Quite naturally Adam took his eyes off the eighth intersection of the bars and let himself fall backwards on the bed. He reflected that he still had two or three hours before suppertime. After that he would smoke his last cigarette of the day, and go to sleep. He had asked for paper and a black ball-point pen as well; but those were evidently not allowed, for the nurse had not mentioned the subject that morning, nor at lunch time. In any case he realized he had nothing much left to write. He had lost the wish to do anything tiring. He wanted to eat, drink, urinate, sleep, etc., taking his own time, in the cool, in the silence, in a kind of comfort. He had a vague impression that there were trees over there, all round. Perhaps one day they’d let him go out in the garden, in his pyjamas. Then he could carve his name surreptitiously on the tree-trunks, like that girl Cécile J. had done on the cactus leaf. He would steal a fork to do it with, and dig it in hard, in capital letters. Then the name would harden slowly into a scar, under the action of sun and rain, for a long time – for twelve years or twenty, for as long as a tree lives:
ADAM POLLO ADAM POLLO
He threw the bolster off the bed and laid his head flat on the mattress; then he stretched his legs as far as possible, so that his feet stuck out beyond the end of the bed. The night-table was on his right, close beside his head; it had two movable aluminium shelves without doors. On the bottom shelf there was an empty chamber pot. On the top shelf were: a pair of sun-glasses with gilt wire frames; one bottle of tranquillizer pills with passiflora and quinine as their chief ingredients; one cigarette, but no matches – when he wanted a light he had to ring for the nurse; one handkerchief; La Sarre et son Destin, by Jacques Dircks-Dilly, out of the hospital library; one glass of water, half full; one white comb; one photo of Zsa-Zsa Gabor, cut out of a magazine. All the furniture and cubic space in the room was supposed to form a setting for Adam alone, as he lay flat on the bed with his arms at an oblique angle and his feet together, as though crucified in sloth and repose.
And, a little before 6 in the afternoon, long after he had finished his cigarette and his thoughts – if they could be so called – the nurse pushed back the outside bolt and came into the room. She found Adam asleep. She had to put a hand on his shoulder in order to wake him. She was a young woman, and attractive, but so completely annihilated by her nurse’s uniform that it was impossible to make out her age or whether she was really pretty or really commonplace. Her hair was tinted a red-gold shade and her palish complexion stood out against the beige walls of the room.
Without saying a word, she picked up the plastic ashtray from the floor where Adam had deposited it, and emptied it into the slop-pail. Time did not in any case pass quickly in this place; and the position she thus suddenly took up, for some obscure reason deriving, perhaps, from the thousands of hours she had given to waiting on the mentally sick, seemed to place her in contradiction to herself, render her more ridiculous, reduce her by repercussion to four colour-slides projected on walls which had become a screen; her body bent sharply at hip-level and stayed like that, stuck, for an indefinite period of time. Awakening echoes of toil and distress in the world, memories of days without food, of degradation and old age. Abolishing all colour-contrasts by a succession of possible movements on different planes where a watery grey was dominant. Driving to madness whoever had the misfortune to catch sight of her and to shut his eyes immediately afterwards. For now the colours were reversed – her white face and apron were ink-black, the once-yellow walls powdered with a sort of cloak of bitter slate-grey and every cool, soothing colour suddenly transformed to a hellish atrocity. Nightmare drew close, pressing against the temples, making every object shrink or expand at its will. The woman seen just now was a medium putting the final touch to delirium in its most horrible form – the fear of going really mad. She clung to the eyeballs like a twining root, multiplying her faces to infinity. Her eyes were immense, wide open like caverns. She emerged from a dark pyrosphere, shattered the ramparts of the background like glass, and stood there, half-revealed, bending over a world simulated in her own image, awaiting some infinitesimal changes. Slowly she shrivelled, until her bones could be seen; until she resembled a drawing traced heavily with the pen, a pattern stamped on some object made of snake-skin; some figure, or rather some strange letter, a capital Gamma, piercing the brain through and through. Within a few seconds she had been devoured by incandescent fire, she had overthrown boundaries; in the ebb and flow that was now slowing down she stood motionless, became mechanical, was transformed into a dead bough that the flames have left behind. She offered every possibility of lingering in her torment, a thousand ways of perpetuating her gesture; Adam’s choice was to sit up up the edge of the bed. Then, drained of all volition, he waited for the nurse to begin moving again; her movement led up to words, pleasant ones, for she asked:
‘Well? Had a nice nap?’
