Repetition

by Alain Robbe-Grillet

  “Fine.… And is there, as a matter of fact, another door?”

  “Of course not! … But why? … Just the one you know, that opens onto the canal. It’s used for hotel deliveries.”

  Maria seemed to regard this matter of the doors as an example of preposterous curiosity on the part of the visitors. Or else she was pretending to be naïve, knowing quite well what the question meant. Perhaps, excited by the notion of my possible escape, she might even have deliberately hastened my reappearance by provoking that uproar in the hallway. I answered quite calmly that I was on my way downstairs, that I needed no more than the time to get dressed. And I closed my door with a swift gesture, turning the key in the lock as well, a demonstrative gesture which made a faint click, like a shot from a revolver equipped with a silencer.

  It was at that moment that I saw my own traveling clothes on the chair where I had put the borrowed suit I was wearing when I returned last night. And on the coat rack at the other end of the room, my vanished jacket was now hanging on its hook.… In what circumstances, at what time, was the substitution made, without my noticing it? Incapable of remembering if my real clothes had already returned to the scene when Pierre Garin had made his swift visit, I might well not have noticed them after Maria’s untimely appearance with my breakfast, since their presence was so familiar to me.… But what disturbed me more was that there no longer existed the slightest proof of any objective truth about my recent movements. Everything had vanished: the comfortable tweed suit, the dreadful red and black argyle socks, the shirt, and the handkerchief embroidered with a gothic W, the tunnel mud on the heavy shoes, the Berlin Ausweis with my photograph (or at least the photograph of a face which strongly resembled mine) but certifying another identity bearing no relation to the various ones I am in the habit of using, though one in close relation to my trip.

  I then remembered the bloodstained panties, picked up from the floor for some reason in Gigi’s bedroom. Hadn’t I taken them out of the tweed trouser pocket before going to bed? (In any case I saw myself quickly stuffing them in, after looking at my double’s three erotic drawings, noticing then that an entire suit is not usually made out of such material.) Where would I have put them upon returning here? … With some relief I finally discovered them in the bathroom waste-basket: the room had not been cleaned, luckily, since I hadn’t yet checked out.

  Inspecting the panties more closely, I noticed a tiny rip in the center of the red stain, as though produced by the tip of a sharp-pointed object. Wasn’t there some connection with the glass stiletto which had just reappeared in my latest nightmare? The anecdotic content of this dream, as is almost always the case, was easily accounted for by elements of actual experience the night before: while putting the broken champagne glass next to the blue slipper on the crowded shelf of the big armoire, the fleeting notion of harpooning a deep-sea fish with this weapon on some underwater fishing expedition had certainly crossed my mind (O Angelica!). I carefully put my hunting trophy behind the mirror of the toilet cabinet, thereby making verifiable the existence of my nocturnal adventures, careful not to remove the fragile splinter of glass which remained hooked in the frayed silk.

  After dressing with no particular haste in order to join my visitors downstairs, I noticed an unusual bulge in the left pocket of my jacket on the coat rack. Approaching it with some circumspection and thrusting in an apprehensive hand, I found myself in possession of a heavy automatic pistol which I immediately recognized: if not the very one, it was at least identical to the Beretta found in the desk drawer of the J.K. apartment on the Gendarmenmarkt when I arrived in Berlin. Was someone trying to get me to commit suicide? Putting off consideration of this problem till later and not knowing what to do with this obstinate weapon, I returned it, for the time being, to where someone had put it before returning my clothes and proceeded downstairs, leaving my fur-lined jacket behind, of course.

