The Erasers (31 page)

Juard returns to his clinic. He has been able to obtain neither information nor promises from Wallas. He has less and less hope of any possible help from the authorities, were things to go badly. They would be quicker to condemn him as an accomplice.

Whichever way he turns, he is just as guilty. The issue, as he sees it, is inevitably a fatal one.

Given these various dangers, the special agent, who at firs
t
inspired him with unexpected fears, now seems on reflectio
n
much less dangerous, if not exactly a savior. Juard is eve
n
about to reproach himself for his own suspicions: shouldn
’
t h
e
have told the truth—of which Wallas certainly seems, after al basically ignorant
…

But the little doctor then remembers the last words he spo
ke
t as he was leaving:
“
Sometimes you go through hell and hig
h
water to find a murderer
…
”
He has immediately regretted
them, for they applied all too clearly—much more clearly than he had planned—to the present situation. Now he is pleased at having spoken them. Wallas, thanks to him, now possesses the key to the riddle; if he considers it carefully and knows how to deal with what he finds, he will not be following a false lead. However, Juard has not felt that the special agent paid particularly close attention to his last words.

Back in the Rue de Corinthe, the doctor is going to rejoin Daniel Dupont in the little white room. As is customary in the clinic, he walks in without knocking. The professor, who has his back to the door, starts when he hears him.

“
You frightened me.
”

“
I
’
m sorry,
”
Juard says,
“
I came in as if this were my own room. I don
’
t know what I was thinking of.
”

Dupont must have been walking back and forth between the bed and the window. He looks annoyed.

“
How
’
s the arm?
”
Juard asks.

“
Fine, just fine.
”

“
Any fever?
”

“
No, none. I
’
m all right.
”

“
It would be better not to move around too much.
”

Dupont does not answer. He is thinking about something else. He walks over to the window, pulls aside one of the curtains—only an inch or so—so as to look out into the street without being seen.

“
Marchat hasn
’
t come back,
”
he says.

“
He
’
ll be here soon,
”
the doctor says.

“
Yes
…
He
’
ll have to hurry.
”

“
You
’
ve still got plenty of time.
”

“
Yes
…
not so much.
”

Dupont lets go of the curtain. The light material falls back,
g
etting the pattern of the embroidery ap
pear again. Before be
coming quite motionless, the curtain is still shaken by a few tiny oscillations—quickly dying away—a faint trembling.

The professor lowers his arm with a certain slowness, that of a man who has nothing else to do afterward—and therefore has no reason to move rapidly. He is waiting for someone who has not come; in order to conceal his nervousness—and to master it somewhat—he forces himself to observe this exaggerated moderation. He lowers his arm.

His hand, instead of hanging naturally, moves up his leg, hesitates at the bottom of his jacket, lifts it slightly, moves down again, rises again, passes underneath the bottom of the jacket and finally vanishes into the trouser pocket.

Dupont turns around to face the doctor.

He glimpses his face in the mirror over the fireplace and, beneath it, the double row of objects arranged on the marble: the statuette and its reflection, the brass candlestick and its reflection, the tobacco jar, the ashtray, the other statuette—a splendid wrestler about to crush a lizard.

The athlete with the lizard, the ashtray, the tobacco jar, the
candlestick
…
He takes his hand out of his pocket and extends
it toward the first statuette, a blind old man led by a child. In the mirror, the hand
’
s reflection advances to meet it. Both remain momentarily suspended over the brass candlestick—hesitating. Then the reflection and the hand come to rest, one opposite the other, calmly at equal distances from the mirror
’
s surface, at the edge of the marble and at the edge of its reflection.

The blind man with the child, the brass candlestick, th< tobacco jar, the ashtray, the athlete crushing a lizard.

The hand again advances toward the bronze blind man—the image of the hand toward that of the blind man
…
The two hands, the two blind men, the two children, the two empty candlesticks, the two earthenware jars, the two ashtrays, the two Apollos, the two lizards
…

He still remains hesitating for some time. Then he resolutely grasps the statuette on the left and replaces it by the terracotta jar; the candlestick replaces the jar, the blind man the candlestick.

The tobacco jar, the blind man with the child, the candlestick, the ashtray, the splendid athlete.

He examined his work. Something still disturbs him. The

tobacco jar, the blind man, the candlestick He reverses the

last two objects. The earthenware pot and its reflection, the blind man and his reflection, the candlestick, the athlete with the lizard, the ashtray.

