Bird in a Cage Read online

“There you are, Herbin.”

  “I am innocent!” I shouted at the top of my voice.

  “You’re not up to much. You didn’t even act surprised when Ferrie mentioned the husband’s corpse.”

  I must have had a funny look because he burst out laughing. I couldn’t take any more. That laugh completely annihilated me.

  “Got that down, Bache?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The bald man leaned forward. His bulging paunch squashed up against his old leather writing set. His face was inches from mine. I felt sick, his breath smelt of milky coffee.

  “Listen carefully, Herbin. When the three of you left the Dravets’, the registration card was under the sofa cushion. When Ferrie and Mme Dravet came back, they found a stiff, M. Dravet, and didn’t touch anything. After Ferrie’s statement this morning, my men went back to search the sofa, and the registration document wasn’t there. I therefore conclude that you entered Mme Dravet’s flat while she was out. You knew the only person there was the baby, providing a perfect opportunity for a man with no money who’s just out of jail. Only Jérôme Dravet came back in while you were looking over the place. He pulled his gun on you. You disarmed him and shot him point blank. In the course of the struggle the sofa cushions got thrown about and when you were putting them back in place you came across Ferrie’s registration card. Why did you take it? A stupid reflex action. Stupid, and also dangerous, since it has allowed us to catch you out.”

  He talked and talked, quite sure of himself and of being right.

  I’d stopped listening to him. My mind had wandered back into the strange labyrinth. There now was only one lounge at the Dravets’! I had destroyed the traces of the switch by my own hand.

  I could try telling them the truth, but I didn’t care to. How could I get them to believe such a truth? Nightmares are personal things that become absurd when you try to tell them to other people. You can experience them, that’s all you can do…

  The blue and yellow bird swinging over the bed of the little girl came to my mind. All I’d done with my time out of prison was to buy a silver-spangled cage. What a symbol! I was going to go back into a cage. Unless Mme Dravet, on learning of my arrest…

  “Tell me, inspector…”

  I must have cut him off in full flight. He went red in the face and looked aghast when he suddenly realized that I hadn’t even been listening to him.

  “What?”

  “What is Mme Dravet’s first name, please?”

  He looked at me, then at his sidekick, then at a piece of paper on his desk.

  “Marthe,” he bellowed spitefully.

  “Thank you.”

  There was nothing more for me to say.

  Marthe would have to decide what to do.

  Did you know?

  One of France’s most prolific and popular post-war writers, Frédéric Dard wrote no fewer than 284 thrillers over his career, selling more than 200 million copies in France alone. The actual number of titles he authored is under dispute, as he wrote under at least 17 different aliases (including the wonderful Cornel Milk and l’Ange Noir).

  Dard’s most famous creation was San-Antonio, a James Bond-esque French secret agent, whose enormously popular adventures appeared under the San-Antonio pen name between 1949 and 2001. The thriller in your hands, however, is one of Dard’s “novels of the night” – a run of stand-alone, dark psychological thrillers written by Dard in his prime, and considered by many to be his best work.

  Dard was greatly influenced by the great Georges Simenon. A mutual respect developed between the two, and eventually Simenon agreed to let Dard adapt one of his books for the stage in 1953. Dard was also a famous inventor of words – in fact, he dreamt up so many words and phrases in his lifetime that a ‘Dicodard’ was recently published to list them all.

  Dard’s life was punctuated by drama; he attempted to hang himself when his first marriage ended, and in 1983 his daughter was kidnapped and held prisoner for 55 hours before being ransomed back to him for 2 million francs. He admitted afterwards that the experience traumatised him for ever, but he nonetheless used it as material for one of his later novels. This was typical of Dard, who drew heavily on his own life to fuel his extraordinary output of three to five novels every year. In fact, when contemplating his own death, Dard said his one regret was that he would not be able to write about it.

  So, where do you go from here?

  If you feel like another novel of the night, take a look at Dard’s paranoid prison-escape classic, The Wicked Go to Hell.

  Or if you’re after something that packs more of a punch, pick up a copy of Martin Holmén’s ultra-gritty Scandi-noir debut, Clinch.

