Next Episode (12 page)

The bright afternoon flows by in the drowsy countryside. I can make out the muted dazzle in the French doors that let me see in the distance the Alps disintegrating slowly in the bluish water of Lac Léman. Motionless and vigilant, I stand watch here in the enemy camp. Arrayed in the ornamental attributes of H. de Heutz, surrounded by furniture chosen by him, and sitting in his officer’s chair close to “The Death of General Wolfe,” I’ve made myself a prisoner of this man, the better to approach him and, ultimately, to kill him.

I wonder in what dark corner the blonde woman who witnessed my conversation with H. de Heutz this morning could be hidden. The grand salon is impractical. The only other place I can imagine is the vestibule that opens on one side onto the main entrance and on the other onto the garage and the spiral staircase that goes upstairs. When I left the salon with H. de Heutz at point-blank range, he was obviously the
one who was leading. He’d done nothing more or less than manipulate me as he showed me quite naturally to the front door. And it didn’t even cross my mind to question his integrity as a guide, nor did I think of glancing at the other end of the vestibule; but even had I done so furtively, I wouldn’t have noticed the woman who, simply by drawing back, could make herself invisible, for example by hiding behind this massive credenza. She could have camouflaged herself easily by standing between the credenza and the frame of the door to the garage. I didn’t see anything and I couldn’t have seen anything. It’s at that very spot in this makeshift sentry box between the immunized piece of furniture and the garage door that I’ll position myself presently when H. de Heutz gets here. And if I want to speed things, I just have to keep an eye on the entrance to the grounds by standing behind the door with a peep-hole that opens onto the front of the chateau, allowing one to see any cars that are coming or going. Between there and the credenza there is just the width of the vestibule, that is, two strides. When I see H. de Heutz’s car pull up near the entrance to the chateau, I can simply cross the vestibule and stand behind the credenza, ready to open fire on the enemy. Till then I don’t have much to do, even though my freedom of movement on the ground floor is curtailed; I’m actually confined to a lookout post that is an isosceles triangle, which I mentally trace by drawing a line between my hiding place and the lacquered chest of drawers with the entwined warriors, another from the chest of drawers to the credenza, and finally another from the credenza back to my hiding place. Inside this Euclidean space then I can move very easily, with no fear of being surprised because from every imaginable position inside the triangle, I can get to my firing position to the right of the credenza in a fraction of a second. I just have to wait calmly for H. de Heutz, while he’s probably pacing Place Simon-Goulart, attracting the attention of a policeman on duty, perhaps, or the curiosity of a teller in the Banque
Arabe. Because rashly strolling around outside a bank is liable to lead to a charge of conspiracy.

But I have better things to do than imagine what H. de Heutz is up to in Geneva while I wait in his chateau at Echandens, pacing the front hall and the predetermined zone of the grand salon; especially because picturing my adversary in another town won’t really prepare me for his suddenly bursting in. I’ve deluded myself enough about his machinations up till now. With him you never know. Consequently, I need to convince myself that H. de Heutz is totally unpredictable; then I’ll be better able to welcome him appropriately than if I spent my time dreamily, running him through the rather faulty grid of my hunches. I will sense only an infinitesimal part of his power. His epiphanies are disconcerting and they invariably catch me unawares. The impression he makes on me neutralizes my ability to counter-attack. Steeped in improbability, H. de Heutz is surrounded by witchcraft and mystery. The holstered gun on his chest is just a formality: his real strength comes from a secret weapon that in the final analysis may be only a counter-feint. The warrior set into the roundel of the Louis XIII buffet has no armour but his beauty, and presenting himself naked to his enemy may be his greatest strength. The relationship between H. de Heutz and me has left me pensive ever since of my own accord I let myself into this fine lair where he lives.

