Читать книгу Two Novels: Jealousy and In the Labyrinth - Alain Robbe-Grillet - Страница 11

JEALOUSY

CONTENTS

Now the shadow of the column

Now the shadow of the southwest column

The brush descends the length

In the hollow of the valley

Now the voice of the second driver

Now the house is empty

The whole house is empty

Between the remaining gray paint

Now the shadow of the column

LEGEND

I.Southwest pillar and its shadow at the beginning of the novel. II. Veranda: 1) Franck's chair. 2) A . . .’s chair. 3) Empty chair. 5) Cocktail table.

III.A. . .’s room: 1) Bed. 2) Chest. 3) Dressing table. 4) Writing table. 5) Wardrobe.

IV.Office: 1) Desk. 2) Photograph of A . . .

V.Hallway

VI.Bathroom

VII.Small bedroom: 1) Bed.

VIII.Living room — dining room: 1) Sideboard. 2) Table. 3) Mark of centipede on wall.

IX.Pantry.

X.Storage room or other (not described).

Now the shadow of the column—the column which supports the southwest corner of the roof—divides the corresponding corner of the veranda into two equal parts. This veranda is a wide, covered gallery surrounding the house on three sides. Since its width is the same for the central portion as for the sides, the line of shadow cast by the column extends precisely to the corner of the house; but it stops there, for only the veranda flagstones are reached by the sun, which is still too high in the sky. The wooden walls of the house—that is, its front and west gable-end—are still protected from the sun by the roof (common to the house proper and the terrace). So at this moment the shadow of the outer edge of the roof coincides exactly with the right angle formed by the terrace and the two vertical surfaces of the corner of the house.

Now A . . . has come into the bedroom by the inside door opening onto the central hallway. She does not look at the wide open window through which—from the door—she would see this corner of the terrace. Now she has turned back toward the door to close it behind her. She still has on the light-colored, close-fitting dress with the high collar that she was wearing at lunch when Christiane reminded her again that loose-fitting clothes make the heat easier to bear. But A . . . merely smiled: she never suffered from the heat, she had known much worse climates than this—in Africa, for instance—and had always felt fine there. Besides, she doesn't feel the cold either. Wherever she is, she keeps quite comfortable. The black curls of her hair shift with a supple movement and brush her shoulders as she turns her head.

The heavy hand-rail of the balustrade has almost no paint left on top. The gray of the wood shows through, streaked with tiny longitudinal cracks. On the other side of this rail, a good six feet below the level of the veranda, the garden begins.

But from the far side of the bedroom the eye carries over the balustrade and touches ground only much further away, on the opposite slope of the little valley, among the banana trees of the plantation. The sun cannot be seen between their thick clusters of wide green leaves. However, since this sector has been under cultivation only recently, the regular crisscrossing of the rows of trees can still be clearly followed. The same is true of almost all the property visible from here, for the older sectors—where confusion has gained the ascendancy—are located higher up on this side of the valley, that is, on the other side of the house.

It is on the other side, too, that the highway passes, just below the edge of the plateau. This highway, the only road that gives access to the property, marks its northern border. A dirt road leads from the highway to the sheds and, lower still, to the house, in front of which a large cleared area with a very slight slope permits cars to be turned around.

The house is built on a level with this courtyard, from which it is separated by no veranda or gallery. On the three other sides, however, it is enclosed by the veranda.

The slope of the terrain, more pronounced starting from the courtyard, causes the central portion of the veranda (which runs along the front of the house on the south) to stand at least six feet above the garden.

On all sides of the garden, as far as the borders of the plantation, stretches the green mass of the banana trees.

On the right and the left, their proximity is too great, combined with the veranda's relative lack of elevation, to permit an observer stationed there to distinguish the arrangement of the trees; while further down the valley, the quincunx can be made out at first glance. In certain very recently replanted sectors—those where the reddish earth is just beginning to yield supremacy to foliage—it is easy enough to follow the regular perspective of the four intersecting lanes along which the young trunks are aligned.

This exercise is not much more difficult, despite their more advanced growth, for those sectors of the plantation on the opposite hillside: this, in fact, is the place which offers itself most readily to inspection, the place over which surveillance can be maintained with the least difficulty (although the path to reach it is a long one), the place which the eye falls on quite naturally, of its own accord, when looking out of one or the other of the two open Windows of the bedroom.

Her back to the hall door she has just closed, A . . . absently stares at the paint-flaked wood of the balustrade, nearer her the paint-flaked window frame, then, nearer still, the scrubbed wood of the floor.

She takes a few steps into the room, goes over to the heavy chest and opens its top drawer. She shifts the papers in the right-hand side of the drawer, leans over and, in order to see the rear of the drawer better, pulls it a little further out of the chest After looking a little longer, she straightens up and remains motionless, elbows close to her body, forearms bent and hidden by the upper part of her body—probably holding a sheet of paper between her hands.

She turns toward the light now in order to continue reading without straining her eyes. Her inclined profile does not move any more. The paper is pale blue, the size of ordinary letter paper, and shows the creases where it has been folded into quarters.

Then, holding the letter in one hand, A . . . closes the drawer, moves toward the little work table (near the second window, against the partition separating the bedroom from the hallway) and sits down in front of the writing-case from which she removes a sheet of pale blue paper—similar to the first, but blank. She unscrews the cap of her pen, then, after a glance to the right (which does not include even the middle of the window-frame behind her), bends her head toward the writing-case in order to begin writing.

The lustrous black hair falls in motionless curls along the line of her back which the narrow metal fastening of her dress indicates a little lower down.

Now the shadow of the column—the column which supports the southwest corner of the roof—lengthens across the flagstones of this central part of the veranda, in front of the house where the chairs have been set out for the evening. Already the tip of the line of shadow almost touches the doorway which marks the center of the façade. Against the west gable-end of the house, the sun falls on the wood about a yard and a half above the flagstone. Through the third window, which looks out on this side, it would reach far into the bedroom if the blinds had not been lowered.

The pantry is at the other end of this west wing of the veranda. Through its half-open door can be heard A . . .’s voice, then that of the black cook, voluble and singsong, then again the clear, moderate voice, giving orders for the evening meal.