  AVAILABLE AND COMING SOON FROM PUSHKIN VERTIGO

  Jonathan Ames

  You Were Never Really Here

  Augusto De Angelis

  The Murdered Banker

  The Mystery of the Three Orchids

  The Hotel of the Three Roses

  María Angélica Bosco

  Death Going Down

  Piero Chiara

  The Disappearance of Signora Giulia

  Frédéric Dard

  Bird in a Cage

  Crush

  The Wicked Go to Hell

  Martin Holmén

  Clinch

  Alexander Lernet-Holenia

  I Was Jack Mortimer

  Boileau-Narcejac

  Vertigo

  She Who Was No More

  Leo Perutz

  Master of the Day of Judgment

  Little Apple

  St Peter’s Snow

  Soji Shimada

  The Tokyo Zodiac Murders

  Seishi Yokomizo

  The Inugami Clan

  PUSHKIN PRESS

  Pushkin Press was founded in 1997, and publishes novels, essays, memoirs, children’s books—everything from timeless classics to the urgent and contemporary.

  Our books represent exciting, high-quality writing from around the world: we publish some of the twentieth century’s most widely acclaimed, brilliant authors such as Stefan Zweig, Marcel Aymé, Antal Szerb, Gaito Gazdanov and Yasushi Inoue, as well as compelling and award-winning contemporary writers, including Andrés Neuman, Edith Pearlman, Erwin Mortier and Ayelet Gundar-Goshen.

  Pushkin Press publishes the world’s best stories, to be read and read again. Here are just some of the titles from our long and varied list. For more amazing stories, visit www.pushkinpress.com.

  THE SPECTRE OF ALEXANDER WOLF

  GAITOG AZDANOV

  ‘A mesmerising work of literature’ Antony Beevor

  BINOCULAR VISION

  EDITH PEARLMAN

  ‘A genius of the short story’ Mark Lawson, Guardian

  IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE SEA

  TOMÁS GONZÁLEZ

  ‘Smoothly intriguing narrative, with its touches of sinister, Patricia Highsmith-like menace’ Irish Times

  BEWARE OF PITY

  STEFAN ZWEIG

  ‘Zweig’s fictional masterpiece’ Guardian

  TRAVELLER OF THE CENTURY

  ANDRÉS NEUMAN

  ‘A beautiful, accomplished novel: as ambitious as it is generous, as moving as it is smart’ Juan Gabriel Vásquez, Guardian

  THE WORLD OF YESTERDAY

  STEFAN ZWEIG

  ‘The World of Yesterday is one of the greatest memoirs of the twentieth century, as perfect in its evocation of the world Zweig loved, as it is in its portrayal of how that world was destroyed’ David Hare

  WAKE UP, SIR!

  JONATHAN AMES

  ‘The novel is extremely funny but it is also sad and poignant, and almost incredibly clever’ Guardian

  BONITA AVENUE

  PETER BUWALDA

  ‘One wild ride: a swirling helix of a family saga… a new writer as toe-curling as early Roth, as roomy as Franzen and as caustic as Houellebecq’ Sunday Telegraph

  JOURNEY BY MOONLIGHT

  ANTAL SZERB

  ‘Just divine… makes you im
agine the author has had private access to your own soul’ Nicholas Lezard, Guardian

  ONE NIGHT, MARKOVITCH

  AYELET GUNDAR-GOSHEN

  ‘Wry, ironically tinged and poignant… this is a fable for the twenty-first century’ Sunday Telegraph

  KARATE CHOP & MINNA NEEDS REHEARSAL SPACE

  DORTHE NORS

  ‘Unique in form and effect… Nors has found a novel way of getting into the human heart’ Guardian

  RED LOVE : THE STORY OF AN EAST GERMAN FAMILY

  MAXIM LEO

  ‘Beautiful and supremely touching… an unbearably poignant description of a world that no longer exists’ Sunday Telegraph

  THE PARROTS

  FILIPPO BOLOGNA

  ‘A five-star satire on literary vanity… a wonderful, surprising novel’ Metro

  SONG FOR AN APPROA CHING STORM

  PETER FRÖBERG IDLING

  ‘Beautifully evocative… a must-read novel’ Daily Mail

  THE RABBIT BACK LITERATURE SOCIETY

  PASI IL MARI JÄÄSKELÄINEN

  ‘Wonderfully knotty… a very grown-up fantasy masquerading as quirky fable. Unexpected, thrilling and absurd’ Sunday Telegraph

