The iron fence, the spindle-tree hedge, the gravel path around the house…He has no need to turn around to see them. The middle window of the second floor is the study window. He knows all that by heart: he studied it enough last week. For nothing, moreover.
Bona was well-informed, as usual, and all Garinati had to do was follow his orders carefully. Would have had, rather, for everything has just been ruined because of Garinati’s blunder: probably no more than scratched, Dupont will soon be able to return behind his spindle trees and dive back into his files and index cards among the green calf bindings.
The light switch near the door, a porcelain button with a metal plate. Bona had said to turn off the light; he did not do this, and everything was ruined. The tiniest flaw…Is it so certain? The hallway had remained lighted, of course; but if the bedroom had been in darkness, Dupont might not have waited to open the door wide to turn on the light. Maybe? Find out! Or would he have really done it? And the tiniest flaw was enough. Maybe.
Garinati had never gone into this house before, but Bona’s information was so exact that he could just as well have moved around inside it with his eyes closed. At five to seven he has reached the house, calmly walking down the Rue des Arpenteurs. No one around. He has pushed open the garden gate.
Bona had said: “The buzzer won’t work.” Which was true. The bell has remained noiseless. Yet that very morning, when he had passed in front of the house (“There’s no use your prowling around there all the time”), he had surreptitiously pushed open the gate, just to see, and he had distinctly heard the bell. No doubt the wire had been cut during the afternoon.
It was already a mistake to have tried the gate in the morning; coming in this evening, he was afraid for a second. But the silence has reassured him. Had he ever really had any doubts?
He has carefully closed the gate, but without letting the latch catch, and walked around the house on the right side, keeping on the lawn to avoid making the gravel crunch. In the darkness, he could just make out the path, paler between the two flowerbeds and the well-clipped top of the spindle trees.
The study window, the one in the middle of the second story on the canal side, is brightly lighted. Dupont is still at his desk. It’s all just the way Bona said it would be.
Leaning against the wall of the shed, at the back of the garden, Garinati waits, his eyes fixed on the window. After a few minutes the bright light is replaced by a fainter glow: Dupont has just turned out the big desk lamp, leaving only one of the bulbs on in the ceiling fixture. It is seven o’clock: he is coming downstairs to eat.
The landing, the staircase, the hall.
The dining room is to the left, on the ground floor. Its shutters are closed. At the back of the house, the kitchen shutters are closed too, but a faint light filters through their slats.
Garinati approaches the little glass door, being careful not to expose himself to the light coming from the hallway. At the same moment the dining room door is closed again. Dupont already? He has come down quickly. Or else the old housekeeper? No, she’s coming out of the kitchen now. So it was Dupont.
The old woman moves off toward the other end of the hall; but her hands are empty; he will have to wait longer. She comes back almost at once, leaving the dining room door open. She goes back into her kitchen and soon reappears carrying an enormous tureen in both hands, comes back into the dining room and this time closes the door behind her. Now is the moment.
Bona said: “You have almost five minutes to get upstairs. The old woman waits until he has finished his soup.” Probably she is taking orders for the next day; since she is rather deaf it probably takes some time.
Noiselessly, Garinati slips inside. “The hinges will creak if you push the door too far.” Violent desire, suddenly, to try all the same; to push it open a little farther, only a little; just to see how far he can go. A few degrees. Just one degree, one single degree; a little margin for error…But the arm stops, sensible. On the way out, instead.
They are not very careful in this house: anyone could come in.
Garinati has closed the door without a sound. He walks carefully on the tiles where his crepe soles make an almost imperceptible hissing noise. On the steps and upstairs there are thick carpets everywhere, that will be even easier. The hall is lighted; the landing too, upstairs. No more difficulty. Walk up, wait until Dupont comes back, and kill him.
On the kitchen table there are three thin slices of ham spread out on a white plate. A light dinner: fine. Provided he doesn’t empty the whole tureen. You shouldn’t overeat if you want to sleep without dreaming.
Things take their immutable course. With calculated movements.
The perfectly adjusted machinery cannot hold the slightest surprise in store. It is merely a matter of following the text, reciting phrase after phrase, and the words will be fulfilled and Lazarus will rise from his tomb, wrapped in his shroud
He who advances like this, in secrecy, to carry out the order, knows neither fear nor doubt. He no longer feels the weight of his own body. His footsteps are as silent as a priest’s; they glide over the rugs and tiles, as regular, as impersonal, as definitive.
A straight line is the shortest distance between two points.
…footsteps so light they leave no trace on the surface of the sea. The stairs in this house have twenty-one steps, the shortest distance between two points…the surface of the sea…
Suddenly the limpid water grows cloudy. In this setting determined by law, without an inch of land to the right or left, without a second’s hesitation, without resting, without looking back, the actor suddenly stops, in the middle of a phrase… He knows it by heart, this role he plays every evening; but today he refuses to go any farther. Around him the other characters freeze, arm raised or leg half bent. The measure begun by the musicians goes on and on He would have to do something now, speak any words at all, words that would not belong to the libretto…But, as every evening, the phrase begun concludes in the prescribed form, the arm falls back, the leg completes its stride. In the pit, the orchestra is still playing with the same vigor.
The stairs consist of twenty-one wooden steps, then, at the very bottom, a white stone step, noticeably wider than the rest and whose rounded outer edge bears a brass column with complicated decorations and, as a finial, a jesters head wearing a cap with three bells. Higher up, the heavy, varnished banister is supported by turned wooden rails flaring slightly toward the base. A strip of gray carpet, with two garnet stripes at the edges, covers the stairs and extends, across the hall, to the front door.
The color of this carpet has been omitted in Bona’s description, as well as the detail of the brass finial.
Another man, in this same place, weighing each step, would come…
Above the sixteenth step, a small painting is hanging on the wall, at eye level. It is a romantic landscape representing a stormy night: a flash of lightning illuminates the ruins of a tower; at its foot two men are lying, asleep despite the thunder or else struck by lightning? Perhaps fallen from the top of the tower. The frame is made of carved and gilded wood; both painting and frame seem to be of rather ancient date. Bona has not mentioned this painting.
The landing. Door to the right. The study. It is just as Bona has described it, even more cramped maybe and more crowded: books, books everywhere, those lining the walls almost all bound in green leather, others, paper-backed, piled carefully on the mantel, on a stand, and even on the floor; still others lying casually on the end of the desk and on two leather armchairs. The desk, of dark oak, long and monumental, virtually fills the rest of the room. It is completely covered with files and papers; the big desk lamp, set in the middle, is out. A single bulb is turned on in the ceiling fixture.