“Of course not, I tell you he arrived last night!”
“Yes, only last night! You’ll have to ask him about the night before that.”
“In any case, I would have notified you!”
The drunk would like to add a word; he half stands up from his chair:
“And then he tried to kill me!…Hey! You better tell them he tried to kill me too!”
But the manager does not bother to answer. He hangs up the receiver and goes back behind his bar, to rummage through a drawer full of papers. He is looking for his police forms, but it has been too long since he has needed them and he has difficulty finding them again. When he finally gets hold of an old and flyspecked form, Wallas will have to fill it out, show his carte d’identité, explain his transformation. Then he will be able to leave—to inquire at the police station if a man in a raincoat was seen last night…
The drunk will go back to sleep in his chair, the manager will wipe off the tables and start washing the glasses in the sink. This time, he will turn off the faucet more carefully, and the little drops that strike the surface of the water with metronomic regularity will stop.
The scene will be over.
His heavy body resting on his widespread arms, his hands gripping the edge of the bar, his head hanging forward, his mouth somewhat twisted, the manager will go on staring into space.
5
In the murky water of the aquarium, furtive shadows pass—an undulation whose vague existence dissolves of its own accord…and afterward it is questionable whether there had been anything to begin with. But the dark patch reappears and makes two or three circles in broad daylight, soon coming back to melt, behind a curtain of algae, deep in the protoplasmic depths. A last eddy, quickly dying away, makes the mass tremble for a second. Again everything is calm.…Until, suddenly, a new form emerges and presses its dream face against the glass…Pauline, sweet Pauline … and no sooner does it appear than it vanishes in its turn, to make way for other specters and phantoms. The drunk is making up a riddle. A man with thin lips, in an overcoat buttoned up to his neck is waiting on his chair in the middle of an empty room. His motionless face, his gloved hands clasped on his knees, betray no impatience. He has plenty of time. Nothing can keep his plan from being carried out. He is preparing to receive a visit—not the one from a disturbed, evasive person without any strength of character—but a visit, on the contrary, from someone who can be counted on: it is to this person that tonight’s execution, the second, will be entrusted. In the first murder, he had been kept in the background, but his work was flawless; while Garinati, for whom everything had been so meticulously prepared, had not even been capable of turning out the light. nd now, this morning, he had let his man get away:
“What time this morning?”
“I don’t have any idea,” the manager says.
“You didn’t see him leave?”
“If I had seen him leave, I’d know what time it was!”
Leaning on his bar, the manager wonders if he should tell Wallas about this visit. No. They’ll have to manage by themselves: no one told him to say anything.
Besides, Wallas has already left the little café to return to the scene…
6
Once again Wallas is walking toward the bridge. Ahead of him, under a snowy sky, extends the Rue de Brabant—and its grim housefronts. The employees are now all at work, in front of their ledgers and their adding machines: the figures form columns, the tree trunks are piled on the docks; mechanical arms maneuver the controls of the cranes, the windlasses, the keys of the adding machines, without wasting a second, without a slip, without an error; the wood export business is in full swing.
The street is as deserted and silent as it was the first time. Only a few cars parked in front of the doors, under the black plaques with their gold letters, testify to the activity now reigning behind these brick walls. The other modifications—if there are any—are imperceptible: there is no change in the varnished wood doors, recessed above their five steps, nor in the curtainless windows—two to the left, one to the right, and, above, four floors of identical rectangular openings. There is not much daylight for working in these offices where the electric lights—for economy—have not been turned on—and the near sighted faces lean their bespectacled eyes toward the big ledgers. Wallas feels overcome by a great weariness.
But having crossed the canal that divides the Boulevard Circulaire, he stops to let a streetcar pass.
Ahead of him, the plaque indicating the number of the line shows the number 6 in yellow on a vermilion disk. The car, its new paint shiny, looks exactly like the one that had appeared this morning in the same spot. And like this morning, it comes to a stop in front of Wallas.
The latter, who was not looking forward to the long, tiresome walk along the Rue de Brabant and the Rue Janeck, climbs up the iron step and goes to sit down inside: this streetcar can only take him closer to his goal. With a ring of its bell the car starts up, its machinery groaning. Wallas watches the houses along the canals edge slide by.
But once the conductor has passed through, Wallas realizes his mistake: the number 6 line does not continue along the parkway as he had thought; instead it turns off at the first stop and heads south, through the suburbs. And since no line follows this unfrequented portion of the parkway that leads to the other end of lie Rue Janeck—where the post office mentioned by the drunk must be—Wallas remains rather confused. It is the conductor who explains matters to him, showing him a plan of the transportation network throughout the city: instead of heading directly for this post office, Wallas will first stop at Doctor Juard’s clinic—which is preferable from every point of view. Line number 4, which this one crosses at the next stop, will take him there.
He thanks the conductor, pays his fare, and gets off.
Around him, the scene is still the same: the parkway, the canal, the irregular buildings.
