Tropic Moon (8 page)

Finally, what he needed was an explanation from her. About Thomas. He absolutely had to have it, and yet he was afraid to ask. Had she killed the black man? He was almost sure of it. It didn't bother him all that much, he just wanted to know how and why. And he wanted to know the reason for her being so tranquil.

The café was lighted by four electric bulbs. It was filled with the clack of billiard balls and the voices of cardplayers, and it seemed like any provincial café. Timar downed two more drinks, then took advantage of a moment when Adèle was away serving someone to head for the stairs. “I'm off to bed. Good night!”

She lifted her head. He caught a mere glimpse of her terrible smile, half ironic and half tender. She was laughing at him. She knew he was running away, and she knew why. And it didn't worry her.

He hadn't expected to sleep soundly, but he did, and when he woke up it was already day. Adèle was standing beside his bed in her black dress.

“Feeling any better?”

“But …”

How did she know he'd been feeling sick? She sat on the edge of the bed as she had the first time, when Eugène and Thomas were still alive. He let his hand stray over to her dress and slowly pulled her close. It was quick, mainly because of the sensation of cold, naked flesh—Adèle had just showered—underneath the soft silk.

“I have to go downstairs.”

He waited two hours before following her. He puttered around, looking through the little things his mother and his sister had packed for him, odd useless things like a thimble and an assortment of different-colored spools of thread: “You'll have to mend your clothes on your own over there.”

There was even a selection of buttons—the two women must have scoured every sewing shop in La Rochelle. Timar could almost hear them saying, “It's for my son. He's leaving for Gabon next week. There won't be any women over there to …”

He went down and ate, exchanging only a few words with Adèle. He announced he'd be stopping by the chief of police.

“Good idea,” she said.

He went, in fact. He was served the customary glass of whiskey.

“What's new with you? Are people asking why the investigation's stalled?”

“I haven't heard anything in particular.”

“Thomas's father came in from the bush. A native clerk who worked for a lawyer for two years has taken him under his wing. He's getting pushy—claiming I don't know how much in damages. By the way, has the hotel manager found a new man?”

“I don't know.”

“That's plain to see. You, you could live here for twenty years without even suspecting the kinds of things that go on!”

Lunch. A stupefying snooze. Cocktail. Dinner. Once again Timar left before closing time. He didn't sleep. He heard all the conversations, the sound of the billiard balls, the coins jingling on the counter, the boy shutting the venetian blinds and locking the doors. At last Adèle, on her way up. He hesitated, couldn't bring himself to get out of bed, and spent two solid hours trying to fall asleep between the clammy sheets.

At ten in the morning he was still sleeping when the door burst open. Adèle came in, excited as can be, a piece of paper in her outstretched right hand.

“Your uncle's reply! Read it, quickly!”

He unsealed the telegram without quite realizing what he was doing. The dateline was Paris.

Timar didn't know if he was pleased, furious, or worried. But he noticed something new. Until then, Adèle had treated him with a degree of condescension. Now, however, she was looking at him admiringly. Finally she was showing some emotion. She gazed at him fondly and suddenly kissed him on both cheeks.

“Well, you're someone—there's no denying it!”

She went on glibly, handing him his clothes.

“Old man Truffaut's downstairs. He's good for a hundred thousand, with a case or two of whiskey thrown in. Look—you've got another bite.”

She touched her finger to Timar's chest, just below the right breast, the way she'd done once before.

“You have a woman's skin! I'm going to call the notary and set up a meeting.”

She went out. It was the first time she'd been so excited. Timar rose, with a heavy glance at his surroundings. Glasses clinked below—no doubt she was plying old Truffaut with drink.

“…
extreme caution
…
sources of capital
…”

He cut himself shaving, looked around without success for his alum, and went downstairs with a streak of blood on his cheek. He was expecting to find a grimy, bearded backwoodsman. Instead a little wizened old man, neatly dressed in a starched suit, got up to greet him.

“It seems it's you who …”

Was Timar too nervous? Was it the streak of blood zigzagging down to his chin, or perhaps just the glare, stronger that morning than usual? He found himself overcome by a sense of panic that he'd experienced two or three times since he'd been in Libreville, at noon, among others, on that red dirt path, when he'd felt like his sun helmet was too tight and that if he didn't escape from under the sun right away it would crush him. His vision grew hazy. Things began to wobble, just a bit, the way they do when you look at them through the steam from a boiling pot.

He was on his feet, facing the little old man who was waiting to take his seat again, and Adèle, her elbows on the counter, was watching them both with an almost animal satisfaction. Standing on a chair, the boy was winding the clock.

Timar sat down. He ran his hand across his forehead and rested his elbows on the table.

“Adèle—a whiskey!”

He was struck by that; it was the first time he'd called her by her name in the café, saying it out loud, in the same tone of voice and just as naturally as one of the loggers or the notary clerk.

“H
APPY?
” she asked him, gazing into his eyes with her chin on her folded hands.

“Yes,” he said, draining his glass of champagne.

“We'll be there soon.”

She spoke slowly, watching him, and Timar had the disagreeable impression that he was being tested.

“Is it my fault we're not there already?” he asked irritably.

“Be nice, Joe. I never said it was.”

He'd grown morbidly touchy. He was depressed. You could see it in his haggard features, his feverish eyes, his abnormal and shifty glance.

“Everything all right, children?” the owner came over to ask. That night, he was dressed in the white uniform of a cook.

Because from now on the owner of the Central was Bouilloux, the ex-logger and cleaner of Libreville's drains. They'd struck a deal just like that, amid laughter, on one of the first nights after it became known that Timar and Adèle had a concession in the interior. The card game was dragging on. Adèle was going over her accounts. In the middle of a hand, Bouilloux had asked, “So, who's going to take over this place now?”

