Auto-da-fé (47 page)

The spectators began to make words of his sounds. They became accustomed to his manner, and listened perplexed; one clutched at another in order to hear better. He spoke like an educated man, he was confessing a murder. As a body they could not believe in his murder, though each of them singly would have taken it to be true. Against whom did he want protection? In his shirt they let him alone; he was afraid. Even the Inspector felt powerless; he preferred to say nothing, his phrases would not have sounded literary enough. The criminal was well-connected. Perhaps he was not a criminal at all. Thérèse was astonished that she had never noticed anything. So he'd been married when she came into his service, and she'd always thought he was a bachelor; she'd known there was a mystery, the mystery was his first wife, he'd murdered her, still waters are murderers, so that was why he never spoke, and because his first wife had had a skirt like hers, he'd married
her
for love. She cast about for proofs; between six and seven in the morning he was busy all by himself, everything was hidden away until he had smuggled all the bits out of the house, the very idea, she could remember it all. So that was why he'd run off and left her, he'd been afraid she'd tell the whole story. Thieves are murderers, she always said; Mr. Brute would be surprised.

The caretaker was seized with terror; the shoulders, on which he was leaning, swayed. The Professor was taking deferred vengeance on him, when everybody had forgotten all about his daughter. The Professor was talking about a wife, but he meant his daughter. The caretaker kept seeing her too, but she wasn't there, was she? The Professor wanted to make a fool of him, but the others didn't fall for the trick. The heart of gold was letting him down; what's that! how mistaken one can be in people! In his sorrow he restrained himself. The Professor's accusations were too insubstantial; he knew his colleagues. He hadn't yet remembered that it was he who had promoted Kien Professor and he contemplated his degradation only as a final measure.

After his repeated appeal for help — he had spoken calmly but it was a despairing entreaty — Kien waited. The dead silence was agreeable to him. Even Thérèse was silent. He wished she would vanish. Perhaps she would vanish now she was silent. She did not. Since no one came to meet him, he assumed the initiative himself, to cure himself of his hallucination. He was well aware of his duty to learning. He sighed, deeply he sighed, for who would not feel shame at having to call in the help of others? Murder was comprehensible; that murder he could defend; only its consequence, this hallucination, he feared so deeply. If the court declared him not responsible for his actions, he would commit suicide on the spot. He smiled, so as to ingratiate himself with his listeners; later on they would certainly be called as witnesses. The more friendly and sensible his words to them, the less important would his hallucination appear. He elevated them to the rank of educated men.

'Psychology to-day is part of every profession pursued by — educated men.' Polite as he was, he prefaced these 'educated men' with a brief pause. 'I have not fallen a victim to a woman as you, perhaps, are thinking. My acquittal is a foregone conclusion. You see in me, almost certainly, the greatest living authority on sinology. But even greater men have suffered from hallucinations. The peculiarity of men of critical temperament consists in the energy with which they concentrate on the object of their choice. For the last hour I have been thinking so intensely and so exclusively of this figment of my brain, that I cannot now expel it. Convince yourselves, gentlemen, how reasonably I myself judge of it! May I earnestly request you to take thé following measures: Withdraw a few steps, all of you! Form up in single file! Let each approach me singly in a straight line! I hope hereby to convince myself that you will find no obstacle in the way, here, here, or here. Here I myself come into contact with a skirt, the woman inside it has been murdered, she is so like the murdered woman as to be mistaken for her, at present she is silent, but earlier she had the voice of the murdered woman too; this baffles me. I need a clear head. I shall conduct my own defence. I need no one. Lawyers are criminals; they lie. I live for truth. I know, this truth is a lie; help me; I know she must vanish. Help me, this skirt disturbs me. I hated her skirt even before the bloodhound ate it, and must I see it again now?'

He had seized on Thérèse; not tentatively, but with all his strength he clutched at her skirt, he pushed her from him, he drew her to him, he enclosed her in his long, lean arms. She let him have his way. He only wanted to embrace her. Before they are hanged, murderers are allowed a last meal. Murder, she wouldn't have guessed. Now she knew: so thin and all those books with everything in them. He turned her round once on her axis and forewent the embrace. This made her angry. He glared at her from an inch off. He stroked her dress with all ten fingers. He put out his tongue and snuffled with his nose. Tears came into his eyes with the effort. 'I suffer from this hallucination!' he admitted, gasping. The listeners inferred sobs from his tears.

