Four Novels (19 page)

“It always surprises you,” said Claire.

The rain had stopped. In moments of unforeseen silence, you could hear the gay streaming of rain on the skylight. Judith, who had gone off to the kitchen, was brought back by a waiter. Pierre was talking about Castile. About Madrid. He found out that in this town there were two Goyas in the church of San Andrea. The church of San Andrea is on the square they crossed when they arrived. The waiter brought the soup. Maria served Judith. And Judith’s eyes filled with tears. Pierre smiled at his child. Maria gave up hope of getting Judith to eat.

“I’m not hungry tonight,” Claire said, “you know, I think it’s the storm.”

“Happiness,” said Maria.

Claire concentrated on what was going on in the dining room. Behind her suddenly thoughtful expression there was a smile. Pierre, wincing, raised his eyes on Maria—the same eyes as Judith’s—and Maria smiled at those eyes.

“Everyone has been waiting so much for this storm, for this coolness,” Maria explained.

“Yes,” Claire said.

Maria was again hoping to get Judith to eat. She succeeded. Spoonful by spoonful, Judith ate. Claire told her a story. Pierre was listening too. The disorder in the dining room was straightening out a little. Yet, you could still hear thunder, more or less loud, depending on whether the storm was coming closer or moving farther away. Every time the skylight was lit up by lightning, a child would cry.

While dinner was being served, people spoke of Rodrigo Paestra’s crime. Some laughed. Who would ever have the chance to kill with such simplicity, like Rodrigo Paestra?

Police whistles continued in the night. Whenever they were heard very close to the hotel, conversations would die down, people would listen. Some were hoping and waiting for Rodrigo Paestra to be captured. A difficult night was ahead.

“He’s on the rooftops,” Maria said very softly.

They didn’t hear her. Judith was eating fruit.

Maria got up. She walked out of the dining room. They were left alone. She had said she was going to see what the hotel looked like.

There were many corridors. Most of them were circular. Some had a view of the wheat fields. Others, a vista of the avenue which crossed the square. No one was sleeping in the corridors yet. Still others led to balconies overlooking the rooftops of the city. Another shower was in the making. The horizon was lurid. It seemed very far away. The storm had become even bigger. There seemed to be little hope that it would die down during the night.

“Storms go as they come,” Pierre had said. “Just like that. You mustn’t be afraid, Claire.”

That’s what he had said. Maria didn’t yet know the irresistible perfume of her fear, of her frightened youth. Just a few hours ago.

The rooftops were empty. They would probably always be, whatever hope you might have of seeing them, just for once, filled with people.

The rain was light but it covered the empty rooftops, and the town disappeared. You couldn’t see anything any more. There remained only the memory of a dream of loneliness.

When Maria came back to the dining room the manager was announcing the arrival of the police.

“As you probably know,” she said, “a crime was committed in our town this afternoon. We are very sorry.”

Two

N
O ONE HAD TO
identify himself. The manager vouched for her guests.

Six policemen rushed through the dining room. Three others walked over to the circular corridors surrounding it. They were going to search the rooms off these corridors. They were just going to search these rooms, the manager said. It wouldn’t take long.

“I was told he’s on the rooftops,” Maria said again.

They heard. She had spoken softly. But they weren’t surprised. Maria left it at that. The confusion in the dining room had reached a new peak. All the waiters came from this village and knew Rodrigo Paestra. The policemen also came from the village. They questioned one another. The waiters stopped serving. The manager intervened. Be careful not to say anything bad about Perez. The waiters went on talking. The manager shouted orders that no one heard.

And then, little by little, everything having been discussed by the waiters, the customers slowly regained their wits and asked for the rest of their meal. The waiters went back to work. They spoke to the customers. All the customers listened carefully to what the waiters were saying, watched the police coming and going, worried, gained or lost hope as to the outcome of the search, some were still smiling at Rodrigo Paestra’s naivete. Some women talked about how horrible it is to be killed at nineteen, and to be left like Rodrigo Paestra’s wife, alone, so alone, that night, in the town hall, a mere child. But all were eating, more or less heartily, in the midst of the confusion, eating the food brought in by the waiters in the midst of anger and confusion. Doors slammed in the corridors, and the policemen crossed the dining room, with Tommy guns, wearing boots and belts, unalterably serious, giving off a nauseating smell of wet leather and sweat. At the sight of them, children always start to cry.

