The Murderer (Simenon novel)
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L'Assassin (1937, English: The Murderer) is a 'roman dur' by Georges Simenon set in Sneek, the Netherlands. The point of view taken is that of the antihero, a technique accentuated by frequent interior monologues. Time is concentrated in the first chapters: three days for the assassination and its immediate consequences. The last chapters are much more relaxed in this respect (six months): the psychological aspect then takes on much more importance than action.
Plot
On the first Tuesday of January, in Amsterdam, Hans Kuperus did not go to the meeting of the doctors of the Biological Association, nor to his sister-in-law, as he had long been accustomed to; he prowls around the snowy town, buys a gun and returns home to Sneek the same day: he has decided to murder his wife and her lover, Schutter, and then to commit suicide. The first two points of this program are carried out in the evening, near the isolated bungalow where the irresistible de Schutter brings his conquests. But Kuperus does not commit suicide: he goes to the café Onder de Linden where he meets, as he does every evening, the notables of the town, for whom the game of billiards has become almost a ceremony; then, he goes to his home where he sleeps with the maid, Neel. The following days, Kupérus plays the comedy of the man whose wife has disappeared and continues his relations with Neel, who has been hiding in the house, for five months, the German vagrant Karl Vorberg: we will learn later that he too is an assassin. For the sake of peace, Kuperus sends Vorberg to Amsterdam, where he provides him with subsistence.
On February 2, the bodies of the wife and lover are found. Kuperus is suspected, but there is no evidence against him. Here he is locked in his solitude, not knowing what people think, what Neel thinks; he sees his life as a void, as an "absence of life". His old friends advise him to leave Sneek; he does nothing, flaunts his affair with Neel, rejects all conformism: isn't this what he has killed? His old life with well-regulated habits. We find Kupérus in July; he stayed in Sneek where nobody speaks to him any more, except Neel who gradually has taken the place of his wife. Kuperus now knows that everyone in Sneek dreams of escaping the conformist dreariness. He escaped, but he returned, afraid of the void. He dwells on the past, while Neel patiently ogles his legacy, refusing to poison him, as Karl Vorberg suggested.
Cast
- Hans Kuperus, Dutch. General physician. Married, no children. 45 years of age.
- Neel, servant of Hans
- Karl Vorberg, lover of Neel.
See also
