Jealousy and in the Labyrinth (8 page)

The African novel again provides the subject of their conversation.

"People say it's the climate, but that doesn't mean anything."

"Malarial attacks ..."

"There's quinine."

"And your head buzzing all day long."

The moment has come to inquire after Christiane's health. Franck replies by a gesture of the hand: a rise followed by a slower fall that becomes quite vague, while the fingers close over a piece of bread set down beside his plate. At the same time his lower lip is projected and the chin quickly turned toward A. . . who must have asked the same question a little earlier.

The boy comes in through the open pantry door, holding a large, shallow bowl in both hands.

A ... has not made the remarks which Franck's gesture was supposed to introduce. There remains one remedy: to ask after the child. The same gesture—or virtually the same —is made, which again concludes with A.. .'s silence.

"Still the same," Franck says.

Going in the opposite direction behind the panes, the felt hat passes by again. The quick, loose gait has not changed. But the opposite orientation of the face conceals the latter altogether.

Behind the thick glass, which is perfectly clean, there is only the gravel courtyard, then, rising toward the road and the edge of the plateau, the green mass of the banana trees. The flaws in the glass produce shifting circles in their unvarying foliage.

The light itself has a somewhat greenish cast as it falls on the dining room, the black hair with the improbable convolutions, the cloth on the table, and the bare partition where a dark stain, just opposite A . . stands out on the pale, dull, even paint.

The details of this stain have to be seen from quite close range, turning toward the pantry door, if its origin is to be distinguished. The image of the squashed centipede then appears not as a whole, but composed of fragments distinct enough to leave no doubt. Several pieces of the body or its appendages are outlined without any blurring, and remain reproduced with the fidelity of an anatomical drawing: one of the antennae, two curved mandibles, the head and the first joint, half of the second, three large legs. Then come the other parts, less precise: sections of legs and the partial form of a body convulsed into a question mark.

It is at this hour that the lighting in the dining room is the most favorable. From the other side of the square table where the places have not yet been set, one of the French windows, whose panes are darkened by no dust at all, is open on the courtyard which is also reflected in the glass.

Between the two window-leaves, as through the half-open right one, is framed the left side of the courtyard where the tarpaulin-covered truck is parked, its hood facing the northern sector of the banana plantation. Under the tarpaulin is a raw wood case, marked with large black letters painted in reverse through a stencil.

In the left window-leaf the reflection is brighter, though deeper in hue. But it is distorted by flaws in the glass, the circular or crescent-shaped spots of verdure, the same colors as the banana trees, occurring in the middle of the courtyard in front of the sheds.

Nicked by one of the moving rings of foliage, the big blue sedan nevertheless remains quite recognizable, as well as A . . .'s dress where she is standing next to the car.

She is leaning toward the door. If the window has been lowered—which is likely—A . . . may have put her face into the opening above the seat. In straightening up she runs the risk of disarranging her hair against the edge of the window, and seeing her hair spread out and fall over the driver still behind the wheel.

The latter is here again for dinner, affable and smiling. He drops into one of the leather chairs without anyone's telling him which, and utters his usual exclamation as to their comfort.

"That feels good!"

His white shirt makes a paler spot in the darkness, against the wall of the house.

In order not to risk spilling the contents in the darkness, A . . . has come as close as possible to Franck's armchair, carefully holding his glass in her right hand. She rests her other hand on the arm of his chair and leans toward him, so close that their heads touch. He murmurs a few words, probably thanking her. But the words are drowned out by the deafening racket of the crickets that rises on all sides.

At table, once the arrangement of the lamps has been shifted so that the guests are in less direct a light, the conversation continues on familiar subjects, with the same phrases.

Franck's truck has had engine trouble on the middle of the hill, between the 40-mile marker—where the road leaves the plain—and the first village. It was a police car which passed the truck and then stopped at the plantation to inform Franck. When the latter reached the spot two hours later, he did not find his truck at the place indicated, but much lower down, the driver having tried to start the motor in reverse, at the risk of crashing into a tree if he missed one of the turns.

Expecting any results at all from such a method was ridiculous anyway. The carburetor would have to be completely dismantled all over again. Luckily Franck had brought along a snack lunch, for he didn't get home until three-thirty. He has decided to replace the truck as soon as possible, and it's the last time—he says—that he will buy old military matériel.

"You think you're getting a bargain, but in the long run it costs much more."

He now expects to buy a new truck. He is going down to the port himself at the first opportunity and meet with the sales agents of the chief makes, so that he can find out the exact prices, the various advantages, delivery time, etc. . . .

If he had a little more experience, he would know that new machines should not be entrusted to Negro drivers, who wreck them just as fast, if not faster.

"When do you think you'll be going down?" A . . . asks.

"I don't know. . . ." They look at each other, their glances meeting above the platter Franck is holding in one hand six inches above the table top. "Maybe next week."

"I have to go to town too," A . . . says; "I have a lot of shopping to do."

"Well, I'll be glad to take you. If we leave early, we can be back the same night."

He sets the platter down on his left and begins helping himself. A . . . turns back so that she is looking straight ahead.

"A centipede!" she says in a more restrained voice, in the silence that has just fallen.

Franck looks up again. Following the direction of A . . .'s motionless gaze, he turns his head to the other side, toward his right.

On the light-colored paint of the partition opposite A.. a common Scutigera of average size (about as long as a finger) has appeared, easily seen despite the dim light. It is not moving, for the moment, but the orientation of its body indicates a path which cuts across the panel diagonally: coming from the baseboard on the hallway side and heading toward the corner of the ceiling. The creature is easy to identify thanks to the development of its legs, especially on the posterior portion. On closer examination the swaying movement of the antennae at the other end can be discerned.

