Standing there beside the table on which the waiter has just deposited my brioches and my coffee with cream (and which is not in fact the one I had chosen), I relish the spectacle of these three kind souls carrying my prey all warm to its black-painted coffin. It is the Brazilian in the white jacket who has the girl under the armpits; the two bystanders, evidently not so strong, have taken a thigh each; since they are holding them higher than the rest of the body the golden dress, which is too short, has slid over the stomach, revealing a band of satiny skin of a delightful pale-brown colour (her whole body appears to be uniformly tanned) above the tiny briefs that just cover the pubis. Leaning on the steel stick, which I am holding firmly in my left hand, I unthinkingly break off a piece of the white bread and start dunking it in my cup.
I must have taken several sips, judging by the level of the liquid, and eaten a whole brioche, since there is now only one left on the white tablecloth, when I notice that the little group constituted as aforesaid is standing—but how long have they been there?—by the car, of which I forgot to give them the keys, with three pairs of eyes fixed on me. I hurriedly lay a few coins on the table beside the second, still intact brioche and go over to them, limping impeccably.
I get behind the wheel. The others lay the girl on the seat beside me, I having first lowered the back by means of the automatic control button that instantly turns it into a bed. This unusual arrangement, coupled with the red caduceus adorning the windscreen, sets the seal on my assumed profession. Moreover the impressive size and serious-looking colour of the car give it an almost official air. Before starting off I take the time, beneath the solidified gazes of my porters, who have lapsed into immobility two paces from the body of the car, lined up as if on parade, to enter in the log under today's date the following few indispensable notes, which they cannot read from where they are standing: “0930 hours, Café Maximilian on the front, black Cadillac 432 AB 123, stiff left leg, ivory-handled stick, medium-grey suit, steel-rimmed spectacles, thin, grizzled moustache.” To check this detail I run the tips of two outstretched fingers along my left upper lip from the middle to the corner of my mouth.
Suddenly I have the feeling of a throng of curious onlookers pressing against the tinted windows of the car, having probably run up from the beach, noiselessly on their bare feet, to join the three original witnesses, who are still standing motionless in the front row of the crowd. With a single movement I close the black book, which makes a slap like a shot. In front of me the slats of the judas are once again shut. But outside there is a trampling and a jostling. The narrow corridor must suddenly have become choked at one of its unpredictable changes of direction, where the mob of dark uniforms and heavy boots is instantly compressed into a tumultuous mass, the confusion of which further slows down its flow. Straining one's ears, one can make out a rustling of leather, thuds against the walls, metallic clicks, individual exclamations emerging here and there from a rumbling and as it were pent-up murmur that is like the sound of the sea; it gradually swells in intensity in a succession of waves, after several seconds becoming a roar, deafening but then abruptly cut off, once more giving way to silence. Ears pricked, I wait for the following change to take place, equally suddenly, unannounced . . . But nothing more occurs. Very carefully I open the black book near the middle.
A woman's handwriting, painstaking and clearly legible, covers the entire page, the little characters ranged in fine, regularly-spaced lines and bearing a title in the upper margin: Secret Properties of the Triangle. If the three sides of any triangle are extended to infinity in the six directions possible, the result is a plane. In that infinite plane the three apices of the triangle lie on a circle that wholly contains the triangle. The three sides of the triangle form tangents of a second common circle that is wholly contained within the triangle. The internal bisectors of the three angles intersect at the centre of this second circle, while the mid-perpendiculars of the three sides—which also admit of a common point—meet at the centre of the first. When these two points merge (concentric circles), the triangle is said to be equilateral.
