4
It was thanks to the radio that, at 7.55, Mr Hire realized that it was Sunday. Every Sunday morning the radio could be heard playing, talking, whistling in some far corner of the building. Through his window he could see that the girl’s bedroom hadn’t been tidied. That was also characteristic of Sunday. At one o’clock, she would breeze into her apartment, haphazardly yank up the sheets and blankets, and get dressed in a fever.
There was still no wood in his apartment. The water from the pot was covered with a film of ice, and Mr Hire, in slippers and without putting on his detachable collar, went out into the stairway.
Outside, it seemed colder than it had the previous night, but that might have been because fewer people were around. The wide boulevard was nearly empty. It was clear from the position of the tram in the street that it wouldn’t be leaving for at least a quarter of an hour. The people who were walking in the pale, sharp air were mostly mourners, bent forward, with flowers in their hands, on their way to the new cemetery. It was their time of day.
Passing in front of the concierge’s, Mr Hire saw only the little girl, washing herself in her white knickers. But from the doorstep he was able to observe the intersection, where the detective was bouncing on his heels to keep warm while talking to the traffic cop. The detective saw him too, but he didn’t flinch. Mr Hire turned to the left to enter the grocer’s.
Despite the nightshirt barely hidden beneath the turned-up collar of his overcoat, he seemed overdressed for that time of morning, almost solemn. He waited his turn, dignified and patient, then selected from the merchandise …
‘A dozen … A half pound … How much?’
They had known him there for a long time, but they looked at him with embarrassment and curiosity. He needed some kindling to light his fire, some cheese, some butter and some cooked vegetables. At the butcher’s, he bought a cold cutlet and some cornichons. His arms were overflowing with small white packages, and in order to support them he had to stick out his stomach.
In the middle of the intersection the detective, standing next to the uniformed officer, watched him come and go, the way a teacher in a school playground keeps an eye on his pupils while chatting away with the head teacher.
Not two hundred metres away, a group of people stood in front of a fence bearing a brightly lit, red and yellow advertisement for boot polish. It had happened on the street across from them, a street that began with houses like any other street but which, a little further down, degenerated into a series of construction sites and vacant plots.
If you passed that way by night, some woman was always ready to grab your arm and point out the deserted construction site, the one where, two Sundays ago, they had found the mutilated body of one of her sisters.
Even now, people were using their Sundays off to come and see the exact place and the brown stains that remained on a cornerstone.
Weighted down by his packages, Mr Hire crossed in front of the dairy just at the moment when the girl was leaving it with her bottles of milk. She stopped in the doorway and smiled, while he bolted on to the porch, ploughing into the concierge who had turned her back. Now she spun around, jumping with fright.
Mr Hire kept on going, faster and faster, until he stumbled into the bottom stair; one of his little packages dropped – he didn’t know which and he didn’t bother to stop to pick it up; he just drew the remaining packages tighter against his chest. By the time he arrived, out of breath, on the fourth floor, he was not so much walking as running.
And still he didn’t stop to rest. Avoiding catching sight of himself in the mirror, he kneeled on the floor and began by lighting the fire; instantly it released a loud roar. Then he took off his overcoat, tied a tea towel around his waist as a makeshift apron and set about cleaning the small apartment.
The building was full of noises: many more men’s voices than during the week, also the sound of splashing water and the cries of children being scrubbed. The radio could be heard babbling nonstop in the apartment of the workers on the fifth floor, or maybe it came from the third – it was impossible to tell with the sound echoing so uniformly through the air.
At 10.30, Mr Hire surveyed the clean room: the made bed; the hot stove cleaned and polished; the gas burner, on which a kettle of water was whistling.
He shaved and dressed, except for his collar and tie, which he put on only at the last minute.
