Jealousy and in the Labyrinth (16 page)

The upper part of A .. .'s body is framed in it, as well as her waist and hips. She says "Good morning" in the playful tone of someone who, having slept well, wakes up in a good mood—or of someone who prefers not to show what she is thinking about, always flashing the same smile, on principle.

She immediately steps back inside, to reappear a little further on a few seconds afterwards—perhaps ten seconds, but at a distance of at least two or three yards—in the next window-opening where the blinds have just been opened.

Here she stays longer, her head turned toward the column at the corner of the terrace that supports the overhang of the roof.

From her post of observation, she can see only the green stretch of banana trees, the edge of the plateau and, between the two, a strip of uncultivated brush, high yellow weeds with a few scattered trees.

On the column itself there is nothing to see except the peeling paint and, occasionally, at unforeseeable intervals and at various levels, a grayish-pink lizard whose intermittent presence results from shifts of position so sudden that no one could say where it comes from or where it is going when it is no longer visible.

A . .. has stepped back again. To find her, the eye must be placed in the axis of the first window: she is in front of the big chest, against the rear wall of the bedroom. She opens the top drawer and leans over the right-hand side of the chest, where she spends a long time looking for something she cannot find, searching with both hands, shifting packages and boxes and constantly coming back to the same point, unless she is merely rearranging her effects.

In her present position, between the big bed and the hall door, other sight-lines can easily reach her from the veranda, passing through one or another of the three open window-recesses.

From a point on the balustrade located two steps from the corner, an oblique sight-line thus enters the bedroom through the second window and cuts diagonally across the foot of the bed to the chest. A . . ., who has straightened up, turns toward the light and immediately disappears behind the section of wall that separates the two windows and conceals the back of the large wardrobe.

She appears, an instant later, behind the left frame of the first window, in front of the writing table. She opens the leather writing-case and leans forward, the top of her thighs pressed against the table edge. Her body, wider at the hips, again makes it impossible to follow what her hands are doing, what they are holding, picking up, or putting down.

A . . . appears from a three-quarter view, as before, although from the opposite side. She is still in her dressing gown, but her hair, though loose, has already been carefully brushed; it gleams in the sunlight when her head, turning, shifts the soft, heavy curls whose black mass falls on the white silk of her shoulder, while the silhouette again steps back toward the rear of the room along the hallway wall.

The leather writing-case, parallel with the long side of the table, is closed, as usual. Above the varnished wood surface, instead of the hair, there is nothing but the post-office calendar where only the white boat stands out from the gray tint of the wall behind.

The room now looks as if it were empty. A . . . may have noiselessly opened the hall door and gone out; but it is more likely that she is still there, outside the field of vision, in the blank area between this door, the large wardrobe and the corner of the table where a felt circle constitutes the last visible object. Besides the wardrobe, there is only one piece of furniture (an armchair) in this area. Still, the concealed exit by which it communicates with the hall, the living room, the courtyard, and the highway multiplies to infinity her possibilities of escape.

The upper part of A . . .'s body appears in the window opening in receding perspective from the third window, overlooking the west gable-end of the house. At a given moment she must have passed in front of the exposed foot of the bed before entering the second blank area between the dressing-table and the bed.

She stays there, motionless, for some time as well. Her profile is distinctly outlined against the darker background. Her lips are very red; to say whether they have been made up or not would be difficult, since it is their natural color in any case. Her eyes are wide open, resting on the green mass of the banana trees, which they slowly move across as they approach the corner column with the gradual turning of the head and neck.

On the bare earth of the garden, the column's shadow now makes an angle of forty-five degrees with the perforated shadow of the balustrade, the western side of the veranda, and the gable-end of the house. A ... is no longer at the window. Neither this window nor either of the two others reveals her presence in the room. And there is no longer any reason to suppose her in any one of the three blank areas rather than in any other. Two of them, moreover, present an easy egress: the first into the central hallway, the other into the bathroom, whose other door opens out onto the hallway, the courtyard, etc. . .. The bedroom again looks as if it were empty.

To the left, at the end of this western side of the veranda, the Negro cook is peeling yams over a tin basin. He is kneeling, sitting back on his heels, the basin between his thighs. The shiny pointed blade of the knife detaches an endless narrow peel from the long yellow tuber which revolves in his hand with a regular motion.

At the same distance but in the opposite direction, Franck and A . . . are drinking cocktails, sitting back in their usual armchairs, under the office window. "That feels good!" Franck is holding his glass in his right hand, which is resting on the elbow-rest of the chair. The three other arms are stretched out parallel on the parallel strips of leather, but the three hands are lying palms-down against the elbow-rests where the leather curves over the ridge before coming to a point just below three large nailheads which attach it to the red wood.

Two of the four hands are wearing, on the same finger, the same gold ring, wide and flat: the first on the left and the third, which is holding the cylindrical glass half-filled with a golden liquid, Franck's right hand. A . . .'s glass is beside her on the little table. They are talking desultorily of the trip to the port they plan to make together during the following week, she for various purchases, he to find out about the new truck he intends to buy.

They have already settled the time of departure as well as that of the return, calculated the approximate duration of the ride and estimated the time in which they must settle their affairs. All that remains is to decide which day will best suit them both. It is only natural that A ... should want to take advantage of such an occasion, which will permit her to make the trip under acceptable conditions without bothering anyone.
The
only surprising thing, really, is that such an arrangement has not already been made in similar circumstances previously, one day or another.

