Read an Excerpt
I'm Gone
By Jean Echenoz New Press
Copyright © 2002 Jean Echenoz
All right reserved. ISBN: 1565847466
Chapter One
"I'm going," said Ferrer. "I'm leaving you. You can keep everything, but I'm gone." And as Suzanne's gaze drifted toward the floor, settling for no good reason on an electrical outlet, Felix Ferrer dropped his keys on the entryway table. Then he buttoned up his overcoat and walked out, gently shutting the front door behind him.
Outside, without a glance at Suzanne's car whose fogged-up windows kept silent beneath the streetlamps, Ferrer began walking the six hundred yards toward the Corentin-Celton metro stop. At nearly nine o'clock, this first Sunday evening in January, the train was all but deserted. Only a dozen men were inside, unattached, as Ferrer seemed to have become in the last twenty-five minutes. Normally he would have rejoiced to find two empty facing benches, like a little compartment for himself alone, which in the metro was his preferred seating arrangement. But on this evening he scarcely gave it a thought, distracted but less preoccupied than he would have imagined by the scene that had just been played out with Suzanne, a woman of difficult character. Having envisioned a more vehement response, cries interspersed with threats and fiery insults, he was relieved, but somewhat put out by his own relief.
He set down his valise, which contained mainly toilet articles and a change of underwear, and at first he stared straight ahead, mechanically skimming over the advertising panels for floor coverings, dating services, and real estate listings. Later, between the Vaugirard and Volontaires stations, Ferrer opened the valise to remove an auction catalogue featuring traditional Persian artwork, which he leafed through up to Madeleine, where he got off.
Around the Madeleine church, strings of unlit Christmas lights hovered above streets still more deserted than the subway. The decorated windows of the high-priced shops reminded the nonexistent pedestrians that they would survive the end-of-year festivities. Alone in his overcoat, Ferrer skirted the church toward an even number on Rue de l'Arcade.
To find the building's entry code, his hands forged a path under his clothing: the left one toward the address book slipped into an inside pocket, the right toward his glasses stuffed into a breast pocket. Then, having passed through the main door, ignoring the elevator, he firmly attacked the service stairs. He reached the sixth floor less out of breath than I would have imagined, in front of a badly repainted brick-red door whose hinges bespoke at least two attempted break-ins. No name on the door, just a tacked-up photo curling at the corners, depicting the lifeless body of Manuel Montoliu, an ex-matador-cum-banderillero, after an animal named Cubatisto had opened his heart like a book on May 1, 1992: Ferrer tapped lightly on the photo twice.
While he waited, the nails of his right hand dug into the inner surface of his left forearm, just above the wrist, where numerous tendons and blue veins intersected under whiter skin. Then, her hair very dark and very long, no older than thirty nor shorter than five foot ten, the young woman named Laurence who had just opened the door smiled at him without saying a word before closing it behind them both. And the next morning at around ten, Ferrer left for his studio.
Continues...
Excerpted from I'm Gone by Jean Echenoz Copyright © 2002 by Jean Echenoz. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