A figure drawn carefully with compasses and ruler represents this particular case. Contrary to the usual practice of elementary geometry courses, the triangle is here placed point downwards. Having once more checked the solitude, the absolute tranquility of this part of town already described—this muddy clutter of derelict sites and ruins, punctuated by open spaces, where I have just stopped the big black car alongside a hoarding covered with multi-coloured posters hanging in shreds—but remaining in my seat in order to be able, in an emergency, to drive off immediately before the intruder has had time to notice my prisoner laid out beside me, working carefully and precisely with one hand only (my left hand is still resting on the steering-wheel) while leaning sideways towards the languid, prostrate body, I slit the golden dress axially with a single stroke of the scalpel from the triangle of orange silk (drawn out sideways towards the hips), the top edge of which just discloses the beginning of a fleece of fair hair (also triangular although smaller in size and much closer to the equilateral model), right up to the throat, where a little cross comes into view, held around the neck by its slender chain.
I proceed to part the two edges of the fringed rent that my blade has just opened up, I fold back the two flaps of material on either side, and I am able at first glance to verify three of my former hypotheses: the absence of any underwear or lingerie apart from the briefs already mentioned, the firmness of the young breasts, which even in the lying position fall only imperceptibly short of being perfectly hemispherical, and finally the uniform tan of skin that is remarkably fine, delicate, and soft to the touch. As I have already pointed out, if my recollections are correct, the girl was placed head forwards with the back of her neck resting on the very edge of the seat, so that her loose brown hair hangs in thick tresses to the floor.
I am suddenly struck by the anomaly represented by this hair colour, false brunettes being much scarcer than false blondes, particularly in this country. Two additional snicks with the scalpel, one on each side towards the top of the groin, confirm my suspicions by laying bare the perfect triangle of a silky bush as pale as straw, which was hidden beneath the superposed triangular mask of coarse silk or possibly satin, the colour of ripe apricots. The exposed body, having lost its last protective covering, is now wearing only the high boots of soft white kid and the little gold cross. Turning my attention to the face, which is half thrown back, I believe I momentarily catch a slight movement of the green eyes, as if the lovely sleeper were surreptitiously observing me beneath the long lashes of her half-closed lids.
It's time, anyway, to add the longer-lasting effect of a proper injection to the temporary one of the cigarette. So without dwelling any further on considerations of discrepant pilosity I seize the syringe already prepared for injection from its self-opening case. The patient's position inhibiting convenient access to the traditional areas, I choose to make the injection in the tough, amber-coloured skin near the areola of the right breast; and in order to find out for certain, by causing her a very sharp pain in this particularly sensitive region, whether the girl is conscious or not. I push the needle in with deliberate slowness, rotating it like a gimlet. It seems to me that I detect a faint trembling of the belly, a quiver followed by tiny spasmodic contractions running along beneath the epidermis from the pit of the stomach to the pubis, a shudder that is continued (even becoming slightly more pronounced) when the too-thick liquid spurts deep into the flesh under pressure that is on the contrary much more brutal and rapid than was called for.
I watch my victim's sweet face with close attention. Surely the mouth is open wider now . . . And again I see the two dilated pupils staring at me. The second mistake I have made then hits me, for no reason, in all its obviousness: I left the student's book and notebook on the table next to the one at which I lingered to eat a brioche. It is undoubtedly going to be pretty easy in these circumstances to identify the missing girl and start
looking for her. Also at this point there drifts through my mind a vague memory of the café waiter in his white jacket, seen through the window of the closed car door exchanging signs of complicity with his two ostensibly chance assistants as if in reality he knew them very well. As for my alleged prey, she may have kept the smoke in her mouth for a long time without inhaling it, precisely in order to mislead me, and just now she stoically put up with that cruel injection, in anticipation of which she had previously swallowed a powerful antidote . . .
At this precise moment I spot in the left wing mirror another black car parked at some distance behind my own in a clearly visible place where there was certainly nothing a moment ago. There being no more time for me to proceed to further tests of sensitivity on even more tender areas of my patient's body—though the results would be extremely useful to me for subsequent operations—I rev up the engine, which has been idling all this time, only to become aware immediately of something different about the cylinder noise, which as a rule is very much smoother. I drive off none the less, not even taking the time to pull out the little syringe, which is still stuck upright in my awkward passenger's breast, so deeply did I sink the needle in it.
