Aminadab 0803213131 (10 page)

Thomas remained standing for a moment, unable to decide whether to leave. The presence of the old man did him good. He asked if he could wait in the room until the girl finished her work. The question was addressed to Barbe but also to the old man. "You're so moody," answered Barbe with a sigh, and she left, but not be fore caressing the young man's face once again. The light - a candle smothered in wax-began to fade. It was useless anyway, for there was nothing left to see in the room. The old man had huddled up under the covers as soon as the girl had left, and speaking to him or looking at him had become a senseless task. Thomas left the room and gently closed the door. In the room on the right, the young ser vant girl was singing or, rather, murmuring a song; he turned to the left, and slowly, as if he needed to reflect while walking, he set out down the hallway alone. He passed his old room again; the door was closed, but he heard the sound of voices. They were probably discussing his disappear ance. After a few steps - it seemed that his brief rest had given him a great deal of strength - he reached the end of the hallway and stood before the door he had already examined. Now he saw it more distinctly. The boards had recently been cut, and the sap that formed on them gave off a strong odor; it was as if the tree, even after being uprooted, continued to grow and live. And yet the wood was as smooth as if it had been polished from long use. One could pass a hand over it without encountering the slightest indentation. Finally persuaded that he would find neither lock nor latch, he ponderously kicked against the door. To his great surprise, he received a response immediately. "Who are you?" shouted an imperious voice. "I am the new tenant," said Thomas. The door opened immediately. "You have taken a wrong turn," said a man standing before the door at the bottom of a stairway, a thick hood covering his head. Thomas was seized with fear. Was it not the guardian? He responded nevertheless: "No, this is the right way." But he could not help asking: "Are you the porter?" The man raised his hood not to show himself but to let in a little light. "I am another guardian," he replied curtly. So it was a mistake. But the resemblance remained. Now that he was looking at the face turned toward him, it was only with difficulty that he 43

could distinguish the two men: he had the same eyes, the same emaciated cheeks, an equally feeble and decrepit body; but there was lacking in this one something that was attractive in the porter, which may have made him more fearsome but which also allowed for more contact. The stairs were half hidden by the man who stood right before the door and who seemed to have no intention of moving aside. If the little steps had not been dif ferent, one might have confused the two entrances. In the first case the steps went down, now they were going up, but in both cases they seemed to emerge from emptiness, as white and clean as if no one had ever ven tured up or down them. As he looked at this new vestibule, Thomas's first thought was that the young servant girl had tricked him, for it was not guarded by someone from outside, and after crossing the threshold, it did not lead to the street; and yet, although this stairway sank into the depths of the building - so much so that it seemed to have been thrown like a bridge over an uncrossable space in order to join it to the house- there was a little light passing through the floorboards, as though the day, the real day, were still not far away. Thomas reflected as he studied the guardian. He had never intended to embark alone on a visit through the building. What would he have gained by such a visit? He simply wanted to find out for himself the way to go and not to be constrained to follow others blindly. Nevertheless, he turned to his companion and told him to move forward. "Where do you want to go?" shouted the guardian impatiently. He was not sure it was a question; the tone was that of a still uncertain threat, the execution of which depended on the will of Thomas. "Well, where are we going?" Thomas asked the young man, but it was rather to that unknown part of the house that he addressed himself, to the stairway climbing before him like a steep narrow street and leading to a large balcony, from which, however, it was impossible to see anything except perhaps the painful and ridiculous effort of those trying to reach it. This balcony looked like a surveillance post. «Perhaps," Thomas said, lifting his head, «the only place you ever stay is up there." «No," replied the guardian, «but it doesn't matter." And he repeated his question: «Where do you want to go? Here is the way that leads to the high est levels; there is the stair that goes down to the underground floors." So there was another stairway? Thomas leaned over the guardian's arm; the latter had extended his hand, less to prevent him from advancing (for 44

the empty space was a sufficient barrier) than to protect him against the risk of falling. A second stairway, which seemed only to mirror the first, sank into the darkness and disappeared in the direction of the lower floors. It was accessible by two descending steps that were covered with a carpet. While Thomas was leaning in the direction of these other spaces, several people appeared on the balcony, where they stood leaning their elbows on the iron rail. They looked around distractedly without paying any atten tion to what was happening below. In any case, they did not respond to the greeting of the new tenant. They were carefully dressed men with freshly shaved faces, and their whole appearance exuded a kind of healthiness. One of them was rather corpulent; he gingerly smoked a cigar and seemed to regret letting the smoke drift away. This spectacle did not last - Thomas, at least, had the sense that it lasted only for a flash; he was so absorbed in it that he could see nothing else. "Who are these gentlemen?" he asked the guardian, who slowly lowered his eyes without answering, either because he would consent only to ad dress questions about the service, or else because he was too distant to hear his words. The window was opened again, and other men came to take a breath on the balcony. This window let out a sort of vapor that must have been caused by the high temperature of the room. All the rooms here were overheated. Thomas boldly repeated his question, and this time it was not only addressed to the guardian, for the other men could hear it too. Of course he received no answer, but, after all, it was not the answer that was important, for he had it right in front of him; what mattered was the possibility of establishing communication between himself and the people up above. But this communication had already been established. He pulled Dom behind him and placed his foot on the first step of the stair but stopped to give the guardian time to intervene. He expected to be bru tally seized and perhaps thrown into the void. But the guardian, without turning around, went to close the door to the hallway, a very solid door equipped with an enormous lock, and again took up his guard duty, lower ing his hood over his eyes. So Thomas had only to ascend. He climbed slowly, stopping to pause every two or three paces and avoiding any up ward glance so as not to compound the boldness of his gesture with impu dence as well. He stood up straight only when he had arrived: the tenants were leaving one after the other and passed so close to him that he could have touched them. So they had waited for him; they had watched him 45

