The Erasers

by Alain Robbe-Grillet

  The blind man with the child, the brass candlestick, th< tobacco jar, the ashtray, the athlete crushing a lizard.

  The hand again advances toward the bronze blind man—the image of the hand toward that of the blind man… The two hands, the two blind men, the two children, the two empty candlesticks, the two earthenware jars, the two ashtrays, the two Apollos, the two lizards…

  He still remains hesitating for some time. Then he resolutely grasps the statuette on the left and replaces it by the terracotta jar; the candlestick replaces the jar, the blind man the candlestick.

  The tobacco jar, the blind man with the child, the candlestick, the ashtray, the splendid athlete.

  He examined his work. Something still disturbs him. The

  tobacco jar, the blind man, the candlestick He reverses the

  last two objects. The earthenware pot and its reflection, the blind man and his reflection, the candlestick, the athlete with the lizard, the ashtray.

  Finally he pushes the little red ashtray about an inch toward the corner of the marble mantelpiece.

  Garinati leaves his room, locks the door behind him, and begins walking down the long spiral of the staircase.

  Along a canal. The blocks of granite that line the quay; under the dust gleam occasional crystals, black, white, and pinkish. To the right, a little farther down, is the water.

  A rubber-coated electric wire makes a vertical line against the wall.

  Below, to pass over a cornice, it makes a right angle, once, twice. But afterward, instead of following the inner surface, it stands away from the wall and hangs free for about a foot and a half.

  Below, fastened again against the vertical wall, it describes another two or three sinusoidal arcs before finally resuming its straight descent.

  The little glass door has creaked loudly. In his hurry to get away, Garinati has opened it a little more than he should have.

  The cube of gray lava. The warning buzzer disconnected, the street that smells of cabbage soup. The muddy paths that fade away, far away, among the rusty corrugated iron.

  The bicycles coming home from work. The wave of bicycles flows along the Boulevard Circulaire.

  “Don’t you read the papers?” Bona bends over toward his briefcase.

  Garinati puts his hands over his ears to get rid of that irritating noise. This time he uses both hands, which he keeps pressed hard against each side of his head for a minute.

  When he takes them away, the whistling sound has stopped. He begins walking, carefully, as though he were afraid of making it start all over again by movements that might be too sudden. After a few steps he is once again standing in front of the apartment house he has just left.

  After a few steps more he sees, glancing up at a gleaming shop, the brick house at the corner of the Rue des Arpenteurs. It is not the house itself, but a huge photograph of it carefully arranged behind the glass.

  He goes in.

  There is no one in the shop. Through a door in the rear comes a dark young woman who smiles at him politely. He glances toward the shelves covering the walls.

  One showcase entirely filled with candy, each piece wrapped in brightly colored paper and sorted out in large round or oval jars.

  One showcase completely full of little spoons, in groups of twelve—in parallel rows, other rows fan-shaped, in squares, in circles…

  Bona would go to the Rue des Arpenteurs, ring at the door of the little house. The old deaf servant would finally hear and come to the door.

  “Monsieur Daniel Dupont, please.”

  “What did you say?”

  Bona would repeat, louder:

  “Monsieur Daniel Dupont!”

  “Yes, this is the house. What do you want?”

  “I came to find out how he was… Find out how he was!”

  “Oh, I see. Very kind. Monsieur Dupont is quite well.”

  Why should Bona go to find out how he was, since he knows the professor is dead?

  Garinati stares, under the platform, at the girders and cables gradually disappearing from sight. On the other side of the canal, the huge drawbridge machinery hums smoothly.

  It would be enough to insert some hard object—it could be of quite small size—into one of the essential gears in order to stop the whole system, with a shriek of wrenched machinery. A small, very hard object that would resist being crushed: the cube of gray lava …

  What would be the use? The emergency crew would come at once. Tomorrow everything would be in operation as usual—as if nothing had happened.

  “Monsieur Daniel Dupont, please.”

  “What did you say?”

  Bona raises his voice:

  “Monsieur Daniel Dupont.”

  “Yes, I hear you! You don’t have to shout, you know. I’m not deaf! What do you want Monsieur Dupont for now?”

  “I came to find out how he is.”

  “How he is? But he’s dead, young man! Dead, you hear? There’s no one else here, you’ve come too late.”

  The little glass door creaks loudly.

  Something to say to that Wallas? What would he have to say to him? He takes the post card out of his pocket and stops to look at it. You could almost count the granite crystals in the curb of stone in the foreground.

  A ball of crumpled paper—bluish and dirty. He kicks it, two or three times.

  A plaque of black glass attached by four gilded screws. The one on the upper right has lost the decorative rosette that concealed its head.

  A white step.

  A brick, an ordinary brick, a brick among the thousands of bricks that constitute the wall.

  That is all that remains of Garinati around five in the evening.

  The tug has now reached the next footbridge and in order to pass under it begins lowering its smokestack.

  Looking directly down, the cable still runs along the surface of the water, straight and taut, scarcely bigger around than a man’s thumb. It rises imperceptibly above the glaucous wavelets.

