by Unknown
one lose his place and in which it was necessary to overcome the passivity of people who were almost asleep and who understood only very slowly the orders they were given. Thomas quickly grew tired - and how much farther he still had to go! The guide apologized, invoking the obligations of his assignment. "But soon," he added, "everything will be better." Was this true? Was it simply a word of encouragement? The farther they advanced, the more obstructed was their path, and the greater was the in comprehension of the people in the way. It was incredible. People stood in tight embraces; it seemed as if they had tried to push each other away one last time, but that in leaning against each other, they suddenly lost all their strength and remained now in an inescapable state of repose. The man himself finally became discouraged. He had shouted several times: "Make way for the staff!" and clapped his hands, but received no response. He held a whistle to his mouth and brought from it a very sweet sound, but in vain. "Do you see," he said, looking at Thomas with an air of satisfaction, "how they facilitate my task." Dom took action. Whether because there was a natural sympathy be tween him and these people or because he was so rough that he did not back down from their threats and violence, he got the attention of some of the ones who resisted and even brought them back to a semblance of life. "Are we next?" they shouted, or: "We're ready," although immediately after the three men had passed, they again appeared exhausted and be numbed. Despite this help, Thomas encountered nothing but difficulties in mak ing his way. The heat became more and more oppressive. The clothes he wore were made of a thick, crude woolen cloth, which he only realized upon seeing the fine brilliant material of the other outfits. He asked if they still had to walk a great deal more. He received no response, but his two companions stopped, and the room was once again filled with darkness. "Here we are," said the man. Was it possible? There was certainly a misunderstanding. The spot where they now stood was the darkest part of the room; they could not see two steps ahead. Thomas tripped against the edge of a large basin. Whispers rose from someplace nearby; from another part of the space there came a thick mist, which the feeble rays of a lamp hanging from the ceiling could 50
not penetrate. He leaned forward and looked into a deep cavity where there was a wheel spinning slowly and silently on an iron pivot. This is where they played the game. The wheel seemed to be half buried in this pit. All kinds of garbage and old papers had been thrown into it, probably out of a general spirit of disorder. Thomas crouched down to see more clearly how the machine func tioned. It had been installed deep down in the hole. The apparatus was separated from the floor by a few yards, but it seemed that one's gaze had to cross a veritable abyss to reach it. "No doubt the machine does not please you?" said the man, bending down to him. "And why not?" said Thomas, refusing to turn around. Looking through the slats in the wheel, he had just noticed a large marble ball rapidly spin ning in the opposite direction, at times following the rim, at other times one of the spokes, and bouncing over the knots and bumps in the wood. When he saw this ball, he guessed that what he had before him was a game of chance. The machine had every appearance of it. Apart from its rudimentary character and the crudeness of its mechanisms, it was indistinguishable from the machines he had once admired in the cities. The wheel soon stopped spinning. The ball continued a few more times around, but its momentum had diminished, and Thomas was hard pressed to interest himself in it until the end. Before it stopped rolling, he looked up. What a terrible disappointment! The man who had led him here was gone, and a few steps away, seated at a table, was one of the tenants who had surprised him on the balcony. Thomas addressed a mute appeal to Dom, but Dom was distracted by a mirror hanging from the chandelier above the pit; an image of the wheel was reflected in it. The light was shin ing near the newcomer; it lit the table and all the papers that were scattered on it, leaving everything else in the shade. A document caught his atten tion. It was a large transparent sheet on which a plan of the house had been crudely drawn. The employee moved his finger along a line traced in red ink that passed through a vestibule and a hallway, stopped at a bedroom, and ended by disappearing into a maze of various lines. Its path led no where. The plan itself must have been interrupted. The other parts of the house that were untouched by the red line were covered with a light gray shadow. The employee, after considering his work for a long time -work that 51
did not seem to satisfy him - slowly sat up and met the gaze of Thomas. He signaled to him to approach, without considering the pit that sepa rated them. Then he crossed his hands on his chest and half closed his eyes. In all likelihood he was continuing his reflections, digging tirelessly into the problem, attempting to clarify the question, the grave question of how the newcomer had arrived in this place. Finally, pushing away the table, he stood up. Hardly had he even begun to move away when ten people leaped at the papers, snatched them up at random, each one taking them as quickly as possible to the writing desks set up along the walls. Thomas ar rived only after a detour. Naturally, the table was empty; there was not even anyone there to look after the inkwell and the pencil. This was not surpris ing, but at the same time this solitude and tranquility -while everywhere else people were suffocating, fighting for a little air, dying on the spot was unbearable. He felt greedy for this space that was refused to him, and he dragged Dom into the middle of the crowd that besieged the desks. "So you are still in this room," his former guide said to him. He had sat down again on a chair. Thomas turned his head; he did not have to tolerate this useless arro gance. He felt the need to make a connection with someone in this im mense crowd, someone who could help him take advantage of his experi ence and who would not hide the truth from him. This would no doubt have been easy if he could have stayed with the companions that chance threw in his way, but he had to fight to avoid being thrown outside, and he himself pushed away those who, sticking next to him, threatened to take his place. A small lean man grabbed onto his arm, not for support but to make him feel by this contact that he had the same right as Thomas to space and air. Thomas said to him: "What are you looking for?" ''And what are you looking for?" his neighbor replied. "I'm still a stranger here," said Thomas. "Oh," said the man, pulling away from Thomas, "you're not from here." But before throwing himself into another part of the crowd, he took the trouble to turn around and say: "We will talk again when you are no longer a stranger." Thomas was not discouraged; he only felt a more intense desire for a response to his question. This desire must have shown on his face, for another man stared at him vehemently - as if such curiosity had disturbed him and distracted his attention from the true duty at hand - and he shouted: "What do you want?" 52
,.
