8
The girl from the dairy shop undressed in a series of movements ritualized by habit, revealing her body little by little, like a living sculpture, until the white nightgown tumbled down over it; as she did, she avoided exposing her face to the invisible gaze of the three sheets of grey paper. She could show him her breasts, her behind. She could press her thighs and the skin of her belly against Mr Hire without flinching even if, rather than closing his eyes in a swoon, he’d taken up her invitation.
But she could not let him see her sullen, preoccupied face.
Once she had put on her nightgown she turned off the light, and – just in case – lay down for a moment, while the light across the way was switched off, too. The burden of thinking was like a heavy bar pressing down on her forehead. Now she got back up, silently, and tiptoed around looking for her shoes, which she slipped on to her bare feet, and her green coat, which she put on over her nightgown. She had already opened the door when she backtracked as far as her dressing table, grabbing a bottle which had once contained hydrogen peroxide.
When the sleepy concierge let her out the front door, Alice was greeted by a sudden blast of rain that drenched her from head to toe. The empty boulevard shimmered. The last tram was at the stop, bathed in yellow light emanating from the other side of the intersection. One of the cafés was still open.
The girl saw a shadow in the doorway next to her. She waited for a moment before stepping down on to the rain-soaked pavement.
‘You’re here?’ she said, without emotion.
It was the youngest detective, huddled up in a corner of the doorway, the collar of his coat turned up.
‘You’ve got quite a job! … I’m not feeling well – I seem to have caught a cold. So I got up to go and find some rum.’
She showed him her little bottle.
‘Want me to get it for you?’
‘And what if the guy comes out while you’re gone?’
Her voice was natural. She kept close to the walls as she walked, her head down, her feet dragging through the puddles, before going into the bistro on the corner, where she set off a bell as she passed through the glass door. Four men were still playing cards. One of their wives was there, waiting.
‘Give me some rum.’
And, while the proprietor was measuring it out: ‘Émile hasn’t been by?’
‘He left at least an hour ago.’
‘Alone?’
‘Alone,’ he replied with a wink.
‘I’ll pay you tomorrow – I don’t have my bag. When Émile comes, tell him I need to speak with him.’
She had the taut, grey face of a person with worries, but her voice was calm; she looked normal. She left with her bottle in her hand and, without glancing over at the deserted intersection which the tram was now leaving with a clatter, she walked back alongside the walls, her shoulders getting wetter and wetter and the hair on her forehead frizzing up from the humidity.
The detective was waiting for her, standing straight up now. He’d pulled his hat down over his ears, but as she approached, he returned it to its customary position. Alice waved to him, and he stopped her.
‘Are you in that much of a hurry?’
She obeyed his summons and turned towards him. He leaned over to peer into her open coat. ‘You’re wearing your nightgown!’ he exclaimed.
‘Of course I am.’
‘And you’ve got nothing on under it?’
He smiled and stretched out his hand to touch the edge of the white nightgown.
‘Your fingers are frozen.’
‘How about now?’
The detective’s hand groped at her breast through her nightgown. ‘You’d never know there’s so much there!’ he said.
Alice waited, without releasing the bottle, and pressed her shoulders into the door while the man drew nearer, standing in the rain, blocking her view of the road, so close now that when he spoke she could feel his breath against her cheek.
‘To think that you’ll go back to a nice, warm bed while I have to spend the night out here!’
Still holding the lifeless breast in his hand, he breathed down the girl’s neck, sniffing her smell in, sometimes brushing his lips along her hairline.
‘You’re tickling me! So, you haven’t finished your investigation?’
‘Unfortunately! It won’t be long now. And then, I’ll no longer have the opportunity to appreciate these beautiful things …’
She flashed him a neutral smile.
‘Will they arrest him?’
‘We don’t need much more. One little clue. He’s feeling trapped. In these situations, they never fail to make a mistake.’
‘You’re hurting me,’ she said as he crushed her chest.
‘Don’t you like it?’
She muttered an unconvincing ‘yes’. He smiled close to her face.
‘Admit that this sex-fiend business excites you! I’m serious! I can tell! All women are alike.’
