But I have better things to do than imagine what H. de Heutz is up to in Geneva while I wait in his chateau at Echandens, pacing the front hall and the predetermined zone of the grand salon; especially because picturing my adversary in another town won’t really prepare me for his suddenly bursting in. I’ve deluded myself enough about his machinations up till now. With him you never know. Consequently, I need to convince myself that H. de Heutz is totally unpredictable; then I’ll be better able to welcome him appropriately than if I spent my time dreamily, running him through the rather faulty grid of my hunches. I will sense only an infinitesimal part of his power. His epiphanies are disconcerting and they invariably catch me unawares. The impression he makes on me neutralizes my ability to counter-attack. Steeped in improbability, H. de Heutz is surrounded by witchcraft and mystery. The holstered gun on his chest is just a formality: his real strength comes from a secret weapon that in the final analysis may be only a counter-feint. The warrior set into the roundel of the Louis XIII buffet has no armour but his beauty, and presenting himself naked to his enemy may be his greatest strength. The relationship between H. de Heutz and me has left me pensive ever since of my own accord I let myself into this fine lair where he lives.
For the time being I won’t allow myself to investigate the two upper floors. Something tells me though that if I were to carry out a scientific search instead of the hasty examination I made when I first came in, I’d come across a whole arsenal of documents, maybe even photos of his wife and his two boys, books on Roman history too, the last shreds of correspondence with unknown women who sign their love letters with just an initial. To tell the truth, though, that’s all I would find. As for the evidence of his counter-revolutionary activities, the plausible testimonies of his collusion with the RCMP, and his secret banking activities in Switzerland — those exhibits I certainly wouldn’t find. I know H. de Heutz too well. With him, every revealing document is probably encoded with the Villerège grid and a counter-code, so that when the two were combined they’d be totally illegible. I wouldn’t find a thing — not the initials of the mounted police or the logo of the CIA or a hint of any records of a bank account where the numerical weapons of our revolution are piling up! On the other hand, it would be pointless, a waste of energy, for me to decode the plan of the Roman fortifications for the battle of Lerida or the inventory of the funerary furniture of the pontifex maximus. Such an exhumation of dates and names would get me nowhere and would only add to the nonsensical impression I get from anything having to do with this man.
My watch has stopped at three-fifteen, though I’m sure it’s much later, even if I judge only by the fading daylight I see through the French doors. Here I am in the heart of Switzerland without a clock! How can I find out what time it is? It’s important because I don’t want to miss my appointment on the terrace of the Hôtel d’Angleterre. Bah, I can just pick up the phone in the hall and ask the operator. Then again, maybe I’d better not. You never know. The phone may be connected to a switchboard God knows where. I’d be sounding the alarm to H. de Heutz’s command centre. You can never be too careful, especially nowadays when the phone system has become a veritable public square.
I don’t know what’s going on inside me. Suddenly I’m soaked in sweat. I have an insane urge to explode, to howl at the wolves and to kick at the panelled walls. An unbearable anguish is gripping me: the time that separates me from my sentence is exhausting and infuriating. All my strength pours from my mouth in a haemorrhage of blasphemy and cries. And why must I suffer such upsets in the face of the preposterous void I’m no longer able to confront? I’m a prisoner here! Yet I slipped into this walled splendour of my own accord: I entered here as a masked killer. Now I’m suddenly afraid that I’ll never get out, that all the doors are closed forever. My own future is a throbbing pain. I’m haunted not by passive melancholy but by rage, a rage that is mad, absolute, sudden, almost without an object! I want to strike out at random, fire a bullet into the naked warrior, and empty the rest of the cylinder into the lower tier of the Louis XIII buffet. It seems to me that such violence would be soothing: any violence, any shot whatsoever, any feat that would lead to an emotional release! To kill! Kill arbitrarily and without hesitation. I’m beside myself. I feel I’ll never be able to leave this place. And while the luminous afternoon is slanting towards the Barre des Écrins, I am confined inside with my funerary furniture. H. de Heutz isn’t here yet, but time is passing! Soon — but when, exactly? — it will be time to join K. I have to keep that appointment, for I don’t have the strength to face the void that awaits me unless I see K again. Suddenly my whole life is faltering on the big hand of a clock, and I don’t even know what time it is! I feel I’ll collapse if I’m not within sight of the Hôtel d’Angleterre at half-past six.
Perhaps I’m stuck here for the whole weekend, truly trapped inside an embellished dungeon cell, unable to escape. I can’t be! I refuse to go on living and suffering such outbursts of fury. I’m afraid. I come up with a thousand reasons to calm down but they don’t comfort me. I’m afraid because I am alone and abandoned. No one comes to me, no one can reach me. Indeed, does anyone even know that I’m in this chateau, armed and with a mandate to kill a man even if I have to wait for him indefinitely? Walls go up around my body, shackles inhibit my movements and grip my heart: I’ve become a revolutionary doomed to sadness and to the useless explosion of childish rage. My destiny, wrapped in a damask cloth and covered with imaginary furniture, is pitilessly closing in on me. It’s horrible to feel destitute in an echoing chateau like this after only a few hours of giddiness, but for how many minutes and centuries yet to come? My strength is gone. And so my entire existence was built on this flimsy base. I’m disintegrating into scattered splinters, shivering at the disastrous passing of time and of my power. I have no resources in this gallery of dreamlike emblems. Nothing ties me any longer to the person who haunts this house. I’m waiting. Ah! I’d sell my soul to know when this waiting will end, to know the precise moment when I can escape from here in a triumphant cloud of dust and get the blue Opel on the road to the Hôtel d’Angleterre. The void that surrounds me seems to emanate from my own shattered existence. The revolution has devoured me. Nothing lives on in me except my expectations and my weariness. Let it come! Let it not leave me alone with myself inside this unfathomable chateau! Yes, let the event fill me once again, let it replace my fatigue … I want to live thunderstruck, with no respite or a single minute of silence! To bring forth the tumult, to fill myself with war and conspiracy, to be consumed in the endless preparations for a battle: that will be my future!
In this space burdened with memories of H. de Heutz, I am prey to a flood of emotion that fills me with terror and takes me back to childhood. Under the assault of this shadowy discharge I cease to be a man. Ancient tears will pour from my eyes. Three days of seclusion in a totemic motel have not drained all the tears from my body. My failures haven’t hardened me. Only the fiery progress of the revolution will beget me anew. Soon, at half-past six, deep in the alpine valley, the revolution will take me to the woman I love. It’s the revolution that united us in a gigantic bed above the natal river, then reunited us after a twelve-month separation in a room in the Hôtel d’Angleterre … Ah, I can’t take any more of this dark museum where I’m only hanging on, a warrior naked and perplexed. With a heavy heart I wait for H. de Heutz. The banking memory cracks and melts into the blackness of tears. Finally, the act so eagerly anticipated seems impossible. Violence has broken me before I’ve had time to commit it. I have no more energy; my own desolation crushes me. I am dying without style, like my brothers at Saint-Eustache. I am a defeated people marching in disorder along the streets that run beneath our bed …