And that was it. Nothing left to do but sit down and think. From time to time, he would look towards the window across the courtyard and he could almost see the soapy water filling the washbasin. A glance at the newspaper had told him what the girl would be doing that afternoon – there was an important football match scheduled. At 1.30, she would wait at the second stop on the Sunday bus route, and, a little bit later, her boyfriend would turn up.
If the match hadn’t been worth seeing, they would have gone to Paris, to the Splendid Cinema. It was always one or the other.
He heard the steady siren of an ambulance. There was one every Sunday. At the same moment, the sound of the boy’s violin could be heard on top of the radio noise.
Mr Hire rewound his alarm clock and, though he’d already polished his shoes, he polished them again. He arranged his provisions on the table and sat down to eat. The meal lasted a full hour. He would take a mouthful and chew for a long time, watching the window across from him, so lost in thought that for several minutes he forgot to take another bite. He made himself some coffee, and the baby upstairs had an interminable attack of misery, releasing screeches that were finally stifled, no doubt at his mother’s breast.
It was only noon. And by 12.15, the table had already been cleared, the oilcloth wiped clean, the leftovers put away in the cupboard.
The girl from the dairy came home at one o’clock, but because it was daylight he saw her as a figure in grey, tossing her work shoes, apron and skirt around the room before coming to a standstill, in shirt and slacks, in front of the mirror.
Mr Hire did not approach the window. He looked far into the distance while putting on his tie and buttoning up his shoes. He knew that when she had finished getting ready, he’d hear the clatter of the window, which she would open to air out the room.
But in the end he didn’t wait. He went out, passing so quickly in front of the concierge’s that she had to spring up to make sure that it was really him. On the pavement, there were more cemetery-goers; they were like a current flowing from Paris out towards the sea.
But the current in the other direction was stronger, the residents of Juvisy, of Corbeil, and places even further north, pouring into Paris in vans, in chartered buses, in cars, on foot.
The detective was there, not ten metres from the building, and Mr Hire passed right by him – waddling, bouncing, chest stuck out, the way he always walked. He didn’t do it on purpose. He was just built like that. Above his quick little legs, his round body seemed to bounce along of its own accord.
There was a line of people a hundred metres long crowded between the chains at the tram stop. Mr Hire crossed the road, stopping twice for cars, and was hustled along by the traffic policeman.
‘Let’s go … Hurry up …’
He wasn’t breathing well. His nerves were shot. He purposely did not step up on to the pavement on the other side. He listened to the sounds and took note of the undercover detective stationed about thirty paces away.
At last there was the roar of a motor and the ringing of a loud bell: the bus from Juvisy, full to capacity, bypassing its stop.
Mr Hire’s jaws were clenched. He half-turned his head, saw the front of the bus and took off with all his might, groping with his right hand, which finally took hold of the post just as two arms reached down to hoist him up on to the running board.
He couldn’t prevent himself from smiling, with an emotion that rendered him both touching and grotesque. The conductor, at the back of the car, hadn’t seen him. The people on the platform, already crammed in, squeezed even more tightly together, looking at him with silent reprobation. As for the detective, he was far away, back at the intersection, standing on his two useless legs, barely visible in the crowd.
A woman who was being elbowed in the ribs by someone groaned in pain, and Mr Hire stammered hastily, ‘I’m getting off right away …’
The bus skipped another stop, and Mr Hire got ready on the running board, faced forward and jumped. Twelve people on the platform watched him curiously as he entered the deserted street, the force of his momentum carrying through ten skittering steps.
It was 1.15. He walked quickly, not along the main street of Villejuif but along one that ran parallel, and returned to the intersection in that manner, without venturing all the way in.
At a corner, he stopped and squatted against a wall, sombre and serious, like an investigator conducting surveillance.
The girl got there first, bundled up in her green coat, collar up, cheeks flushed with cold. Almost immediately, a young man walked up, wearing a grey hat, and she hoisted herself up on to her tiptoes to kiss his cheek while taking hold of his arm.
