The salesman resumed his monologue still more rapidly. It was no easy matter to climb down the rocks, especially wearing such big shoes. Toward the top the ground might easily cave in under his feet. Yet he hadn't suspected it was so dangerous; otherwise he would not even have tried. Since he didn't know this was the place. . . . But no one had said any such thing; the fact that the sweater belonged to Jacqueline did not mean the accident had occurred here. Just now, in the matter of the gumdrop wrapper, Mathias had already given himself away, admitting he knew the exact spot where the girl tended her sheep. Too late, now, to go back. . . . He couldn't suppose, in any case, given the position of the sweater, that it had been torn off in the course of her fall . . . etc.
“That's not it, either,” said Julian.
Mathias was seized with panic and hurried on, too apprehensive for explanations. He began to speak at such a rate that objections—or even regret at his own words—became utterly impossible. In order to fill in the blanks, he often repeated the same sentence several times. He even caught himself reciting the multiplication table. Seized with a sudden inspiration, he fumbled in his pocket and brought out the little gold-plated wrist watch: “Here, since it's your birthday I'm going to give you a present: look at this fine watch!”
But Julian, his eyes still fixed on Mathias’, retreated farther and farther into the grassy hollow, away from the edge of the cliff toward the curve of the horseshoe. Lest the boy run away even faster, the salesman dared not make the least move in his direction. He stood where he was, holding in his outstretched hand the watch with its band of metal links, as if he were trying to tame birds.
When he reached the foot of the slope bordering the inner limit of the horseshoe, the young man stopped, his eyes still fixed on Mathias'—who was equally motionless, twenty yards away.
“My grandmother will give me a finer one,” he said.
Then he thrust his hand into his work-clothes and brought out a handful of miscellaneous fragments, among which the salesman recognized a thick cord spotted with grease; it seemed washed out or discolored, as if by prolonged immersion in sea water. The other things were hard to see at this distance. Julian picked out a cigarette butt—already three-quarters smoked—and put it between his lips. The little cord and the other articles went back into his pocket. He buttoned his jacket again.
Keeping the butt in the right corner of his mouth—without lighting it—and his glassy eyes on the salesman, the boy waited, his face pale; the brim of his cap was tilted slightly toward his left ear. Mathias lowered his eyes first.
“You rented the new bicycle from the tobacco shop,” the voice said next. “I know that bike. There's no tool bag under the seat. The tools are in a box behind the luggage rack.” Of course. The salesman had noticed it right away the day before: a chromium-plated, rectangular box—one of the permanent accessories; on its rear surface was the red reflector, usually attached to the mudguard. Of course.
Mathias lifted his head again. He was alone on the moor. In front of him, in the grass, in the center of the little hollow, he saw a short cigarette butt—which Julian must have thrown away as he was leaving—or else it was the one he had been looking for himself since morning—or perhaps they were one and the same. He came closer. It was only a little pebble, cylindrical, white, and smooth, which he had already picked up once, when he had come here.
Mathias headed slowly toward the big lighthouse, taking the customs road along the edge of the cliff. He could not help laughing at the thought of the dramatic retreat Julian had just made in order to reveal his discovery: a metal box fastened behind the luggage rack. . . . The salesman had never denied it! Was this detail so important that he ought to have corrected Julian when he spoke of a bag under the seat? If he had no proof better than that. . .
He might just as well have said that the gray sweater was not lying “on the rocks,” but “on a projection of the rocks"—or that only one of the mahonias was budding at the Marek farm. He might have said: “The road is not altogether level, nor entirely straight, between the crossroads and the fork leading to the mill"—"The bulletin-board is not precisely in front of the café–tobacco shop door, but slightly to the right, and does not block the entrance"—"The little square is not really triangular: the apex is flattened by the plot of grass around the public building so as to form a trapezoid"—"The enameled iron skimmer sticking out of the mud in the harbor is not the same color blue as the one in the hardware store” —"The pier is not rectilinear, but turns in the center at an angle of one hundred seventy-five degrees.”
Similarly the time wasted at the crossroads to the Marek farm did not amount to forty minutes. The salesman had not arrived there before eleven-forty-five or eleven-fifty, taking into account the long detour to the mill. On the other hand, before meeting up with the old country woman at twelve-twenty, he had spent nearly fifteen minutes repairing the gearshift on his bicycle—with the help of the tools that were in the box . . . etc. There remained just enough time to make the trip to the farm and back—including the wait in the courtyard, near the mahonia bush, and the first two attempts to deal with the abnormal friction of the chain: on the little path, then in front of the house.
The customs road did not actually follow the edge of the cliff very closely—at least not continuously—and often diverged from it for three or four yards, sometimes for much greater distances. Besides, it was not easy to determine where this “edge” actually was, for with the exception of the areas where a steep rock wall towered above the sea for the whole height of the cliff, there were also grassy slopes running down almost to the water, as well as heaps of jagged rock more or less encroaching on the moor, and even planes of schist that ended in huge lumps of rubble and earth.
