Did Protos intend to hand Lafcadio over to the police, as he had threatened to?

I don’t know. The incident at least proved that not all gentlemen of the police were to be counted his friends. Those who were not, and had been tipped off by Carola the day before, had set their mousetrap at Vicolo dei Vecchiarelli. They had been aware of the house for some time and knew that its top floor offered easy communication with the adjoining building, so those exits were also watched.

Protos was not at all afraid of the constables. Neither the prospect of charges being brought nor the apparatus of justice held any terrors for him: he judged that it would be hard to arrest him, since in reality he was not guilty of any crime, merely of a few peccadilloes so trifling that no law enforcement officer would bother with them. He was therefore not wildly alarmed when he realised he was cornered, which he did very rapidly, having a practised eye for identifying police, whatever form their disguises took.

At first, little more than mildly puzzled, he locked himself in Carola’s room and waited for her to come back. He had not seen her since Fleurissoire’s murder. He was keen to ask her advice, and to leave her some instructions in the likely event of his ending up in jug.

Carola, meanwhile, deferring to Julius’s wishes, had not shown herself at the cemetery. From behind a distant mausoleum and under an umbrella she watched the sad ceremony, alone and unobserved. Patiently and humbly she waited until the mourners left the newly dug grave and the procession re-formed. She watched as Julius and Anthime climbed into their carriage and the cortège rolled away in the drizzle. Then she went up to the grave, took out a large bouquet of asters from inside her shawl, laid them down far from the family’s wreaths, and stood there for a long time in the rain, not looking at anything or thinking about anything, and crying instead of praying.

When she got back to Vicolo dei Vecchiarelli, she noticed the two unfamiliar figures standing outside, but did not realise that the house was being watched. She was in a hurry to find Protos: not doubting for an instant that it was he who had committed the murder, she hated him now.

A few minutes later, the police rushed into the house in response to her screams – but too late. Exasperated at finding out that Carola had turned him in, Protos had strangled her.

This took place at around midday. The evening papers ran the story, and as the police had found the piece of leather from the beaver hat’s lining on Protos’s person, no one doubted that he was guilty of both crimes.

Lafcadio, meanwhile, had spent the afternoon in a state somewhere between expectancy and fear, not of the police, despite Protos having threatened him with them, but of Protos himself or some other force against which he no longer had the will to defend himself. An unspecified listlessness weighed him down. Perhaps it was just tiredness. He gave up.

The day before, he had only seen Julius briefly, when Julius had met him off the Naples train and taken delivery of the body. Afterwards he had walked around the city for a long time, going nowhere in particular, to dispel the anger he still felt following his encounter with Protos and the feelings of dependency it had aroused.

Yet the news of Protos’s arrest did not bring Lafcadio the relief he might have expected. It was almost as if he felt disappointed. Strange creature! Just as he had expressly rejected any material benefit from the crime, so he was also reluctant to relinquish any of the risks associated with it. He could not accept that the game was over so quickly. He would willingly, as he had done in his chess-playing days, have sacrificed a rook to his opponent, and with the turn of events having suddenly given him the match too easily and thus stripped it of its interest, he felt he could not stop until he had taken the challenge further.

He dined in a trattoria close to the hotel, so that he did not have to dress. Immediately afterwards, walking back through the lobby, he glimpsed Julius through the glass doors of the restaurant, sitting at dinner with his wife and daughter. He was struck by the beauty of Geneviève, whom he had not seen since his first visit. He was loitering in the smoking room, waiting for dinner to be over, when a page came to tell him that the count had gone up to his room and was expecting him.

He went in. Julius de Baraglioul was alone. He had changed back into a jacket.

‘Well! The murderer has been apprehended,’ he said immediately, holding out his hand.

But Lafcadio did not take it. He remained standing in the doorway.

‘What murderer?’ he asked.

‘My brother-in-law’s, for heaven’s sake!’

‘I am your brother-in-law’s murderer.’

