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Roger Monnerat 
Pierre Imhof, Translator
Dafydd Roberts, Translator
From The School of Shame
Translated from the German by Dafydd Roberts and Pierre Imhof
He woke at dawn, Silvie had gone, on the table lay the various stacks of paper, arranged alongside and on top of each other. Joris knocked on Silvie´s door, but received no reply. He heard noises in the dining room and went downstairs. An old woman brought his breakfast, but when he asked her whether she could tell him something she quickly went away and did not reappear.
Joris ate, taking his time over it. A sluggish blanket of cloud hung over the landscape, and it was only against the deep shade of hills, forests, trees and houses that one could make out a greyish light in which street lamps and lighted windows floated as bright, hazy blotches.
As Joris lit a cigarette, the owner approached his table. "You wanted to ask something? My mother," he said, pointing behind him with his thumb, "doesn´t speak to strangers on principle." Joris asked about the family of Angel Perreira, "You know, the young man from these parts who was killed in El Salvador some twenty years ago?"
"Perreira? I heard about it. The boy´s father, Jaime Perreira, lives down in the gorge, but I don´t know him personally. Perreira avoids people and people avoid him. You´d be better off asking Silvie, she knows the old man rather...." He stopped suddenly. "But that´s really none of my business," he went on, all embarrassed, and went away.
"Do you know where Silvie is?" Joris called after him. He didn´t expect a reply.
Old Perreira´s house wasn´t hard to find. A little bit above the bridge was a turn-off into the gorge, a track which meandered among the rocks and passed over a number of narrow bridges to end at a gate, where the narrow valley broadened out into a bowl. Two setters came running, barking all the way, but turned aside some 20 yards before reaching Joris to strike out in different directions, head down into the bushes. They watched Joris from their posts as old Perreira made his way from the house to the gate.
He was tall and gaunt and walked slightly bent, or rather it seemed as if his bird´s head were thrust forward on a long, curving neck. He wore no hat, and from his head a spiky bush of black hair stood out in all directions. Black too were the bushy eyebrows. He had a flat face, big bright eyes, a short nose and full, soft lips. Perreira stopped at the gate, placed a foot on the middle bar, and offered Joris a cigarette which he had probably been rolling inside his jacket pocket as he came up. The hand disappeared inside the pocket again, while for a few moments he scrutinised Joris silently, then produced a second cigarette, to light it from the small flame that Joris held out to him. "So?" he said. Joris remained silent. From a distance the old man looked like a vulture, from close up like a clown, an old clown, an old clown with eyes as bright and expressionless as a wolf´s. "Well," Joris replied, guardedly.
"Silvie told me everything. She came up last night on her bicycle and got me out of bed." He spoke slowly, shaking his head.
"I´m sorry about what happened to Angel," Joris started to say, but the old man waved it away.
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