Sometimes the indentations along the shore were enlarged by a deep fault cutting into the cliff, or a sandy bay forming an even larger jag. The salesman had been walking for a long time—it seemed to him—when the lighthouse suddenly rose up before him, high above the mass of auxiliary constructions, walls and turrets clustered together.
Mathias turned left, toward the village. A man in fisherman's clothes had been walking ahead of him on the road for some time now. Following him, Mathias again came out onto the main road where the first houses began, and walked into the café.
There were many people, much smoke and noise. The electric lights hanging from the ceiling had been turned on; they were harsh and blue. Scraps of almost incomprehensible conversation were momentarily audible in the general uproar; here and there a gesture, a face, a grin emerged from the shimmering haze for a few seconds.
There was no table free. Mathias headed toward the bar. The other customers pressed a little closer together to make room for him. Exhausted by his day's walking, he would have preferred to sit down.
The fat, gray-haired woman recognized him. He had to make explanations all over again: the boat he had missed, the bicycle, the bedroom . . . etc. The proprietress, fortunately, had too much to do to listen or question him. He asked her for some aspirin. She had none. He ordered an absinthe. Besides, his headache was bothering him less now; it had become a sort of cottony humming in which his whole brain was steeped.
An old man next to him was telling a story to a group of the lighthouse workmen. They were young, and laughed at him, or nudged one another with their elbows, or else interrupted with bantering, apparently serious observations which produced still more laughter. The narrator's low voice was lost in the din. Only a few phrases, a few words reached Mathias’ ears. Nevertheless, he understood, as a result of the old man's deliberation and his incessant repetitions, as well as from the sarcastic remarks of his listeners, that he was telling an old local legend—which Mathias had never heard mentioned in his childhood, however: each spring, a young virgin had to be hurled from the top of the cliff to appease the storm-god and render the sea kind to travelers and sailors. Rising from the deep, a gigantic monster with the body of a serpent and the head of a dog devoured the victi
m alive under the eyes of the sacrificer. It was doubtless the little shepherdess’ death that had provoked such a story. The old man furnished a quantity of mostly inaudible details about the ceremony; it was strange that he used only the present tense: “they make her kneel down,” “they tie her hands behind her back,” “they blindfold her,” “down in the water they can see the slimy coils of the dragon” . . . A fisherman slipped in between Mathias and the group of men to reach the counter. The salesman squeezed in the opposite direction. Now he could hear nothing but the young men's exclamations and laughter.
“. . . little Louis was mad at her too . . . their engagement . . . had threatened her . . .” This voice was loud and sententious; it came from the opposite direction, over the heads of three or four drinkers.
Behind Mathias, several people were still discussing the recent sensation. The whole room, the whole island, was passionately interested in the tragic accident. The fat woman served the newcomer on the salesman's left a glass of red wine. She was holding the bottle in her left hand.
On the wall, above the top row of apéritifs, hung a yellow placard attached by four tacks: “Buy your watch at your jeweler's.”
Mathias finished his absinthe. No longer feeling the little suitcase between his legs, he lowered his eyes toward the floor. The suitcase had disappeared. He thrust his hand into his duffle coat pocket to rub his grease-spotted fingers against the wad of cord, keeping his eyes fixed on the salesman. The proprietress thought he was looking for change and shouted out the price of his drink; but it was the absinthe he was going to pay for. He turned to face the fat woman, or the woman, or the girl, or the young barmaid, then set down the suitcase in order to pick up the suitcase while the sailor and the fisherman sneaked between, crept between, came between, Mathias and the salesman . . .
Mathias passed his hand over his forehead. It was almost night now. He was sitting in a chair in the middle of the street—in the middle of the road—in front of the Black Rocks café.
“Feeling better now?” asked a man wearing a leather jacket.
“Much better, thank you,” Mathias answered. He had already seen this person somewhere. He wanted to justify his indisposition, and said, “It's the smoke, the noise, so much talk . . .” He could not find words to express himself. Yet he stood up with no difficulty.
He glanced around for the suitcase, but immediately remembered he had left it in his room that morning. He thanked the man again and picked up the chair to return it to the café, but the man took it out of his hands, and the only thing left for the salesman to do was to leave—by the road to the solitary cottage in its reed-filled valley at the back of the narrow cove.
In spite of the half-darkness, he walked on unhesitatingly. When the path followed the edge of the cliff, above the sea, he felt no fear whatsoever, although scarcely making out where he was putting his feet. With sure steps he climbed down toward the house, where a single, curtainless window showed a reddish gleam in the blue twilight.
He bent his head toward the panes. Despite the accumulated dust clinging to the surface, what was happening inside could be seen quite clearly. It was rather dark, especially in the corners. Only the objects near the source of light were really clear to Mathias—who was standing sufficiently far back to remain invisible to anyone inside.
The scene is lit by an oil lamp in the middle of the long, blackish-brown table. Also on the table, between the lamp and the window, are two white plates next to each other-touching each other—and an uncorked liter bottle of which the dark glass prevents any certainty as to the color of the liquid filling it. The rest of the table is clear, marked only with a few shadows: the huge, distorted one cast by the bottle, a crescent underlining the plate nearest the window, a large spot surrounding the lamp base.