Two of the policemen must have gone to the corridor, on the left of the dining room, where Maria had just been.

Judith, in a state of terror, stopped eating her fruit. There were no longer any policemen in the dining room. The waiter who had been taking care of them came back to their table shaking with anger; he was muttering insults against Perez and paying tribute to Rodrigo Paestra’s lasting patience; and Judith, pieces of orange dripping between her fingers, was listening all the time.

They must have reached the balcony at the end of the circular corridor where Maria had just been. It wasn’t raining any more, and Maria could hear their footsteps fading away in that corridor alongside the dining room, through the noise of streaming rain on the skylight, of which no one in the dining room seemed to be aware now.

Everything was quiet again. The quiet of the sky. The quiet streaming of the rain on the skylight punctuated by the policemen’s steps in that last corridor—once the rooms, the kitchens, the courtyards will have been searched—will they forget him? Some day? No.

If they reached the balcony, then it was certain that Rodrigo Paestra was not on the rooftops.

“Why was I told such a thing?” Maria went on again very softly.

They heard. But neither one was surprised.

She had seen these rooftops. A moment before they were stretched out, evenly strewn under the sky, entangled, bare, right under the balcony, bare and consistently empty.

Calls could be heard from outside. From the street? From the courtyard? Very close. The waiters stopped and listened, their hands full of dishes. Nobody complained. The calls went on. They bore gaps of terror into the sudden silence. Listening, you could hear that these calls were always the same. His name.

“Rodrigo Paestra.”

In long, plaintive, rhythmical, nearly tender tones, they begged him to answer, to surrender.

Maria stood up. Pierre took her by the arm and forced her to sit down. She sat down obediently.

“But he is on the rooftops,” she said very softly.

Judith didn’t hear.

“It’s funny,” Claire said very softly, “I don’t care at all.”

“But,” Maria said, “it’s just that I know.”

Pierre gently called Maria.

“Please, Maria,” he said.

“It’s those calls,” she said, “that get on one’s nerves, it’s nothing.”

The calls stopped. And another shower began. The police were back. The waiters went back to their work, smiling, their eyes lowered. The manager stayed at the dining room door, she kept an eye on her staff, she smiled too, she too, she knew Rodrigo Paestra. A policeman went into the hotel office and made a phone call. He called the neighboring town to ask for reinforcements. He was shouting because of the noise of the rain on the skylight. He said that the village had been thoroughly surrounded as soon as the crime had been discovered and that there were ten chances out of ten they would find Rodrigo Paestra at dawn, they had to wait, the search was difficult because of the storm and the power failure, but it was probable that the storm, as usual, would end at daybreak, and what they had to do was to guard, all night, the roads leading from the town, for that they needed more men, so that as soon as it was light Rodrigo Paestra would be caught like a rat. The policeman had made himself understood. He was waiting for an answer that came at once. Around ten, in an hour and a half, the reinforcements would be there. The waiter came back to their table, trembling, and spoke to Pierre.

“If they catch him,” he said, “if they manage to catch him, he won’t let them take him to jail.”

Maria was drinking wine. The waiter left. Pierre leaned toward Maria.

“Don’t drink so much Maria, please don’t.”

Maria raised her arm, pushed away the potential obstacle this voice seemed to be, again and again. Claire had heard Pierre speaking to Maria.

“I’m not drinking much,” Maria said.

“It’s true,” Claire said, “tonight Maria is drinking less than usual.”

“You see,” Maria said.

As for Claire, she wasn’t drinking anything. Pierre got up and said that he too was going to take a look at the hotel.

There were no longer any policemen in the hotel. They had left, in single file, by the staircase next to the office. It wasn’t raining. The whistling kept on, but far away, and in the dining room the chatter had started again, the complaints, especially about the bad Spanish food which the waiters were still serving to late-comers with triumphant gusto because Rodrigo Paestra had not yet been caught. Judith was calm
and started to yawn. When the waiter came back to their table he spoke to Claire, to Claire’s beauty, and stopped to look at her again after speaking.

