Выбрать главу

But counting only the ninety watches which were in his luggage, the profit would be considerable: ten at a hundred fifteen crowns, eleven hundred fifty, ten at one hundred thirty, thirteen hundred, fourteen hundred fifty, ten at one hundred fifty, four with a special wristband at five crowns extra apiece.… To simplify matters Mathias decided on an average price of two hundred crowns; the week before he had calculated the exact amount that a similar batch was worth, and two hundred crowns was a good approximation. So he should total about eighteen thousand crowns. His gross profit varied between twenty-six and thirty-eight per cent; figuring on an average of thirty per cent—three times eight, twenty-four, three times one, three, three and two, five—it came to more than five thousand crowns, that is, the gross profit was actually worth a whole week’s work—even during a good week—in his usual territory. As for personal expenses, there would be only the sixty crowns for the round-trip boat fare, which was practically negligible.

It had taken hopes of such exceptionally favorable transactions as these to convince Mathias to make this trip, which was not included in his theoretical itinerary; otherwise two three-hour crossings represented too many complications and too great a loss of time for so small an island—barely two thousand inhabitants—to which nothing else, neither childhood friendships nor early memories of any kind, attracted him. The houses on the island were so much alike that he was not even sure he could recognize the one in which he had spent almost his entire childhood and which, unless there was some mistake, was also the house where he had been born.

They assured him that nothing had changed for thirty years, but often a shed added on to a gable or a little stonework redressed is enough to make a whole building unrecognizable. And even supposing that everything, down to the smallest detail, had remained just as he had left it, he would still have to reckon with the errors and inaccuracies of his own memory, which experience had taught him to mistrust. More than any real changes on the island, or even hazy recollections—which were nevertheless numerous enough to prevent him from retaining any precise image of the place—he would have to be wary of exact but false memories which would here and there have substituted themselves for the original earth and stones.

After all, all the houses on the island looked alike: a low door between two small, square windows—and the same arrangement at the back. From one door to the other a tiled hallway split the house down the middle, separating the four rooms into two symmetrical groups: on one side the kitchen and a bedroom, on the other a second bedroom and a room used either as a parlor or as a kind of lumber room. The kitchen and bedroom on the street side faced east and received the morning sun. The remaining two rooms looked out toward the cliff over three hundred yards of open ground rolling toward an indentation in the coast. The winter rains and the west wind battered against the windows; it was only in milder weather that the shutters could be left open. He had been sitting all afternoon at the heavy table wedged into the window recess, drawing a sea gull that had perched on one of the fence posts at the end of the garden.

Neither the arrangement of the grounds nor their orientation gave him enough clues. As for the cliff, it was the same all the way around the island—and the same, moreover, on the mainland opposite. Its indentations and rises could be as easily confused as pebbles on a beach, as gray gulls.

Fortunately Mathias did not care much about such matters. He had no intention of looking for the house at the moor’s edge, or for the bird on its perch. He had only made his inquiries so carefully, the day before, about the forgotten topography of the island in order to establish the most convenient route, to facilitate broaching the subject of watches in the houses he was supposed to be returning to with such understandable pleasure. The extra effort of cordiality—above all of imagination—required by such an enterprise would be more than compensated for by the profit of five thousand crowns he expected to clear.

He really needed the money. For almost three months, sales had been noticeably below normal; if matters did not soon improve, he would have to get rid of his stock at cut prices—probably at a loss—and find another job again. Among the measures contemplated to settle his difficulties, the imminent canvassing of the island played an important role. Eighteen thousand crowns in cash at such a time meant much more than his thirty-per-cent commission: he would not immediately replace all the watches sold, and the sum would permit him to hold out until better days. If this privileged territory had not been originally included in his schedule, it was doubtless because he had wanted to keep it in reserve for bad times. Present circumstances compelled him to make the trip—of which the inconveniences appeared ever more numerous, as he had feared.

The boat left at seven in the morning, which had forced Mathias to get up earlier than usual. When he traveled by bus or the local railroad he almost never started before eight o’clock. Besides, although his house was quite near the train station it was a good distance from the harbor—and none of the bus lines brought him much nearer. He might as well walk the whole way.

At this hour of the morning the Saint-Jacques district was deserted. As he was walking down an alley which he hoped would be a short cut, Mathias thought he heard a moan—faint, yet seeming to come from so near by that he turned his head. There was no one in sight; the street was as empty behind him as in front. He was about to continue on his way when he heard the sound again, a distinct moan almost in his ear. At that moment he noticed a ground-floor window within reach of his right hand; a light was shining inside although by now the daylight was barely obscured by the simple voile curtain that hung behind the panes. The room looked rather large, however, and its only window was of modest size: a yard wide, perhaps, and scarcely any higher; with its four identical, almost square panes it would have been more suitable for a farmhouse than these urban premises. The folds of the curtain made it impossible to see how the room was furnished. All that could be distinguished was what the electric light illuminated at the back of the room: the conical lamp shade—a bed lamp—and the vaguer form of an unmade bed. Standing near the bed, bending slightly over it, a masculine silhouette lifted one arm toward the ceiling.

The whole scene remained motionless. In spite of the incomplete nature of his gesture, the man moved no more than a statue. Under the lamp, on the night table, was a small blue rectangular object—which must have been a pack of cigarettes.

Mathias had no time to wait for what was going to happen next—supposing that anything was going to happen next. He was not even certain the moans came from this house; he had guessed they came from a source still closer, less muffled than they would have been by a closed window. In thinking it over he wondered if he had heard only moans, inarticulate sounds; had there been identifiable words? In any case it was impossible for him to remember what they were. Judging from the quality of her voice—which was pleasant, and not at all sad—the victim must have been a very young woman, or a child. She was standing against one of the iron pillars that supported the deck above; her hands were clasped behind the small of her back, her legs braced and slightly spread, her head leaning against the column. Her huge eyes inordinately wide (whereas all the passengers were squinting because the sun had begun to break through), she continued to look straight ahead of her, with the same calmness with which she had just now looked into his own eyes.