The Voyeur Read online

  Today especially, success would be a matter of imagination. He would have to have played, long ago, over there on the cliff, with many little friends whom he had never known. Together they would have explored, at low tide, the unfamiliar regions inhabited by forms of life of only an equivocal probability. He had taught the others how to make the sabellas and sea-anemones open. Along the beaches they had found unidentifiable sea-wrack. For hours at a time they had watched the water rising and falling in the sheltered angle of the landing slip, had watched the seaweed alternately revealed and submerged. He had even showed them his string, had invented all kinds of complicated and uncertain games. People don't remember such things; he would manufacture childhoods for them leading straight to the purchase of a wrist watch. With the young it would be more convenient to have known a mother, a grandfather, or someone else.

  A brother and an uncle, for instance. Mathias had reached the pier long before sailing time. He had talked to one of the sailors of the line who like himself, he discovered, had been born on the island; the man's whole family was still living there, his sister in particular, who had three daughters. Two were already engaged, but the third girl was causing her mother many worries. She couldn't be made to behave, and even at her age had an upsetting number of admirers. “She really is a devil,” the sailor repeated, with a smile that betrayed how fond he was of his niece in spite of everything. Their house was the last one on the road to the big lighthouse as you left town. His sister was a widow, in easy circumstances. The three girls were named Maria, Jeanne, and Jacqueline. Mathias, who expected to put them to good use soon, added all these facts to the inquiries he had made the day before. In work like his, there was no such thing as a superfluous detail. He decided to have known the brother for a long time; if need be, he would have sold him a “six-jewel” model he had been using for years without it ever needing the slightest adjustment.

  When the man made a gesture, Mathias noticed that he was not wearing a watch. His wrists stuck out beyond the sleeves of his jumper when he reached up to fasten the tarpaulin at the back of the post-office van. Nor was there a light strip around the skin of the left wrist, as there would have been if he had been wearing a watch until recently—if it was being repaired, for example. The watch, actually, had never needed repairs. The fact of the matter was that the sailor did not wear it during the week for fear of damaging it while he was working.

  The two arms fell back. The man shouted something that was not understood on board over the noise of the engines; at the same moment he stepped to one side of the van and waved to the driver. The van's motor had not stopped, and the vehicle pulled away at once, making a quick, unhesitating turn around the little company office.

  The employee in the chevroned helmet who had taken the tickets at the gangplank returned to the company office, closing the door behind him. The sailor who had just cast off the moorings from the pier and tossed them onto the deck took a tobacco pouch out of his pocket and began to roll himself a cigarette. At his right the ship's boy held out his arms, letting them fall slack at a certain distance from his body. The two of them remained alone at the end of the quay, along with the man whose watch worked so perfectly; the latter, noticing Mathias, waved his hand as if to wish him bon voyage. The stone rim began its oblique receding movement.

  It was exactly seven o'clock. Mathias, whose time had to be very strictly calculated, noticed this with satisfaction. If the fog didn't grow too thick, they would be on time.

  In any case, once ashore he mustn't waste a minute; it was the brevity of his stay, made necessary by the rest of his itinerary, which constituted the chief difficulty. It was true that the steamship line was not making his work any easier for him: there were only two boats a week, one making a round trip on Tuesday, the other on Friday. There was no question of staying on the island four days; that would be almost a week, and the whole advantage of his undertaking would be lost, or just about. He would have to confine himself to this one, all-too-short day, between the boat's arrival at ten and its departure at four-fifteen that afternoon. He therefore had six hours and fifteen minutes at his disposal—that would make three hundred sixty plus fifteen, three hundred and seventy-five minutes. Problem: if he wanted to sell his eighty-nine watches, how much time could he allow for each one?

  Three hundred seventy-five divided by eighty-nine. . . . By using ninety and three hundred sixty the result was easy: four times nine, thirty-six—four minutes for each watch. Using the actual figures would even give him a little extra time: first of all the fifteen minutes omitted from the calculation, and then the time that the sale of the ninetieth watch (already sold) would have taken—another four minutes—fifteen and four, nineteen—a nineteen-minute margin in order not to risk missing the boat back. Mathias tried to imagine this ideal sale which would last only four minutes: arrival, sales-talk, display of the merchandise, choice of the article, payment of the amount written on the price-tag, departure. Even not taking into account any hesitation on the customer's part, any fuller explanation on his, any discussion about the price, how could he hope to sell everything he had in so little time?

