"How you doin'?" - one of our customary greeting. But in some parts of Africa, the question posed when meeting someone is "How's the pain?"
How's the Pain? - an appropriate title for this Pascal Garnier crime noir novel featuring sixty-something Simon Marechall, a hit man continually assailed by stomach pain.
How's the Pain? - not only a crime thriller but also a work of existentialism written in much the same spirit as Albert Camus' The Stranger and about the same page length.
Pascal Garnier frames his tale thusly: morose Simon Marechall books a hotel room in the small French town of Val les Bains. Simon is on the cusp of retirement and needs a driver, preferably young and upbeat, to provide the needed emotional support for his three hour trip down to the coast town of Cap d'Agde so he can carry out his final job.
Simon finds his man whilst sitting on a park bench. Twenty-one-year old Bernard Ferrand from nearby Bron happens to be in town paying a visit to his mother. Although Bernard had the two small fingers of his left hand sliced off by a machine in the factory where he works, he doesn't mind a bit - after all, he's right handed and the pain isn't that great. Following a few more exchanges, Simon can see happy-go-luck, down-to-earth simpleton Bernard will make the perfect driver.
Pascal Garnier is all about lacing his existential tales with generous helpings of black humor. The team of hit man Simon and simpleton Bernard provides the author with ample opportunities - matter of fact, each exchange between these two gents contains more than a cupful of the comic.
Ah, Simon and Bernard - think of sullen tough guy Sean Penn or the Spanish/French actor Jean Reno teaming up with a smiling, always willing to please Stan Laurel-type. To take one example, picture Bernard's reaction when he discovers Simon isn't a common, everyday exterminator like he said he was, "I have a pest-control business. Getting rid of rats, mice, insects, cockroaches and so on." but an honest-to-god hit man, just like in the movies. Bernard says, "I'd have rather you just got rid of rats." Simon answers, "Rats, people - they're all the same. They breed just as quickly."
Pascal Garnier also takes the time to makes a blistering study of other characters, existential to the core, of a young mother and her baby, an older taxidermist on the lookout for a husband and most notably, Bernard's mother, a woman left on her own after Bernard's father took off when the baby was born.
Bernard's mom recounts her failures: she failed as a hat maker (too ornate; nobody actually bought one), failed as a hippie shop owner (her partner, a hippie, ran away with all the money), failed as a dog groomer (one of her machines turned a dachshund into a charred hot dog) and failed as a fortuneteller (her only three clients were killed in ghastly accidents within days of their reading). As she says in her advanced age, "My past was a disaster; my present is a joke; thank god I have no future!"
Lastly, let me mention violence in this and other Pascal Garnier novels is never romanticized or gratuitous - quite the contrary, any killing is usually expressed in no more than a sentence "He aimed the gun and fired, the man dropped on the spot." This to say, the French author's novels are technically crime fiction but they could just as easily be categorized and shelved as literary fiction or existential fiction.
I'm an enthusiastic new fan. I plan to read and review all twelve of Pascal Garnier's short novels that have been translated into English. Thank you, Gallic Books!
Bernard takes time out to enjoy the simple pleasures of life out in nature. "He stood up and looked for a really flat pebble. Skimming stones was another of his talents. The pebble glanced across the surface of the water like a flying saucer, bouncing six times before reaching the opposite bank. It was a hot day. He took his clothes off and lay in the current, holding his injured hand up towards the sky like a periscope so as not to get the bandage wet. He wasn't thinking about anything now. It was just nice to dissolve into the water."
French novelist Pascal Garnier, 1949-1960
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