But his thoughts are to return repeatedly to the abandoned piece of apple and the improbable glistening green of its skin throughout the first part of the opera, of which moreover he understands nothing. He does not like this aggressive, so-called modern music, and the highly obscure story about a kind of blazing bird that provokes a series of catastrophes on the pretext of coming to the victims’ aid strikes him as more fit for the music-hall or the Michelet Circus than for the National Opera House on an official full-dress occasion. Lord G. soon gives up trying to follow the ins and outs of the plot. By great good fortune a procession of dancing-girls in somewhat skimpy pearl costumes arrives to retrieve him from the gloomy thoughts that have come over him anew.
And it is just at this moment that a young woman in a filmy white dress steps dramatically from one of the booths that stand in a row on top of the . . . No, no . . . What am I talking about? Lord G., who had dozed off, wakes with a start and instinctively reaches for his revolver with his right hand. The man on his left in the second row of the state box, surprised by so sudden and inexplicable a movement, half rises in his seat as if preparing to intervene. Lady Caroline, one forearm laid gracefully on the red-velvet trimming of the balustrade, dare not turn towards them. Fortunately the end of this first half of the performance sets the audience applauding at this point and enables everyone to put an acceptable face on the situation.
During the interval Lord G. is surprised to see amidst the brilliantly accoutred crowd thronging the main foyer a very young girl dressed almost in rags and carrying in front of her a tray of roses slung from her slender neck on a length of old frayed rope. He thinks he recognizes the child: it is the one who usually sells her flowers on the steps outside the building. How come she has today been allowed to get as far as the first floor? What is even more curious is that she is engaged in private conversation with Chief Commissioner Duchamp, who scarcely appears to be asking her to account for her presence here or for the inadequacy of her dress: on the contrary he is leaning over the girl with almost anxious attention, listening to the long story she is telling him with an air of innocence embellished with bewitching smiles. But at this very moment a lady in a white dress who has just . . .
“Where was I?” the young lord asks himself, shaking his head in an attempt to put his thoughts back in order. And again it is the obstinate image of the gnawed apple in the poisonous colours that presents itself to his over-wrought mind, as it will also, absurdly, be the last thing he thinks of when, lying where he fell and losing blood at an alarming rate . . . Shouts now go up from all around and in the space of a few seconds reach a deafening climax, which is followed immediately by an abrupt silence, settling as if by magic over the whole length of the beach. All the bodies bronzing themselves in the sun in a variety of postures have sat up, almost in one movement, the few laggards completing their change of position with silent deliberation, like members of a chorus who are slightly behind for an ensemble pose and correct their alignment while drawing as little attention to themselves as possible. And they are all turned towards me, staring at me in horror.
In a last, desperate attempt, pretending not to have noticed anything out of the ordinary, I start to rotate the upper part of my body in order to walk calmly away with as much naturalness as I can still muster, hoping against all reason that no one will dare to intervene. It is then that I catch sight of the young woman in the filmy white dress who has just come out of one of the bathing-huts and has likewise stopped moving, but with her head turned back to face the large black automobile now visible at the top of the dune, which I realize too late is a police car.
She has one arm extended in my direction, and with her white-gloved hand pointing an accusatory forefinger at me in a gesture of inflexible firmness she utters with exaggerated precision, like the actress in a pompous type of theatre playing in a language not her own, these three words repeated three times: “It's him! It's him! It's him!”
So here I am again, chased from my hiding-place, driven out of myself along these corridors that are continually interrupted by unpredictable right-angled turns made even more disagreeable by the successive narrowings of the passage with each change of direction, jostled from smooth surface to blind wall by the trampling pack of black uniforms with their leather-belted tunics to the pallid, cube-shaped, and abruptly silent cell, the three functional poles of which are starting to become clearer to me: first the judas, where two staring eyes appear and disappear between the tilting slats, or which, pivoting on its hinges at irregular intervals, opens wide all of a sudden to admit various objects held out at arm's length before falling—or not—on the resonant floor (engraved boulder, ordinary, clear-glass bottle, thick slice of bread, woman's shoe with the heel torn off, rutilant apple, black notebook . . .), then the interrogations with their disconnected questions revolving—or not—round these same exhibits, some more, some less deformed with use, and thirdly the mirror-like screen taking up the whole of the rectangular wall opposite the door, which is pierced at eye level by its square judas through which, probably, the projections are beamed also, actual-size fragments of narrative that I have afterwards to give account of. Why afterwards?