Finally he pushes the little red ashtray about an inch toward the corner of the marble mantelpiece.

Garinati leaves his room, locks the door behind him, and begins walking down the long spiral of the staircase.

Along a canal. The blocks of granite that line the quay; under the dust gleam occasional crystals, black, white, and pinkish. To the right, a little farther down, is the water.

A rubber-coated electric wire makes a vertical line against the wall.

Below, to pass over a cornice, it makes a right angle, once, twice. But afterward, instead of
following the inner surface, it
stands away from the wall and hangs free for about a foot and a half.

Below, fastened again against the vertical wall, it describes another two or three sinusoidal arcs before finally resuming its straight descent.

The little glass door has creaked loudly. In his hurry to get away, Garinati has opened it a little more than he should have.

The cube of gray lava. The warning buzzer disconnected, the street that smells of cabbage soup. The muddy paths that fade away, far away, among the rusty corrugated iron.

The bicycles coming home from work. The wave of bicycles flows along the Boulevard Circulaire.

“
Don
’
t you read the papers?
”
Bona bends over toward his briefcase.

Garinati puts his hands over his ears to get rid of that irritating noise. This time he uses both hands, which he keeps pressed hard against each side of his head for a minute.

When he takes them away, the whistling sound has stopped. He begins walking, carefully, as though he were afraid of making it start all over again by movements that might be too sudden. After a few steps he is once again standing in front of the apartment house he has just left.

After a few steps more he sees, glancing up at a gleaming shop, the brick house at the corner of the Rue des Arpenteurs. It is not the house itself, but a huge photograph of it carefully arranged behind the glass.

He goes in.

There is no one in the shop. Through a door in the rear comes a dark young woman who smiles at him politely. He glances toward the shelves covering the walls.

One showcase entirely filled with candy, each piece wrapped in brightly colored paper and sorted out in large round or oval jars.

One showcase completely full of little spoons, in groups of twelve—in parallel rows, other rows fan-shaped, in squares, in circles…

Bona would go to the Rue des Arpenteurs, ring at the door of the little house. The old deaf servant would finally hear and come to the door.

“
Monsieur Daniel Dupont, please.
”

“
What did you say?
”

Bona would repeat, louder:

“
Monsieur Daniel Dupont!
”

“
Yes, this is the house. What do you want?
”

“
I came to find out how he was
…
Find out how he was!
”

“
Oh, I see. Very kind. Monsieur Dupont is quite well.
”

Why should Bona go to find out how he was, since he knows the professor is dead?

Garinati stares, under the platform, at the girders and cables gradually disappearing from sight. On the other side of the canal, the huge drawbridge machinery hums smoothly.

It would be enough to insert some hard object—it could be of quite small size—into one of the essential gears in order to stop the whole system, with a shriek of wrenched machinery. A small, very hard object that would resist being crushed: the cube of gray lava
…

What would be the use? The emergency crew would come at once. Tomorrow everything would be in operation as usual—as if nothing had happened.

“
Monsieur Daniel Dupont, please.
”

“
What did you say?
”

Bona raises his voice:

“
Monsieur Daniel Dupont.
”

“
Yes, I hear you! You don
’
t have to shout, you know. I
’
m not deaf! What do you want Monsieur Dupont for now?
”

“
I came to find out how he is.
”

“
How he is? But he
’
s dead, young man! Dead, you hear? There
’
s no one else here, you
’
ve come too late.
”

The little glass door creaks loudly.

Something to say to that Wallas? What would he have to say to him? He takes the post card out of his pocket and stops to look at it. You could almost count the granite crystals in the curb of stone in the foreground.

A ball of crumpled paper—bluish and dirty. He kicks it, two or three times.

A plaque of black glass attached by four gilded screws. The one on the upper right has lost the decorative rosette that concealed its head.

A white step.

A brick, an ordinary brick, a brick among the thousands of bricks that constitute the wall.

That is all that remains of Garinati around five in the evening.

The tug has now reached the next footbridge and in order to pass under it begins lowering its smokestack.

Looking directly down, the cable still runs along the surface of the water, straight and taut, scarcely bigger around than a man
’
s thumb. It rises imperceptibly above the glaucous wavelets.

And suddenly, preceded by a ripple of foam, appears from under the arch of the bridge the blunt bow of the barge, which moves slowly on toward the next bridge.

The little man in the long greenish coat who has been leaning over the parapet straightens up.