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HIDEAWAY FOR A YEAR

Rights sold to Catalonia (1984), China (Shangai Translation), Denmark (Arvids), Italy (Barbès), Korea (Book 21), Poland (Emka), Portugal (Gradiva), Serbia (Geopoetika), Spain (Salamandra), China (Shangai Translation), Hungary (Goncal Kiado KFT), Russia (AST-Release Holdings) and Taiwan (Acropolis).

English and German sample translation available

He was surprised to see food disappearing from his kitchen: a bachelor in his fifties in the southern part of town set up a camera and discovered that a woman he didn’t know was wandering round his house while he was out.”

A minor news item in the Nagasaki morning daily.

It really does all start with disappearances, with things being moved.

Shimura-san lives alone in a quiet house opposite Nagasaki’s shipyards. He’s an ordinary man who curses the chanting cicadas every morning on his way to the city’s weather station, who has lunch alone and goes home early to a retirement devoid of colour except for the bland shades of order and regularity.

For some time now, he has kept a scrupulous record of levels and quantities of food stocked in each of his kitchen cupboards. In this world where even the unpredictable can change nothing, something extraordinary has happened.

Sitting at his computer and thanks to his camera, Shimura-san eventually spots the intruder. There really is someone in his house. He’s seen her profile. He watches her, waits till he is sure. Is it a hallucination, a ghost from his previous romantic failures, a bitter and vengeful former lover? In the end he calls the police. The guest is taken away and locked in a cell.

At the time of the trial we learn that this woman who is barely older than her host found refuge in his house on her travels. He would go out without locking the door, the only concession in his life of control. We learn that she liked to feel the sunlight filtering across the room in the afternoon and coming to rest on her skin, and the smell of clean sheets in the cupboard she used as a bedroom. This woman with no past sensed danger like an animal, detected the sound of footsteps and bolted for cover, taking shelter. She asked for nothing more than to be here, in no one’s way. She too was alone.

We discover plenty more: about the memories a place has and about memory in general, in the final letter that the “hideaway” writes to the owner of those now deserted premises.

Eric Faye has had several books published by Stock: Croisière en mer des pluies (1999), Les cendres de mon avenir (2001), La durée d’une vie sans toi (2003), Mes trains de nuit (2005), Le syndicat des pauvres types (2006), L’homme sans empreintes (2008) and Nous aurons toujours Paris (2009).