3

At five o’clock Mr Hire was entering his fourth bistro, without having left Avenue d’Italie. From the first small bar, he had gone on to a prix fixe restaurant three doors down. He had hesitated briefly in front of a cinema, but instead sat down in a café-tabac on the corner of the first block.

He had covered all of two hundred metres. Now, he had just sat down in a large, crowded tavern on Place d’Italie, where a group of musicians was setting up on a small stage.

‘A café crème,’ he said to the waiter.

He hadn’t taken off his overcoat since morning. He wasn’t about to make himself comfortable. He perched on the edge of the banquette as if he couldn’t stay more than a few seconds and remained that way for hours, without a hint of impatience or boredom. He needed to think – to think long and hard. From time to time his eyes – the colour of hazelnuts – would settle on a point somewhere in space, and his forehead would start to quiver; his lips would move imperceptibly, while his hands froze in his pockets or on the marble table.

At this point he had been thinking so much since morning that his mind had gone blank. People kept going by; there were sounds, scraps of conversation. On the table, he found a newspaper folded in two. Upside-down he read: THE VILLEJUIF AFFAIR.

The waiter brought his coffee, and Mr Hire gave him a smile, drinking half the cup down before letting his gaze return to the paper. Then he stood up and walked over to the toilets, just to be able to turn the newspaper around, as if by accident, on his way there. Still, he took the opportunity to reaffix his bandage and to groom his little moustache.

Back at his seat, he counted out five minutes before risking a glance at the newspaper, which contained a long article.

… for fifteen days … a tricky investigation … big step forwards, thanks to the identification of the corpse … most likely a certain Léonide Pacha, known as Lulu, a professional call girl, suggesting a sadistic motive … still possible … but the victim’s purse was missing … according to corroborating evidence it would have contained some 2,000 francs …

… a new lead … the inquiry enters its final phase … discretion is of the essence …

The orchestra launched into ‘The Blue Danube’. Mr Hire picked up his cup, knocking the newspaper to the floor. The woman at the next table leaned down to pick it up. He said, ‘Sorry … Sorry …’ and replaced the newspaper on the table, facing away from him.

‘You’re alone?’

He didn’t look at the woman but he could see her, sitting on the banquette in front of a glass of beer. She turned towards him – slightly, discreetly – and opened a small, glossy black clutch, lifting it to her face to powder her nose.

‘We might be more comfortable somewhere else,’ she added without moving her lips, all the while observing him from behind her compact.

He tapped a five-franc piece on the table and signalled to the waiter.

‘How much?’

‘One franc fifty. And mademoiselle’s beer?’

He put the five francs down on the marble and left. Outside, all the lights were aglow, overlapping in every direction. The pavements, trams and buses were crowded with people. Mr Hire walked towards Porte d’Italie, his briefcase under his arm, bouncing along, weaving through the crowd, without stopping, without seeing anything but the rows of street lamps, the passing blur of window displays and human silhouettes, irresolute heads scrolling by in the opposite direction.

He went past Porte d’Italie and the city tollgates, preceded by the small grey cloud of his breath. The lights thinned out, and, when he turned to the right, all that remained were a few gas lamps, scattered like fireflies. He went on walking at the same pace, and the sound of his footsteps came back to him, echoing through the deserted streets. He turned left on to one that was still under construction: just a few houses, very grand, all brand-new, separated by empty plots. The pavements hadn’t been built yet. They were planted with skinny trees swaddled in straw.

Men loitered alongside a fence, mostly Arabs, all of them looking in the same direction, towards a glow that illuminated a rectangle of pavement. It was the only glimmer of light on the street, which made it seem enchanted. It shone out of a large, unusual house, covered entirely in glazed tiles, like the ones at delicatessens. It was white and glimmered in the moonlight. It seemed to contain something pink and good to eat. Bright light streamed from every window, filtered through the slats of Venetian blinds.

Mr Hire, tilted forward, walked without slowing down; he clambered up the three steps and on to the doormat, setting off a cheerful bell.

