The path came out onto the central section of a horseshoe-shaped ridge facing the open sea, enclosing between its two arms a kind of elongated basin which extended to the very edge of the cliff, its dimensions not exceeding twenty by thirty yards. A bright speck attracted the salesman's notice; he was upon it in a few strides, and leaned over to pick it up; it was only a tiny pebble, cylindrical, smooth, and white, shaped deceptively like a cigarette.
The flattened bottom of the hollow, where the sparse vegetation of the moor gave way to richer grass, came to an end thirty steps away—without transition—in a steep rock face, plunging down about fifteen yards into the eddying water. After an almost perpendicular fall came an irregular series of sharp, protruding ridges, and at the very base, rising out of the foam between the more imposing rock masses, a cluster of conical reefs against which the waves dashed with great violence, countered by the backwash in the opposite direction, producing bursts of spray that sometimes reached higher than the top of the cliff.
Higher still, two sea gulls described interlacing circles in the sky—sometimes executing them so that the loops occurred side by side, sometimes combining their circuits into a perfect figure eight—their maneuvers achieved without a single movement of their wings. The fixed, round eye which the slightly tilted head directed toward the interior of the horse-shoe, stared immutably downward like the lidless eyes of fish, as if complete insensibility precluded any need to blink. He was watching the water rising and falling against the wet, polished rock, the runners of whitish moss, the periodic bursts of spray, the intermittent cascades, and farther away the rough stone outcroppings. . . . Suddenly Mathias noticed, a little to his right, a piece of cloth—knitted cloth—a piece of knitted gray wool hanging from a projecting rock two yards beneath the upper edge—that is, at a height the tide never reached.
Fortunately this spot looked accessible without too much difficulty. Without a moment's hesitation, the salesman took off his duffle coat, put it on the ground, and advanced along the edge of the precipice, making a detour of several yards to reach—still farther to the right—a point where the descent would be possible. From there, clinging with both hands to the outcroppings, moving his feet cautiously from fissure to projection, pressing his body against the granite flank, he reached, at the cost of more effort than he had supposed, not his goal but a point about two yards below it. Then he had only to stand up as high as he could, stretch out one arm (holding on with the other), and seize the desired object. The cloth came away from the rock without difficulty. There was no doubt about it, it was the gray sweater Violet had been wearing—had not been wearing, rather—but which had been lying on the grass beside her.
Yet Mathias was certain he had thrown it away with the rest, checking everything piece by piece to assure himself that nothing had caught on the rocks halfway down. It would have been better to leave the sweater at the top of the cliff in the hollow where the timid sheep were walking round and round their pickets. Since she had taken it off herself, it would have been more natural for her to fall without it. In any case, it seemed peculiar that she had lost her balance with it on, so that a projecting rock had stripped it from her as she fell without turning it inside out or even tearing it a little. It was lucky no one had discovered it during the search.
But at the same moment Mathias realized the uncertainty of such a conjecture, for the person who might have seen the sweater hanging there would doubtless not have risked trying to get it, regarding such an attempt as unnecessarily dangerous. Under such conditions would it not be a still graver error to remove it now? If someone had noticed it down there on the rock, would it not be better to put it back where he had found it, trying, in fact, to make it hang in exactly the same way?
Then, on consideration, Mathias wondered who such a witness might have been. Maria Leduc, discovering her sister's sweater, would certainly have decided she had fallen here, and brought a searching party in this direction, where no one had thought of looking yesterday. As for the fishermen who had found the body this morning, they had been down below, looking through the seaweed exposed at low tide, too far away to make out anything in particular. The compromising object had hitherto escaped notice.
Since, on the other hand, it was now impossible to put it back in the grassy hollow where Maria would have found it the day before, there remained only one solution. Mathias steadied himself by spreading his feet farther apart on the narrow ledge, wadded up the sweater into a compact mass, and grasping the rock wall behind him with one hand, threw the sweater out to sea with all his strength.