“Then she told him that since that was how things were, he might as well leaveI”
“And he left?”
“No, he didn’t. He wanted to know if it was all true, what she had just told him. At first he said it was silly, that he didn’t believe her and that they’d see about it; but when he realized that the others were going to come back, he was afraid it would turn against him and he remembered he had things to do. Things to do! We know what kind of things. So you know what she said? ‘Don’t do too many things,’ she said, ‘or you’ll wear yourself out!’”
“Oh…what did that mean?”
“Oh, you know, that meant that he might still run into him: she meant the car and everything else.”
“No!”
Wallas is sitting facing the front of the car, next to the window; there is an empty seat to his right. The two voices—woman’s voices, with uneducated intonations—come from the seats behind him.
“She wished him ‘Good luck!’ when he left.”
“And did he run into him?”
“No one knows yet. Anyway, if he met him, there must have been a rumpus!”
“I’ll say.”
“Well, we’ll find out tomorrow, I hope.”
Neither woman seems to have any special interest in the outcome of this matter. The people in question are neither relatives nor friends. It is even apparent that the existence of the two women is unrelated to this kind of story…but such people enjoy discussing the glorious events in the lives of great criminals and kings. Unless it is simply a story in the serial published by some paper.
The streetcar, after following a winding route along the somber buildings, reaches the central part of the city whose relative prosperity Wallas has already noticed. He recognizes the Rue de Berlin, in passing, that leads to the prefecture. He turns around toward the ticket taker, who is supposed to tell him when it is time to get off.
The first thing he notices is a bright red sign with a huge red arrow over the words:
For drawing
For school
For the office
/> VICTOR HUGO STATIONERY SHOP
2, Rue Victor Hugo
(One Hundred Yards to Your Left)
Quality Supplies
This detour takes him away from the clinic; but since he is not in any particular hurry, he turns in the direction indicated by the arrow. After having turned—following the instructions of a second sign—he discovers a shop whose ultra-modern exterior and elaborate advertising indicate a recent opening. Its elegance and its great size are surprising, moreover, in this small, rather isolated street which is located, nevertheless, not far from the main boulevards. The shopfront—plastic and aluminum—is brand new and if the left-hand window contains only a rather ordinary display of pens, note paper, and school notebooks, the one on the right is designed to attract the attention of pedestrians: it represents an “artist” drawing “from nature.” A dummy, dressed in a paint-spotted smock and whose face is hidden under a huge “bohemian” beard, is hard at work in front of his easel; stepping back slightly to see both his work and the model at the same time, he is putting the finishing touches on a carefully drawn landscape—which must actually be a copy of some master. It is a hill with the ruins of a Greek temple among cypress trees; in the foreground, fragments of columns lie scattered here and there; in the distance, in the valley, appears a whole city with its triumphal arches and palaces—rendered, despite the distance and the accumulation of buildings, with a scrupulous concern for detail. But in front of the man, instead of the Greek countryside, stands instead of the setting a huge photographic reproduction of a modern city intersection. The nature of this image and its skillful arrangement give the panorama a reality all the more striking in that it is the negation of the drawing supposed to represent it; and suddenly Wallas recognizes the place: that house surrounded by huge apartment buildings, that iron fence, that spindle-tree hedge, is the corner of the Rue des Arpenteurs. Obviously.
Wallas walks in.
“Well,” he exclaims, “you certainly have a strange window!”
“It’s interesting, isn’t it?”
The young woman greets him with a low, throaty laugh.
“It certainly is strange,” Wallas admits.
“Did you recognize it? Those are the ruins of Thebes.”
“The photograph is particularly surprising. Don’t you think so?”
“Oh yes. It’s a very fine photo.”
Her expression actually indicates that she sees nothing remarkable about it. But Wallas would like to know more:
“Yes, indeed,” he says, “you can tell it’s the work of an expert.”
“Yes, of course. I had the enlargement made by a laboratory that specializes in such things.”
“And the shot had to be extremely clear too.”
“Yes, probably.”
Already the saleswoman is looking at him with a professionally friendly expression of interrogation. “Can I help you?”
“I’d like an eraser,” Wallas says.
“Yes. What kind of eraser?”
That’s just the whole point, and Wallas once again begins describing what he is looking for: a soft, crumbly gum eraser that friction does not twist but reduces to dust; an eraser that cuts easily and whose cut surface is shiny and smooth, like mother-of-pearl. He has seen one such, a few months ago, at a friend’s but the friend could not tell him where it came from. He thought he could find himself one of the same kind without difficulty, but he’s been searching in vain ever since. It looked like a yellowish cube, about an inch or two long, with the corners slightly rounded—maybe by use. The manufacturer’s brand was printed on one side, but was too worn to be legible any more: only two of the middle letters were still clear: “di”; there must have been at least two letters before and perhaps two or three others after.
