There remained the village proper. Originally merely a cluster of three or four farmhouses, it had grown with the neighboring installations, although more modestly Even had Mathias’ memory been better, he would scarcely have recognized it, so much had it developed since his childhood: perhaps ten cottages, jerry-built but of neat appearance, now surrounded and concealed the original group, whose thicker walls, lower roofs, and smaller windows were evidence of their earlier date. The new constructions were not a part of the world of wind and rain: although actually quite similar to their predecessors—granted certain minor differences—they seemed without climate, and at the same time without history and geographical location. It was remarkable that they managed to withstand, with apparently equal success, the same raw weather as the others; unless atmospheric conditions had grown somewhat gentler . . .
It was no different now from anywhere else. There was a grocery and a café, of course, almost at the beginning of the village. Leaving his bicycle near the door, Mathias went in.
The arrangement inside was like that of all such establishments in the country or even in the suburbs of big cities—or on the quays of little fishing ports. The girl behind the bar had a timorous face and the ill-assured manners of a dog that had been ill-assured manners of a dog that had been ill-assured manners of a girl who served behind the. . . . Behind the bar, a fat woman with a satisfied, jovial face beneath her abundant gray hair was pouring drinks for two workmen in blue overalls. She handled the bottle with the sure gestures of a professional, raising the neck with a slight rotation of her wrist at the precise moment the liquid reached the edge of the glass. The salesman went to the bar, set his suitcase on the floor between his feet, and ordered an absinthe.
Without thinking, the salesman was about to order an absinthe when he changed his mind—just before having spoken the word. He cast about for the name of some other kind of drink, and, unable to think of any, pointed to the bottle the proprietress was still holding after having served the two lighthouse workers.
“I'll have the same,” he said, and set the suitcase on the floor between his feet.
The woman put in front of him a glass like the first two; she filled it with her other hand, which had not yet released the bottle—making the same rapid movement, so that a large quantity of liquid was still in the air, between the bottom of the glass and the neck of the bottle, as she was already lifting the latter away. At the very second she had finished twisting her wrist, the surface of the poured liquid immobilized on a level with the edge of the glass—without the slightest miniscus—like a diagram representing the theoretical capacity of the glass.
Its color—rather dark reddish-brown—was that of the majority of wine-base apéritifs. Promptly returned to its place on the shelf, the bottle could not be distinguished from its neighbors in the row of different brands. Previously, when the woman had been holding it in her huge hand, the spread of the fingers—or else the position of the label in relation to the observer—had prevented him from determining its brand. Mathias wanted to reconstruct the scene in order to try to fasten on some fragment of bright-colored paper to compare with the labels lined up on the shelf. He succeeded only in discovering an anomaly which had not struck him at the time: the proprietress used her left hand to serve drinks.
He studied her more attentively as she rinsed and dried the glasses—with the same dexterity—but he could not establish a preliminary standard as to the respective functions of each hand in these complex operations; so that it was impossible for him to determine whether or not she was right- or left-handed. His mind grew so confused between what he saw with his own eyes and his recollection of the previous scene that he began to muddle right and left himself.
The woman put down her towel; she seized the coffee mill beside her, sat down on a stool, and began to turn the handle vigorously. In order not to tire either arm at such a speed, she ground the coffee with one arm and then the other alternately.
The coffee beans made a pattering noise as they were crushed in the gearing, and when one of the two men said something to his companion Mathias could not hear him clearly. Several syllables, however, took shape in his mind, resembling the word “cliff” and—less positively—the verb “to bind.” He cocked his ears; but no one was speaking any longer.
The salesman found it strange that they had fallen silent in this way ever since he had come in, sipping their apéritifs and putting their glasses on the bar after each swallow. Perhaps he had disturbed them in the midst of an important conversation? He tried to imagine what it could be about. But suddenly he was afraid to guess, and dreaded the possibility that the subject might be broached again, as if their words, without their knowing it, might have concerned him. It would not be difficult to go a good deal further along this irrational course: the words “without their knowing it,” for instance, were superfluous, for if his presence had caused them to fall silent—although they were not embarrassed to speak in front of the proprietress—it was obviously because they . . . because “he” . . . “In front of the proprietress,” or rather, “with” her. And now they were pretending not to know one another. The woman stopped grinding only to refill the coffee mill. The workmen managed to keep another mouthful at the bottoms of their glasses. To all intents and purposes no one had anything to say; yet five minutes before he had seen through the window all three talking animatedly together.
The proprietress was about to pour another drink for the two men; they were wearing blue overalls, like most of the lighthouse workers. Mathias leaned his bicycle against the shopwindow, pushed open the glass door, stood against the bar next to the two workmen and ordered an apéritif. After having served him, the woman began grinding coffee. She was middle-aged, fat, imposing, self-assured. At this time of day there was no sailor in her establishment. The house in which her café was located had no upper floor. The sparkling water of the harbor could not be seen through the door.
