by Unknown
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but very fine, handwriting had been traced across them. He knew that the night before his eyes had already been struck by this brief notice; then he ceaselessly returned to it, though it was barely visible; but now the light al lowed him to see more clearly the general movement of the writing. It was very small and slanted; only a few words stood out clearly, and he could read them without difficulty: they were the words invited and regulations; the rest was illegible, as if nothing except these words had any importance. Thomas was of another opinion. As the maitre d'hotel stood leaning over the table, perhaps awaiting an order that could only come from some one of the house, it seemed as if he had no more interest in anything hap pening in the room. This was no doubt true; what was there that could interest him here? But Thomas also felt his sinister gaze - a gaze that re vealed nothing, that simply rested on the things before it -weighing on him and preventing him from continuing to the end of his reading, al though this same gaze suggested that he should read everything, without leaving out a single word. This was the moment to address him. "Say, what is that written on the door?" he asked. The maitre d'hotel straightened up briskly and regained some of the re laxed demeanor he had had before. He rushed to the door and pretended to decipher the lines, as if-what hypocrisy! - he had not always known them by heart. Then he turned around, repeating loudly in a guttural and unpleasant voice what he had first read to himself. It was a reminder: You are invited, in accordance with the regulations, not to forget the staff. Was it possible? Thomas did not want to go so far as to accuse the reader of altering the text, but by emphasizing certain words -and to hear him, one would think that only the last terms mattered -the maitre d'hotel could have given a completely different meaning to the text. Wasn't regulations the most important word? And wasn't the word invited given special em phasis, either in order to underline the optional nature of the observation, or else to reinforce the well-meaning advice and to make of it something more than an obligation? Not to forget the staff, that went without saying; besides, the staff itself made sure that it would not be forgotten. The maitre d'h6tel, having finished his reading, remained standing next to the door, looking at his client in a humble but scornful way, for his hu mility seemed only to be a reflection of the very modest person he had before him. Thomas withstood this gaze. He was struck by the expression that spread over the face of the old man. Had the latter noticed something 34
abnormal in the house? He continued to stare in a futile and petty way, but his face had become serious; it was not possible to look at it without trem bling, and it was tempting to think that the suspicion it brought to bear on the house fell right back onto it. Suddenly, there was a stampede in the stairway, then in the hallway. Everything seemed to be responding to a call that Thomas now believed he had heard as well. Did this call concern him? Someone pushed open the door and the head of the first maitre d'h6tel appeared in the doorway. He addressed a brief and friendly greeting to Thomas, then signaled to his comrade, and both of them disappeared in an extraordinary hurry. Of course they had not taken the trouble to shut the door. Such was their negligence. Thomas noticed in the hallway a girl who, with a piece of cloth on the end of a stick, was hard at work trying to cut through the dust. She came in as soon as she noticed that someone had seen her. "Tell me, where are they going?" asked Thomas without thinking. "To the summons," answered the girl, as she began to push the dust cloth across the room. "Really? To the summons?" he said. "And what is involved in the sum mons?" "They read out instructions," she said, "and listen to orders." ''And you, m demoiselle," said Thomas, with an air of insinuation, "don't you need to listen to orders?" The girl began to laugh, as if this question were best treated distantly and with a light heart. "The orders do not come all the way down to me," she replied, pointing to the upper part of the house. Thomas felt he could trust her. "And who," he asked, "gives the orders?" "What a strange question!" said the girl, who seemed to be occupied solely with her work. "Ifthey did not give the orders themselves, how could they carry them out? Well now," she added, stopping in front of the two box springs, "what a bed you've got there! " She looked with apparent con sternation at the bloody sheets and the disgorged mattress. "That," she said, "was a real battle." She set aside her broom and bucket, and with a few handy gestures, she pulled off the covers and put everything back in order. Thomas watched her with pleasure. She was not like the others; wherever she went, she took away the dust and wiped out the traces of uncleanli ness. Obviously her worked remained superficial. There was still all sorts of garbage in the corners, and the bed had only been covered over. But the room was all the same a much more pleasant place to stay. 35
