Jealousy and in the Labyrinth Page 9

  The right hand picks up the bread and raises it to the mouth, the right hand sets the bread down on the white cloth and picks up the knife, the left hand picks up the fork, the fork sinks into the meat, the knife cuts off a piece of meat, the right hand sets down the knife on the cloth, the left hand puts the fork in the right hand, which sinks the fork into the piece of meat, which approaches the mouth, which begins to chew with movements of contraction and extension which are reflected all over the face, in the cheekbones, the eyes, the ears, while the right hand again picks up the fork and puts it in the left hand, then picks up the bread, then the knife, then the fork. . . .

  The boy comes in through the open pantry door. He approaches the table. His steps are increasingly jerky, as are his gestures when he raises the plates one by one to put them on the sideboard and replace them by clean plates. He goes out immediately afterwards, moving arms and legs in cadence, like a crude mechanism.

  This is the moment when the scene of the squashing of the centipede on the bare wall occurs: Franck stands up, picks up his napkin, approaches the wall, squashes the centipede against the wall, lifts his napkin, squashes the centipede on the floor.

  The hand with tapering fingers has clenched into a fist on the white cloth. The five widespaced fingers have closed over the palm with such force that they have pulled the cloth with them. The cloth shows five convergent creases, much longer than the fingers which have produced them.

  Only the first joint is still visible. On the ring finger gleams a thin ribbon of gold that barely rises above the flesh. Around the hand radiate the creases, looser and looser as they move out from the center, but also wider and wider, finally becoming a uniform white surface on which Franck's brown, muscular hand wearing a large flat ring of the same type comes to rest.

  Just beside it, the knife blade has left on the cloth a tiny, dark, elongated, sinuous stain surrounded by more tenuous marks. The brown hand, after wavering in the vicinity a moment, suddenly rises to the shirt pocket where it again tries, with a mechanical movement, to push down the pale blue folded letter which sticks out by a good half inch.

  The shirt is made of a stiff fabric, a twilled cotton whose khaki color has faded slightly after many washings. Under the upper edge of the pocket runs a line of horizontal stitching over a sewn bracket with the point downward. At the tip of this point is sewn the button normally intended to close the pocket. The button is made of a yellowish plastic material; the thread that attaches it forms a little cross at the center. The letter, above, is covered with a fine, close-set handwriting, perpendicular to the edge of the pocket.

  To the right come, in order, the short sleeve of the khaki shirt, the bulging native terra-cotta pitcher which marks the middle of the sideboard, then, at the end of the latter, the two kerosene lamps, extinguished and set side by side against the wall; still further to the right, the corner of the room, immediately followed by the open leaf of the first window.

  And Franck's car appears, brought into view through the window quite naturally by the conversation. It is a big blue sedan of American manufacture, whose body—though dusty—seems new. The motor too is in good condition: it never gives its owner any trouble.

  The latter is still behind the wheel. Only his passenger has stepped out onto the gravel of the courtyard. She is wearing shoes with extremely high heels and must be careful to put her feet down in places that are level. But she is not at all awkward at this exercise, whose difficulty she does not even seem to notice. She stands motionless next to the front door of the car, leaning toward the gray imitation- leather upholstery, above the window which has been rolled down as far as it will go.

  The white dress with the wide skirt almost disappears above the waist: the head, arms, and upper part of the body, filling the window opening, also obscure what is happening inside. A ... is probably gathering up the purchases she has just made to carry them with her. But the left elbow reappears, soon followed by the forearm, the wrist, the hand, which holds onto the edge of the window-frame.

  After another pause, the shoulders emerge into daylight too, then the neck, and the head with its heavy mass of black hair, whose loose curls are a little disarranged, and finally the right hand which holds by its string only an extremely tiny green cubical package.

  Leaving the print of four parallel tapering fingers on the dusty enamel of the window-frame, the left hand hurriedly arranges the hair, while A . . . walks away from the blue car and, after a last look back, heads toward the door with her decisive gait. The uneven surface of the courtyard seems to level out in front of her, for A . . . never even glances at her feet.

  Then she is standing in front of the door which she has closed behind her. From this point she sees the whole house down the middle: the main room (living room on the left and dining room on the right, where the table is already set for dinner), the central hallway (off which open five doors, all closed, three on the right and two on the left), the veranda, and beyond its openwork balustrade, the opposite slope of the valley.

  Starting from the crest, the slope is divided horizontally into three parts: an irregular strip of brush and two cultivated patches of different ages. The brush is reddish-colored, dotted here and there with green bushes. A clump of trees marks the highest point of cultivation in this sector; it occupies the corner of a rectangular patch where the bare earth can still be distinguished in spots between the clusters of young leaves. Lower down, the second patch, in the shape of a trapezoid, is being harvested: the plate-sized white discs of the cut trunks are about as numerous as the adult trees still standing.

  One side of this trapezoid is formed by the dirt road which ends at the little bridge over the stream. The five men are now arranged in a quincunx, two on each bank and one in the middle of the bridge, all facing upstream and watching the muddy water flowing between two vertical banks which have collapsed a little here and there.

