11

The detective ran up the stairs to warn his boss as soon as Mr Hire stepped out from behind the tram. From a distance, he seemed perfectly small, perfectly round, perfectly black, his pale face in sharp contrast to his inky moustache.

Two men walked behind him, so close that they seemed to be holding him up. And Mr Hire was walking briskly on his little legs, as if that would help him get away.

He had noticed all the people. There was no way he couldn’t have noticed, not at that hour, when pedestrians are rare. He stopped at the corner. He was the only one trying to cross – along with the two policemen at his heels – and yet the traffic policeman blew his whistle and raised his baton to stop the passing cars.

He walked on. He was moving through a cloud, through some kind of soft, impalpable, invisible matter. He was completely focused on the entrance to the building, and the people gathered there, all looking in the same direction. He heard only the footsteps of the two men behind him.

Suddenly more people were on the pavement. They came from indoors and out; men and women, even children, who had been shoved back behind their parents.

‘Stay there, you hear?’

And Mr Hire kept walking, without daring to look towards the dairy, though that didn’t keep him from glimpsing Alice standing there wiping the doorstep with a floor cloth under foot. He stuck out his chest. He would explain. One of his nostrils was stuffed, and he was having a hard time breathing. None of that mattered.

What he needed to do was to get by. There was a narrow opening between the people and the doorway. He just needed to speed up.

He took ten, fifteen steps. Then, all of a sudden, something moved at his side, and his bowler hat flew off his head. The crowd began to snicker.

He made a mistake. He wasn’t thinking – it was pure instinct: he tried to retrieve his hat. A foot sent it rolling off and, as if by accident, the foot also landed in Mr Hire’s face. He was dirty and bruised.

This was a shock to everyone: a shock for Mr Hire, who gave himself away by casting a forlorn look towards the crowd; a shock – or perhaps more of a sign – for the spectators.

Mr Hire wobbled, and almost grazed a woman with his elbow. The nearest man took the opportunity to punch him with his fist.

The sound of a fist meeting Mr Hire’s flesh excited interest – so much interest, in fact, that everyone wanted to hear.

Mr Hire had completely lost his balance and sense of orientation. He lifted himself up on to the tips of his toes; almost everybody was taller than he was. He protected his face with a bent arm.

‘Come on, leave him alone!’ shouted a policeman.

But there were at least thirty of them, preventing him from going any further. Mr Hire was flat against the cornerstone at the base of the front door. Someone threw a stone at him, hitting his hand. He began to bleed. A foot violently kicked his shin.

The rumblings from the crowd grew. Mr Hire kept trying to hide his face with the arm of his black overcoat.

He couldn’t see anything. If he kept backing up it was only because he was being pushed – by fists or feet. He could feel the door in his hand, the tiled corridor underfoot.

He fled with all the speed his legs could muster. He bounded upstairs and tried to push through a half-open door, which was slammed in his face.

The rumblings of the crowd pursued him. The people climbed the stairs behind him, as he kept running, panting, with a crazed look in his eye. The walls, the banister, the doors – everything seemed strange. What he was looking for was a way out. He didn’t know how many floors he’d already gone past.

A door opened, and he failed to recognize his own apartment. A man tried to intercept him, but he went through the man’s legs, impossible to say how. He kept climbing, and now the setting really was new. He’d never climbed so high up in the building. An old woman was trembling, leaning over the banister and clasping her hands.

He brushed past her, entered her apartment. The stairs didn’t go up any further. There was an oven, a table, an unmade bed.

‘Kill him!’

Somebody was saying that. People were yelling all kinds of things. There was a general din, and one loud voice trying to rise above it: ‘Leave him alone! Leave it to the police!’

Then Mr Hire did something he otherwise would never have dared to do. There was a dormer window in the sloped ceiling above his head. He hung from it. The edge of the metal window frame cut into his hands, but he twisted, swung his legs out, and hooked one on to the dormer’s ledge. He made it on to the roof at the very moment the crowd broke into the room – while the old lady screamed like hell.