For the time being I won’t allow myself to investigate the two upper floors. Something tells me though that if I were to carry out a scientific search instead of the hasty examination I made when I first came in, I’d come across a whole arsenal of documents, maybe even photos of his wife and his two boys, books on Roman history too, the last shreds of correspondence with unknown women who sign their love letters with just an initial. To tell the truth, though, that’s all I would find. As for the evidence of his counter-revolutionary activities, the plausible testimonies of his collusion with the
RCMP
, and his
secret banking activities in Switzerland – those exhibits I certainly wouldn’t find. I know H. de Heutz too well. With him, every revealing document is probably encoded with the Villerège grid and a counter-code, so that when the two were combined they’d be totally illegible. I wouldn’t find a thing – not the initials of the mounted police or the logo of the
CIA
or a hint of any records of a bank account where the numerical weapons of our revolution are piling up! On the other hand, it would be pointless, a waste of energy, for me to decode the plan of the Roman fortifications for the battle of Lerida or the inventory of the funerary furniture of the
pontifex maximus
. Such an exhumation of dates and names would get me nowhere and would only add to the nonsensical impression I get from anything having to do with this man.

My watch has stopped at three-fifteen, though I’m sure it’s much later, even if I judge only by the fading daylight I see through the French doors. Here I am in the heart of Switzerland without a clock! How can I find out what time it is? It’s important because I don’t want to miss my appointment on the terrace of the Hôtel d’Angleterre. Bah, I can just pick up the phone in the hall and ask the operator. Then again, maybe I’d better not. You never know. The phone may be connected to a switchboard God knows where. I’d be sounding the alarm to H. de Heutz’s command centre. You can never be too careful, especially nowadays when the phone system has become a veritable public square.

I don’t know what’s going on inside me. Suddenly I’m soaked in sweat. I have an insane urge to explode, to howl at the wolves and to kick at the panelled walls. An unbearable anguish is gripping me: the time that separates me from my sentence is exhausting and infuriating. All my strength pours from my mouth in a haemorrhage of blasphemy and cries. And why must I suffer such upsets in the face of the preposterous void I’m no longer able to confront? I’m a prisoner here! Yet I slipped into this walled splendour of my own
accord: I entered here as a masked killer. Now I’m suddenly afraid that I’ll never get out, that all the doors are closed forever. My own future is a throbbing pain. I’m haunted not by passive melancholy but by rage, a rage that is mad, absolute, sudden, almost without an object! I want to strike out at random, fire a bullet into the naked warrior, and empty the rest of the cylinder into the lower tier of the Louis XIII buffet. It seems to me that such violence would be soothing: any violence, any shot whatsoever, any feat that would lead to an emotional release! To kill! Kill arbitrarily and without hesitation. I’m beside myself. I feel I’ll never be able to leave this place. And while the luminous afternoon is slanting towards the Barre des Écrins, I am confined inside with my funerary furniture. H. de Heutz isn’t here yet, but time is passing! Soon – but when, exactly? – it will be time to join K. I have to keep that appointment, for I don’t have the strength to face the void that awaits me unless I see K again. Suddenly my whole life is faltering on the big hand of a clock, and I don’t even know what time it is! I feel I’ll collapse if I’m not within sight of the Hôtel d’Angleterre at half-past six.

Perhaps I’m stuck here for the whole weekend, truly trapped inside an embellished dungeon cell, unable to escape. I can’t be! I refuse to go on living and suffering such outbursts of fury. I’m afraid. I come up with a thousand reasons to calm down but they don’t comfort me. I’m afraid because I am alone and abandoned. No one comes to me, no one can reach me. Indeed, does anyone even know that I’m in this chateau, armed and with a mandate to kill a man even if I have to wait for him indefinitely? Walls go up around my body, shackles inhibit my movements and grip my heart: I’ve become a revolutionary doomed to sadness and to the useless explosion of childish rage. My destiny, wrapped in a damask cloth and covered with imaginary furniture, is pitilessly closing in on me. It’s horrible to feel destitute in an echoing chateau like this after only a few hours of giddiness, but for how many
minutes and centuries yet to come? My strength is gone. And so my entire existence was built on this flimsy base. I’m disintegrating into scattered splinters, shivering at the disastrous passing of time and of my power. I have no resources in this gallery of dreamlike emblems. Nothing ties me any longer to the person who haunts this house. I’m waiting. Ah! I’d sell my soul to know when this waiting will end, to know the precise moment when I can escape from here in a triumphant cloud of dust and get the blue Opel on the road to the Hôtel d’Angleterre. The void that surrounds me seems to emanate from my own shattered existence. The revolution has devoured me. Nothing lives on in me except my expectations and my weariness. Let it come! Let it not leave me alone with myself inside this unfathomable chateau! Yes, let the event fill me once again, let it replace my fatigue … I want to live thunderstruck, with no respite or a single minute of silence! To bring forth the tumult, to fill myself with war and conspiracy, to be consumed in the endless preparations for a battle: that will be my future!

