lannec was soaked through by the icy rain by the time he got to the bridge.
Moinard, the first mate, was standing stock still at the wheel in the gloom. The departing pilot was buttoning up his oilskins.
‘A glass of calvados?’
Lannec went into the chart house and filled two glasses.
‘Who’s taking over?’
‘Fatty Pérault.’
‘Still on the job, at his age?’
They were following the Seine downstream, but the river couldn’t be seen. Behind the darting raindrops there was just more rain, more wetness, and somewhere in all that dampness were two or three lights as hazy as eyes weeping tears.
‘Cheers! Another dram?’
A launch came alongside in the dark. The pilot went down the rope ladder, and another gleaming shape came over the railing and up to the bridge.
‘Is it stormy out there?’ Lannec asked the new pilot, whose job was to lead the ship to the open sea.
‘A fair swell.’
Lannec put off going back down to the mess room. He felt better up here, behind the rain-swept window of the bridge lit only by the halo of the compass light.
He liked to make out the dim sight of Moinard at the helm, standing there like a statue with his face right up to the windscreen as he concentrated on the course ahead, alongside the river pilot who was filling his pipe and muttering, ‘Left hand down, and look out for the fishing boat that must be somewhere over there …’
Lannec went up to Moinard and sighed:
‘You know, things aren’t great down below!’
Moinard didn’t respond, obviously. He never did. He carried on staring straight ahead, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t heard.
‘Has anyone seen my cigarette lighter?’
He went back into the chart house, which contained just a sofa and a table covered in charts, switched on the light, found his lighter and came across a piece of squared paper which he had to put under the light to read.
‘Moinard!’ he called out.
‘Yes, skipper.’
‘Have you been in here?’
‘No, skipper.’
‘Did you see anyone come in here?’
‘Nobody has been in the chart house.’
Lannec grunted, shoved the piece of paper in his pocket and went back down to the mess room.
‘You’d do well to go to bed,’ he said to his wife. ‘I have to take my turn on the bridge.’
The chief engineer had left the table and gone back to the engine room. The radio operator was hovering politely, not sure if he should stay or go. A green baize drape had replaced the tablecloth so as to make the mess room look more like a lounge.
‘Will there be high seas?’ Mathilde asked once she was alone with her husband.
‘Not very. There’ll be more of a swell when we get into the Channel.’
‘You seem to like the idea.’
‘Do I? Not at all.’
‘Admit it, you’re angry at having me on board!’
‘Of course not …’
The protest was no more than lukewarm. He gave his wife a kiss on her forehead as he pushed open the door to her cabin.
‘If you need anything, just ring the bell.’
‘To summon that boy with the dirty hands?’
‘I’ll tell him to wash his hands.’
‘I could barely eat a thing.’
‘Obviously.’
‘Obviously what?’
‘Nothing!’
Or everything! Her idea of living on board was madness itself. She’d been married to him for two years and had had plenty of time to get used to his absences, since he’d never stopped sailing ships.
But now he had a ship of his own! And that was the reason! He wasn’t just a skipper now. He was a ship owner, so she’d insisted on coming along.
‘Good night.’
‘You too.’
He was alone at last. He scratched his stubbly cheeks and poured himself a glass of water. He had a hangover. Last night, at the Café de Paris in Rouen, a few of them had drunk to the new freighter or rather, to the freighter that had changed owners.
It was an old English steamer that had already been at sea for sixty years under the name of Busiris.
‘What are we going to call her?’ Lannec wondered when he bought her. ‘I’d like to find a name that isn’t ordinary, goddammit.’
‘Call it the Tonnerre-de-Dieu!’
‘Tonnerre de Dieu’ was his favourite swear word.
It was another one of the evenings when they had all had a skinful. Lannec thumped the table with his fist.
‘Done!’
‘Bet you won’t go through with it!’
‘Bet you I will!’
He did not back down even in the face of his wife’s and mother-in-law’s tearful protests.
‘I think I have a right to be heard,’ his mother-in-law objected.
And she did, alas. A hundred times alas! Lannec and Moinard had gone into partnership to purchase the ship, but they hadn’t had quite enough to clinch the deal in cash. The bank that loaned them the balance required a guarantee from someone with visible assets.
Lannec’s wife’s mother, Madame Pitard, owned two
Her signature had done its job, and that’s why she considered herself to be part-owner of the Tonnerre-de-Dieu.
Who knows, maybe she had advised her daughter to live on board so as to keep an eye on the two men?
Lannec was gargling, though still in his oilskins, when he saw the second mate come in. Monsieur Gilles was a young man from Paris who wore a pencil moustache.
‘Is the weather clearing?’
‘Not a lot. I’ve come down to make my bed.’
Another complication! Mathilde Lannec wanted her own quarters, and so everything had to be turned inside out. She got Moinard’s cabin, Moinard got Monsieur Gilles’, and Monsieur Gilles was reduced to bunking on the bench in the mess room.
He had come down with his mattress and sheets and began to make up his bed.
‘All right, I’ll go back up on deck,’ Lannec sighed.
The Tonnerre-de-Dieu was a good ship, everyone had agreed last night. They don’t make ships like that any more; nowadays they skimp on the quality of the materials. Lannec even liked its narrow funnel, as it made the ship something of a curio.
On the stairway he bumped into Campois and winked at him. He had second thoughts once he’d gone past, and turned round to say:
‘You know something? You’ll have to wash your hands more often now.’
Lannec was a short man with a heavy chin – he was a Breton, after all – and small, mischievous eyes. Once he was on deck he leaned on the railing and made out the Courval lighthouse. A huge tanker was on its way down the Seine in front of the Tonnerre-de-Dieu. Up on the bridge Moinard must have stretched his arm out to the fog horn handle, because a long blast followed by two shorter ones could be heard.
