Thursday 19 January 2012

"Belle Famille," - by Arthur Dreyfus - Chapter 12

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"Nice Family," - résumé of chapter 12 - from original in French by Frencheuropean.


The restaurant cannot supply cucumbers, so Laurence and her husband go to buy some from a grocer's shop and go back to the restaurant.

Madec, who is very frightened of the Kappas, decides to find the scorpion, which his mother has hidden, because only the scorpion can protect him from the monster. While he is in the kitchen fetching a large meat fork from a drawer, he deduces that his mother must have hidden the key ring in a high place. So, he tries to reach the top of the cupboard by climbing onto a bar stool, onto which he places an upturned couscoussier, and finally on top of the cupboard, he makes out the shape of the scorpion. At the very moment when he grabs hold of it, his balance is disturbed and he falls over backwards, hitting his head on the corner of the table. As he falls, he skewers his neck on the meat fork. He dies. The noise does not wake his brothers.


Laurence, who leaves the restaurant to take the cucumbers to him, arrives at the chalet, finds that he's not in the lounge and comes across his body in the kitchen.


A small amount of blood has run from his throat. Without a second thought, she puts everything back in place, wraps the body in the tablecloth, cleans the blood-stained floor with a baby wipe soaked in bleach, puts that into the tablecloth and carries the body to the boot of her car. She drives to the edge of the holiday park and, in the rain, drops the body into a small, muddy, waste water drainage channel. Then she covers it with branches. She drives back.

"A short time later, a Peugeot 807 is seen parking in front of 'La Buona Tavola.' A woman in damp clothing is seen to get out. She is seen going back to her friends' table, tidying her hair, using her fingers as a comb, cutting out the cold part, which she deplored, of a 'four season pizza.'. She is seen eating. She is seen laughing."