Blood Wedding Read Online Free Page B

stairs. There is a taxi passing. She hails it. The driver wants to put the suitcase in the boot. No time! She lifts it onto the back seat and gets in.
    The driver says: “Where to?”
    She has no idea. She thinks for a moment.
    “Gare de Lyon.”
    As the taxi pulls away, she looks through the rear window. Nothing unusual, a few cars, pedestrians. She takes a breath. She must look like a lunatic. In the rear-view mirror, the driver is eyeing her suspiciously.

4
    Itis curious how, in emergency situations, one idea leads to another almost spontaneously. She cries out:
    “Stop!”
    Startled by the command, the driver brakes. They have not even gone a hundred metres. By the time the driver has turned around, she is already out of the car.
    “I’ll be right back. Can you wait here for me?”
    “Actually, love, it’s not exactly convenient . . .” mutters the driver.
    He looks at the suitcase she tossed on the back seat. Neither it nor his customer inspire confidence. She hesitates. She needs him, and everything is already so complicated . . . She opens her bag, takes out a fifty-euro note and proffers it.
    “Does this help?”
    The driver looks at the banknote, but he does not take it.
    “Oh, alright, go on then,” he says. “But be quick . . .”
    She dashes across the street and goes into the local branch of her bank. The place is almost empty. At the counter is a face she does not recognise, a woman. But she rarely comes in. She takesout her chequebook and sets it in front of her.
    “I’d like know the balance of my account, please . . .”
    The clerk pointedly looks up at the clock on the wall, takes the chequebook, keys numbers into the terminal and studies her nails while the printer clatters and whirrs. Her nails and her wristwatch. The printer seems to be performing a Herculean task, it takes almost a minute to spit out ten lines of text and numbers. The only number Sophie is interested in is the one at the bottom.
    “And my savings account?”
    The cashier heaves a sigh.
    “You have the account number?”
    “No, I’m sorry, I don’t know it by heart.”
    She does look sorry. And she is. The clocks reads 11.56. She is now the only customer. The other cashier, a tall man, gets to his feet, walks out from behind the counter and begins to roll down the shutters. Gradually, daylight is replaced by the clinical glow of fluorescent tubes. With this dim, clammy light comes a throbbing, muffled silence. Sophie does not feel well. Not well at all. The printer clatters again. She scans the figures.
    “I’d like to withdraw six hundred from the current account and . . . let’s say . . . five thousand from the savings . . .?”
    Her tone rises as she ends the sentence, as though asking for permission. She does this deliberately. It offers reassurance.
    A breath of panic on the other side of the counter.
    “You’d like to close your accounts?” the cashier says.
    “Er, no . . . [No, you are the customer, you get to decide] I just need a little temporary liquidity.” That’s good. The word “liquidity” makes her sound serious, grown up.
    “It’s just that . . .”
    The clerk glances in turn at Sophie, the chequebook she isholding, the wall clock ticking remorselessly towards midday, the colleague crouching by the glass entrance doors to lock them, rolling down the last of the window shutters and staring at the two women with obvious impatience. Sophie hesitates.
    The whole thing is more complicated than she expected. The branch is closing, it is noon, the taxi driver has probably seen the shutters being lowered.
    Flashing a faint smile, she says:
    “The thing is, I’m in a hurry myself.”
    “Just a minute, let me check.”
    There is no time to stop her, the clerk has already stepped from behind the counter and is knocking on the door of the office opposite. Behind her, Sophie feels the eyes of the other clerk who is standing idly by the door and would no doubt rather be sitting idly at a café table