But three other, far more pressing questions arise with regard to these images. What is the mechanism organizing their constituent parts? Do they really give a complete illusion of reality? Why did I write “mirror-like"? Moreover it seems to me that, if I could answer just one of these question marks, the other two would then be spontaneously resolved—as in a glass, in fact. I have already described this broken mirror, unframed and insecurely fixed by three loose cramp-irons, that has been allowed, contrary to all custom, to remain on the wall of my prison (the left wall, looking towards the door). It is so high up that I have to climb on the chair (made of turned wood, painted white) in order to catch a glimpse, cut off by the curved and very sharp lower edge, of the upper part of my face down to about the middle of the nose. Make a note of this detail, which is not without importance.
All the other glasses are from now on in the same ruined state on the terraces of the three big sea-front cafés that date from the period of the three assassinated emperors whose names they bear: Maximilian, Rudolph, Christian-Charles. More or less deserted, depending on the time of year, throughout the war against Uruguay, they were subsequently given over to temporary occupation and systematic sacking by the hordes of wild children operating from their nearby dens: disused remnants of coastal fortifications, former cordage works or fish canneries, abandoned bathing establishments with their innumerable rooms for the wealthy guests of bygone days succeeding one another down both sides of interminable corridors in a maze of forks and right-angled turns where, after many detours, one finds oneself brought brusquely back to one's starting-point: blank walls, progressive constriction of the passage, jostling of uniforms, tramping of boots, etc.
And when everything is silent, the very clear sound of drops of water starts again . . . , far-off, crystalline, at quite widely separated intervals that seem to lack the slightest regularity, however complex, each drop giving out a distinct note without it being possible, here either, to identify any kind of law of repetition . . .
Start again, the interrogator says after a long silence, at the broken glass panels round three sides of the terraces of the ruined cafés on Atlantica Avenue. The floorboards being gradually encroached upon by the sand, the tables and chairs abandoned in disorder or stacked in a corner, the empty beer-cans, some more dented than others, that litter the ground, the defaced remains of a circus poster on which . . . etc. So I go on with the story of the beautiful equestrienne in pearly under-garments who, high on her beige horse, spear in hand, has to fight a variety of ferocious animals—bull, lion, crocodile—in front of the thousands of impassive spectators lining the tiers of the ancient amphitheatre. For no apparent reason the investigating officer's voice interrupts me almost immediately:
As far as you are concerned, does the word “rutilant” imply the idea
of red?
Certainly.
Thank you, that needed to be clarified.
I fail to see why, but I continue my account without demanding an explanation. The girl is now walking along the immense deserted beach, lost, keeping very close to the scalloped advance of the festoons of wavelets, which periodically wet her bare feet. The lion skin she is dragging behind her leaves a series of discontinuous blood-stained streaks in the damp sand that the sea comes and licks at in places, filling the red furrows to overflowing with its white foam mixed with tiny scraps of seaweed.
And now, between the shifting lines of this edging area, an empty beer-can is washed ashore, to all appearances intact, a perfect cylinder some twelve centimetres in height with, recognizable on it from a distance, the manufacturer's gold trade-mark: a series of concentric ovals, some consisting of a broad black line and the others of words printed in capitals. It would be extremely difficult to determine whether this metal container—about which there is nothing remarkable—really had held beer or whether on the contrary it is one of those false cans, copied to perfection from those of the brewer, that the traffickers use for illicitly transporting their precious white powder, which is discharged nightly at the end of the wharf belonging to the old factory by trawlers ostensibly fitted out for salmon-fishing.
