the end of the little drawbridge. Wallas assumes an admiring tone:
“It’s a pretty little house, isn’t it?”
“Yes it is, if you like it,” she answers with a laugh.
And he leaves the shop, taking the post card with him-whose acquisition was inevitable after all his praises when he first came in-and the little eraser which has already joined the one purchased this morning-as useless as the first.
Wallas is in a hurry; it must be almost noon. He still has time to speak to Doctor Juard before lunch. He will have to bear left to reach the Rue de Corinthe, but the first street he come to on that side leads only to a cross street where he might lose his way; he prefers to go on to the next main intersection. After his visit to the clinic, he will look for that post office at the end of the Rue Janeck; he might walk there, for it cannot be very far away. Above all, find out the exact time.
A policeman is on duty in the middle of the street, probably to control traffic in front of a school (otherwise, there are not enough cars to justify his presence at this unimportant crossing). Wallas turns back and walks over to him. The policeman salutes.
“Can you tell me what time it is, please?” Wallas asks.
“Twelve-fifteen,” the man answers without hesitating.
He has probably just looked at his watch.
“Is the Rue Joseph-Janeck far from here?”
“That depends on what number you want.”
“I want to go to the end, near the Boulevard Circulaire.”
“Then it’s easy: you go straight ahead to the first intersection and turn right, and then just afterward you turn left; after that it’s straight ahead. It won’t take you long.”
“There’s a post office there, isn’t there?”
“Yes…On the parkway at the corner of the Rue Jonas. But you don’t need to go that far to find a post office…”
“No, I know, but…I have to go to that one…for the poste restante.”
“Well, the first right, the first left, and then straight ahead. You can’t miss it.”
Wallas thanks him and continues on his way, but once he reaches the intersection and is about to turn left- toward the clinic-he realizes that, having omitted to inform the policeman of this detail, the latter will suppose he is taking the wrong turn despite his clear and repeated explanations. Wallas turns back to see if he is being watched: the man is making wide gestures with his arm to remind him that he should turn to the right first. If he goes in the other direction now, he will look like a lunatic, an idiot, or a practical joker. Maybe the policeman will run after him to set him right. As for going back to reassure the policeman, that would be really ridiculous. Wallas has already begun walking toward the right.
Since he is so near this post office, wouldn’t it be better to go straight there? Besides, it is after noon and Doctor Juard is eating his lunch; while the post office does not close and he will not be disturbing anyone.
Before getting out of sight, he glimpses the policeman making a gesture of approval-to reassure him: he is going the right way.
It’s silly to put a traffic policeman in a place like that, where there is no traffic to control. At this hour, the schoolchildren have already gone home for lunch. Is there even a school there?
As the policeman had said, Wallas immediately reaches another intersection. If he turned right into the Rue Bernadotte, it would take him straight back and allow him to reach the Rue de Corinthe, after a slight detour; but now he can not be any closer to the clinic than to the post office, and besides, he does not know the neighborhood well enough: he might find himself face to face with that policeman again. His invention of the poste restante was not very satisfactory: if he had had mail sent to him there, he would have known the address, instead of knowing its location only approximately.
What kind of spell is it that is forcing him to give explanations wherever he goes today? Is it a particular arrangement of the streets in this city that obliges him to be always asking his way, so that at each reply he finds himself led into new detours? Once before he has wandered among these unexpected bifurcations and blind alleys, where you got lost even more certainly when you happened to walk straight ahead. Only his mother was worried about it. Finally they had reached that dead end of a canal; the low houses, in the sun, reflected their old facades in the green water. That must have been in summer, during the school vacation; they had stopped (on their way to the seashore, farther south, where they went every year) to visit some relative. He thought he remembered that she was annoyed, that there was something about a legacy or something of the kind. But did he ever know just what it was? He does not even remember now if they had ever found the woman, or if they had left empty-handed (they had only a few hours between trains). Besides, are these real memories? That day might have been described to him often: “You remember when we went…”
No. The dead end of the canal he had seen himself, and the houses reflected in the still water, and the low bridge that closed off the end…and the abandoned hull of the old boat… But it is possible that this happened on another day, in another place-or even in a dream.
Here is the Rue Janeck and the wall of the recreation courtyard where the Indian chestnuts are shedding their leaves. “Citizens Awake.” And here is the plaque ordering drivers to slow down.
At the end of the drawbridge, the workman in the dark blue pea jacket and the visored cap makes a gesture of recognition.
CHAPTER THREE
1
As usual, the big house is silent.
On the ground floor, the old deaf housekeeper is almost finished preparing dinner. She is wearing felt slippers that muffle the sound of her comings and goings along the hallway between the kitchen and the dining room, where she sets a single, unalterable place at the enormous table.
It is Monday: Monday’s dinner is never very complicated: a vegetable soup, probably ham, and a cream dessert of some vague flavor-or else caramel rice pudding…
But Daniel Dupont is not much concerned with gastronomy.
Sitting at his desk, he is examining his revolver. It must not fall out of order-though it has been so many years since anyone has used it. Dupont handles it carefully; he opens it, takes out the bullets, carefully cleans the mechanism, checks its operation; finally he returns the clip and puts his rag away in a drawer.
He is a meticulous man who likes every task to be executed correctly. A bullet in the heart is what makes the least mess. If it is fired properly-he has talked it over extensively with Doctor Juard-death is immediate and the loss of blood quite slight. So old Anna will have less trouble getting rid of the stains; for her, that is what matters. He is well aware that she does not like him.
On the whole, people have not liked him much, Evelyne… But that is not why he is killing himself. It does not matter to him whether people have liked him or not. He is killing himself for nothing-out of exhaustion.
Dupont takes a few steps on the water-green carpet that muffles every noise. There is not much room to walk in the little study. Books hem him in on all sides: law, social legislation, political economy…Down below, to the left, at the end of the long shelves, stands the row of books he himself has added to the series. Not much. There were two or three ideas there, even so. Who has understood them? Too bad for them.
He stops in front of his desk and glances at the letters he has just written: one to Roy-Dauzet, one to Juard…to whom else? One to his wife, maybe? No; and the one he is addressing to the minister has no doubt been mailed the day before…
He stops in front of the desk and glances one last time at this letter he has just written to Doctor Juard. It is clear and persuasive; it furnishes all the explanations necessary for camouflaging his suicide as a murder.
At first Dupont had thought of making it look like an accident: “Professor kills himself while cleaning old revolver.” But everybody would have known.
A crime is less suspicious. And he could count on Juard and Roy-Dauzet to keep his secret. The wood
