A servant came to clean his room even though Tunda was still in bed. This servant seemed to have been employed in the hotel for decades, and yet he performed his duties with considerable and startling zeal; he considered each speck of dust with curious satisfaction, he investigated the underside of the wash-basin as if he hoped to discover something unexpected there. Every morning he said: ‘It’s fine today, you should take a walk in the park!’ And every morning Tunda replied: ‘I’m expecting an important letter.’ He spoke to Tunda like a kind uncle to an obstinate nephew, or like a gentle asylum attendant to a well-behaved patient. This servant was both ironic and courteous, although he liked to act the innocent and always bluntly told the truth. ‘How you do enjoy your sleep!’ he once said. And the longer Tunda slept, the oftener he excused himself: ‘Forgive me, I’ve woken you up!’
One day he arrived earlier than usual, brandished a blue envelope, and exclaimed: ‘Here’s the letter you’ve been waiting for!’ He laid it on the counterpane and withdrew his hand rapidly as if the paper was burning him, as if it might explode at any moment. It was a cheap, transparent, ordinary envelope, it felt like blotting-paper, and it contained the bill.
On that day Tunda went out for the second time; he sat down in the nearby park opposite a pond on which boys were sailing small boats. He wanted to induce a letter to arrive. The letter must be outwitted. If it was not allowed to know how impatiently it was awaited, then it would certainly arrive.
But no letter arrived.
Once more Tunda asked the young woman if anyone had been asking for him. And just like the first time she said with a consolatory toss of the head — it was like the cold professional sympathy of an undertaker — ‘The last post hasn’t been yet; the postman comes around seven o’clock.’
But nothing came with the last post either.
It was morning again, the familiar unknown noise woke Tunda, the servant entered, he was still chewing his breakfast. Suddenly, as he began lovingly to polish the water-tap, he said:
‘Someone was asking after you yesterday.’
‘Who? When? What time? A lady?’
‘It was around five in the afternoon …’
And he pulled out a thick silver watch on a thick silver chain, studied it for a few seconds as if he had remarked something on the dial, and repeated:
‘Yes, at five in the afternoon.’
‘And who was it?’
‘A lady.’
‘Didn’t she leave anything?’
‘No.’
‘A young lady?’
‘Yes, it was a young lady actually.’
‘And didn’t she say whether she’d come back?’
‘Not to me.’
‘To whom then?’
‘To no one.’
Then he burnished the tap even more thoroughly, threw the soap in the air like a ball and caught it again, laughed and said:
‘A pretty little young lady.’
‘And did she speak only to you?’
‘Yes, only to me.’
‘And why didn’t you say so yesterday?’
‘It was my evening off yesterday. I went for a stroll.’
‘Here’s a tip. And if she comes again, tell me before you go for your stroll.’
The man tossed the gold piece in the air as he had done the soap and said: ‘Forgive me if I’ve inconvenienced you,’ and departed.
Then came a long Saturday, the servant brought new bed-linen and towels, he stroked them before hanging them over the arm of one of the chairs, and turned to go. He held the door-handle for a moment, hesitated as if he had something important yet embarrassing to say.
Suddenly, already halfway through the door, he spoke:
‘No one has been.’
Tunda awoke in broad daylight on Sunday morning.
The sky was just above the window, small white clouds drifted by, it was indisputably May in the world.
There was a knock on the door and the servant said:
‘There’s someone to speak to you …’
Madame G. entered.
She slowly stripped off a glove, it fell on the counterpane, lightly, deposited by a soft breeze. It lay there, empty, flaccid, but like a tender, living, curious animal.
‘Well, my friend,’ she said, ‘have you come here to see me or to prepare for the Revolution?’
‘To see you! Do you still not believe me? Everything I wrote to you is true. I swear it!’
Tunda held out his papers, as if she were from the police, as if he had to defend his freedom.
She sat down on the bed — and it was like a miracle. She scratched at the papers with three fingers, regarded them disdainfully, and immediately extracted Irene’s photograph.
‘Who’s this beautiful woman?’
‘She was my fiancée.’
‘And she is dead?’ she asked in a tranquil voice. Nothing was simpler in the world than Irene’s death. Not just Irene, all women were dead, buried.
‘I think she’s still alive,’ said Tunda timidly, as if begging her pardon.
He kissed her hand, she put a cigarette in her mouth with her left hand, and he jumped up to fetch some matches.
Suddenly it seemed that nothing in the entire world was as important as these matches. The match burned, a small, blue, festal fire.
‘Goodbye!’ she said, but did not look at him, only at Irene’s photograph which still lay on the bed.
The sky was still blue.
XXV
Tunda had a few letters of introduction from his brother and from acquaintances. He paid calls.
They were calls of the most tedious nature. There were learned and semi-learned men, worthy, but with a worth adulterated by wit. There were men with smooth, old, well-preserved faces and carefully brushed grey beards which still showed the marks of the comb. These men, holders of public offices, were professors or authors or presidents of humanitarian or so-called cultural associations. For thirty years they had had little else to do than to keep up appearances. They were distinguished from their German colleagues by their precise, rounded, polished gestures and their polite manner of speech.
Tunda got to know the President Marcel de K. He lived in a Parisian suburb, in a villa which he left only two or three times a year to attend special ceremonial sessions of the Academy.
He assured Tunda of his love for Germany.
‘Mr President,’ said Tunda, ‘you do me great honour in assuring me, a private person, of your esteemed love for Germany. But I am hardly in a position to accept your cordial assurances. I am not a public servant, not even a private one. I would find it embarrassing if I were asked to tell you what my occupation was. I returned from Russia not long ago, and have barely had time to look around in Germany. I spent two weeks in Berlin and stayed only a little longer with my brother in the town of X. on the Rhine. I did not even have time to find my bearings in Austria, my home country.’
He had caused the venerable old gentleman a certain embarrassment. So he added: ‘However, I could tell you about Siberia, if that interests you.’
They spoke of Russia. The President had the impression that the shooting was still going on in St Petersburg.
Tunda came to realize that the President’s refined tastes permitted him every kind of ignorance. He had the right to know absolutely nothing. France gave him everything he needed: mountains, sea, mystery, clarity, nature, art, science, revolution, religion, history, pleasure, grace and tragedy, beauty, wit, satire, enlightenment and reaction.
Tunda regarded the old gentleman with the pure delight experienced by some people when they stroll in a well-kept garden. He contemplated his elderly regular features, on which sorrow had acted with discretion; disappointments lay in predetermined furrows; the minor pleasures of life had left a fine, clear brightness in the eyes; round the thin, sharp lips and wide mouth the beard was spread in its silver repose; the head had lost only so much hair as was necessary to display a fine, intelligent, distinguished forehead. What an elder! No one could be more entitled to the name of President than he.