La Maison de Rendez-Vous and Djinn
Page 22
In front of the building, on the avenue, parked along the curb, there is the old taxi with closed windows, waiting for him. Without saying anything to the driver, Johnson opens the rear door and gets in. The car immediately starts up, to deposit him a few minutes later at the ferry dock. The boat is about to leave the quay; Johnson, whom a company employee vainly tries to hold back, has just time to leap on board, where he suddenly finds himself among a silent crowd of short men in blue overalls or black pajamas who are going to their jobs, though day has not yet broken. During the crossing, Johnson calculates that he has exactly enough time to reach Aberdeen harbor before six-fifteen, in order to get on board the junk. But when he gets off the ferry, in Victoria, and into a taxi, he has himself driven in the opposite direction, toward the Blue Villa: he cannot leave Hong Kong without seeing Lauren again. He will try once more to persuade her to leave, although he has not been able to keep his promise. She may have done all this only to test him. . . .
He crosses the grounds, walking fast, guided by the blue glow from the house, in the steady, strident shrilling of millions of nocturnal insects; he crosses the vestibule, he crosses the abandoned large salon. All the doors are open. It seems that the servants themselves have vanished. He climbs the grand staircase. But he walks more slowly at each step. Passing in front of Lady Ava’s bedroom, he finds its door wide open too. He enters without a sound. The old lady is lying in the huge bed framed by two torches which give her a funereal aspect. Kim is at her bedside, still standing motionless; has she spent the whole night there? Johnson approaches. The sick woman is not asleep. Johnson asks her if the doctor has come, and how she is feeling. She answers calmly that she is dying. She asks if it is dark yet. He answers: “No, not yet.” But she then begins thrashing about again, moving her head with difficulty, as if she were looking for something, and saying that she has some important news to tell him. Then she begins saying that they have just arrested the Belgian drug merchants recently arrived from the Congo who had set up a heroin factory . . . , etc. But she gradually loses the thread of what she is saying and soon breaks off altogether, asking where the dogs are. These will be her last words.
On the floor above, Lauren’s door is also open. Johnson dashes in, filled with a sudden apprehension: some disaster may have occurred in his absence. . . . It is only in the middle of the room that he sees the police lieutenant in khaki shorts and white knee socks. He turns around suddenly and sees that the door has closed behind him and that a soldier holding a machine gun is standing in front of it, barring his way. More slowly, his glance sweeps the entire room. The second soldier, in front of the drawn curtains of the bay window, also closely watches him, holding his machine gun trained on him with both hands. The lieutenant does not budge either, and keeps his eyes fixed on him. Lauren is lying on the fur spread, between the four columns supporting the canopy which forms a kind of dais above her. She is wearing golden silk pajamas that cling to her body, with a short, standing collar and long sleeves, in the Chinese fashion. Lying on her side, one knee bent, the other leg stretched out, head propped on one arm resting on its elbow, she watches him without making a single gesture, without moving a single feature of her smooth face. And there is nothing in her eyes.