There is no question now, in the circumstances, of making the projected delivery to the fake shop, which I pass without slowing down and without so much as glancing at the dummies in their filmy, translucent white dresses who smile engaging in the windows. Leaving the ruined quarter behind me, I re-cross—this time in the other direction—the bridge over the swollen river. The little flower-seller, trying to move me, holds out at arm's length the single rosebud she has left; but I could hardly, today, envisage stopping to take it from her.
Immediately after the old bridge comes the vast, tree-planted square in front of the Opera House. No doubt the performance has just finished because a flood of people in dark suits and long dresses begins to pour as one from the three large doors at the top of the steps, exactly as if they had all run out with the sole aim of seeing me pass. Soon I am in the wide road, empty at this hour, that runs along the sea front, driving fast in the direction of the derelict factory where I plan to get rid of my false captive by throwing her into the water at the end of the covered landing-stage, having first taken the precaution of tying her hands behind her back to make sure she cannot swim.
Is it the abnormal engine noise—by now most disturbing—that makes me change my mind? At any rate, as I am passing the ruins of the old de luxe hotel, the gaping embrasures of the ground-floor windows (easily reached from the terraces by stepping over the railings of the little balconies) give me a fresh idea that seems to me better without my being able to explain quite why: I shall deposit my delightful burden in one of the rooms, where I shall have all the time . . .
A bright pinpoint of pain in the fat of my right arm as I am watching the road in the rear-view mirror causes me to lose . . . Yes, it did feel like an injection . . . A dim awareness of my third mistake just: reaches the surface of my mind (a second syringe hidden in the thigh part of one of the white-kid boots) before I . . .
And it starts all over again: the muffled tramp of feet in the corridor, the sound of the judas slamming, the silence and the long, deserted beach, the stone falling, etc.
Immediately afterwards the questioning resumes. There are usually two interrogators, difficult to tell apart. They stand side by side. They never alter their position. As far as I am aware they keep their long black coats severely buttoned the whole time and their bowler hats pressed well down on their heads. They speak in turn to ask the questions, but they communicate with each other purely by means of wordless gestures, slow, measured little movements, few in number, involving only one hand, and perhaps the head too, though it is impossible to state this positively because of the very bright spotlights that are arranged in such a way as to blind me every time I try to look at their faces. One of them seems to be holding the curved handle of an umbrella, which he uses to strike the floor with what must be a metal tip every time he wishes to interrupt me.
In order for the alleged trapped student to have concealed a syringe against her thigh beneath the supple leather of a high boot, she would have had actually to be wearing this type of footwear. But the white boots made only a very belated appearance in your system of defence: throughout the early part of the text you were speaking on the contrary of a high-heeled shoe, which is rather different. Do you remember the passage?
Of course! The point is quite right and I remember it very well; the answer seems to me easy, however, because at that stage it was a question of the drowned girl with the fair hair floating like seaweed, one of whose shoes the big bird trained for hunting—according to the legend alluded to—found at the foot of the cliff with its heel broken.
Are you quite sure it is a bird that is involved here and not a large fish? A kind of salmon, for instance, that salvaged the sacred object from the sea and brought it to the shore?
No. If the word “salmon” was mentioned it can only have been to evoke the flesh colour of the rose that has been mentioned several times. And the only fish involved would be the girl herself when the sailors brought her to the surface, caught in their nets.
And yet the factory by the sea, which you admit was the place you were heading for, does happen to be a cannery, does it not?
I don't know . . . And in any case it's derelict, as I was careful to state at the outset.