Why did you not mention this traffic earlier?
It has nothing to do with the case before you.
How do you know? All the constituents of the landscape are of necessity interlinked—in many ways, in fact. What happened then?
I went over to the water's edge to pick up the beer-can in order to study it in greater detail. It was during this examination that the shots rang out behind me. I recognized at once the reports of a combat Mauser. A few seconds later the young woman dressed in white came running out of one of the bathing-huts and started yelling. The police car arrived almost immediately. You already know what comes next.
Without the least preliminary sound having indicated any presence whatever beyond the grey door of the cell, the square judas opens wide all of a sudden to admit an arm—a bare arm, visible up to above the elbow, muscular and covered with red-brown hair—that produces a fresh constituent of the narrative.
It takes me a while to understand what I am dealing with this time. The object at first presents itself as a large white pearl balanced on the clenched fist. Eventually I do manage to make out that this is a simple electric light bulb of the ordinary shape, made of pearl glass, the narrowed base and the metal cap being hidden from view, squeezed between the palm and the tightly-closed fingers.
I am suddenly seized by an inexplicable fear, a feeling of immeasurable anguish, at the thought that the hand must now open, as already happened a few moments earlier in the case of the empty beer-can, which fell from a height of one metre fifty, approximately, onto the cement floor of the cell. I still have in my ears the clear, full sound of the initial impact, like a gigantic drop of water, followed immediately by a series of thinner, duller rebounds—sounding like one of those globular bells with a crack in it, or rubbish in a dustbin—growing progressively more muffled. And I can also hear, already, the glass bulb exploding before my very eyes on the precise spot where, earlier, the gilded-metal cylinder fell that eventually rolled over to the closed door, the innumerable white splinters of the fragile sphere now flying in all directions, propelled by identical forces, and creating on the floor—painted a uniform white like the walls—this final image, disturbing in its regularity: a series of concentric rings comparable to those described by a boulder falling from the sky and breaking the surface of a calm stretch of water, the outer corona (made up of the smallest fragments) having as its diameter the exact distance between me and the grey door.
It is like the nine-circle target devised by Chief Commissioner Duchamp, which the crack marksmen use for rifle practice. The beer-can, lying on its side by the door, would thus mark the ninth gradation of this, in other words the one farthest from the centre. Moreover, closer examination of the trade-mark adorning the cylinder of light-weight metal reveals that its oval periphery contains within it a tangential circle or rather one coinciding along almost half its circumference with the curvature of the oval, of which it occupies the entire upper half; this does in fact form the figure 9, which is rendered even more perceptible by a small gap in the line of words printed in capitals that constitutes the lower hoop.
The figure 8, indicating the value of the next circle in towards the centre, is represented by the bit of perished rope, attributed to “the voyeur” in the report, which is at the same time that of the exceedingly beautiful woman welder found hanged among the machines in the canning factory (this looks like flagrant interference with the necessity for crimping the false beer-cans) and the one that the little illicit flower-seller uses round her neck to support the tray full of roses, in which—it will be remembered—the apple with the message was concealed. Did I say that the young worker's name was Angelica? No conclusions have been reached as yet by the inquest that was to have thrown some light on the peculiar circumstances of her death, the criminal nature of which is at any rate beyond doubt, if only on the grounds of the wire binding her wrists together.
I thought, when this thoroughly twisted piece of wire appeared in the cell, brandished at arm's length through the wide-open judas, that here was a bizarre manifestation of attentiveness on the part of my warders: though terribly changed and distorted, this was undoubtedly a rudimentary coathanger of the type found in third-class hotels, thanks to which I was going to be able—after suitable straightening-out operations—to hang my jacket from one of the cramp-irons securing the remains of the broken mirror to the wall. I must now bow to the obvious: the deformations imposed on the object in reality describe the figure 7. I have decided, anyway, to use it to hang on the wall the spoon for my all-too-infrequent meals, tired of seeing this utensil lying about on the floor (in the absence of any furniture other than a wooden chair with no cross-bars) when it is meant to be kept clear of impurities.