It landed gently on the water—floating between the rocks. The two gulls screamed, left off their circling, and plunged down together. They did not need to go as far as the water itself to recognize a simple piece of cloth, and immediately rose again, screaming still louder, toward the top of the cliff. Standing near the spot where he had left his duffle coat, at the edge of the vertical rock face, someone was leaning over the precipice, looking at the sea. It was young Julian Marek.
Mathias lowered his head so quickly that he almost fell in. At that moment the gray sweater, already half-saturated, was caught between a little wave and the backwash. Engulfed in the collision, it slowly sank, soon drawn out to sea beyond the rocks. When the surface rose again with the next wave, everything had disappeared.
Now he would have to raise his head toward the boy. The latter had obviously seen the sweater and the salesman's incomprehensible gesture. . . . No; he had certainly seen the gesture, but perhaps only a piece of gray cloth, wadded up into a ball. It was important to make him say just what it was he had seen.
Mathias also took into account his own bizarre position at the moment; he would have to furnish some explanation for that. He estimated the distance separating him from the cliff top. The silhouette against the sky frightened him all over again. He had almost forgotten its immediacy.
Julian watched him in silence with the same fixed eyes, thin lips, frozen features.
“Hey! Hello there, boy!” Mathias cried, pretending surprise, as if he had only then discovered his presence.
But the boy did not answer. He was wearing an old jacket over his work-clothes, and a cap that made him look older—at least eighteen. His face was thin, pale, and rather ominous.
“They thought I was throwing them a fish,” the salesman said, pointing to the gulls spiraling over their heads. And he added, embarrassed by the persistent silence: “It was an old rag.”
As he spoke he looked hard at the water moving under the parallel lines of foam between each wave. Nothing returned to the surface . . .
“A sweater.”
The voice came from above, neutral, smooth, unchallengeable—the same voice which had said: “Before leaving you took a key out of a little bag fastened to the seat. . .” The salesman turned to face Julian. The latter's attitude and expression, or rather lack of expression, were exactly the same. It was as if he had never opened his mouth. “A sweater?” Had Mathias heard right? Had he heard anything?
Considering this distance of seven or eight yards, considering the noise of the wind and the waves (even though they were not so strong today), he could still manage to pretend he had not understood. His eyes swept over the gray wall again, examined the humps and hollows, then stopped in an indentation protected against the eddying waves, where the water level rose and fell more markedly along the polished surface of the rock.
“An old rag,” he said. “I found it here.”
“A sweater,” corrected the voice of the imperturbable on-looker.
Although not shouting, he had spoken more loudly. No doubt remained. The same elements were repeated: the eyes raised toward the top of the cliff, the body leaning forward, the motionless face, the closed mouth. With a movement of his hand, Mathias specified: “Here, on the rocks.”
“I know. It was there yesterday,” the young man answered. And when Mathias had lowered his eyes: “It was Jackie's.”
This time the sa
lesman decided on an obvious interruption to give himself time to understand what was happening and to determine what line to take. He began climbing up the rocky slope by the same path he had taken down. It was much easier than the descent; he reached the top almost immediately.
But once on the moor at the cliff edge, he was still not certain what would be best to do. He walked as slowly as possible across the short distance still separating him from Julian Marek. What did he need to think about? Actually he had merely retreated before the threat, hoping, perhaps, that the other would say something more of his own accord.
Since the boy, on the contrary, maintained an obstinate silence, the salesman's first concern was to put his duffle coat back on. He thrust his hands into the pockets to check their contents. Nothing was missing.
“Smoke?” he asked, holding out the open pack of cigarettes.
Julian shook his head and stepped back. The salesman replaced the blue pack in his pocket, where his hand came in contact with the little cellophane bag.
“Would you like a gumdrop?” He held out the transparent bag filled with multicolored twists of paper.