Evidently no one had anything to say. The salesman turned toward the room. For a moment he was afraid it was all going to begin over again: three fishermen he had not noticed when he came in—a very young man and two older ones—were sitting over three glasses of red wine at one of the back tables; just then the youngest began speaking—but the noise of the coffee mill might have kept Mathias from hearing the beginning of the conversation. He cocked his ears. As usual, it was about the slump in crab sales. He turned back to the bar to finish this unidentifiable reddish drink.
His eyes met those of the proprietress; she had been watching him on the sly as she ground her coffee, while he himself had been looking in the other direction. He lowered his eyes to his glass, as if he had noticed nothing. To his left the two workmen were looking straight ahead, toward the bottles lined up on the shelf.
“You wouldn't happen to be the man selling watches?” the woman asked suddenly, her voice calm.
He lifted his head. She was still turning the handle of her coffee mill, still staring at him—but kindly, he thought.
“Yes, I am,” answered Mathias. “Someone must have told you a salesman was coming this way. News travels fast around here!”
“Maria, one of the Leduc girls, came in here just ahead of you. She was looking for her sister, the youngest one. You visited them this morning: the last house as you leave town.”
“Yes, of course I visited Madame Leduc. Her brother is a friend of mine—Joseph—the one who works for the steamship line. But I haven't seen the girls today, not one of them. No one told me the youngest was here.”
“She wasn't. Her mother sent her to tend the sheep. And she ran away again. Always running off where she shouldn't, making trouble somewhere.”
“They send her as far as this with the sheep?”
“No, of course not: back there, under the crossroads. Maria went to tell her to come home early, but no one was there—only the sheep. The girl had picketed them in a hollow.”
Mathias shrugged, hesitating between amusement and compassion.
The proprietress didn't take the matter too much to heart, but on the other hand she wasn't laughing either; her expression was completely neutral—certain of what she was talking about, yet attaching no importance to it—a vaguely professional smile on her lips, as if she were merely talking about the weather.
“It sounds as if she's something of a problem,” the salesman said.
“A real devil! Her sister came all the way here on her bicycle to see if anyone knew where she was. If she doesn't take her home with her, there's going to be trouble.”
“Children are a lot of trouble,” said the salesman.
They were obliged to speak very loudly, in order to be heard over the noise of the coffee mill. Between sentences, the pattering noise of the coffee beans as they were crushed in the gearing was all that could be heard. To reach the village at Black Rocks, Maria must have passed Mathias on the road while he was visiting the exhausted-looking couple. Before that, to cross the moor between the road and the place where the sheep were grazing on top of the cliff, she couldn't have taken the same path he used, but a short cut probably, a short cut starting at the crossroads. In fact, the girl needed a certain amount of time to make the trip from the road to the cliff top and back and to look around a little as well. This amount of time would be much more than the few minutes it had taken the salesman to sell the one watch in the only house he had stopped at between the fork to the Marek farm and the village. And the distance between this fork and the cottage in question could not account for the difference either: beside the fact that it was scarcely more than five or six hundred yards, it was still the road both of them must have taken.
Thus Maria was already riding toward the cliff before he himself had climbed back onto his own bicycle. Consequently, if she had taken the path opposite the fork to the Marek farm, she would have come upon the salesman in the middle of the road, gossiping with the old woman—or examining his bicycle chain, the clouds, the dead toad—for this prolonged stop had occurred within sight of the crossing—not two steps away from it, so to speak. (This same hypothesis—in which the girl used the same path Mathias had taken, to reach the cliff top—worked no better if presuming she had arrived at the cliff top before he had made his stop, since then she would have encountered the salesman on the path itself.)
She must have come by another road. But why had she mentioned him to the proprietress? Because of the rolling ground, it seemed unlikely—it was impossible—it was impossible—it was impossible that she had seen him from another path, supposing that she had been going toward the cliff top and he returning from it. Back there, in the sheltered hollow where the sheep were grazing, she had doubtless just missed him. After a rapid exploration of the environs, repeated calls, a few seconds’ hesitation, she had returned to the main road—this time, probably, by the same path he had taken (the only one he knew), but the tire tracks were too numerous and too indistinct to be able to tell one from another. It seemed unlikely that there would be a new short cut between the sheep and the village at Black Rocks—not a very useful short cut in any case, given the size of the bay jutting into the land northwest of the lighthouse.
Mathias, who had omitted this last possibility in the course of all his previous deductions, feared for a moment that he might have to reconstruct his entire train of thought. But on reflection, he decided that even if this unlikely short cut had existed, it would not have been sufficient to negate the conclusions he had arrived at—although it would have modified his reasoning, without a doubt.
“I came in here as soon as I reached the village. If Maria was here shortly before, she must have passed me without my seeing her—while I was visiting customers: in the cottage along the road, the only one between the village and the crossroads. Before stopping there, I had gone to see my old friends the Mareks—where I waited for a long time in the courtyard: no one was there and I didn't want to leave without saying hello, hearing the family news, gossiping a little about the neighbors. I was born here on the island, you know. Robert Marek was a childhood playmate of mine. He had gone into town this morning. His mother—still an active woman—was marketing here at Black Rocks. Maybe you ran into her while she was here. Luckily I met her on her way back, at the crossroads—at the fork, I mean—but there is a crossroads there, since the road to their farm crosses the main road and continues as a path over the moor. If Maria went that way, she must have been there while I was waiting at the farmhouse. Didn't you say that the path just after the crossroads led to the cliff top—to that place on the cliff top where she took the sheep to graze?”
