“It’s depressing,” he says. He reaches for the book. “We can go on to Alençon. How big is that?”
She looks it up.
“Vingt-sept mille.”
“How about hotels?”
“There’s not much.”
“Not a single decent one?”
“There’s a hospital for the insane.”
“Let me see.”
He tries to read. The light is almost gone.
“Well, we could go on to Paris,” he says. “It’s about three hours.”
She shrugs.
“Comme tu veux,” she says.
He begins to turn the pages.
“But can we eat here?” she says.
“Hm?” He’s still reading. “All right. We’ll decide afterwards.”
It’s a long meal. There’s only one waiter in the restaurant. He’s like a veteran of Fort Douaumont. For him, everything ended long ago. He disappears into the kitchen for ten minutes and then comes out with the bread. There’s a door that opens to the street and another into the hotel. In the end this is the one they take. It’s too late to go on. The lobby is dark. The keys, hung on a varnished honeycomb of wood, are almost all in place. They walk up carpeted stairs—there is no sound—to what can only be called a chamber. Walls of a cream that has turned to ocher, heavy wine drapes. In the ceiling fixture the bulbs are clear glass. It is threatening, this room. The air is stale.
Dean opens the balcony doors. Silence. Across the black lake the casino is alight now, the one ornament in a darkness hung like curtains. No one seems to go in or out. The placards announce films, concerts, to the empty street.
They walk around for a while. There is the scent of a killing boredom in the air. One can recognize it, like mould. The prospect of a few hours is enough to seem terrifying. They buy tickets for the movie. The cashier detaches them from a large roll. There are a few people already inside—that’s something, at least. They are saved. They sit quietly, waiting for the lights to dim. Nobody even whispers. Finally it begins. The screen becomes luminous. Music, voices, images born on the shifting pales of light.
On the way back to the hotel they discover that a few shops have opened late, and they pause at the window of an antiquaire. It’s like a museum. Not a single client. Among the gilded pieces they suddenly see the white of a face, the owner, a woman, pale as a mourner.
It is only after the door to the room closes and he turns the key that Dean feels anything other than death. Even so, there is something artificial and dense about the furnishings, the inadequate light. The doors to the balcony have been shut. Through the glass he can see that a flexible, wooden blind has been drawn completely down. The covers of the bed have been folded back to reveal a clinical white. She is talking about the film. He hears nothing. He merely watches, intrigued by the smallest movement she makes, fascinated by the shape of her calf.
She stands naked, her legs together, brushing her teeth before the sink. Dean is watching her carefully. From where he sits, he reaches out and touches her. There is no authority in the gesture. It is an act of reassurance—he is fixing reality. She puts the toothbrush down. She doesn’t like to look closely at her teeth. She dries the corners of her mouth with the towel and then applies some cream. Her eyes meet his for a moment in the mirror. She is not certain what he is thinking or what he is about to do. But he’s not prepared to talk, that’s obvious to her.
She lies in bed with her eyes open, waiting. Dean undresses. He moves about the room, glancing at her from time to time. Finally he smiles. She does not return it. She has prepared herself for an obedience that cannot be so easily released. Her face is solemn, almost rebellious. He opens the balcony doors but doesn’t raise the blind. He turns out the light. In the bed she moves to his side immediately, as if released by the darkness. Her hands, those thin hands, swim down his body. Dean lies motionless. His silence, his stillness please her. They define her existence. She must conquer them. Of course, it is only a game. He is merely waiting, adorned in a sort of cruelty which excites her and which she must beg him, without speaking a word, to forget. His heart is beating faster. He feels his prick grow an inch or more beneath her touch. The vaseline is chilly as she applies it with great care. Dean is breathing like a runner before a race. He is thinking of the waiters in the casino, the audience at the cinema, the dark hotels as she lies on her stomach and with the ease of sitting down at a well-laid table, but no more than that, he introduces himself. They lie on their sides. He tries not to move. There are only the little, invisible twitches, like a nibbling of fish. In the midst of them he falls asleep. Then she does, too, and like this, together, they pass the night. The final night of the journey.
[33]
THEY ARRIVE HOME ON Sunday evening, weary from traffic. The roads are crowded. For half an hour Dean has been dogging the pale of his headlights which now, in the narrow streets, begin to show bright. It’s like driving under water. A green twilight gleams far above. He turns the last corner. The great, battered truck of the Corsicans is parked among the strewn wrappings, the marvelous rotting odors. As he pulls in, the headlights reflect on the glass of the darkened store. He switches them off, then the motor. They sit for a moment. A great joy, a sense of completion comes over him. They gather all her things, and he carries them upstairs. He’s anxious to leave her. He’s tired of having to be with her all the time.
I find him lying on the bed in blue canvas shoes. His hands are folded behind his head. The radio is playing. It feels good to be back, he tells me. It really does.
He looks black as an Egyptian. When he smiles his teeth seem to leap out of his sunburned face. We swim in a faint aroma, a bouquet of music as he talks.
“Well, where did you go?”
“Everywhere,” he says. “Angers. Orléans. Perros-Guirec. We really drove.”
“Was it nice?”
“It’s a beautiful country,” he says quietly. He begins to tell me about it, the sea with its rocks, the old hotel. He describes the Loire, the haunted evening in Bagnoles. He is talking almost compulsively. All the details come forth, descriptions, feelings, smells. He falls silent, gathers things, goes on. Somehow I have the impression that he is laying it all before me, the essence of this glorious life he has spent in France. He is setting the past in order. There are certain things which should be confessed, and he knows I am interested. Nothing he says is exceptional, but I recognize the events. I understand everything we are not saying.
“How’s Anne-Marie?”
“She’s as tan as I am. You ought to see her,” he says. “She looks great.”
“You’re the color of teak.”
“We had beautiful weather,” he says. “Almost every day. And we ate. We sat at the table like an old French couple, you know, just eating. And we made love every night. But the sun, you really can’t believe what good sun we had.”
He pulls his shirt out to show me the line. He grins. He is invincible. It’s like a game of chess in which his pieces continually overpower me, but we have long ceased to contest.
He begins to wander around the room while he talks. His clothing is scattered everywhere. He goes into the bathroom and discovers some lotion which he slowly rubs into his face, especially around his mouth. He lies down again. That lean face, dark as a farm boy’s. It has an edge to it. The bones seem able to cut right through me. He gets up again and begins to look through his suitcase. There’s an apple among his clothes. He offers me half.