They spoke, but it was impossible to hear their words. The bus for Colombes stopped, and Mr Hire saw the girl turn around before getting in, as if she were looking for someone.
So Mr Hire got on the bus, too. There was nowhere to stand, but they wouldn’t turn anyone away. People couldn’t move their arms or legs. Their faces, all at about the same height, swayed with every jolt; below, it was just an anonymous mass.
The couple was two metres away from Mr Hire. From time to time his eyes would meet theirs, neutral, empty, indifferent, the way people’s eyes meet all the time. The bus skipped along on the cobbles and arrived at Porte d’Italie, where even more people climbed on.
The boyfriend was skinny, unhealthy. His gaze never fell on Mr Hire without irony, but it was always he who would look away first, because Mr Hire could stare at someone for a very long time, without meaning to, without wanting to, without anything, the way one stares at a wall, or at the sky.
Then the young man would nudge his girlfriend with his elbow, murmur a few words into her ear and pretend to laugh, and Mr Hire would turn a little red.
But this happened rarely. There were too many other intervening heads. The conductor, his elbows spread out, forced his way through the crowd, collecting fares.
They rode through empty streets, empty squares; only a few stray shadowy figures were wandering on the pale, frosty pavements, which swirled with dust kicked up by the cold north wind.
And suddenly there were crowds, cries, music. A violent push carried Mr Hire out of the bus. He was barely able to slow down, to turn around to assure himself that the couple was among the throng. There were some ten or twenty ticket windows. In the middle of the crowd, people held out multicoulored tickets, yelling in his ear: ‘Reserved seats in the stands. Twenty-five francs …’
Mr Hire’s face collapsed into a childish agony when he lost the couple, and he spun around like a top, opening his mouth with joy when he spotted the girl’s green hat in the distance.
‘Sorry … Sorry …’
He made it to the ticket window almost at the same moment she did and bought a ticket for ten francs. She bought two oranges, which her companion paid for with a disdainful look. People were coming and going in all directions, yelling out all kinds of things, while on the other side of the barrier, in the stands, they were stomping their feet in impatience.
There was a ray of sunshine as acidic as the oranges, but as soon as the doors were opened, the wind that blew up from the hard turf swept away hats and put a wince on people’s faces.
The boyfriend had his hands in his pockets, his overcoat open. The girl clung to his arm like a small child afraid of getting lost. From the side they could be seen gliding between the crowded rows of little benches, followed by Mr Hire in his bowler hat and black overcoat with the velvet collar.
‘Sorry … Sorry …’
Mostly, there were people in sport caps, almost all of them eating: peanuts, oranges, roasted chestnuts. They held conversations across great distances, yelling back and forth over the rows. Mr Hire made his way through it all apologetically, smiling.
‘Sorry …’
He found a seat right behind the couple, and since the benches didn’t have backrests, his knees touched the girl’s back.
Everyone was stomping in unison, and the official fanfare fought in vain against the music that the wind was carrying from across the field.
At last, little men began to move out into the immense field, some in yellow and blue stripes, others in red and green. They bantered with each other, now smack in the middle of the turf, until a whistle blew, and the crowd roared as one.
Mr Hire hunched his shoulders against the cold; above all, he avoided shifting his knees the tiniest bit, since the girl from the dairy was pressing against them, really leaning as if against a seatback, even as her kidskin-gloved hand remained firmly attached to her companion’s forearm.
The men in stripes ran across the field, interrupted from time to time by the sound of the whistle. Mr Hire stared forty centimetres in front of him at the light down on the nape of the girl’s nubile neck. She didn’t turn around, but she must have felt his eyes glued to her skin. Every once in a while, as if to break the spell, she would hear the whistle and ask, ‘What happened?’
She was following the game without understanding. Her companion shrugged. The stands resonated like a drum, shuddered, then positively shook as thousands of people rose at once to cheer.
