Maigret Sets a Trap by Georges Simenon (Penguin Books 1955)

 

'What qualifications do you have?’

‘I began by doing painting, fine art.’

‘When was that?’

‘When I was seventeen.’

‘You have your baccalaureate, do you?’

‘No, when I was young I wanted to be an artist. The paintings you saw in our drawing room, they’re by me.’

Maigret had not been able to work out what they represented, but they had disturbed him by their sad and morbid character. Neither the lines nor the colours were clear. The dominant shade had been a purplish-red, combined with curious shades of green that made him think of light under water, and it was as if the oil paint had spread by itself, like an ink-stain on a blotter.

The Rules of the Game by Georges Simenon (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 1955)

The vibration of the lawn mower's small motor passed into Higgins's arm, and through his arm into his whole body, giving him the feeling that he was living to the rhythm not of his own heart but of the machine. On this street alone there were three mowers, all more or less the same, all working at the same time, with the same angry sound, and whenever one of them stalled for a moment, others could be heard elsewhere in the neighbourhood.

Proud Beggars by Albert Cossery (NYRB Classics 1955)

All this wasn't serious. El Kordi would have liked a people who measured up to him: sad and animated by vengeful passions. But where to find them? 

His young blood boiling with impatience, he dreamed of being a man of action. This ridiculous job, which he did for starvation wages, wasn't designed to quench his thirst for social justice. He was so disgusted by it that most of the time he farmed it out to his more unfortunate colleagues - married men and fathers of numerous children - for a moderate payment. Thus, at the end of each month a paradoxical spectacle took place: the colleagues who had done some work for El Kordi came to collect their meager fees in a line before his desk. At such moments, El Kordi assumed the irritated air of a boss paying his workers. All the same, with the little money left over, he managed to survive. He led a life of extreme poverty, but decent and, he thought, very dignified. Keeping up appearances was his constant worry. For example, when he was obliged to live on boiled beans, he would tell his grocer that he was sick of eating chicken and that a common dish would surely excite his jaded appetite. The grocer wasn't fooled, but honor was saved.