“To be frank, gentlemen,” I said, holding the glass up to my nose, as if I were smelling the contents, “I didn’t come here to eat.”
The Spaniards laughed heartily, and not in a malicious way; the one who was eating spluttered, raised his glass to me, and busied himself with the platters again.
“Actually,” said the dark one, “I have no idea what the waiter’s called; we call them all Gaston, and if one of us is right, if the waiter really is called Gaston, the other one has to pay for the meal, you see?”
“No, I don’t. No one can win with that system.” The dark one looked at me, perplexed. “If you and your friend both call all the waiters Gaston, you obviously both win or both lose. One of you should call them Gaston and the other . . . Raoul.”
The dark one thought for a moment, then nodded several times.
“You’re right. Maybe our system is too perfect. You must have read Newton, of course.”
I didn’t answer.
“We know you’re thinking of treating Vallejo,” said the thin one sadly.
I observed him through the glass of wine: a slow, red eel, sucking his teeth and drinking with a feigned parsimony.
“Was that why you were following me last night?”
“We went to your apartment to find you, twice,” he said with an obsequious smile. “We know where you live, Monsieur Pain. Why would we need to follow you?”
“True, but if it wasn’t you, it must have been two of your compatriots.”
“When?” He appeared to be genuinely interested.
“Last night, after our encounter on the stairs.”
For a few seconds the Spaniards appeared to be lost in thought.
“Well . . . but that’s irrelevant, isn’t it? Just a coincidence, because it certainly wasn’t us.” He didn’t sound very convinced. “Anyway, let’s get to the heart of the matter.”
“The heart of the matter?”
“The common good,” he said. “Or common sense, if you prefer.”
The dark one swallowed a pair of pills that he had taken from a little nickel-plated box. The box was almost flat and transformed the light striking it into curious reflected figures. I had never seen such an object. I was relieved when he put it back into the inside pocket of his jacket.
“As I’m sure you’ve already guessed,” he said, “we want you to forget all about it: Vallejo, his wife, us, everything.”
I put my lips to the rim of the glass. I couldn’t think. The situation was bizarre to say the least. I mustn’t lose control, I thought. I drank. A long gulp in the vain hope of calming myself.
“Our request,” the last word was stressed, “does not of course imply any lack of respect for your capabilities. On the contrary, I can assure you, and my companion will vouch for me, that I greatly admire the expertise you have demonstrated in your field. A very broad field it is, too, and I dare say quite unfamiliar to the majority of mortals, am I right?”
I nodded, and immediately felt contemptible.
“But you have no business with Vallejo. For the common good.”
“The common good,” the other sighed, “a nice definition, your good and the good of all . . . Harmony . . . Balance . . . The stability of the spheres . . . The tunnels filled again . . . Smiles . . .”
I was going to object that I didn’t understand a word of that gibberish, but on second thoughts I felt that it would be better to remain silent. Leaning against the chair’s vermilion backrest, the dark one kept his eyes fixed on me, but his gaze was curious rather than threatening. He was studying me. I don’t know why, but this lifted my spirits. On a mad impulse, I refilled my glass and drank, almost hopefully.
“Was it Lejard who sent you?”
“That is a question we are not going to answer,” sighed the thin one. “In fact, to be totally frank with you, we are not going to answer any questions unless they are absolutely essential to the satisfactory conclusion of our agreement with you.”
“Agreement?”
“We’ve already told you: you forget about the existence of Vallejo, the Clinique Arago and the rest, and we’ll forget about this envelope.”
Lazily, but also with an artificial, studied arrogance, the dark one took out a long, dark-brown envelope, of the kind used by the Bank of Paris ten years ago, and dropped it onto the table beside the bottle. It contained more than two thousand francs.
“But why?”
The thin one raised a warning finger and traced a hieroglyph in the air, keeping me at a distance.
“No questions, remember.”