Mr Hire remained seated. He was surprised when suddenly it was halftime. Like a sleeper jolted awake, he warily noted the changed character of the crowd: people calmed down and relaxed, went back to eating their snacks. The girl ate too, an ice-cold orange from which she tore away the peel with her nails. The tart juice squirted out, while her small, pointed teeth gnawed at the pulp. Her stiff tongue thrust its way in, and she sucked with her lips. The scent of orange wafted through the air.
‘Sour …,’ the girl said with satisfaction. ‘Now, give me a cigarette.’
She puffed, her lips loosely gripping the tip of the cigarette, the way people do who smoke for effect and not because they enjoy the taste. The smell of the orange and the smell of tobacco mingled together into a single smell, both bitter and dull, that seemed to emanate from the redhead’s neck, which was as round and straight as a column.
‘Who won?’
The man was reading a sports paper without taking any notice of the small hand always resting on his wrist. Halftime ended. The players filled the field. The whistle stopped fights and started them.
By the end, it was almost night, and the spectators were stomping their feet to keep warm. There was no roof over the stands. A few flakes of snow hovered in the grey air; one of them came to rest upon the green hat, where it melted.
It was a struggle to get through the crowd, and Mr Hire would certainly have lost track of the couple if the young man hadn’t run into some friends.
They stood together in a group near one of the exits. None of them was paying any attention to the girl, who stood a little way behind.
She saw Mr Hire leave and looked at him for a long while, her eyes more serious than usual. The young men spoke loudly. The boyfriend turned her way, said a few words, took a five-franc note from his pocket and gave it to her, kissing her on the forehead.
The men piled into a taxi heading for Paris. As for her, she walked slowly, as if thrown off by being alone. Mr Hire stayed put, allowing her to take the lead. She wasn’t going towards the tram or towards the bus. She followed the same route as the taxi, without hurrying, without turning around. She knew that Mr Hire was there. She heard his footsteps, recognizable by their skip and by the very thin soles which barely grazed the ground.
Night had come. The shutters on the shops were closed. Only the cafés were lit from within. Families were returning home, dressed in their Sunday best, the children walking ahead.
Ten metres separated Mr Hire from the girl. Then five, Then, after three hurried steps, he stopped short, keeping his distance.
They walked like this for a quarter of an hour. From time to time, she would turn her head to the side, not so much as actually to see him, but enough to reassure herself that he was there.
Finally she went into a small bar, where there was a little space free at the horseshoe-shaped counter.
‘A diabolo.’
Elbows on the bar, she studied Mr Hire, who had sat down across from her. Looking ashamed, he mumbled:
‘A diabolo.’
Two men in the back stopped talking to watch. Then the boss returned to pick up where their game of Zanzi had left off.
The girl counted out change in her purse. Her cheeks were glowing, her eyes shone after being in the open air; her lips, ever so slightly parted, were as red as blood.
‘How much?’
Disappointed, she avoided looking at Mr Hire.
And Mr Hire put a franc on the table and stood up to leave at the very minute she did, without waiting for his change, stepping aside to let her pass.
She thought he was going to speak. She smiled, her hand ready to offer itself, lips ready to murmur: ‘
Bonjour …’
But he didn’t say anything, and she continued down the length of the pavement, her full hips swaying more than usual, stretching her skirt with every step.
They entered the city, where the streets were brightly lit and crowded. The girl, tired but obstinate, kept walking steadily. At a square, she got on a tram without even turning around to see if she was still being followed. Maybe she didn’t care one way or the other.
Mr Hire sat down three seats behind her. The tram went through central Paris, full of people and cafés, little stalls selling trinkets, couples holding on to each other’s waists. Mr Hire was tired and drawn. His complexion became leaden; dark circles appeared under his eyes; he looked as though he’d been deflated. He seemed less rosy, less plump, less peculiar. His brown eyes lost their hardness and looked as helpless as a dog’s.