  And suddenly, preceded by a ripple of foam, appears from under the arch of the bridge the blunt bow of the barge, which moves slowly on toward the next bridge.

  The little man in the long greenish coat who has been leaning over the parapet straightens up.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  1

  And night is already falling—and the cold fog comes in from the North Sea; the city seems to fall asleep in it. There has been almost no day at all.

  Walking along past the shopwindows that light up one after the other, Wallas tries to distinguish the usable elements of the report Laurent has given him to read. That the motive of the crime is not theft, he is—in the precise sense of the words—“paid to find out.” But why go so far as to imagine this duplication of the murderer? It does not take anyone any further to have supposed that the man who fired the fatal shot is not the man who pointed out the familiar way across the garden and through the house. Moreover, the argument about the footsteps on the lawn is not very convincing. If someone were already walking on the brick rim of the path, the other man could have walked behind him or rather in front of him, since he was the only one supposed to know the way. This is the position it is easiest to imagine the two night prowlers adopting. In any case, no one needed to walk on the lawn; if anyone did, it must be for some other reason—or else for no reason at all.

  Wallas feels the day’s accumulated fatigue beginning to make his legs numb. He is not used to walking such long distances. These comings and goings from one end of the town to the other must ultimately add up to a good number of miles, most of which he has covered on foot. Leaving the police station, he headed for the Rue de Corinthe by way of the Rue de la Charte, the prefecture, and the Rue Bergere; here he found himself at an intersection of three roads: the one he was on and two possible directions opposite him, forming a right angle between them. He remembered having already passed this place twice before: the first time he had gone the right way, the second time he had made a mistake; but he could no longer rem
ember which of these two streets he had taken the first time—moreover, they looked very much alike.

  He took the one to the left, and after a few detours made necessary by the arrangement of sidewalks, he came out—much sooner than he would have believed possible—on the courthouse square, just in front of the police station.

  Laurent was just leaving; he has indicated his surprise at finding Wallas here, since he had left some fifteen minutes ago. Yet Laurent has not asked for any explanation and has offered to drive the special agent to Juard’s clinic in his own car, for he was going that way himself.

  Two minutes later, Wallas was ringing at Number 11. It is the same nurse who has opened the door before—the one who, this morning, had insisted so indiscreetly on keeping him there despite the doctor’s absence. He could tell from her smile that she recognized him. “They’re all the same!” He has told her he wanted to speak to Doctor Juard in person; he has emphasized the urgent nature of his visit and has given her a card on which were printed the words: “Bureau of Investigation of the Ministry of the Interior.”

  He has been asked to wait in a kind of dim parlor-library. Since no one has asked him to sit down, he has walked up and down in front of the shelves filled with books, now and then reading a few titles as he passed. One whole shelf was filled with books devoted to the plague—as many historical studies as medical ones.

  A woman has walked through the room, then two others and a short, thin man wearing glasses, who seemed in a great hurry.

  The nurse has finally come back and—as if she had forgotten him—asked him what he was waiting for. He has answered that he was waiting for Doctor Juard.

  “But the doctor left a moment ago, didn’t you see him just now?”

  It was hard to believe that she was not making fun of him. How could he have guessed that the man he has just seen was Doctor Juard, since he did not know him. And why hadn’t she announced his visit as he had asked her to?

  “Don’t be angry, Monsieur; I thought the doctor would have spoken to you before he went out. I had told him you were here. He’s just been called on an emergency case, and it was impossible for him to stay—even a minute. Since the doctor has a very busy afternoon, he’s asked if you could meet him at exactly four-thirty in the hall of the railway station, between the telephone booths and the snack bar; it’s the only way you can meet him today: he won’t be coming back here until late tonight. When I saw the doctor come in here, I assumed he was going to arrange the meeting himself.”

  On his way through the room, the little doctor had glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. “There are some funny doctors around here.”

  Since he had plenty of time, Wallas went around to Marchat’s apartment building. But his ring at the door remained unanswered. That wasn’t important, one way or the other, Laurent having repeated to him the essentials of his conversation with the man who believed himself doomed to die. Still, he would have liked to judge the man’s mental equilibrium for himself. Laurent described him as raving mad, and the way he had behaved in the commissioner’s office justified, at least in part, this opinion. But on certain points, Wallas is not so sure as the commissioner of the insanity of Marchat’s fears: the execution of a new victim is in fact only too likely for this very evening.

  Having walked back downstairs, Wallas has asked the concierge of the building if he knew when his tenant would be coming in. Monsieur Marchat had just left in his car for several days, with his entire family; he had probably heard of the death of a close relative: “The poor fellow was all worked up.”

  The businessman lives in the southern part of town, not far from the wood export offices. From here, Wallas proceeded toward the station, walking back along the Rue de Berlin and through the courthouse square. He then followed an endless canal bordered on the other side by a row of old houses whose narrow gables have been rotted away by the water for centuries, until they lean over the canal most alarmingly.

