Mathias was seized with panic and hurried on, too apprehensive for explanations. He began to speak at such a rate that objections—or even regret at his own words—became utterly impossible. In order to fill in the blanks, he often repeated the same sentence several times. He even caught himself reciting the multiplication table. Seized with a sudden inspiration, he fumbled in his pocket and brought out the little gold-plated wrist watch: “Here, since it’s your birthday I’m going to give you a present: look at this fine watch!”
But Julian, his eyes still fixed on Mathias’, retreated farther and farther into the grassy hollow, away from the edge of the cliff toward the curve of the horseshoe. Lest the boy run away even faster, the salesman dared not make the least move in his direction. He stood where he was, holding in his outstretched hand the watch with its band of metal links, as if he were trying to tame birds.
When he reached the foot of the slope bordering the inner limit of the horseshoe, the young man stopped, his eyes still fixed on Mathias’—who was equally motionless, twenty yards away.
“My grandmother will give me a finer one,” he said.
Then he thrust his hand into his work-clothes and brought out a handful of miscellaneous fragments, among which the salesman recognized a thick cord spotted with grease; it seemed washed out or discolored, as if by prolonged immersion in sea water. The other things were hard to see at this distance. Julian picked out a cigarette butt—already three-quarters smoked—and put it between his lips. The little cord and the other articles went back into his pocket. He buttoned his jacket again.
Keeping the butt in the right corner of his mouth—without lighting it—and his glassy eyes on the salesman, the boy waited, his face pale; the brim of his cap was tilted slightly toward his left ear. Mathias lowered his eyes first.
“You rented the new bicycle from the tobacco shop,” the voice said next. “I know that bike. There’s no tool bag under the seat. The tools are in a box behind the luggage rack.” Of course. The salesman had noticed it right away the day before: a chromium-plated, rectangular box—one of the permanent accessories; on its rear surface was the red reflector, usually attached to the mudguard. Of course.
Mathias lifted his head again. He was alone on the moor. In front of him, in the grass, in the center of the little hollow, he saw a short cigarette butt—which Julian must have thrown away as he was leaving—or else it was the one he had been looking for himself since morning—or perhaps they were one and the same. He came closer. It was only a little pebble, cylindrical, white, and smooth, which he had already picked up once, when he had come here.
Mathias headed slowly toward the big lighthouse, taking the customs road along the edge of the cliff. He could not help laughing at the thought of the dramatic retreat Julian had just made in order to reveal his discovery: a metal box fastened behind the luggage rack…. The salesman had never denied it! Was this detail so imporïant that he ought to have corrected Julian when he spoke of a bag under the seat? If he had no proof better than that…
He might just as well have said that the gray sweater was not lying “on the rocks,” but “on a projection of the rocks”—or that only one of the mahonias was budding at the Marek farm. He might have said: “The road is not altogether level, nor entirely straight, between the crossroads and the fork leading to the mill”—“The bulletin-board is not precisely in front of the café-tobacco shop door, but slightly to the right, and does not block the entrance”—“The little square is not really triangular: the apex is flattened by the plot of grass around the public building so as to form a trapezoid”—“The enameled iron skimmer sticking out of the mud in the harbor is not the same color blue as the one in the hardware store”—“The pier is not rectilinear, but turns in the center at an angle of one hundred seventy-five degrees.”
Similarly the time wasted at the crossroads to the Marek farm did not amount to forty minutes. The salesman had not arrived there before eleven-forty-five or eleven-fifty, taking into account the long detour to the mill. On the other hand, before meeting up with the old country woman at twelve-twenty, he had spent nearly fifteen minutes repairing the gearshift on his bicycle—with the help of the tools that were in the box… etc. There remained just enough time to make the trip to the farm and back—including the wait in the courtyard, near the mahonia bush, and the first two attempts to deal with the abnormal friction of the chain: on the little path, then in front of the house.
The customs road did not actually follow the edge of the cliff very closely—at least not continuously—and often diverged from it for three or four yards, sometimes for much greater distances. Besides, it was not easy to determine where this “edge” actually was, for with the exception of the areas where a steep rock wall towered above the sea for the whole height of the cliff, there were also grassy slopes running down almost to the water, as well as heaps of jagged rock more or less encroaching on the moor, and even planes of schist that ended in huge lumps of rubble and earth.
Sometimes the indentations along the shore were enlarged by a deep fault cutting into the cliff, or a sandy bay forming an even larger jag. The salesman had been walking for a long time—it seemed to him—when the lighthouse suddenly rose up before him, high above the mass of auxiliary constructions, walls and turrets clustered together.
Mathias turned left, toward the village. A man in fisherman’s clothes had been walking ahead of him on the road for some time now. Following him, Mathias again came out onto the main road where the first houses began, and walked into the café.
There were many people, much smoke and noise. The electric lights hanging from the ceiling had been turned on; they were harsh and blue. Scraps of almost incomprehensible conversation were momentarily audible in the general uproar; here and there a gesture, a face, a grin emerged from the shimmering haze for a few seconds.
There was no table free. Mathias headed toward the bar. The other customers pressed a little closer together to make room for him. Exhausted by his day’s walking, he would have preferred to sit down.
The fat, gray-haired woman recognized him. He had to make explanations all over again: the boat he had missed, the bicycle, the bedroom… etc. The proprietress, fortunately, had too much to do to listen or question him. He asked her for some aspirin. She had none. He ordered an absinthe. Besides, his headache was bothering him less now; it had become a sort of cottony humming in which his whole brain was steeped.
An old man next to him was telling a story to a group of the lighthouse workmen. They were young, and laughed at him, or nudged one another with their elbows, or else interrupted with bantering, apparently serious observations which produced still more laughter. The narrator’s low voice was lost in the din. Only a few phrases, a few words reached Mathias’ ears. Nevertheless, he understood, as a result of the old man’s deliberation and his incessant repetitions, as well as from the sarcastic remarks of his listeners, that he was telling an old local legend—which Mathias had never heard mentioned in his childhood, however: each spring, a young virgin had to be hurled from the top of the cliff to appease the storm-god and render the sea kind to travelers and sailors. Rising from the deep, a gigantic monster with the body of a serpent and the head of a dog devoured the victim alive under the eyes of the sacrificer. It was doubtless the little shepherdess’ death that had provoked such a story. The old man furnished a quantity of mostly inaudible details about the ceremony; it was strange that he used only the present tense: “they make her kneel down,” “they tie her hands behind her back,” “they blindfold her,” “down in the water they can see the slimy coils of the dragon”… A fisherman slipped in between Mathias and the group of men to reach the counter. The salesman squeezed in the opposite direction. Now he could hear nothing but the young men’s exclamations and laughter.