  On the right bank there still remain two new logs to be set in place. They form a kind of loose V with an open point across the road rising toward the house and the garden.

  A ... is just coming home. She has been visiting Christiane, who has been kept from going out for several days by her child's poor health, as delicate as her mother's and just as badly adapted to colonial life. A . . ., whom Franck has driven home in his car, crosses the living room and walks down the hallway to her bedroom which opens onto the terrace.

  The bedroom windows have remained wide open all morning long. A . . . approaches the first one and closes its right-hand leaf, while the hand resting on the left one interrupts her gesture. The face turns in profile toward the half-opening, the neck straight, the ear cocked.

  The low voice of the second driver reaches her.

  The man is singing a native tune, a wordless, seemingly endless phrase which suddenly stops for no apparent reason. A . . ., finishing her gesture, closes the second leaf of the window.

  Then she closes the two other windows. But she lowers none of the blinds.

  She sits down in front of the dressing-table and looks at herself in the oval mirror, motionless, her elbows on the marble top and her hands pressing on each side of her face, against the temples. Not one of her features moves, nor the long-lashed eyelids, nor even the pupils at the center of the green irises. Petrified by her own gaze, attentive and serene, she seems not to feel time passing.

  Leaning to one side, her tortoise-shell comb in her hand, she fixes her hair again before coming to the table. A mass of the heavy black curls hangs over the nape of her neck. The free hand plunges its tapering fingers into it.

  A ... is lying fully dressed on the bed. One of her legs rests on the satin spread; the other, bent at the knee, hangs half over the edge. The arm on this side is bent toward the head lying on the bolster. Stretched across the wide bed, the other arm lies out from the body at approximately a forty-five degree angle. Her face is turned upward toward the ceiling. Her eyes are made still larger by the darkness.

  Near the bed, agains
t the same wall, is the heavy chest. A... is standing in front of the open top drawer, on which she is leaning in order to look for something, or else to arrange the contents. The operation takes a long time and requires no movement of the body.

  She is sitting in the chair between the hallway door and the writing table. She is rereading a letter which shows the creases where it has been folded. Her longs legs are crossed. Her right hand is holding the sheet in front of her face; her left hand is gripping the end of the armrest.

  A ... is writing, sitting at the table near the first window. Actually, she is getting ready to write, unless she has just finished her letter. The pen remains suspended an inch or so above the paper. Her face is raised toward the calendar hanging on the wall.

  Between this first window and the second, there is just room enough for the large wardrobe. A ..., who is standing beside it, is therefore visible only from the third window, the one that overlooks the west gable-end. It is a mirrored wardrobe. A ... is carefully examining her face at close range.

  Now she has moved still further to the right, into the corner of the room which also comprises the southwest corner of the house. It should be easy to observe her from one of the two doors, that of the hallway or that of the bathroom; but the doors are of wood, without blinds that can be seen through. As for the blinds on the three windows, none of them is now arranged so that anything can be seen through them.

  Now the house is empty.

  A . . . has gone to town with Franck to make a few necessary purchases. She has not said what they were. They left very early, so as to have enough time to run their errands and still be able to return to the plantation the same night.

  Having left the house at six-thirty this morning, they expect to be back a little after midnight, which means an absence of eighteen hours, at least eight of which will be spent on the road, if all goes well.

  But delays are always likely on these bad roads. Even if they start back at the expected time, immediately after a quick dinner, the travellers might not get home until around one in the morning, or even much later.

  Meanwhile, the house is empty. All the bedroom windows are open, as well as its two doors, opening onto the hallway and the bathroom. The door between the bathroom and the hallway is also wide open, as is that from the hallway to the central part of the veranda.

  The veranda is empty too; none of the armchairs has been brought outside this morning, nor has the low table that is used for cocktails and coffee. But under the open office window, the flagstones show the trace of eight chair legs: two sets of four shiny points, smoother than the stone around them. The two left-hand corners of the right-hand square are scarcely two inches away from the two right-hand corners of the left-hand square.

  These shiny points are clearly visible only from the balustrade. They disappear when the observer comes closer. Looking down from the window immediately above them, it becomes impossible to tell where they are.

  The furnishings of this room are very simple: files and shelves against the walls, two chairs, the massive desk. On one corner of the latter stands a little mother-of-pearl inlaid frame with a photograph taken at the seaside, in Europe. A ... is sitting on the terrace of a large cafe. Her chair is set at an angle to the table on which she is about to set down her glass.

  The table is a metal disc pierced with innumerable holes, the largest of which form a complicated rosette: a series of S's all starting at the center, like double-curved spokes of a wheel, and each spiraling at the outer end, at the periphery of the disc.

  The base supporting the table consists of a slender triple stem whose strands separate to converge again, coiling (in three vertical planes through the axis of the system) into three similar volutes whose lower whorls rest on the ground and are bound together by a ring placed a little higher on the curve.

  The chair is similarly constructed, with perforated metal sheets and stems. It is harder to follow its convolutions, because of the person sitting on it, who largely conceals them from view.

