“Hello, Vadassy!”
“Who is that?”
“Commissaire de Police.”
“The waiter said that it was a call from Paris.”
“I told the operator to say that. Are you alone?”
“Yes.”
“Have you heard whether anyone is leaving the Reserve today?”
“The English couple leave tomorrow morning.”
“No one else.”
“Yes. I leave tomorrow.”
“What do you mean? You will leave when you are told to do so. You know Monsieur Beghin’s instructions.”
“I have been told to leave.”
“By whom?”
“Koche.” All the pent-up bitterness of the day’s disasters welled up within me. Briefly and very acidly I described the outcome of Beghin’s instructions of the morning.
He listened in silence. Then:
“You are sure no one else is leaving besides the English?”
“It is possible, but if so I have not heard about it.”
Another silence. At last:
“Very well. That is all now.”
“But what shall I do?”
“You will receive further instructions in due course.”
He hung up.
I stared wretchedly at the telephone. I would receive further instructions in due course. Well, I could do no more. I was beaten.
16
The clock struck nine. It was a thin, high-pitched sound, and very soft.
I can see the scene now, clearly. There are no blurred edges. Here nothing is out of focus. It is as if I were looking through a stereoscope at a perfect colored reproduction of the room and of the people in it.
The rain has stopped, and the breeze is once more gentle and warm. It is hot and steamy in the room, and the windows are wide open. The wet leaves of the creeper just outside gleam in the light from the electric “candles” in their rococo brackets on the walls. Beyond the stone balustrade on the terrace the moon is beginning to rise through the fir trees.
The Skeltons and I are sitting near to the window, the remains of the coffee before us on a low table. Across the room Roux and Mademoiselle Martin are playing Russian billiards. He is standing over her, guiding the cue, and as I watch I see her press her body against his, and look round quickly to see if anyone has noticed the action. In the other corner, near the door leading to the hall, there are two small groups. Monsieur Duclos is stroking his beard with his pince-nez and talking in French to an intent Frau Vogel. Herr Vogel is saying something in halting Italian to Mrs. Clandon-Hartley-an unusually animated Mrs. Clandon-Hartley-while the Major listens, the ghost of a smile on his lips. Only Schimler and, of course, the Koches, are absent.
I remember that Skelton was saying something to me about Roux and Duclos pretending to ignore each other. I scarcely heard him. I was looking round the room at their faces. Nine of them. I had talked to all of them, watched them, listened to them and now-now I knew no more about them than I had known on the day-what ages ago it seemed-when I had come to the Reserve. No more? That was not quite true. I had learned something of the lives of some of them. But what did I know about their thoughts, about the minds that worked behind those masks? A man’s account of his own actions was, like the look he habitually wore on his face, no more than the expression, the statement of an attitude. You could never get at the whole man any more than you could see four faces of a cube. The mind was a figure with an infinite number of dimensions, a fluid in ceaseless movement, unfathomable, unaccountable.
The Major still had that faint smile on his lips. His wife, her hands fluttering slightly as she said something to Vogel, seemed, for the first time, to be alive. Of course! Someone had lent them money. Who was it? I knew so little that I could not even make an intelligent guess.
Duclos had put his pince-nez back on his nose, and was listening to Frau Vogel’s guttural French, with his head cocked patronizingly. Roux, his eyes fixed glassily on the balls, was demonstrating a stroke. I watched them all fascinated. It was like seeing dancers through a window that shut out the music. There was a mad solemnity about their antics…
The Skeltons burst out laughing. I turned round feeling rather foolish.
“Sorry,” said he; “but we’ve been watching your face, Mr. Vadassy. It was getting longer and longer. We were afraid you were going to burst into tears.”
“I was thinking how much we identify ourselves with other people and yet how separate we are. You see, I’m leaving tomorrow morning.”
Their dismay was so well done that I had a sudden feeling that they might really be sorry to see me go. A wave of emotion swept over me; self-pity, no doubt. I fought my way clear of it.
“I shall be sorry to go myself,” I said. “Will you be staying long?”
There was an almost imperceptible pause before he replied, and I saw her glance at him quickly.
“Oh,” he said carelessly, “for a while, I guess.”
And then she leaned forward. “For three months, to be exact,” she said and glanced at him again. “There’s no reason why we shouldn’t tell Mr. Vadassy. I’m tired of this act anyway.”
“Now look, Mary…” he began warningly, and I suddenly felt sick.
“Oh, what’s the difference?” She smiled faintly at me. “We’re not brother and sister, Mr. Vadassy. We’re cousins and we’re living in sin.”
“Congratulations,” I said. I still felt sick, but in a different way now. I was sick with jealousy. She smiled at me.
“Well you’d better tell about the hocus-pocus, too,” said her lover gloomily. “It’s not entirely usual in France for people in our situation to go around pretending to be brother and sister.”
She shrugged. “It’s all so absurd, really. When we came here we had separate rooms, and, because of the names on our passports and the forms you fill out and everything, they took us for brother and sister. Well then, when it turned out that we could do with one room after all, it meant that we’d either have to move to another hotel or stay here as we were.”
“Or look incestuous,” he put in unhappily.
“So, as we felt a bit sentimental about this place, we stayed. You see, we can’t get married for three months yet because if Warren gets married before his twenty-first birthday we lose fifty thousand dollars from Grandfather Skelton, which would be crazy, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said, but they were looking at each other and I knew now what it was that had made them seem so attractive. They were in love.
“Absolutely crazy,” he said, smiling.
And then, Monsieur Duclos, abandoned by or having abandoned Frau Vogel, loomed over me.
“They are a very charming couple, these Americans,” he said.
“Yes, very charming.”
“I was saying as much to Madame Vogel. She is a most intelligent woman. Monsieur Vogel, you know, is director of the Swiss State Power Company. He is a very important man. I have, of course, heard of him before. His offices at Berne are one of the sights of the city.
“I thought he came from Constance.”
He adjusted his pince-nez warily. “He has also a large villa at Constance. It is very fine. He has invited me to
