This time, the bridge is open to traffic. No barge is seeking passage. The workman in the navy blue pea jacket, idle, stares blankly at the sky. He glances toward the man walking toward him, recognizes Wallas and nods to him, as he might to someone he was accustomed to see every day.
On either side of the gap that marks the end of the movable part of the bridge, the metal corner plates look motionless and appear to be on the same level.
At the end of the Rue Joseph-Janeck, Wallas turns right onto the Boulevard Circulaire. Some twenty yards farther on, the Rue Jonas begins, and there is a small post office at the corner.
A neighborhood post office: only six windows and three telephone booths; between the main door and the booths: a large ground-glass window, and beneath it the long, slightly tilted writing desk where people can fill out forms.
At this hour, the room is empty and, on the employees’ side of the counter, only two elderly ladies can be seen, nibbling their sandwiches over immaculate napkins. Wallas decides it is better to wait to begin his investigation until the entire staff is present. He will come back at one-thirty. In any case, he will have to eat lunch sooner or later.
He heads toward a NOTICE that looks as if it had been posted recently, and to justify his entrance he pretends to examine it with interest.
It is a series of paragraphs announcing certain modifications made by the minister in the organization of details in the postal system-nothing, in short, of interest to the public, aside from a few hypothetical specialists. For an outsider, the precise nature of these modifications does not seem clear, so that Wallas finds himself wondering if there is any real difference between the new state of affairs and the one that existed previously.
As he leaves, he has the impression that the two women are staring at him in perplexity.
Retracing his steps, Wallas notices, on the other side of the Rue Janeck, an automat of modest size but equipped with the most recent machinery. The chromium-plated dispensers are lined up along the walls; at the rear sits the cashier from whom the diners obtain special tokens. The entire length of the room is occupied by two rows of small round plastic tables attached to the floor. Standing in front of these tables, some fifteen people-continually changing-are eating with quick, precise gestures. Girls in white laboratory smocks clear the tables and wipe them off once the diners leave. On the white walls, a sign reproduced many times:
“Please Hurry. Thank You.”
Wallas examines all the machines. Each of them contains-placed on a series of glass trays, equidistant and superposed-a column of earthenware plates with precisely the same culinary preparation on each one reproduced down to the last lettuce leaf. When a column is emptied, anonymous hands fill up the blanks from behind.
Having reached the last dispenser, Wallas has not yet made up his mind. Besides, his selection is of slight importance, for the various dishes differ only by the arrangement of articles on the plate; the basic element is marinated herring.
Behind this last pane of glass, Wallas glimpses, one on top of the other, six replicas of the following composition: on a bed of toast, spread with margarine, is arranged a broad filet of herring with silvery-blue skin; to the right, five quarters of tomato, to the left, three slices of hard-boiled egg; set on top, at specific points; three black olives. Each tray also contains a fork and a knife. The circular slices of toast are certainly made for this purpose.
Wallas drops his token into the slot and presses a button. With a pleasant hum of its electric motor, the entire column of plates begins to descend; in the empty compartment at the bottom appears, then halts, the plate whose owner he has become. He removes it and the napkin that accompanies it and sets them both down on a free table. After having performed the same operation to obtain a slice of the same toast, accompanied this time by cheese, and once again for a glass of beer, he begins to cut up his meal into little cubes.
A quarter of tomato that is quite faultless, cut up by the machine into a perfectly symmetrical fruit.
The peripheral flesh, compact, homogeneous, and a splendid chemical red, is of an even thickness between a strip of gleaming skin and the hollow where the yellow, graduated seeds appear in a row, kept in place by a thin layer of greenish jelly along a swelling of the heart. This heart, of a slightly grainy, faint pink, begins-toward the inner hollow-with a cluster of white veins, one of which extends toward the seeds-somewhat uncertainly.
Above, a scarcely perceptible accident has occurred: a corner of the skin, stripped back from the flesh for a fraction of an inch, is slightly raised.
At the next table, three men are standing, three railroad workmen. In front of them, the entire table top is covered by six plates and three glasses of beer.
All three are cutting little cubes out of three disks of toast with cheese on them. The other three plates each contain an example of the herring-tomato-hard-boiled egg-olives arrangement of which Wallas also possesses a replica. The three men, aside from their identical uniforms, are the same height and are equally heavy; they also have more or less similar faces.
They eat in silence, with quick, precise gestures.
When they have finished their cheese, they each drink half of their glass of beer. A short conversation begins:
“What time did you say it happened?”
“It must have been around eight, eight-thirty.”
“And there was no one there then? That can’t be-he told me himself…”
“He said what he wanted you to believe.”
After having redistributed the plates on the table, they begin the second dish. But after a moment’s pause, the man who has spoken first stops eating to conclude:
“It’s as unlikely in the one case as in the other.”
After this, they stop talking, absorbed by their arduous problem of cutting.
Wallas feels a disagreeable sensation in the region of his stomach. He has eaten too fast. He now forces himself to continue more slowly. He must take something hot to drink, otherwise he might have pains in his stomach all afternoon. When he leaves this place, he will drink a cup of coffee somewhere where he can sit down.
When the railroad workmen have finished their second plateful of food, the man who has said what time it was resumes the discussion:
“In any case, it was last night.”
“It was? How do you know?”
“Don’t you read the papers?”
“Oh, you know, the newspapers!”
This remark is accompanied by a cynical gesture. All three have serious, but dispassionate faces; they are speaking in neutral, even tones, as if they were not paying too much attention to their words. Probably they are talking about something of slight interest-or about something already repeated over and over again.
“And what do you make of the letter?”
“In my opinion, that letter proves nothing at all.”
“Then nothing ever proves anything.”
With simultaneous gestures, they finish their glasses of beer. Then, in single file, they head for the door. Wallas can still hear:
“Well, we’ll see tomorrow, I hope.”
In a cafe that is the image of the one in the Rue des Arpenteurs-not very clean, but well heated-Wallas is drinking a cup of coffee.
He is vainly struggling to get rid of this cottony discomfort that keeps him from thinking about his case seriously. He must be catching some kind of grippe. Though he usually escapes minor ailments of this kind, it would have to be today that he doesn’t feel “up to snuff.” Yet he awoke feeling fine, as usual; it was during the morning that a kind of generalized discomfort gradually invaded his system. At first he ascribed it to hunger, then to the cold. But, even so, he has eaten and warmed himself with this coffee without managing to overcome his torpor.