Jealousy and In The Labyrinth (35 page)

On my last visit, the third injection was useless. The wounded soldier was dead. The streets are full of armed soldiers who march by singing in low voices, their songs more nostalgic than joyous. Others pass in open trucks in which the men are sitting stiffly, rifles upright, held in both hands between their knees; they are arranged in two rows, back to back, each row facing one side of the street. Patrols circulate everywhere, and no one may go out after nightfall without a pass. It was necessary to give the third injection, and only a practicing doctor would have had authorization to do so. Fortunately the streets were poorly lit, certainly much worse than during the last few days when the lights were on even in broad daylight. But it was too late for the injection. Besides, they only served to make the dying man's last hours less painful. There was nothing else to do.

The body has remained in the apartment of the sham lame man, who will make the proper declaration, telling the whole story as it actually happened: a wounded man whom they took in off the street and about whom they knew nothing, not even his name, since he had no papers. If the man is afraid his leg will be examined on this occasion and his actual condition discovered, the woman could take the appropriate steps; as for the man, he need only avoid showing himself when they come to get the body: it will not be the first time he has hidden from a visitor.

The woman seems to mistrust him. In any case she has been unwilling to let him deal with the package wrapped in brown paper which he badly wanted to open. He thought it was some secret weapon, or at least its plans. The box is now in safe keeping—on the cracked black marble top of the chest—closed, wrapped up again, retied, but bringing it back here from their place has not been easy on account of the patrols. Luckily it was not very far. Just before the goal was reached, a brief command rang out: "Halt!" shouted in a loud voice from some distance behind. In itself, the box was obviously not very compromising; the sham lame man's notions on this subject were, of course, ridiculous, but the woman was nevertheless afraid that the letters the soldier had mentioned to her might contain information of a non-personal nature, of military or political interest, for instance, the soldier himself having shown in many circumstances an exaggerated discretion in their regard. It would be better, in any case, not to let them be taken, particularly since the dagger-bayonet the woman also returned at the same time might seem quite suspicious. The lack of a pass would have made the bearer's case still worse. The loud, commanding voice has shouted "Halt!" a second time, then a third, and immediately afterward there was a rapid burst of machine-gun fire. But the gun must have been too far away to aim properly, and it was very dark in this area. Perhaps it was even fired into the air. Once past the street corner, there was no longer any danger. The apartment house door had not remained ajar, of course. Nevertheless the key has turned noiselessly in the lock, the hinges have not creaked, the door has closed in silence.

At first glance the letters contain no secret of any kind and are of no general or personal importance. They are ordinary letters, the kind a country girl sends every week to her fiancé, giving news of the farm or the neighbors, regularly repeating the same conventional formulas about separation and return. The box also contains an old gold watch, of no particular value, with a tarnished gilded-brass chain; there is no name engraved inside the lid over the watch face; there is also a ring, a signet ring made of silver or nickel alloy, the kind workers often make for themselves in factories, with "H. M." engraved on it; finally, a dagger-bayonet of the current model, identical in every detail to the one given by the young woman, along with the package whose origin she was unwilling to specify, saying only that she was afraid to keep it at home since the latest regulations concerning the surrender of weapons, but that even so she did not want to turn it in (it is certainly the sham lame man who has forced her to get rid of it). The box is not a shoe box, it is a biscuit box of the same dimensions, but made out of tin.

What is most important about all this is the envelopes of the letters: they are addressed to a soldier—Henri Martin—and give his postal sector. On the back is the name and address of the girl who has written them. It is to her that the box will have to be sent when the mails are functioning again, since it is now impossible to find the father, who is not even named Martin. Besides, he had probably proposed himself as the provisional recipient only for reasons of convenience: even if he knew the contents of the box, he supposed it would be easier, geographically speaking, to reach him than the girl herself. Unless only the letters are intended for the latter, the dagger, the watch, and the ring belonging by rights to the father. It might also be supposed that the letters too should not be returned to their sender; many reasons might readily be suggested in support of this notion.