The sun has disappeared behind the rocky spur that ends the main section of the plateau.

Sitting facing the valley, in one of the armchairs of local manufacture, A . . . is reading the novel borrowed the day before; they have already spoken about it at noon. She continues reading, without raising her eyes, until the daylight becomes too faint Then she raises her head, closes the book—which she puts within arm's reach on the low table—and remains staring straight in front of her, toward the openwork balustrade and the banana trees on the opposite slope, soon invisible in the darkness. She seems to be listening to the noise that rises on all sides from the thousands of crickets inhabiting the low ground. But it is a continuous, ear-splitting sound without variations, in which nothing can be distinguished.

Franck is here again for dinner, smiling, talkative, affable. Christiane has not come with him this time; she has stayed home with the child, who is running a slight fever. It is not unusual, these days, for her husband to come without her like this: because of the child, because of Christiane's own ailments—for her health has difficulty adapting itself to this hot, humid climate—and also because of her domestic problems, her difficulties managing her too numerous and poorly organized servants.

Tonight, though, A . . . seemed to expect her. At least she had had four places set. She gives orders to have the one that will not be used taken away at once.

On the veranda, Franck drops into one of the low armchairs and utters his usual exclamation as to how comfortable they are. They are very simple chairs of wood and leather thongs, made according to A . . .’s instructions by a native craftsman. She leans toward Franck to hand him his glass.

Although it is quite dark now, she has given orders that the lamps should not be brought out, for—she says—they attract mosquitoes. The glasses are filled almost to the brim with a mixture of cognac and soda in which a little cube of ice is floating. In order to avoid the danger of upsetting the glasses in the darkness, A . . . has moved as near as possible to the armchair Franck is sitting in, her right hand carefully extending the glass with his drink m it She rests her other hand on the arm of the chair and bends over him, so close that their heads touch. He murmurs a few words: probably thanking her.

She straightens up gracefully, picks up the third glass —which she is not afraid of spilling, for it is much less full—and sits down beside Franck, while he continues telling the story about his engine trouble, which he had begun the moment he arrived.

It was A ... who arranged the chairs this evening, when she had them brought out on the veranda. The one she invited Franck to sit in and her own are side by side against the wall of the house—backs against this wall, of course— beneath the office window. So that Franck's chair is on her left, and on her right—but farther forward—the little table where the bottles are. The two other chairs are placed on the other side of this table, still farther to the right, so that they do not block the view of the first two through the balustrade of the veranda. For the same reason these last two chairs are not turned to face the rest of the group: they have been set at an angle, obliquely oriented toward the openwork balustrade and the hillside opposite. This arrangement obliges anyone sitting there to turn his head around sharply toward the left if he wants to see A . . . —especially anyone in the fourth chair, which is the farthest away.

The third, which is a folding chair made of canvas stretched on a metal frame, occupies a distinctly retired position between the fourth chair and the table. But it is this chair, less comfortable, which has remained empty.

Franck's voice continues describing the day's problems on his own plantation. A . . . seems to be interested in them. She encourages him from time to time by a few words indicating her attention. During a pause the sound of a glass being put down on the little table can be heard.

On the other side of the balustrade, toward the opposite hillside, there is only the sound of the crickets and the starless dark of the night.

In the dining room the two kerosene lamps are lit. One is at the edge of the long sideboard, toward its left end; the other on the table itself, in the empty place of the fourth guest.

The table is square, since extra leaves (unnecessary for so few people) have not been added. The three places set are on three sides, the lamp on the fourth. A . . . is at her usual place; Franck is sitting at her right—therefore with his back to the sideboard.

On the sideboard, to the left of the second lamp (that is, on the side of the open pantry door), are piled the clean plates which will be used during the meal. To the right of the lamp and behind it—against the wall—a native pitcher of terracotta marks the middle of the sideboard. Farther to the right, against the gray-painted wall, is outlined the magnified and blurred shadow of a man's head—Franck's. He is wearing neither jacket nor tie, and the collar of his shirt is unbuttoned; but the shirt itself is irreproachably white, made of a thin material of high quality, the French cuffs held together by detachable ivory links.

A . . . is wearing the same dress she wore at lunch. Franck almost had an argument with his wife about it, when Christiane criticized its cut as being “too hot for this country.” A . . . merely smiled: “Besides, I don't find the climate here so bad as all that,” she said, to change the subject. “If you could imagine how hot it was ten months out of the year in Kanda! . . .” Then the conversation had settled for a while on Africa.

The boy comes in through the open pantry door, holding the tureen full of soup in both hands. As soon as he puts it down, A . . . asks him to move the lamp on the table, whose glare—she says—hurts her eyes. The boy lifts the lamp by the handle and carries it to the other end of the room, setting it down on a piece of furniture A . . . points to with her left hand.

The table is immediately plunged into shadow. Its chief source of light has become the lamp on the sideboard, for the second lamp—in the opposite direction—is now much farther away.

On the wall, toward the pantry door, Franck's head has disappeared. His white shirt no longer gleams as it did just now beneath the direct light of the lamp on the table. Only his right sleeve is reached by the beams of the lamp three quarters of the way behind him: the shoulder and the arm are edged with a bright line, and similarly, higher up, the ear and neck. His face has the light almost directly behind it.

“Don't you think that's better?” A . . . asks, turning toward him.

“Certainly more intime," Franck answers.

He drinks his soup in rapid spoonfuls. Although he makes no excessive gestures, although he holds his spoon quite properly and swallows the liquid without making any noise, he seems to display, in this modest task, a disproportionate energy and zest. It would be difficult to specify exactly in what way he is neglecting some essential rule, at what particular point he is lacking in discretion.

Avoiding any notable defect, his behavior, nevertheless, does not pass unnoticed. And, by contrast, it accentuates the fact that A . . . has just completed the same operation without having seemed to move—but without attracting any attention, on the other hand, by an abnormal immobility. It takes a glance at her empty though stained plate to discover that she has not neglected to serve herself.

Memory succeeds, moreover, in reconstituting several movements of her right hand and her lips, several comings and goings of the spoon between the plate and her mouth, which might be considered as significant.

