M. PUJOL KNOWS what he will find when he opens the drawing-room door. He pictures it with the same sense of misgiving with which he recalls the schoolroom he sat in when he was a child, the map he had drawn of its dangers and unfriendly territories: the desk with an obscene picture on its lid; the alcove where the strongest boys hatched their plots; the row of meek children who would look at him knowingly, as if he belonged to them; the chair with the mysterious words scratched under its seat, over the ridges of which he would trace his fingers helplessly, and then pull his hands away in self-disgust, feeling contaminated. He had been glad, as a child, to be taken from that schoolroom. It was all thanks to his unusual gift.
But what now could deliver him?
Deliver him from the constellation of widow, girl, photographer: one perched on the edge of her delicate chair, one waiting at attention on the carpet, one crouched behind his camera, making the whole contraption tremble with his hunger. In a corner of the drawing room stands an Oriental screen, behind which he will be asked to take off his clothes. In another corner is a small bust of Racine. In the window seat is Marguerite, pouring lotion from a bottle into the thick palm of her hand. And crowded against each other, limbs and haunches bumping, like statuary forgotten in a warehouse, are the acrobats, the emaciated man, the dog girl, and the stringed woman, each body arranged to tell its own story.