At last he stopped, a bit out of breath. Beads of frost were melting into his moustache. A second door opened automatically; with a click he was transported into a fully lit room, into a veritable bath of light – so vivid, so abundant, so radiant that it didn’t seem real.

The walls were white – the same sleek, shimmering white. The air was saturated with scented steam. A woman in black satin, her face serene and gracious, framed by silver hair, frowned at him for a second, then smiled.

‘Gisèle, right?’

He nodded. No need to say anything more. The woman touched a bell with her finger. Its ringing filled the air. A young girl opened the door a crack. She wore black stockings, and her legs were shaking.

‘Take him to 16.’

She gave a welcoming smile to Mr Hire. Already, the sounds of other bells reverberated. Mr Hire followed the maid down a corridor lined on both sides with numbered doors. The steam here was even thicker. Number 7 was open, revealing a bathtub filled with hot water. Steam covered the walls and windows in tiny drops.

A woman hurried out of number 12, in a blue short-sleeved shirt, her hands cupping her breasts, which danced as she ran. Someone knocked from inside number 14, and the petite maid cried: ‘Voilà, voilà! Just a minute …’

The floor was tiled and seemed freshly washed with plenty of soap and water. It was clean, perfumed. The maid’s apron was crisply starched.

‘I’ll bring you everything you need.’

Mr Hire went in, sat down on a narrow rattan settee across from the bath; the maid, before leaving, had turned on both taps. The water swirled into the bath with a deafening roar. It was the pale green colour of a precious stone.

Water was running in other rooms, maybe ten, maybe twenty rooms at the same time.

‘Gisèle is coming. You still have time to bathe.’

The maid closed the door. She had left two white towels on the shelf, along with a small, candy-pink bar of soap, and a minuscule flask of eau de Cologne.

‘Voilà!’ she shouted to someone who called to her from the other end of the hall.

A woman’s voice in the next room said: ‘It’s been a while since the last time you came.’

It was hot, a special kind of heat that sank into the pores, the flesh, the brain. Its immediate effects were a buzzing head, red ears, an almost imperceptible ache in the throat.

Mr Hire remained seated, not moving, his leather briefcase on his knees, watching the water rise in the bath. He jumped when someone knocked at the door.

‘All done?’

A face appeared, very dark hair, bare shoulders.

‘Okay, I’ll be back in five minutes.’

Only then did he begin to undress, slowly. There were mirrors on two walls, and little by little, as the image of his body came into view, he could see it multiplied three or four times: very white and plump, as smooth and soft as a woman’s. He lowered his eyes and quickly got into the water, where he lay back with a sigh.

Outside, people were walking, people were running, the bells wouldn’t stop ringing, and the names of women were called out from one end of the corridor to the other; above it all the sound of water, the smell of soap and of eau de Cologne, the steam from the baths. The place was an oven. From one minute to the next, the windows would turn completely opaque. Now and then a jet of steam rose from out of nowhere, clouding the air and leaving people to flounder about blindly. Everywhere there was the vulgar cheer of a laundry room.

And yet, underneath the din there were sighs and whispers – restrained, ashamed, stifled – along with sloppy, estranged kisses.

Standing in the bath, Mr Hire was soaping up when the door swung open. A woman entered. ‘It’s you,’ she called out. ‘Hi …’

And with the door barely closed behind her, she took off her robe and stood naked before him, more naked here in the bathhouse than in any other setting.

She was chubby and pink and very clean, steeped in steam, soap and perfume. She exuded health and vigour. With the touch of her thumb, she sent water shooting out of the shower-head, and Mr Hire watched the soap trickle down the length of his body and coat the water in the bath with grey foam.

‘Come.’

She held the robe open. She rubbed. With every stroke, her breasts leaped, grazing his shoulder blades.

‘You got into a fight?’

She gestured towards the cut and continued to rub, drying off her own chest, which had become wet.

‘I was shaving …’ he said meekly.

