And the couples who continue, as if nothing had happened, the complicated figures of the dance, the girl standing quite far from her partner who directs her at a distance, without needing to touch her, makes her turn around, keep time, undulate her hips where she stands, and then—in a swift turn—look at him again, at that severe gaze which fixes on her intently, or which focuses beyond her, ignoring her, above the blond hair and the green eyes.
Then comes the scene of the shopwindow of an elegant establishment in the European section, in Kowloon. However it must not take place precisely at this point, where it would not be understandable, despite the presence of this same Kim who is also on the stage of the little theater where the performance, which continues, has now reached those few minutes preceding the murder. The actor playing the part of Manneret is sitting in a chair at his desk. He is writing. He writes that the Eurasian servant girl then passes through the ring without seeing anything, making the gleaming splinters of glass crunch in the silence under her delicate sandals, all eyes being immediately turned toward her and following her as if fascinated, and she moving like a sleepwalker toward Lauren, and stopping in front of the terror-stricken young woman, and standing there staring at her coldly for a very long time, too long, unendurably, and finally saying in a clear, impersonal voice which allows no hope of escape: “Come. You’re expected.”
In the vicinity the dancing follows its normal course, as if all this were happening at the other end of the world, the couples still swept along by the same slow but irresistible rhythm, much too powerful to be interrupted, even momentarily, or altered by such dramas, however violent and sudden they may be. However, accidents multiply on all sides: a glass that breaks on the floor, a girl who suddenly faints, a little ampoule of morphine that falls from a tuxedo pocket when a guest takes out his silk handkerchief to wipe his moist forehead, a long cry of pain that tears through the polite buzz of the salon, the silent entrance of one of the maidservants, one of the big black dogs that has just bitten a dancer’s leg, a white silk handkerchief stained with blood, a stranger who suddenly stands in front of the mistress of the house and hands her, at arm’s length, a thick, brown paper envelope that seems to be stuffed with sand, and Lady Ava who, without losing her composure, quickly takes the object, weighs it in her hand and makes it disappear, just as the messenger has disappeared at the same time.
It is just at this moment that the British police have burst into the large salon of the Blue Villa, but this episode has already been described in detail: the short harsh whistle blast which abruptly stops the orchestra and the murmur of conversation, the iron heels of the two soldiers in shorts and short-sleeved shirts that ring on the marble floor in the sudden calm, the dancers who have frozen in the middle of a step, the man standing with one hand extended in front of him toward his partner still half-turned away, or the two partners facing each other but looking in different directions, one to the right and the other to the left, as if their attention had been attracted at the same moment by diametrically opposed events, other couples, on the contrary, keeping their eyes mutually fixed on their feet, or their bodies united in a motionless embrace, and then the careful search of all the guests, the long-investigation of their names, addresses, professions, dates of birth, etc., until the final sentence spoken by the lieutenant, which follows the words “. . . a necessary crime, not a gratuitous one” and which concludes: “No one else could have anything to gain from his death.”
“Surely you’ll have a glass of champagne,” Lady Ava then says in her calmest tone of voice. A few yards behind her, standing against the frame of a door-way, like a perfectly trained servant ready to answer the first summons, body rigid and waxen face fixed in that kind of impassive smile characteristic of the Far East, which is actually not a smile at all, one of the young Eurasian girls (the one, I believe, whose name is not Kim) stares unblinking at her mistress. Seeming to ignore the incident, she is, according to her habit, attentive and vacant, given up to dark thoughts, perhaps, behind her frank, level gaze, prepared at the slightest notice, effective, impersonal, transparent, lost all day long as well in splendid and bloody dreams. But when she looks at something or someone, it is always directly and with her eyes wide open; and when she walks, it is without turning her head right or left, toward the baroque setting which surrounds her, toward the guests she passes and most of whom, nonetheless, she has known for several years, or several months, toward the faces of the anonymous passers-by, toward the little shops with their variegated displays of fruit or fish, toward the Chinese characters of the signs and posters whose meaning she at least would understand. And when she arrives, at the end of her errand, at the appointed house, in front of that narrow steep staircase without a railing which begins flush with the façade, rising directly toward the dark interior, and which resembles all the other entrances of the long straight street, the servant girl abruptly turns left and unhesitatingly climbs the inconvenient stairs, not even suggesting the awkwardness caused by her narrow split skirt; in a few steps, she has vanished into the total darkness.