To be still more certain, it is enough to ask her if she doesn't think the cook has made the soup too salty.

“Oh no,” she answers, “you have to eat salt so as not to sweat.”

Which, on reflection, does not prove beyond a doubt that she tasted the soup today.

Now the boy clears away the plates. It then becomes impossible to check again the stains in A . . ,’s plate—or their absence, if she has not served herself.

The conversation has returned to the story of the engine trouble: in the future Franck will not buy any more old military matériel; his latest acquisitions have given him too many problems; the next time he replaces one of his vehicles, it will be with a new one.

But he is wrong to trust modern trucks to the Negro drivers, who will wreck them just as fast, if not faster.

“All the same,” Franck says, “if the motor is new, the driver will not have to fool with it.”

Yet he should know that just the opposite is true: the new motor will be all the more attractive a toy, and what with speeding on bad roads and acrobatics behind the wheel . . .

On the strength of his three years’ experience, Franck believes there are good drivers, even among the Negroes here. A . . . is also of this opinion, of course.

She has kept out of the discussion about the comparative quality of the machines, but the question of the drivers provokes a rather long and categorical intervention on her part.

Besides, she might be right. In that case, Franck would have to be right too.

Both are now talking about the novel A. . . is reading, whose action takes place in Africa. The heroine cannot bear the tropical climate (like Christiane). The heat actually seems to give her terrible attacks:

“It's all mental, things like that,” Franck says.

He then makes a reference, obscure for anyone who has not even leafed through the book, to the husband's behavior. His sentence ends with “take apart” or “take a part,” without its being possible to be sure who or what is meant. Franck looks at A. . ., who is looking at Franck. She gives him a quick smile that is quickly absorbed in the shadows. She has understood, since she knows the story.

No, her features have not moved. Their immobility is not so recent: the lips have remained set since her last words. The fugitive smile must have been a reflection of the lamp, or the shadow of a moth.

Besides, she was no longer facing Franck at that moment. She had just moved her head back and was looking straight ahead of her down the table, toward the bare wall where a blackish spot marks the place where a centipede was squashed last week, at the beginning of the month, perhaps the month before, or later.

Franck's face, with the light almost directly behind it, does not reveal the slightest expression.

The boy comes in to clear away the plates. A. . . asks him, as usual, to serve the coffee on the veranda.

Here the darkness is complete. No one talks any more. The sound of the crickets has stopped. Only the shrill cry of some nocturnal carnivore can be heard from time to time, and the sudden drone of a beetle, the clink of a little porcelain cup being set on the low table.

Franck and A . . . have sat down in their same two chairs, backs against the wooden wall of the house. It is once again the chair with the metal frame which has remained unoccupied. The position of the fourth chair is still less justified, now that there is no view over the valley. (Even before dinner, during the brief twilight, the apertures of the balustrade were too narrow to permit a real view of the landscape; and above the hand-rail nothing but sky could be seen.)

The wood of the balustrade is smooth to the touch, when the fingers follow the direction of the grain and the tiny longitudinal cracks. A scaly zone comes next; then there is another smooth surface, but this time without lines of orientation and stippled here and there with slight roughnesses in the paint.

In broad daylight, the contrast of the two shades of gray—that of the naked wood and that, somewhat lighter, of the remaining paint—creates complicated figures with angular, almost serrated outlines. On the top of the handrail, there are only scattered, protruding islands formed by the last vestiges of paint. On the balusters, though, it is the unpainted areas, much smaller and generally located toward the middle of the uprights, which constitute the spots, here incised, where the fingers recognize the vertical grain of the wood. At the edge of the patches, new scales of the paint are easy to chip off; it is enough to slip a fingernail beneath the projecting edge and pry it up by bending the first joint of the finger; the resistance is scarcely perceptible.

On the other side of the veranda, once the eye is accustomed to the darkness, a paler form can be seen outlined against the wall of the house: Franck's white shirt. His forearms are lying on the elbow-rests. The upper part of his body is leaning back in the chair.

A . . . is humming a dance tune whose words remain unintelligible. But perhaps Franck understands them, if he already knows them, from having heard them often, perhaps with her. Perhaps it is one of her favorite records.

A . . .’s arms, a little less distinct than her neighbor's because of the color—though light—of the material of her dress, are also lying on the elbow-rests of her chair. The four hands are lying in a row, motionless. The space between A . . .’s left hand and Franck's right hand is approximately two inches. The shrill cry of some nocturnal carnivore, sharp and short, echoes again toward the bottom of the valley, at an unspecifiable distance.

“I think I'll be getting along,” Franck says.

“Oh don't go,” A . . . replies at once, “it's not late at all. It's so pleasant sitting out here.”

If Franck wanted to leave, he would have a good excuse: his wife and child who are alone in the house. But he mentions only the hour he must get up the next morning, without making any reference to Christiane. The same shrill, short cry, which sounds closer, now seems to come from the garden, quite near the foot of the veranda on the east side.

As if echoing it, a similar cry follows, coming from the opposite direction. Others answer these, from higher up, toward the road; then still others, from the low ground.

Sometimes the sound is a little lower, or more prolonged. There are probably different kinds of animals. Still, all these cries are alike; not that their common characteristic is easy to decide, but rather their common lack of characteristics: they do not seem to be cries of fright, or pain, or intimidation, or even love. They sound like mechanical cries, uttered without perceptible motive, expressing nothing, indicating only the existence, the position, and the respective movements of each animal, whose trajectory through the night they punctuate.

“All the same,” Franck says, “I think I'll be getting along.”

A . . . does not reply. Neither one has moved. They are sitting side by side, leaning back in their chairs, arms lying on the elbow-rests, their four hands in similar positions, at the same level, lined up parallel to the wall of the house.

Now the shadow of the southwest column—at the corner of the veranda on the bedroom side—falls across the garden. The sun, still low in the eastern sky, rakes the valley from the side. The rows of banana trees, growing at an angle to the direction of the valley, are everywhere quite distinct in this light.

From the bottom to the upper edge of the highest sectors, on the hillside facing the one the house is built on, it is relatively easy to count the trees; particularly opposite the house, thanks to the recent plantings of the patches located in this area.