Behind the table, in the room's right corner (the one farthest away), the big kitchen stove against the rear wall can be discerned by an orange glow from the open ash-drawer.
Two people are standing face to face: Jean Robin—called Pierre—and, much shorter than he, the young woman of unknown identity. Both are on the other side of the table (in relation to the window), he to the left—that is, in front of the window—she at the opposite end of the table, near the stove.
Between them and the table—running its whole length but concealed from view by it—is the bench. The entire room is thus cut up into a network of parallel lines: first the back wall, against which, at the right, are the stove and several boxes, and at the left, in shadow, some more important piece of furniture; next, at an unspecifiable distance from this wall, the line determined by the man and the woman; then, still advancing toward the front of the room, the invisible bench, the central axis of the rectangular table-including the oil lamp and the opaque bottle—and the window itself.
Cutting across this system by perpendiculars, from front to back, the following elements can be discerned: the central upright of the window, the shadow crossing the second plate, the bottle, the man (Jean Robin, or Pierre), a crate set upright on the floor; then, a yard to the right, the lighted oil lamp; and about a yard farther, the end of the table, the young woman of unspecified identity, and the left side of the stove.
Two yards—or a little more—separate the man from the woman. She lifts her timorous face toward him.
At this moment the man opens his mouth, moving his lips as if talking, but nothing can be heard by the observer behind the square panes. The window is too tightly closed; or the noise of the sea behind him, breaking against the reef at the mouth of the cove, is too loud. The man does not articulate his words clearly enough for the syllables to be counted. He has been speaking slowly for some ten seconds—which must be about thirty syllables, perhaps less.
In reply the young woman screams something—four or five syllables—at the top of her lungs, it appears. Yet this time too, nothing can be heard through the glass. Then she steps forward toward the man and rests one hand (the left) on the edge of the table.
Now she is looking at the lamp and says a few words more —less intensely—as her features become progressively more distorted and a grimace narrows her eyes, widens the corners of her mouth, and raises the wings of her nostrils.
She is crying. A tear can be seen falling slowly down her cheek. The girl sits down on the bench; without putting her legs between it and the table, she turns the upper part of her body toward the latter and rests her forearms on it, hands clasped. Finally she lets her head droop forward, her face hidden in her hands. Her golden hair gleams in the lamplight.
Then the man slowly approaches, stands behind her, stares at her for a moment, stretches out his hand, and slowly caresses the nape of her neck with his fingertips. The huge hand, the blond head, the oil lamp, the edge of the first plate (on the right), and the left upright of the window are all aligned in the same oblique plane.
The lamp is made of brass and clear glass. From its square base rises a cylindrical, fluted stem supporting the oil reservoir—a half-globe with its convexity underneath. This reservoir is half-full of a brownish liquid which does not resemble commercial oil. On its upper part is a flange of stamped metal an inch and a half high, into which is screwed the glass—a perpendicular tube widening slightly at the base. It is this perforated flange, brightly lighted from within, which can be seen most clearly of all the articles in the room. It consists of two superimposed series of equal tangent circles—rings, more exactly, since their centers are hollow—each ring of the upper series being exactly above a ring of the lower row to which it is joined for a fraction of an inch.
The flame itself, produced from a circular wick, appears in profile in the form of a triangle deeply scalloped at the apex, therefore exhibiting two points rather than just one. One of these is much higher than the other, and sharper as well; the two joints are united by a concave curve—two asymmetrical, ascending branches on each side of a rounded depression.
Blinded from staring at the lamp too long, Mathias finally turned away his eyes. To re
st them, he examined the window itself—four identical panes with neither curtain nor shade, looking out into the darkness of the night. He blinked violently several times, pressing his eyeballs in order to get rid of the circles of fire still printed on his retinas.
He brought his head close to the glass and tried to look through, but could see nothing: neither sea nor moon nor even the garden. There was no sign of the moon or the stars—the darkness was complete. Mathias returned to his memorandum book, open at the day's date—Wednesday—on the massive little table wedged into the window recess.
He re-read the schedule he had just brought up to date, accounting for his recent movements. For the day that had just passed, on the whole, there was little to suppress, or to add. And besides, he had met too many witnessess.
He turned back a leaf, found himself at Tuesday, and once again went over the imaginary succession of minutes between eleven in the morning and one in the afternoon. He confined himself to closing the ill-formed loop of an eight with the point of his pencil. Everything else was in order.
But he smiled, thinking of the futility of his task. Such a concern for exactitude—unaccustomed, excessive, suspect-far from clearing him, rather tended to accuse. . . . In any case, it was too late. Young Julian Marek had probably turned him in late that afternoon. Certainly after their encounter at the edge of the cliff the boy's doubts had vanished completely; the salesman's words and ridiculous behavior gave him away indisputably, without even taking into account what Julian knew already, perhaps from having seen it with his own eyes. Tomorrow, early in the morning, the old Civil Guard would come to arrest “the unspeakable individual who . . . ,” etc. There was no hope of escaping in a fishing boat: the police in all the little mainland harbors would be waiting for him as he arrived.
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