Apart from this stone, which fell from no one knows where, no fresh element that might have furthered the progress of the investigation has come to light in the past twenty-four hours. I close the newspaper and, without hesitating further, decide to leave my hiding-place: still the same tiny, comfortless room tucked away in a quarter that its last inhabitants are deserting, where an obsolete disguise enables me to present (to whom?) that modest, reassuring, retired-murderer look for which I am known. It's a quiet little life with no problems between the stove that smokes and the ever-open window that looks out on a landscape becoming daily less coherent . . . But what am I saying? And to whom? . . . All questions not worth asking from now on. Once more the hunt resumes. Already, down at the end of the long passage, shut in a last room behind parallel vertical bars, motionless, the lovely and still very new prisoner is inexplicably smiling at me from her cage. Then the image recurs of the iron bed half buried in the wet sand on the long, deserted beach, right at the edge of the little waves. Something—I don't know what—is moving to and fro, borne by the foam. Something once again drives me outside myself in search of pleasure.
Here, then, is what happens on that memorable evening. It is important to give as precise an account of it as possible at this point and not allow oneself, henceforth, to become burdened by details that are either pointless or causally unrelated to the whole. I went out fairly early, that is to say just before nightfall. Dressed for the occasion in a long black single-breasted coat cut straight in the classic style and closed tightly down the front (along its vertical axis) with five dark, imitation-tortoiseshell buttons, a stiff-brimmed felt hat on my head and holding in my (gloved) left hand the little flat case of black synthetic leather marked in the middle of the lid, in large gilt letters accompanied by Gothic flourishes, with the initials W.M. (William Morgan), I had rounded off my severely medical look with a pair of small steel-framed spectacles. Right at the bottom of the three imitation-granite steps—of which on the left only two remain, so steeply does the street slope—I notice a woman's shoe, once splendid but now in a very sorry state, abandoned on the cast-iron grating round the nearest tree. Nothing to be faulted so far.
Predictably this object puts me in mind of the sweet Angelica, whose long fair hair . . . But I dismiss these still glowing recollections, not wishing to stray from my path in order to plunge into considerations that might make me lose sight of my purpose. I make my planned detour none the less via the fashion boutique with the double-exit trying-on cubicles to check that everything is in place. The young brides and communicants in their immaculate tulle dresses are still smiling with the same air of innocence—tender ewes awaiting the sacrificial knife—figures or costumes whose freshness comes as a surprise in the landscape of demolitions and ruins dominated by this small and apparently intact building in dubious Directoire style.
Still on foot since, all things considered, the distances between these three points are so short (this is hard to believe initially), I reach the hydropathic around ten to eight and proceed immediately to the Casino Theatre, which is a blaze of lights for the big première. Inside I am surprised to see so many people already there. In the long corridor leading to the performers’ dressing-rooms, to which in theory the public has no access, I come across Franck V. Francis (real name, Francis Lever), who addresses certain incoherent remarks to me as we pass; I do not even attempt to make the slightest sense of them since their sole purpose—quite obviously—is to divert my suspicions. To set his own at rest I play up to him; and we part with what might be an exchange of conspiratorial winks.
At the entrance to the main foyer it is young Vanessa, a second-year student anaesthetist, who next accosts me. The uniform tan of her face and shoulders, which are of a beautiful coppery hue, suggests a better attendance record on the beaches than in the operating theatres. Her brown tresses are enhanced at night by bluish highlights. But the crowd has swiftly become so dense here, the lights sparkle with such dazzling brightness in the faceted mirrors, on the gilt panelling, in the crystal chandeliers, and the sound of countless cheerful conversations, amplified by reverberation, reaches such a pitch of intensity and confusion, punctuated now and then by exclamations in celebration of some unexpected encounter or by the ringing laughter of women in plunging necklines, jewels, silks, and spangles, that I have difficulty in following what the girl is saying to me. Is it apprehension concerning what is about to happen? Or has the glass of champagne that I drank at the bar just now gone to my head a little? Vanessa, for a reason that I don't entirely grasp, starts telling me the story of the death of King Charles-Boris, known as Boris Bluebeard:
He is seated in his favourite chair, the straight back of which holds his tall body upright, in the centre of one of the large, deserted drawing-rooms looking out over the back garden. He is looking at the tops of the hundred-year-old ash trees, leafless as yet, watching the innumerable rooks soaring in the wind above and around their nests. A servant arrives to announce that the rioters are approaching the gates; it is obvious that these are not going to hold them up. The rooks have been making less noise the last few days, fussing about on the edges of their nests, flapping their wings. Probably the eggs have already hatched. Next winter there will be twice as many adult pairs, and their din . . .
