“All right,” the woman says. “Come in.”
He makes his way down the hallway, then through the first door on the right into the kitchen. He sets down his suitcase on the big oval table in the middle of the room. The new oilcloth is decorated with a pattern of small many-colored flowers.
He opens the clasp by pressing on it with his fingertips. He seizes the cover in both hands—one on each side, thumbs over the reinforced corners with the copper rivets—and folds it back. The cover remains wide open, its outer edge resting on the oilcloth. The salesman takes the black memorandum book out of the suitcase with his right hand and puts it in the cover. Then he picks up the prospectuses and puts them on top of the memorandum book.
With his left hand he then takes hold of the first rectangular strip of cardboard by its lower left corner and holds it at the level of his chest, tilted at an angle of forty-five degrees, the two long sides parallel to the table top. Between the thumb and index finger of his right hand he takes hold of the protecting paper attached to the upper part of the cardboard strip; holding this paper by its lower right corner, he raises it, making it pivot on its hinge until it has made a rotation of more than one hundred eighty degrees. Then he lets go of this paper which, still fastened to the cardboard strip by one edge, continues its rotating movement until it occupies once again a vertical position next to the cardboard strip, although slightly askew because of the natural stiffness of the leaf. Meanwhile the right hand returns toward the salesman's chest, that is, lowered to the level of the center of the cardboard strip, while moving toward the left. The thumb and index finger are extended forward, pressed together, while the other three fingers curve toward the interior of the palm. The end of the extended finger approaches the circle formed by the face of the watch attached to . . .
. . . circle formed by the face of the watch attached to his wrist and said: “Four-fifteen, exactly.”
At the base of the glass, he saw his long, pointed fingernail. Of course the salesman did not file them to look like that. And tonight, as soon as . . .
“It's on time, today,” the woman said.
She walked away toward the bow of the little steamer, immediately swallowed up by the crowd of passengers on deck. Most of them had not yet taken their seats for the crossing; they were wandering aimlessly about the deck, looking for comfortable places to sit, bumping into one another, calling directions, piling and counting luggage; others were standing along the railing next to the pier, waving a last farewell to those remaining behind.
Mathias also leaned on the gunwale and stared at the water; a wave had just broken against the stone slope. The lapping undulations of the surface, in the sheltered angle of the landing slip, were weak but regular. Farther to the right, the ridge formed by the inclined plane and the vertical embankment began its oblique retreating movement.
The whistle blew a last shrill, prolonged blast. The gangway's electric bell sounded. Against the ship's hull the darker strip of water widened almost imperceptibly.
On the pier, beneath the thin sheet of liquid covering the stone, the slightest unevenness of the blocks could be clearly distinguished, as well as the joints in the cement separating them by more or less hollow lines. The relief was both more apparent than it would have been in air, and more unreal, made noticeable by shadows that were emphasized—exaggerated, perhaps—without quite giving the impression of real outcroppings: as if they Had been painted in trompe-l'oeil.
The tide was still rising, although it was already high compared to its level this morning, when the steamer arrived. The salesman was standing at the gangway watching the passengers: there were only civilians with benign faces, local people returning home to be met on the pier by their wives and children.
At the bottom of the portion of the inclined plane that was still dry, a slightly stronger wave suddenly wet a new area, less than six inches wide. When it retreated, a number of gray and yellow marks, previously invisible, appeared on the granite.
The water in the sheltered angle rose and fell, reminding the salesman of the swell several miles offshore as it ran against a floating buoy the ship had passed. It occurred to him that in about three hours he would be on land. He stepped back a little, in order to glance at the fiber suitcase at his feet.
It was a heavy iron buoy, the portion above water constituting a cone surmounted by a complex assemblage of metal stems and plates. The structure extended three or four yards into the air. The conical support itself represented nearly half of this height. The rest was divided into three noticeably similar parts: first, prolonging the point of the cone, a narrow, openwork, square turret—four iron uprights connected by crosspieces; above this came a kind of cylindrical cage, its vertical bars sheltering a signal light fastened in the middle; and last, topping the structure and separated from the cylinder by a stem which continued its main axis, three equilateral triangles, superimposed so that the tip of one supported in its center the horizontal base of the next. The whole of this structure was painted a shiny black.
Since the buoy was not light enough to follow the movement of the waves, the water level rose and fell according to their rhythm against the sides of the cone. Despite the water's transparency, the detail of the substructures could not be distinguished—merely a number of dancing shapes: chains, rocks, trailing seaweed, or perhaps reflections of the mass above water . . .
The salesman thought, once again, that in three hours he would be on land.
The Voyeur Page 21