'Don't cry, sir!' said one: he was a father himself, his eldest boy brought home top marks in German composition every day. The Inspector felt envious. The man in the shirt, whom he had undressed himself, suddenly seemed to him very well-dressed. 'All right, all right,' he grumbled. He thought of ways for transposing into a sterner key. To ease his task, he threw a glance at the shabby clothes on the table. The policeman with a memory asked: "Why didn't you say something before?' He had not forgotten all that had happened. His question was purely rhetorical; he only asked it so as to remind people of his genius, as his colleagues called it, from time to time, particularly when things w;re quiet. The remaining, less developed characters, were still either listening or laughing. They were divided between curiosity and satisfaction. They felt happy, but did not know it. At these rare moments they forgot their duty, even their dignity, like many people at a theatre of established reputation. The playing-time was short. They would have liked more for their money. Kien spoke and performed, he took great pains. It was clear how seriously he took his profession. He earned his money with the sweat of his brow. No actor could have done better. In forty years he had not said so much about himself, as now in twenty minutes. His gestures were convincing. Almost, the spectators applauded. When he began to handle the woman, they were all benevolently willing to credit him with the murder. For a street performer he seemed too well-connected; for the theatre, his calves were too wretched. They would have been ready to argue that he was a decayed star, but they were too busy watching him and enjoying the mingled feelings which his art induced in diem.

Thérèse was annoyed with him. As she imagined that the greedy eyes of the men, all of them, men, were intended for her, she accepted his flatteries for a while. He himself was repulsive to her. What good was he to her? He was feeble and thin, couldn't play the man, men don't do such things. He was a murderer of course, but she wasn't afraid, she knew him, he was a coward. But she felt that the murderer's blissful interlude was becoming to her; he was under her spell and she kept quiet. The caretaker's shrewdness had vanished. He noticed that his daughter was not the pivot of the Professor's tale, and became absorbed in the movement of his legs. If only a beggar like that would pass within focus of his peep-hole! He would snap his legs like matchsticks. A man should have calves, or be ashamed. What did he go dangling round that old bitch for? She wasn't worth courting. She ought to leave him in peace and pull no more pretty faces. She'd put a spell on the poor Professor all right! Writhing in the toils of love, as the saying is. A gentleman too! His colleagues in the force ought to help him put on his trousers again. A stranger might come in at any moment and see he had no calves. That'd be a shame for the whole force. He ought to stop talking, no one here can understand such clever stuff; he always talks too clever. Mostly he doesn't talk at all. To-day he's got the bit between his teeth. What's it all in aid of Suddenly Kien drew himself up. He swarmed up Thérèse to his full height Scarcely had he overtopped her — he was a head taller — than he began to laugh. 'She hasn't grown!' he said and laughed, 'she hasn't grown!'

He had in fact decided to rid himself of this mirage by measuring himself against it. How could he reach the head of the pseudo-Therese? He saw her, a gigantic size, before him. He would stretch himself, he would stand on tiptoe and if she was still taller then he could say with absolute justification: 'In reality she was always a head smaller during the whole of her lifetime; therefore this object is a mirage!'

But just as he had shot up, as agile as an ape, his cunning experiment dwindled to Therese's old size. He did not worry; on the contrary, could there have been a better proof of his famous accuracy; Even his imagination was accurate! He laughed. A scholar of his stamp was not lost. Humanity suffers from inaccuracy. Several milliards of ordinary human beings had lived without meaning and died without meaning. A thousand accurate ones, at the outside a thousand, had built up knowledge. To let one of the upper thousand die before his time, would be little less than race-suicide. He laughed heartily. He imagined the hallucinations of ordinary fellows, like those surrounding him. Thérèse would have been too tall for any of them; in all probability she would have touched the ceiling. They would have cried with terror and turned to others for help. They lived among hallucinations; they did not even know how to form a lucid sentence. It was necessary to guess what they were thinking of, if it interested you; far better not to trouble your head with it. Among them, you felt as in a madhouse. Whether they laughed or cried, they were always grotesquely masked; they were incurable, one as cowardly as another; not one of diem would have murdered Thérèse; they would have let themselves be plagued to death by her. They were even afraid of helping him because he was a murderer?, Who but he knew the motives he had had for the deed? At his trial, after his great speech, this miserable species would acquit him. He had reason to laugh, who else had been born with a memory like his? Memory was the pre-condition of scientific accuracy. He would examine this mirage until he had convinced himself of what it really was. He had followed trails no less dangerous, imperfect texts, missing lines. He could recall no occasion on which he had failed. No problem he had undertaken had ever been left unsolved. Even this murder he must needs regard as a task accomplished. It took more than a mere hallucination to shatter Kien; the hallucination ran the greater risk, even if it were of flesh and blood. He was hard. Thérèse had not spoken for a long time. He had his laugh out. Then he set to work again.