platform of the fire escape and the ground. The man with the gray face let himself tumble down, rather than actually climb the last rungs. The lieutenant fireman has asked him if there was still anyone in the building. The man has answered without a moment’s hesitation that there was no one left. An elderly woman, who was in tears and had barely—as I understood it—escaped the flames, has repeated for the third time that a ‘young lady,’ who lived over her own room, had disappeared. The man has declared that the floor in question was empty, adding that doubtless this blond girl had already left her room when the fire broke out, perhaps in her very room: if she had forgotten to unplug an electric iron, or left on a gas burner, or an alcohol lamp …”
“And then what did you do?”
“I managed to lose myself in the crowd.”
He finishes writing what interests him in the report I have just made. Then he looks up from his papers and asks, without my seeing the link with what has preceded: “Was the woman you call your sister in the house at that time?”
“Yes, of course, since she never goes out.”
“You’re sure of that?”
“Yes, absolutely sure.”
Previously, and without any more reason, he had asked me how I accounted for the color of Laura’s eyes, her skin, and her hair. I had answered that there had probably been some kind of mix-up. This interview over, I walked toward the subway, in order to go back home.
Meanwhile, Laura is still huddled under her sheets and blankets, pulled up over her mouth. But her eyes are wide open, and she is listening hard, trying to figure out what is happening overhead. Yet there is nothing to hear, so heavy and ominous is the silence of the whole house. At the end of the hallway, the murderer, who has quietly climbed up the fire escape, is now carefully picking up the pieces of broken glass which he found broken when he reached the window; thanks to the hole left by the little triangle of windowpane which had already fallen out, the man can grasp one by one between two fingers the sharp points which constitute the star and remove them by pulling them out from their groove between the wood frame and the dry putty. When he has, without hurrying, completed this task, he need merely thrust his hand through the gaping rectangle, where he no longer risks severing the veins in his wrist, and turn the recently oiled lock without making any noise at all. Then the window frame pivots silently on its hinges. Leaving it ajar, ready for his escape once his triple crime has been committed, the man in black gloves walks silently across the brick tiles.
Already the door handle moves slightly. The girl, half-sitting up in her bed, stares wide-eyed at the brass knob facing her. She sees the gleaming spot which is the reflection of the tiny bedlamp in the polished metal turning with unbearable deliberation. As if she were already feeling the sheets crushed beneath her covered with blood, she utters a scream of terror.
There is light under the door, since I have just pressed the hall-light button on my way up. I tell myself that Laura’s screams will end by disturbing our neighbors. During the day, the schoolchildren hear them in their courtyard. I climb the stairs wearily, legs heavy, exhausted by a day of errands even more complicated than usual. I even need, tonight, the banister to lean on. At the second-floor landing, I carelessly drop my keys, which clatter against the iron bars before they reach the floor. I then notice that I have forgotten to set these keys down on the vestibule table downstairs, as I usually do each time I come in. I attribute this negligence to my exhaustion and to the fact that I was thinking about something else as I was closing my door: once again, about what Frank had just told me with regard to Laura, and which I should probably consider as an order.
This had happened at “Old Joe’s.” The band there makes such a racket that you can talk about your business without danger of being overheard by indiscreet ears. Sometimes the problem is actually to make yourself heard by the person you are talking to, whose face you get as close to as you can. At our table, there was also, at first, the go-between who calls himself Ben-Saïd, who as usual said nothing in the presence of the man whom we all more or less regard as the boss. But when Frank got up and walked toward the men’s room (or, more likely, the telephone), Ben-Saïd told me right away that I was being followed and that he wanted to warn me. I pretended to be surprised and asked if he knew why.
“There are so many informers,” he answered, “it’s only natural to be careful.” He added that in his opinion, moreover, almost all the active agents were watched.
“Then why tell me about it—me in particular?”
“Oh, just so you’ll know.”
I looked at the people at the other tables around us, and I said: “So my shadow is here tonight? You should tell me which one he is!”
“No,” he answered without even turning his head to make sure, “here it’s no use, there are almost no men here except our own. Besides, I think it’s actually your house that’s being watched.”
“Why my house?”
“They think you’re not living there alone.”
“Yes I am,” I say after a moment’s thought, “I’m living alone there now.”
“Maybe you are, but they don’t seem to think so.”
“They better let me know what they do think,” I say calmly, to put an end to this conversation.
Frank was just coming back from the men’s room. Passing by one of the tables, he said something to a man who immediately stood up and walked over to get his raincoat, hanging on a peg. Frank, who had continued on his way, then reached his chair. He sat down and said curtly to Ben-Saïd that everything was set, he should be on his way there now. Ben-Saïd left without asking for another word of information, even forgetting to say good-by to me. It was right after he left that Frank spoke to me about Laura. I listened without answering. When he finished: “That’s it, you take it from there,” I finished my Bloody Mary and went out.
In the street, just in front of the door, there were two homosexuals, walking arm in arm with their little dog on a leash. The taller one turned around and stared at me with an insistence I couldn’t explain. Then he whispered something into his friend’s ear, while they continued their stroll, walking with tiny steps. I thought that maybe I had a speck of dirt somewhere on my face. But when I rubbed the back of my hand over my cheeks, all I could feel were the hairs of my beard.
At the first shopwindow I came to, I stopped to examine my face in the glass. At the same time I took advantage of the occasion to glance back and I glimpsed Frank coming out of “Old Joe’s.” He was accompanied by Ben-Saïd, I am ready to swear to it, though the latter had already left at least three-quarters of an hour before. They were walking in the opposite direction from mine, but I was afraid one or the other would turn around, and I pressed up closer against the glass, as if the contents of the shopwindow were enormously interesting to me. It was only the wig-and-mask shop, though, whose display I have been familiar with for a long time.
The masks here are made out of some soft plastic material, very realistically fashioned, and bear no relation to those crude papier-mâché faces children wear at Halloween. The models are made to measure according to the customer’s specifications. In the middle of the objects exhibited in the window, there is a large placard imitating hurriedly daubed-on graffiti: “If you don’t like your hair, try ours. Feel like jumping out of your skin? Jump into ours!” They also sell foam-rubber gloves which completely replace the appearance of your hands—shape, color, etc.—by a new external aspect selected from a catalogue.
Framing the central slogan on all four sides, are
