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Pascal Garnier
Pascal Garnier was born in Paris in 1949. The prize-winning author of over sixty books, he remains a leading figure in contemporary French literature, in the tradition of Georges Simenon. He died in 2010.
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Sensing the atmosphere, the cat crept under a quilt at the other end of the garage, wisely deciding this was not the moment to claim its meagre rations. The weather was neither good nor bad; there was only a blank sky like a blind man’s eyes. Brice felt stiff and weak. His body needed to move about, loosen up a bit. He decided to go to the chapel he could see from his window, at the very top of the hill. He didn’t even think about his ankle as he strode up the slope. His walking stick whipped the brambles mercilessly. A drum was pounding in his chest, cymbals clanging in his ears. Snails braked sharply as his heavy shoes crossed their paths.
His anger kept him going at the same furious pace until the top of the hill, but as he reached the threshold of the chapel he collapsed in a heap, red-faced and short of breath. Seen from a distance through binoculars, the chapel appeared larger than it was. Never could a donkey, an ox and a family of Palestinian émigrés have fitted inside at the same time. Besides, there was no longer any roof, or a cross, only the façade to deceive you. The whole sky was visible through it. He lay flat against the stone slabs with his mouth wide open. He felt the urge to graffiti that stupid blank sky, to spray-paint, ‘Piss off, the lot of you’. Not a trace of the divine, damn all, nada.
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