He had better stop. These specifications as to time and itinerary—both furnished and requested—were futile, suspect even—worse still: confusing. Besides, the fat woman had never said Maria took the road passing through the crossroads, but only that the Leduc sheep were grazing “after the crossroads"—an ambiguous expression, since it was impossible to know if she meant “after” in relation to her own village or to the town where Madame Leduc lived.
The proprietress did not answer his question. She was no longer looking at the salesman. Mathias thought he had not made himself heard above the noise of the coffee mill. He did not try again, however, and pretended to drink the liquid remaining in his glass. Afterward, he doubted whether he had spoken aloud at all.
He was glad of it: if it was useless to go over the details of his alibis with listeners as inattentive as this, it could only be dangerous to falsify those parts of his story relating to the sister, who would certainly remember which road she had taken. Doubtless she had reached the cliff top by another road—a short cut the proprietress must know about. It was stupid, under such conditions, to refer to the “fact” that the girl had taken a path at the crossroads.
Then the salesman remembered that the fat woman had not said “after the crossroads,” but something like “under the crossroads"—which meant nothing in particular—or even nothing at all. As a last resource, there still remained. . . .
He had to make a conscious mental effort to understand that here too any attempt at deception would be useless: the place where the sheep were picketed had been determined beyond all possibility of dispute. They were always pastured in the one spot, perhaps, and Maria went there often. In any case, she had had time today, certainly, to examine the place as much as she liked. Furthermore: the sheep, left where they had been picketed, would be the most irrefutable indication of all. And besides, Mathias knew the hollow on the cliff top as well as anyone else. He would obviously not succeed in changing its position by pretending to interpret incorrectly the declarations of an indirect witness.
Anyway these various pieces of information concerning location and route were of no importance whatever. The thing to remember was that Maria could not have seen him crossing the moor, or else he would have seen her himself, especially since they were going in opposite directions. All these explanations were intended solely to account for the fact that they had not met each other when he stopped in the middle of the main road, near the toad's dried corpse—a place where such a meeting would be of no importance. To try to prove in addition that they had not seen each other because he was waiting at the Marek farm during that time would lead to nothing.
It would be much more likely, everyone would think, that Maria Leduc had passed the salesman well before he reached the crossroads, while he was showing his merchandise in another house—the mill, for instance. The few minutes Mathias had spent at the Marek farm, added to the trip to the cliff top and back on the little path, did not leave the girl time enough to look for her youngest sister in all the nooks and crannies of the cliff.
True enough, Mathias had not gone to the farm—but a conversation with the old woman at the crossroads sounded as if it would have lasted an even shorter time. The mill would be a solution less open to dispute. Unfortunately it too had to be rejected as altogether spurious for at least two reasons, one being that the salesman had no more made this side-trip to the mill than he had made the other to th
e farm.
As for the other reason, it must be confessed that Maria's investigations represented only the time it would take to sell a watch—near a crossroads—to repair a new bicycle, to tell the difference between a frog's skin and a toad's, to rediscover in the all-too-changeable shapes of clouds the fixed eye of a sea gull, to follow the movements of an ant's antennae in the dust.
Mathias prepared to recapitulate his movements since he had left the café–tobacco shop–garage on the rented bicycle. That had been at eleven-ten or eleven-fifteen. To establish the subsequent chronology of his stops presented no particular difficulty; but this would not be true in determining their respective lengths, which he had neglected to note. And the length of time on the road between each stop scarcely influenced his calculations, the distance from town to lighthouse not exceeding three miles—that is, scarcely more than fifteen minutes in all.
To begin with, the distance to the first stop being virtually negligible, he could state that the latter had occurred at exactly eleven-fifteen.
It was the last house as he left town. Madame Leduc had opened the door almost at once. The preliminaries had gone very fast: the brother working for the steamship line, the wrist watches at prices defying all competition, the hallway splitting the house down the middle, the door to the right, the big kitchen, the oval table in the middle of the room, the oilcloth with the many-colored little flowers, the pressure of his fingers on the suitcase clasp, the cover opening back, the black memorandum book, the prospectuses, the rectangular frame on top of the sideboard, the shiny metal support, the photograph, the sloping path, the hollow on the cliff sheltered from the wind, secret, calm, isolated as if by thick walls . . . as if by thick walls . . . the oval table in the middle of the room, the oilcloth with the many-colored little flowers, the pressure of his fingers on the suitcase clasp, the cover opening back as if on a spring, the black memorandum book, the prospectuses, the shiny metal frame, the photograph showing . . . the photograph showing the photograph, the photograph, the photograph, the photograph . . .
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