But there won't be a next winter. The old king asks how long the revolution will take to reach him. An hour at the most, the servant replies. On the approaches to the deserted palace the regiments of the guard are going over to the insurgents one after another. All right, says the last king, you may leave. He listens to the liveried attendant's footsteps going away, hears the floor creak in the usual places, the heavy door close. He remains motionless for a moment longer, gazing at the tattered black shapes swarming among the treetops.
Then he gets up and goes over to the inlaid mahogany writing-desk occupying the panel between two windows opposite his chair. The piece was badly restored by a cabinet-maker thirty years back. In one of the little drawers beneath the roll-top, namely the top one on the extreme right, there is a tiny glass tube containing three minute splinters of veneer that came away almost immediately and that Charles-Boris has meant ever since to glue back in their exact place. There is an ampoule of wood-glue at the back of the centre drawer among the many erasers, pencils, and penholders of all kinds, most of them not in use. He also needs a lens, a fine sable brush, and a pair of tweezers.
Hardly is this meticulous repair job complete when the armed men burst into the huge room, which because of its size appears to be empty. They stop just inside the door as if something prevented them from going further. Standing ten metres away, facing them, the old king greets them with a happy smile, as a father would the expected arrival of his children to spend Sunday with the family. For a moment the assassins hesitate, so disconcerted are they by this charming manner. To make things easier for them Charles-Boris, nicknamed Boris Bluebeard, assumes the precise facial expression of the four-colour portrait that hangs in all public places and, until this morning, virtually every home in the country, from the humblest to the richest.
Outside, their domesticity disturbed by a quarrel flaring up between rival clans, the rooks suddenly start croaking all together in a fury. Fire, says the leader of the insurgents, a turner known simply by his first name, John, brandishing his stage sword, filched during some pillaging operation, as he gives the order. The aged sovereign, riddled with bullets, sinks to the floor. In the next room the two ex-militiamen's police dogs howl their death-howl.
This last act (which in the programme is subtitled “A Regicide") is a great success, particularly since the music, being both heroic and sentimental, panders to the audience's facile taste. A veritable delirium of applause breaks out. Descending the monumental staircase leading to the square with the first wave of spectators, those in the greatest hurry, I catch a glimpse—as anticipated—of the large black Cadillac moving off, at abnormally high speed for the narrow and intricate streets of the centre of town, in t
he direction of the sea and the abandoned fish factory with the still-usable jetty. Good: I'm in time. Nor am I surprised when, on the old bridge, I come across the third female character in this affair: the little girl who sells flesh-coloured rosebuds to passers-by and whom the report mentions several times under the name of Temple, which come to that is probably her own. It is she who conveys the secret messages to certain operators passing through, thus ensuring the shifts in meaning at delicate hinge-points in the account.
So I buy a flower from her. Following the agreed procedure, I leave the task of choosing it to the child herself. To ask her to do this I use a coded sentence, which she identifies immediately. Although she does not recognize my face—and with reason—as that of a regular agent of the organization, she suspects nothing and searches right at the bottom of the tray, among roses that seem to me impossible to tell apart, for the one—undoubtedly a fake—that she believes is for me.
