The Methods of Maigret ( PDFDrive )

CHAPTER 8
« ^ »
Sunday lay so heavily in the air as to become almost nauseating. Maigret used to
claim openly, half seriously, half in fun, that he had always had the knack of
sensing a Sunday from his bed, without even having to open his eyes.
Here there was an unprecedented noise of bells. They were not proper church
bells, but small, high-pitched ones, like chapel or convent bells. One was led to
the belief that the quality, the density of the air was not the same as elsewhere.
One could distinctly hear the hammer striking the bronze, which gave out some
sort of a note, but it was then that the phenomenon would begin: a first ring
would carry into the pale and still-cool sky, would extend hesitantly like a smoke
ring, becoming a perfect circle out of which other circles would form as by
magic, ever increasing, ever purer. The circles passed beyond the square, the
houses, stretched over the harbor and a long way out to sea, where small boats
were anchored. One felt them above hills and rocks, and they wouldn’t cease to
be perceptible until the hammer struck the metal once more and other circles of
sound were born so as to reproduce themselves, then others, which one listened
to in innocent amazement, as one watches a firework display.
Even the simple sound of footsteps on the rough surface of the square had
something paschal about it, and Maigret, glancing out of the window, was
expecting to see first communicants with their small legs becoming caught up in
their veils.
As on the previous day, he put on his slippers, trousers, and slipped his jacket
over his nightshirt with the red embroidered collar, went downstairs and, going
into the kitchen, was disappointed. Subconsciously he had been hoping to repeat
the previous day, find himself beside the oven again, with Jojo preparing the
coffee, with the clear rectangle of the door open to the outside. But today there
were four or five fishermen there. They must have been given some liquor which
strongly pervaded the air. On the floor of the room a basket of fish had been
upset; pink hogfish, blue and green fish of which Maigret didn’t know the name,
a sort of sea serpent with red and yellow blotches, which was still alive and
coiling itself round the foot of a chair.
“Would you like a cup of coffee, Monsieur Maigret?”
It wasn’t Jojo who served him, but the patron. Perhaps because it was Sunday.
Maigret felt like a frustrated child.