The wrinkles of the person sitting on the bed fade away, one after the other; his bottom lip has again flattened its mean fold. Who would say of that slovenly, impertinent nose that it belonged to a sleuthhound? The corners of his mouth turned upward — oh, barely enough to notice — the upper lip puckered, the eyelids rose afresh, the outstretched arms moved slowly from the ankles to the thighs — you there, boy, rejuvenated, how’d you get in here? — and look, here’s the smile, here’s the person, the one who was thinking:
“You unfortunate innkeeper! You cheated innkeeper!”
“You cheated innkeeper!” was the fresh, enterprising thought that required no more than a flick — it flipped over, and on the other side was: “I’ve had a look around the washbasin.” When this thought was flicked in turn, it withdrew as well, revealing a third, in which one recognized, God knows by what, that it was the correlate of the thought “I’ve had a look around the washbasin.” To wit:
“I left the rooms and went down into the yard, and there I passed a lovely moment by myself.”
Between the thought and its correlate a broad land stretches, overgrown with seductive realities. The fairy tale of meadows with mills has nothing on it. Strange that he doesn’t rest his eyes upon it! If he were to lean over slightly, he might see it even better. So he leans his entire torso. The hands resting on buttocks recalled the beautiful walk a moment before: they feel like taking another one, in the opposite direction, and slowly move down toward the ankles. If he had seen himself, he would have been pleased. His back had grown younger; his scapular muscles twitched nervously: you’d say it was a person sunning himself after a swim. So he’s sunbathing.
Somewhere around here there’s some overly seductive possibility, and it’s pestering him. He had brushed it off rudely at first. Oh, just for effect, as a test: to see whether it would turn its back on him after having been brushed off; for if it turned its back on him, it would mean that it was quite a seductive possibility, but a false one. For that matter, he has no fear; he knows in advance that it will not turn its back on him, not at all. For that matter, you can see it so distinctly, this possibility, that it’s not only surely true, but it is the only true thing.
“Where is my head!”
“Where is my head!” — in a woman’s voice; he hears right: a woman’s voice. Feminine, not masculine; but just before that “where is my head,” which sounds like a calm corrective to something riled-up, something else had been said. But what? “Where is my head” emerges as though from a phonograph spinning backwards. So the beginning is still to come. And here it is: it’s a femininely alarmed “my bracelet!” — This “my bracelet” sounds so familiar and natural that the person sitting on the bed doesn’t resist; insofar as one might say “doesn’t resist” of a gesture that’s actually automatic. Look at him, he’s whipped his eye upon the washbasin, and just when he did so the phonograph went kaput. It’s quiet for a moment, but so impatiently that you can hear it wearing thin. Yes, it’s a provisional quiet: the transmission just barely makes it across. Yes. Now, at last, the disc is turning again in the proper direction:
“My bracelet! Wherever is my head? Bring it to me, dear, it’s next door on the washbasin.” Yes; now it’s spinning properly; now, at last, you can see it properly as welclass="underline" he happens to be in his room, in the new one assigned to him, the one where he’s only just woken up. A short time ago he’d transferred his shirts here; he’s kneeling in front of the dresser, he’s putting them in, he’s alone. You hear: “My bracelet! Wherever is my head? Go get it for me, dear, it’s next door on the washbasin.” At the words “it’s next door on the washbasin” he turned his head. The washbasin was within arm’s reach. He felt for the bracelet, he slipped it into his pocket. It happened so fast — yes, it must be said this way: happen; it happened; impersonally— so that this movement startled even him. So what had gotten into him? — But just then steps resounded in the corridor; that’s not it, steps didn’t resound; there’d been no time for “resounding”; there’d only been two of them. The rooms were right next to each other. Mr. Steel entered and headed straight for the washbasin.
“Nonsense,” he called out, “it’s surely in our room.”
“I’m telling you that I left it next door on the washbasin. Don’t you remember me washing my hands?”
“Nom de Dieu, nom de Dieu, nom de Dieu!” Mr. Steel sings to himself.
The whole time he’s kneeling in front of the dresser; he hasn’t turned around, as if there’s nothing to fuss over. He didn’t even know that Mr. Steel had gone back out. He only realized it from hearing the words “that’s impossible” coming from the adjoining room.
“It’s most certainly next door on the washbasin.”
So what had gotten into him? Beg your pardon, if we should stick to the truth, we’d rightly have to admit that it actually hadn’t gotten into him to ask what had gotten into him. For that matter, how does one ask, and why, in that complicated euphoria in which he was as though suddenly drowning? Such rollicking fun with those conceited bourgeois! If only Tiemen could have seen him! Tiemen! It was as if he’d just stumbled upon that name. It had surfaced unexpectedly and uncalled— that is, it was just the thing that was called for. Tiemen and his expertise: legerdemain of votive candles, breaking into church collection boxes, pilfering apples from grocers’ carts, snatching smudged, dog-eared detective novels from cartons of used books on the riverbank. They caught Tiemen once, but it was settled at the station. Tiemen! A drifter-dilatant, but he had connections. He was so very young back then, and he was trying on the role of the ingenious, and therefore spoiled, child. Not that he would have considered himself a genius; it was his friends who took him for a genius; he didn’t want to spoil their pleasure. Spoiled, and therefore ingenious, children were all the rage back then. — “So, let’s just call it kleptomania,” the commissioner sighed, hanging up from his conversation with the prefecture, where the “connections” had intervened, “and off you go!” “Me, a kleptomaniac?” Tiemen protested, priding himself on the systematic deliberateness of his most minor thefts. It was out of them that Tiemen, doltish-looking wiseacre and sensitif, gentle executioner and smartass dreamer, constructed his jealously guarded tale of the “simplified simpleton.” — He wanted to be locked up; they had to kick him out of the station. — Fine. So that was Tiemen. But now it’s Mr. Steel’s play again, yesterday’s Mr. Steel, Mr. Steel enflamed by Mrs. Steel’s eternal “I forgot it on the washbasin.”
“Zut alors! It couldn’t have just disappeared. You haven’t seen it, have you?”
The question arrived as though she had wanted expressly to help him stand up; for he was just now finishing straightening up in the dresser and was rising. “. . If only Tiemen knew,” and it was all he could do not to burst into laughter at this capacious notion.
“A nasty business, really a nasty business. I was just checking the dresser to see whether it might have fallen in there by accident. I perhaps don’t have to tell you that this is still much more awkward for me than it is for you.”
“More awkward?” Mr. Steel said irritably. “Perhaps.”
He hadn’t known that he was capable of bluffing so casually; a spiteful joy was just then at play within him. Maybe it was even visible. Mr. Steel straightened up suddenly, maybe for just that reason, and having first assented with only an absent “yes,” he changed his tone: “Yes! — And what’s there in your linen?”