The Widow Read Online Free

Tilly. A fat girl with scarlet cheeks and eyes popping out of her head who wears her dresses too short. She goes to St. Amand to learn shorthand and typing…. A real bitch!”
    Ducks and chickens were stirring in their baskets. Forty women, perhaps more, all dressed in black, were squashed into the seats, and most of them sat silent and staring, their heads, along with the motion of the bus, swayed from left to right while every now and then all their bosoms lunged forward.
    Ten, nine, eight miles farther along the man was still walking on, like someone going nowhere in particular with nothing particular in mind. No luggage, no packages, no walking stick, not even a switch cut from the hedge. His arms swung freely.
    â€œLéon began with Lolotte, and she was laughing so loud that the people in the movie kept telling them to be quiet.”
    The big red bus was drawing nearer. A gray car overtook it. Not local people. They came from far, and they had far to go. The car was traveling fast. It started up the slope. The walking man heard its approach without slackening his pace; he merely turned his head a little and raised one arm, with no great hope of success.
    The car did not stop. The woman beside the driver asked, “What did he want?”
    Turning around, she saw a tall silhouette still moving from the shadow of one tree trunk to the shadow of the next, then almost at once the car was over the top and going down the slope on the other side.
    The bus followed, rumbling in low gear. It vibrated more than ever. The widow Couderc, behind the driver, kept glancing anxiously upward, as the packages on top of the bus could be heard rattling about.
    The man on the road raised his arm once again. The bus pulled up just by him. The driver, keeping his seat, opened the door with a familiar movement.
    â€œWhere to?”
    The man looked around him and mumbled, as though it were the most natural thing in the world, “I don’t mind. Where are you heading for?”
    â€œMontluçon …”
    â€œThat’ll do.”
    â€œMontluçon? Eight francs …”
    The bus started off again. Standing inside, the man hunted through his pockets, fetching out a five-franc piece, then a two-franc bit, and finally, after searching his other pockets without any particular anxiety, found another fifty centimes.
    â€œHere’s seven francs fifty. I’ll get out a bit before Montluçon.”
    The old wives on their way back from market looked at him. The widow Couderc looked at him, but not in the same way as the rest of them. The girl sitting by the driver looked at him too: she had never met a man like this before.
    The bus was laboring up the last of the slope. Little puffs of cool air came in through the open windows. The widow Couderc had a lock of hair hanging over her brow, her bun was on the point of falling down and her pink slip—a queer bluish pink—showed under the hem of her dress.
    There was a sound of bells, but the church could not be seen. It must be midday. A house loomed at the side of the road, and a woman got out of the bus opposite the doorstep where two children sat.
    It was odd: there were forty passengers, and only one of them, the widow Couderc, looked at the man any differently from the way you would look at just anybody. The rest were placid and quiet, like cows in a meadow watching a wolf browsing in their midst without the least astonishment.
    And yet he was a man such as they had never seen in this bus which took them to market each Saturday. The widow Couderc had sensed this at the very first glance. She had seen him thumb the car before he stopped the bus. She had noticed that he was empty-handed; and you just don’t walk empty-handed along the main road without so much as knowing where you’re going.
    She was not forgetting to keep a lookout for the antics of the packages on the roof, but all the same she did not take her eyes off him, and she took note