"What makes you think-"
He cut me off in a voice trembling with anger. "Who else could it have been?"
I'm no warrior. I gave up trying to outsmart him. "All right, all right, I'll give it back."
Despite himself, his face expressed an unspeakable relief.
I took the notebook from the desk drawer where I'd placed it while waiting for Lambert. Delaunay tore it from my hands.
"Why did you do it?" His voice was almost as tense as before.
I wanted to know. Now I know."
"It's only a novel!"
"A fantastical novel, then"
"That's right. A fantastical novel."
In that moment he hated me-I am sure of it but his desire to deceive me as to the nature of the notebook forced him to keep his hatred in check.
"It was inspired by my work;" he went on. "You've read it? What did you think?"
"It's a… disturbing tale. I'd like to know how it ends."
"You'll find out if it's published someday."
"… or by reading the newspapers. But in that case I'd be the only one to know what story had just come to an end."
Our gazes met head-on. He was the first to lower his eyes.
"You'll have to hire another broker;" said he, lifting his gaze once more.
"No one could ever match you. If you agreed to stay, I'd increase your percentage. I know-"
I shut my mouth. I'd almost added that from now on I knew how much each piece cost him. I couldn't think about the pages in the notebook devoted to what he called "the bar" without trembling. I had never read anything more terrifying.
money's secondary," he said. "I want to work in a climate in of trust. And I no longer trust you."
I have never seen him again since that morning. A few weeks later, I learned that he'd teamed up with Nedelkovich, one of my most gifted competitors.
All I have left of this little adventure is the photocopy of Delaunay's diary. I made another copy, and had them both bound. The first I keep by my bedside. I often reread it, and reflect upon it. The second is tucked safely away in a deposit box, where these pages will join it when they come back, in turn, from the binder's. Let posterity make of them what it will. As for me, I believe I have done my duty in thus preserving a part of the only diary of the fantastic in the history of literature. For God knows what may happen to Delaunay and his notebook, and to the pages that he will, without a doubt, keep writing every day, every night, upon returning from his expeditions.
Lozere, April 1988
The Excursion
e didn't know who he was. We never do know much of what goes on. We're too far away from it all. Be it fashion, progress, war, or people's reputations, few things make their way out here. Everything is foreign to us, as though we took part only on an honorary basis in the human race. All we know is wind and rain and the sound of waves on the rocks. Our few visitors find it sad out here. They never stay. After the excursion, they hurry back quick as they can to civilization, to the sunny shallows, as though out here were the depths: the depths of what, God alone knows.
But they're wrong. It's not sad out here-well, maybe just a bit, in an infinitely gentle way. You have to be born here, and not have known anything else. Then you'd understand, you'd see how it cradles and calms you, lulls you to sleep for life. Your eyes stay open, but you're actually asleep, and all is well; nothing, almost nothing really reaches you, rain falls in a curtain of pearls between you and the world, the wind half drowns out the voices and cries.
I don't know how we found out he was famous. He wasn't the kind to brag. Maybe all he said was that he was in music, and that was enough to ring a bell; then we rummaged around in a closet and came up with an old magazine. A closet at the inn, no doubt, since it's always visitors who bring the books and magazines alike. There's no delivery service here. There isn't even a post office. We entrust our letters to the pharmacist. He stocks up on remedies at the branch depot every two or three weeks. But we rarely write. Who would we write, and what would we say? As for letters to us… well, no one writes us, either. You can't make reservations in advance, not even for the excursion. You come and work something out on the spot with one of the fishermen… So most magazines are at the inn, where they've been forgotten or left behind. The innkeeper saves them. Sometimes, when we stop by to see her for this or that, she pulls them out of the closet and we flip through them together. How terrifying, how bewildering the tumultuous world they depict! Each time I've taken a peek I've thought back for days on the drugged athletes, corrupt congressmen, and two-timing princesses that haunt it, on the dictators, serial killers, and terrorists… and I think how lucky we are to live here, if only just, in the murmur of the wind and the light tap of rain on our roofs.
As for him, his music had made him famous: it existed like the wind or the rain, since he, too, was in the papers. We got a kick when we found out, since he was the first. Not our first visitor ever, of course, but the first to come bathed in the same aura of fame he enjoyed back beyond the curtain of pearls. The first to matter. You couldn't tell from his face. Without the innkeeper's magazine, how would we have guessed there was music in that head? Music of his very own, like a matchless scent? For we, too, sometimes sing songs or hymns. But it's not the same. I've often thought I'd liked to have heard his music. Maybe I wouldn't have liked it. In the big cities, crowds might flock to his concerts in the big cities, they might call him maestro, but can we tell beauty from its opposite? Do we know what we like? At any rate, I'm sorry never to have heard his work. If I really wanted… there are recordings, after all. All I'd have to do is get them through the pharmacist. I'd find someone to lend me a record player, or order one at the co-op… everything's always very complicated, though never really out of reach. That's the worst part. Nothing's really out of reach, but nothing ever gets done. A pity… I'll probably never hear his music.
He arrived one night on horseback. He dismounted, or fell off, more like; happens to all of them, after ten long hours in the saddle through dune, marsh, and peat bog. The innkeeper's used to it. She serves them soup and puts them to bed. They sleep in the next day, and when they make a showing at last, it's to go down to the port, one hand on their aching backs. There they wait, nursing a mug of mulled wine, for the fishermen to return. It might not be their favorite, but the barman hasn't much else to offer, so mulled wine it is. Between sips they watch us in the low, dark room. Their gazes dart about, lingering here on one face, alighting there on another, their nostrils flaring. Back home, in their well-lighted cafes and eateries, where everything is new, clean, smooth, and gleaming, it doesn't smell of rain, tides, mulled wine, and mildew like it does here. The odors disorient them, doubtless even sicken them a bit. Then they study us with a curiosity tinged with worry. It's true that we live in the nearness of myth, that since childhood the air we breathe has been as though suffused by it, so much so that visitors start imagining things. They tell themselves that what they've come in the middle of the journey of their lives (or for some, even later) to find, we've always known, which confers on us a certain… if not superiority, then uniqueness at least. But it's not true. They have no reason to envy us. We and they are equally as helpless, as naked before it. What advantage will the fisherman who takes them out tomorrow have over them, once they settle on a price for the excursion? Well, he knows where he's going. He'll take them to the edge of that mystery they alone will brush. On the way back to port they'll no longer be the same; there'll be something feverish in their eyes that wasn't there before. The skipper's gaze won't have changed.