Act of Passion by Georges Simenon

the winter sports. Another year something else.
    As for this business of the shadow, it did not happen all at once, as in the case of my man on the street. But I couldn't find any better image.
    I can't even place the thing within a year or so. My disposition apparently did not change, I did not lose my appetite, and I had the same inclination for work.
    There just came a moment when I began to look around me with different eyes and I saw a city that looked strange to me, a pretty city, very neat, very luminous, very clean, a city in which everybody greeted me affably.
    Why did I have that sensation of emptiness then?
    I began looking at my house too, and I asked myself why it was my house, what connexion there was between these rooms, this garden, this wrought-iron gate adorned with a brass plate bearing my name, and me.
    I looked at Armande and I had to keep telling myself that she was my wife.
    Why?
    And these little girls who called me Papa ...
    I repeat, it didn't happen all at once, for, in that case, I would have been very much worried about myself and would have consulted one of my colleagues.
    What was I doing in a peaceful little town, in a charming comfortable house among people who smiled at me and cordially shook my hand?
    And who had fixed the order of my days, which I followed as scrupulously as if my life depended on it? What am I saying! As if from the beginning of time it had been decided by the Creator that this order should inexorably be mine!
    We entertained frequently, twice or three times a week. Good friends, who had their day, their habits, their little foibles, their armchair. And I watched them with a certain terror, saying:
    'What have I to do with them?'
    It was as if my sight had grown too keen, as if, for example, it had suddenly become sensitive to ultraviolet rays.
    And I was the only one to see the world in this way, the only one to be troubled in a universe that had no idea of what was happening to me.
    In fact, for years and years I lived without being conscious of all this. I had scrupulously done the best I could, everything I had been told to do. Without trying to know the reason. Without trying to understand.
    A man must have a profession, and Mama had made a doctor of me. He must have children, and I had children. He must have a house, a wife, and I had all these. He must have distractions, and I drove a car, played bridge and tennis. He must have vacations, and I took my family to the seashore.
    My family! I would look at them around the dining-room table and it was as if I didn't recognize them. I would look at my daughters. Everybody said they resembled me.
    In what way? Why?
    And what was this woman doing in my house, in my bed?
    And these people sitting patiently in my waiting-room, whom I called into my office, one by one? ...
    Why?
    I continued to go through the same daily motions. I was not unhappy, you mustn't think that, but I had the impression of running around in circles.
    Then, little by little, a vague longing took possession of me, so vague that I hardly know how to speak of it. I lacked something and I didn't know what. Often my mother, between meals, will say:
    'I think maybe I'm a little bit hungry.'
    She isn't sure. Just a diffused uneasiness which she quickly satisfies by eating a piece of bread and butter or some cheese.
    I too was hungry, undoubtedly, but for what?
    It came so insensibly, this uneasiness, that it is impossible, I repeat, to date the beginning of it within a year or two. I paid no attention to it. We have been so conditioned to think that what exists, exists; that the world is really as we see it, that we must do this or that and never act otherwise...
    I shrugged my shoulders.
    'Bah! A slight depression ...'
    Was it, perhaps, because of Armande, who did not give me enough rein?
    That is what I decided one day, and thenceforth it was Armande and Armande alone who for me epitomized the over-calm city, the over-harmonious house, the family, work, all