The Voyeur (11 page)

A man and a woman were seated facing each other across a table. They were not eating; perhaps they had already finished. It looked as though they were expecting the salesman.

Mathias set down his suitcase on the unpatterned oilcloth. Taking advantage of their tacit consent, he unpacked his merchandise while delivering his sales-talk with some assurance. The two people sitting in their chairs listened politely; they even examined the strips of cardboard with a certain interest, passing them back and forth to each other and attempting one or two comments: "This is a practical shape," "This is a more elegant case," etc. . . . But they seemed to be thinking of something else—or of nothing at all—to be weary, distressed, chronically ill, or perhaps suffering from some tremendous disappointment; their comments were confined to scrupulously objective remarks: "This one is thinner," "The other has a convex glass," "Here's a rectangular face," . . . of which the obvious futility did not seem to disturb them.

Finally they decided on one of the cheapest models—one just like the one the old country woman had bought. They indicated their choice without enthusiasm, and as if without reason. ("Why wouldn't this one do just as well?") They exchanged no words with the salesman himself. It was as if they scarcely saw him. When the man had taken out his wallet and paid for the watch, Mathias regretted not having insisted on an item two or three times as expensive, thinking that they would have paid for it with no more hesitation, with the same indifference.

No one came to show him out. The new watch (with the metal strap) was still lying on the oilcloth between the woman and her ahead)' distracted companion: shiny, lost, unjustified.

There was not another house until the village at Black Rocks. Mathias pedaled steadily for about two-thirds of a mile. The bicycle cast only a pale—and intermittent—shadow which soon disappeared altogether. Against the gray background of the sky, in which only a few vague blue spots remained, rose the lighthouse, now quite near.

The structure was one of the highest of the countryside, as well as one of the most massive. Besides the white-painted, slightly conical tower itself, it included a semaphore, a radio station, a small power-house, four enormous foghorns for bad weather, and several accessory structures sheltering machines and equipment, as well as lodgings for the workmen and their families. Had these employees been engineers or even mechanics, they would have constituted a wealthy enough clientele for Mathias, but unfortunately the lighthouse workers were not the sort who bought their watches from traveling salesmen.

There remained the village proper. Originally merely a cluster of three or four farmhouses, it had grown with the neighboring installations, although more modestly Even had Mathias' memory been better, he would scarcely have recognized it, so much had it developed since his childhood: perhaps ten cottages, jerry-built but of neat appearance, now surrounded and concealed the original group, whose thicker walls, lower roofs, and smaller windows were evidence of their earlier date. The new constructions were not a part of the world of wind and rain: although actually quite similar to their predecessors—granted certain minor differences— they seemed without climate, and at the same time without history and geographical location. It was remarkable that they managed to withstand, with apparently equal success, the same raw weather as the others; unless atmospheric conditions had grown somewhat gentler . . .

It was no different now from anywhere else. There was a grocery and a café, of course, almost at the beginning of the village. Leaving his bicycle near the door, Mathias went in.

The arrangement inside was like that of all such establishments in the country or even in the suburbs of big cities —or on the quays of little fishing ports. The girl behind the bar had a timorous face and the ill-assured manners of a dog that had been ill-assured manners of a dog that had been ill-assured manners of a girl who served behind the. . . . Behind the bar, a fat woman with a satisfied, jovial face beneath her abundant gray hair was pouring drinks for two workmen in blue overalls. She handled the bottle with the sure gestures of a professional, raising the neck with a slight rotation of her wrist at the precise moment the liquid reached the edge of the glass. The salesman went to the bar, set his suitcase on the floor between his feet, and ordered an absinthe.

Without thinking, the salesman was about to order an absinthe when he changed his mind—just before having spoken the word. He cast about for the name of some other kind of drink, and, unable to think of any, pointed to the bottle the proprietress was still holding after having served the two lighthouse workers.

"I'll have the same," he said, and set the suitcase on the floor between his feet.