  ***

  Walking into the station hall, he saw the little chromium-plated stand at once, where a man in a white apron was selling sandwiches and bottles of soda pop. About five yards to the right there was a telephone booth—just one. He began walking up and down, glancing frequently at the dial of the clock. The doctor was late.

  The hall was full of people hurrying in all directions. Wallas did not budge an inch from the place indicated by the nurse, for the crowd was so thick that he was afraid he might miss the doctor when he arrived.

  Wallas began to be worried. The hour agreed on had long since passed and the disagreeable impression his visit to the clinic had made on him was growing stronger minute by minute. There had certainly been a misunderstanding. The nurse had garbled the message, either in understanding or transmitting it—perhaps in both.

  He would have to telephone to the clinic to ask for an explanation. Since there was no phone book in the one booth standing here, Wallas has asked the man behind the soda fountain where he might find one. While handing out bottles and counting change, the man indicated a place in the hall where Wallas, despite his efforts, could see nothing but a newsstand. It seemed to him that the boy had not understood what he wanted. He has nevertheless started toward the tiny stall where there was obviously no trace of a phone book. A few stationery articles were exhibited among the illustrated magazines and the brightly colored covers of the detective stories; Wallas has asked to see some erasers.

  It was at this moment that Doctor Juard appeared. He had been waiting at the other end of the hall, where the real snack bar and a whole row of telephone booths are.

  The doctor was unable to tell him anything new. Wallas did not want to speak of the conspiracy, out of discretion, and Juard merely repeated what he had said that morning to the chief commissioner.

  Quite naturally Wallas has taken, from the station square, the same streetcar as the evening before—the one that had taken him near the Rue des Arpenteurs. He got off at the same stop, and now follows the Boulevard Circulaire that brings him back to the little brick house and the wretched room over the Café des Allies. It is completely dark now. Wallas is no further along than when he arrived, the day before, by this same route.

  He walks into the huge stone apartment building that stands at the corner of the street. He is going to be forced, for the counter-questioning of the concierge, to show his pink card and, most likely, to admit, at the same time, his little deception of this morning concerning his mother’s supposed friendship with Madame Bax.

  From the greeting of the heavy-set, jovial man, Wallas sees that the latter recognizes him. When he reveals the object of his visit to him, the concierge smiles and merely says:

  “I knew this morning that you were from the police.”

  The man then explains that an inspector has already come by to question him, whom he has told that he knew nothing. Wallas then refers to the youth whose disturbing manners the concierge had mentioned. The other man raises his arms to heaven:

  “Disturbing!” he repeats.

  It had seemed to him, in fact, that the inspector was attaching to this young man an importance which he himself was far from…etc. Wallas discovers, as he expected, that Commissioner Laurent made no mistake in suspecting his subordinate of immoderate “zeal.” Hence the concierge did not say that there had been quarreling during these encounters, but only that at moments “voices were raised.” Nor did he say that the student often seemed to be drunk. Yes, he saw him point to the house as he walked by to a friend, but he did not say that his gesture was threatening; he only mentioned “sweeping gestures”—the kind all boys that age make, impassioned or nervous. Lastly the concierge adds that the professor had already received, in the past—though rarely, as a matter of fact—visits from students at the School of Law.

  The café is warm and cheerful despite the heavy atmosphere—smoke, men’s breath, and the vapors of white wine. There are a good many people—five or six drinkers laughing and talking in loud voices, all at once. Wallas has retur
ned to this place as to a refuge; he would like to have told someone to meet him here; he would wait for hours, lost in the noise of these trifling discussions—drinking hot rum at this rather isolated table…

  “Greetings,” the drunk says.

  “Hello.”

  “You kept me waiting,” the drunk says.

  Wallas turns around. Here, too, there is no isolated table where he can be quiet.

  He has no desire to go upstairs to his room, which he remembers is gloomy and which is probably quite cold as well. He walks over to the bar, where three men are standing.

  “Well,” the drunk shouts behind him, “aren’t you going to sit down over here?”

  The three men turn around at the same time and stare at Wallas without the slightest embarrassment. One is wearing a grease-stained mechanic’s suit; the two others are in heavy navy blue pea jackets with big collars. It occurs to Wallas that his bourgeois clothes are betraying his profession. Fabius would have started by dressing up as a sailor.

  …Fabius comes in. He is wearing a bargeman’s uniform and rolls his hips when he walks—the token of imaginary pitching on stormy seas.

  “Not much to catch today,” he remarks to no one in particular. “Guess all the herring are already canned…”

  The three men stare at him with surprise and suspicion. Two other customers, standing in front of the stove, have broken off a conversation—though one they were deeply involved in—to stare at him too. The manager wipes a rag across the bar.

  “All right, are you coming?” the drunk repeats during the silence. “I’ll ask you the riddle.”

  The two sailors, the mechanic, the other two men next to the stove all go back to their previous conversations.

  “Give me a hot rum, please,” Wallas says to the manager.