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"You are lively and young," Thomas said to her. "I am certain that you have many fine qualities. The house must be open to you. Could you not, during your free time, show me around?" She laughed again. What was nice about her was that she understood immediately what he was saying. "So you don't know the house?" she cried. "Then why did you come in? Did you not examine it carefully from the outside?" She arranged the cups and saucers on the table, but when Thomas grabbed her apron and pulled her toward him, she caught a glimpse of the prisoner and, seeing his wounds, let out a cry. "Oh you poor precious creature," she said. "What a state he's in! " Drawing near to him, she saw that the blood had dried, and a thick scab had formed on his back. "Has he even eaten anything?" She looked questioningly at Thomas, who shook his head no. Naturally, she managed to arrange everything in a few brief moments. In the hallway she found a pot, and sliding the cup next to the young man, she filled it with a thick and appetizing brew. "Have a drink now," she said. The young man's hand was too thick; all he could do was spill the liquid, and the girl, rising up on the tips of her toes, had to help him drink; de spite her efforts to grow taller, she hardly reached the prisoner's mouth, and the latter, thrashing around blindly like a voracious animal, knocked over the cup and managed to take only a few drops. Nevertheless, he was satisfied. At first, Thomas surveyed this spectacle with curiosity, but then he turned away; he was impatient to resume his conversation with the girl and above all to leave the room, for he was afraid that someone might come at any moment. The prisoner showed his satisfaction like a baby. He stared in turns at Thomas, the girl, the various objects in the room so that there would be witnesses to his happiness and so that this happiness would not be borne alone. His face was radiant. One no longer noticed his crude fea tures, that air of bestiality that covered his face with another thick and vulgar face. And what mischief in his eyes! "Do you know him then?" asked Thomas. "He's asking if we know each other," said the girl to the prisoner. This re mark sent them into spasms of joy. They both laughed endlessly, but the prisoner laughed rather in imitation of the girl and was the first to stop. "Pardon me," she said. "There's nothing to laugh about. I'm seeing him for the first time just today."
She gathered up her broom, her bucket, and her bottle and carried them into the hallway. She had thrown the cup and saucer into the corner. The room was done. Thomas would have had a lot to say to her. Although he was disappointed by this last incident, he looked at the girl, and several questions he never would have thought of had she not been there were left in suspense. Overhead he heard a deafening noise of footsteps, mixed with the outbursts of high-pitched voices. They sounded like women's voices. "Is it the meeting of the maitres d'h6tel?" he asked. The girl merely shrugged her shoulders in an ill humor, without making it clear if it was the question she disliked or if she judged these meetings ridiculous. She made a brief little sign and was about to shut the door. ''I'll go with you," shouted Thomas, and he stood up so abruptly that he knocked over the table. In the hallway, the darkness was impenetrable. Gradually his eyes be came accustomed not so much to the night, which remained perfectly dark, as to their own weakness. It was dark only to the extent that these eyes believed themselves capable of rising to any task. Thomas managed to rec ognize the girl, who was standing next to him in a small rece
ss. How feeble and sickly she seemed to him! He leaned over in her direction. "Where shall we begin'the visit?" he said to her. She took his hand as if to guide him, but they remained standing in a moment of hesitation he could hardly bear; wouldn't someone find them there? Why were they wasting time? Was someone supposed to come to their aid? Feeling her little tormented and feverish hand still resting in his, he began to walk with her, leading her away without any resistance, and dragging the prisoner along too. After a few steps they were stopped by a door that marked the end of the hallway. He looked for the lock. He passed his fingers over all the rough spots on the wood and followed all the grooves, but he found nothing. He turned around, resolved this time to call on the girl and to ask her for an explanation not only of this last incident but also of her attitude since they had left the room. He groped toward her and heard her laughing beside her companion, whose arm she had taken. He addressed her roughly: "Shouldn't you be working?" But she was not offended by this; she only pressed herself more gently against the prisoner and said, half turned toward him as if to question him: "Will we never have done with work?" But then she quickly moved back to Thomas. 37