  In the main room of the Café des Alliés, where there were usually very few people, the two men who wanted to see me, though without manifesting any impatience to do so, were easily identifiable: there were no other customers. Sitting at a table close to the street door, in front of almost empty glasses of beer, they looked up at me and one of them pointed (with an almost imperative gesture) at the empty chair evidently prepared for my arrival. I instantly realized from the way they were dressed that these were German police officers in mufti, who moreover, as a preamble, showed me their official cards attesting to their functions and their duty to obtain from me answers that would be prompt, precise, and not dilatory. Although they were anything but loquacious and did not trouble to stand up when I arrived, their gestures and attitudes, as indeed their rare words, manifested considerable politeness and even perhaps a certain kindness, at least apparently. The younger one spoke a clear and correct French without excessive finesse, and I felt honored by this solicitude of the police in my regard, though realizing that I was losing thereby an important means of eluding some embarrassing question or other by feigning not to grasp exact meanings or obvious implications.

  I gathered from my glance at their professional cards that the officer who did not employ my own language—whether out of ignorance or calculation—occupied a superior rank in the hierarchy. And he paraded a somewhat absent, bored expression. The other man explained the situation briefly: I was suspected of playing a certain part (to say no more) in the criminal case they had been assigned this morning. Since neither the victim nor any of the potential suspects belonged to the American civilian or military services, it was customary in this zone that an investigation—at the start, anyway—should devolve upon the Stadtpolizei of West Berlin. He would therefore read to me, to begin with, the part of the report concerning me. If I had any observations to make, I had the right to interrupt; but it might be preferable, in order not to waste time, that I not take advantage of this latitude and that my personal contributions, possible arguments, or justifying commentaries be grouped—for example, at the end of his preliminary statement. I acquiesced, and he immediately began reading the typed sheets he took out of his thick briefcase:

  “Your name is Boris Wallon, born October 1903 in Brest, not the Brest of Byelorussia but a wartime port in Brittany, France. At least it was under this identity that you crossed the Friedrichstrasse checkpoint to enter the western part of our city. However, some thirty hours earlier, you had left the Federal Republic at the frontier post of Bebra with a passport bearing another surname, Robin, and another given name, Henri; moreover it was this latter document that you also presented on the train, during a military check provoked by your strange behavior in the Bitterfeld station. The fact of being in possession of more than one apparently authentic Reisepass made out to different patronymics, birthplaces, or professions will not be held against you: this is often the case with French travelers on special missions, and is none of our business. In principle, your movements since entering the Soviet zone at Gerstungen-Eisenach up to your leaving East Berlin for our American zone do not concern us either.

  “But it so happens that you spent this past night (of the fourteenth to the fifteenth) on the second floor of a ruined apartment building overlooking the Gendarmenmarkt, facing the precise point on this huge, ruined square where a certain Colonel von Brücke was the victim, at around midnight, of a first criminal attack: two revolver shots, coming from one of the open windows of the apartment building in question, which inflicted only flesh wounds in one arm. An impoverished elderly woman named Else Back lodges here illegally despite the insalubrious nature of the premises, lacking electricity and running water, and she formally recognized you from a selection of photographs shown to her. She testifies that the bullets came from the half-destroyed, uninhabited small apartment located on the same landing as her own. She saw you arrive there at nightfall and leave the premises only after the shots were fired. During her deposition, without the suggestion being made by any other person, she mentioned your fur-lined jacket, surprised that a traveler so well-dres
sed should be spending the night in this vagrants’ rendezvous.

  “She saw you leave the next morning carrying your luggage but without the big mustache you were wearing the night before. Although this person evinced in certain of her observations an episodic but evident mental debility, the details she furnished concerning you remain disturbing, especially since, once you had reached Kreuzberg (on foot, by means of the Friedrichstrasse), you asked your way of a young waitress in the beer hall Spartacus, who pointed out to you Feldmesserstrasse, which you were looking for, and where you immediately selected a hotel room—here in fact—some yards from your supposed victim’s legal domicile, at present the residence of his former French spouse, Joëlle Kastanjevica. Your steps having been guided by more than chance, the coincidence obviously appears suspicious.

