Jealousy and in the Labyrinth Page 8

  They have already settled the time for their departure, as well as for their return, calculated the approximate duration of the time on the road in each direction, estimated the time they will have for their affairs, including lunch and dinner, in town. They have not specified whether they will take their meals separately or if they will meet to have them together. But the question hardly comes up, since only one restaurant serves decent meals to travelers passing through town. It is only natural that they will meet there, especially for dinner, since they must start back immediately afterwards.

  It is also natural that A . . . would want to take advantage of this present opportunity to get to town, which she prefers to the solution of a banana truck, virtually impracticable on such a long road, and that she should furthermore prefer Franck's company to that of some native driver, no matter how great the mechanical ability she attributes to the latter. As for the other occasions which permit her to make the trip under acceptable circumstances, they are incontestably rather infrequent, even exceptional, if not nonexistent, unless there are serious reasons to justify a categorical insistence on her part, which always more or less upsets the proper functioning of the plantation.

  This time, she has asked for nothing, nor indicated the precise nature of the purchases which motivated her expedition. There was no special reason to give, once a friend's car was available to pick her up at home and bring her back the same night. The most surprising thing of all, upon consideration, is that such an arrangement should not already have been made, one day or another.

  Franck has been eating without speaking for several minutes. It is A . . whose plate is empty, her fork and knife laid across it side by side, who resumes the conversation, asking after Christiane whom fatigue (due to the heat, she thinks) has kept from coming with her husband on several occasions recently.

  "It's always the same," Franck answers. "I've asked her to come down to the port with us, for a change of scene. But she didn't want to, on account of the child."

  "Not to mention," A . . . says, "that it's much hotter down on the coast."

  "More humid, yes," Franck agrees.

  Then five or six remarks are exchanged as to the respective doses of quinine necessary down on the coast and up here. Franck returns to the ill effects quinine produces on the heroine of the African novel they are reading. The conversation is thus led to the central events of the story in question.

  On the other side of the closed window, in the dusty courtyard whose rough gravel gathers into heaps, the truck has its hood turned toward the house. With the exception of this detail, it is parked precisely in the spot intended for it: that is, it is framed between the lower and middle panes of the right-hand window-leaf, against the inner jamb, the little crosspiece cutting its outline horizontally into two masses of equal size.

  Through the open pantry door, A . . . comes into the dining room toward the table where the meal has been served. She has come around by the veranda, in order to speak to the cook, whose voluble, singsong voice rose just a moment ago, in the kitchen.

  A ... has changed her clothes after taking a shower. She has put on the light-colored, close-fitting dress Christiane says is unsuitable for a tropical climate. She is going to sit down at her place, her back to the window, before the setting the boy has added for her. She unfolds her napkin on her knees and begins to help herself, her left hand raising the cover of the still warm platter that has already been served while she was in the bathroom but still remains in the middle of the table.

  She says: "The trip made me hungry."

  Then she asks about the incidents occurring on the plantation during her absence. The expression she uses ("What's new?") is spoken in a light tone whose animation indicates no particular attention. Besides, there is nothing new.

  Yet A . . . seems to have an unusual desire to talk. She feels—she says—that a lot of things must have happened during this period of time which, for her part, was busily filled.

  On the plantation too this time has been well employed; but only by the usual series of activities, which are always the same, for the most part.

  She herself, questioned as to her news, limits her remarks to four or five pieces of information already known: the road is still being repaired for five or six miles after the first village, the "Cap Saint-Jean" was in the harbor waiting for its cargo, the work on the new post office has not advanced much in the last three months, the municipal road service is still unsatisfactory, etc. . . .

  She helps herself again. It would be better to put the truck in the shed, since no one is to use it at the beginning of the afternoon. The thick glass of the window nicks the body of the truck with a deep, rounded scallop behind the front wheel. Somewhat farther down, isolated from the principal mass by a strip of gravel, a half-circle of painted metal is refracted more than a foot and a half from its real location. This aberrant piece can also be moved about as the observer pleases, changing its shape as well as its dimensions: it swells from right to left, shrinks in the opposite direction, becomes a crescent toward the bottom, a complete circle as it moves upward, or else acquires a fringe (but this is a very limited, almost instantaneous position) of two concentric aureoles. Finally, with larger shifts, it melts into the main surface or disappears, with a sudden contraction.

  A . . . tries talking a little more. She nevertheless does not describe the room where she spent the night, an uninteresting subject, she says, turning away her head: everyone knows that hotel, its discomfort and its patched mosquito-netting.

  It is at this moment that she notices the Scutigera on the bare wall in front of her. In an even tone of voice, as if in order not to frighten the creature, she says:

  "A centipede!"

  Franck looks up again. Following the direction of A .. ,'s motionless gaze, he turns his head to the other side.

  The animal is motionless in the center of the panel, easily seen against the light-colored paint, despite the dim light. Franck, who has said nothing, looks at A . . . again.

  Then he stands up, noiselessly. A . . . moves no more than the centipede while Franck approaches the wall, his napkin wadded up in his hand.