And he replied:
‘Yes, thank you, very nice,’ adding, ‘Have you come to do the room?’
She moved the slop-pail a few inches before saying:
‘That I have not. You should do a little work yourself today, don’t you think? We can’t afford to pay for chambermaids for you here, you know. So make your bed, nice and tidily, and then sweep the floor a bit. I’ve brought you a broom and a dust-pan. All right?’
‘All right…’ said Adam. ‘But…’ he added, looking with curiosity at the young woman, ‘But – shall I have to do this every day?’
‘I should think so,’ she retorted, ‘Every morning. Today it was rather different, because you’re new here. But from now on you’ll have to get down to work every morning at ten o’clock. And if you’re a good boy you’ll soon be allowed out, like the others. You’ll be able to go out in the garden and read, or dig flowerbeds, or talk to the rest of them. You’d like to go out in the garden, wouldn’t you? You’ll see. You’ll enjoy being here. They’ll give you little jobs to do, making little wicker baskets, or decorations. There’s even a carpenter’s shop with all the gadgets, planes, electric saws and so forth. You’ll see, you’ll enjoy it. Provided you do just as you’re told, you understand? To be going on with, make your bed now, and sweep the floor. Like that, everything will be tidy for visiting time.’
Adam nodded, got up, and set to work at once. He did it well, while the young woman in her white uniform watched him. When he had finished, he turned to her and asked:
‘Will that do?’
‘Is the pot empty?’
‘Yes,’ said Adam.
‘Good. Then that’ll do. We shall get along splendidly.’
She picked up the slop-pail and added:
‘Right. Visiting time is an hour from now.’
‘Is someone coming to see me?’ queried Adam.
‘I’ll come and call you then.’
‘Is someone coming to see me?’ he asked again.
‘I should just think so.’
‘Who? My mother? Tell me.’
‘Half a dozen gentlemen will be round to see you an hour from now, with the head doctor.’
‘From the police?’ Adam asked.
‘Oh no,’ she laughed, ‘Not from the police.’
‘Then who?’
‘Some gentlemen who’re interested in you, you inquisitive boy! Some very solid citizens, who can’t wait to meet you! You’ll behave nicely, won’t you?’
‘Who are they?’
‘They’re what I’ve told you. Half a dozen of them. Very much interested in you.’
‘Journalists?’
‘Yes, that’s it. Journalists, in a way.’
‘They’re going to write some stuff about me?’
‘Well, that’s to say – they’re not exactly journalists. They won’t talk about you in the papers, certainly…’
‘Then they’re the people I saw when I came in here?’
The nurse picked up everything she had to carry away, and took hold of the door-handle with her left hand.
‘Oh no, not them. Young men like yourself. Th
ey’ll come to the infirmary with the head doctor and ask you questions. You must get on the right side of them. They may be able to help you.’
‘You mean coppers, don’t you?’ Adam persisted.
‘Students,’ said the nurse as she left the room, carrying the slop-pail. ‘Students, if you must know.’
Adam went to sleep again till they arrived, at about ten past seven.
The nurse woke him as she had done the first time, shaking him by the shoulder, told him to make water, to straighten his pyjamas and comb his hair, and then led him to the door of a room just across the corridor. She left him to go in alone.
