Sample Simenon

THE PREMIER; THE TRAIN by Georges Simenon. 248 pages. Harcourt, Brace & World. $4.95.

Belgian-born Georges Simenon is a great tattletale. His endless series of novels now total about 500, include a mound of pulpy romances, scores of Inspector Maigret mysteries, and dozens of gritty, graceful character studies such as The Premier and The Train. These were first published separately in France some years ago. Both are typical, tidy iterations of an old Simenon thesis: escape in any real sense is impossible.

In The Premier, the intended escape is from oblivion. An aged ex-Premier of France, part petty household tyrant, part national monument, lives in impatient retirement, awaiting his chance to settle old scores and topple old foes. When he discovers that his servants are all government spies, that his secret papers are no longer secret, and that his power is nil, he decides that since he has been politically dead for years, he may as well relax and die physically.

In The Train, the escape is initially from invading Nazis. A diffident, dutiful French shopkeeper hustles his pregnant wife and daughter into the first-class carriage of a refugee train, himself crawls into an overcrowded freight car, and settles down contentedly to escape his dull, daily round. Contentment is compounded when a forlorn Jewish girl beds down with him. When his family gets lost in the wartime shuffle, the lovers happily play house in a refugee reception center until the missing wife and child are found. Then the lovers part. Many months later, fleeing the Gestapo, the girl timidly hunts up the shopkeeper at his home. Comfortably captured in the good old daily round, he refuses the risk of hiding her, and she is caught, tried, shot.

Simenon's prose rejoices in the virtues of his virtuosity: it is economical, supple, precise. The stories tend to go on too long, as though Simenon were afraid that he had not really gotten to the heart of his characters. But he writes entertainingly about corruption, cruelty or grief because he jousts at human follies without judging them.

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