‘To tell the truth I had no intention of offering dinner,’ I confessed candidly. ‘I’ve almost run out of what few reserves I had and each of us will have to pay our own way. We’ll simply be dining at the same table; we’re alone, we can keep each other company, it seemed logical to me.’
She said nothing and just drank the fruit-juice the waiter had served her. ‘And then it’s not true we don’t know each other,’ I went on, ‘we got to know each other this morning.’
‘We haven’t even introduced ourselves,’ she objected.
‘It’s an omission that’s easily enough remedied,’ I said. ‘I’m called Roux.’
‘And I’m called Christine,’ she said. And then added: ‘It’s not an Italian name, is it?’
‘What difference does it make?’
‘Actually, none,’ she admitted. And then sighed: ‘Your technique is truly irresistible.’
I confessed that I had no intention of trying any technique or of chatting her up at all, that I had started off with the idea of a lively dinner with a friendly conversation between equals. Something like that anyway. She looked at me with a mock-imploring look, and still with the same playful tone protested: ‘Oh no, do chat me up, please, sweet talk me, do, say nice things to me, I’m terribly in need of that sort of thing.’ I asked her where she’d come from. She looked at the sea and said: ‘From Calcutta. I made a brief stop-over in Pondicherry for a stupid feature on my compatriots who are still living there, but I worked for a month in Calcutta.’
‘What were you doing in Calcutta?’
‘Photographing wretchedness,’ Christine replied.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Misery,’ she said, ‘degradation, horror, call it what you like.’
‘Why did you do that?’
‘It’s my job,’ she said. ‘They pay me for it.’ She made a gesture that perhaps was meant to indicate resignation to her life’s profession, and then she asked me: ‘Have you ever been to Calcutta?’
I shook my head. ‘Don’t go,’ said Christine, ‘don’t ever make that mistake.’
‘I imagined that a person like yourself would think that one ought to see as much as possible in life.’
‘No,’ she said with conviction, ‘one ought to see as little as possible.’
The waiter signed to us that our table was ready and led us to the terrace. It was a good corner table as I had asked, near the shrubs round the edge, away from the light. I asked Christine if I could sit on her left, so as to be able to see the other tables. The waiter was attentive and most discreet, as waiters are in hotels like the Oberoi. Did we want Indian cuisine or a barbecue? He didn’t want to influence us, of course, but the Calangute fishermen had brought baskets of lobsters today, they were all there at the bottom of the terrace ready to be cooked, where you could see the cook in his white hat and the shimmer of glowing coals in the open air. Taking advantage of his suggestion, I ran an eye along the terrace, the tables, the diners. The light was fairly uncertain, there were candles on every table, but the people were distinguishable, with a little concentration.
‘I’ve told you what I do,’ said Christine, ‘so what do you do? If you feel like telling me.’
‘Well, let’s suppose I’m writing a book, for example.’
‘What kind of book?’
‘A book.’
‘A novel?’ asked Christine with a sly look.
‘Something like that.’
‘So you’re a novelist,’ she said with a certain logic.
‘Oh no,’ I said, ‘it’s just an experiment, my job is something else, I look for dead mice.’
‘Come again?’
‘I was joking,’ I said. ‘I scour through old archives, I hunt for old chronicles, things time has swallowed up. It’s my job, I call it dead mice.’
Christine looked at me with tolerance, and perhaps with a touch of disappointment. The waiter came promptly and brought us some dishes full of sauces. He asked us if we’d like wine and we said yes. The lobster arrived steaming, just the shell singed, the meat spread with melted butter. The sauces were very heavily spiced, it only took a drop to set your mouth on fire. But then the flames died out at once and the palate filled with exquisite, unusual aromas: I recognised juniper, but the other spices I didn’t know. We carefully spread the sauces on our lobster and raised our glasses. Christine confessed that she already felt a bit drunk, perhaps I did too, but I wasn’t aware of it.
‘Tell me about your novel, come on,’ she said. ‘I’m intrigued, don’t keep me in suspense.’
‘But it’s not a novel,’ I protested, ‘it’s a bit here and a bit there, there’s not even a real story, just fragments of a story. And then I’m not writing it, I said let’s suppose that I’m writing it.’
Clearly we were both terribly hungry. The lobster shell was already empty and the waiter appeared promptly. We ordered some other things, whatever he wanted to bring. Light things, we specified, and he nodded knowingly.
‘A few years ago I published a book of photographs,’ said Christine. ‘It was a single sequence on a roll, impeccably printed, just the way I like, with the perforations along the edges of the roll showing, no captions, just photos. It opened with a photograph that I feel is the most successful of my career, I’ll send you a copy sometime if you give me your address. It was a blow-up of a detail; the photo showed a young negro, just his head and shoulders, a sports singlet with a sales slogan, an athletic body, an expression of great effort on his face, his arms raised as if in victory; obviously he’s breasting the tape, in the hundred metres for example.’ She looked at me with a slightly mysterious air, waiting for me to speak.
‘And so?’ I asked. ‘Where’s the mystery?’
‘The second photograph,’ she said. ‘That was the whole photograph. On the left there’s a policeman dressed like a Martian, a plexiglass helmet over his face, high boots, a rifle tucked into his shoulder, his eyes fierce under his fierce visor. He’s shooting at the negro. And the negro is running away with his arms up, but he is already dead: a second after I clicked the shutter he was already dead.’ She didn’t say anything else and went on eating.
‘Tell me the rest,’ I said, ‘you may as well finish the story now.’
‘My book was called South Africa and it had just one caption under the first photograph that I’ve described, the blow-up. The caption said: Méfiez-vous des morceaux choisis.’ She grimaced a moment and went on: ‘No selections, please. Tell me what your book is about, I want to know the concept behind it.’
I tried to think. How could my book turn out? It’s difficult to explain the concept behind a book. Christine was watching me, implacable, she was a stubborn girl. ‘For example, in the book I would be someone who has lost his way in India,’ I said quickly, ‘that’s the concept.’
‘Oh no,’ said Christine, ‘that’s not enough, you can’t get off so lightly, there must be more to it than that.’
‘The central idea is that in this book I am someone who has lost his way in India,’ I repeated. ‘Let’s put it like that. There is someone else who is looking for me, but I have no intention of letting him find me. I saw him arrive and I have followed him day by day, we could say. I know his likes and his dislikes, his enthusiasms and his hesitations, his generosity and his fears. I keep him more or less under control. He, on the contrary, knows almost nothing about me. He has a few vague clues: a letter, a few witnesses, confused or reticent, a note that doesn’t say much at alclass="underline" signs, fragments which he laboriously tries to piece together.’
‘But who are you?’ asked Christine. ‘In the book I mean.’