Her legs were frozen stiff, her feet soaked, and the man’s caresses, always on the same breast, were starting to burn.
‘You think you’ll arrest him tomorrow?’
‘If it were up to me, I’d never arrest him at all, if it would mean …’
And he leaned in, gluing his mouth to hers, then pulled back, brimming with happiness.
‘But we could see each other elsewhere.’
‘We could,’ she said, taking advantage of the momentary respite to summon the concierge.
‘Will you dream about me?’
When the door opened, he blocked it with his foot. He entered behind her and took her into his arms in the darkness of the hallway. She could see the night more clearly through the opening, could sense the breath of the cold, rainy night, the smell of cigarettes on her companion’s mouth.
Without relinquishing her lips he began to knead at her with both hands, from her thighs to her neck. His knees were shaking.
‘Careful!’ she breathed.
And she fled towards the courtyard, while he, satisfied, closed the door and huddled back into his corner, his collar turned up again, a smile on his face. He looked out on the glistening intersection, and at the café on the corner, where the shutters were being lowered as the last customers took their leave. They bid each other goodnight under the awning before making their way back into the street.
Sitting on her bed, Alice slowly warmed her feet in her hands.
With his hat on his head, Mr Hire lifted up a corner of the grey paper. The rain was coming down in sheets. With a faint sense of nostalgia, he looked through it on the empty room. On the sheets of the unmade bed lay a comb like an arabesque.
Nonetheless, as he was about to leave, with his briefcase tucked under his arm, he turned on his heels, took the cardboard box from the wardrobe, and extracted the folder with the rubber band. When he finally opened the door, the Treasury bonds were in his briefcase – and he had torn up the class portrait to boot.
The building at that hour was filled with sounds: children leaving for school; men getting dressed, not finding what they needed; and the arrival of the coal merchant, with a bulging sack strapped to his shoulders that took up the entire stairwell.
As Mr Hire was proceeding downstairs in a dignified manner, a door swung open, and he found himself face to face with the detective, who was just leaving one of the apartments.
He didn’t say a word. Neither did the detective. But for the space of a second their eyes met, and it made Mr Hire feel sick: his breakfast weighed in his stomach like a stone.
He kept walking. A woman’s hand pulled a departing child back inside, and on the porch, where the rainwater was collecting in rivulets between the stones, five or six of the other tenants were huddling around the concierge near the door to her apartment.
They fell silent when he walked by. Out of habit, Mr Hire touched the edge of his bowler hat, stuck out his chest, and put even more of a bounce into his step than usual.
He was seized by the cold wind, wet and heavy, just as it had been on the night he’d held Alice. There wasn’t much on the shelves outside the dairy – some pumpkins and some bottles of milk. Mr Hire barely had to turn his head to see Alice’s pink face near the counter, her white apron and her bare arms. She followed him with her eyes as he walked to the tram.
He turned away. There was only one building across from the apartment house, a moving company’s. Four men were standing by the door, along with the little bearded detective, watching him from afar.
He walked faster. He had forgotten to open his umbrella. When he got to the intersection, he turned all the way around. There was a large group gathered on the doorstep to his building. The little one with the beard had already left. He and Mr Hire reached the tram almost at the same time, and the traffic policeman was also joined by a colleague. So, there were at least three of them at the Villejuif station. Mr Hire made out the words:
‘What did the boss say?’
He held his breath, but in vain: he couldn’t make out anything more. The tram left. The two men stood together on the platform, talking the whole time, occasionally turning towards Mr Hire.
Only one of them followed him into the Métro, but that was somehow even more unnerving.
On Rue Saint-Maur, the fire didn’t want to start, and Mr Hire spent more than a quarter of an hour on his knees in front of the stove, blowing on it to get it to catch.
He didn’t need to walk over to the window to look for the detective, who had discovered the neighbouring bistro, and was sitting there, next to the window, chatting with the waitress as she wiped down the coffee machine and counter.
But he could be out of there in the next minute; at this point, he might not be above stooping down to look through the grille.
