She forced herself to listen. Golets had just spoken to her. Doubtless it was his "We really must make hay while the sun shines: because you never know," that he kept repeating every five minutes. The smear of clay on his forehead was drawing out into a long, sinuous trickle. "If only I could ask him: that apartment, that simulated search in a disordered bed-were they real?" said a hopeless voice within her. It was the "little bitch," she recognized it almost joyfully, for these words were the only ones that still linked her to this day, to this man's conversation, to life… She leaned forward, thrust her hand into the water. She was going to wash away the muddy mark on his forehead…
At that moment they touched land. Golets jumped onto the bank and drew the bow of the vessel into a little gap between the willows in the middle of the tangle of weeds. Then he helped her to step ashore and settled her in a little clearing surrounded by bushes. He did it with the care you would have for an important patient; or for a vase filled with water with a bunch of flowers in it, that you dread breaking just at the last moment. Or perhaps (the voice of the "little bitch" pierced the silence that enveloped her) yes, especially, for a person whose social standing made this riverside picnic somewhat inappropriate. "The Princess Arbyelina," the voice whispered. "That is what you still are to him. He is still susceptible to your body's added value."
Golets spread out a tablecloth and set down the bottle. From his bag he took two glasses, some bread, and a packet covered in grease stains. "Princess Arbyelina," she thought, picturing the life where the word had a meaning, where the people lived who knew her. The Caravanserai, Villiers, Paris… This world now seemed to her non-existent, beheld in a dream long since dissipated. Now there was only the damp sauna of this July afternoon, the sweetish smell of the tepid, muddy water; this woman half reclining in the grass, with a glass in her hand that she raised to her lips from time to time, yielding to the pleas of a man who talked incessantly. A man who, when night came, would crush her breasts, penetrate her, fall asleep beside her. He already had all these actions imprinted in him, in his forearms, blue with their thick veins, in his fingers with broad, yellow nails…
"And to think that last winter all this was under the snow!"
He was stretched out, his elbow planted in the earth, his legs crossed, and, without letting go of his glass, he extended his arm, indicating the fields beyond the river. She closed her eyes and signaled to him to say nothing more. A fragile night was forming within her in which she walked along, recognizing, with mournful felicity, a branch crystallized in the hoarfrost; a little frozen pond; but, above all, a floral tapestry of ice on a dark windowpane…
It was Golets who roused her from her reverie. He must have thought her closed eyes-she had covered them with her hand to shut out the light more completely-were a sign of drunkenness. Without getting up he executed a rapid crawl and got behind her. He took her by the shoulders, tilted her toward him, slipped a hand beneath her back. When he met her suddenly opened eyes he froze: a glassy stare that expressed nothing, did not see him, saw nothing… Detaching himself from her, he emitted, in spite of himself, a sort of moan of thwarted pleasure, almost a meowing. She got up, stared at the man crouching at her feet, then lifted her eyes toward the roofs of the upper town where they climbed up the hill, toward the flat curve of the river… So after all, there was nothing in the warm, soft stuff of life but this whine of desire; this flesh forever hungering for fusion.
He picked up the remains of the meal, folded the tablecloth. And it was then that there was this moment of hesitation: should he throw away the almost empty bottle or take it with him? Already visibly drunk, he was brought up short by this ridiculous indecision. He stuffed the bottle into his bag, took it out again, examined it, perplexed… These few seconds of uncertainty (she later felt it that way but no one chose to believe her) marked the start of that ticking away of minutes that preceded the end. If he had not delayed, turning the bottle over and over, if they had left a little sooner, or if he had ended up keeping the bottle, everything would have turned out differently. But he swung his arm, essaying a jocular war whoop, and threw the bottle into the water.
But with the intuition of drunken men, he must have felt as if there were a taut cord linking him to something invisible. His mood changed. He tried to joke. Now they were drifting downstream. Several yards farther on they caught up with the bottle that had not sunk; he gave it a poke with an oar, the neck disappeared, releasing a brief gurgling of air bubbles. He roared with laughter. And at once became somber again.
It was no doubt in order to cast off this obscure uneasiness that he suddenly abandoned the oars, stretched himself, raising his face toward the sky, and declared in a voice slurred by drunkenness, "Man is made for pleasure as birds are made for flight."
He half stood up and, shaken by the instability of the boat, lurched headlong toward the stern where she was sitting. She moved aside so as not to be crushed by this unbalanced mass, braying with laughter. He reached her all the same, hung over her, and tugged roughly at her dress.
At this moment she saw a twisted, rusty steel structure rising up out of the water and growing rapidly larger. It seemed to her that the boat overturned almost gently…
She would never know if the violence with which Golets hurled himself at her and clung to her body was due to his drunkenness, his desire to save her, or his inability to swim. Perhaps he, in his turn, was trying to push away the woman who threatened to drown him. Or was it already the death throes? Nor would she ever know whether he had been wounded at the very moment when he fell or afterward, when he sank and resurfaced, already lifeless.
Whatever the reason for his brutality, by a macabre coincidence, Golets s gestures parodied the carnal act of which he had dreamed. He clasped the body he desired, did violence to it, tore off the upper part of her clothes, laying bare her shoulders and her breasts, lacerating the skin with his nails.
This savage struggle lasted scarcely a few seconds. He disappeared beneath the water and surfaced a little farther off, closer to the bank, at a spot sheltered from the force of the current. His body came to rest between a block of concrete, a narrow spit of sand, and the stems of reeds on which green and blue dragonflies continued to settle.
She swam, or rather allowed herself to be carried, surrounded by the tatters of her dress, as far as this sheltered spot. Just a few yards from the place of their shipwreck her foot touched the bottom. It all seemed like a game. And yet a few feet away from her floated this fully dressed body and the water around his head was turning brown.
On the bank two men could be seen running along, led by a boy who still had his fishing rod in his hand.
It seemed to her as if she remained for weeks on that sunny river-bank, on the ancient tree stump where the first witnesses had found her sitting. There were no nights anymore, nothing but that interminable day, the muggy effluvia arising from the water, the smell of the plants and the mud; and the hot, slightly hazy light, more dazzling to the eye than glaring sunlight.
Interminably, people came and went, surrounded her; dispersed; timidly approached the corpse of the drowned man; made their comments. She recognized almost all of them: the Russified pharmacist, the director of the retirement home, the old swordsman, the nurse, the woman from the station ticket office… She noticed that they all of them, even in these exceptional circumstances, remained true to their roles, to their masks. The nurse, with her bitter expression, did not fail to let it be understood that the mourning she wore was a good deal more worthy of respect than this stupid accident. The ticket office woman was constantly consulting her watch. The director managed the tragedy. The pharmacist moved from one group to another, happily taking part in discussions both in French and Russian without distinction. And beside the willow trees, mingling with the buzz of conversations, there rang out the merry "s-s-shlim!"…