  On the table near a second glass, at the right edge of the picture, are a man's hand and the cuff of a jacket sleeve, cut off by the white vertical margin.

  All the other portions of chairs evident in the photograph seem to belong to unoccupied seats. There is no one on the veranda, as elsewhere in the house.

  In the dining room, a single place has been set for lunch, on the side of the table facing the pantry door and the long, low sideboard extending from this door to the window.

  The window is closed. The courtyard is empty. The second driver must have parked the truck near the sheds, to wash it. In the place it usually occupies, all that remains is a large black spot contrasting with the dusty surface of the courtyard. This is a little oil which has dripped out of the motor, always in the same place.

  It is easy to make this spot disappear, thanks to the flaws in the rough glass of the window: the blackened surface has merely to be brought into proximity with one of the flaws of the windowpane, by successive experiments.

  The spot begins by growing larger, one of its sides bulging to form a rounded protuberance, itself larger than the initial object. But a few fractions of an inch farther, this bulge is transformed into a series of tiny concentric crescents which diminish until they are only lines, while the other side of the spot shrinks, leaving behind it a stalk-shaped appendage which bulges in its turn for a second; then suddenly everything disappears.

  Behind the glass, now, in the angle determined by the central vertical frame and the horizontal cross-piece, there is only the grayish-beige color of the dusty gravel that constitutes the surface of the courtyard.

  On the opposite wall, the centipede is there, in its tell-tale spot, right in the middle of the panel.

  It has stopped, a tiny oblique line two inches long at eye level, halfway between the baseboard (at the hall doorway) and the corner of the ceiling. The creature is motionless. Only its antennae rise and fall one after the other in an alternating, slow, but continuous movement.

  At its posterior extremity, the considerable development of the legs—of the last pair especially, which are longer than the antennae—identifies it unquestionably as the Scutigera, also known as the "spider-centipede" or "minute-centipede," so called because of a native belief as to the rapidity of the action of its bite, supposedly mortal. Actually this species is not very venomous; it is much less so, in any case, than many Scolopendra common in the region.

  Suddenly the anterior part of the body begins to move, executing a rotation which curves the dark line toward the lower part of the wall. And immediately, without having time to go any further, the creature falls onto the tiles, still twisting and curling up its long legs while its mandibles rapidly open and close around its mouth in a quivering reflex.

  Ten seconds later, it is nothing more than a reddish pulp in which are mingled the debris of unrecognizable sections.

  But on the bare wall, on the contrary, the image of the squashed Scutigera is perfectly clear, incomplete but not blurred, reproduced with the faithfulness of an anatomical drawing in which only a portion of the elements are shown: an antenna, two curving mandibles, the head and the first joint, half of the second, a few large legs, etc. . . .

  The outline seems indelible. It has no relief, none of the thickness of a dried stain which would come off if scratched at with a fingernail. It looks more like brown ink impregnating the surface layer of the paint.

  Besides, it is not practical to wash the wall. This dull- finish paint is much more fragile than the ordinary gloss paint with linseed oil in it which was previously used on the walls of this room. The best solution would be to use an eraser, a hard, fine-grained eraser which would gradually wear down the soiled surface—the typewriter eraser, for instance, which is in the top left desk drawer.

  The slender traces of bits of legs or antennae come off right away, with the first strokes of the eraser. The larger part of the body, already quite pale, is curved into a question mark that becomes i
ncreasingly vague toward the tip of the curve, and soon disappears completely. But the head and the first joints require a more extensive rubbing: after losing its color, the remaining shape stays the same for quite a long time. The outlines have become only a little less sharp. The hard eraser passing back and forth over the same point does not have much effect now.

  A complementary operation seems in order: to scratch the surface very lightly, with the corner of a razor blade. Some white dust rises from the wall. The precision of the tool permits the area exposed to its effect to be carefully determined. A new rubbing with the eraser now finishes off the work quite easily.

  The stain has disappeared altogether. There now remains only a vaguely outlined paler area, without any apparent depression of the surface, which might pass for an insignificant defect in the finish, at worst.

  The paper is much thinner nevertheless; it has become more translucid, uneven, a little downy. The same razor blade, bent between two fingers to raise the center of its cutting edge, also serves to shave off the fluff the eraser has made. The back of a fingernail finally smoothes down the last roughness.

  In broad daylight, a closer inspection of the pale blue sheet reveals that two short pen strokes have resisted everything, doubtless because they were made too heavily. Unless a new word, skillfully arranged to cover up these two unnecessary strokes, replaces the old one on the page, the traces of black ink will still be visible there. Unless the eraser is used once again.

  It stands out clearly against the dark wood of the desk, as does the razor blade, and the foot of the mother-of-pearl inlaid frame where A ... is about to set down her glass on the round table with its many perforations. The eraser is a thin pink disc whose central part is covered by a little white-metal circle. The razor blade is a flat, polished rectangle, its short sides rounded, and pierced with three holes in a line. The central hole is circular; the two others, one on each side, reproduce precisely—on a much smaller scale—the general shape of the blade, that is, a rectangle with its short sides rounded.