What a roof! Mr Hire averted his eyes. He was afraid. Some of the slates were dry, others wet. There was a terrible pitch to it. The only thing in sight was an empty plot, far off beyond the edge.

He stayed there, balancing, for a good long moment, his arms outstretched at his sides, his eyes wild. A hand reached up through the dormer and tried to grab his leg. Did he step back?

He tripped, in any case, and fell forwards. He slipped, slipped, grabbed onto something with both hands. It was loose.

He screamed with all his might – the sound was inhuman, and it tore his throat. His feet, his body, hung in the void. His hands burned. People were yanking on his arms.

He wriggled his legs. He was trying to find a foothold, but there was nothing; his body was stretched out, his arms were about to break.

He didn’t yell. He was holding his breath. He looked at the brick wall in front of him, and, just above him, at the metal cutting into his fingers.

The cornice was giving way! It was collapsing! It dropped down further. He thought he could hear them talking about him in the dormer, it had to be.

Now there were no more threats. The voices were hushed, anxious.

It would break! The whole thing would come down! He didn’t dare look below him, and his hands were so clammy that they kept slipping ever more. All his blood had frozen. He stopped moving. He couldn’t see anything but his hands, his own hands, the veins so swollen they were unrecognizable. The air burned in his lungs.

The crowd had pulled back as far as the empty plot across the street to get a better view, and cars kept passing between them and the building. They could see the roof with its steep pitch and patches of rain; the heads in the dormer; even the torso in uniform poking up through it.

The new brick façade was smooth to the ground. A whole part of the cornice had given way under Mr Hire’s weight. It hung down like a garland now, with Mr Hire’s body suspended from the bottom. It was so still that he could have been dead.

The inspector was in the midst of the crowd, but he didn’t even see them. Up in the dormer the policeman gestured to him; the boss signalled back no.

It was going to be impossible for the policeman to go out there without tumbling down the roof himself, and in that case the cornice would certainly give way.

Inside the building there was a lot of coming and going. There was an active group in the old lady’s apartment, and another one in the empty plot.

Finally a driver noticed the dangling black body and stopped. Others stopped behind him.

‘Call the fire brigade!’ ordered the inspector.

A window opened, just below. Mr Hire must have seen the man, two metres away, but there was nothing to do.

‘Hold on!’ the man called out.

Someone had found a rope somewhere. With the help of the plumber from the night before, the policeman lowered it down.

The inspector was making gestures to direct him from afar: ‘To the left! … Again! … Not so much. Yes! …’

And the rope slithered down like an animal, finally reaching the cornice, dropping in front of Mr Hire’s face. But he didn’t grab it. Maybe he was afraid to, worried that he wouldn’t be able to support himself, even for a split second, with one hand.

The intersection came to a standstill. The road was clogged with cars. The traffic policeman was looking up towards the sky along with everyone else. From time to time a driver who had no idea what was going on honked impatiently.

Down on the ground there were only a few scattered groups, little black blotches, with occasional people passing back and forth between them.

‘Is the fire brigade on its way?’

‘Three minutes.’

On the pavement, below Mr Hire, there was no one.

The doctor, who had just arrived, stood on the corner of the street, where the concierge had found him.

‘Could you have imagined this?’

Alice was in the empty plot, not far from the detective. He grinned at her from time to time.

‘Ah! …’ the crowd cried when, with a jerk, Mr Hire’s overcoat climbed further up his neck. They thought he was going to let go. They could see his body tremble, clench and relax. A few times, he spread his legs or squeezed his knees tightly together. All the while the rope was hanging right in front of his nose.

The crowd couldn’t see his face: only his back, his legs – most of all his flailing leg, which restlessly searched for some solid footing.

Émile was there, too, right next to Alice, with his hands in his pockets, his face morbid and cold. She looked at him, but he didn’t see her. His eyes were feverish. His neck hurt from craning upwards. Alice was busy studying the crowd.

People were making calculations.

‘The building is twenty-three metres high.’

Never had the walls seemed so naked, so high, so smooth, or the pavement so hard. A siren cut through the traffic jam, but it was the ambulance, not the fire engine. It stopped right in front of the door, barely five metres from the place where Mr Hire was poised to fall.

