Mathias smiles back at the proprietor and adds: “Besides, I have to go and pay for my room. My landlady probably won’t be home now.”
A glance through the glass door affords him the same surprise: the fisherman is at exactly the same place he appeared to occupy a moment before, when Mathias’ eyes had left him, still walking with the same even, rapid pace between the nets and traps. As soon as the observer stops watching him he stands still, continuing his movement at the very moment Mathias’ eyes return to him—as if no interruption had occurred, for it is impossible to see him either start or stop.
“It’s your business,” the proprietor says. “If you want to stay with us so badly…. I’ll bring you something right away.”
“Thank you. I’m hungry this morning.”
“I’m not surprised! You didn’t eat anything last night.”
“I’m usually hungry in the morning.”
“In any case, nobody can say you don’t like the country around here! You’d think you were afraid of missing a day of it.”
“Oh, I know the country quite well—I’ve known it for a long time. Didn’t I tell you I was born here?”
“You had plenty of time to drink a cup of coffee and get your things. As for the money, you’ll spend more staying here.”
“Well, that’s too bad. I don’t like making decisions at the last minute.”
“It’s your business. I’ll bring you something right away…. Hey! Here’s little Louis now.”
The door opens to admit a sailor in a faded red uniform—the one who was walking on the pier just now. Besides, his face was not unfamiliar to Mathias.
“Don’t bother,” the proprietor says to him. “He doesn’t want anything to do with your old tub.”
The salesman smiles amiably at the young man: “I’m not in such a hurry as all that, you know,” he says.
“I thought you wanted to leave the island right away,” the proprietor says.
Mathias glances at him stealthily. The man seems to have meant nothing in particular by his remark. The young sailor, his hand still on the doorknob, looks at each of them in turn. His face is thin and severe. His eyes seem to see nothing.
“No,” Mathias repeats, “I’m not in such a hurry.”
No one answers. The proprietor, leaning in the doorway behind the bar, is facing the sailor wearing the red canvas jumper and trousers. The young man’s eyes are turned toward the back wall, to the comer of the room occupied by the pin-ball machine. It looks as if he were waiting for someone.
He finally mutters three or four words—and goes out. The proprietor exits too—by the other door, into the room behind the bar—but returns almost at once. He walks around the bar to the glass door to look outside.
“This drizzle,” he says, “will last all day.”
He continues his commentary on the weather—the island’s climate in general and the meteorological conditions during the last weeks. Although Mathias had feared another discussion of his poor reasons for not leaving, the man, on the contrary, seems to approve heartily of his decision: today is scarcely a good day, actually, to risk going out in a fishing boat. Not that there is much danger of seasickness in a calm like this, but on so modest a trawler there is nowhere to keep out of the spray; the salesman would be soaked to the skin before reaching port.
The proprietor also mentions the filthiness of such boats: no matter how much time is spent washing them down, there is always some fish refuse around, as if it grew there as fast as it could be cleaned away. And it is impossible to touch an inch of rope without covering your hands with grease.
Mathias glances at the man stealthily. Evidently he spoke without any special meaning—with no meaning at all—he was merely talking for the sake of conversation, without attaching the slightest importance to what he was saying, without insistence or conviction; he might just as well be saying nothing.
The young barmaid appears from the room behind the bar, walking with tiny steps and carrying on a tray the silverware for breakfast. She sets it down on Mathias’ table. She knows where everything belongs now and no longer makes the errors or the hesitations of the first day. An almost imperceptible deliberation still betrays her attention to her work. When she has finished arranging the silverware, she lifts her large, dark eyes to the traveler’s face to see if he is satisfied—but without waiting longer than a second, a flicker of her eyelashes. It seems to him that she has smiled faintly at him this time.
After a final, roundabout inspection of the table service, she stretches out her arm as if to move something—the coffeepot, for instance—but everything is in order. Her hand is small, the wrist almost too delicate. The cord had cut into both wrists, making deep red lines. Yet she was not bound very tightly. The cord must have sunk into the flesh because of her futile efforts to get free. He had been forced to tie her ankles too—not together, which would have been easy—but separately, each one attached to the ground, about a yard apart.
For this purpose, Mathias still had a good piece of string, for it was longer than he had thought at first. In addition he would need two stakes solidly planted in the ground…. It was the sheep grazing nearby that furnished the ideal solution to this problem. Why had he not thought of it before? First he ties her feet together, so that she will lie still while he goes to shift the pickets; the sheep haven’t time to move before he has swiftly attached them all to a single peg—instead of their original grouping into two pairs and one solitary animal. He thus recovers two of the metal pegs—pointed stakes with a loop at the top.
He had the most difficulty in restoring the sheep to their respective tetherings, for they had taken fright in the meantime. They ran in terrified circles at the ends of the taut cords…. She, on the other hand, was lying very still now, her hands hidden under her, behind the small of her back—her legs spread and slightly apart, her mouth swollen by the gag.
Everything becomes even calmer: the chromium-plated bicycle has been left in the hollow of the cliff, lying on the slope, conspicuous against the background of short weeds. Its contours are perfectly clear, with no suspicion of disorder and no blurred areas, despite the complication of its parts. The polished metal does not reflect the sun, doubtless because of the fine layer of dust from the road—almost a vapor—deposited on it. Mathias calmly drinks the rest of the café au lait.
The proprietor, who has again taken up his observation post behind the glass door, announces the little trawler’s departure. The hull gradually slides away from the oblique stone rim; between can be seen the widening streak of black water.
“You could have been home by four o’clock,” the proprietor says without turning around.
“Oh well, no one is expecting me,” Mathias answers.
The other man says nothing, still watching the boat maneuvering—it now turns so that it is headed in a line perpendicular to its original direction, the stem facing the entrance to the harbor. In spite of the distance, the letters painted in white on the hull are still legible.
Mathias gets up from the table. One last reason—he adds—keeps him on the island until tomorrow: before leaving, he still would like to finish his rounds, which had remained uncompleted the first night. Since he now had more time than he needed, he had done nothing the day before—or virtually nothing—relying on this third day to finish up the last part of his rounds at his usual rate. He explains to the proprietor the general plan of his itinerary: a kind of figure eight, of which the town constitutes not precisely the center, but a point along the side of one of the two loops—the northwest one. At the tip of this loop is Horses Point. It is the ground between Horses Point and the harbor—less than a quarter of his anticipated route—that he has to cover again, but thoroughly this time, without missing a single house or neglecting the least side road. In a hurry last Tuesday, he had actually abandoned most of the little groups of houses that were not on the main road. Finally he had had to go on without stopping at all, not even at doors he passed right before, traveling at the fastest speed the bicycle could manage.