I was waiting for the visitor who would frighten me the most.
Surely it was only a matter of time. The pockets of fragrance, the lantern, the guests who arrived uninvited, the stream of ghosts crossing the divide after Pierre first broke through . . .
Who were they? After a while, when I had had long enough to think as rationally as I could, I became convinced that they were nothing more or less than the stirring of my conscience.
And so, in dread, I waited for her.
I listened to the sounds that could reassure me, temporarily, of normality. The leaves rustling down the alleyway, scraping the pebbled concrete with their imitations of light footsteps.
The loirs scampering between the terra-cotta tiles of the roofs, and balancing in the electricity wires like a high-wire circus act. We never succeeded in getting rid of them, you see, not since the time when André worked for us. These funny, rodentlike creatures—a kind of gray squirrel with larger eyes and ears—are becoming braver, promenading along the beams of the little terrace roof outside the kitchen.
Roof tiles crashed off in high winds. More creaking presaged the fall of more disintegrating ceilings. I was alert for the pattering of crumbling plaster, followed by the crash of falling masonry. When I dared to go up to check, ambushes awaited, startling reflections in windows blacked out by shutters, glimpses of shadows, odd people at odd angles.
Doors slammed in the wind, forever slipping their catches but impossible to lock, because keys no longer turned and steel would not dock in holes that have shifted out of alignment with the weight of the house.
I, too, could feel myself shifting.