The valley has been cleared over the greater part of its width here: there remains, at present, nothing but a border of brush (some thirty yards across at the top of the plateau) which joins the valley by a knoll with neither crest nor rocky fall.

The line of separation between the uncultivated zone and the banana plantation is not entirely straight. It is a zigzag line, with alternately protruding and receding angles, each belonging to a different patch of different age, but of a generally identical orientation.

Just opposite the house, a clump of trees marks the highest point the cultivation reaches in this sector. The patch that ends here is a rectangle. The ground is invisible, or virtually so, between the fronds. Still, the impeccable alignment of the boles shows that they have been planted only recently and that no stems have as yet been cut.

Starting from this clump of trees, the patch runs downhill with a slight divergence (toward the left) from the greatest angle of slope. There are thirty-two banana trees in the row, down to the lower edge of the patch.

Prolonging this patch toward the bottom, with the same arrangement of rows, another patch occupies the space included between the first patch and the little stream that flows through the valley bottom. This second patch is twenty-three trees deep, and only its more advanced vegetation distinguishes it from the preceding patch: the greater height of the trunks, the tangle of fronds, and the number of well-formed steins. Besides, some stems have already been cut. But the empty place where the bole has been cut is then as easily discernible as the tree itself would be with its tuft of wide, pale-green leaves, out of which comes the thick curving stem bearing the fruit.

Furthermore, instead of being rectangular like the one above it, this patch is trapezoidal; for the stream bank that constitutes its lower edge is not perpendicular to its two sides—running up the slope—which are parallel to each other. The row on the right side has no more than thirteen banana trees instead of twenty-three.

And finally, the lower edge of this patch is not straight, since the little stream is not: a slight bulge narrows the patch toward the middle of its width. The central row, which should have eighteen trees if it were to be a true trapezoid, has, in fact, only sixteen.

In the second row, starting from the far left, there would be twenty-two trees (because of the alternate arrangement) in the case of a rectangular patch. There would also be twenty-two lor a patch that was precisely trapezoidal, the reduction being scarcely noticeable at such a short distance from its base. And, in fact, there are twenty-two trees there.

But the third row too has only twenty-two trees, instead of twenty-three which the alternately-arranged rectangle would have. No additional difference is introduced, at this level, by the bulge in the lower edge. The same is true for the fourth row, which includes twenty-one boles, that is, one less than an even row of the imaginary rectangle.

The bulge of the bank also begins to take effect starting from the fifth row: this row, as a matter of fact, also possesses only twenty-one trees, whereas it should have twenty-two for a true trapezoid and twenty-three for a rectangle (uneven row).

These numbers themselves are theoretical, since certain banana trees have already been cut at ground level, once the stem has matured. There are actually nineteen tufts of leaves and two empty spaces which constitute the fourth row; and in the fifth, twenty tufts and one space—that is, from bottom to top: eight tufts of leaves, an empty space, twelve tufts of leaves.

Without bothering with the order in which the actually visible banana trees and the cut banana trees occur, the sixth row gives the following numbers: twenty-two, twenty-one, twenty, nineteen—which represent respectively the rectangle, the true trapezoid, the trapezoid with a curved edge, and the same after subtracting the boles cut for the harvest.

And for the following rows: twenty-three, twenty-one, twenty-one, twenty-one. Twenty-two, twenty-one, twenty, twenty. Twenty-three, twenty-one, twenty, nineteen, etc . . . .

On the log bridge that crosses the stream at the bottom edge of this patch, there is a man crouching: a native, wearing blue trousers and a colorless undershirt that leaves his shoulders bare. He is leaning toward the liquid surface, as if he were trying to see something at the bottom, which is scarcely possible, the water never being transparent enough despite its extreme shallowness.

On the near slope of the valley, a single patch runs up-hill from the stream to the garden. Despite the rather slight declivity the slope appears to have, the banana trees are still easy to count here from the height of the veranda. As a matter of fact, the trees are very young in this zone, which has only recently been replanted. Not only is the regularity of the planting perfect here, but the trunks are no more than a foot and a half high, and the tufts of leaves that terminate them are still quite far apart from each other. Finally, the angle of the rows with the direction of the valley (about forty-five degrees) also favors their enumeration.

An oblique row begins at the log bridge, at the right, and reaches the left corner of the garden. It includes the thirty-six trees in its length. The alternate arrangement makes it possible to consider these same trees as being aligned in three other directions: first of all, the perpendicular to the first direction mentioned, then two others, also perpendicular to each other, and forming angles of forty-five degrees with the first two. These last two rows are therefore respectively parallel and perpendicular to the direction of the valley—and to the lower edge of the garden.

The garden is, at present, only a square of naked earth, recently spaded, out of which are growing perhaps a dozen thin young orange trees a little shorter than a man, planted at A . . .’s orders.

The house does not occupy the whole width of the garden. Therefore it is isolated on all sides from the green mass of the banana trees.

Across the bare ground, in front of the west gable-end, falls the warped shadow of the house. The shadow of the roof is linked to the shadow of the veranda by the oblique shadow of the corner column. The balustrade here forms a barely perforated strip, whereas the real distance between the balusters is scarcely smaller than the average thickness of the latter.

The balusters are of turned wood, with a median hip and two accessory smaller bulges, one at each end. The paint, which has almost completely disappeared from the top surface of the hand-rail, is also beginning to flake off the bulging portions of the balusters; they present, for the most part, a wide zone of naked wood halfway up the baluster, on the rounded part of the hip, on the veranda side. Between the gray paint that remains, faded with age, and the wood grayed by the action of humidity, appear little red-dish-brown surfaces—the natural color of the wood—where it has been exposed by the recent fall of new flakes of paint The whole balustrade is to be repainted bright yellow: that is what A . . . has decided.

The windows of her bedroom are still closed. However the blinds which replace the panes of glass are opened as far as possible, thus making the interior of the room bright enough. A . . . is standing in front of the right-hand window, looking out through one of the chinks in the blinds toward the veranda.

The man is still motionless, bending over the muddy water on the earth-covered log bridge. He has not moved an inch: crouching, head lowered, forearms resting on his thighs, hands hanging between his knees.

