“Disturbing!” he repeats.
It had seemed to him, in fact, that the inspector was attaching to this young man an importance which he himself was far from…etc. Wallas discovers, as he expected, that Commissioner Laurent made no mistake in suspecting his subordinate of immoderate “zeal.” Hence the concierge did not say that there had been quarreling during these encounters, but only that at moments “voices were raised.” Nor did he say that the student often seemed to be drunk. Yes, he saw him point to the house as he walked by to a friend, but he did not say that his gesture was threatening; he only mentioned “sweeping gestures”-the kind all boys that age make, impassioned or nervous. Lastly the concierge adds that the professor had already received, in the past-though rarely, as a matter of fact-visits from students at the School of Law.
The cafe is warm and cheerful despite the heavy atmosphere-smoke, men’s breath, and the vapors of white wine. There are a good many people-five or six drinkers laughing and talking in loud voices, all at once. Wallas has returned to this place as to a refuge; he would like to have told someone to meet him here; he would wait for hours, lost in the noise of these trifling discussions-drinking hot rum at this rather isolated table…
“Greetings,” the drunk says.
“Hello.”
“You kept me waiting,” the drunk says.
Wallas turns around. Here, too, there is no isolated table where he can be quiet.
He has no desire to go upstairs to his room, which he remembers is gloomy and which is probably quite cold as well. He walks over to the bar, where three men are standing.
“Well,” the drunk shouts behind him, “aren’t you going to sit down over here?”
The three men turn around at the same time and stare at Wallas without the slightest embarrassment. One is wearing a grease-stained mechanic’s suit; the two others are in heavy navy blue pea jackets with big collars. It occurs to Wallas that his bourgeois clothes are betraying his profession. Fabius would have started by dressing up as a sailor.
…Fabius comes in. He is wearing a bargeman’s uniform and rolls his hips when he walks-the token of imaginary pitching on stormy seas.
“Not much to catch today,” he remarks to no one in particular. “Guess all the herring are already canned…”
The three men stare at him with surprise and suspicion. Two other customers, standing in front of the stove, have broken off a conversation-though one they were deeply involved in-to stare at him too. The manager wipes a rag across the bar.
“All right, are you coming?” the drunk repeats during the silence. “I’ll ask you the riddle.”
The two sailors, the mechanic, the other two men next to the stove all go back to their previous conversations.
“Give me a hot rum, please,” Wallas says to the manager.
And he goes to the first table and sits down, facing away from the drunk.
“Still polite as ever,” the latter observes.
“I could still,” someone says, “be walking obliquely to the canal and be walking in a straight line anyway.”
The manager serves the three men at the bar another round. The other two have resumed their argument; it is the meaning of the word oblique that is in dispute. Each man is trying to prove he is right by shouting louder than the other.
“Are you going to let me talk?”
“That’s all you do is talk!”
“You don’t understand: I said I can go straight ahead while still taking a direction that’s oblique-oblique in relation to the canal.”
The other man thinks a moment and remarks calmly:
“You’re going to fall into the canal.”
“Then you refuse to answer?”
“Listen, Antoine, you can say whatever you want, I’m not changing what I said: if you walk obliquely, you don’t go straight ahead! Even if it’s in relation to a canal or anything else.”
The man in the pharmacist’s gray smock and cap considers the argument he has just given an irrefutable one. His adversary shrugs in disgust:
“I’ve never met anyone so stupid in my life.”
He turns toward the sailors; but the latter are speaking among themselves, making exclamations in dialect and laughing loudly. Antoine comes over to the table where Wallas is drinking his hot rum; he calls on Wallas as his witness:
“You heard that, Monsieur? Here’s a supposedly educated man who doesn’t allow that a line can be both straight and oblique.”
“Oh.”
“Do you allow that?”
“No, I don’t,” Wallas quickly answers.
“What do you mean, you don’t? An oblique line is a line…”
“Yes, of course. I said I don’t allow that it isn’t allowed.”
“Oh, all right…fine.”
Antoine does not seem quite satisfied with this position, which he considers too subtle. All the same he shouts to his companion:
“You hear that, pillpusher?”
“I don’t hear anything,” the pharmacist answers.
“This gentleman agrees with me!”
“That’s not what he said.”
Antoine grows more and more exasperated.
“All right, explain to him what ‘oblique’ means, will you?” he asks Wallas.
“Oblique,” Wallas repeats evasively. “That can mean several things.”
“That’s my opinion too,” the pharmacist says approvingly.
“All right,” Antoine cries, at the end of his patience, “a line that’s oblique in relation to another line, that means something, doesn’t it?”
Wallas tries to formulate a precise answer:
“It means,” he says, “that they form an angle, an angle between zero and ninety degrees.”
The pharmacist chuckles.
“That’s what I said,” he concludes. “If there’s an angle, it isn’t straight.”
“I never met anyone so stupid in my life,” Antoine says.
“Well, I know one even better Listen to this…”
The drunk has stood up from his table to get into the conversation. Since it is difficult for him to stand, he immediately sits down again beside Wallas. He speaks slowly, so as not to get his words confused:
“Tell me what animal is a parricide in the morning…”
“That’s all we needed was this goon here,” Antoine objects. “You don’t even know what an oblique line is, I’ll bet…”
“You look pretty oblique to me,” the drunk says mildly. “I’m the one around here who asks riddles. I have one here just for my old pal…”
The two adversaries move away toward the bar, seeking new partisans. Wallas turns his back on the drunk, who goes on nevertheless, his voice jubilant and deliberate:
“What animal is parricide in the morning, incestuous at noon, and blind at night?”
At the bar the discussion has become a general one, but the five men are all talking at once and Wallas can hear only snatches of their remarks.
“Well,” the drunk insists, “can’t you guess? It’s not so hard: parricide in the morning, blind at noon…No…blind in the morning, incestuous at noon, parricide at night. Well? What animal is it?”
Fortunately the manager comes over to take away the empty glasses.
“I’ll be keeping the room tonight,” Wallas informs him.
“And he’ll pay the next round,” the drunk adds.
But no one pays any attention to this suggestion.
“Well, are you deaf?” the drunk asks. “Hey! Buddy! Deaf at noon and blind at night?”
“Let him alone,” the manager says.
“And limps in the morning,” the drunk concludes with sudden seriousness.
“I told you to let him alone.”
“All right, I wasn’t doing anything. I’m asking a riddle.”
The manager wipes his rag across the table.
“Let us alone with your riddles.”
Wallas leaves. More than any specific task to be accomplished, it is the man with the riddles who is chasing him out of the little cafe.
He prefers to walk, despite the cold and the night, despite his fatigue. He tries to organize the various elements he has been able to pick up here and there during the course of the day. Passing in front of the garden fence, he glances up at the house, now empty. On the other side of the street, Madame Bax’s window is lit.