“One chance they don’t catch him,” he said.

“Did she love Perez?” Claire asked.

“Impossible to love Perez,” the waiter said.

Claire laughed and the waiter gave way to laughter also.

“Still,” Claire said, “what if she loved Perez?”

“Why do you want Rodrigo Paestra to understand?” the waiter asked.

He left. Claire began to nibble some bread. Maria was drinking and Claire let her.

“Pierre isn’t coming back?” Maria said.

“I don’t know. Any more than you do.”

Maria moved toward the table, straightened up, then leaned very close to Claire.

“Listen, Claire,” Maria said, “listen to me.”

Claire leaned back in the opposite direction. She looked past Maria, staring at the back of the dining room without seeing it.

“I’m listening to you, Maria,” she said.

Maria fell back into her chair and said nothing. Some time passed. Claire had stopped nibbling bread. When Pierre came back he told them that he had picked the best corridor in the hotel for Judith, he had seen the sky, he had seen the storm petering out little by little; it would probably be nice tomorrow and very early, if they wanted, they could reach Madrid, after looking at the two Goyas in San Andrea. Since the storm had started again, he spoke a little louder than usual. His voice was beautiful, always precise, with a precision, this evening, that was almost oratorical. He was talking about the two Goyas it would be a shame not to see.

“Without this storm, we would have forgotten them,” Claire said.

She said this like anything else and yet she never would have said it like that before this evening. Where, in the half darkness Maria had given them earlier, in what part of the hotel, did they first wonder and then marvel at having known each other so little until then, at the wonderful agreement that had grown between them, and then at last come to light behind this window? or on that balcony? or in this corridor? in this surging warmth of the streets after the showers, behind the sky so dark, Claire, that your eyes, at that very moment, were the
very color of rain. How could I have noticed it before? Your eyes, Claire, are gray.

She told him that the light always had something to do with it and that he was probably mistaken that evening because of the storm.

“It seems to me, if I remember correctly,” Maria said, “that before leaving France we had talked about these two Goyas.”

Pierre remembered. Not Claire. The shower stopped and they could hear one another. The dining room was getting emptier. The humming picked up in the corridors. They were probably dividing up beds. Children were being undressed. The time had come for Judith to go to sleep. Pierre was quiet. Finally Maria said it.

“I’m going to put Judith to sleep in the corridor.”

“We’ll wait for you,” Pierre said.

“I’ll be back.”

Judith didn’t object. In the hall there were many children, some already asleep. Maria didn’t undress Judith that night. She wrapped her in a blanket, against the wall, half-way down the corridor.

She waited for Judith to fall asleep. She waited a long time.

Three

S
O MUCH TIME WENT
by that no trace of twilight was left in the sky.

“Don’t expect any electricity tonight,” the manager of the hotel had said. “Usually around here the storms are so violent that there’s no electricity all night.”

There was no electricity. There were going to be more storms, more sudden showers throughout the night. The sky was still low and small, still whipped by a very strong wind, toward the west. The sky could be seen, perfectly arched up to the horizon. And the limits of the storm could be seen too, trying to take over more of the clearer part of the sky.

From the balcony where she was standing, Maria could see the whole expanse of the storm. They remained in the dining room.

“I’ll be back,” Maria had said.

Behind her, in the corridor, all the children were now sleeping. Among them was Judith. When Maria turned around she saw her asleep, her body outlined in the soft light of the oil lamps hooked up on the walls.

“As soon as she’s asleep, I’ll come back,” Maria had told them.

Judith was asleep.

The hotel was full. The rooms, the corridors, and later on this hall, would be still more crowded. There were more people in the hotel than in a whole district of the town. The town, beyond which stretched deserted roads, all the way to Madrid, toward which the storm was moving since five o’clock, bursting here and there, its clouds breaking and then mending again. To the point of exhaustion. Until when? It was going to last all night.