After all, here is the story of an elderly married couple, Émile and Marguerite Bouin, who now detest each other. They were both widows when they wed eight years ago, and today, in their early 70s and living on the edge of Paris, they haven’t spoken for the past three years or so. They each believe that the other caused the death of their pet.

It could almost be black comedy if it weren’t so serious. When they met, she had a brightly coloured macaw, Coco, and he had a black-striped cat, Joseph. But Émile and Marguerite didn’t like each other’s pets, the bird and the cat were wary of each other and, to cap it all, the two pets didn’t like each other’s owners. If ever there was a recipe for marital disaster…

Émile had loved Joseph long before he knew Marguerite. She lived opposite and her house had been her home all her life. Before marrying Émile “She lived in her own world, an invisible world, which she coloured as she pleased, and now had to suffer a man who was very real, noisy, heavy on his feet, who smoked smelly cigars and gave off an animal odour”.

It was she who wanted him, to bring a quiver into her immobile, silent life. Now they were old , faded, hated. Each had become irritated with the other’s gestures and intonations.

Émile had taken in Joseph as a wild kitten and it became his companion, thus introducing into Marguerite’s carefully protected domain “a common alley cat” that, to her, crept along the furniture the way a wild beast rubs itself against the bars of its cage and that stared at her but accepted familiarities only from its master… “it filled her with an almost superstitious terror… Every time it brushed up against her, she would leap aside with a shriek.”

And he had similarly negative feelings about Coco, which didn’t speak but let out ear-splitting screeches when it was angry. “Its feathers would quiver, its neck would stretch, as if it weren’t surrounded by bars, as if it were going to hurl itself at its enemy, and the house would ring with its screeching.”

Rat poison was needed in the cellar, and when Joseph was found dead there in a dark corner, Émile knew she had killed the cat while he was ill in bed. So in spite he attacked Coco, pulling out tail feathers. Marguerite brought a vet but it died, so she had it stuffed and returned to its large cage in the sitting room. There, its stillness and glassy eyes tormented her husband.

She still spoke to it and left Émile a note: “If you touch it, I’ll call the police”. He had a little notebook and in return wrote “The cat“, tore out the page, folded it very small and flicked it at her with his thumb and finger. He would become adept at flicking his notes into her lap.

They sat on each side of the fireplace in the living room, slyly observing one another without actually looking directly, he reading the newspaper and she eternally knitting. She pretended not to notice his note at first, play-acting, waiting for him to leave the room or turn his back to put a log on the fire. Then she would pick it up surreptitiously, read it without turning a hair and throw it in the fire. So they were even. It was a game. They were like children.

The semi-dark and cheerless evenings passed in silence except the television news and ticking clock. They had separate locked dressers in the kitchen, preparing their own food and eating while ignoring each other. Early on, he couldn’t get used to the marital bed and so brought his own, putting it alongside hers. She flinched from sex, anyway. They undressed in the same room, steaing glances at each other’s deteriorating bodies, and they took turns in the bathroom. Both put up pictures of their first spouses to taunt one another. Joseph slept with Émile, which she said was unhealthy plus the cat snored, keeping her awake.

When she went shopping he followed her, and vice-versa. They ignored each other in public too. What might people be saying about them? “An old stale couple. Did the people who saw them – neighbours, tradesmen – think they were pathetic or grotesque?” In typical Simenon oh-so-casual sexual style, Émile goes often to a small café where the owner, Nelly, obligingly takes him to the kitchen,  lifts her dress and offers her fleshy rump for a quick knee-trembler.

And so it goes on. And there is no hurry – “They both had time, all the time between the present and the moment when one of them would die. How could they know who would go first?” How would it all end? That’s one of Simenon’s skills, drawing  in the readers and keeping them absorbed, even if it’s mostly in the head and not a lot of real action.

The storyline of “The Cat” is speculated to have originated from the author’s difficult relationship with his mother. In 1974 Simenon (1903-1989) published “Lettre à ma mère” (“Letter to My Mother”), revealing “I left home at 19 and you were still a stranger to me” and “As you are well aware, we never loved each other in your lifetime. Both of us pretended.”

The Budapest Times’ modest Simenon collection includes a hardback of “The Cat” that was  translated in 1967 by Bernard Frechtman, an American who lived in France for 20 years and translated French authors including Jean Genêt, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Simone de Beauvoir, Eugène Ionesco and Louis-Ferdinand Céline.

This new 2025 translation is by Ros Schwartz, one of the team who have recently retranslated Simenon’s 75 “Maigret” novels and 16 or so romans durs, the “hard” ones that he saw as his real literary works. Ms Schwartz’s honours include being awarded the Chevalier d’Honneur dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres for her services to French literature in 2009.

As The Budapest Times understands it, the impetus for these new editions has come from the Simenon estate, namely Simenon’s son John, who is seeking to (re-)establish his father as a major literary figure in the anglosphere. Some of the earlier translations are considered wooden and are probably still in copyright. This latest project includes eye-catching covers.

Two more new English translations are in preparation, “Letter to My Judge” (“Lettre à mon Juge” from 1947), to be published in May, and “The Green Shutters” (“Les Volets verts” from 1950), coming in November. Penguin is thankfully restoring the books’ original titles. The Budapest Times has a 1974 copy of “The Green Shutters” but titled “The Heart of a Man”.

One thing missing though: the line at the end of many early English Simenon translations noting where and when he wrote the book. Frechtman’s says: Epalinges, October 5, 1966.

Is there such a thing as a definitive translation? Without a French copy, which we wouldn’t be able to read anyway, it is impossible to compare the work of Schwartz or Frechtman.

This is the first paragraph of “The Cat” version one – “He had let go of the newspaper, which first unfolded on his lap and then slid slowly over his knees before dropping to the waxed floor. One would have thought he had just fallen asleep were it not that a narrow slit could be seen between his eyelids from time to time.”

And the first paragraph of “The Cat” version two – “The newspaper had slipped from his hands, first unfolding in his lap and then sliding slowly onto the polished wood floor. He looked as if he had dozed off, except that every now and again a thin slit was visible between his eyelids.”

At The Budapest Times we are interested in these things and we all wear anoraks… How to end this excellent, unusual roman dur? Rely on Simenon, he has it all under control.