Mr Hire's Engagement (12 page)

The whole thing went into a thin yellow envelope like the ones he used for his customers. Mr. Hire sat for a long time staring at it, as exhausted as though after several hours' physical effort.

At last he put on his coat and hat, picked up his heap of little parcels, and set out through the rain to the post office. The bearded inspector was following him without enthusiasm. As usual Mr. Hire spent a good five minutes at the counter, and when he left, his note to Victor was already speeding to its destination by express post.

The post office was practically empty, and resembled a railway station, with the dog-eared posters on the walls, the government-model clock, the trickles of water on its paved floor. Mr. Hire did not go away. He had no reason, now, to be in one place rather than another. He had hours ahead of him. The office in the Rue Saint-Maur had ceased to be his office. His room at Villejuif was no longer his room. His home, now, was the black velvet-collared overcoat, its sleeves and shoulders padded with stiff paper.

The inspector was getting bored with waiting for him, and Mr. Hire deliberately read all the posters, one by one.

It was an extraordinary afternoon. The rain came down harder and harder. People hesitated before stepping off a pavement, as though the roads had been torrents. Taxis drove slowly, for fear of skidding. The newspapers on the stands were being gradually reduced to pulp.

And now, while everyone else in Paris was crouching under the rain, and all faces were scowling, doorways holding groups of ten people, customers fidgeting in the little bars, waiting for a pause in the downpour, Mr. Hire was transfigured by gaiety.

Holding his umbrella very straight, he was going to and fro as the fancy took him, with no fear of getting mud-splashed or of being late. He would stop in front of shop-windows. He bought some chocolates at a sweet-shop, put the bag in his pocket and pulled one out now and then, to suck it slowly.

It was as though the doors of time and space had been thrown open before him. He had nothing to do. He did not have to be anywhere in particular.

And the most wonderful thing was that this holiday was limited. At five o'clock next morning, at five-forty to be exact, it would be over. He would take his seat in a railway carriage, opposite a woman. He would lean forward to speak to her. When the man from the dining-car came to offer tickets, he would say: 'Two!'

Two! He skipped. He got his umbrella hooked up on other people's. He was roaming along streets where it had never occurred to him to set foot in the days when a lifetime lay ahead of him with all the days and hours it contained.

Now he had only eleven hours, only ten! The lights of Paris were being turned on, and he stopped at a jeweller's shop in the
grands boulevards.
Thousands of rings lay there, crudely lit, but Mr. Hire remembered the Rue des Francs-Bourgeois, where jewellery is less expensive because most of it comes from the pawnbroker's.

He did not take a bus or a tram. It was more enjoyable to walk in the dazzling light from the shop windows, then along the darker streets where the only gleam came from the wet, cobble-stoned pavements.

It was not a tailor's now in the house where he had been born, but a gramophone shop. Yet the windows on the first floor—where the ceiling was so low that one could hardly stand upright—were still exactly the same; it looked as though they even had the same curtains. And why not? Who would be likely to change them?

The inspector was floundering along behind in a kind of nightmare, and Mr. Hire was going into a jeweller's shop, spending a quarter of an hour looking at rings and fingering them. He bought one with a turquoise, which they let him have cheap because there was a slight scratch on the stone. From the brightly-lit interior of the shop, he could see the pathetic nose and beard of the inspector, flattened against the window.

The jeweller, a thin, spry man, was staring hard at him, but waited until Mr. Hire had paid before asking: 'Aren't you young Hirovitch?'

'Yes!' he replied eagerly.

But the jeweller, closing the drawer of his till, merely said: 'Ah!'

And that 'ah' continued to ring in Mr. Hire's ears as he went along the street. That 'ah' made him feel uncomfortable, it weighed on him.

Why had the man said 'ah'?

Looking round, he once more caught sight of the inspector panting in his rear, and was no longer amused. On the contrary, he began to loathe the man, and he kept very close to the edge of the pavement, watching for the sound of the buses as they came up behind him.

