He was looking into the underside of his greasy cap, reading there that life begins just when we have sensed (but sensed the way we perceive smells, tastes, or lights) that it is a spiral, which in the instantaneous point of the “I” is just beginning, and then — ever more vertiginously and centrifugally — it spins out into being without end and without beginning, and that we are wed to freedom just in the moment when we have no choice but not to place a pause between today and tomorrow, I and thou, here and anywhere.
He was kneading his cap with wondrous amazement (by now it had his trust) at how, just as he was fading in the disregarded scorn of the nameless and non-citizen crowd of Nobodies, he felt as though at the tip of that so perfectly annealed coil, from which that Nameless, which is the Unnameable, his neighbor and companion, is making up his mind to jump.
“So it’s you then. — Your name?”
He told him.
“Your papers?”
“Left them at the hotel.”
“You’ve resided there for how long?”
“Since yesterday.”
“Your reference?”
“The hotel.”
“You’ve only been there since yesterday. — Someone else.”
“Mr. Steel, installation. .”
“Fine. . I know. — You were apprehended at the spot from which a certain hussy fell into the water. — Fell! You pushed her in. — Did you push her in?”
“On the contrary. I had to defend myself.”
The commissioner stood, walked right up to him, and, chewing his brioche:
“Yes. . Cochin. . On the whole it squares with the testimony. . with the testimony. .”
All of a sudden he crouched down in front of him, looked him over from below, and, having done so, hopped up nimbly and landed his hand on his shoulder. It fell cop-like, heavily and rudely, but barely had it fallen than it gripped the shoulder, which it wanted to shake, gripped it in a quick and fervent squeeze that nevertheless swiftly went shamefaced and shy and had now let go.
The commissioner was preparing a word, but he said it only with his eyes, immersing them in the eyes of the man they’d caught. And it was an actual immersion, of blue eyes into black eyes, in which the sky-blue broke through.
“Right,” said one.
“Right,” said the other.
“You’re innocent in all this, I know that,” the commissioner stated, “but being innocent in all this is already wrongdoing as well. And anyway: all I know is the regulations.”
“Yeah, sure,” the other fellow said.
“All I know is the regulations; the regulations, and also the law,” the commissioner insisted, looking at him timidly.
“No! That’s all you’re obliged to know,” the delinquent responded, fixing his eyes on the commissioner’s legs, which were trying in vain to remain planted on the floor. The commissioner was hovering, and upon noticing that this could be seen he tried all the more to make landfall (but still in vain), and he fell into a great embarrassment, absently holding it at bay. For he had, you’d say, still another job: keeping watch over the quiet, the great quiet that in the meantime was assuming the quality of a kind of third presence. At length the commissioner coped with his embarrassment by sort of swallowing (it seemed to the other fellow that he really was swallowing, and some extra-pure morsel at that), whereupon, still with that ever-so-incomprehensibly relieving hand on the delinquent’s shoulder the whole time, he said, “I would like you please to look me in the eye, and nowhere else. It’s fitting, and so: I’m well aware that your conscience is clean. But that doesn’t matter. Here all that matters is evidence and regulations. If the only thing you have is a clean conscience. . Fortunately, you were mentioning references. .”
“Mr. Steel! Mr. Steel! I repeat: Mr. Steel.”
“Mr. Steel,” the commissioner said, “he’s the one who. .”
But he broke off.
“Mr. Steel,” the other fellow repeated obstinately.
“Because,” the commissioner went on as though he hadn’t heard, and now he was again in the little armchair behind the desk with the telephone, which he was fiddling with, “because I know how the world works. Mr. Steel. There isn’t somebody else you know? Because — think it over, whether you know someone who’d have no reason to go red in front of you. .”
“Commissioner!”
“Because if he has a reason to go red in front of you — I know how the world works — and when you don’t have anyone else, he’ll deny you.”
“Mr. Steel.”
“Or else he’ll say something that’ll make me lock you up.”
“Mr. Steel.”
“What time is it?” the commissioner asked his watch, “ten to nine, let’s give it a try.”
He picked up the phone book.
“Steel, 305 Rue Saint-Lazare. . Steel, 305 Rue Saint-Lazare. . Steel. . Steel. . Ah, yes, 305 Rue Saint-Lazare. . Provence 46–57. .”
The telephone on the commissioner’s desk was as pretty as a plaything, but when the commissioner lifted it, the plaything started to resemble a trap for martens.
He turned toward the plank bed.
“So you’re sticking with it?” and he stood, not putting down the receiver. “The unfinished slap from Benedictine Mill isn’t enough for you?”
“Mr. Steel,” the other fellow said simply, and as though he had foreseen this.
Yet someone did marvel at the commissioner’s unexpected statement: the commissioner himself.
“Eh?” he uttered. “I didn’t know that one could know his way around these paths without me,” and he sat back down resolutely.
“Hello. Provence 46–57.”
“Provence 46–57? — The Steel Company, Vesta gas heating system installation? — Could I speak with Mr. Steel? — Excellent, this is Louvre precinct headquarters — could I. . Excellent. Yes, please.”
Between seven and eight, time just drags its feet; between eight and nine, it walks; then it’s already running; it’s afraid— and in winter especially — it’s afraid of the prearranged encounter with the prepared evening.
“Mr. Steel? This is Louvre precinct headquarters. Am I speaking with Mr. Steel? — Oh, no, forgive the early call. It’s just that last night. . But not at all. . just whether you know a certain. . By the name of — — I knew that beforehand. No one wants a scene — — Sorry? — But how could something like that have occurred to me! I just wanted to say that someone like yourself. . so well-connected. . memory fails so easily. — Oh no! You’ve misunderstood: not that he’d be lying — far from it! — it’s just that perhaps it’s your memory that’s failed. He was caught at the spot where a certain girl threw herself into the river. That is. . that’s how they’ve both made it out, she and him. It’s for just that reason that I have certain doubts. What good are doubts if they’re both telling the same story?. . Oh, my dear Mr. Steel, one can see that you don’t know how the world works. . The girl? O Mr. Steel, the girl is not the point, you mustn’t concern yourself with her. Because if you were to concern yourself with her, we wouldn’t have the honor of looking forward to your visit — should it interest you. But of course you’re in no way obliged. . We’d be most grateful. . Perhaps when you see him. . You’d be doing a good deed. . Are the police capable of appreciating good deeds? No, Mr. Steel, the police don’t know what that is; the police know only regulations and facts. . but exceptionally well — you’re most welcome.”