Now the tapering fingers of the second hand circle the large shiny nailheads: the ball of the last joint of the index finger, the middle finger, and the ring finger circle round and round the three smooth, bulging surfaces. The middle finger is stretched out vertically following the direction of the triangular point of the leather; the index and ring fingers are half bent to reach the two upper nailheads. Soon, twenty inches to the left, the same three delicate fingers of the other hand begin the same exercise. The furthest to the left of these six fingers is the one wearing the ring.

"Then Christiane doesn't want to come with us? That's too bad. . ."

"No, she can't," Franck said, "because of the child."

"And of course it's much hotter on the coast."

"More humid, yes, that's right."

"Still, it would be a change for her. How is she feeling today?"

"It's always the same thing," Franck says.

The low voice of the second driver, who is singing a native lament of some kind, reaches the three armchairs grouped in the middle of the veranda. Although distant, this voice is perfectly recognizable. Coming around each gable-end at the same time, it reaches the ears simultaneously from right and left.

"It's always the same thing," Franck says.

A . . . presses the point, full of solicitude: "In town, though, she could see a doctor."

Franck raises his left hand from the leather armrest, but without lifting his elbow off, and then lets it fall back, more slowly, to where it was.

"She's already seen enough doctors as it is. With all those drugs she takes, it's as if she. . .."

"Still, you have to try something."

"But she claims it's the climate!"

"You can talk all you want about the climate, but that doesn't mean a thing."

"The attacks of malaria."

"There's quinine. . . ."

Then five or six remarks are exchanged about the respective doses of quinine necessary in the various tropical regions, according to the altitude, the latitude, the proximity of the sea, the presence of swamps, etc. . . . Then Franck refers again to the disagreeable effects quinine produces on the heroine of the African novel A ... is reading. Afterwards he makes an allusion—obscure for anyone who has not even leafed through the book—to the behavior of the husband, guilty of negligence at least in the opinion of the two readers. His sentence ends in "take apart" or "take a part" or "break apart," "break a heart," "heart of darkness," or something of the kind.

But Franck and A . . . are already far away. Now they are talking about a young white woman—is it the same one as before, or her rival, or some secondary character? —who gives herself to a native, perhaps to several. Franck seems to hold it against her:

"After all," he says, "sleeping with Negroes. . . ."

A . . . turns toward him, raises her chin, and asks smilingly: "Well, why not?"

Franck smiles in his turn, but answers nothing, as if he is embarrassed by the tone their dialogue is taking—before a third person. The movement of his mouth ends in a sort of grimace.

The driver's voice has shifted. It now comes only from the east side; it apparently emanates from the sheds, to the right of the main courtyard.

The singing is at moments so little like what is ordinarily called a song, a complaint, a refrain, that the western listener is justified in wondering if something quite different is involved. The sounds, despite apparent repetitions, do not seem related by any musical law. There is no tune, really, no melody, no rhythm. It is as if the man were content to utter unconnected fragments as an accompaniment to his work. According to the orders he has received this very morning, this work must have as its object the impregnation of the new logs with an insecticide solution, in order to safeguard them against the action of the termites before putting them in place.

"Always the same thing," Franck says.

"Mechanical troubles again?"

"This time it's the carburetor. ... The whole engine has to be replaced."

On the hand-rail of the balustrade, a lizard is perched in absolute immobility: head raised and cocked toward the house, body and tail forming a flattened S. The animal looks as if it were stuffed.

"That boy has a lovely voice," A .. . says, after a rather long silence.

Franck continues: "We'll be leaving early."

A . . . asks him to be specific, and Franck gives details, asking if it is too early for his passenger.

"Not at all," she says. "It'll be fun."

They sip their drinks.

"If all goes well," Franck says, "we could be in town by ten and have a good bit of time before lunch."

"Of course I'd prefer that too," A ... answers, her face serious again.

"I won't have too much time all afternoon finishing up my visits to the sales agents and asking the advice of my regular garageman, Robin—you know, down on the waterfront. We'll start back right after dinner."

The details he furnishes as to his schedule for this day in town would be more natural if they were provided to satisfy an interlocutor's question, but no one has shown the slightest interest, today, in the purchase of his new truck. And he nearly furnishes aloud—very loud—the program of his movements and his interviews yard by yard, minute by minute, constantly emphasizing the necessity of his behavior in each case. A ..., on the other hand, makes only the smallest reference to her own errands, whose total duration will be the same, however.

For lunch, Franck is here again, loquacious and affable. This time Christiane has not accompanied him. They had almost had an argument the day before about the cut of a dress.

After the customary exclamation as to the comfort of the armchair, Franck begins telling, with a great wealth of detail, a story about a car with engine trouble. It is the sedan he is referring to, and not the truck; since the sedan is still almost new, it does not often give its owner problems.

The latter should, at this moment, refer to an analogous incident which occurred in town during his trip with A . . ., an incident of no importance but which postponed their return to the plantation by a whole night. The comparison would be only normal. Franck refrains from making it

A . . . has been looking at her neighbor with increased attention these last few seconds, as if she were expecting a remark he was on the point of making. But she says nothing either, and the remark is not made. Besides, they have never again referred to that day, that accident, that night—at least when they are not alone together.

Now Franck is recapitulating the list of parts to dismantle for the complete inspection of a carburetor. He performs this exhaustive inventory with a concern for exactitude which obliges him to mention a number of elements that are ordinarily understood without being referred to; he goes almost to the point of describing the removal of a screw turn by turn, and similarly, afterwards, for the converse operation.

"You seem to be up on your mechanics today," A . . . says.

Franck suddenly stops talking, in the middle of his account. He looks at the lips and the eyes on his right, upon which a calm smile, as though with no meaning behind it, seems to be fixed by a photographic exposure. His own mouth has remained half open, perhaps in the middle of a word.