He brought it off in the Place de la République. The traffic had piled up as far as the eye could see. The policeman was blowing his whistle. Taxis were hooting. At the very moment when, as though by a miracle, the mass began to break up, Mr. Hire jumped on the platform of a bus, while the inspector, surrounded by taxis, had no chance of running after it.

Mr. Hire got off at the Porte Saint-Martin, took another bus to the Gare du Nord, and walked down again from there along the Rue La Fayette to the Opéra.

Dark figures were streaming through the brightly-lit streets. He was carried with them in spite of himself.

Still nine hours to go!

But why had the Jew in the Rue des Francs-Bourgeois said 'ah'?

Weariness came over Mr. Hire all at once, and he went into a cinema, guided through the darkness by the attendant with her little torch.

Someone was seated to his left, someone to his right, and everywhere there were rows of faces, half-revealed by the glow from the screen. It was hot. A woman's voice was uttering long sentences, amplified, more than human, and sometimes one heard her breathing in between the words, as though her breath were brushing past the thousands of spectators, while the lips moved in her gigantic face.

Mr. Hire sighed, settled down in his seat, stretched his short legs.

Wasn't it incredible, miraculous that he should be here, when the police were looking for him, when the people of Villejuif were accusing him of having murdered a prostitute?

And he was only filling in time! Hardly eight hours from now, he would be strolling up and down a platform at the Gare de Lyon, outside a compartment in which he would have kept seats. Two seats! Alice would come running at the last moment, because women were always late. He would beckon to her to hurry. He would hoist her up the steps.

Then they would sit gazing at each other while the wheels began to turn beneath their feet, running through the outskirts of Paris, past the tall suburban houses, the little tree-shaded villas, out into the open country.

He started, without knowing why, looked to the left and saw a surprised face turned towards him. To the right an old woman was staring at him in the same way, drawing back a little.

Perhaps because he was panting? But now he was calming down. He looked at the screen. He even made an effort to follow the film.

All the same, he heaved another sigh, a deep sigh that was both contented and impatient, for there are moments when such waiting is positively painful, when one's fingers stiffen as though with cramp, one's knees quiver, and one feels like laughing and groaning at the same time.

IX

T
HAT
same day, at about ten in the morning, the concierge was astonished by the arrival of a neighbour with whom she was not even on speaking terms, bringing her little girl back from the nursery school. The child's neck was held stiffly and made to look longer by the bandage her mother had put round it that morning, because she had a sore throat. Her eyes were shining, her face pinched.

'They asked me to bring her home and to give you this.'

It was a note from the teacher: 'Your little girl has white spots in her throat and should be put to bed at once. I strongly advise you to send for the doctor.'

The concierge picked her daughter up, lifted her across the bucket and floor-cloth that lay in the doorway, and wondered where to put her, finally deposited her on a chair and drew it up close to the stove.

'Stay there!'

Never had there been so much rain. It tired one's eyes to watch it falling, splashing, trickling along the ground and making its way in everywhere, dirtying and soaking everything. In the courtyard the drain was choked up, and a pool was rapidly forming. The concierge finished wiping over her doorstep so that she could shut the door, and she could hear two men approaching from behind.

They were the police superintendent who had arrived in a taxi a quarter of an hour ago, and the inspector with whom he had been conferring. She had offered them the shelter of her lodge, but they had refused. They were pacing up and down the passage between the street and the courtyard, the collars of their overcoats turned up, hands in pockets, and their conversation was broken by long pauses. Finally the superintendent crossed the pavement, and departed again in his taxi. A few seconds later, the inspector came into the lodge to warm his hands at the stove.

'He'll be back presently, with the examining magistrate and a search-warrant. '

And the concierge, kneeling on her wet threshold, looked up as she swabbed it with the floorcloth.

'Will you stay where I put you!' she cried shrilly to the little girl, who had slid off the chair.

The policeman on point duty at the cross-roads had put on his oilcloth cape with its pointed hood. Lorries were driving past him, their tarpaulins glistening, and pedestrians were hesitating to cross the road. Some of the market-women, standing beside their barrows, had put empty sacks over their heads and shoulders.

