“…little Louis was mad at her too… their engagement… had threatened her…” This voice was loud and sententious; it came from the opposite direction, over the heads of three or four drinkers.
Behind Mathias, several people were still discussing the recent sensation. The whole room, the whole island, was passionately interested in the tragic accident. The fat woman served the newcomer on the salesman’s left a glass of red wine. She was holding the bottle in her left hand.
On the wall, above the top row of apéritifs, hung a yellow placard attached by four tacks: “Buy your watch at your jeweler’s.”
Mathias finished his absinthe. No longer feeling the little suitcase between his legs, he lowered his eyes toward the floor. The suitcase had disappeared. He thrust his hand into his duffle coat pocket to rub his grease-spotted fingers against the wad of cord, keeping his eyes fixed on the salesman. The proprietress thought he was looking for change and shouted out the price of his drink; but it was the absinthe he was going to pay for. He turned to face the fat woman, or the woman, or the girl, or the young barmaid, then set down the suitcase in order to pick up the suitcase while the sailor and the fisherman sneaked between, crept between, came between, Mathias and the salesman…
Mathias passed his hand over his forehead. It was almost night now. He was sitting in a chair in the middle of the street—in the middle of the road—in front of the Black Rocks café.
“Feeling better now?” asked a man wearing a leather jacket.
“Much better, thank you,” Mathias answered. He had already seen this person somewhere. He wanted to justify his indisposition, and said, “It’s the smoke, the noise, so much talk…” He could not find words to express himself. Yet he stood up with no difficulty.
He glanced around for the suitcase, but immediately remembered he had left it in his room that morning. He thanked the man again and picked up the chair to return it to the café, but the man took it out of his hands, and the only thing left for the salesman to do was to leave—by the road to the solitary cottage in its reed-filled valley at the back of the narrow cove.
In spite of the half-darkness, he walked on unhesitatingly. When the path followed the edge of the cliff, above the sea, he felt no fear whatsoever, although scarcely making out where he was putting his feet. With sure steps he climbed down toward the house, where a single, curtainless window showed a reddish gleam in the blue twilight.
He bent his head toward the panes. Despite the accumulated dust clinging to the surface, what was happening inside could be seen quite clearly. It was rather dark, especially in the corners. Only the objects near the source of light were really clear to Mathias—who was standing sufficiently far back to remain invisible to anyone inside.
The scene is lit by an oil lamp in the middle of the long, blackish-brown table. Also on the table, between the lamp and the window, are two white plates next to each other—touching each other—and an uncorked liter bottle of which the dark glass prevents any certainty as to the color of the liquid filling it. The rest of the table is clear, marked only with a few shadows: the huge, distorted one cast by the bottle, a crescent underlining the plate nearest the window, a large spot surrounding the lamp base.
Behind the table, in the room’s right corner (the one farthest away), the big kitchen stove against the rear wall can be discerned by an orange glow from the open ash-drawer.
Two people are standing face to face: Jean Robin—called Pierre—and, much shorter than he, the young woman of unknown identity. Both are on the other side of the table (in relation to the window), he to the left—that is, in front of the window—she at the opposite end of the table, near the stove.
Between them and the table—running its whole length but concealed from view by it—is the bench. The entire room is thus cut up into a network of parallel lines: first the back wall, against which, at the right, are the stove and several boxes, and at the left, in shadow, some more important piece of furniture; next, at an unspecifiable distance from this wall, the line determined by the man and the woman; then, still advancing toward the front of the room, the invisible bench, the central axis of the rectangular table—including the oil lamp and the opaque bottle—and the window itself.
Cutting across this system by perpendiculars, from front to back, the following elements can be discerned: the central upright of the window, the shadow crossing the second plate, the bottle, the man (Jean Robin, or Pierre), a crate set upright on the floor; then, a yard to the right, the lighted oil lamp; and about a yard farther, the end of the table, the young woman of unspecified identity, and the left side of the stove.
Two yards—or a little more—separate the man from the woman. She lifts her timorous face toward him.
At this moment the man opens his mouth, moving his lips as if talking, but nothing can be heard by the observer behind the square panes. The window is too tightly closed; or the noise of the sea behind him, breaking against the reef at the mouth of the cove, is too loud. The man does not articulate his words clearly enough for the syllables to be counted. He has been speaking slowly for some ten seconds—which must be about thirty syllables, perhaps less.
In reply the young woman screams something—four or five syllables—at the top of her lungs, it appears. Yet this time too, nothing can be heard through the glass. Then she steps forward toward the man and rests one hand (the left) on the edge of the table.
Now she is looking at the lamp and says a few words more—less intensely—as her features become progressively more distorted and a grimace narrows her eyes, widens the corners of her mouth, and raises the wings of her nostrils.
She is crying. A tear can be seen falling slowly down her cheek. The girl sits down on the bench; without putting her legs between it and the table, she turns the upper part of her body toward the latter and rests her forearms on it, hands clasped. Finally she lets her head droop forward, her face hidden in her hands. Her golden hair gleams in the lamplight.
Then the man slowly approaches, stands behind her, stares at her for a moment, stretches out his hand, and slowly caresses the nape of her neck with his fingertips. The huge hand, the blond head, the oil lamp, the edge of the first plate (on the right), and the left upright of the window are all aligned in the same oblique plane.
The lamp is made of brass and clear glass. From its square base rises a cylindrical, fluted stem supporting the oil reservoir—a half-globe with its convexity underneath. This reservoir is half-full of a brownish liquid which does not resemble commercial oil. On its upper part is a flange of stamped metal an inch and a half high, into which is screwed the glass—a perpendicular tube widening slightly at the base. It is this perforated flange, brightly lighted from within, which can be seen most clearly of all the articles in the room. It consists of two superimposed series of equal tangent circles—rings, more exactly, since their centers are holloweach ring of the upper series being exactly above a ring of the lower row to which it is joined for a fraction of an inch.
The flame itself, produced from a circular wick, appears in profile in the form of a triangle deeply scalloped at the apex, therefore exhibiting two points rather than just one. One of these is much higher than the other, and sharper as well; the two joints are united by a concave curve—two asymmetrical, ascending branches on each side of a rounded depression.
Blinded from staring at the lamp too long, Mathias finally turned away his eyes. To rest them, he examined the window itself—four identical panes with neither curtain nor shade, looking out into the darkness of the night. He blinked violently several times, pressing his eyeballs in order to get rid of the circles of fire still printed on his retinas.