  The last house on the road to the big lighthouse as you leave town is an ordinary house: a one-story building with a small, square window on either side of a low door. As he passes Mathias knocks on the pane of the first window and without pausing continues to the door. The second he reaches it, he sees the door open in front of him; there is no need whatever to hesitate before entering the hallway, and then, after a quarter-turn to the right, the kitchen itself, where he immediately sets his suitcase down flat on the big table. With a quick gesture he opens the clasp; the cover springs back and right on top can be seen the most expensive items; he seizes the first cardboard strip in his right hand while with his left he lifts the protecting sheet of paper and points to the three splendid ladies’ watches at four hundred twenty-five crowns. The lady of the house is standing near him, flanked by her two elder daughters (a little shorter than their mother), all three motionless and attentive. As one person, with a gesture of rapid, identical, and perfectly synchronized acquiescence, all three nod their heads. Already Mathias is removing—almost tearing—from the cardboard strip the three watches, one after the other, in order to hold them out to the three women who one after the other extend their hands—the mother first, then the daughter on the right, then the daughter on the left. The amount, calculated in advance, is there on the table: one thousand-crown note, two hundred-crown notes, and three twenty-five-crown pieces—twelve hundred seventy-five crowns—four hundred twenty-five multiplied by three. The amount is correct. The suitcase closes with a dry click.

  As he was leaving he wanted to say a few words of farewell, but none came out of his mouth. He noticed this at the same moment he realized that the whole scene had been a stupidly wordless one. Once on the road, behind the closed door, his suitcase unopened in his hand, he understood that it all still remained to be done. Turning around, he knocked with his ring against the door panel, which echoed as if he had struck an empty box.

  The varnished paint, recently renewed, imitated the veins and irregularities of wood to a fault. Judging from the sound of his knock, there could be no doubt that under this deceptive layer the door was really a wooden one. On a level with his face there were two round knots painted side by side: they looked like two big eyes—or more precisely like a pair of glasses. They were represented with an attention to detail not generally accorded to this type of decoration; yet although executed with the greatest possible realism, they comprised a perfection of design virtually beyond probability; it must have been artificial because it appeared so studied, as if the accidents themselves had occurred in obedience to law. But it would have been difficult to prove by any particular detail the flagrant impossibility of any such pattern in nature. Even the suspect symmetry of the whole door could be explained by some new development in carpentry. If the paint were scratched away at this very point, two real knots might have be
en discovered in the wood, knots cut exactly in this shape—or in any case presenting a very similar formation.

  The fibers formed two dark circles, thicker at the top and the bottom and provided, at their highest points, with a little excrescence pointing upward. More than like a pair of glasses, they looked like two rings painted in trompe-l'oeil, with the shadows they cast on the wood panel and the two nails on which they hung. Their position was certainly surprising, and their modest size seemed out of all proportion to the thickness of the ropes usually used: nothing much heavier than thin cords could have been attached to them.

  Because of the green seaweed that grew on the lower section of the landing slip, Mathias was obliged to watch where he put his feet in order not to slip, lose his balance, and do some kind of damage to his precious burden.

  After a few steps he was out of danger. Having reached the top of the inclined plane, he continued to make his way along the jetty at the top of the pier extending straight toward the quay. But the crowd of passengers moved very slowly among the nets and traps, and Mathias could not walk as rapidly as he wanted to. To jostle past his neighbors served no purpose, in view of the narrowness and complexity of the passage. He would have to advance at their pace. Nevertheless he felt a slight impatience rising within him. They were taking too long to answer the door. Lifting his hand on a level with his face this time, he knocked again—between the two eyes painted on the wood. The door, which must have been extremely thick, sent back a dull sound which would be barely audible inside. He was about to knock again, this time with his ring, when he heard a noise in the vestibule.

  Now he must get something a little less ghostly under way. It was essential that the customers say something; therefore he would have to say something first. The exaggerated acceleration of his gestures also constituted a major danger: working fast must not keep him from remaining natural.

  The door opened on the mother's mistrustful countenance. Distracted from her work by this unexpected visit and finding herself face to face with a stranger—the island was so small she knew everyone on it—she was already preparing to close the door again. Mathias was someone who had knocked at the wrong door—or else a traveling salesman, which was no better.

  Of course she said nothing. He made what seemed to him a considerable effort: “Good morning, madame,” he said. “How are you?” The door slammed in his face.

  The door had not slammed, but it was still closed. Mathias felt as if he were going to be dizzy.

  He noticed that he was walking too near the edge, on the side where the pier had no railing. He stopped to let a group of people pass him; a narrowing of the path, caused by the accumulation of empty boxes and baskets, dangerously choked the line of passengers ahead of him. Down the vertical embankment his gaze plunged to the water that rose and fell against the stone. The pier's shadow colored it a dark green—almost black. As soon as the path was clear, he stepped away from the edge—to the left—and continued on his way.

  A voice behind him repeated that the boat was on time this morning. But this was not quite accurate: it had actually docked a good five minutes late. Mathias turned his wrist to glance at his watch. This whole landing was interminable.

  When he finally managed to reach the kitchen, a period of time out of all proportion to the amount at his disposal must have passed, yet he had not promoted his interests in the slightest. The lady of the house had only admitted him, apparently, against her better judgment. He set his suitcase down flat on the big oval table in the middle of the room.

  “You can judge for yourself,” he forced himself to say; but hearing the sound of his own voice and the silence that followed, he sensed how falsely it rang. The words lacked conviction—density—to a disturbing degree; it was worse than saying nothing at all. The table was covered by an oilcloth with a pattern of little flowers, a pattern that might have been like the one on the lining of his suitcase. As soon as he had opened the suitcase he quickly put the memorandum book inside the open cover, in the hope of concealing the dolls from his customer.