The girl turned to look at him. She played her part well. She pretended not to see him, to be casual, indifferent. Twice, she powdered her cheeks and put on lipstick. Twice she tugged at her dress as if she’d caught Mr Hire examining her knees.
The surroundings became familiar. Without even looking out the windows it was easy to recognize the luminous signs of Place d’Italie, then the cafés on the avenue, and Porte d’Italie itself.
‘Last stop! Everybody off!’
She got off first and paused for a moment on the edge of the pavement. Twenty metres away, other trams, destined for Villejuif, were waiting. The road was dark and pedestrians scarce.
She began to walk anyway. She had bought chestnuts for twenty sous and she ate them as she went, slowing her pace when one of the skins proved hard to remove. After 500 metres, she shivered, as if she’d forgotten something. She turned and saw nothing but emptiness behind her.
Mr Hire was no longer there. A tram went by on the other side of the street, and she could see him behind one of the windows, sitting in the pinkish light.
The next stop was another 500 metres away. When she got there, no tram came; she went to another stop, and another, and, step by step, she made it all the way to Villejuif on foot. She bought some more chestnuts at the intersection. She was weary. Her heels burned and the soles of her feet were aching from the arches of her shoes. Despite the cold, she was so hot that she pushed the green hat back on to her neck. That was how she looked when she entered the building, her bag of chestnuts in her hand.
Out of habit, she cast a glance towards the concierge’s apartment. There was the concierge, wearing her glasses and reading the newspaper, her elbows resting on the table. Across from her, the detective warmed his hands over the stove. The girl went in.
‘I’m not disturbing you? Chestnut?’
She exhaled steam as she spoke, since the chestnut in her mouth was hot. The detective took two. He seemed tired, too, and discouraged.
‘I assume you don’t know where Mr Hire might have gone?’
‘Me? How would I know?’
‘She goes out every Sunday afternoon with her boyfriend,’ explained the concierge, without lifting her eyes from her paper. ‘How was the match?’
The detective looked at the stove, annoyed.
‘He did it on purpose!’
‘What?’
‘Jumped on to the moving bus. I thought he would take the tram, as usual. He must have been going somewhere he didn’t want to be followed.’
‘Is it very important for you to know?’
‘Of course!’
‘Well, maybe I could go and pay him a little visit …’
The concierge lifted her head. The glasses transformed her, adding years but also a certain distinction.
‘Are you crazy?’
The girl flashed a toothy grin. Bits of chestnut were visible in her mouth.
‘Bet I can pull the worms out of his nose!’ she yelled as she opened the door.
And she ran up stairway B to her apartment, where she saw Mr Hire’s window lit up, and then the man himself, who was pouring boiling water into his little cafetière. She hadn’t turned on her light. On tiptoe, she entered her bathroom, found the flask of eau de Cologne, and spritzed her dress and hair. Still in darkness, she ran a comb through her hair and pulled up her synthetic stockings, which were held in place by an elastic band above her knees.
Mr Hire set the table: a cup, a saucer, a small plate with butter, a slice of bread and some ham.
Before walking out, the girl hesitated once more. She looked at her bed, and then at the lighted window. She could get there without passing the concierge’s again. In the courtyard, she was surprised by the cold – all the coming and going had left her soaked in sweat. The stairway was the same as her own, except that the doors were painted brown; the ones on stairway B were dark blue.
She had to stop because an entire family was climbing up with great effort: first the children; then the winded mother, whose arms were filled with packages.
She arrived at last in front of the door corresponding to her own. Once again, she smoothed her copper hair with her fingers, tugged on a sagging stocking and knocked.
There came the sound of a cup being set down on a saucer, and of a chair violently pushed back. The girl smiled when she heard the felt soles approaching the door. She looked down. For just a second more she could see the backlit outline of the keyhole, then something came between the door and the light.
She saw that it was an eye and smiled, stepping backward into the field of view and proudly showing her exuberant breasts.