“Who is Violet?”
“I mean poor little Jacqueline Leduc. You’re mixing me up with all your nonsense!”
The boy said nothing for several seconds. Mathias took advantage of the time to let his face become pleasant and peaceful again, a task he had not taken enough trouble with during the last few remarks. Julian took the gumdrop out of its wrapper and put it in his mouth; then he spat it out into his hand, wrapped the paper around it, and threw it into the sea.
“Jackie always bought caramels,” he said afterward.
“Well, then it was someone else.”
“At first you said it was you.”
“Yes, it was. I took one just now, on the way here, and I threw the paper away. You’re confusing me with your questions.”
The salesman was talking naturally now, even cordially, as if he understood none of the reasons for this interrogation, but was nevertheless yielding to his interlocutor’s childish caprices. One of the gulls plunged, then gained altitude with great strokes of its wings, almost grazing the two men as it passed them.
“I found it yesterday,” Julian said.
Mathias, not knowing what to answer now, was on the point of walking away from young Marek with all the abruptness of justified impatience. Yet he remained where he was. Although it was impossible to prove anything by this one piece of red paper, it would be better not to alienate so persistent an investigator, one who might be acquainted with other elements of the story. But which ones?
There was already the episode of the gray sweater. Julian might also have discovered a second gumdrop wrapper—the green one—and the third half-smoked cigarette…. What else? The question of his presence at the farm at the time of the salesman’s supposed visit also remained to be cleared up. Actually, if the boy had happened to be in the courtyard or the shed that morning, why had he not told his father that no one had knocked at the door? What was his motive in backing up Mathias’ story? And if he had been somewhere else, why did he behave in such a strange way about it? After his long, stubborn silence, why this preposterous last-minute invention of a repair made to the bicycle gearshift?… A bolt tightened?… Perhaps that was the solution to all these incidents, now that he had come full circuit.
But if Julian Marek had not been at the farm, where had he been? Did his father have good reason for supposing him to have run off to the cliff on the way home from the bakery? Suddenly a wave of terror broke over Mathias: Julian, coming by another path—by “the other” path—to meet Violet, from whom he had demanded explanations—against whom, in fact, he harbored enough resentment to desire her death—Julian, catching sight of the salesman, had taken cover and had watched…. Mathias passed his hand over his forehead. Such imaginings did not hold water. His headache had become so violent that he was going out of his mind.
Was it not sheer madness to be ready—suddenly, because of an ordinary gumdrop wrapper—to get rid of young Marek by pushing him over the edge?
Until now Mathias had not taken into account the two little pieces of paper which he had thrown away the day before and which—to his mind, at least—did not constitute actual evidence in the case. He considered it a matter of bad taste that they should be so regarded, since he had not even thought of recovering them; they had seemed so unimportant when he was in a state of composure. Julian himself had just unwrapped one quite casually, demonstrating that nothing could be proved.… All the same, another interpretation…
Another interpretation occurred to him: was this spectacular gesture not meant to show that Julian would keep silent, that the guilty party, once brought to light, would have nothing to fear from him? His strange attitude back at the farm could have no other explanation. There too he was proclaiming his power over Mathias: he was destroying evidence with the same facility with which he unearthed further indications of guilt, modifying as he chose the content of the hours that had already elapsed. But there would have to be something more than suspicions—even detailed suspicions—to justify such assurance as this. Julian had “seen.” There was no use denying it any longer. Only the images registered by these eyes could have given them such an intolerable fixity.
Yet they were quite ordinary gray eyes—neither ugly nor beautiful, neither large nor small—two perfect, motionless circles set side by side, each one pierced at the center by a black hole.
The salesman had begun talking again to conceal his agitation, rapidly and without a break—unconcerned, moreover, with relevance or even coherence; it did not seem to matter much, since the boy was not listening. Any subject he could think of seemed worth trying: the harbor shops, the length of the crossing, the price of watches, electricity, the sound of the sea, the last two days’ weather, the wind and the sun, the toads and the clouds. He also described how he had missed the return boat, which obliged him to remain on the island for several days; he was spending this compulsory leisure time, until his departure, making visits and taking long walks…. But when he came to a stop, out of breath, desperately casting about for something else to say in order not to repeat himself too much, he heard Julian’s question, asked in the same neutral, even tone of voice: “Why did you go get Jackie’s sweater again if you were only going to throw it into the sea?”
Mathias passed his hand over his forehead. Not “go get the sweater,” but “go get the sweater again”… He began his answer in an almost supplicating tone: “Listen, boy, I didn’t know it was hers. I didn’t know it was anyone’s. I only wanted to see what the gulls would do. You saw them: they thought I was throwing them a fish…”
The young man said nothing. He was looking Mathias straight in the eyes, his own fixed and strange—as if unconscious, even blind—or imbecile.
And Mathias still went on talking, though without the slightest conviction, carried away by the flood of his own words across the deserted moor, across the series of dunes where no trace of vegetation remained, across the rubble and the sand, darkened here and there by a sudden shadow of a specter forcing him to retreat. He went on talking. And the ground, from sentence to sentence, gave way a little more beneath his feet.
He had come out here on one of his strolls, following the paths wherever they led, for no other reason than to stretch his legs a little. He had noticed a piece of cloth hanging from the rocks. Having climbed down to have a look, out of sheer curiosity, he had decided it was merely an old rag of no possible use (but Julian was doubtless aware of the gray sweater’s excellent condition…) and had unthinkingly thrown it to the gulls to see what they would do. How could he have known that this rag, tills dirty piece of wool (on the contrary, extremely clean)—this object, really—belonged to little Jacqueline? He didn’t even know this was the place she had fallen… fallen… fallen.… He stopped. Julian was looking at him. Julian was going to say: “She didn’t fall, either.” But the boy did not open his mouth.
The salesman resumed his monologue still more rapidly. It was no easy matter to climb down the rocks, especially wearing such big shoes. Toward the top the ground might easily cave in under his feet. Yet he hadn’t suspected it was so dangerous; otherwise he would not even have tried. Since he didn’t know this was the place…. But no one had said any such thing; the fact that the sweater belonged to Jacqueline did not mean the accident had occurred here. Just now, in the matter of the gumdrop wrapper, Mathias had already given himself away, admitting he knew the exact spot where the girl tended her sheep. Too late, now, to go back…. He couldn’t suppose, in any case, given the position of the sweater, that it had been torn off in the course of her fall… etc.
“That’s not it, either,” said Julian.