He was bright red from the friction and the heat. His legs trembled. Then the woman lay down on the settee, flat on her back, her knees high in the air.

‘Come.’

He was on the verge of obeying, but lost his nerve and sat down instead on the edge of the settee.

‘Not that …’

‘As you wish.’

She rose and sat down next to him. First, she ran her fingers over his flabby pectorals. As she did, she looked straight ahead. ‘You’ve left me some eau de Cologne?’ she said.

He stammered a weak ‘yes’, tilting his head and letting it slide along the breasts of his companion. He closed his eyes. At the corners of his lips, deep in the creases, there was the shadow of a smile and a hint of suffering.

‘Like this?’

She wriggled around a little because he was crushing her chest; Mr Hire’s head followed her every movement, like the head of a baby. Finally, she got up. He lifted himself painfully, hiding his eyes.

‘Hurry up, get dressed.’

She pulled her robe around her waist like a loincloth and left the room, her breasts bare, their aggressively pink, pointed nipples darting ahead. Slowly, Mr Hire put on his underpants, his trousers. Somebody knocked.

‘I can start?’

It was the housekeeper with her towels, bucket and scrubbing brush. While he dressed, she washed the bath, wiped down the floor and changed the sheet on the rattan settee.

‘Have a good time?’

He said nothing but hunted around for some change. Briefcase under his arm, he left the way he’d come, passing by a black man who was following another maid.

Out in the street it was cold; an unhealthy cold, thanks to the damp that had permeated his skin. Shadowy figures lingered along the length of the fence – people who were afraid to go in, perhaps, unless it was the vice squad.

On the last street before the lights, barely fifty metres from the shops, a couple was pressed against a door, their faces meshed into a milky-white stain, so tightly entangled that the taste of their kiss hung in the air. The girl wore a white apron, meaning she worked for a butcher or at a dairy shop.

It was eight o’clock. Mr Hire arrived once again at Porte d’Italie, but he did not head towards the tram that was waiting at the stop. In a bar, somebody was playing an accordion. He was jostled by three young men with red paper flowers in their lapels.

He walked to a restaurant. Alone at a table, he ate dinner, choosing the mildest, sweetest dishes. But he hardly touched his food. At 9.30 he was outside. He stopped in front of a small hotel on a side street.

He was still thinking, and this distracted him. Whenever someone suddenly passed nearby, or a car honked, or a girl grazed him, he jumped in terror.

He went back to Avenue d’Italie. Most of the shops were closed, but it was still sufficiently lit, and at the end, on the square, the lights above a carousel of wooden horses could be seen revolving in the sky.

At one point, when a passer-by knocked into him, Mr Hire dropped his briefcase and had to bend down to pick it up. He stood back up, sighed wearily and headed straight to the tram. When he saw that his seat was taken, he remained where he was on the platform.

He got off at the Villejuif terminal at 10.15. The intersection was deserted. There was nobody around except in the two cafés. Cars passed incessantly along the shimmering street.

The door to the building was closed. He rang. The concierge unhooked the latch, turned on the light. He passed her apartment without exactly looking into it. Still, he made out the form of a man, maybe two, sitting astride a chair in front of the stove.

He knew that it was the man who had pulled off his bandage and who had followed him that morning.

He climbed the stairs heavily, and the timer light went out when he still had one flight left to go. But he was used to it. He found the lock, inserted his key and took in the cold breath of the room. When the light was on and the door closed, his face tightened; he grew tense. His eyes combed the room, looking for something.

Mr Hire didn’t smoke, and yet a vague odour of stale tobacco hung in the air.

He went over to the drawer where he kept his dirty linen and closed it wearily, tossing his leather briefcase on the bed, and hanging his hat on the rack.

The bloodstained towel had disappeared.

He had turned out the lights and was standing in front of the window in his overcoat, his hands in his pockets. The girl from the dairy had gone to bed before he got home, but she wasn’t sleeping. She was reading a new novel, her two bare arms outside the sheets, a cigarette in her mouth.