He said it without trembling, without altering or lowering the tone of his voice and without moving, in such a natural way that at first Julius did not understand. Lafcadio had to repeat himself.

‘I’m saying that your brother-in-law’s murderer has not been arrested for the simple reason that I murdered your brother-in-law.’

If Lafcadio had looked at all wild or frenzied, Julius might have taken fright, but his look was more childlike than anything else. He looked younger even than the first time Julius had met him. His eyes were as bright, his voice as clear. He had closed the door, but remained with his back to it. Julius, standing by the table, slumped into an armchair.

‘My poor boy,’ were his first words. ‘Speak more quietly! … What possessed you? How could you have done it?’

Lafcadio looked down, already regretting having spoken.

‘How should I know? I did it very quickly. I just suddenly felt like it.’

‘What did you have against Fleurissoire? Such a worthy and virtuous man.’

‘I don’t know … He didn’t look happy … How do you think I can explain to you what I can’t explain to myself?’

An increasingly awkward silence fell, broken by short bursts of words from each of them, only to fall again more deeply. Snatches of cheap Neapolitan music wafted up from the hotel’s lobby. Julius scratched at a small spot of candle wax on the tablecloth with his little fingernail, which he kept long and tapered to a point. He suddenly noticed that this handsome nail was broken, with a crack across it that marred the whole width of its polished, pink-coloured surface. How had it happened? And how had he not noticed it immediately? Whatever the answer, the damage was done, and there was nothing he could do but cut it short. He was deeply irritated: he took great care of his hands and of this nail in particular, which he had tended patiently and carefully and which showed off his finger, emphasising its elegance. The nail scissors were in his dressing-table drawer and he was about to get up to fetch them, but he realised he would have had to walk past Lafcadio. He tactfully decided to postpone the delicate operation.

‘So … what do you plan to do now?’ he said.

‘I don’t know. Hand myself in, possibly. I’m going to sleep on it.’

Julius let his arm fall beside his armchair. Gazing at Lafcadio for a few moments, he sighed in a deeply disheartened voice, ‘And there I was, beginning to care for you!’

Lafcadio could not have imagined that it was said with unkind intent, and yet, however unthinkingly the words had been uttered, they sounded just as cruel. He felt them like a knife to his heart. He raised his head, his body rigid with the struggle to overcome the anguish that suddenly washed over him. He looked at Julius. ‘Is he really the person I thought of almost as my brother yesterday?’ he said to himself. His gaze strayed around the room where, the day before yesterday, he had, despite his crime, been able to talk so cheerfully. The bottle of eau de Cologne was still on the table, nearly empty …

‘Listen to me, Lafcadio,’ Julius said. ‘I don’t see your situation as entirely hopeless. The person supposed to have committed this crime—’

‘Yes, I know he’s just been arrested,’ Lafcadio interrupted. ‘Are you about to advise me that I should let an innocent person be convicted in my place?’

‘The person you describe as innocent has just murdered a woman, and moreover one you know …’

‘And that sets my mind at rest, does it?’

‘That isn’t exactly what I’m saying, but—’

‘Let’s remind ourselves that he’s the one person who could give me away.’

‘But still everything’s not hopeless, surely you can see that.’

Julius stood up, walked over to the window, straightened the folds of the curtains, retraced his steps and, leaning forward with his arms folded on the back of the armchair in which he had been sitting, said, ‘Lafcadio, I should not like to see you go without a word of advice. It depends on you and you alone, I am convinced of it, to make an honest man of yourself again, and to take your place in society – as far as your birth permits it, at any rate … The Church is there to help you. Come on, my boy! Be brave: go to confession.’

Lafcadio could not suppress a smile.

‘I’ll reflect on your kind words.’ He took a step forward. ‘I’m sure you would prefer not to shake hands with a murderer. All the same I’d like to thank you for your—’

‘Don’t mention it! Don’t mention it,’ Julius said, with a friendly, impersonal wave. ‘Farewell, my boy. For now I dare not say it’s only a goodbye. Yet perhaps, in future, you’ll—’

‘You have nothing else to say to me at this moment?’