To my great surprise (but I am careful to let nothing of it show) it is an apple that she extracts from the mass of leafy, prickly stems, a small green apple that gives every outward appearance of being a real fruit. The little girl offers me the object and murmurs, in the tone of a polite formula at once pleasant and ceremonious, the time at which I am to present myself and the appointed place: the black-painted door, obviously, that has neither number nor bell nor handle of any kind. Immediately on taking the false apple in my hand I am struck by its excessive weight and the extreme hardness of its surface, which a fingernail cannot even dent. Mechanically raising it to my nostrils, I note that it does, however, give off a strong smell of ripe pippin. The short stalk of the fruit, which is rather too thick and stiff, must in fact be the switch for transmitting the ultrasonic signal that automatically opens the black door and gives access to the sanctuary.
As soon as I am inside and the heavy steel panel has shut behind me with a sort of solemn exhalation like the sound of certain nocturnal birds, followed by the simultaneous dull clicking of the multiple bolts of a lock mechanism swimming in oil, I find myself engulfed in a bluish twilight and must wait for several seconds—several minutes, maybe—before I can see clearly enough to make out my surroundings and take my bearings with all requisite prudence.
In fact very little hesitation is possible; there is only one way open to me: a narrow corridor with smooth walls and no lateral openings that I think at first must be long and straight but that abruptly turns left at right angles, afterwards continuing in this new direction, still without doors or adjacent passages; however, it would now be a little less reduced in width . . . A sound in the distant silence resembles solitary notes on a piano, spaced out like drops of water, muffled by the heavy curtains and draperies of an old apartment in which all is motionless and at rest, even the young pupil herself, dozing over her practice in a monotonous eternity.
After several metres, and again quite unpredictably despite the fact that the lighting seems to have improved marginally (or is this just the effect of adjustment?), there is another ninety-degree bend, again to the left, accompanied by a further widening of the passage—for which the word “narrow” is already unsuitable—and probably by a further improvement in the light, too, which has gradually become sufficient to reveal with certainty that there is nothing to be seen here apart from the walls, the ceiling, and the floor, covered with the same white paint, uniform, abstract—one might say—so strongly does it give the impression of being inalterable, offering no hold, proof against time.
Moreover the ambient light, which is blue and milky, poses a further problem to the alert mind of the man moving forward (yet again) with measured tread: although this has increased sensibly, by insensible degrees, it is impossible to detect the presence of any source. Finally an additional ground for unease is provided by the right-angled turns that have multiplied, now to the right and now to the left, though without alternating in any regular way, so many times as to make it impossible to form an idea of the general direction followed since entering the sanctuary.
These various unanswered questions vanish all at once in the face of a new and quite remarkable item of information appearing in the picture after a final right-angled bend: conspicuous on the pale, shiny wall on the left-hand side is a much darker rectangle that by its size and position at first suggests a yawning door embrasure.
In fact one discovers on moving closer that there is no way out here. A virtually invisible pane of glass fills the whole rectangle, lying flush with the polished surface of the wall without any break between them. Beyond the glass is a very dark room, the precise shape and size of which are hard to specify because of the very sombre—possibly black—colour of such limits as it possesses, whether carpeting, paper, or hangings. Only three elements stand out against this inky background, being distinctly better lit or at least, with their lighter colouring, reflecting the light from the corridor to greater effect.
These are, starting from the right foreground and proceeding at an angle towards the back of the field of view, a pair of lady's shoes made of fine blue leather and with very high heels, a long, stiff stem with, at its tip, a flesh-coloured rose like the ones offered to gentlemen in evening dress as they emerge from the Opera House by the little flower-seller known locally by her first name, Temple, and finally the girl herself (apparently) lying in an abandoned position on the dark floor like the other objects mentioned in this inventory.
