caught Quentin off guard, for he had no plans of any kind. He had toyed with the idea of going back to Europe, but he basically felt no real desire to do so. So Masko suggested he drop by the Consulate: he had heard they were looking for an emergency replacement for someone in the visa section.
“They’ll surely be delighted to add a European to their local staff,” he added bemusedly.
There was a short silence. A flash of something else in Masko’s look that Quentin was having trouble identifying. They parted on a chillier than expected note.
The Grand Hotel was not too far and he had seen no need to take a taxi, but it was so hot out that he soon wished he had. Halfway there, he suddenly felt terribly weary. The traffic noise on the Ring was deafening. He had forgotten his sunglasses, and felt as if the sun were boring into his skull. The hotel seemed to be receding into the distance, like a mirage. He made it at last, relieved at the idea that he would finally be able to lie down. He had a splitting headache.
In the elevator, what he had sought in vain to identify a short while ago finally became obvious: it was contempt.
“Looks like we’ve got ourselves another oddball,” quipped Rosemonde Goult. “Seems he was supposed to work for some company or other here, but he quit the job on day one. Strange, since he came all the way to Tahas just for the job; that’s what I heard, anyway. Something must have happened to make him bail on the very first day. In any case, he must not be a very stable person. I wouldn’t be surprised if he quit this job too. Thirty-seven, I saw on his passport: not an age when you should be switching jobs so often. Quentin Corval, funny name. Never met a Quentin before, unless you count the city of Saint-Quentin. Kind of a nice name, actually. I’ll have to write my niece who’s having a baby. She doesn’t know what to call it. Agnes! Did you steal my stapler again? They told her it was a boy, but they’re not always right. I’m actually not so sure I would have wanted them to tell me, you’re having a girl, or you’re having a boy. Not that it’s any better when women say ‘I’m having Caroline,’ or ‘I’m having Claude-Henri.’ Idiotic. Anyway, it’s due next month, right in the middle of summer, poor girl. At least it won’t be as hot there as it is here—though there are summers when it does get awfully hot there too. Claudine, are you the one who keeps turning off the air conditioning? Switch it back on, we can’t breathe in here. I don’t know what’s wrong with me today, I guess I’m a little under the weather. Must have been something I ate. I should have passed on those shrimp last night, in this heat . . .”
This is how Paul Gaudin heard of Quentin for the first time. He thought to himself that this Quentin would need help finding someplace to live. And that something had to be done to soundproof these offices. He then mused that he had never been to any city called Saint-Quentin, or if he had, it was a long while ago, yes, maybe before he had met Jeanne in any case, and he had forgotten.
Quentin Corval. The name itself conjured up a medieval castle in black stone, somewhere in Ireland or Scotland, in an untamed landscape of gray rock and peat bogs. (A cold, spumeladen wind whistling across the weathered vegetation.) But the report open on his desk prevented him from pursuing this vision any further, and he stopped thinking about Quentin Corval altogether.
A few weeks after his arrival, Quentin still knew very little of Tahas. Force of habit had already blunted his earlier curiosity, and he sensed he most likely wouldn’t be learning much more about the place.
The city was enormous. When seen from the panoramic restaurant, The Himalaya, it stretched as far as the eye could see. The horizon was always drowned in a variably thick layer of smog depending on how strong the winds were, and there were days when he could hardly make out the Grand Hotel from his place, a mere three hundred meters away. Beneath this haze, the city appeared without structure or boundary, like a human swamp. What was called “downtown”—actually, just a neighborhood like many others—was located inside the Ring, that wide boulevard which described a perfect circle on the city map. Twenty years ago, all foreign residents in Tahas were obliged to live on the Ring and nowhere else. With the new regime, that rule was relaxed, along with many others, but the curious custom remained, and foreigners went on living there, even now, with a few rare exceptions. What had been established as a constraint, and felt like one by those it affected, gradually turned out to be more convenient than they had thought. It in no way impeded their ability to get around; on the contrary, it spared them getting caught in traffic jams. What’s more, the Ring had the rather peculiar feature of being raised several meters above ground level, like a big circular slide. The buildings that lined it had their entrance at street level, but what looked like the ground floor was in fact one story up. The illusion was further reinforced by the presence of meager gardens out front. On closer inspection, what looked like little gardens were in fact hedges of potted shrubs lined up behind the iron grills.
This distribution of the foreign colony along the same boulevard was particularly advantageous for diplomats in that it simplified their contacts. In any other capital, managing in one evening to attend a holiday gathering, one or two cocktail parties, and then a dinner, would be inconceivable. In Tahas, it was perfectly feasible. Since all the homes holding the events were located on the Ring, one had only to make a succession of stops at the appointed places. The return trip consisted quite naturally of coming full circle, arriving conveniently back home without having to wander through unfamiliar neighborhoods, attempting to decipher dimly lit street names written in foreign lettering, losing one’s way under the combined effects of fatigue, disorientation, and alcohol.
But Quentin was not a diplomat, thank God, and his utterly subaltern position at the consulate spared him the need to make the nightly thirteen-kilometer circuit. He preferred to stay at home most evenings, reading or watching local television shows of which he understood not a word, but which relaxed him for that very reason.
He liked his new apartment. He had almost settled in, though he lacked the will to address certain details and be done with them. The apartment already suited him just as it was, and he knew very well that the last things which remained to be done—hanging a few pictures, having some curtains made, or changing the glass tabletop he had broken the first day by setting a hot pan on it—would never get done. Louise used to enjoy making all-day projects out of rearranging something that was perfectly fine to start with, or fixing things that weren’t broken. She was one of those people who got passionate about having faucets changed or heaters serviced. If she had been there, she would have taken charge, not resting until she had hung the engravings, ordered the curtains, and had the glass tabletop replaced. Not doing any of this felt a little like revenge, which he found gratifying.
It all worked out well in the end. At the consulate, he was off by two and had his afternoons free. In the morning, he began much earlier than he had at his previous job, but since his colleagues had no qualms about arriving late and leaving on time, it wasn’t long before he was doing the same.
When he first arrived, the wing where he was supposed to work was under repair, so they put him temporarily in a little prefab annex located behind the main building, back in a kind of garden.
There was a restroom and sink, a refrigerator, and an electric kettle and cups for making coffee, allowing him to stay holed up in his little hideout all day. Hardly anyone ever came out to bother him, and soon they simply forgot he was there. The time came when he was dealing with no one but the office boy, who brought him papers from time to time, or a new ration of passports to be stamped.
From the start, he kept his distance from the redhead who was handling his own paperwork, the one he’d given his passport to on the first day. The milky flab of her fat arms aroused in him both disgust and fascination, as did her name, which he found a bit sickening to pronounce. Rosemonde Goult talked incessantly, broadcasting a misfortune, predicting a fall from grace, tracking a marriage on the rocks. She was the herald of love affairs and secret flaws, the standard-bearer of rumor. The three other secretaries, markedly younger than she, were much less
