WHEN JULIE came round for the first time, she was alone and naked in a low bed in the middle of a vaulted room. Anxiety gnawed at her insides. Where was Peter? She called out.
“Peter!”
She could hardly hear her own voice; she thought she must be deaf. She tried to sit up and managed only to get onto her elbows. Her head fell back onto a bolster without a pillowcase. With difficulty the girl rolled onto her side. Again she tried to call out.
“Uhh” was the only sound that issued from her dry throat.
Had that sound traveled sixty centimeters, it would have been like reaching the ends of the earth. Julie saw a flagged floor, a red perforated-plastic chair of the kind you see at the outdoor tables of provincial cafés, and a large bare stone wall with a French window. Outside the light was blindingly bright. Julie could see nothing beyond the glass except for milky shadows overwhelmed by whiteness.
A very short time later, the girl came to for a second time. The light had turned orange now. Julie pushed herself to the edge of the bed and let herself drop to the floor. There was a vague pain in her arm. She touched the spot. A crepe bandage encircled her biceps and she could not bend her right elbow. Fuentès appeared in the orange opening.
“What the hell are you doing on the floor?” he demanded.
“You murderer!” Julie responded feebly, looking about in vain for a weapon.
Fuentès leant down and took hold of the girl. He was bare-chested, wearing white linen pants, and their skin touched as he lifted Julie back into the bed.
“Where is Peter? Where is Hartog? What do you want? Are you going to rape me?”
It was exhausting Julie to talk. She sensed that the brute was tucking her in.
“Sleep. You have nothing to fear.”
The girl wanted to ask again where Peter was, but succeeded only in producing a bubble of saliva, like a newborn baby. After that she kept experiencing brief moments of relative lucidity. It was sometimes day outside, sometimes night. Fuentès had her drink broth through a straw. She would choke on it and spill most of it down her front, which was no longer naked, she noticed, because she was wearing a man’s shirt. Once she thought she saw Peter, but since he seemed to be wearing a wig she had to acknowledge that this was a dream.
“I’m able to talk now,” said the girl at last.
She opened her eyes, astonished to have said it. Fuentès was sitting next to the bed dressed in khaki shorts and an apple-green shirt, a gypsy shirt. He had a thick beard. His eyes had dark circles under them.
“Your fever has passed, at any rate.”
“I’m completely whacked,” said Julie.
She pressed her wound. The site was covered by a large square adhesive bandage. It did not hurt very much.
“Do you realize that you were fired at with an expanding bullet?” asked Fuentès. “Part of it was still in you. I got it out. The rest had come out by itself. You’re lucky you still have your arm. Who was the bastard that did it?”
“Thompson,” said Julie. “As if you didn’t know!”
“Oh yes, right,” he answered. “Peter told me all about it. How I was the chief killer and all that.”
“Peter? What have you done with him?”
Fuentès scratched his beard. Noisily. “He’s playing on the hillside.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Try a bit harder.”
Julie laughed nervously. Fuentès began to laugh too. He took a pack of Gitanes from the pocket of his apple-green shirt and lit up.
“I’m not offering you one. It would only make you cough. You’re not in any state.”
“Have I been here long?”
“Soon be eight days.”
Julie made an unintelligible exclamation. Fuentès shrugged.
“I haven’t killed you. Looked after you, more like.”
His tone was even. He was checking things off. He might as well have been counting on his stubby fingers.
“The trouble with all this is that it wasn’t me. Not you, either, according to Peter. But I couldn’t make head or tail of his story. You know how kids are. He told me no end of crazy stuff. Gangsters, buildings on fire . . . You tell me your version. Maybe I’ll believe you.”
Julie told him. A large sun shone in through the doorway. Dust danced in its beams. Fuentès dragged on his cigarette, the paper of which was burning unevenly. As Julie told her story, the man seemed to nod off.
“Your tale,” the man said at last, “has absolutely everything. Even the calvary—the ascent to the castle—as the finale. You must have had a shock when you saw me.”
Julie nodded. In her mind she felt disarmed.
“This, where we are,” he said, “is my place. It never belonged to Hartog, and he didn’t build it.”
“He told me just the opposite.”
“Yes. The rat. The dirty rat.”
“Be quiet!” cried Julie.
Fuentès pursed his lips. He seemed very tired.
“Now it’s my turn to tell a story,” he said. “Once upon a time there were two young men . . . Listen, once there were two young men . . .”