Repetition

by Alain Robbe-Grillet

  * * *

  Note 13 – It is from this moment—when HR picks up from the floor of the children’s room that odd crystal dagger formed by the main fragment of a broken champagne flute, with which he immediately plans to arm himself as an offensive weapon of intimidation, in order to flee the house in which he believes he is being held captive—that the narrative of our psychotic special agent becomes entirely deranged, necessitating a completely new version, not only corrected in several points of detail but revised from beginning to end in a more objective fashion:

  Once his light evening meal was finished, HR was visited by our good Doctor Juan, who was unavoidably convinced that the patient’s condition had become more alarming: a mixture of prostration in a state of half-consciousness (still awake, though increasingly passive) alternating with periods, brief or otherwise, of excessive mental agitation, combined with sudden attacks of severe tachycardia and hypertension, in which was manifest yet again his persecution mania concerning the elaborate conspiracy against his person, an imprisonment against his will in which his imaginary enemies were keeping him in order to administer compulsory barbiturates, sedatives, and various poisons. Juan Ramirez is a competent, entirely reliable physician. Though known chiefly as a psychoanalyst, he is also a general practitioner, though mainly concerned with cerebral aberrations linked to the sexual function. His reputation as an obliging abortionist which his jealous colleagues have fabricated is not, thank God, entirely unjustified—we frequently resort to his talents in this realm for the girls we employ as models, who on occasion do more than undress during their posing sessions for amateur painters.

  He had no sooner left the improvised bedroom where his patient was being cared for than Joëlle Kast arrived in her turn, in hopes of dispelling the absurd dark intentions attributed to her by this ungrateful traveler, whose lodging she had provided out of pure goodness of heart. Her excuse for coming was to bring him his clothes, which had been cleaned and pressed—his shoes, his underwear, and his fur-lined jacket—as well as a cup of Indian tea to which the good-hearted pseudo-widow attributed virtues much more effective (as both a sedative and a tonic for the central nervous system!) than those of all other pharmaceutical potions. Once the Frenchman seemed to have fallen asleep, she left the room, careful to make no noise of any kind before going to bed herself, at the other end of the house. But HR was merely pretending to have fallen into a deep sleep, of which he displayed obvious though fraudulent symptoms: relaxation of his entire body, slack lips, slow and regular breathing.… He allowed his hostess ten minutes, to be sure she had had time to return to her bedroom. Then he got up, dressed quickly in the clothes that had been returned to him, removed from the shelf in the mirrored armoire the crystal dagger he had hidden there, and stealthily ventured out into the huge silent house.

  Of course he didn’t recognize much in this series of vestibules and corridors, more complex than he would have supposed from the way this attractive villa looked from outside. When he had been brought into the former children’s room, where a mattress had been placed on the floor for his use, the man was unconscious after a bad fall, upon emerging from an acute fit of erotic hallucinations in the reception room of the living dolls. And when, later on, he had been taken to the toilets of the large pink bathroom where the gentlemen like to bathe the little girls, he seemed to see so little around him that Gigi had had to take him by the hand to lead him to the place as well as back again. HR must then have wandered for sometime looking for a staircase down to the main floor. Everything was deserted, and also very dimly lit at this late hour: a bluish night-light appeared here and there.…

  And now, emerging from a narrow passageway into the central corridor, he suddenly found himself almost bumping into Violetta, who had taken off her high-heeled shoes in order not to disturb the sleepers. Violetta is one of the adolescent girlfriends of his own daughter to whom J.K. offers lodging, protection, material comfort, psychological support, and patrimonial services (juridical, medical, and financial assistance, etc.). She is a pretty young lady of sixteen, slender and highcolored, who enjoys a good deal of success among the officers and is, for the most part, not easily intimidated. But the surprise of finding herself like this, in the lunar obscurity of a dimly lit corridor, confronting an unknown man with a wild-looking face and an intimidating corpulence made even more massive by his heavy fur-lined jacket, alarmed her, and she instinctively uttered a little scream.