In front of him, in the patch along the opposite bank of the little stream, several stems look ripe for harvesting. Several boles have already been cut in this sector. Their empty places appear with perfect distinctness in the series of geometrical alignments. But on closer inspection it is possible to distinguish the sizeable shoot that will replace the severed banana tree a few inches away from the old stump, already beginning to spoil the perfect regularity of the alternate planting.

From the other side of the house can be heard the noise of a truck coming up the road on the near slope of the valley.

A . . .’s silhouette, outlined in horizontal strips against the blind of her bedroom window, has now disappeared.

Having reached the level portion of the road, just above the rocky outcrop that marks the end of the plateau, the truck shifts gears and continues with a less muffled rumble. Then the sound gradually fades as it drives off east, through the scorched brush dotted with motionless trees, toward the next plantation—Franck's.

The bedroom window—the one nearest the hallway—opens outward. The upper part of A . . .’s body is framed within it. She says “Hello” in the playful tone of someone who has slept well and awakened in a good mood; or of someone who prefers not to show what she is thinking about—if anything—and always flashes the same smile, on principle; the same smile, which can be interpreted as derision just as well as affection, or the total absence of any feeling whatever.

Besides, she has not awakened just now. It is obvious she has already taken her shower. She is still wearing her dressing gown, but her lips are freshly made up—the lipstick color the same as their natural color, a trifle deeper, and her carefully brushed hair gleams in the light from the window when she turns her head, shifting the soft, heavy curls whose black mass falls over the white silk of her shoulder.

She goes to the heavy chest against the rear partition. She opens the top drawer to take out a small object and turns back toward the light. On tile log bridge the crouching native has disappeared. There is no one visible around the house. No cutting crew is working in this sector, for the moment.

A . . . is sitting at the little work table against the wall to her right that separates the bedroom from the hallway. She leans forward over some long and painstaking task: mending an extremely fine stocking, polishing her nails, a tiny pencil drawing. . . . But A . . . never draws: to mend a run in her stocking she would have moved nearer the daylight; if she needed a table to do her nails on, she would not have chosen this one.

Despite the apparent immobility of her head and shoulders, a series of jolts disturbs the black mass of her hair. From time to time she straightens up and seems to lean back to judge her work from a distance. Her hand rising slowly, she puts into place a short curl that has emerged from this shifting mass. The hand lingers as it rearranges the waves of hair, the tapering fingers bend and straighten, one after the other, quickly though without abruptness, the movement communicating itself from one to the other continuously, as if they were driven by the same mechanism.

Leaning over again, she has now resumed her interrupted task. The lustrous hair gleams with reddish highlights in the hollow of the curls. Slight quivers, quickly absorbed, run through the hair from one shoulder to the other, without its being possible to see the rest of the body stir at all.

On the veranda in front of the office windows, Franck is sitting in his customary place, in one of the chairs of local manufacture. Only these three have been brought out this morning. They are arranged as usual: the first two next to each other under the window, the third slightly to one side, on the other side of the low table.

A . . . has gone to get the glasses, the soda water, and the cognac herself. She sets a tray with the two bottles and the three big glasses down on the table. Having uncorked the cognac she turns toward Franck and looks at him, while she begins making his drink. But Franck, instead of watching the rising level of the alcohol, fixes his eyes a little too high, on A . . .’s face. She has arranged her hair into a low knot whose skillful waves seem about to come undone; some hidden pins must be keeping it firmer than it looks.

Franck's voice has uttered an exclamation: “Hey there! That's much too much!” or else: “Stop! That's much too much!” or, “Ten times too much,” “Half again too much,” etc. . . . He holds up his right hand beside his head, the fingers slightly apart. A . . . begins to laugh.

“You should have stopped me sooner.”

“But I didn't see . . .” Franck protests.

“Well, then,” she answers, “you should keep your eye on the glass.”

They look at each other without adding another word. Franck widens his smile, which wrinkles up the corners of his eyes. He opens his mouth as if he were going to say something. But he doesn't say anything. A . . .’s features, from a point three-quarters of the way behind her, reveal nothing.

After several minutes—or several seconds—both are still in the same position. Franck's face as well as his whole body are virtually petrified. He is wearing shorts and a short-sleeved khaki shirt, whose shoulder straps and but-toned pockets have a vaguely military look. Over his rough cotton knee socks he wears tennis-shoes coated with a thick layer of white shoe polish, cracked at the places where the canvas bends with the foot.

A . . . is about to pour the soda into the three glasses lined up on the low table. She distributes the first two, then, holding the third one in her hand, sits down in the empty chair beside Franck. He has already begun drinking.

“Is it cold enough?” A . . . asks him. “The bottles just came out of the refrigerator.”

Franck nods and drinks another mouthful.

“There's ice if you want it,” A . . . says. And without waiting for an answer she calls the boy.

There is a silence, during which the boy should appear on the veranda at the corner of the house. But no one comes.

Franck looks at A . . ., as if he expected her to call again, or stand up, or reach some decision. She makes a sudden face toward the balustrade.

“He doesn't hear,” she says. “One of us had better go.”

Neither she nor Franck moves. On A . . .’s face, turned in profile toward the corner of the veranda, there is neither smile nor expectation now, nor a sign of encouragement. Franck stares at the tiny bubbles clinging to the sides of his glass, which he is holding in front of his eyes at very close range.

One mouthful is enough to tell that this drink is not cold enough. Franck has still not answered one way or the other, though he has taken two already. Besides, only one bottle comes from the refrigerator: the soda, whose greenish sides are coated with a faint film of dew where a hand with tapering fingers has left its print.

The cognac is always kept in the sideboard. A . . ., who brings out the ice bucket at the same time as the glasses every day, has not done so today.

“It's not worth bothering about,” Franck says.

To get to the pantry, the easiest way is to cross the house. Once across the threshhold, a sensation of coolness accompanies the half darkness. To the right, the office door is ajar.

The light, rubber-soled shoes make no sound on the hallway tiles. The door turns on its hinges without squeaking. The office floor is tiled too. The three windows are closed and their blinds are only half-open, to keep the noon-day heat out of the room.