Rather than send the package through the mails, it would probably be preferable to carry it in one's own hands and return it with the customary considerations. As a matter of fact the girl might not yet have been informed of her fiancé's death. Only the father was notified when he telephoned the hospital; yet supposing that he is not the real father—or not legally the father, or in any case not quite the father—he is not obliged to be in communication with the girl, or even to know of her existence; so there is no reason for him to write her once the mails are functioning again.

The woman who has taken care of the wounded soldier has obtained no information from him as to his comrade who died before he did. Toward the end he talked a good deal, but he had already forgotten most things that had happened recently; besides, he was delirious most of the time. The woman declares that he was already sick before he was wounded, that he had fever, and that he sometimes behaved like a sleepwalker. Her son, a serious-looking boy of about ten, had already encountered him in the street, perhaps even several times, if it is actually the same boy each time, as is likely despite slight contradictions. His role is significant since he is the one who, by his heedlessness, has provoked the actions of the occupants of the side car, but his many appearances are not all decisive to the same degree. The lame man, on the other hand, plays virtually no part at all. His presence in the morning at the Rue Bouvet military offices (transformed into a barracks or hospitalization center) has nothing surprising about it, given the ease with which he maneuvers when no one is there to observe his means of locomotion. Besides, the soldier does not seem to have paid much attention to his remarks. The bartender, for his part, is problematical or insignificant. He does not say a word, does not make a move; this heavy-set bald man might also be a spy or an informer, the nature of his reflections is impossible to determine. The minor characters arguing in front of him with so much animation will, in any case, tell him nothing worth reporting to his eventual chiefs; they are only café strategists who make History over as they please, criticizing the ministers, correcting the generals, creating imaginary incidents which among other things might have permitted a victory at Reichenfels. The soldier sitting in the back of the room at the next to the last table to the right certainly has a more realistic outlook on battles; hence he has nothing to say about them; he must merely be waiting to be served something to drink, between his two comrades whose faces are not entirely visible, the one seen in profile and the other three-quarters from the rear. His first change of uniform can be explained by the general and probably unjustified contempt to which his regiment has been subjected since the defeat; he has preferred wearing less familiar insignia on this trip.

Hence he can mingle with the crowd without attracting attention, and quietly drink the wine the waitress is about to serve him. Meanwhile he stares straight ahead through the large window. The snow has stopped falling. The weather has grown increasingly mild during the course of the day. The sidewalks are still white, but the street, where the trucks have been passing continuously for hours, has already turned black again along its entire central section, the half melted snow having been heaped in the gutters on either side; each time the soldier crosses a side street, he sinks in up to his leggings with a spongy noise, while the scattered drops of fine rain begin to float in the evening air, still mixed with a few moist snowflakes which turn to water even before they have reached the street.

The soldier hesitates to leave the busy café where he has come in to rest for a moment. It is the rain he is staring at through the large window with its pleated curtains and its three billiard balls on the other side of the glass. The child is also watching the rain, sitting on the floor close to the window so that he can see through the thin material. It begins to rain much harder. The umbrella in its black silk sheath is leaning on the coat rack near the fur-lined overcoat. But in the drawing there are so many other garments hanging on top of each other that it is difficult to make out much of anything in the jumble. Just under the picture is the chest with its three drawers whose gleaming front is fitted with two large, tarnished brass knobs. In the bottom drawer is the biscuit box wrapped in brown paper. The rest of the room is unchanged: the ashes in the fireplace, the sheets of paper scattered on top of the table, the burnt cigarette butts filling the ashtray, the table lamp turned on, the heavy red curtains drawn tight.