The woman put in front of him a glass like the first two; she filled it with her other hand, which had not yet released the bottle—making the same rapid movement, so that a large quantity of liquid was still in the air, between the bottom of the glass and the neck of the bottle, as she was already lifting the latter away. At the very second she had finished twisting her wrist, the surface of the poured liquid immobilized on a level with the edge of the glass—without the slightest miniscus—like a diagram representing the theoretical capacity of the glass.

Its color—rather dark reddish-brown—was that of the majority of wine-base aperitifs. Promptly returned to its place on the shelf, the bottle could not be distinguished from its neighbors in the row of different brands. Previously, when the woman had been holding it in her huge hand, the spread of the fingers—or else the position of the label in relation to the observer—had prevented him from determining its brand. Mathias wanted to reconstruct the scene in order to try to fasten on some fragment of bright-colored paper to compare with the labels lined up on the shelf. He succeeded only in discovering an anomaly which had not struck him at the time: the proprietress used her left hand to serve drinks.

He studied her more attentively as she rinsed and dried the glasses—with the same dexterity—but he could not establish a preliminary standard as to the respective functions of each hand in these complex operations; so that it was impossible for him to determine whether or not she was right- or left-handed. His mind grew so confused between what he saw with his own eyes and his recollection of the previous scene that he began to muddle right and left himself.

The woman put down her towel; she seized the coffee mill beside her, sat down on a stool, and began to turn the handle vigorously. In order not to tire either arm at such a speed, she ground the coffee with one arm and then the other alternately.

The coffee beans made a pattering noise as they were crushed in the gearing, and when one of the two men said something to his companion Mathias could not hear him clearly. Several syllables, however,' took shape in his mind, resembling the word "cliff" and—less positively—the verb "to bind." He cocked his ears; but no one was speaking any longer.

The salesman found it strange that they had fallen silent in this way ever since he had come in, sipping their apéritifs and putting their glasses on the bar after each swallow. Perhaps he had disturbed them in the midst of an important conversation? He tried to imagine what it could be about. But suddenly he was afraid to guess, and dreaded the possibility that the subject might be broached again, as if their words, without their knowing it, might have concerned him. It would not be difficult to go a good deal further along this irrational course: the words "without their knowing it," for instance, were superfluous, for if his presence had caused them to fall silent—although they were not embarrassed to speak in front of the proprietress—it was obviously because they . . . because "he" . . . "In front of the proprietress," or rather, "with" her. And now they were pretending not to know one another. The woman stopped grinding only to refill the coffee mill. The workmen managed to keep another mouthful at the bottoms of their glasses. To all intents and purposes no one had anything to say; yet five minutes before he had seen through the window all three talking animatedly together.

The proprietress was about to pour another drink for the two men; they were wearing blue overalls, like most of the lighthouse workers. Mathias leaned his bicycle against the shop¬window, pushed open the glass door, stood against the bar next to the two workmen and ordered an apéritif. After having served him, the woman began grinding coffee. She was middle-aged, fat, imposing, self-assured. At this time of day there was no sailor in her establishment. The house in which her café was located had no upper floor. The sparkling water of the harbor could not be seen through the door.

Evidently no one had anything to say. The salesman turned toward the room. For a moment he was afraid it was all going to begin over again: three fishermen he had not noticed when he came in—a very young man and two older ones—were sitting over three glasses of red wine at one of the back tables; just then the youngest began speaking—but the noise of the coffee mill might have kept Mathias from hearing the beginning of the conversation. He cocked his ears. As usual, it was about the slump in crab sales. He turned back to the bar to finish this unidentifiable reddish drink.

His eyes met those of the proprietress; she had been watching him on the sly as she ground her coffee, while he himself had been looking in the other direction. He lowered his eyes to his glass, as if he had noticed nothing. To his left the two workmen were looking straight ahead, toward the bottles lined up on the shelf.