The room was even smaller than his own cell, and full of people sitting on chairs. There was a medicine cupboard in one corner and a weighing-machine in another, to show that this was the infirmary. Adam made his way between the seated people, found an empty chair at the far end of the room, and sat down on it. He sat there for a little time in silence. The other people seemed to take no notice of him. Except when Adam asked a girl who was sitting next to him whether she happened to have a cigarette; she said yes, opened her black leather handbag and held out the packet to him. They were rather expensive Virginia cigarettes, Blacks or Du Mauriers. Adam asked if he might take three or four. The girl told him to keep the whole packet. Adam took it, thanked her, and began to smoke. After a few minutes he raised his head and looked at them; there were seven in all, young ones, some male, some female, aged between nineteen and twenty-four, and a doctor, a man of about forty-eight. None of them was looking at him. They were talking in undertones. Three of the young ones were making notes. A fourth was reading something in an exercise-book; this was the girl who’d given him her packet of cigarettes. She was twenty-one and a bit, her name was Julienne R., and as it happened she was slim and astonishingly pretty; she had fair hair twisted into a chignon and a beauty-spot above her right ankle; she was wearing a dark blue cotton dress that had a leather belt lined with gold plastic. Her mother was Swiss. Her father had died of an ulcer ten years ago.
She was the first who really looked at Adam. She gazed at him with grave eyes, faintly dark-circled, full of gracious understanding. Then she folded her arms, locking her little finger into the bend at each elbow, scarcely moving the tips of the first fingers, and craned her neck slightly forward, more than usual. Her forehead had a faint suggestion of something childish, yet material; it was broad but not vulgarly so, it made way naturally for the roots of her hair, which began by parting to right and left and was then brought up at the back of the head and coiled down again at the end of a twisted parting.
She was unquestionably the one who had listened most to the others, whether to the doctor or to her fellow students. One could sense this in her remarkably well-proportioned features; they had a symmetry which, instead of hardening the lower part of the face, particularly the lips, gave an added tenderness, an extra touch of inquiry. She opened her mouth slightly in breathing, and gazed unblinkingly. Her gaze, by infinitesimal degrees, bore down Adam’s, took on a thousand presumed emotions, a thousand delicate touches, an intimacy as powerful as sin, as perfect as incestuous love. She was a citadel of consciousness and knowledge, not vindictive, not violent, but almost senile in its sweet confidence.
She was the first to speak; at the nodded permission of the doctor, she leant slightly forward towards Adam, as though to take him by the hands. But her arms were still folded. She said, in her deep voice:
‘Have you been here long?’
‘No…’ said Adam.
‘How long?’
Adam hesitated.
‘A day? Two days? Three days? Or more?’
Adam smiled.
‘Yes, that’s it – three or four days, I think…’
‘You think? – ’
‘Three or four days?’ asked a boy in dark glasses.
Adam hesitated again.
‘Do you like being here?’ asked Julienne.
‘Yes,’ said Adam.
‘Where are you?’ asked another girl, whose surname was Martin.
‘Do you know where you are, here? What the place is called?’
‘Er – the lunatic asylum,’ said Adam.
‘And why you’re there?’ asked the Martin girl.
‘Why you’re here?’ Julienne repeated after her.
Adam pondered this.
‘The coppers brought me here,’ he said. The girl made a note – of his reply, no doubt – in her exercise-book. A lorry was grinding up a steep bit of road, somewhere outside the window. The dull roar of its engine came into the infirmary like the drone of a bluebottle, weaving a web of sound-waves between the white-tiled walls; it was a garbage-lorry, no doubt, climbing the mimosa-bordered hill that leads to the incinerating plant. Lead pipes, rolls of cardboard and heaps of springs would fall pellmell over the sides of the artificial mountain, waiting to be thrust into the annihilating flames.
‘How long will they keep you here?’ asked Julienne R.
‘I don’t know – they haven’t told me.’
Another young man, a tallish boy on the other side of the room, raised his voice now:
‘And how long have you been here?’
Adam looked pensively at him.
‘I’ve told you already. Three or four days.’
The girl glanced round and made a sign of disapproval at the young man. Then she went on again, in a slightly softer voice:
‘What’s your name?’
‘Adam Polio,’ said Adam.
‘And your parents?’
‘The same.’
‘No – I mean, your parents? They’re still alive?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you live with them?’