Everyone was relieved when they finally heard the bell of the fire engine, but then a shadow passed over the crowd. It would all be over soon. Some may have secretly hoped that the drama would play to the end.

Mr Hire was inert, swaying almost imperceptibly, as if blowing in the breeze.

Oblivious to the spectators and the police, the firemen took command of the intersection. There were twenty of them, thirty, bustling around a red-painted engine. The ladder rose up from it, extending ever higher, reaching up to the third floor, the fourth.

Émile’s face had gone totally white. He continued to look up above. His trembling hand clutched at the lighter in his pocket.

Alice glanced at him, then at the detective. Once in a while, but not too often, she dared to look up at the sinister sky – so harsh it hurt her eyes – and towards the brick façade.

A fireman with a copper helmet leaned out from the end of the ladder, which was still not fully extended. It bent beneath his weight like a ladder under a clown at the circus. The last section stretched out, and Mr Hire’s feet shot out one more time, then came back together; his head turned to the side, revealing half a moustache.

Then there was a hush, except for the sound of a big car that continued idling. The people in the dormer couldn’t see anything. They signalled to people below, trying to get information.

The fireman got closer. Two metres. One metre. Three rungs. Two. One …

He threw his arms around Mr Hire’s waist but could hardly get him to let go. As the fireman carried him down the ladder, Mr Hire continued to move, out of shock, it seemed. Then his body went slack.

Below, the ladder was more stable. By the end, it was as sturdy as a staircase, and everyone rushed forwards at the same time. The policemen linked arms in a barricade.

Two steps. One step. The fireman was on the ground with his burden. The head was hanging down. In the crowd, Alice’s hand gripped Émile’s elbow. People dared to murmur again, then to speak. The din grew louder.

‘Silence!’

And they laid Mr Hire’s inert body down on the ground, at the edge of the pavement, while the concierge’s doctor moved in. The face was the colour of wax. The jacket was hiked up, revealing a striped shirt and braces.

All they heard was the ladder of the fire engine retracting.

‘He’s dead. Heart attack …’ said the doctor, straightening up.

It wasn’t only the inspector who heard him. The people leaned forwards. There was no more Mr Hire. Only a dead body, the eyes of which had just been shut. There were still red traces of blood on his palms.

‘Make way! Bring the ambulance!’

It was a woman yelling from the back of the crowd. She didn’t know what to do. She paced in the rear and was afraid to come closer.

Émile wasn’t afraid. He stepped forwards bit by bit, reaching the third, then the second row. From pinched features he directed a piercing gaze.

Now and then, Alice’s hand would clutch at his arm. He didn’t move. He watched. He wanted to see everything.

They hoisted the body on to a stretcher. Two men lifted it up.

‘Émile!’ whispered the girl from the dairy.

He stared at her coldly, stunned that she was there.

‘What’s the matter with you?’

He turned away from her.

‘Are you jealous? Do you think that …’

And then passionately: ‘It isn’t true! I didn’t have to do anything, Émile, I swear!’

She pressed close to his arm.

‘You don’t believe me? You think I’m lying?’

He prised her hand off so that he could take out a cigarette and light it. The crowd was beginning to break up. The ambulance blared its siren and then left. The torrent of cars resumed its course.

‘I swear!’ she repeated.

A few steps off she could see the shop and her boss waiting for her. The detective was caught in the crowd, overseeing the debacle. She walked right by him, but there was no grin. He was grimy and he frowned.

Everyone left, filled with shame! The voice of the concierge, running along at the doctor’s side, said: ‘I wonder if it wasn’t the croup, and …’

‘I’m here!’ Alice called out as she entered the shop and picked up her pail and rag from the doorstep. ‘I can’t be in two places at the same time!’

On board the red fire engine driving towards Paris, the fireman explained: ‘He just melted in my arms, up there – it was as if, bit by bit, he died of fright. I knew it was over.’

And in Villejuif they were busier than usual, because their whole little world was two hours behind schedule.