Two of the windows overlook the central section of the veranda. The first, to the right, shows through its lowest chink, between the last two slats of wood, the black head of hair—at least the top part of it

A . . . is sitting upright and motionless in her armchair. She is looking out over the valley in front of them. She is not speaking. Franck, invisible on her left, is also silent, or else speaking in a very low voice.

Although the office—like the bedrooms and the bathroom—opens onto the hallway, the hallway itself ends at the dining room, with no door between. The table is set for three. A . . . has probably just had the boy add Franck's place, since she was not supposed to be expecting any guest for lunch today.

The three plates are arranged as usual, each in the center of one of the sides of the square table. The fourth side, where there is no place set, is the one next to about six feet of the bare partition where the light paint still shows the traces of the squashed centipede.

In the pantry the boy is already taking the ice cubes out of their trays. A pitcher full of water, set on the floor, has been used to heat the backs of the metal trays. He looks up and smiles broadly.

He would scarcely have had time to go take A . . .’s orders on the veranda and return here (outside the house) with the necessary objects.

“Missus, she has said to bring the ice,” he announces in the singsong voice of the Negroes, which detaches certain syllables by emphasizing them too much, sometimes in the middle of words.

To a vague question as to when he received this order, he answers: “Now,” which furnishes no satisfactory indication. She might have asked him when she went to get the tray.

Only the boy could confirm this. But he sees in the awkwardly put question only a request to hurry.

“Right away I bring,” he says.

He speaks well enough, but he does not always understand what is wanted of him. A . . ., however, manages to make herself understood without any difficulty.

From the pantry door, the dining-room wall seems to have no spot on it. No sound of conversation can be heard from the veranda at the other end of the hallway.

To the left, the office door has remained wide open this time. But the slats of the blind are too sharply slanted to permit what is outside to be seen from the doorway.

It is only at a distance of less than a yard that the elements of a discontinuous landscape appear in the successive intervals, parallel chinks separated by the wider slats of gray wood: the turned wood balusters, the empty chair, the low table where a full glass is standing beside the tray holding the two bottles, and then the top part of the head of black hair, which at this moment turns toward the right, where above the table shows a bare forearm, dark brown in color, and its paler hand holding the ice bucket. A . . .’s voice thanks the boy. The brown hand disappears. The shiny metal bucket, immediately frosted over, remains where it has been set on the tray beside the two bottles.

The knot of A . . .’s hair, seen at such close range from behind, seems to be extremely complicated. It is difficult to follow the convolutions of different strands: several solutions seem possible at some places, and in others, none.

Instead of serving the ice, A . . . continues to look out over the valley. Of the garden earth, cut up into vertical slices by the balustrade, and into horizontal strips by the blinds, there remains only a series of little squares representing a very small part of the total surface—perhaps a ninth.

The knot of A . . .’s hair is at least as confusing when it appears in profile. She is sitting to Franck's left. (It is always that way: on Franck's right for coffee or cocktails, on his left during the meals in the dining room.) She still keeps her back to the windows, but it is now from these windows that the daylight comes. These windows are conventional ones with panes of glass: facing north, they never receive direct sunlight.

The windows are closed. No sound penetrates inside when a silhouette passes in front of one of them, walking alongside the house from the kitchen toward the sheds. Cut off below the knee, it was a Negro wearing shorts, undershirt, and an old soft hat, walking with a quick, loose gait, probably barefoot His felt hat, shapeless and faded, is unforgettable and should make him immediately recognizable among all the workers on the plantation. He is not, however.

The second window is located farther back, in relation to the table; to see it requires a pivoting of the upper part of the body. But no one is outlined against it, either because the man in the hat has already passed it, or because he has just stopped, or has suddenly changed his direction. His disappearance is hardly astonishing, it merely makes his first appearance curious.

“It's all mental, things like that,” Franck says.

The African novel again provides the subject of their conversation.

“People say it's the climate, but that doesn't mean anything.”

“Malarial attacks . . .”

“There's quinine.”

“And your head buzzing all day long.”

The moment has come to inquire after Christiane's health. Franck replies by a gesture of the hand: a rise followed by a slower fall that becomes quite vague, while the fingers close over a piece of bread set down beside his plate. At the same time his lower lip is projected and the chin quickly turned toward A . . ., who must have asked the same question a little earlier.

The boy comes in through the open pantry door, holding a large, shallow bowl in both hands.

A . . . has not made the remarks which Franck's gesture was supposed to introduce. There remains one remedy: to ask after the child. The same gesture—or virtually the same—is made, which again concludes with A . . .’s silence.

“Still the same,” Franck says.

Going in the opposite direction behind the panes, the felt hat passes by again. The quick, loose gait has not changed. But the opposite orientation of the face conceals the latter altogether.

Behind the thick glass, which is perfectly clean, there is only the gravel courtyard, then, rising toward the road and the edge of the plateau, the green mass of the banana trees. The flaws in the glass produce shifting circles in their unvarying foliage.

The light itself has a somewhat greenish cast as it falls on the dining room, the black hair with the improbable convolutions, the cloth on the table, and the bare partition where a dark stain, just opposite A . . ., stands out on the pale, dull, even paint.

The details of this stain have to be seen from quite close range, turning toward the pantry door, if its origin is to be distinguished. The image of the squashed centipede then appears not as a whole, but composed of fragments distinct enough to leave no doubt. Several pieces of the body or its appendages are outlined without any blurring, and remain reproduced with the fidelity of an anatomical drawing: one of the antennae, two curved mandibles, the head and the first joint, half of the second, three large legs. Then come the other parts, less precise: sections of legs and the partial form of a body convulsed into a question mark.

It is at this hour that the lighting in the dining room is the most favorable. From the other side of the square table where the places have not yet been set, one of the French windows, whose panes are darkened by no dust at all, is open on the courtyard which is also reflected in the glass.

Between the two window-leaves, as through the half-open right one, is framed the left side of the courtyard where the tarpaulin-covered truck is parked, its hood facing the northern sector of the banana plantation. Under the tarpaulin is a raw wood case, marked with large black letters painted in reverse through a stencil.