A . . . has not moved since her discovery: sitting very straight in her chair, her hands resting flat on the cloth on either side of her plate. Her eyes are wide, staring at the wall. Her mouth is not quite closed, and may be quivering imperceptibly.

It is not unusual to encounter different kinds of centipedes after dark in this already old wooden house. And this kind is not one of the largest; it is far from being one of the most venomous. A . . . does her best, but does not manage to look away, nor to smile at the joke about her aversion to centipedes.

Franck, who has said nothing, is looking at A . .. again. Then he stands up, noiselessly, holding his napkin in his hand. He wads it into a ball and approaches the wall.

A . . . seems to be breathing a little faster, but this may be an illusion. Her left hand gradually closes over her knife. The delicate antennae accelerate their alternate swaying.

Suddenly the creature hunches its body and begins descending diagonally toward the ground as fast as its long legs can go, while the wadded napkin falls on it, faster still.

The hand with the tapering fingers has clenched around the knife handle; but the features of the face have lost none of their rigidity. Franck lifts the napkin away from the wall and with his foot continues to squash something on the tiles, against the baseboard.

About a yard higher, the paint is marked with a dark shape, a tiny arc twisted into a question mark, blurred on one side, in places surrounded by more tenuous signs, from which A... has still not taken her eyes.

The brush descends the length of the loose hair with a faint noise something between the sound of a breath and a crackle. No sooner has it reached the bottom than it quickly rises again toward the head, where the whole surface of its bristles sinks in before gliding down over the black mass again. The brush is a bone-colored oval whose short handle disappears almost entirely in the hand firmly gripping it.

Half of the hair hangs down the back, the other hand pulls the other half over one shoulder. The head leans to the right, offering the hair more readily to the brush. Each time the latter lands at the top of its cycle behind the nape of the neck, the head leans farther to the right and then rises again with an effort, while the right hand, holding the brush, moves away in the opposite direction. The left hand, which loosely confines the hair between the wrist, the palm and the fingers, releases it for a second and then closes on it again, gathering the strands together with a firm, mechanical gesture, while the brush continues its course to the extreme tips of the hair. The sound, which gradually varies from one end to the other, is at this point nothing more than a dry, faint crackling, whose last sputters occur once the brush, leaving the longest hair, is already moving up the ascending part of the cycle, describing a swift curve in the air which brings it above the neck, where the hair lies flat on the back of the head and reveals the white streak of a part.

To the left of this part, the other half of the black hair hangs loosely to the waist in supple waves. Still further to the left the face shows only a faint profile. But beyond is the surface of the mirror, which reflects the image of the whole face from the front, the eyes—doubtless unnecessary for brushing—directed straight ahead, as is natural.

Thus A . . .'s eyes should meet the wide-open window which overlooks the west gable-end. Facing in this direction she is brushing her hair in front of the dressing table provided especially with a vertical mirror which reflects her gaze behind her, toward the bedroom's third window, the central portion of the veranda and the slope of the valley.

The second window, which looks south like this third one, is nearer the southwest corner of the house; it too is wide open. Through it can be seen the side of the dressing- table, the edge of the mirror, the left profile of the face, the loose hair which hangs over the shoulder, and the left arm which is bent back to reach the right half of the hair.

Since the nape of the neck is bent diagonally to the right, the face is slightly turned toward the window. On the gray- streaked marble table-top are arranged jars and bottles of various sizes and shapes; nearer the front lies a large tortoise-shell comb and another brush, this one of wood with a longer handle, which is lying with its black bristles facing up.

A . . . must have just washed her hair, otherwise she would not be bothering to brush it in the middle of the day. She has interrupted her movements, having finished this side perhaps. Nevertheless she does not change the position of her arms or move the upper part of her body as she turns her face all the way around toward the window at her left to look out at the veranda, the open-work balustrade and the opposite slope of the valley.

The foreshortened shadow of the column supporting the corner of the roof falls across the veranda flagstones toward the first window, that of the gable-end; but it is far from reaching it, for the sun is still too high in the sky. The gable-end of the house is entirely in the shadow of the roof; as for the western part of the veranda running the length of this gable-end, an unbroken sunny strip scarcely a yard wide lies between the shadow of the roof and the shadow of the balustrade.

It is in front of this window, inside the bedroom, that the varnished mahogany-and-marble dressing table has been set; there is always a specimen of such pieces in these colonial-style houses.

The back of the mirror is a panel of rougher wood, also reddish, but dark, oval in shape and with a chalk inscription almost entirely erased. To the right, A.. .'s face, which is now bent toward her left so she can brush the other half of her hair, shows one eye staring straight ahead of her, as is natural, toward the open window and the green mass of the banana trees.

At the end of this western side of the veranda opens the outside door of the pantry; the pantry opens onto the dining room, where it stays cool all afternoon. On the bare wall between the pantry door and the hallway, the stain formed by the remains of the centipede is scarcely visible because of the oblique light. The table is set for three; three plates occupy three sides of the square table: the sideboard side, the window side, and the side toward the center of the long room. The other half of this room forms a living room on the other side of an imaginary central line between the hall doorway and the door opening onto the courtyard. From the courtyard it is easy to reach the sheds where the native overseer has his office.

But this living room—or the side of the shed through a window—can be seen only from Franck's place at the table: back to the sideboard.

At present, this place is empty. The chair is nevertheless put in the right spot, the plate and silver are in their places too; but there is nothing between the edge of the table and the back of the chair, which shows its trimming of thick straw bound in a cross, and the plate is clean and shiny, surrounded by the usual knives and forks, as at the beginning of the meal.