The little girl is naked except for her long black gloves and a pair of stockings—of a similar shade though more translucent—held at mid-thigh by frilly garters embellished with tiny percale roses. Around her neck is a sort of broad collar made of embroidered lace, also black. She seems to be asleep, but between the splayed fingers of one hand, which she has brought up to her face as if to shield herself from the too-bright light of a lamp (not in the picture), it is conceivable that the child has her eyes open, watching. Or is she dead? Or at least unconscious? The enigmatic character of the whole composition is such, however, as to encourage one to venture a choice, a wager, rather than to join the different compartments together in accordance with the laws of an imaginary organizing principle. So it's a question of plumping for just one of the elements in the picture, but it must be done urgently. The faint, percussive noise is closer now, striking with the curt regularity of a metronome, inexorably.
The narrator, Franck V. Francis, afraid that if he makes a mistake he will find himself back where he started, on the imitation-granite steps in front of the steel door with no number and the handle missing, in the end obviously chooses one of the pale-blue shoes, the one that is lying on its side and seems to have its heel broken at the counter. And immediately he is standing in front of the next window, probably a little farther down the long passage.
This is a rectangle of glass identical to the first, giving on a completely dark space. The spectacle taking place there supplies (provisionally) an explanation for those repeated sounds that seemed to come from a metronome or a piano, or from drops of some liquid echoing in the silence. It is in fact pearls dropping and one after another hitting the exact centre of an oval mirror laid flat on the floor along the axis of the glazed embrasure. There is nothing else visible in the room but the mirror and the succession of silver pearls falling from an invisible ceiling to strike their own image at the same time as the immaterial surface of reflection with a clear, musical sound that is scarcely deadened by the transparent partition, then bouncing up again very high but following trajectories that incline at a greater or lesser angle from the vertical, depending on infinitesimal variations in impact between the two little glistening spheres, which soon disappear together from the view of the spectators immediately on leaving the zone of light emanating from the consulting room, audition room, observation room, showroom, or interrogation room, etc.
The concert continues in a contemplative atmosphere. The note given out varies from pearl to pearl, as does the spacing between consecutive pearls; but it must be possible to identify, amid this apparent co
nfusion, a relatively restricted number of spaces and notes. The question will then re-arise: is one dealing with a problem of choice, as in the previous scene, or is this on the contrary a study in structural organization?
Doubtless plunged in this analysis of the distinct units and their combinations, the ladies of the audience, facing the screen in a semi-circle on seats as varied as they are uncomfortable, lost in their abstracted contemplation, or fascinated by the immemorial cascade of bright dots that rebound one after another in always unforeseen (unforeseeable?) directions, the spectators—as I have said—remain motionless, frozen in highly affected attitudes imitating nature, like those wax figures one sees in museums where famous episodes from history are reproduced in actual size, ostensibly true to life.
Wearing excessive make-up, though in the paler shades apart from the bright red emphasizing the cheekbones, dressed in black and white but in long dresses of outmoded extravagance with a wealth of lace, silk brocade, feathers, spangles, and precious stones, several of them also sport massive rings and enormous brooches, ear-rings, pendants, tiaras, aigrettes, or girandoles of positively pyrotechnic intricacy and apparently made of these same drop-shaped pearls that continue to fall in a vertical series in front of them, immediately reascending to the flies along ever-new parabolic segments.
Others are plastered with artificial roses, lilies, or giant butterflies. Almost all of them have their feet resting in various highly contorted arrangements on cushions, little fur rugs, or lace mats, thus offering as if on a series of display stands a whole collection of footwear for specialist enthusiasts ranging from the ankle boot to the evening shoe and including models with leather straps crisscrossing from the painted toenails to above the ankle. The full evening gowns have in most cases been pulled very high over long, silk-stockinged legs to make it easier to admire the different specimens (is one going to have yet again to back one in particular?), so high, in fact, that at times, in the absence of any undergarments, they expose the delicate brown or golden pubic fleece, carefully combed and itself perhaps decorated with pearl jewellery or little roses, its fissure sometimes revealing still more intimate areas of wax-like flesh if the patient's attitude is such as to keep her thighs open unduly wide.
Recollections of the Golden Triangle Page 6