  “Now, this same officer in the Wehrmacht special services, one Dany von Brücke, was shot, and this time successfully killed, at one forty-five this morning: two bullets fired in the chest at point-blank range with a nine-millimeter automatic pistol, a weapon identical, according to our experts, to the one which had inflicted upon him, three days previously, only a flesh wound of no importance. The bullets corresponding to the two attacks were recovered on each occasion, which is to say, with regard to the second one, in a construction site overlooking Viktoria Park, hence some thirty-five minutes’ walk from here at a regular pace. The precise time of the murder was furnished by a night watchman who heard the explosions and looked at his watch. The two used cartridges of this successful repetition of the attack were lying in the dust in the immediate proximity of the corpse. As for those of the first failed attempt in East Berlin, they were discovered in the apartment indicated by the Back woman, in front of the open window from which she asserts you fired. Despite the fact that this person is half-crazed and sees either sadistic criminals or disguised Israeli spies in every corner, it must be acknowledged that her delirium nonetheless sustains a number of essential points of our scientific and infallible investigation.…”

  On these complimentary words addressed, in a sense, to himself, the officer looked up and insistently met my eyes. Without showing any perturbation, I smiled at him as if I associated myself with the compliments, or at least was mildly amused by the nature of the text. As a matter of fact, his narrative, which at some moments he read from the typed text but at others doubtless involved a series of free improvisations (his last sentence, for instance, struck me as a personal addition), failed to surprise me: rather it confirmed my suspicions concerning this crime which someone wanted to pin on me. But who, in fact: Pierre Garin? Io? Walther von Brücke? … I was therefore readying myself to answer with a certain frankness, though hesitating about what I might reveal to the Berlin police concerning a supposed mission, increasingly obscure, of which I myself was gradually becoming the victim.

  But before I could manage to speak, my interlocutor suddenly looked at his superior, who had just stood up. I in my turn glanced at this tall figure, whose face had suddenly changed expression: disinterest tinged with weariness gave way to an acute, almost anxious attention as he stared at something behind me, in the direction of the staircase to the upper floor. The French-speaking subordinate stood up at once and stiffened, he too staring in that direction with the ardor of a bloodhound on a trail as perceptible as it was unexpected.

  Without leaving my chair or showing the slightest haste, I too turned my head to see the object of their sudden fascination. Having come to a point facing them without completing her descent, pausing on the last step more or less in darkness, Maria stood beside a uniformed Schupo holding in both hands in front of his chest a large flat attaché case which he presented horizontally with respectful vigilance, as if it were an object of great value. And on the lips of the attractive servant could be read the words, German no doubt and articulated with great care, of a mute message she was addressing to my accusers. This young woman, with her naïve airs and graces, must also have belonged to the local information services (like, moreover, most of the domestics in the hotels and pensions of Berlin). As soon as she realized that my eyes were on her, of course, Maria interrupted her gestures, which were immediately transformed into an innocent smile in my direction. The chief inspector gestured to this pair to approach, which they did with a certain eagerness. Maria having removed the two almost empty glasses, the police agent placed his precious burden on our table in order to open it and lift back the lid, continuously observing the precautions reserved for works of art. Inside, carefully set out beside each other and separated by clumps of tissue paper, were seven plastic sachets, each tied by a piece of string to which was attached a tag written in cursive gothic script, illegible to a Frenchman. But I had no difficulty identifying elsewhere in this collection the dance slipper with the blue-sequined vamp, its lining now stained red, the Beretta 9-millimeter automatic pistol, four cartridges which had obviously been fired by the weapon in question, a little naked celluloid flesh-colored doll whose arms had been torn off, the lace-trimmed satin panties which I had supposed hidden from sight in my armoire, a clear glass flask containing an equally colorless liquid as well as a measuring dropper, and the dangerous fragment of the broken champagne flute, its sharp tip still preserving some traces of dried blood.

