Island of Point Nemo. Jean-Marie Blas de Robles
Чтение книги онлайн.
Читать онлайн книгу Island of Point Nemo - Jean-Marie Blas de Robles страница 13
![Island of Point Nemo - Jean-Marie Blas de Robles Island of Point Nemo - Jean-Marie Blas de Robles](/cover_pre695203.jpg)
“Oh, so you think it’s from a broken jar?”
“Possibly.”
“Not from a pair of glasses?”
“I don’t know. I’m not an eye doctor.”
“But still, you don’t think it is? It’s such a little shard.”
“Yes, you have to find the rest of it.”
“I didn’t think to look. But d’you think he’ll be able to . . .?”
“Of course he’ll make it home.”
“You’re sure he’ll make it home? ’Cause with just one lens . . .”
“If he’s still got one lens, it’s fine. Anyway, it’s not like he’s totally blind.”
“You think he’ll still be able to read his name?”
“On the buzzer? He’s been pushing the same button for thirty years, he doesn’t need to read it, he knows where it is.”
“Even if his lens is broken, you think he’ll still be able to see?”
“Yes.”
“Ah, you think he’ll still be able to see? Even if it’s small?”
“Yes.”
“Good. You think I shouldn’t worry about it?”
“No.”
“Mustn’t cry, then?”
“Oh, no, crying doesn’t help anything. Not right now, at least!”
“You say he’ll still be able to see his name to get back here?”
“Yes, to ring the bell.”
“I’m gonna cry . . .”
“There’s no need to cry, Marthe. Well, good night, I have to get some rest.”
Charlotte goes into her apartment and quickly shuts the three-bolt lock that protects her from the horrors of old age. She undresses, pulls her flannel shirt over her head, slides under her comforter, eagerly starting to visualize Fabrice’s handsome face. They started to have a conversation over break today, she tries to remember the exact scene, but nothing appears, either in her head or on the ceiling. Her eyes settle on the phosphorescent stars glued above the bed by a previous tenant. Tiny ones, big ones, arranged any which way; the spittle of a consumptive Martian. Their luminosity gave out ages ago. They are dead stars, Charlotte has never seen them shine.
She concentrates on the idea of a lovely house in the country; she would be there with Fabrice, surrounded by children. On the front of the house would be a climbing vine and bougainvilleas. Words, just words that do not manage to bring a single image into her head. For a moment, she thinks she hears shouting, like kids at play, but it’s Chonchon coming home, piss drunk, and Marthe scolding him. And just like every other evening, the wallpaper falls away, panel by panel, as if stripped off by an invisible hand, the walls pucker, become porous, melt away. Marthe’s face appears to her, immeasurably magnified, dotted with bristles on her chin, her forehead wrinkled with oily arches. The bedroom is nothing more than an aquarium, Charlotte a breathing axolotl.
The Diamond and Its Reflection
Presented with aplomb by Shylock Holmes, Scummington’s card gave them easy access to Eagle Place, the London morgue. One of the attendants led them to the cell where the late Chung Ling Soo was temporarily resting on a black marble slab. As soon as the attendant left them, Holmes rebelled.
“But really, Canterel, we’re not children . . . When are you going to explain to me what we’re doing here?”
“The wooden leg,” said Canterel, pursing his lips. “Take off the wooden leg, will you?”
Grimod understood immediately and did so, his eyes gleaming.
Once he had the object in his hands, Canterel examined it and quickly found what he was looking for.
“I knew it!” he said, showing them a horizontal groove cut into the wood in the top third of the leg.
He aligned the beginning of the strip with this groove and asked Grimod to hold it in place while he rolled it around the leg. Gradually, as it wound around, the message appeared. His glasses perched on the tip of his nose, Holmes spelled it out aloud: “‘The diamond and its reflection are on their way. Moscow-Peking 02/15.’ As for the rest, I apologize for my pronunciation, but Ananki d oúdé theoí machontaí.”
“Άνάνκη δ ούδέ θ∊οί μάχουταί,” Grimod corrected, smiling. “‘Not even the gods fight against necessity,’ Simonides’s famous words . . .”
“But which in our case sounds like a warning!” said Canterel.
“You are extraordinary. I would pay dearly to know the series of deductions that brought you to this leg . . .”
“Even if I had the answer to your question, I don’t think you’d be able to afford my price, my dear. No offense, of course.”
“That’s not what I meant,” continued Grimod, “though perhaps a more in-depth conversation on that topic would surprise you. Let’s move on . . . I am more a being of logic than passion, I have studied Joseph Bell’s theories, arguments drawn upon by the grandsire of our own Sir Holmes, whom I try to assist as much as I can in his work, but your method of coming to this conclusion astounds me, as it flies in the face of all deductive logic!”
“Perhaps,” said Canterel, unwinding the strip very slowly, “perhaps it is simply a matter of a different sort of logic, just as true to reason, or what you understand by that word. If I weren’t concerned about the contradiction in terms, I would speak of an irrational logic, a mental process that I have noticed can be found in the margins, in random encounters, and in a kind of pure poetry, the magic of its operation. Thinking about it a little, I would say that I am likely not such a bad poet.”
“Please, Monsieur, or I won’t be able to sleep tonight: how did you go from the ribbon to the scytale, and from there to the wooden leg?”
“You imagine I know how I did it?” asked Canterel, adjusting his tiepin. “You are wrong. I try to be . . . How shall I put it? To be truly present in my surroundings, and suddenly everything begins to signal to me in some strange way. I cannot write poems that an editor would agree to publish without making me pay the expenses out of pocket, but something happens within me that is along the lines of poetry. I must be some kind of sensor, you know. Reality often works the same way in which Raymond Roussel wrote some of his books—it feels like a bad pun. Coils, pythons, a stray scytale . . . Then the intuition that a conical stick was needed to produce that shift in the letters. It’s no more than that: I lock on to