What he wanted was no one's business but his. He shouted in turn: "To go to the desk." Someone who was already standing close to the writing table laughed at this, but everyone around him began to nod their heads. "You know very well," one of them said to Thomas's interlocutor, "that conversations are forbidden." This was odd, for indeed everyone was whispering, and at times veri table shouts would rise from the crowd. "Tell me what isn't forbidden," the man responded. "The games are also forbidden." At this moment someone began to knock on the top of the desk; this noise seemed to come from very far away, although there were only a few rows between Thomas and the desk. "So now is the time to keep quiet," said someone near Thomas. "What's happening?" asked Thomas. One would have thought that this question had been expected and that for all these people it reminded them of the reasons for their wait and their struggle. Everyone looked passionately toward the desk. Thomas stood on the tips of his toes and saw a man with a weak constitution who was exam ining several pieces of paper through a magnifying glass. Someone said: "This is one of his good days." "I see," said Thomas in a skeptical tone. He saw nothing inviting in the physiognomy of the employee; he noticed only his scowling and sickly ap pearance, his punctilious manners, and, from time to time, his gaze that looked wearily over the crowd. As Thomas observed him, he heard him call a name. Was it not his name? At first he was
sure he had been asked to approach, and he raised his arm as a sign of obedience; but everyone else raised their arms, either because they did not want to give him the bene fit of his initiative, or else because everyone was given over to the same illusion. The employee also raised his hands, to ridicule the petitioners. In a rage, he commanded everyone to approach - since everyone wanted to come - and knocked violently on the desk. "Oh, this is one of his good days," said Thomas. "Yes, it is," the man next to him answered gravely. So everyone attempted to move forward again, but it was pointless, for those in the first row, after so much effort to reach this place, naturally re fused to move away. Thomas began to lose patience. "Is it worth waiting 53
for?" he wondered; he probably would have withdrawn if the man next to him, almost holding him in his arms, had not begun to stare at him in a mysterious manner, murmuring: "Why are you staying here?" Thomas nodded in agreement, as if to say: "Yes, that is precisely the question that interests me," but he was too mistrustful to speak. "Almost all of the winners," added his neighbor, "have already left. The others will probably be designated at the last minute, but the employee only picks out people whose faces he knows. So you have no chance." Thomas listened distractedly. This man was not yet the one who would tell him the truth. "So it's the employee," he said, "who designates the win ners?" "No," said the man, "the names of the winners are written on the docu ments." "So," said Thomas, "the choice does not belong to the employee." "Of course not," he said. "The employee merely identifies the winners; he obeys what is written; but as for the rest, he is free." "That explains everything," said Thomas finally, bringing the conversa tion to an end. In reality, as he well knew, nothing was explained, and even if his neigh bor's explanations had been better, he could not have put any faith in them, so obvious was the attempt to lead him astray. Still, the man believed he had seriously shaken him. "Not winning means nothing," he said in an encouraging tone. "It is only a momentary failure; all the chances still remain. What must be avoided is losing. Perhaps it is wrong of me to speak to you about it," he added, lowering his voice. "It doesn't matter," Thomas answered, "since I'm not here to play. I came to look for the plan of my apartment." "Very well," said his interlocutor. "In that case, you'll be sent away the next time around." Thomas found it difficult to understand what was being said to him. He had to struggle against this man who, under the pretext of sharing inside knowledge, was pushing him farther and farther away; voices were dron ing all around, and from time to time he heard the sardonic voice of the employee shouting: "Come forward!" Yet he did not remain silent, for he was afraid of being forgotten. "You seem to be giving yourself a lot of trouble," he said. 54
"It's true," said his neighbor; then the latter seemed caught off guard, and after reflecting on the character of the remark, he added, as if these words were as dangerous for Thomas as for himself: "Everyone is absorbed in his own affairs." At this moment there arose a great commotion that made the disorder intolerable; it was provoked, apparently, by the expulsion of the people in the first row. Dom was carried away so violently that the chain almost snapped. Thomas felt the tugging pressure throughout his entire body. A deafening noise clattered in his ears. He tried to turn around to see where it was coming from, but he was enveloped on every side by the howling of some sort of alarm signal. The noise grew continually more intense; it became so sharp that he thought he was being especially designated by its call. What should he do; what was being said to him; what was the mean ing of this warning? Although his eardrums were bursting, it seemed to him that the noise remained too vague and that it was coming from too far away. "Louder!" he shouted among the shouts of the others, "louder!" Surprisingly, he received an immediate response, and the deep, serious voice that gave it to him, coming from very distant regions, easily made its way to him. "You have been called," someone shouted in his ear. "The employee has pronounced your name. What