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"Just leave this door alone," she said. "It can't be opened unless you are coming from the street. It is only for people who are passing through, for they too have their business to attend to." Thomas wanted to have the layout of the house explained to him, but when the girl told him that the house had five floors with six rooms on each, plus some garrets for the domestics - garrets that in reality no one used because the staff preferred to share the empty rooms - he stopped listening, for he had the impression that she was speaking from hearsay or that she was not telling the truth. The only thing to do, then, was to go back in the opposite direction. They began to hear noises again from the upper floors. It seemed at times that the house was like a sleeping person who was trying to wake up and who, after twitching around a little, fell back to sleep. The darkness was also lifting. The day seemed to rise throughout the house. As ifher worries of a moment ago had vanished, the girl chattered aimlessly about all sorts of things, and one of her great pleasures was to speak to the prisoner in a senseless childish language. The prisoner himself seemed not to enjoy the conversation very much, and when they passed in front of their old room, he made an abrupt movement to go in. "Hold on, Dom," she said. "Straight ahead, keep straight ahead." Thomas noticed that she knew the young man's name. "We gave each other names," she said," while you were searching so in tently for the lock on the door; he calls me Barbe and I call him Dom." Perhaps this was the moment to ask what her real name was, but Thomas said nothing. He had other worries. Where was this path really leading them? He now recognized all its detours, and his memory of it was so clear that he had difficulty believing that he would find anything new at the end of it. He knew that if he continued to follow it, he would come up against the door of the little painting salon and that soon he would have come back to his point of departure. Was that what awaited him now? He went slowly back, dragging behind him his two companions, who, receiving this after shock of his disappointment, seemed incapable of guiding him. It was in deed the same pathway. He looked at several doors - they all opened on the right-hand side -with no desire to enter any of them. The best place was still his own room, and from the moment he had decided not to return there unless he were forced, all he could do was wander the hallway until he collapsed with fatigue. But he did not get very far. The girl called to him:
"Thomas," she said, "I have a message for you. Will you wait for me in your room while I finish my work, or would you prefer to accompany me?" "I'll accompany you," said Thomas, enchanted with the invitation. The girl took up her broom and bucket, and they walked back the same way once again, while she wiped down the walls and gently scrubbed the floors to erase the traces left by their steps. Thomas felt more free and at the same time less separated from her when she worked. He asked her for some explanations. "How did you learn my name?" She smiled with a slightly frustrated look. "I saw the painting," she said. "I go every morning to the reception hall, and the attendant, who is a childhood friend of mine, secretly shows me the portraits of the new arrivals. It's strictly forbidden," she added naIvely, "and he'll be severely punished if they find out what he is doing. But there is so much disorder here that no one will find out. Besides, not all of the paintings are worth looking at. But yours was very well done." Thomas was struck by the cunning expression on her face, and he thought that she was probably no more scrupulous about telling the truth than about following the regulations. And she had spoken to him of the message only for the sake of form. "Why didn't you tell me about it sooner?" he said to her. "Well, I had no time to speak to you about it," she said. The work was quickly finished. Dom carried the bucket, and the girl sank the cloth into it before washing the entrances to the rooms. Thomas seemed to be there only to watch over them. When everything was clean and bright - the wooden floor and the tiling had a shine as though light could be reflected off it - Barbe shouted in a piercing voice: "Now, to work!" and she opened all the doors in a rush without pausing to catch her breath. "Well, come with me," she said to Thomas, who hesitated to follow her. He saw the rooms one after the other. At first glance they all seemed to be based on the same model. Most of them had only worn out and miserable furnishings: a chair, a mattress simply placed on the floor, a table covered with glasses and flasks, that was all. They had certainly given the most comfortable room to Thomas. From outside it was almost impossible to see anything. The only light was from the stub of a candle that was hidden by its own smoke. The air one breathed constricted one's throat; it was like 39