Mr Hire was busy wrapping the hundreds of boxes of watercolours that had been stacked up in the back of the basement and making them into a wall of sorts in the middle of the room. He didn’t hurry. He worked at his usual pace: slow, but without interruption.
When it was possible for him to sit in his usual spot without his hands being visible from the outside, he went to get his overcoat, the scissors, and an iron box that he found in a drawer filled with files.
He spent two hours ripping out and sewing up the striped satin lining of the sleeves, which was thicker than the rest of the lining. He worked with a thimble, like a tailor, chewing on his lower lip. When he was through, the Treasury bonds were safe inside the coat, and, with the same obstinate slowness, Mr Hire demolished his rampart of boxes.
The fire had gone out. He had no more wood. He put on his overcoat and went out to buy some more. When he passed in front of the bistro, he saw the detective sitting in front of a pint of grog, cheerfully holding forth while the proprietor and waitress listened. The detective shuddered when he saw Mr Hire and hurried towards the door but he didn’t leave his shelter yet, since Mr Hire had already entered the coal merchant’s.
When Mr Hire returned, with half a dozen sticks of kindling, the scene in the little bistro hadn’t changed. The three characters there seemed petrified like statues. But as soon as he passed by the window, the proprietor and the waitress ran to the doorway, even stepped out to try to get a better look.
This didn’t keep him from making twenty-three packages, complete with address labels, postage forms and all. Now the fire was scorching his back, the desk lamp lit up his table, the window on his right was a small grey square, through which he could see feet and legs pass by, and the occasional slim wheels of a baby carriage.
By the time the final label had been addressed, he had also managed to write two letters, so discreetly that the detective would have noticed nothing even if he were observing his every movement. The first was for Victor, the waiter who served the bowlers at the café.
My dear Victor,
You are the only person I can depend on to do the following favour. When you get this note, hail a taxi and go to the intersection at Villejuif. You’ll see a dairy on your right. When you go in, purchase something, and when you are speaking with the shopgirl, a young redhead, find a way to slip her the enclosed letter.
I am counting on you. I’ll explain everything later. For now, thanks.
He picked out a 100-franc note, then reread the letter to Alice:
I’ll be waiting for you at 5.40 a.m. at Gare de Lyon. Take every precaution. Impossible to bring your things. I love you.
In all, it only amounted to a small brown-paper envelope, like the envelopes he sent to his customers. Mr Hire sat for a long time looking at it. He was worn out, as if after hours of physical exertion.
Finally he put on his overcoat, gathered all his little packages and walked through the rain towards the post office. The bearded detective followed him reluctantly.
As usual, Mr Hire was at the window with the clerk for a good five minutes. When he left, his message to Victor was already in the pneumatic mail, on its way to its destination.
The post office was practically empty. It resembled a train station, with its faded posters on the wall, its standard-issue clock and the trickles of water on the marble floor. Mr Hire didn’t leave. Now there was no reason to be in one place any more than in another. He had two hours ahead of him. Already the office on Rue Saint-Maur was no longer his office, the room in Villejuif no longer his room. His home was the black overcoat with the velvet collar, its sleeves and shoulders stuffed with stiff paper.
The detective was getting tired of waiting. Mr Hire made a point of reading every poster, one after another.
It was an extraordinary afternoon. The rain fell harder and harder. People waited at the kerbs as if by a river, unsure how to cross. The taxis moved slowly, afraid of skidding. In the kiosks, the newspapers slowly disintegrated.
And yet while all of Paris was bent beneath the downpour, while faces turned glum, while people huddled by the dozen under awnings or tapped their feet in a bar, waiting for an opening in the sky, Mr Hire was transfigured by joy.
Holding his umbrella upright, he wandered aimlessly, without worrying about getting soaked or being late. He stopped in front of shop windows. He bought sweets from a confectioner and put the bag inside his pocket, occasionally withdrawing a sweet, which he would suck on slowly.
It was as if someone had opened the doors of space and time for him. There was nowhere he had to be.
