MY WORLD: The fly

The fly is a story written by George Langelaan. I've read it in English class.

It's the story of a man named François Delambre who lives in Paris and owns a factory. One night, his sister-in-law, Hélène, calls him and tells him she has killed his husband André in the steam hammer of the factory and that he has to warn the police to go there. François and Commisaire Charas go then to the factory where the police has already arrived. André's body is found under the steam hammer, and Hélène insists that she has killed him. Commisaire Charas and François himself ask her a lot of questions but she refuses to reply to the most important ones, about André's death and why she killed him. Hélène is declared mad and sent to an asylum for the criminally insane. Her and André's son, Henri, goes to live with François. In the asylum, Hélène is obsessed on catching flies, examine them and  then release them. One day Henri explains to François that he had found a strange fly the day his father died, that his mother made him release it but then asked him to find it again. François goes to the asylum and talks to Hélène, that finally gives him some papers that contain her confession.
Hélène's confession explains that her husband was doing strange experiments. He could transfer objects and animals from one booth to another (in the next room), allowing him to teleport things. One day he did an experiment trying to transfer himself, but a fly got intoe booth and the result is that he ends up having an arm and the head of a fly, and that there's a fly with a white head and a strange leg. The only way to reverse the experiment wasgetting him and the fly again in the booth, and that's why Hélène wants to find the strange fly. Hélène helped André but another experiment went wrong and André said that Hélène had to kill him with the steam hammer because he was a monster. She did it.

After reading the confession, François shows it to Commisaire Charas. Hélène has commit suicide in the asylum, but the proof is the confession. Althought the Commisaire and François burn the papers. François says then that in the cementery he killed a fly with a white head.

I really like this story. It's mysterious and impactant. I think that the writer has a great imagination by reading this. It's a sad story too, but I don't understand why the strange fly was so important if André was already dead.

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