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as he came up. What a surprise! The window was half closed. Reflections of an intense light shone on the glass, but the darkness that covered the surface of the panes was all the greater for that. All that could be distin guished were the shadows of the people who passed and who for the most part went away immediately, as if the outside no longer existed for them. After a few moments, Thomas, having partly regained his freedom of mind, pushed open the window and entered the room. It was very spa cious. It must have taken up the entire width of the house, and at the other end was probably one of the windows that opened onto the street. On either side, two rows of people who were trying to approach the center completely blocked the way and formed a semicircle. The number of ten ants who had slipped into these two processions seemed very large. It was impossible to count them because they were all dressed the same and all seemed to look alike. Some had been unable to find a place in the crowd; they ran from one person to the next and stopped only to whisper a word into someone's ear. There was a deafening racket. No one spoke with a loud voice; everyone even made an effort to whisper, but the least breath was transformed into a thundering noise and grew into an uproar that rumbled from one corner of the room to the other. Although he was dazed by the noise, Thomas was rather reassured by the immensity of the assembly. He could easily believe that his presence would be lost in the general throng. Yet it was not a throng. On the con trary, everything was regulated according to a meticulous order. Even the ones who had no definite place and wandered far from the groups were obeying a plan. "Silence," shouted someone at the window. Was this addressed to Thomas? The entire room received the watch word; the conversations rapidly became incomprehensible; although the noise was still very great, it was impossible to understand anything. Some one approached and murmured: "What do you want?" Thomas had to step back to understand more clearly what was being said to him. "To play," he replied. The man examined him in silence. The result of the examination was probably unfavorable, for the man shook his head and walked away, as if, after penetrating the meaning of this response, he were incapable of keep ing it to himself; Thomas ran after him. He did not know how to call to

him; he grabbed his arm and shouted in a stentorian voice: "I have been given a message to deliver. I am only passing through the room." Although it had a whole crowd to contend with, his voice forced sev eral people to turn around; they stared him down. Someone uttered a loud "Shush!" In any case, the intervention had an effect: his interlocu tor, thinking only of getting away from him, echoed his first response: "To play?" he said. "Naturally. And why shouldn't you play?" And without adding another word, he tried to lose himself in one of the processions. Thomas wondered if he would be able to cross the room de spite the obstacles. It was an enormous room, and none of the people who were standing in the lines seemed to be moving forward. Supposing that this immobility was a kind of illusion explained only by the large size of the crowd, the best one could hope for was a difficult, and in any case im perceptible, advance. But this hope itself was diminished by the fact that in order to belong to one of the processions, it was first necessary to have an invitation from someone already in it, an invitation that depended on who-knows-what goodwill and on the general rules of the meeting. The tenants who ran back and forth along the rows were in principle never ad mitted; Thomas at least had not seen a single instance of this. Deep within themselves they may have had reasons for hope, but nothing otthe kind showed on the outside. Yet, however far they were from the goal, they were not the most unfortunate, for they could at least make their entreaties heard, and they held on to the satisfaction of pouring out for other ears the words they must have whispered a thousand times in their own hearts. There were indeed some who were worse off, who did not know where to go, who said nothing, who walked on without a goal -the true goal having been forever barred to them - seemed to be even more estranged from what they were seeking. Thomas, however, looked upon them with envy. They were the only ones on whom his eyes could come to rest. Some of them had sat down on seats that had been put at their disposal. Their faces reflected their exhaustion. Their eyes were closed, and they opened their mouths, as if they were allowed only to imitate sleep. Others were stand ing behind slanted writing tables that came up to their shoulders. Fatigue must have prevented them from moving, but they were not, for all that, re duced to sitting down. There were also some who continued to walk with mechanical steps, edging along the carpets, going to the window, and, at times, taking the arm of a companion. 47

Thomas thought to himself that his situation was even worse. Never theless, a slight shiver passed over him when in the center of the room a man rose - he must have climbed onto a chair - and demanded silence. Silence soon reigned. The large chandelier was extinguished; the room fell into a suffocating darkness. For a few moments, Thomas leaned on Dom's arm; then something caught his attention. He heard a deep, harsh, unusual noise, the noise of a slowly turning wheel that seemed to be constantly held back by the hand that set it spinning but that succeeded nevertheless in escaping from it in order to complete its revolution. The wheel finally stopped. "There's been a mistake," several voices shouted. "We want to file a com plaint." The chandelier was re-lit. Thomas, his eyes bedazzled, saw that every thing in the room had changed. The processions had disbanded; the crowd pressed toward the writing desks; those who were seated along the wall seemed to be in command of everyone. Thomas was especially surprised to find next to him the man who had already spoken to him. He looked timidly at Thomas. At first he had avoided him; now it appeared that he was seeking him out. He leaned over to Dom and murmured with a smile: "Chance has passed me by." Then he remained there, motionless, waiting for something, perhaps a confirmation from his interlocutor. Although Thomas had not been ex plicitly included in the secret, he could not hold back from asking: "What chance? What passed you by?" The player addressed his response to Dom. "Do not use the word 'chance.' Say 'it' or 'she' or whatever you want; it's a word that is painful for me to hear in someone else's mouth." His smile softened the unpleasant nature of his remarks, but his brow was furrowed; he gnawed his lips; he could not hide his nervousness; per haps he was sick. "Of course," said Thomas, "one cannot always win." A dispute began around one of the tables. A man, old and tired, leaning on a cane, had reached the board that served as a writing table. It was a true miracle. Now he did not want to move away, and even though he had received a white piece of paper, he clung to the desk, groaning and shout ing. The others took him by the shoulders and feet and deposited him in a corner.