  STAMMERED SONGBOOK: A MOTHER’S BOOK OF HOURS

  ERWIN MORTIER

  ‘Mortier has a poet’s eye for vibrant detail and prose to match… If this is a book of fragmentation, it is also a son’s moving tribute’ Observer

  THE BRETHREN

  ROBERT MERLE

  ‘Swashbuckling historical fiction… For all its philosophical depth [The Brethren] is a hugely entertaining romp’ Guardian

  BARCELONA SHADOWS

  MARC PASTOR

  ‘As gruesome as it is gripping… the writing is extraordinarily vivid… Highly recommended’ Independent

  THE LIBRARIAN

  MIKHAIL ELIZAROV

  ‘A romping good tale… Pretty sensational’ Big Issue

  WHILE THE GODS WERE SLEEPING

  ERWIN MORTIER

  ‘A monumental, phenomenal book’ De Morgen

  BUTTERFLIES IN NOVEMBER

  AUÐUR AVA ÓLAFSDÓTTIR

  ‘A funny, moving and occasionally bizarre exploration of life’s upheavals and reversals’ Financial Times

  BY BLOOD

  ELLEN ULLMAN

  ‘Delicious and intriguing’ Daily Telegraph

  THE LAST DAYS

  LAURENT SEKSIK

  ‘Mesmerising… Seksik’s portrait of Zweig’s final months is dignified and tender’ Financial Times

  TALKING TO OURSELVES

  ANDRÉS NEUMAN

  ‘This is writing of a quality rarely encountered… when you read Neuman’s beautiful novel, you realise a very high bar has been set’ Guardian

  JOURNEY INTO THE PAST

  STEFAN ZWEIG

  ‘Lucid, tender, powerful and compelling’ Independent

  FROM THE FATHERLAND, WITHLOVE

  RYU MURAKAMI

  ‘If Haruki is The Beatles of Japanese literature, Ryu is its Rolling Stones’ David Pilling

  THE BREAK

  PIETRO GROSSI

  ‘Small and perfectly formed… reaching its end leaves the reader desirous to start all over again’ Independent

  COIN LOCKER BABIES

  RYU MURAKAMI

  ‘A fascinating peek into the weirdness of contemporary Japan’ Oliver Stone

  CLOSE TO THE MACHINE

  ELLEN ULLMAN

  ‘Astonishing… impossible to put down’ San Francisco Chronicle

  MARCEL

  ERWIN MORTIER

  ‘Aspiring novelists will be hard pressed to achieve this quality’ Time Out

  POPULAR HITS OF THE SHOWA ERA

  RYU MURAKAMI

  ‘One of the funniest and strangest gang wars in recent literature’ Booklist

  LETTER FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN AND OTHE RSTORIES

  STEFAN ZWEIG

  ‘Zweig’s time of oblivion is over for good… it’s good to have him back’ Salman Rushdie

  MY FELLOW SKIN

  ERWIN MORTIER

  ‘A Bildungsroman which is related to much European literature from Proust and Mann onwards… peculiarly unforgettable’ AS Byatt, Guardian

  FISTS

  PIETRO GROSSI

  ‘There is more power and pathos in this short piece of spare, timeless prose than in most densely-written novels’ Independent

  THE LIVES OF OTHERS

  FLORIAN HENCKEL VON DONNERSMARCK

  ‘Both a political document and an enduring work of art’ John le Carré

  THE THINGS WE DON’T DO

  ANDRÉS NEUMAN

  ‘A literary heavyweight’ TLS

  SIXTY-NINE

  RYU MURAKAMI

  ‘A light, rollicking, sometimes hilarious, but never sentimental picture of late-sixties Japan’ Library Journal

  SHUTTERSPEED

  ERWIN MORTIER

  ‘Beautifully elegiac… a remarkable novel’ Gay Times

  Copyright

  Pushkin Vertigo

  71–75 Shelton Street

  London, WC2H 9JQ

  Original text © 1961 Fleuve Editions, département d’Univers Poche, Paris

  First published in French as Le Monte-Charge in 1961

  Translation © David Bellos, 2016

  First published by Pushkin Vertigo in 2016

  ISBN 978 1 782272 10 6

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission in writing from Pushkin Press

  www.pushkinpress.com