It was obvious that although they had witnessed the encounter between Lemière and Madame Vallejo that afternoon, the Spaniards were still unaware that I no longer had any involvement in the case. Lemière had taken charge of everything, along with his medical team and Lejard; it was idiotic to pay me to wash my hands of something from which I had, in any case, been excluded. The chords of a tango were faintly audible in the distance. The crystalline laughter of a woman. I heard a master of ceremonies saying: “Alan Monardes in person will play for you . . .”
“This is madness.”
“All right, but it’s not going to do you any harm. On the contrary, the way things are going, a little bit of money put aside could come in very handy . . .”
They’re mad, I thought, but the money is real, and it was there, waiting to be taken and slipped into my wallet. For the first time I was not afraid.
“This is the strangest bribe I’ve ever heard of,” I murmured. Of course they didn’t understand.
The thin one smiled, letting it pass.
“Let’s call Gaston,” he said as he rang the bell, “and order another bottle of wine. The night is still young.”
The dark one corrected him: “The night is always young.”
“Monsieur Rivette?”
“Ah, Pierre Pain.”
“I’m calling from Raoul’s café, it must be very late.”
“It doesn’t matter, don’t worry, I wasn’t asleep.”
“I think I’m drunk. I needed . . . to speak with someone I can trust, dear Monsieur Rivette.”
“Tell me how I can help you.”
“This evening I did something vile and repugnant . . .”
“ . . .”
“I accepted a bribe.”
“You?”
“I know, it’s hard to believe that anyone in the world would want to bribe a poor devil like me.”
“That’s not what I meant, Pierre—calm down, you sound very nervous.”
“And how often have you known me to be nervous, Monsieur Rivette? Think about it . . .”
“That’s beside the point, Pierre, human nature is unfathomable. Do you remember Pleumeur-Bodou?”
“What was that?”
“Pleumeur-Bodou.”
“My god, I haven’t thought of him in years. I suppose we were friends, once.”
“The will to forget. Magic. Pleumeur-Bodou wasn’t the nervous type, was he? Do you remember?”
“Didn’t he commit suicide?”
“No. He’s been living in Spain for more than a year. Every now and then I get a letter from him. He enjoys reminiscing about the old days.”
“Well I don’t. Or not much. I prefer to accept or tolerate myself as I am now. But why did you mention Pleumeur-Bodou?”
“I don’t know, I suppose I must have been thinking about him . . . and about you.”
“Today?”
“All afternoon. You know how it is, old folks like me, we like to revisit times gone by. I was looking at an astrological chart I drew up for both of you.”
“For Pleumeur-Bodou and me? You never told me.”
“It was nothing really. Don’t worry about it. Anyway, what were you saying about a bribe?”
“I took it. I let them corrupt me.”
“Do you mean you took money?”
“Exactly. They gave me two thousand francs and got me drunk. Then we were subjected to a performance by some wret
ched tango orchestra and went on drinking. I even ate meat! A juicy Argentinean steak!”
“Pierre . . .”
“And I wasn’t being forced. I wanted to know. That’s why I stayed: out of curiosity. In fact, my dear Monsieur Rivette, they paid me not to do something that I already knew I couldn’t do anyway. But they didn’t know that. What they did know, however, and hours, it seems, before I was informed myself, was that I would be asked to treat the patient in question. Hours before, do you see?”
“ . . .”
“Hours before I was even aware of my ex-patient’s existence, they tried to find me and stop me from taking on the case. I say ex- but he was never really my patient at all. I have never even seen him! But they knew, and took the necessary steps. It’s as if they had planned an ambush and were lurking at a bend in the road, but I have never walked that road and never will. How would you explain that?”
“There are explanations for everything, Pierre, except the inexplicable; remember Terzeff, that poor boy who claimed to have refuted Madame Curie.”
“Terzeff . . . wasn’t he Pleumeur-Bodou’s friend?”
“Exactly. He was the scientist, although Pleumeur-Bodou was just as clever. A brilliant young man, Terzeff, or so he seemed, at first. None of his theories, of course, could be proved.”