Outside it is raining. Outside you walk through the rain with your head down, shielding your eyes with one hand while you stare ahead, a few yards ahead, at a few yards of wet asphalt. The rain does not get in here, nor the snow nor the wind; and the only dust that dulls the gleaming horizontal surfaces, the polished wood of the table, the waxed parquet floor, the marble mantelpiece, the cracked marble top of the chest, the only dust comes from the room itself, perhaps from the cracks in the floor, or else from the bed, or from the ashes in the fireplace, or from the velvet curtains whose vertical folds rise from the floor to the ceiling across which the fly's shadow—which is shaped like the incandescent thread of the electric bulb concealed by the truncated conical lampshade—now passes near the tiny black line which, remaining in the half-darkness beyond the circle of light and at a distance of four or five yards, is extremely difficult to make out: first a short, straight segment about half an inch long, followed by a series of rapid undulations, themselves scalloped .. . But the image grows blurred by trying to distinguish the outlines, as in the case of the inordinately delicate pattern of the wallpaper and the indeterminate edges of the gleaming paths made in the dust by the felt slippers, and, beyond the door, the dark vestibule where the umbrella is leaning against the coat rack, then, once past the entrance door, the series of long hallways, the spiral staircase, the door to the building with its stone stoop, and the whole city behind me.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Works by Robbe-Grillet in French

Les Gommes.
Paris, Les Editions de Minuit, 1953.

Le Voyeur.
Paris, Les Editions de Minuit, 1955.

La Jalousie
. Paris, Les Editions de Minuit, 1957.

Dans le labyrinthe
. Paris, Les Editions de Minuit, 1959.

L'année dernière à Marienbad
. Paris, Les Edi
tions de Minuit, 1961.

Instantanés
. Paris, Les Editions de Minuit, 1962.

L'immortelle.
Paris, Les Editions de Minuit, 1963.

Pour un nouveau roman
. Paris, Les Editions de Minuit, 1963.

La maison de rendez-vous.
Paris, Les Editions de Minuit, 1965.

Works
by Robbe-Grillet
in translation

The Erasers.
Translated by Richard Howard. New York, Grove Press, 1964.

The Voyeur.
Translated by Richard Howard. New York, Grove Press, 1958.

Jealousy.
Translated by Richard Howard. New York, Grove Press, 1959.

In the Labyrinth.
Translated by Richard Howard. New York, Grove Press, 1960.

Last Year at Marienbad.
Translated by Richard Howard. New York, Grove Press, 1962.

C.
Books and articles on Robbe-Grillet

1. Audry, Collette: "La caméra d'Alain Robbe-Grillet,"
La Revue des Lettres Modernes,
nos. 36-38 (1958), pp. 131-140. i       2. Barnes, Hazel: "The Ins and Outs of Alain Robbe-Grillet,"
Chicago Review,
Vol. XVI, no. 3 (Winter-Spring 1962), pp. 21-42. 3. Barthes, Roland: "Littérature littérale: Alain Robbe-Grillet,"
Critique,
nos. 100-101 (septembre-octobre 1955), pp. 820-826.

4       : "Littérature objective:

Alain Robbe-Grillet,"
Critique,
nos. 86-87 (juillet-août 1954), pp. 581-591.

Berger, Yves: "
Dans le labyrinthe Nouvelle  Nouvelle Revue Française,
no. 85 (janvier
pp. 112-118.

Blanchot, Maurice: "Notes sur un roman" [on Le Voyeur], Nouvelle Nouvelle Revue Française,
Vol.
NI
,
no.
31
(juillet
1955),
PP
. 105-112.

Bonnot, Gérard: "Marienbad ou le parti de Dieu,"

Les Temps Modernes,
no. 187 (décembre
,       pp. 752-768.

Brée, Germaine: "Jalousie: New Blinds or Old?"

Yale French Studies,
no. 24 (1960), pp. 87-91.

Champigny, Robert: "In Search of the Pure

Récit,"
American Society of the Legion of Honor Magazine
(Winter
1956-1957),
pp.
331-343.