The Erasers (2 page)

***

Here is Antoine; it
’
s starting well.

“
Have you heard the news yet?
”

Not even a nod in answer. He is not an easy customer this morning, the manager. Let
’
s give him a try, anyway.

“
A man named Albert Dupont, murdered last night, here, right at the end of the street!
”

“
Daniel.
”

“
Daniel what?
”

“
Daniel Dupont.
”

“
No, I said it was Albert. Right here
…
”

“
First of all, no one was murdered.
”

“
That
’
s what you say. How do you know anyway, without ever leaving your bar?
”

“
She telephoned from here. The old housekeeper who works for them. Their line was out of order. Flesh wound in the arm.
”

(Poor fool who always knows everything.)

“
Well, he
’
s dead anyway! Look at the paper: he
’
s dead, I tell you.
”

“
You have a paper?
”

Antoine looks through his overcoat pockets, then he remembers:

“
No, I left it for my wife.
”

“
All right, never mind, it doesn
’
t matter anyway: his name
’
s Daniel and he isn
’
t dead at all.
”

Antoine does not look happy. He stands there wondering what he might do that would be more convincing than an ironic sneer, but the bartender does not give him time.

“
Are you drinking something, or getting the hell out?
”

The dispute is likely to grow nastier, when the door opens again and lets in a cheerful, plump, and gesticulating person, almost in rags.

“
Good morning, boys. Say, I have a riddle for you.
”

“
All right, we know that one,
”
Antoine says.

“
No, boy,
”
the cheerful man says, undiscouraged,
“
you don
’
t know this one. No one does. No one, you hear? Bartender, a glass of white wine I
”

Judging from the man
’
s face, his riddle must be a really good one. So no one will miss a word of it, he enunciates it as if he were giving dictation:

“
What is the animal that in the morning
…
”

But no one is listening to him. He has already had one too many. He
’
s funny, of course, but the other two don
’
t have the heart for jokes: what concerns them is a man
’
s life!

The Rue des Arpenteurs is a long straight street, bordered on each side by houses that are already old, whose inadequately tended two- or three-storied
façade
s suggest the modest circumstances of the tenants they shelter: laborers, office workers, or merely fishermen. The shops are not very prosperous looking and even the
café
s are few and far between—not that these people are particularly sober, but they choose to do their drinking elsewhere.

The
C
afé
des Allies (Wines & Liquors. Furnished Rooms) is located at the end of the street, number 10, only a few houses from the Boulevard Circulaire and the city proper, so that the proletarian character of the buildings in its vicinity is somewhat tempered by bourgeois features. At the corner of the parkway stands a big stone apartment building, well kept up, and opposite, at number 2, a small two-story private house with a narrow strip of garden around it. The structure does not have much style but gives an impression of comfort, even of a certain luxury; a fence and behind it a spindle-tree hedge clipped to a man
’
s height complete its isolation.

The Rue des Arpenteurs extends eastward, interminable and less and less prepossessing, to quite out-of-the-way neighborhoods that are obviously those of the poor: a checkerboard of muddy paths between the shacks, rusty corrugated iron, old planks, and tarpaper.

To the west, on the other side of the parkway and its canal, stretches the city proper, t
he streets somewhat cramped be
tween the high brick houses, the public buildings without unnecessary ornament, the churches stiff, the shopwindows somber. The whole effect is solid, occasionally substantial, but austere; the
café
s close early, the windows are narrow, the people are serious.

Yet this mournful town is not monotonous: a complicated network of canals and ponds brings in from the sea, which is only six kilometers north, the smell of kelp, the gulls, and even a few boats of low tonnage, coasters, barges, small tugs, for which a whole series of drawbridges and locks opens. This water, this movement keep people
’
s minds open. The freighter whistles reach them from the harbor, over the tow docks and depots, and at high tide bring the space, the temptation, the consolation of possibility.

Since their heads are on their shoulders, temptation is enough: possibility remains simply possible, the whistles have long blown without hope.

The crews are recruited elsewhere; men around here prefer to go into business, on land, the most daring among them scarcely venturing farther than thirty miles from the coast to the herring fisheries. The rest are content to listen to the ships and estimate their tonnage. They do not even go to see them, it
’
s too far. The Sunday walk stops at the Boulevard Circulaire: one comes out into the parkway along the Avenue Christian-Charles, then follows it along the canal to the New Dairy or to the Gutenberg Bridge, rarely below.

Farther south, on Sundays, one meets, so to speak, only neighborhood people. On weekdays, the calm here is disturbed only by the army of bicycles on their way to work.

At seven in the morning, the workers have already gone past; the parkway is virtually deserted.

At the edge of the canal, near the drawbridge at the end of the Rue des Arpenteurs, there are two men. The bridge has just opened to let a trawler through; standing near the winch, a sailor is about to close it again.