  HR, fearing that the noise would bring the entire household down upon him, gestured to the girl to keep still, threatening her with the crystal weapon held against his hip and pointing toward the hem of her scandalously short skirt. Violetta was wearing the charming schoolgirl uniform which is de rigueur at the Sphinx, but a more suggestive version that was much more openly provocative than Gigi’s: the blouse, unbuttoned in front almost to her waist, gaped wide on one side, exposing the roundness of a bare shoulder, while the upper part of her thighs revealed the satiny flesh between the hem of the skirt and the elastic garters, embellished with tiny pink-gauze blossoms, which secured long black silk stockings, trimmed with lace above the knees.

  Violetta, now terrified at being exposed to a madman’s criminal intentions, gradually retreated toward the wall and soon found herself cornered in a recess between two half-columns by her aggressor, who was now so close as to be virtually squeezed against her. Hoping to find in this very position her best safeguard in the presence of an uncontrollable adversary, and having previously relied, in all such cases, on the acknowledged power of her charms, the intrepid girl pushed her bust forward to brush up against him, careful to reveal more of her lovely naked breast in the opening of her blouse, moreover murmuring quite distinctly that if he wanted to rape her standing up, she could remove her little panties right away.…

  But the man was asking for something else, which she did not understand: a key to get out of this house, no door of which was ever locked. She failed to realize that the dangerous glass blade still being brandished by this unknown assailant was now touching the base of her pelvis. She gestured as if to put both arms around this unexpected, unforeseeable client, and HR imagined she was trying to escape. Even as he repeated in a hoarse voice, “Give me the key, little whore!” he gradually thrust his crystal stiletto into her flesh, its needle-sharp point disappearing into the tender triangle between her thighs. While the traveler’s distorted features became increasingly terrifying, his victim now stood completely motionless, fascinated, mute with terror, gazing at her murderer, both hands raised in front of her open mouth, still clutching the straps of her delicate dancing slippers. As these swayed back and forth, the hundreds of metallic sequins covering their triangular vamp cast innumerable blue flashes in the darkness.

  But HR suddenly seemed to become aware of what he was doing. Incredulous, with his free left hand he apprehensively raised the lower edge of the indecently short skirt, immediately revealing the base of the furry little cushion and its illusory protection of white silk, pierced now, where he could plainly see a bright red glistening sheet of fresh blood continuing to well up.

  He stared at his right hand with astonishment, as if it were severed from his body and no longer belonged to him. Then, suddenly emerging from his lethargy in a horrified impulse of recoil, he uttered six words under his breath: “Have pity, my God! Have pity!” The invisible glass knife was wrenched out of the already-deep wound by an impulse so extreme and lacerating that Violetta could not repress a long moan of ecstatic pain. But taking advantage of her aggressor’s evident disarray, she suddenly pushed him away with all her might and ran screaming toward the far end of the hallway, abandoning the glittering slippers, which she had dropped in her overimpetuous gesture of liberation.

  Sinking back into a sudden stupor, lost among the labyrinth of repetitions and recollections, HR stared at the slippers where they lay on the floor at his feet. A drop of blood had fallen from the tip of his lance onto the white kidskin lining of the left slipper, making a
round vermilion spot, its edges fringed with tiny red spatters.… Throughout the entire household, which had been roused by the screams of the sacrificial victim, doors could be heard slamming, footsteps hurrying down hallways, alarm bells ringing, as well as the victim’s nervous sobbing and the high-pitched wailing of the other terrified ewe-lambs.… It was a tremendous clamor that gradually swelled, momentarily dominated by the horrified exclamations of new arrivals, by brief commands and incongruous calls for help, while harsh beams of light suddenly riddled the darkness.