The building was silent except for the sound of a coffee grinder – just upstairs from Mr Hire. Someone must be sick; there could be no other reason to be making coffee at this time of night.

The girl hadn’t taken down her hair when she went to bed. It even seemed as if she had put on some powder and a hint of lipstick. From time to time, she lifted her head. Her eyes would leave the printed page, slip over the borders of the bed and look towards the window, with its transparent muslin curtains.

What was she looking at? The black wall on the other side of the courtyard? She made a vague motion with her head, as if she wished discreetly to signal to someone. Or maybe she had a stiff neck.

Mr Hire was absolutely still. He saw – very clearly – the girl’s full lips part and curve into the slightest smile. But for whom? For what? She pushed back the sheets and stretched, arching her back, so that her chest made a peak in the white fabric of her nightdress. And she continued to smile, a smile engorged with sensual bliss.

Maybe she felt hot under the sheets? Or maybe the smile was for the hero of her novel?

She drew up her knees under the sheets. Mr Hire’s forehead weighed more heavily against the icy window.

She was signalling to him! There was no conceivable doubt! She repeated the movement of her head! She smiled right at the window! He didn’t move, and she got up, revealing her pink thighs for an instant. When she was standing with the lamp behind her, he could see her body silhouetted through her translucent nightgown.

She made a sign for him to come! She pointed to the door! She drew the bolt and lay back down with a voluptuous, provocative movement, then stretched again, this time holding her breasts fully in her hands.

Mr Hire backed away. He could still see her, but now she was further away. He bumped into his table, looked into a drawer without turning on the lights – something white, anything – and found a handkerchief.

The girl wasn’t looking at the window any more. She must have thought that he was on his way down; she was arranging her hair in front of a pocket mirror, putting on lipstick.

Mr Hire made no noise. A beam creaked above his head, and a voice murmured plaintively. He used a broomstick to prop up the white handkerchief against the window where his face had been, and he went to open the door, pausing first to listen.

Despite his felt slippers, the steps creaked. A voice from behind a door asked: ‘Is it you?’

He walked by without responding. It was the apartment of a couple with three children. There was no light behind the concierge’s door, and Mr Hire went past it, barely avoiding crashing into the rubbish bins. He reached the courtyard.

It was some three metres deep and two across, and there were windows from top to bottom; only three were lit, including that of the top-floor apartment where the coffee was being made. His own window was the one below it. He saw it from an angle, completely black. In that blackness, he sought out the handkerchief and found it, phantom-like but visible – as his face each night was visible.

Across from him was the door to stairway B, which led to the girl’s apartment. Mr Hire contemplated it, had second thoughts and fled towards his own stairway, breathing heavily.

In that short time something had changed in the ground-floor corridor. It was lit. Someone had turned on the timer light. But nobody had rung. There had been no footsteps.

Mr Hire walked on tiptoes, leaning forward. He made it to the glass-paned door of the concierge’s apartment and stopped.

In the shadow, behind the glass, a man was standing, blandly looking him over while smoking a pipe. His expression wasn’t grim, or menacing, or ironic. He had no expression at all. He was smoking his pipe as if, at this time of night, it was completely natural to be standing there in the concierge’s apartment, smoking in the darkness, with only the dim glow of the hallway lights for illumination.

He showed no surprise at the sight of Mr Hire, who looked back at him wide-eyed. Then he stirred. But it was only to lift his arms and take the pipe from his mouth. He exhaled a cloud of smoke that, obscuring the window, for an instant entirely erased his face.

Mr Hire stretched his hand out towards the doorbell, then let it fall. Tearing himself away, he dived into the stairwell and climbed upstairs, groping the banister for support.

Once in his room, he sat down; he could still see the window across the courtyard. He could see the girl from the dairy closing her door and locking it behind her. With an angry gesture, she let her hair down and stubbed out her cigarette against the enamel washbasin.

Finally, with a glance towards the courtyard – towards the window – she stuck out her tongue – and turned out the lights.