The young woman tries to complete the name, but without success. She shows him, with mounting discouragement, all the erasers in the shop—and she has, in fact, a splendid stock—whose respective merits she warmly extols. But they are all either too soft or too hard: “breadcrumb” erasers, as easily kneaded as modeling clay, or else dry and grayish substances which abrade the paper—good at best for getting rid of ink blots; the rest are pencil erasers of the usual kind, more or less elongated rectangles of more or less white rubber.
Wallas hesitates to return to the subject that is plaguing him: he might seem to have come in for the sole purpose of obtaining God knows what information about the photograph of the house, without even being willing to spend the money for a little eraser—preferring to turn the whole shop upside down over an imaginary object attributed to a legendary brand whose name he could not even remember—and with good reason! His strategy would soon appear for the foolish thing it was, since by giving only the middle syllable of this name he kept his victim from questioning the existence of the brand.
He is therefore going to be obliged, once again, to buy an eraser he will not know what to do with, since it is not, apparently, the one he is looking for and since he does not need any other—despite certain resemblances—than that one.
“I’ll take this one,” he says. “It may do the trick.”
“You’ll see, it’s a good one. All our customers are satisfied with it.”
What’s the use of explaining further? Now he must bring the conversation back to…But the farce goes so fast that he scarcely has time to think: “How much do I owe you?” the bill taken out of his wallet, the change ringing on the marble… The ruins of Thebes…Wallas asks:
“Do you sell reproductions of pictures?”
“No, for the time being I have only post cards.” She points to two revolving stands. “If you’d like to look: there are a few museum paintings; all the rest are views of the city and its environs. But if you’re interested, there are a few that I took myself. Here, I made this one from the shot we were talking about just now.”
She takes out a glossy-print post card and hands it to him. It is the one that was used for the window. Besides, it shows in the foreground the paving stones that form the edge of the quay and the end of the railing at the end of the little drawbridge. Wallas assumes an admiring tone:
“It’s a pretty little house, isn’t it?”
“Yes it is, if you like it,” she answers with a laugh.
And he leaves the shop, taking the post card with him—whose acquisition was inevitable after all his praises when he first came in—and the little eraser which has already joined the one purchased this morning—as useless as the first.
Wallas is in a hurry; it must be almost noon. He still has time to speak to Doctor Juard before lunch. He will have to bear left to reach the Rue de Corinthe, but the first street he come to on that side leads only to a cross street where he might lose his way; he prefers to go on to the next main intersection. After his visit to the clinic, he will look for that post office at the end of the Rue Janeck; he might walk there, for it cannot be very far away. Above all, find out the exact time.
A policeman is on duty in the middle of the street, probably to control traffic in front of a school (otherwise, there are not enough cars to justify his presence at this unimportant crossing). Wallas turns back and walks over to him. The policeman salutes.
“Can you tell me what time it is, please?” Wallas asks.
“Twelve-fifteen,” the man answers without hesitating.
He has probably just looked at his watch.
“Is the Rue Joseph-Janeck far from here?”
“That depends on what number you want.”
“I want to go to the end, near the Boulevard Circulaire.”
“Then it’s easy: you go straight ahead to the first intersection and turn right, and then just afterward you turn left; after that it’s straight ahead. It won’t take you long.”
“There’s a post office there, isn’t there?”
“Yes…On the parkway at the corner of the Rue Jonas. But you don’t need to go that far to find a post office…”
“No, I know, but…I have to go to that one�
�for the poste restante.”
“Well, the first right, the first left, and then straight ahead. You can’t miss it.”
Wallas thanks him and continues on his way, but once he reaches the intersection and is about to turn left—toward the clinic—he realizes that, having omitted to inform the policeman of this detail, the latter will suppose he is taking the wrong turn despite his clear and repeated explanations. Wallas turns back to see if he is being watched: the man is making wide gestures with his arm to remind him that he should turn to the right first. If he goes in the other direction now, he will look like a lunatic, an idiot, or a practical joker. Maybe the policeman will run after him to set him right. As for going back to reassure the policeman, that would be really ridiculous. Wallas has already begun walking toward the right.
Since he is so near this post office, wouldn’t it be better to go straight there? Besides, it is after noon and Doctor Juard is eating his lunch; while the post office does not close and he will not be disturbing anyone.
Before getting out of sight, he glimpses the policeman making a gesture of approval—to reassure him: he is going the right way.
It’s silly to put a traffic policeman in a place like that, where there is no traffic to control. At this hour, the schoolchildren have already gone home for lunch. Is there even a school there?
As the policeman had said, Wallas immediately reaches another intersection. If he turned right into the Rue Bernadotte, it would take him straight back and allow him to reach the Rue de Corinthe, after a slight detour; but now he can not be any closer to the clinic than to the post office, and besides, he does not know the neighborhood well enough: he might find himself face to face with that policeman again. His invention of the poste restante was not very satisfactory: if he had had mail sent to him there, he would have known the address, instead of knowing its location only approximately.
The Erasers Page 11