“It must be the alcohol, I can’t remember anything, I haven’t drunk so much in ages.”
“There was a love affair behind it all, do you remember? Terzeff was in love with Madame Curie’s daughter, Irène, and that was why he tried to prove her mother wrong, I always thought.”
“Terzeff was the one who killed himself, wasn’t he?”
“Exactly, he hung himself from the Pont Mirabeau, one night in 1925 . . . I think it was in winter, January or February . . . terrible days.”
“God, it’s laughable, isn’t it, Monsieur Rivette. It’s all so sad and absurd: Terzeff in love with Irène Joliot-Curie, me bothering you at this hour of the night.”
“I wasn’t asleep, my friend, I was reading—you could say I was waiting for your call—at our age, as you know, a few hours of sleep are enough.”
“For Raoul too, it seems. He has shut the café, and now he’s playing solitaire at one of the tables.”
“Solitaire?”
“Yes . . . he’s sitting in the middle of the café, two tables away from the bar, trying to finish a game of solitaire.”
“A disturbing scene, my dear Pierre.”
“No . . . not really . . .”
“ . . .”
“At the back of the café there’s someone else, behind the bar, sitting on a stool next to a door that leads god knows where. It’s Raoul’s wife, she must be doing the day’s accounts or reading a novel. Anyhow, what were we talking about?”
“About you, Pierre, and that curious bribe.”
“Shameful is what you mean.”
“No, no, no . . . think of it as a consequence of your curiosity.”
“But I accepted the money. Two thousand francs.”
“There was clearly a misunderstanding and you took advantage of it.”
“Shamefully, contemptibly, like a pimp . . .”
“You can return the money and that will put an end to the matter.”
“I thought I had nothing to lose, my professional ethics didn’t even come into it. Professional ethics! The ethics of the oldest profession, maybe. What I thought was: I need the money! I’m sorry.”
“ . . .”
“Now I wouldn’t even know where to find the Spaniards. I saw them this afternoon at the Clinique Arago, but I don’t think they work there. I don’t know why, but for some reason I’m sure they don’t work there . . . Have you been to the Clinique Arago?”
“No.”
“It’s a nightmare. The hallways are endless, as if they were specially designed to disorient visitors . . . Which is what generally happens . . . I don’t feel well . . .”
“It’s all so confusing . . .”
“I didn’t want the money for any practical reason. I didn’t need it to buy food! I have a state pension . . . and as you know, I spend very little . . .”
“Of course, Pierre.”
“There were other, deeper reasons, Monsieur Rivette; it’s as if I could smell something lurking nearby, very near . . . I took the money . . . just so as not to block . . . the passage . . . It sounds paranoid, but that’s how it is. Unless I’m just looking for excuses!”
“I think you need to calm down, Pierre.”
“Do you remember that young lady you gave my address to more than a year ago? Her husband was in the Salpêtrière. Madame Reynaud.”
“Yes, yes, Madame and Monsieur Reynaud. He died, if I remember rightly. A very young man.”
“Indeed. Well it was Madame Reynaud who formally requested my help in this case. The patient is the husband of one of her friends.”
“I don’t see the connection, Pierre.”
“I think I’m in love with Madame Reynaud.”
“ . . .”
“You must think I’m ridiculous: a man of my age, forty-eight, hoping to court a young lady.”
“You’re still young, Pierre. Now if I were to fall in love, at over eighty, that would be ridiculous. Does she know?”
“Of course not.”
“What are you planning to do?”
“Return the money, I suppose, or invite Madame Reynaud to dinner at some fancy restaurant. I don’t know. Everything has started spinning. I think I had too much to drink and you’ve been too patient with me.”
“ . . .”
“I think Raoul’s been too patient, too. It’s time to go to bed.”
“ . . .”
