And he drilled in with his tallow gaze, which already melted on the first go-round.
“And don’t be a wise guy, I’m telling you, we have methods for that.”
He grabbed him by the chin and lifted it so roughly that his jaws rattled.
“We have methods for that,” he chanted, holding the chin and drilling with his gaze, which had become enraged at not getting anywhere, “did you throw her in, or didn’t you?”
In him, a resilient desire now sprang up to burst out laughing at the policeman, at least with his eyes. An even more resilient compassion swiftly jerked it back, however, and he, astonished by that brief encounter, which came off utterly different from what his will had prescribed, no longer had anything in reserve besides a vacuously fixed gaze. But just then the policeman’s other hand stroked his face in such a way that it was as if they’d removed the fetters from his constrained astonishment. But the hand doing the stroking stopped, deliberated for a moment, then rose lightly and hit him ever so slightly. Then, seduced by the rhythm it had gotten going, it continued, alternately lifting away and falling back down, falling from angles that each time grew only slightly, but mindfully — quite like a differential proceeding toward its ideal sum, which is ideal because it’s forbidden. And that sum was a slap.
The hand lifted up and fell down precisely to the cadence of its attendant words, like so:
“Her pimp — right? — Saturday — right? — your share— right? — not enough — right? — she didn’t give you enough (two slaps, syncopated) — right? — the slut — right? — is that all? — I’m asking: is that all! (syncopation) — are you going to cough it up? — no?—got nothing? — got nothing?. .”
The hand doing the shaming was putting on speed in this rhythm, putting on speed — but on the last “got nothing?” it recalled that the ideal sum is sacred, which is to say forbidden, and just on that “got nothing,” where the irresolute slapping was supposed to collapse into determined smacking, the hand gave up, as if before the last dance, having infected even the other hand with defeatism, the one that was holding that differentially smacked face by the chin, which it now lifelessly released.
“So that’s how it’s going to be?” the policeman roared as reparation, nudging his prisoner so hard he knocked him over, “and what, you didn’t throw her in?”
He answered quietly, resignedly, and with a word that you wouldn’t cast aside:
“No.”
“All joking aside,” the sergeant protested, “one never knows.”
The slapping policeman made a goliath of a gesture and walked off grumbling toward the table, where his colleagues were gambling as though seven mountains away.
He took his cap and held it between his knees. Thus it happened that his gaze slipped to the knotty floor. There he discovered a sort of vermillion line. It reminded him of a note on the general staff’s map: the ideal offensive line “from there to here.”
At this moment, however, he was suffused with a delightful indifference, toward both the “from there” as well as the “to here.” A line — yes, but not an abscissa, not from there to here, merely a course, barely a course.
The Auer burners were buzzing like flies startled after a great alarm. The sergeant puffed out a last ring, in such a way as to let it be known that it actually was the last ring for the time being: the ring had an air of ceremonial farewell. Thereupon he came back around and got himself together. The sergeant’s torso and seat now made almost a right angle. He yanked at his pleated shirt, and the station became dignified.
“The report is the commissioner’s business,” he said, “but the commissioner won’t be here before eight. Then he has breakfast — another half hour — which makes it half past. — We know him. — Either the dépôt, or release.”
“What do you mean, sergeant?”
“What I mean is that we don’t have much room. Keep him here till eight — and where will he lie down? Wait for the commissioner, who’ll just sign everything I would have signed? Anyway, you know him, that heavenly nincompoop! So why wait for the commissioner! Either I hand down my judgment, or I let him off. And that’s it. I’ll judge whether he threw her in. If he didn’t throw her in. . Yeah, but I wasn’t there. Which of you nabbed him? You? — Alright: did he or didn’t he?”
“He says he didn’t, that much we know.”
“I, for one, haven’t fallen in love with him,” the sergeant said, “but to keep him here, going around in circles. .! And you know the commissioner: he doesn’t like unnecessary work. And when there’s a report, there are facts. Alright then: did he or didn’t he?”
“Like I’m saying, he says ‘didn’t.’”
“He says; and she?”
“She! We walked right along the Pont Royal. Me and Durand. We hear ‘help’ and a splash. We’re just two steps from the locker with the lifebelt. We toss it in, as you please, we run down the stairs. She grabbed onto it, we know that much. We untied the dinghy. She was floating five meters from shore. In you go! We put her down. Meanwhile, people had come running. They nabbed this fellow here. That’s it: nabbed him!. . Actually, he wasn’t even running away. Actually, actually he was standing there like a pillar of salt. ‘Are you the one who threw her in?. .’ But how did it actually go down, Durand?”
Durand: “‘Was it you?’ I says. He’s like it didn’t have anything to do with him: ‘She overpowered me. . She jumped. . I don’t know her.’ Meanwhile, they’ve pulled her out. Well, what was she supposed to do? She’s drowned! — To tell you the truth, I think she raised her hand — a pretty enough girl, but she was just throwing up water — yes, she raised her hand. I’d almost say she pointed at this guy and shook her head like it wasn’t him. Then again, count on a drowning victim when you’ve only just pulled her out?. .”
“Fine. She shook her head, or didn’t she?”
“I’d almost say that she did.”
“Like how?”
“Like I’m telling you. Like none of it was on him.”
“Where’d they take her?”
“Wherever there’s room.”
“What was closest?”
“Saint-Louis. . Or else Cochin.”
“Ring them up.”
The cards were upset. The perpendicular on the sergeant’s chair went slack again. The shirt was unburdened; shirts take a breather by making creases across the navel. The telephone’s bell rang so imperiously that the commotion eased back down like a whipped dog.
He, not having taken his eyes off the vermillion line, lifted his head without expecting anything. He was all the more meagerly astonished upon noticing that his despair was to no avail. He caught sight of an aurora that was not so much an aurora that one caught sight of but rather a light laying siege. In the police station, it was the light of the Auer burners, but it was inside a kind of scattered light whose origin lay elsewhere. Because he then caught sight both of his dreadful poverty, as well as of his own raging inferno, he thought that it was from this.
Stop!
“What are they saying?” the sergeant protested, perking the sloppy perpendicular back up. “Well?”
“She’s not at Saint-Louis.”
“Cochin then.”
The aurora was now so dazzling that he couldn’t stand it. He fled from it, staring into the bowl of his greasy cap. There he found, you might say, something unbelievably precious, for he winced. But he didn’t resist. He looked again. For us to say, after all, what was so monstrous — and what was so precious that it was monstrous — that it seemed he was seeing: it was something that looked like — but if only he knew why! — that looked like Mercifulness. He well knew that Mercifulness could not be seen. His disbelief that what he was seeing in the dirty underside of his cap could be Mercifulness was so sincere, so disbelieving, that he pursed his lips. And it was a peculiar image, seeing Mercifulness (for, in spite of everything, that’s what it was) face-to-face with a person who makes fun of it.