‘Yes.’
‘You always have done?’
‘Yes, I think so.’
‘You have lived somewhere else?’
‘Yes – once…’
‘When was that?’
‘Not long ago.’
‘And where was it?’
‘It was on a hill. There was an empty house.’
‘And you lived in that?’
‘Yes.’
‘Were you comfortable?’
‘Yes.’
‘You were alone there?’
‘Yes.’
‘Didn’t you see anybody? Didn’t anyone come to see you?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because they didn’t know where I was.’
‘Did you like that?’
‘Yes.’
‘But you don’t sug…’
‘It was nice. A fine house. And the hill was nice, too. One could see the road at the bottom. I used to sunbathe with nothing on.’
‘You like that?’
‘Yes.’
‘You don’t like wearing clothes?’
‘Not when it’s hot.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because one has to button them. I don’t like buttons.’
‘What about your parents?’
‘I’d left them.’
‘And gone away?’
Adam took a flake of tobacco out of his mouth.
‘Yes.’
‘Why did you go away?’
‘Where from?’
The girl jotted down something in her exercise-book; now it was she who hesitated, hanging her head. Adam saw that the parting turned round the top of her head in an S shape. Then she looked up and her big, heavy, sleepy eyes rested on Adam again. They were huge eyes, blue, intelligent, inflexibly and resolutely hypnotic. Her voice seemed to flow along her gaze and slide to the depths of Adam’s guts. Before it reached maturity, three other questions, fired at him by two girls and a boy, were left unanswered:
‘Are you ill?’
‘How old are you?’
‘You say you don’t like clothes. But – do you specially like being naked?’
At last Julienne R’s words burst out from the midst of a kind of fog, like a spark running through damp gunpowder. Like
a match used for picking one’s ear, on which the wax-coated phosphorus is consumed without a flame and gives off an acid smell of singed flesh. Like a burning torch thrusting through the opposing layers of water.
‘Why did you leave your parents’ house?’
Adam had not heard this; she repeated, without annoyance, as though speaking into a microphone:
‘Why did you leave your parents’ house?’
‘I had to go,’ said Adam.
‘But why?’
‘I don’t quite remember,’ he began. They all made notes of this. Only Julienne R. did not lower her head.
‘I mean to say – ’
‘Were you in trouble?’
‘Had you quarrelled with your parents?’
Adam waved his hand. The ash from his cigarette fell on Julienne’s shoe; ‘Excuse me,’ he murmured, and then went on:
‘No, not in trouble, exactly. Put it this way, I ought to have gone a long time before. I thought – ’
‘Yes? You thought?’ asked the girl. She seemed to be really listening.
‘I thought it would be better,’ said Adam. ‘I wasn’t having trouble with my parents, no but – Perhaps I was just giving way to a childish need to be alone…’
‘Children are usually pretty sociable,’ said the boy with dark glasses.
‘Yes, if you like – Yes, that’s true, they are pretty sociable. But at the same time they try to establish a kind of – how can I put it? – a kind of faculty of communication with nature. I think they want – they easily give way to purely egocentric – anthropomorphic – needs. They try to find a way of getting inside things, because they’re afraid of their own personality. It’s as though their parents had made them want to minimize themselves. Parents make their children into things – they treat them like objects of poss – like objects that can be possessed. They give this object psychosis to their children. So some children are afraid of company, of the company of grown-ups, because of a vague inkling that they’re on an equal footing there. It’s equality they’re afraid of. They have to play their part. Something’s expected of them. So they choose to withdraw. They try to find some way of having their own universe, a rather – well – mythical universe, a make-believe universe where they’re on a level with dead matter. Or rather, where they feel they’ve got the upper hand. Yes, they’d rather feel superior to plants and animals and what have you, and inferior to grown-ups, than on an equality with anything at all. If necessary they’ll even reverse the situation, making the plants play their role, the children’s role, while they play at being grown-ups. You see, for a kid, a Colorado beetle is always more like a man than another kid. I – yes…’
The Interrogation Page 19