Ocean Sea (22 page)

“Perhaps you are right. But here is so far away from everything . . . I wonder if anything will ever manage to take me away again.”

“Don’t think about it. If it happens, it will be something good. And if not, this town will be glad to keep you for itself.”

“It’s an honor to hear it said by the mayor in person . . .”

“Oh, don’t remind me, I beg you . . .”

“I must really go now.”

“Yes. But come back, when you wish. I should like that. And my wife too would be most happy.”

“Count on it.”

“Good night, then, Dr. Savigny.”

“Good night, Monsieur Deverià.”

CHAPTER 7

Adams

H
E STAYED AWAKE
for hours, after sunset. The last innocent time of a whole life.

Then he left his room and walked silently along the corridor until he came to a stop in front of the last door. There were no keys in the Almayer Inn.

One hand resting on the doorknob, the other holding a small candleholder. Moments like needles. The door opened without a sound. Silence and darkness, inside the room.

He went in, put the candleholder down on the writing desk, and closed the door behind him. The click of the lock made a sharp sound in the night: in the half-light, between the sheets, something
moved.

He went up to the bed and said, “It’s over, Savigny.”

A phrase like a saber cut. Savigny shot upright in bed, lashed by a thrill of terror. Questing in the tepid light of those few candles, his eyes caught the glitter of a knifeblade and,
motionless, the face of a man whom he had been trying for years to forget.

“Thomas . . .”

Ann Deverià looked at him, bewildered. She propped herself up on one arm, cast a glance around the room, she did not understand, she sought again the face of her lover, she slid close to
him.

“What is happening, André?”

He kept on staring, terrified, straight ahead.

“Thomas, stop, you’re mad . . .”

But he did not stop. He came right up to the bed, raised his knife, and brought it down again violently, once. Twice, three times. The covers were soaked with blood.

Ann Deverià did not even have the time to cry out. Stupefied, she stared at the dark tide that was spreading over her and she felt life slipping away from that open body of hers, so fast
that it did not even leave her the time for a thought. She slumped backward, with staring eyes that could no longer see anything.

Savigny was trembling. There was blood everywhere. And an absurd silence. It was at rest, the Almayer Inn. Motionless.

“Get up, Savigny. And take her in your arms.”

Thomas’s voice resounded with an inexorable tranquillity. It was not over yet, no.

Savigny moved as if in a trance. He got up, picked up Ann Deverià’s body, and, holding it in his arms, he let himself be dragged out of the room. He could not manage to say a word.
He could see nothing anymore, nor could he manage to think. He was trembling, that’s all.

Strange little procession. The beautiful body of a woman borne in procession. A dead burden of blood in the arms of a man who dragged himself along trembling, followed by an impassive shadow
with a knife clutched in his fist. They crossed the inn like that, until they were out onto the beach. One step after another, in the sand, until they reached the seashore. A wake of blood behind
them. A little moonlight upon them.

“Don’t stop, Savigny.”

Swaying, he forced his feet into the water. He could feel that knife pressed against his back, and, in his arms, a weight that was becoming enormous. Like a puppet he dragged himself on for a
few yards. That voice stopped him.

“Listen to it, Savigny. It’s the sound of the sea. May this sound and that weight in your arms follow you for the rest of your life.”

He said it slowly, without emotion and with a hint of tiredness. Then he let the knife fall into the water, turned around and headed back to the beach. He crossed it, following those dark
blotches, congealed in the sand. He was walking slowly, with no more thoughts and no more story.

Nailed to the threshold of the sea, with the waves foaming between his legs, Savigny stood motionless, incapable of any gesture. He was trembling. And he was weeping. A puppet, a child, a wreck.
He was dripping blood and tears: the wax of a candle that no one would ever be able to extinguish.

A
DAMS WAS HANGED
, in the town square of St. Amand, at dawn on the last day of April. It was raining heavily, but many had come out to enjoy the
spectacle. They buried him that same day. No one knows where.

CHAPTER 8

The Seventh Room

T
HE DOOR OPENED
, and a man came out of the seventh room. One step beyond the threshold, he stopped and looked around. The
inn seemed deserted. Not a sound, not a voice, nothing. The sun was coming in through the little windows in the corridor, cutting the dim light and projecting small trailers for a clear and bright
morning on the wall.

Inside the room, everything had been put in order in a willing but hasty fashion. A full suitcase, still open, on the bed. Sheets of paper in piles on the desk, pens, books, a lamp, switched
off. Two plates and a glass on the windowsill. Dirty but ordered. On the floor, a corner of the carpet formed a large dog-ear, as if someone had left a sign in order to find the place again one
day. On the armchair was a large blanket, folded roughly. Two pictures could be seen on a wall. Identical.

Leaving the door open behind him, the man went along the corridor and went down the stairs, singing a cryptic little refrain softly to himself, and he stopped at the reception desk—if we
want to call it that. Dira was not there. There was the usual register, open on the book rest. The man began reading, tucking his shirt into his trousers as he did so. Funny names. He looked around
again. The Almayer was decidedly the most deserted inn in the history of deserted inns. He entered the large lounge, walked around the tables for a bit, sniffed at a bunch of flowers growing old in
a horrendous crystal vase, went up to the glass door, and opened it.

That air. And the light.

He had to half close his eyes, it was so strong, and pull his jacket closer around him against all that wind from the north.