The dairy was one step below pavement-level, and all day, time had to be wasted in mopping up the water that came pouring in from the pavement. The proprietress was wearing clogs, and so was Alice. They were both equally irritable. Customers would pause in the doorway, see the water, and turn away.

'Just a minute!' the proprietress would call to them. 'We'll wipe the floor. Alice! Alice! . . .'

And as time went by, her voice became steadily sharper.

'You're clumsier than ever, to-day. You would be, of course . . .'

The dairy-woman was short and tubby, as fresh and sour as an apple. She stood near the door.

'Don't be afraid! I'll serve you from here.'

Alice really was clumsy, or absent-minded, at any rate, with a vague dejected air that was unusual in her. She was constantly caught gazing at the rain-spotted window, through which the passers-by looked unreal, as though reflected in a bad looking-glass.

'Alice!'

She would jump, drag her clogs across the floor, and weigh out butter or cheese.

'One franc forty-five.'

At half-past ten the inspector, having warmed himself in the lodge and buttoned his raincoat up to his chin, began to pace up and down the pavement again, and each time he came near the shop he gave Alice a long look. Rain was streaming down his face, but it seemed to amuse him, to whip up his blood'

At ten to eleven the dairy-girl suddenly went out through the back door, which gave onto the courtyard.

'Alice! Where are you off to now?'

'To the lavatory,' she called back.

And when she reappeared, ten minutes later, she was breathing hard.

'You might have chosen a more convenient time. Hurry up! Madame Rorive is waiting to be served.'

A cyclist was knocked down by a lorry, a few yards from the policeman. He was carried to the corner café, his twisted bicycle left lying in the middle of the road. Alice paused in her weighing-out, to have a look. But before long the cyclist came limping back, half-dazed, his clothes covered with mud. Reeling like a drunkard, he staggered over to his machine, picked it up and went off, pushing it by the handlebars. Émile was at the door of the café. 'Shall I go and buy the meat?' asked Alice. 'Are you crazy? With six customers to be served?' And time dragged on, the rain kept falling, cars followed one another along the street. Emile had gone back into the
bistro
and every now and then rubbed his hand over the window to wipe away the steam and make sure Alice was not coming out.

'Shall I go now? You want three cutlets?'

She just flung her green coat over her shoulders, dashed out, and ran into the inspector, who was waiting at the corner. 'Not here!' she said. He went round the corner with her.

'I'll see you this evening, won't I? This may be my last day here.'

'Yes,' she murmured impatiently, looking towards the corner café. 'When?'

'I don't know. I'll tell you presently.'

And she rushed off down the pavement of the narrow shopping street, went into the butcher's, stood looking out into the street while she waited for the cutlets. When she came out again Émile was there but she could see the inspector at the corner of the main road. 'Careful!'

She stopped in front of the stationer's window and said very rapidly, without looking at her companion:

'I've put everything in his room! He wanted to go away with me and give you away.'

Already she had started to move off, because she felt the inspector was watching her. She smiled as she passed him and went back into the dairy, hung her coat on its hook, put the change into the drawer. 'How much?' asked her employer. 'Seven francs twenty-five.'

The little girl had at last been put to bed in a corner of the lodge, and now her face was scarlet, her eyes feverish, her breathing wheezy. Her brother had not gone back to school after lunch. 'Try and keep your sister amused!'

The concierge was exasperated. Everything was going wrong. The courtyard could only be crossed on planks laid on packing-cases and the plumber had not arrived. As if they were doing it on purpose, the men to read the gas and electric meters were promptly succeeded by other men with bills to be paid.

And now, at three o'clock, a car drew up in front of the house. The superintendent she had seen in the morning emerged from it, with a thin gentleman who wore a stiff collar nearly three inches high. The inspector hurried to meet them. And they were talking under the archway. It seemed their conversation would never end. At last the superintendent opened the glass-panelled door of the lodge.