Nocturne

Once again, Corentin drew the mortuary slab out from the refrigeration unit and examined the closed eyes of the man. He dipped his head close, and he could feel waves of cold radiate from the waxy face. The man’s lips were a whitish blue and had sores around the edges. Corentin picked at a scabbed area with his finger and hooked a dry scab under his nail. He examined the dark red fleck and then wiped it onto the man’s forehead. So much about the man’s vacant expression reminded Corentin of his father. He was unsure where that man was now, not that he cared at all. His father had left the family home decades ago for a woman in Montpellier. Or so his mother had told him. Corentin believed that story for years until he saw a familiar-looking man outside of a bar in a neighboring village. The man wore a grubby shirt and had shellacked gray hair. He was enjoying an afternoon glass of pastis and playing a card game with some other men. Corentin considered calling out for his father, maybe offering to buy him another drink or lend him a few francs. Instead, he had walked over and asked his father to telephone home. His father waved his cards in midair and said Corentin was mistaken. “I have no wife, no son,” he said. “You must be looking for someone else.” The other men laughed and clinked glasses. They all studied their cards once more. Yet, as Corentin walked away, his father motioned for Corentin to return. He went back and leaned in, and his father grabbed the back of Corentin’s neck. “Foutre le camp!” he spat. And now Corentin was here, working in the mortuary as a night porter, only a few kilometers from that village bar. He couldn’t recall what he had done after hearing his father’s words. But it did not matter now. He leaned over the dead man’s face and raked his eyelids back, to look again into those eyes. He hoped for a spark of recognition, a memory of his father up close, angry, and too drunk to love anyone. But the eyes were pale and dull and unfamiliar. Corentin pushed the slab back into the refrigeration unit, welcoming the metallic clank of the insulating seal. The body would lie there for another day, anonymous in the dark, unloved and unclaimed, not a father, not Corentin’s. His was still out there, dying somewhere in a village square, ready to be brought in.

CHRISTOPHER LINFORTH

Christopher Linforth is the author of three story collections: The Distortions (Orison Books, 2022, winner of the 2020 Orison Books Fiction Prize), Directory (Otis Books/Seismicity Editions, 2020), and When You Find Us We Will Be Gone (Lamar University Press, 2014).