Ahead, the whole beach. He set his feet on the sand. He was looking at them as if in that moment they had returned from a long journey. He seemed genuinely amazed that they were there once more.
He looked up again, and his face bore that expression which people have, every so often, when the mind is empty, emptied, happy. Such moments are strange. Without knowing why, you could commit any
act of foolishness. He committed a very simple one. He began to run, but he ran like mad, at breakneck speed, tripping and getting up again, without ever stopping, running as fast as he could, as
if he had the devil at his heels, but there was no one at his heels, no, it was he who was running and that was it, he alone, along that deserted beach, with his eyes staring and his heart in his
mouth, it was the sort of thing that, had you seen him, you would have said, “He won’t stop.”

Seated on his usual windowsill, his legs dangling out into empty space, Dood took his eyes off the sea, turned toward the beach, and saw him.

He was running brilliantly, no argument about that.

Dood smiled.

“He has finished.”

Beside him was Ditz, the one who invented dreams and then made you a present of them.

“Either he’s gone mad, or he has finished.”

I
N THE AFTERNOON
, everybody was on the shore, throwing flat stones to make them skip, and throwing round stones to hear them splash. They were all
there: Dood, who had come down from his windowsill specially; Ditz, the one with the dreams; Dol, who had seen so many ships for Plasson. There was Dira. And there was the astonishingly beautiful
little girl that slept in bed with Ann Deverià, and who knows what her name was. All there, throwing stones in the water and listening to that man who had come out of the seventh room. He
was talking very slowly.

“You have to imagine two people who love each other . . . who love each other. And he must go away. He is a sailor. He is leaving for a long journey, at sea. And so she embroiders a silk
handkerchief with her own hands . . . she embroiders her name upon it.”

“June.”

“June. She embroiders it in red thread. And she thinks: he will always carry it with him, and this will protect him from dangers, from storms, from diseases . . .”

“From big fish.”

“. . . from big fish . . .”

“From the bananafish.”

“. . . from everything. She is convinced of it. But she doesn’t give it to him straightaway, no. First she takes it to her village church and says to the priest, ‘You must
bless it.’ And so the priest puts it down there, in front of him, he bends over a little, and with a finger he draws a cross above it. He says something in a strange language, and with a
finger he draws a cross above it. Can you manage to imagine it? A tiny little gesture. The handkerchief, that finger, the priest’s words, her eyes, smiling. Is that all perfectly clear to
you?”

“Yes.”

“Right, then, now imagine this. A ship. Big. About to set sail.”

“The ship of the sailor you mentioned before?”

“No. Another ship. But she, too, is about to set sail. They have cleaned her very well all over. She is floating on the water in the harbor. And before her, miles and miles of sea are
waiting, the sea with its immense strength, the mad sea, perhaps it will be kind, but perhaps it will crush her in its hands and swallow her, who knows? No one talks about it, but everyone knows
how strong the sea is. And then a little man, dressed in black, boards that ship. All the sailors are on deck, with their families, the women, the children, all there, standing in silence. The
little man walks about the ship, murmuring something under his breath. He goes as far as the prow, then he turns back, walking slowly among the cordage, the folded sails, the casks, the nets. He is
still murmuring strange things to himself, and there is no corner of the ship that he does not visit. In the end he stops, in the middle of the bridge. And he kneels. He lowers his head and
continues murmuring in that strange tongue of his, it seems as if he is talking to the ship, that he is telling her something. Then suddenly he is silent, and with one hand, slowly, he draws the
sign of the cross above those wooden planks. The sign of the cross. And then everyone turns toward the sea, and they have the look of those who have won, because they know that that ship will
return, she is a blessed ship, she will challenge the sea and win, nothing can harm her anymore. She is a blessed ship.”

They had even stopped throwing stones in the water. By that time they were motionless, listening. Sitting on the sand, all five of them, and around, for miles, no one.

“Have you got it clear?”

“Yes.”

“Can all of you see it, really well?”

“Yes.”

“Then listen carefully. Because here it gets difficult. An old man. With white, white skin, lean hands; he walks with difficulty, slowly. He is going up the main street of a town. Behind
him, hundreds and hundreds of people, all the people of the town, filing past and singing, they are wearing their best clothes, no one is absent. The old man keeps on walking, and he seems alone,
completely alone. He arrives at the last houses in the town, but he does not stop. He is so old that his hands shake, and his head too, a bit. But he looks straight ahead, calm, and he does not
stop even at the beginning of the beach. He slips between the boats hauled up above the waterline, with that unsteady gait of his that makes it seem as if he will fall at any moment, but he never
does. Behind him, all the others, a few yards behind, but still there. Hundreds and hundreds of people. The old man walks on the sand, and it’s even more complicated, but it doesn’t
matter, he will not stop, and since he does not stop, in the end he comes to the sea. The sea. The people stop singing, they stop a few steps away from the shore. Now he seems even more alone, the
old man, while he places one foot in front of the other, so slowly, and walks into the sea, a man alone, in the sea. A few steps, until the water reaches his knees. His clothes, soaked through,
cling to him and those terribly skinny legs, skin and bone. The wave slips back and forth and he is so slight that you think it will carry him off. But it doesn’t, he stays there, as if
planted in the water, his eyes staring straight ahead of him. His eyes looking straight into those of the sea. Silence. All around, nothing stirs. The people hold their breath. A spell.