are you waiting for?" It was as if the thick wall that held him prisoner had collapsed; suddenly, he saw clearly; space had opened. A few quick strides and he was stand ing before the desk. The situation was not at all what he had imagined. The writing table, beneath which he stood, rose steeply before him, and he was forced to raise his head to see the employee, who, for his part, had to lean forward whenever he wanted to speak to his client. It was a magnifi cent desk made of black wood; it seemed to have come directly from the workshop, and yet when he looked closer, Thomas saw crude inscriptions that had probably been carved with a knife by the petitioners. One of them served as the caption for an ill-formed drawing meant to represent the em ployee. Someone had drawn a man standing on a platform and holding in his hand a large white sheet of paper. By straining his attention, Thomas managed to read what was beneath it: "I am just." He was so absorbed in these childish scribblings that the employee had to knock on the top of the desk to get his attention. He found it difficult to focus his eyes on him. His 55
face was not particularly malicious, rather it was bleak and barren; as soon as one turned away, it was forgotten. Likewise, Thomas understood his words only with difficulty. Was it because he was distracted? He thought of the crowd that had just disappeared so quickly. One would have thought that the meeting was over. The people who passed in the distance did not cast a single glance in his direction, as if everything that was happening now had lost all importance. What was the meaning of this interrogation? He stood up as straight as he could, and without bothering about what was being said to him, he asked how he was supposed to interpret all these questions. The employee pushed away the papers that were piled up next to him -there was an enormous mass of them - and taking the magnify ing glass from his pocket, he looked by turns at Thomas and at Dom, as if he were examining an indecipherable manuscript. "I do not know your face," he said. Was he going to send them away? Thomas quickly revealed his request regarding the plan of the house. "Ah! The famous plan," said the man, without, however, doing anything to look for it. He did not seem to be in any hurry to carry out the interro gation. Besides, was it an interrogation? His gaze rested distractedly on Thomas, guided, so it seemed, by the hope that he would never have to see him again, but at the same time he kept him close, as if his presence could serve to keep his attention away from more painful thoughts. He said in a confidential manner, in a tone full of admiration but also of regret- a regret at being unable, because of his bad eyesight, to take everything in with one look: "What a beautiful room!" Seeing that Thomas only lowered his head, he thought it necessary to add, so that his praise would not appear to conceal any blame with respect to the other rooms: "The house is beautiful too." Thomas remained quiet. "I am an old employee," said the man. "All requests for information and instruction are addressed to me. If ever you are in need of explanations, come to me. Here we gladly give all the desired clarifications concerning the customs of the house." "You are not easily approachable," remarked Thomas, without commit ting himself. The employee laughed loudly. "You are mistaken," he said. "You need only try me out, if you should judge it to be useful. Whatever you may
,.
ask me about," he added, gently caressing the papers piled next to him, "I will make sure that you are well informed; all possible cases have been foreseen; we have an answer for everything." Thomas did not want a ready-made answer, and he did not believe that his questions had been foreseen. So, turning toward the rest of the room, which was now three-quarters empty, he said: "There are, as far as I can tell, many people who need information, and there are very few who re ceive any." "Mere appearance," said the man, holding out his hand toward Thomas. But he thought for a moment and added: "Almost everyone believes they have something to ask; they are bursting with questions; they want to clar ify everything. We are here to respond; we even take our courtesy to the point of asking questions in their place. Do you think they take advantage of it? They don't; once they are here," he said, pointing his thumb at the desk, "they no longer want to listen, and they look at us as if we were about to tear their eyes out." "What a waste of time," ob
served Thomas. He had been staring at the skeletal hand that was stretched toward him. Then he abruptly turned around and examined the room. "This is a gaming room," he said. He was making a statement, but it was a question as well . "That is indeed the name by which it is usually designated," said the em ployee. "That's not its real name then?" said Thomas. "Well, yes, it is," said the employee. "What else do you want to know? Do you also want to learn about our little secrets? When we are among our selves, my colleagues and I, we call it the grand hall, for there is no other room that is so grand to us, or so beautiful. But that is an incomplete opin ion, for all the rooms of the house are remarkable. But this is the one we know best, for we spend our lives in it." "Still, it's a gaming room," said Thomas. "And what else could it be?" said the employee. "The apparatus is not enough for you? It is neither sufficiently new nor sufficiently well main tained? No doubt," he added timidly, "you would like to have other ma chines installed and other gaming tables? This would be a useless wish; reforms are not tolerated." "You are wrong to worry," answered Thomas. "I do not intend to ask for changes. But I am surprised all the same that the project of introducing a 57