She climbs to the second floor without seeing anything, or to the third. She knocks softly three times at a door, and immediately goes in without waiting for an answer. It is not the agent who is here to receive her today, it is the man she knows only by a nickname: the “Old Man” (though he is probably only sixty), whose real name is Edouard Manneret. He is alone. His back is to the door by which she has just entered the room and which she has closed behind her, still leaning against it. He is sitting in a chair, at his desk. He is writing. He pays no attention to the young girl, whose arrival he does not even seem to have noticed, although she has not taken any special precautions to avoid making noise; but her movements are naturally silent, and it is possible that the man has really not heard anyone come in. Without doing anything to indicate her presence, she waits for him to decide to look toward her, which probably takes some time.
But she is then (immediately afterward or a little later?) facing him, both of them standing in a dark corner of the room, motionless and mute; and it is the servant girl who is standing with her back to the wall, as if she had slowly retreated there out of mistrust or fear of the Old Man who, two steps from her, is at least a head taller. And now she is leaning over the desk from which he has still not moved; she has rested one hand on the green leather top whose worn surface disappears almost entirely under a clutter of papers, and with the other hand—the right one—she holds onto the brass rim that protects the edge of the mahogany surface; in front of her, the man, still sitting in his chair, has not even raised his eyes toward his visitor; he stares at the delicate fingers with their red lacquered nails resting on a manuscript page of business stationery only three-quarters covered with a very small, close, and regular handwriting without erasure or mistake; the word which the servant girl’s forefinger seems to be pointing to is the verb “represents” (third person singular of the present indicative); a few lines lower, the last sentence has remained unfinished: “would tell, upon his return from a trip” . . . He has not found the word that came next.
The third image shows him standing once again; but Kim, this time, is half-reclining beside him on the edge of a bed with rumpled blankets. (Was the bed already visible, previously, in this room?) The girl is still wearing her sheath dress slit up the side in the Chinese fashion, whose thin white silk, doubtless worn next to the skin, makes a cluster of tiny fan-shaped creases at the waist, produced by the evident torsion of the long, supple body. One foot is touching the floor with the toe of the thonged sandal; the other, shoeless but still sheathed in its transparent stocking, rests on the far edge of the mattress, the leg, bent at the knee, emerging as far as possible from the split skirt through its side opening; the other thigh (that is, the left one) lies full length, up to the hip, on the rumpled covers while the upper part of her body is propped on one elbow (the left one) as it turns toward the right side. The open right hand is spread on the bed, palm exposed and fi
ngers slightly curved. The head is tipped back a little, but the face has kept its waxen mask, its frozen smile, its wide eyes, its complete absence of expression. Manneret, on the contrary, has the strained features of a man observing the course of an experiment or a project with feverish attention. He moves no more than his companion whose indecipherable face he scrutinizes as though he were waiting for it to reveal at last some anticipated, or feared, or unpredictable sign. One hand is extended in a cautious gesture, ready perhaps to intervene. The other is holding a delicate, stemmed glass whose shape suggests that of a champagne glass, but smaller. There are the remains of a colorless liquid at the bottom.
In a final scene, we see Edouard Manneret lying on the floor, in his dark suit that shows no disorder, between the impeccably made bed and the desk where the manuscript page remains unfinished. He is lying at full length on his back, arms extended symmetrically a few inches away from his body. In the room around him, there is no trace of violence or struggle or accident. The cessation of all action continues in this way for some time, until the leather clock on the desk chimes out, in the silence, the even ringing of the alarm; the spectators, recognizing this conclusion, then begin to applaud and stand up from their chairs, one after the other, to proceed one by one or in little groups toward the exit door, toward the red-carpeted staircase, toward the large salon where refreshments are waiting for them. Lady Ava, smiling and relaxed, is quite surrounded, as is natural, everyone wanting to offer his thanks as well as his compliments to the mistress of the house, before leaving. Having caught sight of me, she approaches with her most open, ordinary expression, seeming to have lost all recollection of the serious words she spoke a few moments ago, as of the events which caused her anxiety, and saying in her polite calm voice: “Surely you’ll have a glass of champagne.” I smile in my turn, answering that I was just about to, and before heading toward the buffet, I compliment her on the success of the evening.