The frozen face was already beginning to make the same sign of refusal, when the features underwent an almost imperceptible modification. Julian appeared to be changing his mind. He looked at the bag, then at the salesman, then at the bag again. It was at that moment that Mathias realized what was so extraordinary about his eyes: they expressed neither effrontery nor hostility, they were merely a little strabismic. The discovery reassured him.
Besides, Julian—now interested—was walking toward him to take a gumdrop out of the bag. Instead of taking the one on top, he pushed his fingers farther in, to grasp the twist of red paper he had decided on. He looked at it attentively, without unwrapping it. Then he looked at Mathias. . . . There was certainly some flaw in the young man's vision, yet he did not squint. It was something else. . . . Extreme myopia? No, he was holding the gumdrop at a normal distance from his eyes.
“Well, go on and eat it!” the salesman said, laughing at Julian's hesitation. Perhaps he was merely a little simple-minded.
The boy unbuttoned his jacket to reach one of the pockets in his work-clothes. Mathias thought he wanted to keep the tidbit for later.
“Here,” he said, “take the whole bag.”
“It's not worth it,” Julian answered. And he stared again. . . . Could it have been a glass eye that made his stare so embarrassing?
“Is this yours?” the boy asked.
Mathias glanced from his eyes to his hands: the right one still held the wrapped gumdrop, and in the left, between thumb and forefinger, was an identical piece of red paper-shiny, translucent, crumpled—but untwisted and empty.
“It was here in the grass,” Julian continued, with a movement of his head to indicate the little hollow beside them. “Is it yours?”
“Maybe I dropped it on the way,” said the salesman, feigning indifference. He realized at once that gumdrop wrappers are not “dropped,” but thrown away. To disguise his error he added, as agreeably as he could, “You can keep it too, if you like.”
“It's not worth it,” Julian answered.
The same quick smile he had noticed at the farm passed across the boy's thin lips. He wadded the rectangle of red paper into a hard ball and flicked it into the sea. Mathias followed its trajectory, but lost sight of it before it had reached the bottom of the cliff.
“What made you think it was mine?”
“It's just like those.”
“What does that prove? I bought them in town. Anyone else could have bought them. Violet must have been eating them while she was tending the sheep . . .”
“Who is Violet?”
“I mean poor little Jacqueline Leduc. You're mixing me up with all your nonsense!”
The boy said nothing for several seconds. Mathias took advantage of the time to let his face become pleasant and peaceful again, a task he had not taken enough trouble with during the last few remarks. Julian took the gumdrop out of its wrapper and put it in his mouth; then he spat it out into his hand, wrapped the paper around it, and threw it into the sea.
“Jackie always bought caramels,” he said afterward.
“Well, then it was someone else.”
“At first you said it was you.”
“Yes, it was. I took one just now, on the way here, and I threw the paper away. You're confusing me with your questions.”
The salesman was talking naturally now, even cordially, as if he understood none of the reasons for this interrogation, but was nevertheless yielding to his interlocutor's childish caprices. One of the gulls plunged, then gained altitude with great strokes of its wings, almost grazing the two men as it passed them.
“I found it yesterday,” Julian said.
Mathias, not knowing what to answer now, was on the point of walking away from young Marek with all the abruptness of justified impatience. Yet he remained where he was. Although it was impossible to prove anything by this one piece of red paper, it would be better not to alienate so persistent an investigator, one who might be acquainted with other elements of the story. But which ones?
There was already the episode of the gray sweater. Julian might also have discovered a second gumdrop wrapper—the green one—and the third half-smoked cigarette. . . . What else? The question of his presence at the farm at the time of the salesman's supposed visit also remained to be cleared up. Actually, if the boy had happened to be in the courtyard or the shed that morning, why had he not told his father that no one had knocked at the door? What was his motive in backing up Mathias’ story? And if he had been somewhere else, why did he behave in such a strange way about it? After his long, stubborn silence, why this preposterous last-minute invention of a repair made to the bicycle gearshift? ... A bolt tightened? . . . Perhaps that was the solution to all these incidents, now that he had come full circuit.
