Her husband still calls himself an occasional smoker. He knows
one by one they sit upon the steps, each taking their place as if
he isn’t and he knows she knows, but he says it all the same, like
the process was a random one, though god knows its been very
the way he refuses to tell people he’s unemployed. All those lies are
carefully planned. With the morning sun bouncing off their
justified, he thinks, by the unsatisfactory nature of the classification
white faces, it’s difficult to gage their exact expressions, though you
system. If people will continue to classify other people according to
expect them to be straight-faced and serious. They sit so still, after
one or two facts, then people ought to have the right to make up
all, resisting the temptation to talk to one another. You wonder
those facts. Something like that, anyway. She thinks he’s just being
how they communicate at all. It is now time that the last few are
difficult, which is true – but that was always his point. And it’s
finding their places and you know that they sense this, even those
not as if she doesn’t bend the truth every now and again. She
on the first step – who cannot see those assembled behind – or
denies illness with frightening fervour. I’m never ill, she tells people,
those at the edges, who heads never turn – not once. And yet they
when the truth is that she always is. But it’d be gloomy to go on
know when to start. They are very well-trained. There is no need for
about it, wouldn’t it? She remembers making a pledge to herself at
a conductor – though maybe this is where the sun comes in. Is
the age of sixteen never to give stock replies. Hey there, how are
that what it is? A song to the sun? I wish I might never know
you? I’m fine thanks, how are you? Yeah, I’m good. She tried to be
for sure. Their jaunty hums please me all the more for not knowing
sickened by the routine, but in the end she was comforted by it.
what their purpose is, though the tune is too bouncy to be beguiling.
(Pierre Monceau and Jean-Pierre Sertin)