Let's come back to this question of the tables, not the long, rectangular table on which you placed your victim in an empty room of the ruined hotel but the cast-iron pedestal table ... or rather tables standing in rows on the terrace of the Café Maximilian. It is not clear from your account—despite a surfeit of detail regarding many less important points—whether the white-coated waiter placed your drink on the student's table or on the one you were sitting at yourself.
Neither. He put the cup of coffee and the little basket of brioches down on a third table a little farther back, which together with the first two formed a sort of isosceles triangle, or even what almost amounted to . . . (Violent sound of the umbrella stick striking the floor several times, its iron tip beating out a jerky rhythm.)
Is that why you neglected to take the black notebook with you?
What notebook? I don't know what you're talking about.
That sort of register in which the false student was writing her own account as she went along, the contents of which you seem to be quite familiar with, despite what you are saying at present; the very sentence in which you describe the layout of the tables proves it yet again. On the other hand you start by claiming that the girl had not even touched her drink (since the little bottle that stood on the table—but could not have been brought by the waiter—was still full at the time you intervened), and you go on to imply that this was an antidote, taken in anticipation of the attempt at conditioning by intra-muscular injection that you perpetrated on her a short while later. How could this alleged counter-poison have done its job if your patient had not even had time to drink it? Let us take things in order and begin at the beginning: what shape are these tables, exactly?
They're round—I mean they have a circular top—with a central foot mounted on a very heavy triangular support (equilateral). Anyway, they've already been described in the report, as have the square tablecloths held in place by four metal clips against the frequent gusts of wind that sweep the beach.
Why do you never mention the apple that the girl was eating?
Yes, that's true, there's an apple too. It's one of the exhibits in the case, each of which occupies one of the listening rooms that line the whole length of the corridor. I don't know whether or not the acoustical soundings have revealed the presence of the suspected message inside. In any case it was not the student who had this large apple in her hand, taking a bite out of it from time to time with her small white teeth, close-set between laughing lips: this last epithet in particular would hardly fit the inscrutable bearing described as being hers. No, this would
probably have been the girl in the bathing-costume who was all golden—body and hair—and who was playing ball with two companions in the midst of the crowd when a brief tornado suddenly buffeted the long beach from end to end, picking up wrapping-papers, newspapers, tablecloths, students’ notebooks, and light articles of clothing left on the beach by swimmers and whirling them several metres into the air, even tearing up tents and sunshades here and there, carrying off towards the suddenly stormy water an unlikely collection of debris—cardboard boxes, flat bits of wood, children's games all in pieces, foliage from elsewhere—that mingles in the white and blue of the sky with the great sea-birds, which themselves look as if they have been torn to ribbons by the wind . . .
This probably unexpected reappearance of the phantom bird would provide me with a possible bridge towards a similar storm that once accompanied the birth of the idol on the ship of sacrifice. But I am afraid of losing the thread of my narrative if the course of events concerning the apple with the message, the foreseeable consequences of which ought normally to lead to the factory that used before it was abandoned to produce tins of some large fish in piquant sauce, if the events—as I was saying—concerning the apple are not rehearsed without delay: so there I am, sitting in my comfortable cane armchair, on the beach, only a matter of metres from where the water keeps dying away in imperceptible little hissing, silent waves up a very slight slope of wet sand, successive advances and retreats leaving changing festoons of white foam like lines of bubbles in truncated arcs that vanish instantly. This motion of the waves, however, and the tiny fragments of algae and shell that they are today rolling to and fro, this lulling, bring me back to two indispensable remarks relating to the idol, which I am afraid of subsequently forgetting if I do not make a note of them in passing: among the objects carried out to sea by the foregoing gust of wind there was—originating from some open-air game—a turned wooden pin about thirty-five centimetres high and a thin sheet of plywood cut out in the shape of a female silhouette of approximately the size of a real girl; second point: the hurricane was of such violence that it may very well have carried off even more solid items such as the woman's high-heeled shoe, which would thus have disappeared out to sea in a matter of seconds.
Recollections of the Golden Triangle Page 4