The other man is probably waiting for him to finish, but he cannot be in much of a hurry: the footbridge joining the two banks a hundred yards to the right would already have allowed him to continue on his way. He is a short man dressed in a long, rather old greenish coat and a shapeless felt hat. His back is to the sailor, he is not watching the boat; he is leaning against the iron railing at the end of the bridge. He is staring straight down at the canal
’
s oily water.

This man
’
s name is Garinati. He is the one who has just been seen going into the
Café
des Allies to ask for that Wallas who was no longer there. He is also the clumsy murderer of the day before, who only slightly wounded Daniel Dupont. His victim
’
s residence is that little house with the fence around it at the corner of the street, just behind his back.

The iron fence, the spindle-tree hedge, the gravel path around the house
…
He has no need to turn around to see them. The middle window of the second floor is the study window. He knows all that by heart: he studied it enough last week. For nothing, moreover.

Bona was well-informed, as usual, and all Garinati had to do was follow his orders carefully. Would have had, rather, for everything has just been ruined because of Garinati
’
s blunder: probably no more than scratched, Dupont will soon be able to return behind his spindle trees and dive back into his files and index cards among the green calf bindings.

The light switch near the door, a porcelain button with a metal plate. Bona had said to turn off the light; he did not do this, and everything was ruined
. The tiniest flaw…Is it so
certain? The hallway had remained lighted, of course; but if the bedroom had been in darkness, Dupont might not have waited to open the door wide to turn on the light. Maybe? Find out! Or would he have really done it? And the tiniest flaw was enough. Maybe.

Garinati had never gone into this house before, but Bona
’
s information was so exact that he could just as well have moved around inside it with his eyes closed. At five to seven he has reached the house, calmly walking down the Rue des Arpenteurs. No one around. He has pushed open the garden gate.

Bona had said:
“
The buzzer won
’
t work.
”
Which was true. The bell has remained noiseless. Yet that very morning, when he had passed in front of the house (
“
There
’
s no use your prowling around there all the time
”
), he had surreptitiously pushed open the gate, just to see, and he had distinctly heard the bell. No doubt the wire had been cut during the afternoon.

It was already a mistake to have tried the gate in the morning; coming in this evening, he was afraid for a second. But the silence has reassured him. Had he ever really had any doubts?

He has carefully closed the gate, but without letting the latch catch, and walked around the house on the right side, keeping on the lawn to avoid making the gravel crunch. In the darkness, he could just make out the path, paler between the two flowerbeds and the well-clipped top of the spindle trees.

The study window, the one in the middle of the second story on the canal side, is brightly lighted. Dupont is still at his desk. It
’
s all just the way Bona said it would be.

Leaning against the wall of the shed, at the back of the garden, Garinati waits, his eyes fixed on the window. After a few minutes the bright light is replaced by a fainter glow: Dupont has just turned out the big desk lamp, leaving only one of the bulbs on in the ceiling fixture. It is seven o
’
clock: he is coming downstairs to eat.

The landing, the staircase, the hall.

The dining room is to the left, on the ground floor. Its shutters are closed. At the back of the house, the kitchen shutters are closed too, but a faint light filters through their slats.

Garinati approaches the little glass door, being careful not to expose himself to the light coming from the hallway. At the same moment the dining room door is closed again. Dupont already? He has come down quickly. Or else the old housekeeper? No, she
’
s coming out of the kitchen now. So it was Dupont.

The old woman moves off toward the other end of the hall; but her hands are empty; he will have to wait longer. She comes back almost at once, leaving the dining room door open. She goes back into her kitchen and soon reappears carrying an enormous tureen in both hands, comes back into the dining room and this time closes the door behind her. Now is the moment.

Bona said:
“
You have almost five minutes to get upstairs. The old woman waits until he has finished his soup.
”
Probably she is taking orders for the next day; since she is rather deaf it probably takes some time.

Noiselessly, Garinati slips inside.
“
The hinges will creak if you push the door too far.
”
Violent desire, suddenly, to try all the same; to push it open a little farther, only a little; just to see how far he can go. A few degrees. Just one degree, one single degree; a little margin for error
…
But the arm stops, sensible. On the way out, instead.

They are not very careful in this house: anyone could come in.

Garinati has closed the door without a sound. He walks carefully on the tiles where his crepe soles make an almost imperceptible hissing noise. On the steps and upstairs there are thick carpets everywhere, that will be even easier. The hall is lighted; the landing too, upstairs. No more difficulty. Walk up, wait until Dupont comes back, and kill him.

On the kitchen table there are three thin slices of ham spread out on a white plate. A light dinner: fine. Provided he doesn
’
t empty the whole tureen. You shouldn
’
t overeat if you want to sleep without dreaming.

Things take their immutable course. With calculated movements.