Radicz sees all of that, everything that’s happening, and his throat tightens. Soon the men and the women will open their shutters and doors, they’ll roll up their shades and come out on the balconies; they’ll walk through the streets of the city, and start the motors of their cars and trucks, and drive around looking at everything with their mean eyes. That’s why there’s that gaze, that threat. Radicz doesn’t like the daytime. He only likes the night, and the dawn, when everything is silent, uninhabited, when there’s nothing but bats and stray cats.
So, he keeps walking up the alleys of the big parking lot, looking a little more closely at the interiors of the parked cars. From time to time, he sees something that might be interesting, and he tries the door handles, just like that, rapidly in passing, just in case they should open. He’s run across three cars whose doors aren’t locked, but hasn’t touched them yet, because he’s not sure it’s worth the trouble. He tells himself he’ll come back a little later, when he’s gone around the whole lot, because unlocked cars are a quick job.
The light of day is broadening rapidly up above the trees, but you still can’t see the sun. All you can see is the lovely, warm light opening out, spreading through the sky. Radicz doesn’t like the daytime, but he quite likes the sun, and he’s happy at the idea of seeing it appear. It finally comes, an incandescent disk that shoots a glint deep into his eyes, and Radicz stops walking for a second, blinded.
He waits, listening to the sound of his heart beating in his arteries. The threat is all around, without his being able to say where it’s coming from. The light increases, and fear weighs down all the more heavily, from atop the high white walls with hundreds of blue shades, from atop the flat roofs bristling with antennae, from atop the cement pylons, from atop the tall palm trees with smooth trunks. It’s the silence that is most frightening. The silence of the day and the electric lights of the streetlamps that continue to shine with a shrill humming sound. It’s as if the ordinary sounds of humans and their motors could never come back, as if sleep had stopped them short, locked them in stone, motors jammed, throats tight, faces with closed eyes.
“Okay, let’s go.”
It’s Radicz talking out loud, to muster his courage. His hand tries the door handles again, his eyes search the cold interiors of the cabs. The sunlight is glittering on the drops of dew clinging to the hulls and the windshields.
“Nothing … nothing.”
Haste now somewhat overrides his anxiety. The day is spread taut, white, the sun will soon be above the roofs of the tall buildings. It’s undoubtedly already shining on the sea, lighting up sparkling reflections on the crests of the waves. Radicz is walking along not paying attention to his surroundings.
“Good, thanks.”
A car door has opened. Without a sound, the boy slips his body into the car; his hands feel everywhere, under the seats, in the corners, in the door pockets, open the glove compartment. His hands feel quickly, agilely, like the hands of the blind.
“Nothing!”
Nothing: the inside of the car is empty, cold and damp as a cave.
“Bastards!”
Anxiety is followed by anger, and the boy goes back up the alley, alongside the building, searching inside each car. Suddenly a noise makes him start, the roaring of a motor and the crashing of metal. Hidden behind a green station wagon, Radicz watches the garbage truck pass and the collectors who are emptying the bins. The truck makes its way around the buildings, without entering the parking lot. It goes off, half hidden by the hedges of oleander and the palm trunks, and Radicz thinks it looks like a funny metallic insect, a dung beetle maybe, with its big rounded back lurching along.
When everything has fallen silent again, Radicz sees some shapes that could be interesting in the bed of the station wagon. He moves closer to the back window and can distinguish clothing, lots of clothing piled up in the back, in orange plastic sacks. There are also clothes in the front, shoe boxes and, on the floor, right next to the seat, difficult for someone with no experience to make out, the corner of a transistor radio set. The doors of the station wagon are locked, but the front window is cracked open; Radicz pulls with all his might, hangs on the edge of the window to enlarge the opening. Millimeter by millimeter, the window gives way, and soon Radicz can pass his long skinny arm through until his fingertips touch the door lock and pull it up. He opens the door and slips into the front of the car.
The station wagon is very spacious, with deep seats, covered in dark green vinyl. Radicz is glad to be inside the vehicle. He remains sitting on the cold seat for a minute, his hands resting on the steering wheel, and looks at the parking lot and the trees through the large windshield. The top part of the windshield is tinted emerald green, and it casts a strange hue on the white sky when you move your head. To the right of the steering wheel, there’s a radio. Radicz turns the knobs, but the radio doesn’t come on. His hand pushes the button on the glove compartment, and it opens; in the compartment there are papers, a ballpoint pen, and a pair of sunglasses.
Radicz passes over the back of the front seat to the rear. He examines the garments rapidly. They are new clothes, suits, shirts, women’s suits and pants, sweaters, all folded up in their plastic sacks. Next to himself, Radicz makes a pile of clothing, then piles of shoe boxes, ties, scarves. He stuffs the clothes into the pants, knotting the legs to make bundles. Suddenly, he remembers the transistor radio. He slips onto the front seat, his head on the floor, and his hands feel the object, lift it a little. He turns a knob, and this time music blares out, guitar notes that glide and flow like the song of birds at dawn.
That’s when he hears the sound of the police coming. He didn’t see them coming, maybe he didn’t even really hear them coming, the soft sound of tires on the tarred gravel of the circular alley, the rustling of a shade going up somewhere on the immense silent façade of the building, white with light; maybe it’s something else that alerted him, while he was there with his head down listening to the transistor radio’s bird music. Inside his body, behind his eyes, or else in his guts, something knotted up, clenched, and the void filled the body of the station wagon like a cold chill. So then he rose up and saw it.
The black police car is racing toward the alley of the parking lot. Its tires are making a wet sound on the tar and on the gravel, and Radicz can clearly see the faces of the policemen, their black uniforms. At the same time he feels the hard murderous look observing him from up on one of the balconies of the building, up where the shade has just gone quickly up.
Should he remain hidden in the large car, holed up like an animal? But he’s the one the police are coming after, he knows it, he’s sure of it. So his body suddenly uncoils, springs out of the front door of the station wagon, and he starts running on the sidewalk, in the direction of the wall surrounding the parking lot.
All at once, the black car accelerates, because the policemen have seen him. There’s the sound of voices, brief shouts that echo through the park, bounce off the tall white walls. Radicz hears the whistle blowing shrilly, and he hunches his shoulder up, as if it were bullets. His heart is pounding so hard he can barely hear anything else, as if the whole surface of the parking lot, the buildings, the trees in the park, and the asphalt alleys were all throbbing, quivering, and aching fitfully along with it.