“I haven't thought about it yet.”

“How much are you asking for it?”

“What do you care? You're too poor no matter what.”

They joked around. Bouilloux came up to the counter.

“Maybe we could work something out. I've never owned a bar, but I think I could pull it off.”

“Let's talk about it again tomorrow morning.”

The next day it was done. Bouilloux handed over fifty thousand francs in cash and signed some papers to make up the balance.

That had been three weeks ago, but this was the first night that the café was actually his. Wearing his cook's uniform, he offered champagne all around. And for the first time since the death of Eugène Renaud, the gramophone was playing. Several residents of Libreville had joined the regulars.

Timar and Adèle sat across from each other at a little table and didn't speak much. Every few minutes Adèle looked at her companion intently. His brow was furrowed with worry.

He wasn't sick, simply tired. The strange month he'd just lived through had been filled with events that had come so rapidly and been so unsettling that he still hadn't grasped their import.

He had barely gotten to Libreville before he found himself in an office with Adèle seated next to a notary and using her finger to point out the various deletions and corrections that should be made. The concession was in Timar's name, but there was a binding contract between him and the widow Renaud, who brought two hundred thousand francs to the deal, a hundred thousand for the concession and the rest for improvements to the land. Every foreseeable event had been accounted for, everything was in order, and Timar, who didn't have any objections, signed the papers he was handed one by one.

There had been a lot of details to attend to after that, but the main thing was he'd settled into a routine that had become absolutely indispensable to him. There was, for instance, the walk down the esplanade along the red path with its border of palms. Timar always stopped at a fixed time at the market, then at the place where the native canoes landed their fish, at last at the pier across from the governor's house.

The heat made the walk oppressive, and yet he took it every day, as if it were a duty, and each day he asked himself where he was going to stop for a whiskey. Most often it was at the police chief's. He sat down and said, “Don't let me interrupt your work.”

“I'm done. What's new? A whiskey?”

They chatted in the warm shade of the office. This lasted until the day the citizens of Libreville learned about the concession and the partnership between Timar and Adèle. Suddenly, the police chief was a changed man. He seemed put out. He puffed away at his pipe, looking at the bands of shadow and light.

“You know that the investigation is still continuing and that our opinion remains unchanged. I'll tell you the truth: All we're missing is the pistol. Adèle has stashed it away. But no matter—one of these days …”

And the chief of police got up and walked across the room.

“Perhaps you made an unwise move. You, a young man with the brightest of futures …”

Timar's response never varied. With a trace of a smile, ironic and condescending, he rose to collect his sun helmet.

“Let's drop it, all right?”

He left, looking very dignified, and maintained the attitude for as long as he thought he was being watched. He wanted it to seem like he knew what he was doing.

The most logical thing, now that he was on the other side, would have been to avoid the three individuals who represented the enemy camp: the governor, the chief of police, and the prosecutor. Some confused instinct, hope or a wish to show off, drove him to visit all three.

With the prosecutor it was simple enough. His host served him three whiskies, one after the other, and gave him an earful.

“You, my friend, are about to take a bath. It's none of my business. But still, try to get out before it's too late. Adèle is a pretty girl. In bed, she's something else. But afterward, that's it. Understood?”

And Timar found himself on the veranda wearing his knowing look.

At the governor's, by contrast, the blow had been brutal. While Timar waited in the anteroom, the boy went into the office he knew so well. Timar heard the governor say, without lowering his voice, “Tell the gentleman I'm very busy. I don't know when I'll have any time to see him.”

Timar's ears reddened, but he didn't move a muscle. Even when there was no one around to see, he'd trained himself to wear his cynical smile.

He went back the way he came—following the esplanade until he reached the shadowy hotel, with Adèle at the register and the regulars. He went on pretending he was just another guest, having his meals with the others. Downstairs, there was never any intimacy between Adèle and him. Just like Bouilloux or the one-eyed man, he'd shout, “Adèle! A Pernod!”

Because he'd learned to drink Pernod. He'd picked up some other habits, too, and almost made them into rituals. At noon, for instance, before everyone sat down to eat, they played a game of cards at the bar. The loser paid for the round. At night, right after dinner, they arranged for a couple of games of belote. Timar was an avid participant. From time to time, someone or another would cry out, “Adèle! Another round!”

And he was mastering an entirely new vocabulary. The others would sometimes look at each other as if to say, “He's making progress.”

And yet it depressed Timar, too, seeing himself there in the crushing heat, with cards in hand for hours on end, his blood thickened by alcohol. He turned moody then. He'd take exception to the slightest thing, a single word, a look.

In short, he was no longer one of the enemy. He had nothing to do with officials or sober types. And yet twenty years of this still wasn't going to make him one of the loggers, or like the notary clerk with the big gut, who played cards using a whole set of words that Timar had never heard before.

The doors and shutters were locked. Adèle went up first, candle in hand, and the electric generator shut down. On the landing, a moment of hesitation—this was a daily occurrence. Adèle turned to look at her companion. Some days he'd say, “Good night.”

And she'd say the same, handing him the candle before she went to her room without a kiss or a touch of the hand.

Other times, he murmured, “Come.”

Though it was no more than a movement of the lips, she understood. Without a trace of self-consciousness she entered his room, placed the candle on the dresser, opened the mosquito net, and readied the bed before getting in and waiting for him.

“Tired?”

“Not at all.”

He didn't want to be tired, but in fact—even though he didn't work and never had to make an effort of any sort—he could barely stand. His exhaustion must have been due to a weakening of his blood. The main symptoms were the hollowness in his head and the shapeless anxiety that sometimes made him shake with terror.