In the left window-leaf the reflection is brighter, though deeper in hue. But it is distorted by flaws in the glass, the circular or crescent-shaped spots of verdure, the same colors as the banana trees, occurring in the middle of the courtyard in front of the sheds.

Nicked by one of the moving rings of foliage, the big blue sedan nevertheless remains quite recognizable, as well as A . . .’s dress where she is standing next to the car.

She is leaning toward the door. If the window has been lowered—which is likely—A . . . may have put her face into the opening above the seat. In straightening up she rum the risk of disarranging her hair against the edge of the window, and seeing her hair spread out and fall over the driver still behind the wheel.

The latter is here again for dinner, affable and smiling. He drops into one of the leather chairs without anyone's telling him which, and utters his usual exclamation as to their comfort.

“That feels good!”

His white shirt makes a paler spot in the darkness, against the wall of the house.

In order not to risk spilling the contents in the darkness, A . . . has come as close as possible to Franck's armchair, carefully holding his glass in her right hand. She rests her other hand on the arm of his chair and leans toward him, so close that their heads touch. He murmurs a few words, probably thanking her. But the words are drowned out by the deafening racket of the crickets that rises on all sides.

At table, once the arrangement of the lamps has been shifted so that the guests are in less direct a light, the conversation continues on familiar subjects, with the same phrases.

Franck's truck has had engine trouble on the middle of the hill, between the 40-mile marker—where the road leaves the plain—and the first village. It was a police car which passed the truck and then stopped at the plantation to inform Franck. When the latter reached the spot two hours later, he did not find his truck at the place indicated, but much lower down, the driver having tried to start the motor in reverse, at the risk of crashing into a tree if he missed one of the turns.

Expecting any results at all from such a method was ridiculous anyway. The carburetor would have to be completely dismantled all over again. Luckily Franck had brought along a snack lunch, for he didn't get home until three-thirty. He has decided to replace the truck as soon as possible, and it's the last time—he says—that he will buy old military matériel.

“You think you're getting a bargain, but in the long run it costs much more.”

He now expects to buy a new truck. He is going down to the port himself at the first opportunity and meet with the sales agents of the chief makes, so that he can find out the exact prices, the various advantages, delivery time, etc. . . .

If he had a little more experience, he would know that new machines should not be entrusted to Negro drivers, who wreck them just as fast, if not faster.

“When do you think you'll be going down?” A . . . asks.

“I don't know. . . .” They look at each other, their glances meeting above the platter Franck is holding in one hand six inches above the table top. “Maybe next week.”

“I have to go to town too,” A . . . says; “I have a lot of shopping to do.”

“Well, I'll be glad to take you. If we leave early, we can be back the same night.”

He sets the platter down on his left and begins helping himself. A . . . turns back so that she is looking straight ahead.

“A centipede!” she says in a more restrained voice, in the silence that has just fallen.

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

On the light-colored paint of the partition opposite A . . ., a common Scutigera of average size (about as long as a finger) has appeared, easily seen despite the dim light. It is not moving, for the moment, but the orientation of its body indicates a path which cuts across the panel diagonally: coming from the baseboard on the hallway side and heading toward the corner of the ceiling. The creature is easy to identify thanks to the development of its legs, especially on the posterior portion. On closer examination the swaying movement of the antennae at the other end can be discerned.

A . . . has not moved since her discovery: sitting very straight in her chair, her hands resting flat on the cloth on either side of her plate. Her eyes are wide, staring at the wall. Her mouth is not quite closed, and may be quivering imperceptibly.

It is not unusual to encounter different kinds of centipedes after dark in this already old wooden house. And this kind is not one of the largest; it is far from being one of the most venomous. A . . . does her best, but does not manage to look away, nor to smile at the joke about her aversion to centipedes.

Franck, who has said nothing, is looking at A . . . again. Then he stands up, noiselessly, holding his napkin in his hand. He wads it into a ball and approaches the wall.

A . . . seems to be breathing a little faster, but this may be an illusion. Her left hand gradually closes over her knife. The delicate antennae accelerate their alternate swaying.

Suddenly the creature hunches its body and begins descending diagonally toward the ground as fast as its long legs can go, while the wadded napkin falls on it, faster still.

The hand with the tapering fingers has clenched around the knife handle; but the features of the face have lost none of their rigidity. Franck lifts the napkin away from the wall and with his foot continues to squash something on the tiles, against the baseboard.

About a yard higher, the paint is marked with a dark shape, a tiny arc twisted into a question mark, blurred on one side, in places surrounded by more tenuous signs, from which A . . . has still not taken her eyes.

The brush descends the length of the loose hair with a faint noise something between the sound of a breath and a crackle. No sooner has it reached the bottom than it quickly rises again toward the head, where the whole surface of its bristles sinks in before gliding down over the black mass again. The brush is a bone-colored oval whose short handle disappears almost entirely in the hand firmly gripping it.

Half of the hair hangs down the back, the other hand pulls the other half over one shoulder. The head leans to the right, offering the hair more readily to the brush. Each time the latter lands at the top of its cycle behind the nape of the neck, the head leans farther to the right and then rises again with an effort, while the right hand, holding the brush, moves away in the opposite direction. The left hand, which loosely confines the hair between the wrist, the palm and the fingers, releases it for a second and then closes on it again, gathering the strands together with a firm, mechanical gesture, while the brush continues its course to the extreme tips of the hair. The sound, which gradually varies from one end to the other, is at this point nothing more than a dry, faint crackling, whose last sputters occur once the brush, leaving the longest hair, is already moving up the ascending part of the cycle, describing a swift curve in the air which brings it above the neck, where the hair lies flat on the back of the head and reveals the white streak of a part.

To the left of this part, the other half of the black hair hangs loosely to the waist in supple waves. Still further to the left the face shows only a faint profile. But beyond is the surface of the mirror, which reflects the image of the whole face from the front, the eyes—doubtless unnecessary for brushing—directed straight ahead, as is natural.

Thus A . . .’s eyes should meet the wide-open window which overlooks the west gable-end. Facing in this direction she is brushing her hair in front of the dressing table provided especially with a vertical mirror which reflects her gaze behind her, toward the bedroom's third window, the central portion of the veranda and the slope of the valley.