  Despite the impression of being surrounded by pursuers on all sides, caught in the beams of powerful searchlights trained on him, HR, collecting himself, had dashed in the direction Violetta had seemed to come from, and he had in fact immediately found the main staircase. Clinging to a massive banister so that he could rush down the steps without having to grope for each one, all he noticed as he passed was a small picture hung at eye level: a romantic landscape representing, on a stormy night, the ruins of a tower from which two identical men lying in the grass had just fallen, doubtless struck by lightning. At this very moment, he missed a step in his haste and found himself at the bottom of the stairs even sooner than he had expected. In three strides he finally passed through the main entrance door, which like all the others was apparently unlocked.

  The cool night air allowed him to recover a calmer gait. When he pushed open the squeaking garden gate, to emerge onto the unevenly paved quay, he encountered an American officer who as he passed gave him a stiff little salute, to which HR made no response. The other man then stopped, slowly turning around to get a better look at this rude or absentminded person whom he seemed vaguely to recognize. HR calmly continued on his way, soon turning right to follow the Landwehrkanal toward the Schönberg district. The left pocket of his jacket, though deep and wide, bulged with an elongated shape that was quite abnormal. He thrust his hand in and discovered without much surprise the presence of the blue-sequined dance slipper, which he had unconsciously picked up when he took flight. As for the crystal stiletto, it was now standing on its champagne-flute base, in the center of the hall table, looming like a tower at the top of the main staircase hurriedly descended by the murderer under a stormy sky amid flashes of lightning illuminating the scene amid repeated thunderclaps.

  The American officer’s testimony is the last of a virtually continuous series permitting us to reconstruct in detail our escaping patient’s actions and behavior in the von Brückes’ very private villa. HR having vanished into the dead-end alley, the soldier passed through the garden gate in his turn, but in the opposite direction and without hesitation, as a habitué of the doll shop; this was, indeed, Colonel Ralph Johnson, readily identifiable by all of us, as by most of the Western secret services, but better known under the unwarranted appellation of Sir Ralph, which was no more than a friendly allusion to his very British manner. He then ran up the three steps to the door, consulting the large watch he wore on his left wrist. In this fashion we know quite precisely that an hour and twenty minutes passed between that crucial instant and the one at which H.R. reappeared at the Sphinx cabaret (where several of our schoolgirls are employed)—in other words, almost twice the walking time of the girls, for whom this is a customary route: following the canal past the Mehringplatz, then crossing the canal to the left in order to reach the Yorkstrasse. Our so-called special agent therefore had a certain latitude (twenty-five to thirty minutes) in which to make some detour or other and eventually commit a murder, whether the latter had been plotted in advance or was due to accidental circumstances, even to pure contingency. It may be presumed, in any case, that this neighborhood was familiar to him since he’d initiated his frequent sojourns in the nearby French zone: just the other side of the Tiergarten, which actually constitutes a largely international district (despite its theoretical inclusion in the English zone), with its Zoo station constituting the main gateway to the West.

  The fugitive, moreover, obviously knew the place where he might hope to find the best refuge during curfew: in the relatively undamaged area to the south of Kleist and Bülow Streets, a sector abounding in entertainment establishments frequented by Allied soldiers and unauthorized socialites bearing the precious pass allowing circulation here at all hours. For he does not seem to have hesitated among the different signs, which, despite their relative discretion, remain easily locatable, many moreover boasting French names—Le Grand Monde, La Cave, Chez la Comtesse de Ségur—but also Wonderland, Die Blaue Villa, The Dream, Das Mädchenpensionat, Die Hölle, etc.

  When HR entered the intimate but crowded “concert hall” of the Sphinx, Gigi was standing on the bar performing one of her traditional Berlin numbers in a black corset and top hat. Without interrupting her routine, she made an affectionate sign of welcome with her long white silver-handled dandy’s cane, as if they had scheduled a date at the cabaret for that night, which the girl vehemently denies, insisting in fact that she had urged the sick man to stay in his bedroom, given his extremely weak condition (confirmed by Doctor Juan), and above all not to leave the house, all the doors of which, she claimed, would be locked anyway. As usual the little bitch has therefore, in this instance as in countless others, told at least one lie.