“So Pleumeur-Bodou is in the International Brigade? Good for him. A just cause, adventures in a fascinating land, the ideal vacation.”
“No, it seems he has joined the other side.”
“The Fascists?”
“That’s right.”
“Well, that, my dear Monsieur Rivette, was predictable. Pleumeur-Bodou was never a democrat at heart.”
“I never predicted it. But anyway, at my age, I have given up judging. I accept people as they are, whatever they do.”
“You always were an overly generous master, Monsieur Rivette.”
“Not at all. It would simply be an error for an old man like me to set himself up as a judge . . . But there will be judges, Pierre, you can be sure of that, judges hard as stone, who will not know the meaning of the word pity. Sometimes, between sleep and waking, I catch a glimpse of them; I see them at work, deciding. They piece it all together; they are cruel and follow rules that to us seem entirely arbitrary. In a word, they are dreadful and inscrutable. But by then, of course, I’ll be gone.”
“Perhaps it’s because I’m drunk, but the night smells of something strange.”
“Every night has a different smell, my friend; it would be unbearable otherwise. I think you should go to bed.”
“But tonight’s smell is special, as if something were moving in the streets, something vague and familiar, but I can’t quite remember what it is.”
“Go to bed. Sleep. Calm your spirit.”
“The smell will follow me there too.”
That night—the last hours of the seventh of April, and the early hours of the eighth—had the ambivalent honor of being one of the worst nights of my life. I can’t remember what time it was when I went to bed, nor in what state I climbed the stairs. I slept, if that shivering can be counted as sleep, in a low-roofed, gray-and-white labyrinth, architecturally reminiscent of the Clinique Arago with its circular corridors; sometimes the dream-corridors were broader and stretched off endlessly, sometimes they were narrower, like twisted vestibules, and the starts and groans with which I woke and fell asleep again were not the worst of it. What was I doing there? Was I there of my own free will, or was some external force holding me in that place? Was I looking for Vallejo, or for someone else? I believe that if the company of nightmares c
onspired to visit me all at once, the result would be similar to what I experienced that night. I remember thinking at some point, as I sat on the bed mopping the sweat from my neck with my pajama sleeve, that the dreams I was enduring had all the features of a transmission, yes, a kind of radio transmission. And so, as if my dream-world were a crystal set secretly tuned to a private radio station, scenes and voices were transmitted to my mind (I should point out that the dreams had the following peculiarity: they were composed not so much of images as of voices, whispers and grunts), scenes quite unrelated to my own fantasies—I had simply become their fortuitous receptor. The demented radio drama assailing me was no doubt an anticipation of hell: a hell of voices connecting and disconnecting in a buzz of a static that was, I presume, my troubled snoring, forming duos, trios, quartets and entire choruses advancing blindly through an empty chamber, a kind of empty reading room, which at some point I identified as my own brain. At another moment in the dream, I also thought that the ear was the eye.
An abridged version of the nightmare might run something like this:
A first voice says: “Who the devil is Pierre Pain?”
“There is a leak.”
“All I know for sure is that there is a leak.”
“It could have been caused by a trivial oversight.”
“Look around you, examine the view. Do you notice anything strange?”
“Our life in the Market, in the streets of the Great Market . . .”
“Dreams, melancholy.”
“There is a leak, examine the view.”
Indistinctly, as in a blurry photograph, I see Terzeff, Pleumeur-Bodou and myself standing around Monsieur Rivette, in the study of his old apartment on the Boulevard Richard Lenoir, where he has not lived for many years; it is 1922 and the four of us are silent, although our master’s eyes are moving constantly, as if he could sense an intrusion. I understand that this image is, in some way, resisting the general drift of the dream, and that, in spite of the protection it is affording me, I will not be able to hold onto it.
A stranger smiles. He is a movie actor, but that is all I know, nothing more. His smile is beautiful, but his words lacerate the air; in a second they absorb all the oxygen in the room: “What do you mean when you say a leak? What does the word leak signify to you?”