the child, who is running a slight fever. It is not unusual, these days, for her husband to come without her like this: because of the child, because of Christiane's own ailments—for her health has difficulty adapting itself to this hot, humid climate—and also because of her domestic problems, her difficulties managing her too numerous and poorly organized servants.
Tonight, though, A . . . seemed to expect her. At least she had had four places set. She gives orders to have the one that will not be used taken away at once.
On the veranda, Franck drops into one of the low armchairs and utters his usual exclamation as to how comfortable they are. They are very simple chairs of wood and leather thongs, made according to A . . .’s instructions by a native craftsman. She leans toward Franck to hand him his glass.
Although it is quite dark now, she has given orders that the lamps should not be brought out, for—she says—they attract mosquitoes. The glasses are filled almost to the brim with a mixture of cognac and soda in which a little cube of ice is floating. In order to avoid the danger of upsetting the glasses in the darkness, A . . . has moved as near as possible to the armchair Franck is sitting in, her right hand carefully extending the glass with his drink m it She rests her other hand on the arm of the chair and bends over him, so close that their heads touch. He murmurs a few words: probably thanking her.
She straightens up gracefully, picks up the third glass —which she is not afraid of spilling, for it is much less full—and sits down beside Franck, while he continues telling the story about his engine trouble, which he had begun the moment he arrived.
It was A ... who arranged the chairs this evening, when she had them brought out on the veranda. The one she invited Franck to sit in and her own are side by side against the wall of the house—backs against this wall, of course— beneath the office window. So that Franck's chair is on her left, and on her right—but farther forward—the little table where the bottles are. The two other chairs are placed on the other side of this table, still farther to the right, so that they do not block the view of the first two through the balustrade of the veranda. For the same reason these last two chairs are not turned to face the rest of the group: they have been set at an angle, obliquely oriented toward the openwork balustrade and the hillside opposite. This arrangement obliges anyone sitting there to turn his head around sharply toward the left if he wants to see A . . . —especially anyone in the fourth chair, which is the farthest away.
The third, which is a folding chair made of canvas stretched on a metal frame, occupies a distinctly retired position between the fourth chair and the table. But it is this chair, less comfortable, which has remained empty.
Franck's voice continues describing the day's problems on his own plantation. A . . . seems to be interested in them. She encourages him from time to time by a few words indicating her attention. During a pause the sound of a glass being put down on the little table can be heard.
On the other side of the balustrade, toward the opposite hillside, there is only the sound of the crickets and the starless dark of the night.
In the dining room the two kerosene lamps are lit. One is at the edge of the long sideboard, toward its left end; the other on the table itself, in the empty place of the fourth guest.
The table is square, since extra leaves (unnecessary for so few people) have not been added. The three places set are on three sides, the lamp on the fourth. A . . . is at her usual place; Franck is sitting at her right—therefore with his back to the sideboard.
On the sideboard, to the left of the second lamp (that is, on the side of the open pantry door), are piled the clean plates which will be used during the meal. To the right of the lamp and behind it—against the wall—a native pitcher of terracotta marks the middle of the sideboard. Farther to the right, against the gray-painted wall, is outlined the magnified and blurred shadow of a man's head—Franck's. He is wearing neither jacket nor tie, and the collar of his shirt is unbuttoned; but the shirt itself is irreproachably white, made of a thin material of high quality, the French cuffs held together by detachable ivory links.
A . . . is wearing the same dress she wore at lunch. Franck almost had an argument with his wife about it, when Christiane criticized its cut as being “too hot for this country.” A . . . merely smiled: “Besides, I don't find the climate here so bad as all that,” she said, to change the subject. “If you could imagine how hot it was ten months out of the year in Kanda! . . .” Then the conversation had settled for a while on Africa.
The boy comes in through the open pantry door, holding the tureen full of soup in both hands. As soon as he puts it down, A . . . asks him to move the lamp on the table, whose glare—she says—hurts her eyes. The boy lifts the lamp by the handle and carries it to the other end of the room, setting it down on a piece of furniture A . . . points to with her left hand.
The table is immediately plunged into shadow. Its chief source of light has become the lamp on the sideboard, for the second lamp—in the opposite direction—is now much farther away.
On the wall, toward the pantry door, Franck's head has disappeared. His white shirt no longer gleams as it did just now beneath the direct light of the lamp on the table. Only his right sleeve is reached by the beams of the lamp three quarters of the way behind him: the shoulder and the arm are edged with a bright line, and similarly, higher up, the ear and neck. His face has the light almost directly behind it.
“Don't you think that's better?” A . . . asks, turning toward him.
“Certainly more intime," Franck answers.
He drinks his soup in rapid spoonfuls. Although he makes no excessive gestures, although he holds his spoon quite properly and swallows the liquid without making any noise, he seems to display, in this modest task, a disproportionate energy and zest. It would be difficult to specify exactly in what way he is neglecting some essential rule, at what particular point he is lacking in discretion.
Avoiding any notable defect, his behavior, nevertheless, does not pass unnoticed. And, by contrast, it accentuates the fact that A . . . has just completed the same operation without having seemed to move—but without attracting any attention, on the other hand, by an abnormal immobility. It takes a glance at her empty though stained plate to discover that she has not neglected to serve herself.
Memory succeeds, moreover, in reconstituting several movements of her right hand and her lips, several comings and goings of the spoon between the plate and her mouth, which might be considered as significant.
To be still more certain, it is enough to ask her if she doesn't think the cook has made the soup too salty.
“Oh no,” she answers, “you have to eat salt so as not to sweat.”
Which, on reflection, does not prove beyond a doubt that she tasted the soup today.
Now the boy clears away the plates. It then becomes impossible to check again the stains in A . . ,’s plate—or their absence, if she has not served herself.
The conversation has returned to the story of the engine trouble: in the future Franck will not buy any more old military matériel; his latest acquisitions have given him too many problems; the next time he replaces one of his vehicles, it will be with a new one.
But he is wrong to trust modern trucks to the Negro drivers, who will wreck them just as fast, if not faster.
“All the same,” Franck says, “if the motor is new, the driver will not have to fool with it.”
Yet he should know that just the opposite is true: the new motor will be all the more attractive a