  The hand with tapering fingers has clenched into a fist on the white cloth.

  Franck lifts the napkin away from the wall and with his foot continues to squash something on the tiles, against the baseboard. And he sits down in his place again, to the right of the lamp lit behind him, on the sideboard.

  When he passes in front of the lamp, his shadow swept over the table top, which it covered entirely for an instant. Then the boy comes in through the open door; he begins to clear the table in silence. A . . . asks him to serve the coffee on the veranda, as usual.

  She and Franck, sitting in their chairs, continue a desultory discussion of which day would be most convenient for this little trip to town they have been planning since the evening before.

  The subject is soon exhausted. Its interest does not diminish, but they find no new element to nourish it. The sentences become shorter and limit themselves, for the most part, to repeating fragments of those spoken during these last two days, or even before.

  After some final monosyllables, separated by increasingly longer pauses and ultimately no longer intelligible, they let the night triumph altogether.

  Vague shapes indicated by the less intense obscurity of a light-colored dress or shirt, they are sitting side by side, leaning back in their chairs, arms resting on the elbow-rests, occasionally making vague movements of small extent, no sooner moving from these original positions than returning to them, or perhaps not moving at all.

  The crickets too have fallen silent.

  There is only the shrill cry of some nocturnal carnivore to be heard from time to time, and the sudden buzzing of a beetle, the clink of a little porcelain cup being set on the low table.

  Now the voice of the second driver reaches this central section of the veranda, coming from the direction of the sheds; it is singing a native tune, with incompr
ehensible words, or even without words.

  The sheds are located on the other side of the house, to the right of the large courtyard. The voice must therefore come around the corner occupied by the office and beneath the overhanging roof, which noticeably muffles it, though some sound can cross the room itself through the blinds (on the south façade and the east gable-end).

  But it is a voice that carries well, full and strong, though in a rather low register. It is flexible too, flowing easily from one note to another, then suddenly breaking off.

  Because of the peculiar nature of this kind of melody, it is difficult to determine if the song is interrupted for some fortuitous reason—in relation, for instance, to the manual work the singer is performing at the same time—or whether the tune has come to its natural conclusion.

  Similarly, when it begins again, it is just as sudden, as abrupt, starting on notes which hardly seem to constitute a beginning, or a reprise.

  At other places, however, something seems about to end; everything indicates this: a gradual cadence, tranquillity regained, the feeling that nothing remains to be said; but after the note which should be the last comes another one, without the least break in continuity, with the same ease, then another, and others following, and the hearer supposes himself transported into the heart of the poem . . . when at that point everything stops without warning.

  A ..., in the bedroom, again bends over the letter she is writing. The sheet of pale blue paper in front of her has only a few lines on it at this point; A ... adds three or four more words, rather hastily, and holds her pen in the air above the paper. After a moment she raises her head again while the song resumes, from the direction of the sheds.

  It is doubtless the same poem continuing. If the themes sometimes blur, they only recur somewhat later, all the more clearly, virtually identical. Yet these repetitions, these tiny variations, halts, regressions, can give rise to modifications—though barely perceptible—eventually moving quite far from the point of departure.

  To hear better, A. . . has turned her head toward the open window next to her. In the hollow of the valley, work is under way to repair the log bridge over the little stream. The dirt revetment has been removed from about a quarter of its width. The men are going to replace the termite-infested wood with new logs that still have their bark on, cut to the proper lengths beforehand, now lying across the road, just in front of the bridge. Instead of piling them up in an orderly fashion, the porters have thrown them down and left them lying in all directions.

  The first two logs are lying parallel to each other (and to the bank), the space between them equivalent to approximately twice their common diameter. A third cuts across them diagonally at about a third of the way across their length. The next, perpendicular to this latter, touches its end; its other end almost touches the last log which forms a loose V with it, its point not quite closed. But this fifth log is also parallel to the two first logs, and to the direction of the stream the little bridge is built over.

  How much time has passed since the bridge underpinnings last had to be repaired? The logs, supposedly treated against termite action, must have received defective treatment. Sooner or later, of course, these earth-covered logs, periodically doused by the rising stream, are liable to be infested by insects. It is possible to protect over long periods of time only structures built far off the ground, as in the case of the house, for instance.

  In the bedroom, A . . . has continued her letter in her delicate, close-set, regular handwriting. The page is now half full. But she slowly raises her head and begins to turn it gradually but steadily toward the open window.

  There are five workmen at the bridge, and as many new logs. All the men are now crouching in the same position: forearms resting on their thighs, hands hanging between their knees. They are facing each other, two on the right bank, three on the left. They are probably discussing how they are going to complete their job, or else are resting a little before the effort, tired from having carried the logs this far. In any case, they are perfectly motionless.

  In the banana plantation behind them, a trapeze-shaped patch stretches uphill, and since no stems have been harvested in it yet, the regularity of the trees' alternate arrangement is still absolute.