And the most marvellous thing was, the holiday would have a conclusion. At five o’clock in the morning – at 5.40 a.m. precisely – it would be over. He would take his seat in a train, across from a woman. He would lean forward to talk to her. He would tell the waiter in the restaurant car:
‘Two!’
Two! He skipped. His umbrella got caught on other umbrellas. He wandered down streets where he’d never thought to set foot, even with his whole life in front of him, all the days and all the hours of a life.
But now there were only eleven hours left. Ten! Paris lit up her lights, and on one of the Grand Boulevards he stopped in front of a jewellery store. They had thousands of violently sparkling rings, but Mr Hire thought of Rue des Francs-Bourgeois, where the jewels were less expensive, because most of them came from the pawnshop.
He didn’t take the bus or the tram. It was better to walk among the dazzling window displays than in the darker streets where only the pavement shone.
The building where he was born was now occupied by a phonograph merchant instead of a tailor. And yet the windows on the first floor – with ceilings so low you could barely stand – had remained exactly the same, with the same curtains even. And why not? Who would have taken them down?
Behind him, the detective walked along sullenly, caught in a nightmare. Mr Hire walked into a jeweller’s and spent a quarter of an hour looking at the rings and touching them. He bought one with a turquoise – at a discount because the stone was a little scratched. From the glowing interior of the shop, he could see the pitiful nose and beard of the detective, splayed against the window.
The merchant, a wiry, energetic man, was watching Mr Hire attentively. He waited for him to pay before saying anything.
‘Aren’t you the son of Hirovitch?’
‘Yes!’ he burst out with feeling.
The jeweller, closing the drawer of his register, said, simply, ‘Ah.’
And Mr Hire continued to hear this ‘ah’ as he walked through the streets. It disturbed him; it stuck in his heart. Why would someone say ‘ah’?
Turning around, he saw the detective, who was out of breath, and he didn’t find this funny. On the contrary, he was filled with hatred and began to walk alongside the kerb, ears open for the sound of an approaching bus.
His plan succeeded at Place de la République. Traffic was hopelessly backed up. The traffic policeman kept blowing his whistle. At the instant when, as if by a miracle, this magma began to flow, Mr Hire jumped on to the platform of a bus. The detective, stuck between two taxis, was helpless to pursue him.
Mr Hire got off at Porte Saint-Martin, took another bus to Gare du Nord, and from there proceeded on foot along Rue La Fayette to the Opéra.
Life flowed, fluid and black, through the lighted streets. There was nothing to do except go with the flow, like it or not.
Nine more hours!
But why had the Jew on Rue des Francs-Bourgeois said ‘ah’?
Suddenly Mr Hire was exhausted. He wandered into a cinema, where an usherette with a small torch led him through the darkness to his seat.
There was someone on his left and someone on his right, and everywhere rows of faces, half-illuminated by the glow from the screen. It was hot. A woman’s voice was speaking long sentences – amplified, superhuman – and sometimes between words you could hear her breathe. He thought how many thousands of spectators had been grazed by the breath of that gigantic head moving its lips up there on the screen.
Mr Hire sighed. He sunk as far down as he could in his seat and stretched out his short legs.
Wasn’t it incredible, miraculous, that he was here! He, whom the police were pursuing, whom the inhabitants of Villejuif accused of murdering a woman.
And he was just killing time. In barely eight hours, he would be pacing up and down the platform at Gare de Lyon, in front of a train carriage in which he would have already picked out their seats. Two seats! Alice would run up at the last minute, because women always arrive late. He would signal for her to hurry up. He would whisk her up on to the running board.
Then they would gaze at each other while, under their feet, the train began to glide away, skimming past the last streets of Paris, the big suburban houses, cottages surrounded by trees, the countryside.
He winced without knowing why, looked to his left and saw a stunned face turned towards him. On the right, an old woman was also staring and recoiling a little too.
Was it because he was panting? He calmed himself down. He looked at the screen. He even made an effort to understand the film.
Still, he couldn’t help but let out another sigh, a big sigh both of frustration and anticipation, because there are moments when waiting hurts so much your fingers cramp and your knees shake. You don’t know whether to laugh or groan.