But if Julian Marek had not been at the farm, where had he been? Did his father have good reason for supposing him to have run off to the cliff on the way home from the bakery? Suddenly a wave of terror broke over Mathias: Julian, coming by another path—by “the other” path—to meet Violet, from whom he had demanded explanations—against whom, in fact, he harbored enough resentment to desire her death—Julian, catching sight of the salesman, had taken cover and had watched. . . . Mathias passed his hand over his forehead. Such imaginings did not hold water. His headache had become so violent that he was going out of his mind.
Was it not sheer madness to be ready—suddenly, because of an ordinary gumdrop wrapper—to get rid of young Marek by pushing him over the edge?
Until now Mathias had not taken into account the two little pieces of paper which he had thrown away the day before and which—to his mind, at least—did not constitute actual evidence in the case. He considered it a matter of bad taste that they should be so regarded, since he had not even thought of recovering them; they had seemed so unimportant when he was in a state of composure. Julian himself had just unwrapped one quite casually, demonstrating that nothing could be proved. ... All the same, another interpretation . . .
Another interpretation occurred to him: was this spectacular gesture not meant to show that Julian would keep silent, that the guilty party, once brought to light, would have nothing to fear from him? His strange attitude back at the farm could have no other explanation. There too he was proclaiming his power over Mathias: he was destroying evidence with the same facility with which he unearthed further indications of guilt, modifying as he chose the content of the hours that had already elapsed. But there would have to be something more than suspicions—even detailed suspicions—to justify such assurance as this. Julian had “seen.” There was no use denying it any longer. Only the images registered by these eyes could have given them such an intolerable fixity.
Yet they were quite ordinary gray eyes—neither ugly nor beautiful, neither large nor small—two perfect, motionless circles set side by side, each one pierced at
the center by a black hole.
The salesman had begun talking again to conceal his agitation, rapidly and without a break—unconcerned, more-over, with relevance or even coherence; it did not seem to matter much, since the boy was not listening. Any subject he could think of seemed worth trying: the harbor shops, the length of the crossing, the price of watches, electricity, the sound of the sea, the last two days’ weather, the wind and the sun, the toads and the clouds. He also described how he had missed the return boat, which obliged him to remain on the island for several days; he was spending this compulsory leisure time, until his departure, making visits and taking long walks. . . . But when he came to a stop, out of breath, desperately casting about for something else to say in order not to repeat himself too much, he heard Julian's question, asked in the same neutral, even tone of voice: “Why did you go get Jackie's sweater again if you were only going to throw it into the sea?”
Mathias passed his hand over his forehead. Not “go get the sweater,” but “go get the sweater again” . . . He began his answer in an almost supplicating tone: “Listen, boy, I didn't know it was hers. I didn't know it was anyone's. I only wanted to see what the gulls would do. You saw them: they thought I was throwing them a fish . . .”
The young man said nothing. He was looking Mathias straight in the eyes, his own fixed and strange—as if unconscious, even blind—or imbecile.
And Mathias still went on talking, though without the slightest conviction, carried away by the flood of his own words across the deserted moor, across the series of dunes where no trace of vegetation remained, across the rubble and the sand, darkened here and there by a sudden shadow of a specter forcing him to retreat. He went on talking. And the ground, from sentence to sentence, gave way a little more beneath his feet.
He had come out here on one of his strolls, following the paths wherever they led, for no other reason than to stretch his legs a little. He had noticed a piece of cloth hanging from the rocks. Having climbed down to have a look, out of sheer curiosity, he had decided it was merely an old rag of no possible use (but Julian was doubtless aware of the gray sweater's excellent condition . . .) and had unthinkingly thrown it to the gulls to see what they would do. How could he have known that this rag, this dirty piece of wool (on the contrary, extremely clean)—this object, really—belonged to little Jacqueline? He didn't even know this was the place she had fallen . . . fallen . . . fallen. . . . He stopped. Julian was looking at him. Julian was going to say: “She didn't fall, either.” But the boy did not open his mouth.
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