  The five men, on each side of the little bridge, are also arranged symmetrically: in two parallel lines, the intervals being the same in each group, and the two men on the right bank—whose backs alone are visible—placed in the center of the intervals determined by their three companions on the left bank, who are facing the house, where A . . . appears behind the open window recess.

  She is standing. In her hand she is holding a sheet of pale blue paper of ordinary letter-paper size, which shows the creases where it has been folded into quarters. But her arm is half-bent, and the sheet of paper is only at her waist; her eyes, which are looking far above it, wander toward the horizon, at the top of the opposite hillside. A ... listens to the native chant, distant but still distinct, which reaches the veranda.

  On the other side of the hallway door, under the symmetrical window of the office, Franck is sitting in his chair.

  A . . . who has gone to get the drinks herself, sets down the loaded tray on the low table. She uncorks the cognac and pours it into the three glasses lined up on the tray. Then she fills them with soda. Having distributed the first two, she sits down in her turn in the empty chair, holding the third glass in one hand.

  This is when she asks if the usual ice cubes will be necessary, declaring that these bottles come out of the refrigerator, though only one of the two has frosted over upon contact with the air.

  She calls the boy. No one answers.

  "One of us had better go," she says.

  But neither she nor Franck moves.

  In the pantry, the boy is already taking the ice cubes out of their trays, according to the orders his mistress gave him, he declares. And he adds that he is going to bring them right away, instead of specifying when this order was given.

  On the veranda, Franck and A . . . have remained in their chairs. She has not been in any hurry about serving the ice: she has still not touched the shiny metal bucket which the boy has just set down next to her, its luster already frosted over.

  Like A . .. beside him, Franck looks straight ahead, toward the horizon, at the top of the hillside opposite. A sheet of pale blue paper, folded several times—probably in eighths—now sticks out of his right shirt pocket The left pocket is still carefully buttoned, while the flap of the other one is now raised by the letter, which sticks above the edge of the khaki cloth by a good half inch.

  A ... notices the pale blue paper is attracting attention. She starts explaining about a misunderstanding between herself and the boy with regard to the ice. Then did she tell him not to bring it? In any case, this is the first time she has not succeeded in making herself understood by one of her servants.

  "There has to be a first time for everything," she answers, with a calm smile. Her green eyes, which never blink, merely reflect the outline of a figure against the sky.

  Down below, in the hollow of the valley, the arrangement of the workmen is no longer the same, at either end of the log bridge. Only one remains on the right bank, the other four being lined up opposite him. But their postures have not changed at all. Behind the single man, one of the new logs has disappeared: the one which was lying on top of two others. A log with earth-covered bark, however, has appeared on the left bank, quite a way behind the four workmen facing the house.

  Franck stands up with sudden energy, and sets down on the low table the glass he has just emptied at one gulp. There is nothing left of the ice cube in the glass. Franck walks stiffly to the hallway door. He stops there. His head and the upper part of his body turn toward A. . . who is still sitting in her chair.

  "Forgive me, again, for being such a bad mechanic."

  But A . . .'s face is not turned toward him and the grimace which accompanies Franck's words has remained far outside her field of
vision, a grimace that is, moreover, immediately absorbed, at the same time as the wrinkled white suit, by the shadow of the hallway.

  At the bottom of the glass he has set down on the table as he left, a tiny piece of ice is melting, rounded on one side, on the other formed into a bevelled edge. A little further away come the bottle of soda, the cognac, then the bridge crossing the little stream where the five crouching men are now arranged as follows: one on the right bank, two on the left, two others on the bridge itself, near its far end, all facing the same central point which they seem to be considering with the closest attention.

  There remain only two more new logs to put in place.

  Then Franck and his hostess are sitting in the same chairs, but they have exchanged places: A ... is in Franck's chair and vice versa. So now it is Franck who is nearest the low table where the ice bucket and the bottles are.

  A . . . calls the boy.

  He appears at once on the veranda, at the corner of the house. He walks with mechanical steps toward the little table, picks it up without spilling anything on it, sets the whole thing down a little farther away, near his mistress. He then continues on his way, without saying a word, in the same direction, with the same mechanical gait, toward the other corner of the house and the eastern side of the veranda, where he disappears.

  Franck and A . . still silent and motionless in their chairs, continue to stare at the horizon.

  Franck tells a story about his car's engine trouble, laughing and gesturing with a disproportionate energy and enthusiasm. He picks up his glass from the table beside him and empties it in one gulp, as if he had no need to open his throat to swallow the liquid: everything runs down into his stomach at once. He sets the glass down on the table, between his plate and the place-mat. He begins eating again right away. His considerable appetite is made even more noticeable by the numerous, emphatic movements he makes: his right hand that picks up in turn the knife, the fork and the bread, the fork that passes alternately from the right hand to the left, the knife that cuts up the pieces of meat one by one and which is laid on the table after each use, so as to leave the fork free play as it changes hands, the comings and goings of the fork between plate and mouth, the rhythmic distortions of all the muscles of the face during a conscientious mastication which, even before being completed, is already accompanied by an accelerated repetition of the whole series.