‘Nothing, at this moment.’

‘Farewell, Monsieur.’

Lafcadio bowed solemnly and went out.

He went back to his room on the next floor, half undressed, and threw himself on his bed. The late afternoon had been very hot, and nightfall had not brought any cooling freshness. His window was open wide, but there was not a puff of wind to stir the still air. The distant electric globe lamps on the Piazza delle Terme, from which he was separated by the hotel’s gardens, filled his room with a bluish, diffuse light that looked like moonlight. He wanted to think, but a strange lethargy numbed his mind terribly. He was unable to think about his crime or about ways of escape. He just kept trying not to hear Julius’s awful words: ‘I was beginning to care for you …’ If he himself did not care for Julius, were Julius’s words worth his tears? Was that really what he was crying for? … The night was so balmy he felt all he had to do was let go, and death would steal silently up on him. He reached for a carafe of water next to his bed, soaked his handkerchief, and pressed it to his aching heart.

‘There isn’t a drink in this world that will ever quench my parched heart again!’ he told himself, letting the tears roll down his cheeks to his lips so he could taste their bitterness. Some lines of poetry – he couldn’t remember where he had read them or why – kept repeating themselves in his brain:

He drifted off to sleep.

Is he dreaming? Wasn’t that a knock at his door? The door, which he never locks at night, opens gently on a slim figure dressed in white who steps into the room. He hears a voice call faintly, ‘Lafcadio … Are you there, Lafcadio?’

In his half-asleep state he nonetheless recognises that voice. But does he still doubt the reality of such a welcome apparition? Does he fear that a word or gesture might scare it away? He stays silent.

Geneviève de Baraglioul, whose room was next to her father’s, had been unable to help hearing every part of the conversation between her father and Lafcadio. An unbearable anguish had driven her to Lafcadio’s door and now, convinced because her call had gone unanswered that Lafcadio had just killed himself, she ran to his bedside and fell to her knees, sobbing.

Lafcadio, seeing that she was not moving, sat up and leant bodily over her, still not daring to press his lips to the lovely brow he saw gleaming in the half-light. As he moved towards her, Geneviève felt all her will drain from her body. Throwing back her forehead, on which she could feel the warmth of Lafcadio’s breath, and not knowing where to turn for help to resist him, except to him himself, she murmured, ‘Have pity on me, dear friend.’

Lafcadio recovered his self-control, recoiling from her and simultaneously pushing her away from him.

‘Get up, Mademoiselle de Baraglioul! And get away from me! I’m not … I cannot be your friend any longer.’

Geneviève sat up but did not step away from the bed, where the person she had thought dead half lay, instead stroking Lafcadio’s burning forehead as if to assure herself that he was still living.

‘But, dear friend, I heard every word you said to my father tonight. Don’t you understand that that’s why I came?’

Lafcadio half sat up and stared at her. Her untied hair fell around her shoulders. Her face was entirely in shadow, so he could not see her eyes, but he felt her gaze engulfing him. Unable to bear its gentleness, and hiding his face in his hands, he groaned.

‘Oh, why did I take so long to meet you? What did I do to make you care about me? Why are you saying these things to me when you know I’m not a free man or worthy to care about you any more?’

Geneviève protested miserably, ‘You’re the one I came to see, Lafcadio. Not someone else. You, the criminal! How many times have I whispered your name, since that first day I saw you as a hero? More than a hero: you were too reckless … I can’t keep it to myself any longer. I was secretly yours the moment I saw you risk your life for others so unthinkingly. But what happened then? Is it possible that you’ve killed someone? What have you let yourself turn into?’

As Lafcadio just shook his head without answering, she went on, ‘Didn’t I hear my father say that someone else had been arrested? A bandit who had just killed someone? … Lafcadio, while there’s still time, you must get away. Tonight. Go. Go!’