Besides, the spoon in question is somewhat awkward for eating with, having at the centre of its concave part a round hole through which I can almost pass my finger, which will make it easier to hang up; however, a small perforation in the end of the handle would have offered the same advantage without the drawbacks of the solution adopted. The fact remains that, in its present state (the handle is also twisted sideways as if a powerful hand had used it as a tool, possibly for escape), this spoon, marking the position on the floor of the sixth circle out from the central point, which is absent, does happen to present to the eye an acceptable image of a 6, somewhat drawn-out.
The next ring bears the imprint of a man's strong hand (the one mentioned in connection with the previous number), obtained in all probability by placing the palm with fingers outstretched in some wet red paint and immediately pressing them against the whitewashed cement surface. The arrangement of this hand in relation to the spoon, which is very close to it, appears to represent an attempt to link the two signs in some meaningful way: for example, the hand could be trying to grasp cutlery lying beyond its reach (since both of them are fixed), which again calls to mind the inadequacy of the meals. The mark of the five fingers, clearly printed in bright red, takes the place—as will have been guessed—of the figure 5.
Is it lack of food? Or the effect of the drugs that they periodically inject into my veins? My head is spinning, my legs giving way beneath me. I would like at least to sit down. But the threat constituted by the glass bulb, still in abeyance but about, at any moment, inexorably, to break into a thousand tiny pieces, paralyzes my whole body. So I have to be content, knowing the same despair as stretches the red hand out towards its holed spoon, with looking at the chair (already named), of which the frame, lying on the floor and viewed from the side, approximates to the figure 4.
Time is getting on. As an entirely natural product of my growing hunger I pass quickly on to the 3 that marks the following circle. This is
recognizable without difficulty in the remains of the apple, which has been half munched (as has been said, but where and when?) by a rather narrow jaw, probably Lady Caroline's, that has left two deep notches in the upper part, on either side of the stalk. This apple core is one of the most important exhibits in the case, having been found by Inspector Franck V. Francis in the immediate vicinity of the delicate item of female footwear that had caught by the heel in a tree grating outside the black-painted door with neither handle nor number.
The figure 2 on the penultimate circle is in point of fact indicated by this bright-blue shoe, which is now, here, lying on its side and so showing the straight line of the high stiletto heel, the curve of the sole, and the rounded tip of the upper. Something disturbs me all of a sudden, quite unexpectedly: the cast-iron grating did, according to the report, comprise nine concentric circles linked by intertwined loops, but if the apple gnawed by small, regular teeth really was resting on the third of those circles counting from the trunk of the tree, the broken shoe marked the seventh one and not the second. Moreover, seen in profile like this, it is much more like a figure 7 (the Anglo-Saxon numeral, without a bar), whereas the 2 would require one of those long, curled-up toes not present here, the only peculiarity of the toe of this shoe consisting in a round mirror the width of a half-dollar piece, which is let into the leather and which I had at first taken to be a cut-glass cabochon.
The investigating officers have established that this little glass, which is slightly convex, served the young lady as an unobtrusive rear-view mirror during her delicate spying missions, for example on seaside café terraces, where she was always careful to recline in a deck-chair. Consequently a few minor alterations to the text ought to suffice in order to insert the shoe in the seventh position, where it belongs, in other words between the length of frayed rope relating to the two double agents previously named (the fair Angelica, whose tortured body was used as a lure by the special branches of the police force, and little Temple, the false itinerant flower-seller suspected of having carried the booby trap in her innocent basket of roses, which that evening was unreasonably overloaded, and arrested on the spot to bring to an end the tragic gala performance marking what in the circumstances was a highly controversial re-opening of the Grand Lyric Theatre), between that piece of string—as I was saying—and the paradoxical spoon that I have already decided to hang from the nail belonging to the broken mirror with the sharp curved edge that a careless if not Machiavellian administration has left on the wall of my cell.
Recollections of the Golden Triangle Page 8