So it is here that the dialogue occurs, once again, between the red-faced fat man and his tall companion in the dark tuxedo who bends his head a little to hear the stories the other man is telling him as he raises his congested face, no longer paying any attention to the silver tray offered by the white-jacketed waiter. The fat man has one hand extended in that direction, but he seems to have completely forgotten the reason for his gesture, and even his hand, which remains suspended about six inches from the brimming glass which the waiter too is no longer watching, his attention elsewhere, and which is tilting dangerously.
The fat man’s hand has in time closed a little, only the forefinger remaining extended and the third finger partially curved. On this finger, which is as thick and short as all the rest, he wears a large Chinese seal ring whose stone, skillfully carved in every tiny detail, represents a young women half-reclining on the edge of a sofa, one of her bare feet still resting on the ground, the upper part of her body propped on one elbow and her head tilted back. The supple body which twists under the effect of some ecstasy, or some pain, produces in the thin black silk of the clinging dress several series of tiny divergent creases: at the top of the thighs, at the waist, over the breasts, at the armpits. It is a traditional dress, clinging and severe, with long sleeves tight at the wrists and a low, stiff, close-fitting collar, but instead of being slit no higher than the knee, it is open to the hip. (There is doubtless an invisible zipper which runs up to the armpit and perhaps even runs down the inner side of the sleeve to the wrist.) The left hand, which is resting on the unmade bed, palm upward, still holds loosely under the thumb a tiny glass syringe with its needle attached. A last drop of liquid has dripped from the hollow beveled tip, leaving on the sheet a round spot the size of a Hong Kong dollar.
Manneret, who has not moved from his desk during the entire scene, merely turning his head to observe the bed (so there must have been a bed in the room), his right shoulder drawn back and his left hand resting on the right arm of the chair, then looks back at his manuscript page and his pen on the interrupted sentence; after the word “trip,” he writes the words “made clandestinely” and stops once again. Kim, facing him, leaning over the mahogany desk covered with a jumble of manuscript pages, one hand with three of its long, bright red, lacquered nails resting on a tiny area of old and faded green leather still visible amid the clutter, the line of her hip—emphasized by her asymmetrical posture—silhouetted against the almost closed Venetian blind, Kim straightens up, holding in her other hand the thick, brown paper envelope which the man has just given her (or perhaps merely indicated to her on the table with a rapid gesture of his chin . . .). And without a word, without a greeting, without a gesture of farewell, she retires as silently as she had come in, closes the door behind her without a sound, crosses the landing, goes down the narrow, dark, inconvenient stairs which lead directly to the swarming overheated street smelling of rotten eggs and fermenting fruit, amid the crowd of men and women uniformly dressed in black cotton pajamas as shiny and stiff as oilcloth.
The servant girl is still accompanied by the big dog which tugs just hard enough on its leash to keep it taut and straight between the leather collar and the hand with lacquered nails holding the other end at arm’s length. In her other hand, there is the thick brown envelope, bulging as if it had been stuffed with sand. And a little farther on, there is again the same municipal sweeper in overalls, wearing a light straw hat in the shape of a flattened cone. But this time he does not even glance up as the girl passes. He is leaning against one of the big square pillars of the covered gallery on which are posted a number of very small signs; the broom handle stuck under one arm, the sheaf of rice straw curved by use partially covering one of his bare feet, he is holding in both hands in front of his eyes the piece of mud-stained magazine which he has picked up from the gutter. Having sufficiently examined the many-colored scene embellishing the cover, he turns the page; this side, much dirtier than the other, is furthermore printed only in black and white. The majority of the still-legible surface is occupied by three stylized drawings, one above the other, showing the same young woman with high cheekbones and slightly slanted eyes, still situated in virtually the same setting (a poor and empty room furnished with a simple iron bed) in the same costume (a black sheath dress, of traditional cut) but increasingly faded.