Lafcadio whispered, ‘I can’t go on,’ and, feeling Geneviève’s hair brush against his hands, grasped handfuls of it and passionately pressed it over his eyes and mouth, muttering, ‘Escape! Is that what you want me to do? Where do you want me to escape to? Even if I could get away from the police, I couldn’t get away from myself … And then you’d despise me for running away.’

‘Me? Despise you, my—’

‘I was living without thinking. I killed as if it was a dream, a nightmare I’ve been struggling in ever since …’

‘Which I want to save you from!’ she cried out.

‘What’s the use of waking me up? If it’s only to wake me up as a criminal.’ He clutched her arm. ‘Don’t you see that I can’t stand the idea of getting away with it? What is there left for me to do? Apart from giving myself up as soon as it’s light?’

‘It’s God you must give yourself up to, not the police. If my father didn’t tell you, Lafcadio, I’m telling you now. The Church is there to determine your punishment and to help you find peace again, once you have repented.’

Geneviève is right. Clearly the best thing Lafcadio can do now is throw himself conveniently on the Church’s mercy. Sooner or later he will realise this, when he understands that every other exit is blocked … It’s infuriating that it should have been that dope of a father of hers who had given him that advice in the first place!

‘Not another sermon!’ he said aggressively. ‘Is it really you talking to me like that?’

He lets go of her arm, which he was holding, and pushes her away, and as she stumbles back he feels a blind antagonism towards Julius well up inside him and a desire to sever Geneviève from her father, to drag her down, closer to his level. Looking at the floor, in the darkness he catches sight of her bare feet in their little silk slippers.

‘Can’t you understand? It’s not remorse I’m afraid of, but …’

He jumps off his bed and turns away from her. He feels he cannot breathe and walks to the open window to rest his forehead on the glass and his burning palms on the cold iron railing. He would like to put her out of his mind, to forget how close he is to her …

‘Mademoiselle de Baraglioul, you have done everything a young woman of good family could do for a criminal – you have gone beyond the call of duty – and I thank you from the bottom of my heart. It will be better if you leave me now. Return to your father, to your habits, your duties … Goodbye. Who knows whether I shall see you again? Believe me when I say that it is in order to be a bit less unworthy of your affection that I shall go and turn myself in tomorrow. Believe me … No! Don’t come any closer … Do you think shaking hands would be enough for me?’

Geneviève would have braved her father’s condemnation and the world’s scorn, but at Lafcadio’s icy tone her heart fails her. Can he not understand that to come and speak to him like this at night, to confess her love for him like this, demanded determination and courage from her too, and that perhaps her love deserves more than a thank you? … But how can she tell him that her life was a dream too until today – a dream she could only escape from for short periods at the hospital, where, surrounded by her poor little ones and dressing their real wounds, she could now and then feel in touch with some kind of reality – a low-quality dream in which her parents, fussing around her with their absurd conventions, were never far from her side and in which she could never take their behaviour or their opinions, their ambitions or their principles, or even the way they looked, seriously. Small wonder that Lafcadio had not been able to take Fleurissoire seriously! … Can this really be how they will part? Love drives her, thrusts her towards him. Lafcadio grabs her, hugs her, covers her pale forehead with kisses …

A new book starts here.

Desire! Palpable truth of desire! You send the phantasms of my mind racing back into the shadows.

We shall leave our two lovers there, as the cock starts to crow and colour, warmth and life flood triumphantly back at last, after the darkness of the night. Lafcadio raises himself above a sleeping Geneviève. Yet it is not his lover’s beautiful face, her forehead damp with sweat, her pearly eyelids, her warm, parted lips, her perfect breasts, her tired limbs – no, it is none of these that he stares at, but, through the wide-open window, the coming dawn and a tree that rustles in the garden.

It will soon be time for Geneviève to leave him. But he waits on, and bent over her, listens above the faint sound of her breathing to the vague clamour of the city that is already shaking him from his lethargy. Across the rooftops, in the barracks the bugles are playing. Hey! Is he going to give up living? And for the sake of Geneviève thinking well of him – Geneviève, whom he thinks a bit less of now that she loves him a bit more – is he still thinking of turning himself in?