That meant they were going to pass the tanker on the port side.
‘Who ever could have written that?’ Lannec grunted as he scrunched the piece of squared paper in his pocket.
He went through the friends he’d been with the night before. Friends? Not exactly. Just people you can have a beer with, like Bernheim, the shipbroker who’d got him the freight, the deputy harbourmaster, a tug master and a customs inspector …
‘You start with one old ship, tonnerre de Dieu, and you can end up with a whole fleet, like Fabre or Worms!’
He wasn’t stoked up by the drink so much as by being with a group of fellows in a well-lit café, by the chink of crockery and the waiter’s conniving smiles. Lannec felt he was turning into a superman. He could be heard all over the room, and the more he talked the more enthusiastic he got.
‘Let me tell you! My father was just a fisherman on a cod trawler. I went to sea at the age of fifteen, but look at me now …’
Lannec shrugged. It’s always embarrassing to remember what you said on occasions of that kind. The rain on his face was doing him good. Before going up to the bridge he stuck his head into the engine room, saw deep down below splendid steel parts in silent motion, and smelled a pleasing odour of hot engine oil. Mathias, the chief engineer, was talking to the lookout man.
‘All hunky dory?’
‘Hunky dory it is.’
Would anyone have dared to sabotage his engine? He got up to the bridge and stood next to the pilot, who had only fifteen more minutes on board.
‘A shot of calvados?’
It was a ritual they went through without thinking. Lannec filled two glasses, like he had done before. Moinard shot him a glance that meant to say, ‘May I go below decks?’
Moinard was a good guy, he really was. He did his job as chief mate just the way he would if he hadn’t been half-owner of the ship.
‘Wait a bit.’
The Seine was widening into the estuary. Despite the curtain of rain you could sense the glow over Le Havre, and there were more and more fishing boats around the banks, where there were shoals of sprats.
‘What are they saying about me in Rouen since I became an owner?’
‘That you’re a lucky man!’ the pilot replied, taking the wheel himself and giving it a quarter turn.
‘Are some people jealous?’
‘There are always jealous people.’
‘Who, in particular?’
‘You know, I don’t pay much attention to that kind of talk …’
‘A last dram?’
They clinked glasses. The pilot sounded his whistle to summon the launch to take him off.
‘I hear you’re taking your wife. Like some English captains do. Maybe there’s a good side to it …’
They were thinking of something quite different as they watched out for the few lights that shone through the watery fog.
‘There they are! Slow astern.’
Moinard operated the wireless. The boat slowed down in the current, and then there were voices in the dark and a slight bump against the hull.
‘Be seeing you!’ the pilot said as he held out his hand for a shake.
‘See you soon!’
A few more manoeuvres, and the Tonnerre-de-Dieu was on her own. Lannec gave the order to go full steam ahead.
He was going out to sea, for real, on his own boat! He blinked at the Hève light, which he’d spotted so many times before, and some of last night’s enthusiasm came back to him.
‘Georges!’
He didn’t often call Moinard by his first name.
‘Some bastard has tried to play a trick on me.’
As he said that he handed over the piece of paper he’d found in the chart house.
‘Have a read of that.’
The little light shone once again over the charts. Lannec checked they were on the right course and that there was nothing ahead of them, except for a liner all lit up in the far distance.
‘What do you think? Must be some idiot who wants to give us a scare, right?’
Moinard turned over the scrap in his fingers. The message on it had been written in crayon:
Don’t try to be too clever. A person who knows what he’s saying is telling you that the Tonnerre-de-Dieu will not reach safe haven. That person sends greetings to you and says hallo to Mathilde.
‘He knows my wife,’ Lannec observed. That detail hadn’t struck him before.
However, she did not live in Rouen, but in Caen, where her mother had given the young couple an apartment in one of the buildings she owned.
‘A practical joke, right?’
‘You never know,’ Moinard sighed, seeming not overly concerned.
‘What could they have done? Sabotage the engine?’
He suddenly felt fond of his old ship now he saw her as being under threat. He talked about her different parts as if he were speaking of a living being.
‘The rudder? We would already have noticed something. And the hull is as tough as they come …’
He gave a sudden jump and then burst out laughing. He’d had a fright on hearing a noise so strange from the forward hatch that at first he hadn’t realized what it was.
It was a cow mooing!
‘I’d forgotten …’
They had two on board, a pair of buxom Normandy cows for delivery in Hamburg, tethered on the open deck. A sailor had done his best to pitch a canvas awning over the animals, but even so rivulets of rain ran down their black-and-white flanks.
And now they were mooing, perhaps from fright at the mysterious sea.
‘Tell me it’s a joke. Isn’t it?’
Now they had left estuarial waters the ship got into its usual sway, and waves started breaking over the bow.
‘I bet my wife will get up.’
He wasn’t wrong. Down below, Mathilde opened her cabin door, in her nightdress, looked around for someone in the ill-lit mess room and finally espied the light-coloured sheets covering Monsieur Gilles as he lay in his bunk.
‘Are we at sea?’
Monsieur Gilles was already asleep. He just sighed and turned over in his bed.
‘Émile! …’ Mathilde called out in a half-whisper.
She listened, heard no response and went back into her cabin, but she could not get back to sleep for an hour. She kept the light on. She kept on staring at the enamelled bulkheads and found they were covered in stains.
‘It all needs a good scrub …’
The red leaf-pattern carpet on the floor was dirty too, with dark stains of who knows what. Then to cap it all was the smell, she would never get used to it. The bulkheads must have been not properly sealed, which would explain the odours of burned oil and coal.
‘Do you mind staying on watch for a moment longer?’ Lannec asked Moinard.