The second window, which looks south like this third one, is nearer the southwest corner of the house; it too is wide open. Through it can be seen the side of the dressing-table, the edge of the mirror, the left profile of the face, the loose hair which hangs over the shoulder, and the left arm which is bent back to reach the right half of the hair.

Since the nape of the neck is bent diagonally to the right, the face is slightly turned toward the window. On the gray-streaked marble table-top are arranged jars and bottles of various sizes and shapes; nearer the front lies a large tortoise-shell comb and another brush, this one of wood with a longer handle, which is lying with its black bristles facing up.

A . . . must have just washed her hair, otherwise she would not be bothering to brush it in the middle of the day. She has interrupted her movements, having finished this side perhaps. Nevertheless she does not change the position of her arms or move the upper part of her body as she turns her face all the way around toward the window at her left to look out at the veranda, the open-work balustrade and the opposite slope of the valley.

The foreshortened shadow of the column supporting the corner of the roof falls across the veranda flagstones toward the first window, that of the gable-end; but it is far from reaching it, for the sun is still too high in the sky. The gable-end of the house is entirely in the shadow of the roof; as for the western part of the veranda running the length of this gable-end, an unbroken sunny strip scarcely a yard wide lies between the shadow of the roof and the shadow of the balustrade.

It is in front of this window, inside the bedroom, that the varnished mahogany-and-marble dressing-table has been set; there is always a specimen of such pieces in these colonial-style houses.

The back of the mirror is a panel of rougher wood, also reddish, but dark, oval in shape and with a chalk inscription almost entirely erased. To the right, A . . .’s face, which is now bent toward her left so she can brush the other half of her hair, shows one eye staring straight ahead of her, as is natural, toward the open window and the green mass of the banana trees.

At the end of this western side of the veranda opens the outside door of the pantry; the pantry opens onto the dining room, where it stays cool all afternoon. On the bare wall between the pantry door and the hallway, the stain formed by the remains of the centipede is scarcely visible because of the oblique light. The table is set for three; three plates occupy three sides of the square table: the sideboard side, the window side, and the side toward the center of the long room. The other half of this room forms a living room on the other side of an imaginary central line between the hall doorway and the door opening onto the courtyard. From the courtyard it is easy to reach the sheds where the native overseer has his office.

But this living room—or the side of the shed through a window—can be seen only from Franck's place at the table: back to the sideboard.

At present, this place is empty. The chair is nevertheless put in the right spot, the plate and silver are in their places too; but there is nothing between the edge of the table and the back of the chair, which shows its trimming of thick straw bound in a cross; and the plate is clean and shiny, surrounded by the usual knives and forks, as at the beginning of the meal.

A . . ., who has finally decided to have the lunch served without waiting for the guest any longer, since he hasn't come, is sitting rigid and silent in her own place, in front of the windows. Though the discomfort of this location, with the light behind her, seems flagrant, it has been chosen by A . . . once and for all. She eats with an extreme economy of gestures, not turning her head right or left, her eyes squinting slightly, as if she were trying to discover a stain on the bare wall in front of her, where the immaculate paint offers not the slightest object to her gaze, however.

After clearing away the hors-d'oeuvres but not bothering to change the unused plate of the absent guest, the boy comes in again through the open pantry door, holding a wide, shallow platter in both hands. A . . . doesn't even turn to give it her usual “mistress of the house” glance. Without a word, the boy sets the platter down on the white cloth to her right. It contains a yellowish puree, probably of yams, from which rises a thin trail of steam which suddenly curves, flattens out, and vanishes without leaving a trace, reappearing at once—long, delicate and vertical—high above the table.

In the middle of the table there is already another untouched platter on which, against a background of brown sauce, are arranged three small roasted birds, one next to the other.

The boy has withdrawn, silent as ever. A . . . suddenly decides to look away from the bare wall and now considers the two platters, one on her right and one in front of her. Having grasped the appropriate spoon, she helps herself with careful and precise gestures: the smallest of the three birds, then a little of the puree. Then she picks up the platter at her right and sets it down on her left, the large spoon has remained in it.

She begins meticulously cutting up the bird on her plate. Despite the smallness of the object, she takes apart the limbs, as if she were performing an anatomical demonstration, cuts up the body at the joints, detaches the flesh from the skeleton with the point of her knife while holding the pieces down with her fork, without forcing, without ever having to repeat the same gesture, without even seeming to be accomplishing a difficult or unaccustomed task. These birds, it is true, are served frequently.

When she has finished, she raises her head, looking straight ahead of her, and remains motionless again, while the boy takes out the plates covered with the tiny bones, then the two platters, one of which still contains a third roasted bird, the one meant for Franck.

The latter's place remains as it was until the end of the meal. He has probably been delayed, as is not infrequently the case, by some incident occurring on his plantation, since he would not have put off this lunch for any possible ailments of his wife or child.

Although it is unlikely that the guest should come now, perhaps A . . . is still expecting to hear the sound of a car coming down the slope from the highway. But through the dining-room windows, of which at least one is half open, no motor hum or any other noise can be heard at this hour of the day when all work is interrupted and even the animals fall silent in the heat.

The corner window has both leaves open—at least partly. The one on the right is only ajar, so that it still covers at least half of the window opening. The left leaf, on the other hand, is pushed back toward the wall, but not all the way either—it is scarcely more than perpendicular, in fact, to the window sash. The window therefore shows three panels of equal height which are of adjoining widths: in the center the opening and, on each side, a glass area comprising three panes. In all three are framed fragments of the same landscape: the gravel courtyard and the green mass of the banana trees.

The windows are perfectly clean and, in the right-hand leaf, the landscape is only slightly affected by the flaws in the glass, which give a few shifting nuances to the too uniform surfaces. But in the left leaf, the reflected image, darker although more brilliant, is plainly distorted, circular or crescent-shaped spots of verdure the same color as the banana trees occurring in the middle of the courtyard in front of the sheds.

Franck's big blue sedan, which has just appeared here, is also nicked by one of these shifting rings of foliage, as is A . . .’s white dress when she gets out of the car.