The first of these drawings shows her half-reclining on the edge of the bed with rumpled sheets (the upper part of her body propped on one elbow, dress open to the hip over the naked flesh, face tilted back with an ecstatic smile, hand still holding the empty syringe, etc.); but a second setting is superimposed on the first in the whole upper part of the frame, occupying what seems to be the girl’s field of vision: here are many elements of a naive and ornate luxury, such as walls covered with ornamental moldings, carved columns, mirrors in baroque frames, bronze candlesticks cast in fantastic shapes, heavily draped materials, ceilings painted in the eighteenth-century manner, etc. In the second drawing, all this tawdry luxury has vanished: nothing is left but the narrow iron bed on which the girl is now chained by all four limbs, lying on her back in a twisted and awkward position, which must indicate her vain efforts to free herself from these bonds; in her convulsive movements, her dress has opened still more, the lateral slit now revealing a small round breast (so that one can tell, here, that the zipper extended all the way to the neck instead of running back down the inner side of the sleeve, as had first been supposed without much concern for probability). The third drawing is doubtless symbolic: the girl is no longer chained, but her lifeless, entirely naked body is lying at an angle on its side, half on the bed where the arms and bust are stretched out, half on the floor where the long legs, knees bent, are extended; the black dress is lying on the floor, near a pool of blood; a huge hypodermic needle, the size of a sword, pierces the body through, penetrating the breast and emerging behind, below the waist.
Each image is accompanied by a brief caption, whose large Chinese characters signify, respectively: “Drugs are a Disloyal Friend,” “Drugs are an Ensl
aving Tyrant,” “Drugs are a Deadly Poison.” Unfortunately, the sweeper cannot read. As for the short fat man with the red face and bald head who is telling the story, he does not understand Chinese; at the bottom of the last picture, he has only been able to make out some very tiny Western letters and numbers: “S.W.N. Tel.: 1-234-567.” A far more scrupulous narrator, who seems to be unaware of the meaning of the three initials (Society for the War on Narcotics) and who insists, on the contrary, on the attraction of the illustrations to a specialist, he declares to his interlocutor—who is quite incredulous, moreover—that the drawings are an advertisement for some clandestine establishment in the lower part of the city, where habitués are offered forbidden and monstrous pleasures which are not those of morphine and opium alone. But the white-jacketed waiter, who has straightened the tray in order to extend it horizontally, then says, at last: “Here you are, sir.” The fat man turns his head and for an instant considers his own hand still in midair, the jade ring squeezing the middle finger, the silver tray, the glass full of a pale-yellow liquid in which tiny bubbles slowly rise to the surface; having finally realized where he is and what he is doing there, he says: “Oh! Thank you!” He picks up the glass, empties it in one swallow, sets it down again clumsily, without paying any attention, too close to the edge of the tray still held toward him. The glass pitches over and falls to the marble floor where it breaks into a thousand splinters. This passage has already been reported, hence it can be passed over quickly.
Not far from here, Lauren happens to be reattaching her sandal, whose thongs have come undone during the dance. Pretending to be unaware of Sir Ralph’s gaze, the young woman has sat down on the edge of a couch, where her long bouffant skirt spreads around her. She remains leaning forward, almost to the floor, so that both hands can reach the foot just visible under the white material. The delicate shoe, whose upper is no more than a narrow triangle of gilded leather which scarcely conceals the tips of the toes, is held in place by two long thongs which crisscross over the instep and around the ankle, above which a tiny buckle fastens them together. As she concentrates on this delicate operation, Lauren’s blond hair falls forward and further exposes the curved nape of her neck and the delicate skin whose down is even paler than the blond hair, which falls forward and further exposes the curved nape of her neck and the delicate skin whose down is even paler than the rest of the curved nape and the delicate skin which curves further and the skin . . .
La Maison de Rendez-Vous and Djinn Page 13
