To which he replied, in the same tone:
‘Nothing … Joseph … The whole thing …’
They went to get the English papers from the news vendor near the landing stage.
‘Who was that?’ Joseph’s son asked, his legs dangling from his chair.
‘Nobody!’ he was told. ‘Stop asking questions, it’s a bad habit.’
His mother pitched in:
‘Eat!’
And everything sparkled, everything crackled, people and things, the light-coloured dresses, the plates, the dish of lamb, the lake and the sun, a blinding, chaotic universe, and in it the boy, clumsily holding his fork, searched for the extraordinary man who had just plunged into it.
THE BEGINNING
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PENGUIN CLASSICS
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Penguin Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.
First published in French as Chez Krull by Gallimard 1939
This translation first published 2018
Copyright © Georges Simenon Limited, 1939
Translation copyright © Howard Curtis, 2018
GEORGES SIMENON ® Simenon.tm
MAIGRET ® Georges Simenon Limited
The moral right of the translator has been asserted
Cover: Maison sur la digue by Léon Spilliaert. Belfius Art Collection
ISBN: 978-0-141-98677-7