  Instead of the memorandum book spread conspicuously over the sheet of paper that protected the first row of watches, appeared the wad of cord rolled into a figure eight. Mathias was in front of the door to the house, contemplating the two circles with their symmetrical deformations painted side by side in the center of the panel. Finally he heard a noise in the vestibule and the door opened on the mother's mistrustful countenance.

  “Good morning, madame.”

  For a moment he thought she was going to answer, but he was mistaken; she continued to look at him without speaking. Her strained, almost anxious expression indicated something more than surprise, something more than ill-humor or suspicion; and if she was frightened, it was difficult to imagine why. Her features were frozen in the very expression they had assumed when she first saw him—as though unexpectedly recorded on a photographic plate. This immobility, far from making it easier to read her countenance, merely rendered each attempt at interpretation more uncertain: although the face, judging from appearances, expressed some intention—a very banal intention that seemed identifiable at first glance—it ceaselessly avoided every reference by which Mathias attempted to capture its meaning. He was not even altogether certain whether she was looking at him—the man who provoked her mistrust, her astonishment, her fear . . . —or at something behind him—beyond the road, the potato field bordering it, the barbed-wire fence, and the open ground on the other side—something that came from the sea.

  She didn't appear to see him. He made what seemed to him a considerable effort: “Good morning, madame,” he said. “I have news for you . . .”

  The pupils of her eyes had not moved a fraction of an inch; yet he had the impression—he imagined the impression, he gathered it, a net full of fish, or of too much seaweed, or of a little mud—he imagined that her gaze fell on him.

  The customer was looking at him. “I have some news for you, some news of your brother, your brother the sailor.” The woman opened her mouth several times, moving her lips as if she were speaking—with difficulty. But no sound came from them.

  Then, very low, a few seconds later, came the words: “I have no brother"—words too brief to correspond to the movements the lips had made a moment before. Immediately afterward—as an echo—came the expected sounds, somewhat more distinct although distorted, inhuman, like the voice of an old phonograph record: “Which brother? All my brothers are sailors.”

  The eyes had moved no more than the lips. They still looked away, toward the open ground, the cliff, the distant sea beyond the field and the barbed-wire fence.

  Mathias, on the verge of abandoning his attempt, started to explain again: he meant the brother who worked for the steamship company. The voice became more regular as it answered: “Oh, of course, that's Joseph.” And she asked if there was a message.

  From then on, fortunately, the conversation gathered momentum and accelerated. Intonations and expressions began to come into focus; gestures and words were once again functioning almost normally: “. . . wrist watches . . . the finest being manufactured today, and the cheapest as well; all sold with a guarantee and a manufacturer's certificate, registered and trade-marked, waterproof, rustproof, shock-proof, antimagnetic . . .” He would have to keep track of the time all this was taking, but at the moment the question of knowing whether the brother wore a watch—and for how long he had—threatened to lead to another collapse. Mathias needed all his attention to get past it.

  He managed to reach the kitchen and its oval table, and set his suitcase on it while continuing the conversation. Then there was the oilcloth and the little flowers of its pattern. Things were going almost too quickly. There was the pressure of his fingers on the clasp of the suitcase, the cover opening wide, the memorandum book lying on the pile of cardboard strips, the dolls printed on the lining, the memorandum book inside the open cover, the piece of cord rolled into a figure eight on top of the pile of cardboard strips, the vertic
al side of the pier extending straight toward the quay. Mathias stepped back from the water, toward the parapet.

  Among the passengers lined up in front of him he looked for the little girl who had been staring into space; he did not see her any more—unless he was looking at her without recognizing her. He turned around as he was walking, thinking he might catch sight of her behind him. He was surprised to discover that he was the last passenger on the pier. Behind him the pier was empty again, a cluster of parallel lines describing a series of elongated planes alternately horizontal and vertical, in light and in shadow. At the very end was the beacon light that indicated the entrance to the harbor.

  Before reaching the end of the pier, the horizontal plane formed by the jetty underwent a change, lost in an abrupt inset about two-thirds of its width, and continued, thus narrowed, as far as the turret of the beacon light between the massive parapet (on the open sea side) and the embankment without a railing that was set back for two or three yards of its length, plunging straight down into the black water. From where Mathias was standing the landing slip was no longer visible because of the steepness of its slope, so that the jetty appeared to be cut off at that point without any reason.

  When he turned around and continued his interrupted walk toward the quay, there was no one on the pier ahead of him either. It was suddenly deserted. On the quay, in front of the row of houses, only three or four little groups of people could be seen, and a few isolated figures moving in one direction or the other, going about their affairs. The men were all wearing more or less worn and patched blue canvas trousers and wide fishermen's jumpers. The women wore aprons and were bare-headed. All had on sabots. These people could not be the passengers who had disembarked to join their families. The passengers had disappeared—had already gone into their houses, or perhaps into the nearby alley leading to the center of town.