Even so, he couldn’t tear his gaze away from that point where, from one moment to the next, she might appear. He had the feeling that a nub of pain had moved over there, like a second soul released from within him and dispatched to watch and wait for her.
Sometimes the curtains moved, a hand appeared. Then Paul, seemingly unable to bear a new level of tension, felt an abrupt tremolo of awareness that permitted him to observe without crying out, with a resigned stupefaction, as the curtains opened to let a dancer, a coat-check girl or a flower-girl pass. Even harder to bear was when a hand appeared for an instant then withdrew without opening the curtains and without allowing him to see who precisely was behind it, since then nobody would be able to convince Paul that Ann wasn’t there, that she had not come as far as the threshold of the bar only so that at the last minute (because it was too late or because there weren’t very many people) she could have second thoughts and leave. He would have liked to run after her, catch up to her just as she was going out the door and be able to say to her: Stay! But he saw himself returning alone between the lines of dancers, between the tables full of clients intrigued by his comings and goings. He didn’t feel in any condition to put up with indiscreet looks, so many hinting gestures, so many whispers…
A waiter was turning out the shaded lamps at the tables that had remained empty. From the next table, the piano-player, who was talking with one of the establishment’s dancers, turned towards Paul. “Drink sales are pathetic. It’s a bad sign. They’re starting to save money on the lighting.”
Only in the middle of the room had the dance floor remained illuminated, like a silver planet sailing through the white space of the cigarette smoke.
The owner approached Paul’s table and asked to sit down next to him. It was the hour for confessions, as the bar personnel and the regular clients fell into informal conversation.
“I don’t know what else I can do,” the owner moaned. “I think I’m going to have to sell up. It’s just not working any more. Three whole nights with one whisky and two lemon squashes. I’m not superstitious, but since Miss Ann stopped coming here things have got worse and worse. You don’t know what’s got into her? Why she might be angry? I wanted to ask her tonight, but…”
“She was here?”
“Yes. Around one o’clock.”
“Alone?”
“I think she was alone. Unless someone was waiting for her in the car. She didn’t even want to come in. ‘Aren’t you staying, Miss Ann?’ ‘No, I’m looking for someone.’ And she left.”
Paul looked at the man in front of him without seeing him, heard him without understanding what he was saying.
Ann came here to look for me. The thought was of a simplicity that did not admit a reply. She was here and she looked for me.
No, in fact, she had been unable to let midnight pass without meeting him. She had looked for him at home, she had called him at the office, she had come here… And while she had been running after him all over town in order to put an end to this stupid separation, while she had been racing to bring him her welcome-back kiss, her reconciliation kiss, he had allowed himself to get dragged into that stupid street accident.
Paul paid for his glass of whisky, which only now he realized he had not drunk. He consoled the owner: “Don’t worry, it’ll work out. Bars like this are like women: you never know where they come from or why they leave you.” He tossed a wave at the piano-player, skirted the dance floor with an indolent stride, with the lazy gestures that suit so well the client of a bar at the approach of daybreak. No one was going to read the glowing impatience, the unseen light, on his pale face…
He stopped in front of the telephone and looked with feeling at the black funnel in which a moment from now Ann’s voice would vibrate, her voice aroused from sleep, troubled at first, then made lucid by surprise.
His hand shuddered as he rotated the phone’s disk to compose her number, that number he had sworn to forbid himself from dialling, and which, nonetheless, he had mimed hundreds of times on imaginary disks, mechanically, while standing at the window, working at the office or leaning over his files. The telephone rang several times without a reply. Probably a wrong number, Paul thought. It wasn’t surprising, given his state of impatience.
He took up the operation from the beginning again, dialling the number digit by digit, slowly, carefully, like a beginner, with the attentive care recommended by the instructions on the wall of the telephone booth. The ring repeated its regular call and, as though a light had come on at the other end of the line, Paul saw with closed eyes the telephone close to Ann’s bed and the familiar surrounding objects: the small silver elephant, the ashtray of burnt wood (Guyannese teak, he thought, pointlessly remembering the wood’s name), the portrait of Ingrid on the wall, the red armchair, the carpet — the entire apartment in which the ring sounded without meaning or response.
“Is it broken?” the wardrobe girl, who was waiting to hand him his overcoat, asked on seeing him standing for such a long time with the receiver in his hand without speaking.
“No, it’s not broken. She’s not home,” he replied, without knowing why, without noticing to whom he was speaking.
He tried to lift his shoulders, but couldn’t manage it. Not even his oldest gestures came to his aid.
The taxi went down Griviţei Street towards the city. In front of the Găra de Nord, Paul motioned for the driver to stop. “Do you know if any trains leave at this time?”
The driver turned his head towards his strange passenger.
“Why?”
“I asked if any trains were leaving.”
“At this time, no. The first train’s at 5:40 AM. The slow train to Timişoara.”
Paul saw himself collapsed in a compartment in a third-class carriage, rocking to the noise of the wheels, dizzy, travelling aimlessly all day and all night, then another day, then another night, getting off at some nameless station in the middle of the countryside, filthy, black with soot, wrecked by sleeplessness, lying down on the frozen earth to sleep and to forget.
The driver set off again, without asking for directions. He was used to picking up passengers whom he found alone on street corners at night, hesitating between hailing a taxi and putting a bullet in their heads. Paul didn’t even notice that they had headed off again. Turning his head, he caught sight, as if through a screen of shadow, of the building housing the National Theatre through the window where a moment earlier the Găra de Nord building had been visible.
The taxi raced down Calea Regală, but when they reached Bulevardul Brătianu it was the driver’s turn to stop, not knowing in which direction to take him.
“Should I take you home?”
“What home?”
“How do I know? Maybe somebody’s waiting for you.”
Paul shuddered. Maybe somebody’s waiting. It seemed he had already heard these same words tonight. It’s someone who knows, it’s someone who’s waiting.
The thought was ridiculous, and Paul felt he really didn’t have the energy to deal with it any more. In the ashes of his resignation, there was no place for this new expectation, this new useless hope. He would have liked to stop it short somewhere beyond awareness, in the dark room of memory, but the dazzling word, having been uttered, had developed into an image swifter and more vivid than his desire to forget: Upstairs, in my room, Ann is waiting.
He was ashamed of believing this, yet he couldn’t do otherwise. He told the driver the address, slowly, in an embarrassed whisper