In this space burdened with memories of H. de Heutz, I am prey to a flood of emotion that fills me with terror and takes me back to childhood. Under the assault of this shadowy discharge I cease to be a man. Ancient tears will pour from my eyes. Three days of seclusion in a totemic motel have not drained all the tears from my body. My failures haven’t hardened me. Only the fiery progress of the revolution will beget me anew. Soon, at half-past six, deep in the alpine valley, the revolution will take me to the woman I love. It’s the revolution that united us in a gigantic bed above the natal river, then reunited us after a twelve-month separation in a room in the Hôtel d’Angleterre … Ah, I can’t take any more of this dark museum where I’m only hanging on, a warrior naked and perplexed. With a heavy heart I wait for H. de Heutz. The banking memory cracks and melts into the blackness of tears. Finally, the act so eagerly anticipated seems impossible. Violence has
broken me before I’ve had time to commit it. I have no more energy; my own desolation crushes me. I am dying without style, like my brothers at Saint-Eustache. I am a defeated people marching in disorder along the streets that run beneath our bed …

How can I grasp the cold wind that is numbing me, how can I name the ill-defined pain that makes me falter? My love, my own! I’m afraid I won’t get to the end; I’m weakening. You’ll hate me if you learn about my weakness, but here it is all the same, the unavoidable face of my cowardice! I don’t have the heart for it. The uncertain revolution is debasing me: I’m not the unworthy one, it’s she who is betraying me and abandoning me! Ah, let the event happen, let it generate the chaos that means life to me! Let the event burst, let it give the lie to my cowardice, let it open my eyes! Quickly, for I’m about to succumb to historic fatigue … I stay here, with no enemy or reason, far from the violence of the womb, far from the river’s dazzling shore. I need H. de Heutz. What will happen to me if he doesn’t come? When he’s not facing me, in person, I forget that I want to kill him and I no longer feel a blinding need for our endeavour. This interlude in a chateau will get the better of me in the end. The solitary act becomes clouded with the uncheckable progress of this wasted afternoon. No project resists the implacable dimming of expectation. What time is it? I still don’t know.

O
NE ITEM IS
missing from the murderous protocol that will take me back to the terrace of the Hôtel d’Angleterre: the body of H. de Heutz. Without it, I’m stranded in his chateau, which is anguish. Everything has to happen in this space cluttered with furniture, which I continue to explore. The door will open: the click of the lock will be my warning. Without knowing it, H. de Heutz will step onto our battlefield in this narrow zone that separates the place I’ll fire from and the threshold of the front door.

And what if H. de Heutz doesn’t come back? And what if the revolution never comes to overwhelm our lives? What would become of us then? And what would we have to tell each other at half-past six this evening on the terrace of the Hôtel d’Angleterre?

I wonder if I did the right thing in leaving for the Coppet woods first when I had H. de Heutz in front of me. It would have been wiser to go directly towards the middle of the wooded space. Then he wouldn’t have been tempted to escape: one move by him and I’d have fired. And afterwards I’d have been able to flee through the woods as far as the promontory, race down the path that brought me to this little square, then take the Grande-Rue to the Auberge des Émigrés, where I’ll have treated myself to an excellent lunch with white wines
from Vaud and the Valais; even to celebrate my victory, I’d surely have prolonged the meal with two or three glasses of Williamine from the hills of Hérémence, very near to Evolène and the Valais chalet I dream of buying one day as a place to shelter our love. Clearly I was wrong to run away at the appearance of the blonde woman coming to the aid of H. de Heutz, who followed me throughout my journey from Echandens to Geneva and from Place Simon-Goulart to this small road that turns sharply after the Coppet chateau. There’s no doubt about it: I lost the initiative at that moment and that was when the time I’d gained earlier began to turn against me. The coordinates of the plot are tangled. I’ve dropped the thread of my story, and here I am in the middle of a chapter I don’t know how to finish.