air that has not circulated for a long time, and a strange medicinal smell cut through it, as though to bring out its impurities even more intensely. Although he felt ill at ease before these poorly kept rooms, Thomas gave in to his curiosity and took a few steps behind the girl. Was no one there? He questioned Barbe with his eyes, and she showed him a man sleeping in the bed, his head almost entirely buried in the covers. It was an old man. He wore a beard, and his mouth lolled open. The girl looked at him from afar and said: "It's not life that he's lacking." Thomas wondered what she meant, for the very opposite seemed to him to be the case. There was even something disturbing in the fact that for him there was no longer any question of living and that nevertheless it was hard to see how, in the feeble state he had fallen into, he could sink any fur ther in order to die. The air was unbreathable, but the candle occasionally threw off a small flame, and the smoke swirled all around, casting small bits of reddish light here and there. The girl went to the corner where she lifted a curtain that hid a portrait. She looked at it, and Thomas looked at it too as he leaned over her shoulder. Rather than a painting, it was the en largement of a photograph that had been altered several times. It showed a young man running toward a girl as she waved a scarf in the distance. That is what Thomas saw, at least. The face of the girl had been crudely marked out with a pencil, whereas the young man appeared in relief, and the painter saw fit to decorate the photograph by placing in his hands an enormous bouquet of red hydrangeas. "He's changed," said Thomas. Barbe nodded her head, but it was impossible to tell whether it was out of regret or whether, on the contrary, she regretted that he was still the same. "Not so much," she said finally. Thomas turned to look at the old man. "Are you the one who takes care of him?" he asked the girl. At first she signaled yes with her eyes, but then, without taking it back, she thought it well to add: "He doesn't need any care." That was possible, but Thomas was not convinced. "And yet," he said, pointing to the half-empty flasks covering the table, "here is some medi cine." "That was in the beginning," said Barbe. "I had not yet completed my apprenticeship, and I was very impressionable." 40
She walked Thomas over to the bed. "I even put together a bedshirt for him, like the ones given to sick people here. He spoke of it every day until I agreed to sew one for him using an old dress of mine. How crazy I was! But at the
last minute I realized what I was doing, and despite his complaints, I only let him see it and hold it every once in a while. She showed it to Thomas. It was a ridiculously small nightshirt; it must have been all white at first, before black bands had been added to make circles around it. In any case, he would not have been able to wear it. Thomas was in no way interested in this little rag; it was the sick man that attracted him. Although the man had his head turned toward Thomas and stared at him with eyes that still showed some life, he did not give the im pression of having noticed him; or if he was looking at him, it was in the way a person does who looks at someone he has already forgotten so that he can pursue his own thoughts. "Why," said Thomas, "do you take in sick people here? Could you not send them home? Do you not have enough work to do with the ordinary clients?" Barbe shrugged her shoulders. "There," she said, "you're touching on a question that is close to my heart. We are never finished with the sick. On certain days I am so weary that I collapse with fatigue into a corner and wish for one thing only, that the house would collapse too. And yet it's not that the sick people here are very demanding. From the moment they fall ill, they have nothing else to ask for, and we leave them to do as they please. But, you see, you never know what turns they may take." "What do you fear might happen?" asked Thomas. "It's the doctors," said the girl. "The doctors generally have other things to do besides take care of these trifles, but if luck has it that a sick per son is summoned -this always happens unexpectedly - and that he does not have his observation paper with him, this would be a true misfor tune. In any case," she remarked, "I would not be the one at fault. I have taken my precautions. Whenever someone is registered as sick, I sew onto his shirt that paper from which he must never be separated. He has it on hand day and night. He looks at it, touches it. What more can be desired? And besides," she added with a sly look, "it's the same for people who are not sick." 41
