‘Anywhere.’
‘No, we need to be careful. I’ll be in Las Orquideas at ten-thirty. You come in, but don’t say hello or anything. Sit down at another table, and we’ll both leave at eleven, I’ll follow you, you go into the house and then I’ll go, and then we each leave separately.’
‘That’s less suspicious. Good thinking… Have you got a revolver?’
‘No.’
Suddenly a weapon shone in his hand, and before I could stop him he slid it into my pocket.
‘I’ve got another one.’
‘No need.’
‘You never know what might happen.’
‘You’d kill someone?’
‘I… what a question, of course I would!’
‘Wow.’
Some passers-by made us shut up. A happiness came down from the blue sky and transformed itself to sadness in my guilty soul. I remembered something I had meant to ask, and said:
‘How will she know that we’re coming tonight?’
‘I’ll call her.’
‘And the engineer isn’t in the house during the day?’
‘No, if you want I can call her now.’
‘Where from?’
‘This store.’
The Crip went in to buy an aspirin and came out shortly afterwards. He had spoken to his woman.
I feared a set-up, and I asked for clarification:
‘You were banking on me to do this, weren’t you?’
‘Yes, Blondy.’
‘Why?’
‘Because.’
‘Everything’s ready.’
‘Everything.’
‘Have you got gloves?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ll put some stockings over my hands, it’s the same thing.’
We fell silent.
All afternoon we walked at random, lost in thought, both of us overwhelmed by our separate, and very different, ideas.
I remember we went to a boules court.
We had a drink there, but life rolled around us like the world spins round in a drunk man’s eyes.
Images that had slept for a long time, images like clouds, raised themselves in my conscience, the solar glare hurt my eyes, a great tiredness weighed down on my senses and every now and then I would say something rapidly without making any sense.
The Crip looked at me abstractedly.
Suddenly a subtle idea split in two within my spirit, and I felt it heading down to my warm guts, it was as cold as a thread of water and it touched my heart.
‘What if I handed him in?’
Scared that he might be able to read my thoughts I looked at The Crip in alarm, but he was sitting in the shade of a tree, looking with sleepy eyes at the bowling area, where the balls lay scattered about.
It was a sombre place, the right place to think up fierce ideas.
Broad Nazca Street got lost in the distance. Next to the tarred wall of a tall building, the groundsman’s lean-to was made of green-painted wood, and all over the rest of the area were positioned the parallel sandy strips.
Iron tables were laid out in various positions.
Once again I thought:
‘What if I handed him in?’
With his chin on his chest and his hat pulled down over his forehead, The Crip had gone to sleep. A sunbeam fell on one leg, on his trousers stained with patches of grease.
Then a great disgust took hold of my spirit and I grabbed him roughly by one arm and shouted:
‘Crip.’
‘Eh… eh… what?’
‘Come on, Crip.’
‘Where?’
‘Home. I need to pack. We do the job tonight and tomorrow we get out of here.’
‘Okay, let’s go.’
Once I was alone, various fears rose up in my mind. I saw my existence spent among mankind. Infamy pulled my life this way and that in their lives and everyone could touch me with a finger. And as for me, I never belonged to myself again.
I said to myself:
‘Because if I do this I’ll ruin the life of the noblest man I’ve ever known. If I do this I will be eternally condemned. And I will be alone, as lonely as Judas Iscariot. I’ll be in pain for the rest of my life. I’ll be in pain for the rest of my days.’ And I saw myself move through the spaces of my inner life, like a pain that was shameful even to me.
It would be useless to try to mingle with the anonymous crowd. Memory, like a rotten tooth, would be within me, and its stench would make all the perfumes of the earth seem rotten to me, but the more I tried to push this deed away from myself, the more my perverseness found infamy attractive.
Why not? I would have a secret, a salty repugnant secret, one that would make me investigate the origins of my dark roots. And if I have nothing to do, when I’m feeling sad, I’ll think about The Crip and ask myself ‘Why was I such a bastard?’ and I will not know the answer, and in my searching I will find curious spiritual horizons opening before me. Also, this could be profitable for me. ‘The truth,’ I said to myself, ‘the truth is that I’m a crazy man with elements of the scoundrel about him; but Rocambole was the same: he committed murder… I won’t kill anyone. For a few francs he bore false witness against Papa Nicolo and got him hanged. He strangled and killed the old woman Fipart who loved him like a mother… he killed Captain Williams, who was the reason he became a marquis and got all his millions. Whom didn’t he betray?’
Suddenly I remembered with surprising clarity this passage from the work:
Rocambole forgot for a moment his physical pain. The prisoner, whose back was covered with weals dealt out by the Overseer’s stick, was in a daze: he thought to see before him like a confusing whirlpool Paris, Les Champs Elysées, the Boulevard des Italiens, the whole of that dazzling and deafening world in the bosom of which he had lived previously.
I thought:
‘And I… Will I be like that? Will I have as bright a life as Rocambole?’ And the words which I had said to The Crip before sounded once again in my ears, but as if they were being said by someone else:
‘Yes, life is beautiful, Crip… It’s beautiful. Think about it, the wide-open fields, imagine the cities on the other side of the sea. The women who’ll follow us; we’ll be sugar daddies in the cities across the sea.’
Slowly another voice grew louder in my ears:
‘A bastard… you’re a bastard.’
My mouth twisted. I remembered an idiot who lived next to my house and who was always saying in a nasal voice:
‘It’s not my fault.’
‘Bastard… you’re a bastard….’
‘It’s not my fault.’
‘Oh! Bastard… bastard…’
‘I don’t care… and I will be beautiful as Judas Iscariot. I will be in pain for the rest of my life… pain… Anguish will open vast spiritual horizons to my eyes… Why make such a fuss! Don’t I have the right…? Have I…? I will be beautiful as Judas Iscariot… and I will be in pain for the rest of my life… but… ah! Life is beautiful, Crip… it’s beautiful… and I… I will destroy you, I’ll cut your throat… I’ll let you down royally… yes, you… so clever… so cunning… I’ll sink you… yes, Crip, I’ll sink you… and then… then I’ll be beautiful as Judas Iscariot… and I’ll have a pain… pain… You pig!’
Huge golden stains carpeted the horizon, from which there arose storm clouds in tin plumes, surrounded by whirling orange veils.
I raised my head and near the zenith, among sheets of cloud, I saw a star shining weakly. It was like a spatter of water trembling in a crack made of blue porcelain.
I was in the suburb that The Crip worked.
The pavements were shaded by the thick foliage of acacia and privet. The street was calm, bourgeois in a romantic fashion, with painted fences protecting the gardens, little sleeping fountains among the bushes and a few damaged plaster statues. A piano could be heard in the dusky twilight, and I felt suspended among the sounds, like a drop of dew on the stem of a plant. So strong a gust of perfume came from an unseen rosebush that my knees shook as I was reading a brass plaque on one of the houses: