The Voyeur (13 page)

He had to say something at any cost. The three glasses on the drainboard were nearly dry. The woman picked them up one after another and gave them a quick wipe of her towel; they disappeared under the counter from where she had originally taken them. They were lined up again at the end of a long row of others—all invisible to customers standing at the counter.

But arrangement by rows being impractical for serving, they were grouped in rectangles on the shelves: the three apéritif glasses had just been set down next to three similar glasses, ending a first series of six. A second identical series was just behind, then a third, a fourth, etc. . . . The sequence disappeared in the darkness at the back of the cupboard. To the right and to the left of this series, and on the shelves above and below it as well, were arranged other rectangular series of glasses: they varied in shape and size, rarely in color.

Nevertheless, certain differences of detail were noticeable. One glass was missing from the last row of those used for the wine-base apéritifs; two other glasses, furthermore, were not of the same make as the rest, from which they could be distinguished by a slight pinkish cast. This heterogeneous row thus included (from west to east): three units of the orthodox type, two pinkish glasses, and an empty place. In this series the shape of the glasses resembled a slightly convex barrel on a smaller scale.

It was from one of these—a colorless one—that the salesman had just drunk.

He lifted his eyes toward the gray-haired fat woman and saw that she was watching him—had been watching him, perhaps, for a long time now.

"Well, Maria. . . . What did she want me for? You said just now. . . . What did she mention me for?"

The proprietress continued to stare at him. She waited almost a minute before answering.

"No reason. She only wanted to know if anyone had seen you. She expected to find you in the village. That's part of the reason she came this far."

After another pause, she added: "I think she wanted to have a look at your watches."

"So that's what's at the bottom of it!" said the salesman. "Well, you're going to see for yourself that what I have here is well worth going a few miles out of your way to find. Her mother must have told her. If you ever admired splendid watches, ladies and gentlemen, prepare yourselves . . ."

As he continued in a tone bordering on parody, Mathias picked up his suitcase from between his feet and turned around to set it down on a table near the one where the three sailors were drinking. They looked in his direction; one moved his chair to be able to see better; the woman walked around the bar and came closer.

The copper-plated clasp, the cover, the black memorandum book, everything went as usual, without deviation or obstruction. Words, as always, worked a little less well than gestures, but with nothing too disturbing in the total effect. The proprietress wanted to try on several styles which had to be detached from the cardboard strips and afterward replaced as well as possible. She fastened them on her wrist one after another, moving her hand about in all directions to determine their effect, suddenly revealing a coquettish self-interest which her appearance scarcely suggested. She finally decided on a large watch with a heavily ornamented case in which the hours were indicated by tiny, complicated designs of interlaced knots rather than by numbers. Originally, perhaps, the artist had been inspired by the shapes of the twelve numbers; so little of them remained, however, that it was virtually impossible to tell the time—without a close examination, in any case.

Two of the sailors, who wanted their wives' advice, asked the salesman to stop by after lunch. They lived in the village, of which the topography could scarcely be complicated; nevertheless, they began extremely lengthy explanations to indicate the location of their respective dwellings. They probably gave him a number of useless or redundant details, but with such exactitude and such insistence that Mathias was completely confused. A description of the place containing willful
eiTors
would not have misled him more; he was not certain, in fact, that a good many contradictions were not mixed in with their redundancies. Several times he even had the impression that one of the two men was using the words "to the right" and "to the left" almost by chance—indiscriminately. A quick sketch of the cluster of houses would have cleared up everything; unfortunately, none of the sailors had anything to write with, the woman was too absorbed by her recent purchase to offer them a sheet of paper, and the salesman had no desire to have his memorandum book used as a spot-map. Since he intended to visit every house in the village anyway, he soon decided merely to nod with an understanding expression and not even listen to the rest of the directions, which he nevertheless punctuated now and then with a convincing "All right" or "Yes."

Since their two houses were in the same direction in relation to the café, the sailors had at first taken turns telling him where they were, the one who lived farthest away beginning his account where his companion left off. As an extra precaution, the first sailor began all over again as soon as the second one had finished. The successive versions referring to the same ground to be covered naturally included variations—which seemed, in fact, considerable. But then a real disagreement arose about the beginning of the route, and both men began to talk at once, each trying to impose his own point of view, although Mathias could not even understand the difference between them. The dispute would have been endless if the dinner hour had not forced them to put a provisional end to it: the salesman would settle the discussion later by telling them which way he considered better; since he spent his life on the road, he must be a specialist in such matters.

They paid for their wine and left, accompanied by the third, still silent, sailor. Mathias, who could not call on his customers before one-forty-five or two (because of the island's appreciably later daily routine as compared to that of the mainland), had plenty of time to eat his two sandwiches. He carefully put back the contents of his suitcase, closed it, and sat down at a table to wait for the return of the proprietress, who had disappeared into the room behind the counter; then he would order something to drink.

Alone now, he looked straight ahead, through the window, at the road that passed through the village. It was very wide, dusty—and empty. On the other side rose an unbroken stone wall higher than a man, doubtless screening some of the lighthouse outbuildings. He closed his eyes and thought how tired he was. He had risen early in order not to miss the boat. There was no bus line between his house and the harbor. In an alley of the Saint-Jacques district a ground-floor window revealed a deep, rather dark room; although it was already broad daylight, the light from a little lamp fell on the unmade bedsheets at the head of the bed; lit at an angle, from below, a lifted arm cast its magnified shadow on the wall and the ceiling. But he couldn't afford to miss the boat: this day on the island could save everything. Counting the first watch he had already sold in town this morning, just before getting on board, his sales still amounted to no more than four. He would write them down later in the memorandum hook. He thought how tired he was. Nothing disturbed the silence, neither in the café nor outside. No. On the contrary—in spite of the distance and the closed door—the steady crashing of the waves against the rocks beyond the lighthouse was distinctly audible. The sound was so clear he was surprised he had not noticed it sooner.

He opened his eyes. The sea, of course, was not visible from here. A fisherman was standing behind the window and looking into the café—one hand on the doorknob, the other holding an empty bottle. Mathias thought it was one of the men who had been in the café—the one who had not spoken. But when the man came inside, the salesman saw that he was mistaken. He realized, furthermore, that the delighted expression on the newcomer's face was the result of his own presence. The sailor walked straight over to him with loud exclamations: "It's really you? I'm not seeing things?"

Mathias rose from his chair in order to shake the hand held out to him. He made the handclasp as brief as possible and made a fist as he drew back his arm, so that his nails were hidden within Iris palm.

"Oh yes, it's me all right."

"Good old Mathias. It's been a hell of a long time!"

The salesman fell back into his chair. He did not know what to do. At first he had suspected a hoax: the fellow was merely pretending to know him. Since he did not see the fisherman's advantage in such a trick, he abandoned the idea and declared without further reserve: "My God, yes! It has been a hell of a long time!"

At this moment the fat woman returned; Mathias was not sorry to have an opportunity to prove he was not a stranger, that he really had friends on the island, that he could be trusted. The sailor took her for his witness: "I come in here to buy some wine, and who do I find myself next to but old Mathias—I haven't seen him in I don't know how long. That's a good one!"

The salesman didn't know how long either; he too found the encounter strange. But it was useless trying to stir up his memories, he didn't even know what he should be looking for.

"Such things happen," the proprietress said.

She took the empty bottle and brought a full one in its place. After taking it from her, the sailor declared that it would be "best" to put it on his bill "with the others." The woman made a dissatisfied face, but did not raise any objection. Looking at the wall with a vague expression, the sailor then announced that with a second bottle he could invite "this old Matt" to lunch. He addressed himself to no one in particular. No one answered.

Doubtless it was up to Mathias to intervene. But the man turned to him and began to question him with an increased cordiality about what had become of him "since old times." It seemed difficult to tell him without knowing beforehand how long ago he meant. The salesman did not have to puzzle about this for long, however, for the sailor had apparently no intention of listening to his answer. His new old comrade spoke more and more rapidly, making gestures of which the vigor and extent endangered the full bottle in his left hand. Mathias soon gave up trying to unravel any clues concerning the common past supposedly linking him to this person. His entire attention barely sufficed to follow the movements—sometimes divergent, sometimes convergent, sometimes without apparent relation—of the free hand and the bottle of red wine. The former, more agile, led on the other; by weighing it down with a load equal to the one already encumbering the left hand, the agitation of both might have been reduced to almost nothing—to slight movements, slower and more orderly, less extensive, necessary perhaps, easy to follow, in any case, for an attentive observer.

But first of all there would have to be a certain lull to interrupt this series of intertwined gestures and sentences which increased from moment to moment, assuming an alarming intensity. The slight breaks still evident here and there were of no use, for they could only be discerned at a distance, hence too late, when the current was already re-established. Mathias regretted not having bought the second bottle when the occasion had obviously permitted. To return to that point now demanded an immediacy of reaction utterly beyond his power. He closed his eyes. Behind the sailor, the threatening—or liberating—wine, the glass door, the road, the stone wall, the sea continued to dash against the cliff in regular assaults. After the shock of each wave against the irregular rock walls came the sound of water falling back in a mass, followed by the rustling of innumerable white cascades streaming out of the hollows and down the projections of the rock, the diminishing murmur lasting until the next wave.

The sun had completely disappeared. Past the shoreline the sea appeared a flat, even green, opaque, as if it had been frozen. The waves seemed to form at a very short distance from land, suddenly swelling up, submerging the giant rocks off the coast and spreading milky fans behind them as they advanced, collapsing farther inshore, boiling into the indentations in the slope, surging into unsuspected holes, breaking against other waves in gutters and grottoes, or leaping toward the sky in plumes of surprising height— which nevertheless were repeated at the same points with each wave.

In an indentation protected by an oblique ledge, where the calmer water lapped in rhythm with the undertow, a thick layer of yellowish moss had accumulated, from which the wind tore off long strips, spreading them in whorls along the face of the cliff. Mathias was walking rapidly along the path on the cliff top, his suitcase in one hand and his duffle coat buttoned up, several yards behind the fisherman. The latter, a full bottle dangling at the end of each arm, had finally stopped talking because of the racket the waves made. From time to time he turned around to face the salesman, and cried out a few words, accompanying them with confused movements of his elbows—vestiges of vaster demonstrations. Mathias could not reconstitute their full development, for he was obliged, in order to turn his ear in the man's direction, to keep his eyes elsewhere. He stopped for a moment in order to hear better. At the angle of a narrow passageway between two almost vertical walls, the water alternately swelled and hollowed with each wave; at this point there was neither foam nor backwash; the moving mass of water remained smooth and blue, rising and falling against the rock walls. The disposition of the nearby rocks forced a sudden influx of liquid into the narrows so that the level rose to a height greatly exceeding that of the initial wave. The collapse followed at once, creating in a few seconds, in the same place, a depression so deep that it was surprising not to be able to see sand, or pebbles, or the undulating fronds of seaweed at the bottom. On the contrary, the surface remained the same intense blue tinged with violet along the rock wall. But away from the coast, the sea appeared beneath a sky filled with clouds, a flat, even green, opaque, as if it had been frozen.

A reef farther offshore, where the swell seemed almost insignificant, escaped the periodic immersion despite its low configuration. A border of foam traced its contours. Three gulls sat perfectly still on slight eminences on it, one a little above the other two. They were sitting in profile, from where he was standing, all three facing the same direction and as identical as if they had been painted on canvas with a stencil—legs stiff, body horizontal, head raised, eve fixed, beak pointing toward the horizon.