  The evening’s entertainment, already nearly over, had passed without a hitch amid languishing music, the sweet smoke of Camels, the indirect pink lighting, the gentle warmth of an air-conditioned hell, the heady perfume of cigars mixed with the muskier scent of the girls, most of whom were now virtually naked. Couples formed with no more justification than an apparently chance encounter, a gesture, a glance. Others left the room more or less discreetly, making for separate premises, comfortable despite their exiguous dimensions, available upstairs as well as, for special purposes, in the basement.

  After drinking several glasses of bourbon, served by a charming young lady of about thirteen named Louisa, HR, utterly exhausted, fell asleep in a dark corner of the room.

  Early in the morning a military patrol discovered the lifeless body of Oberführer Dany von Brücke in the courtyard of an apartment building partially gutted by bombs, inhabited but in the process of restoration, overlooking Viktoria Park—that is, in the immediate proximity of the main Tempelhof airport. This time his murderer had not missed. The two bullets, fired almost at point-blank range into the chest, and found on the spot, were of the same caliber as the one that had merely wounded him in the arm three days before, and according to the experts came from the same automatic pistol, a 9-millimeter Beretta. Next to the corpse was lying a woman’s high-heeled shoe, its vamp covered with metallic blue sequins. A bright red drop of blood stained the inner lining.

  Fifth Day

  HR dreams that he wakens with a start in the windowless bedroom of the von Brücke children. The violent sound of breaking glass which has roused him from his imaginary sleep seems to be coming from the mirrored armoire, yet the big mirror is intact. Fearing damages inside the armoire, he gets up to open the heavy door. On the central shelf, at eye level, the crystal dagger (standing previously on its champagne-glass base) has indeed fallen onto the slipper with blue mermaid scales, doubtless overturned by the vibrations of an American four-engine plane flying abnormally low after its takeoff from Tempelhof (into the north wind), which has shaken all the objects in the villa like an earthquake. In its sudden fall, the transparent pointed blade has made a deep wound in the white kidskin lining the delicate slipper, now also lying on its side. The gash bleeds profusely: a thick vermilion liquid flows in spasmodic waves onto the shelf below and on Gigi’s intimate garments, which are piled there in disorder. HR, panic-stricken, cannot stop the bleeding. He becomes even more hysterical when the whole house suddenly fills with shrill cries.…

  I then actually awakened, but in Room 3 of the Hôtel des Alliés. Two chambermaids were arguing noisily in the hallway, just outside my door. I was still in pajamas, lying across the rumpled feather bed, dampened by my perspiration. Once my Frühstück had been removed after Pierre Garin
’s departure, I tried to rest a little on my bed, and, still oppressed by exhaustion after that disturbed night, followed by too little sleep, I had immediately fallen back to sleep. And now the winter daylight was already fading, between the still-open curtains. The chambermaids were upbraiding each other in some dialect with a strong country accent, of which I understood nothing.

  I got up with some effort and threw open my door. Maria and her young colleague (obviously a newcomer) immediately brought their altercation to an end. On the hallway floor lay a clear glass carafe broken into three big pieces, the contents of which (apparently red wine) had spread as far as the sill of my bedroom door. Maria, despite her nervousness, sent a smile my way as she tried to make excuses, now using a more classical German, though somewhat simplified for my benefit:

  “This little idiot was scared: she thought the plane would crash into the house, and she dropped her tray.”

  “No I didn’t,” protested the other girl in a low voice. “She pushed me on purpose to make me lose my balance.”

  “Enough! Don’t bother the guests with your stories. Monsieur Wall, there are two gentlemen waiting for you downstairs; they’ve been there an hour. They said not to waken you … that they had time.… They wanted to know if the hotel had another exit!”