"You wouldn't happen to be the man selling watches?" the woman asked suddenly, her voice calm.

He lifted his head. She was still turning the handle of her coffee mill, still staring at him—but kindly, he thought.

"Yes, I am," answered Mathias. "Someone must have told you a salesman was coming this way. News travels fast around here!"

"Maria, one of the Leduc girls, came in here just ahead of you. She was looking for her sister, the youngest one. You visited them this morning: the last house as you leave town."

"Yes, of course I visited Madame Leduc. Her brother is a friend of mine—Joseph—the one who works for the steamship line. But I haven't seen the girls today, not one of them. No one told me the youngest was here."

"She wasn't. Her mother sent her to tend the sheep. And she ran away again. Always running off where she shouldn't, making trouble somewhere."

"They send her as far as this with the sheep?"

"No, of course not: back there, under the crossroads. Maria went to tell her to come home early, but no one was there—only the sheep. The girl had picketed them in a hollow."

Mathias shrugged, hesitating between amusement and compassion. The proprietress didn't take the matter too much to heart, but on the other hand she wasn't laughing either; her expression was completely neutral—certain of what she was talking about, yet attaching no importance to it—a vaguely professional smile on her lips, as if she were merely talking about the weather.

"It sounds as if she's something of a problem," the salesman said.

"A real devil! Her sister came all the way here on her bicycle to see if anyone knew where she was. If she doesn't take her home with her, there's going to be trouble."

"Children are a lot of trouble," said the salesman.

They were obliged to speak very loudly, in order to be heard over the noise of the coffee mill. Between sentences, the pattering noise of the coffee beans as they were crushed in the gearing was all that could be heard. To reach the village at Black Rocks, Maria must have passed Mathias on the road while he was visiting the exhausted-looking couple. Before that, to cross the moor between the road and the place where the sheep were grazing 0n top of the cliff, she couldn't have taken the same path he used, but a short cut probably, a short cut starting at the crossroads. In fact, the girl needed a certain amount of time to make the trip from the road to the cliff top and back and to look around a little as well. This amount of time would be much more than the few minutes it had taken the salesman to sell the one watch in the only house he had stopped at between the fork to the Marek farm and the village. And the distance between this fork and the cottage in question could not account for the difference either: beside the fact that it was scarcely more than five or six hundred yards, it was still the road both of them must have taken.

Thus Maria was already riding toward the cliff before he himself had climbed back onto his own bicycle. Consequently, if she had taken the path opposite the fork to the Marek farm, she would have come upon the salesman in the middle of the road, gossiping with the old woman —or examining his bicycle chain, the clouds, the dead toad—for this prolonged stop had occurred within sight of the crossing—not two steps away from it, so to speak. (This same hypothesis—in which the girl used the same path Mathias had taken, to reach the cliff top—worked no better if presuming she had arrived at the cliff top before he had made his stop, since then she would have encountered the salesman on the path itself. )

She must have come by another road. But why had she mentioned him to the proprietress? Because of the rolling ground, it seemed unlikely—it was impossible—it was impossible—it was impossible that she had seen him from another path, supposing that she had been going toward the cliff top and he returning from it. Back there, in the sheltered hollow where the sheep were grazing, she had doubtless just missed him. After a rapid exploration of the environs, repeated calls, a few seconds' hesitation, she had returned to the main road—this time, probably, by the same path he had taken (the only one he knew), but the tire tracks were too numerous and too indistinct to be able to tell one from another. It seemed unlikely that there would be a new short cut between the sheep and the village at Black Rocks —not a very useful short cut in any case, given the size of the bay jutting into the land northwest of the lighthouse.

Mathias, who had omitted this last possibility in the course of all his previous deductions, feared for a moment that he might have to reconstruct his entire train of thought. But on reflection, he decided that even if this unlikely short cut had existed, it—would not have been sufficient to negate the conclusions he had arrived at—although it would have modified his reasoning, without a doubt.