  The officer who had just read me his report asked me, after a silence, if I recognized these objects. I then considered them in detail more carefully, and answered without any signs of disturbance:

  “A slipper identical to this one was on a shelf in the armoire, in the room where I slept with Joëlle Kast, but it was not bloodstained and was for the right foot; this is a left slipper. The pistol—which has just been found, I suspect, in my belongings upstairs—was put in a pocket of my jacket while I was asleep; I discovered its suspicious presence myself when I awoke this morning.”

  “Had you never seen it before? … For instance, in the bombed-out apartment overlooking the Gendarmenmarkt?”

  “There was, as a matter of fact, an automatic pistol in the table drawer; but if I remember correctly, it was a smaller-caliber model. As for the empty cartridges, I have no idea where they came from. On the other hand, the tortured doll comes right out of a child’s dream.”

  “A dream of yours?”

  “Of mine and of countless little boys! As for the crystal stiletto, it seems to be a piece of a champagne flute containing vermilion paint that I saw in Gigi’s bedroom—she’s Joëlle’s daughter—but there were a lot of other things jumbled about there, and in the midst of all that chaos a pair of silk panties stained with menstrual blood. That item, however, cannot be identified with the intimate evidence you are showing me here: it had no lace trimming, and its simple fabric, that of a schoolgirl’s garment, had not been pierced at the level of the vulval opening.”

  “May we know where you happened to get hold of this perforated underwear, discovered just now in your bathroom?”

  “I had nothing to do with it. As for the Beretta, the only explanation would be that someone whose identity is unknown to me introduced certain objects into my existence with the probable goal of inculpating me for a crime which I know nothing whatever about.”

  “And what is the meaning, in your highly unlikely scenario, of this flask containing a substance of which the measuring dropper is still half-full? What kind of liquid might it contain?”

  This is, in truth, the only element which means nothing to me among the heteroclite contents of the dispatch case. Examining it anew, I see that the body of the flask, of a vaguely pharmaceutical type, reveals, from certain angles, an inscription in ground glass including the silhouette of an elephant, surmounted by the Greek name of this creature, curiously written in large Cyrillic capitals (hence with a Russian S shaped like the Latin C, in place of the final sigma) and followed underneath, in smaller letters, by the German word Radierflüssigkeit, the meaning of which is quite mysterious to me.… But an idea occurs to me, recalling Walther von Brücke’s artistic activities: Radierung means etching.… Prefer
ring not to evoke, for the moment, my rival’s very compromising drawings, I make another answer of a more evasive character:

  “It might be a narcotic or some poison deleterious to the understanding which has been put drop by drop for several days in whatever I drink: coffee, beer, wine, CocaCola … and even tap water.”

  “Yes, of course.… Your psychosis, or your alibi, of some machination organized against you by means of various drugs figures, moreover, in the reasons adduced in our dossier. If you suspect someone in particular, it would be entirely to your interest to provide us with the name.”

  Still leaning over the dispatch case, which is wide open on the table, but suddenly looking up toward the back of the room (by chance or perhaps because the whispering from that direction has grown louder?), I notice that Maria and the older police officer, who’ve been standing against the bar while I’ve been speaking to the officer sitting with his back to them, are talking animatedly, though being careful not to raise their voices. They seem quite at their ease, as if they’ve known each other a long time, though I initially supposed, because of their serious expressions, that their relations were entirely professional. But then a sudden very tender gesture on the man’s part makes me conclude that there is a much greater intimacy between them, with at the very least powerful sexual connotations.… Unless, having noticed that I’m paying attention to their discussion, which doubtless concerns me, they merely intend to deceive me.

  “Something, in any case,” continues my interrogator, “destroys your hypothesis. On the one hand, this is no poison, but a correcting fluid, as is stated in capital letters, though in German, on the flask. This erasing fluid, more over, has an altogether remarkable action, which alters nothing on the surface of the most delicate papers. And on the other hand, numerous and distinct fingerprints of your own have been detected on the glass, with no chance of error.”