I just heard someone walking … Listen, there it is again! …”
“No, it can’t be, there’s never anyone there,” she answered, in her most stubborn manner, against all appearances.
“Then perhaps you have neighbors?”
“No, there are no neighbors. This is all the apartment!” And with a sweeping gesture, she included the vicinity of the boudoir in all directions.
Nonetheless she got up from her pneumatic chair and took a few nervous steps to the large bay window which seemed to open onto nothing but the unvarying gray sky. That was when I noticed how silent her own footsteps remained on the white carpeting thick as fleece, even when she tapped on the floor with her little black patent-leather shoes.
If little Laura’s intention had been to drown out by her movements the noises of the adjoining room, it was a miscalculation in any case, especially since they continued all the louder behind the partition, from which came now the quite recognizable echoes of a struggle: trampling, furniture knocked over, heavy breathing, clothes ripped, and even, soon after, groans, muffled pleas, as though uttered by a woman who for unknown reasons dares not raise her voice, or is materially prevented from doing so.
The little girl, too, was listening now. When the moaning assumed a more particular character, she gave me a sidelong glance, and I had the impression that a fugitive smile passed across her lips, or at least between her half-closed eyelids which had perceptibly winked. But then there was a fierce scream, so violent that she made up her mind to go and see, though without seeming in any way surprised or alarmed.
Having left my seat at the same moment, in an instinctive movement, I saw the door close behind Laura; then, since there was nothing more to be heard, I turned my head toward the sheet of glass. I was thinking, of course, of the fire escape; but aside from the fact that no such thing exists on any building of recent construction, I would have been very reluctant to use, once again, this convenient means of regaining the street, the subway, my abandoned house … In a few meditative steps, however, I reach the huge bay window, and raise the thick tulle curtains covering it.
I am then amazed to discover that the room we were in overlooks Central Park, which seems to me quite impossible, given the position of the building JR entered a few minutes earlier. It would have required, in other words, that the complicated route she took to the apartment door from the entrance lobby, by various elevators and escalators, made her pass under at least one street. But now these topographical reflections divert me to a scene which is taking place at the very bottom, between the bushes, not far from a streetlamp casting a dim light over the figures, distorting their shadows.
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