The Voyeur (14 page)

Then the path descended to a little beach forming the end of a narrow cove full of reeds. The triangle of sand was completely covered by a beached fishing-smack and five or six crab traps—big round openwork baskets made of thin wands tied in place with osier knots. Immediately behind the beach, near the first reeds, stood a lone cottage in the center of a tiny lawn joined to the beach by a steep path. The fisherman pointed one of the bottles toward the slate roof and said, "Here we are."

Mathias was surprised by his voice, which had suddenly become normal again: he no longer needed to shout to make himself heard; the deafening noise of sea and wind had disappeared so completely that it seemed he had been transported several miles away. He looked behind him. The slope down had barely begun, but the narrowness of the cove and the hillocks along the cliff top above him were enough to shelter the path almost immediately. The waves were no longer visible—neither their successive arrivals, nor their collapse, nor even their highest columns of spray—concealed as they were by the rocky projections three-quarters of the way across the entrance to this little basin. Protected as if by a series of staggered dikes, the water here had the smoothness of a flat calm. Mathias leaned over the perpendicular edge.

He saw beneath him, barely above the surface, a horizontal platform roughly hewn from the rock, long enough and wide enough for a man to stretch out comfortably. Whether the formation was entirely natural or the result of human handiwork, human beings certainly used it—or had used it in the past—probably for landing little fishing boats when the tide permitted. It was accessible, without too much difficulty, from the path, thanks to a series of breaks and faults forming a staircase missing only a few steps. The appointments of this rudimentary quay had been completed by four iron rings set into the vertical flank: the first two were quite low, on a level with the platform, about a yard apart, the others at a man's height, and a little wider apart. The unusual position in which the legs and arms were thus held revealed the body's grace. The salesman had recognized Violet immediately.

The likeness was perfect. It was not only the still-childish face with the huge eyes, the slender, round neck, the golden color of the hair, but even the same dimple near the armpits and the same fragile texture of the skin. Slightly below the right hip was a tiny blackish-red mole about the size of an ant and shaped like a three-pointed star—it looked very much like a
v
or a
y.

The sun was hot down in this sheltered hollow. Mathias unbuckled the belt of his duffle coat; although the sky was overcast, the air did not seem so fresh now that the wind no longer reached him. Toward the open sea, on the other side of the reefs protecting the cove, the same low rock could still be seen with its fringe of foam and its three motionless gulls. They had not changed direction; but since they were rather far away they continued, despite the observer's change of position, to be seen from the same angle—that is, exactly in profile. Tlirough an invisible opening in the clouds a pale sunbeam illuminated the scene with a wan, flat light. The rather lusterless white of the birds, in this light, gave an impression of distance that was impossible to estimate; the imagination might locate them at a mile off, or twenty feet, or even, without much more effort, within arm's reach.

"Here we are," said the fisherman boisterously. The sunbeam disappeared. The grayish plumage of the gulls was restored to its sixty yards' distance. At the edge of the steep cliff—too near, in places, following the recent cave-ins—the path sloped steeply down to the cottage and the bit of lawn. The cottage had only one small, square window. The roof was covered with thick, irregular, hand-hewn slates. "Here we are," the voice repeated.

They went in, the sailor followed by the salesman who closed the door behind him; the latch caught by itself. The cottage was really a good way from the village and not "thirty seconds" as its owner had promised. The latter's name was written on the door in chalk: Jean Robin. The clumsy script, both laborious and uncertain, suggested the school exercises of young children; but a child could not have reached so high on the door panel, even standing on tiptoe. The vertical side of the
b,
instead of being straight, leaned backward, and its upper loop, too rounded, looked like the reversed image of the bulge against which it was braced. Mathias, groping his way forward in the dark vestibule, wondered if the sailor had written these two words himself—and with what purpose. "Jean Robin"—the name suggested something, but nothing precise enough for him to locate the man in the past from which he claimed to emerge. The cottage's dark interior seemed more complicated than its size and its single window had led him to suppose from outside. The salesman directed his steps according to the back preceding him—turning several times at sharp angles—without discovering whether he was crossing rooms, hallways, or only going through doors.

"Be careful here," the man said, "there's a step."

His voice was low now, whispering, as if fearful of waking a sleeper, an invalid, an unfriendly dog.

The room impressed Mathias as being rather large— certainly less cramped than he had expected. The little square window—the one looking out toward the cove, doubtless—provided a brilliant, raw, but limited light, which did not reach the corners of the room, nor even its central section. Only the comer of a massive table and a few inches of rough flooring clearly emerged from the darkness. Mathias turned toward the light to look through the dirty panes.

He did not have time to recognize the landscape, for his attention was immediately drawn in the opposite direction by the noise of some utensil falling, a kitchen implement, probably. In the corner farthest from the window he could make out two silhouettes, one the fisherman's and the other, which he had not noticed up to now, that of a girl or young woman—slender, graceful, and wearing a close-fitting dress which was either black or very dark. Her head did not reach to the man's shoulder. She leaned over, bending her knees, to pick up the fallen object. Motionless above her, his hands on his hips, the sailor bent his head a little, as if to gaze at her.

Behind them were flames appearing through a circular opening in a horizontal surface—short yellow flames spreading sideways in order not to extend beyond the level of the opening. They issued from the grate of a large kitchen stove standing against the rear wall from which one of the two cast-iron lids had been removed.

Mathias walked around the big table to join the couple; but not the slightest attempt was made at an introduction, nor any other kind of speech. His exuberance gone now, the host's expression was severe, his half-closed eyes producing a line across his brow portending either anxiety or anger. Something must have happened, while the salesman had his back turned, between him and the girl—his daughter? —his wife?—a servant?

They sat down at the table in silence. There was nothing on it but two soup plates, two glasses, and an ordinary hammer. The two men sat facing the window, each at an end of the long bench running the length of the table. The sailor uncorked the two bottles of wine one after the other with a corkscrew attached to his pocket knife. The woman set another glass and plate for Mathias; then she brought a casserole of boiled potatoes and finally, without bothering to put them on a plate, two whole broiled spider-crabs. Then she sat down on a stool facing the salesman—between him and the window, her back to the light.

Mathias tried to see through the panes. The sailor poured the wine. In front of them the two crabs were lying side by side, the angular legs in the air, half-crooked toward their bellies. Looking at the simple cotton dress worn by the girl opposite him, Mathias decided he was getting too warm. He took off his duffle coat, threw it on a box behind the bench, and unbuttoned his jacket. He regretted having let himself be brought all the way to this cottage, where he felt alien, importunate, as if he inspired defiance in its inhabitants, and where, furthermore, his presence was justified by no hope of a sale, as he might have guessed.

His two companions had begun to peel their potatoes, using their nails with deliberate movements. The salesman reached into the casserole and imitated them.

Suddenly the fisherman burst out laughing, so unexpectedly that Mathias gave a start; his eyes shifted from the girl's black dress to his neighbor's suddenly cheerful face. The man's glass was empty again. Mathias drank a swallow from his own.

"It's damned funny all the same!" said the man.

The salesman wondered if he should answer. He decided it was more discreet to busy himself with his task, facilitated by the unusual length of his nails. He looked at the thin, close-fitting black dress, and the reflections of the light playing about the base of the girl's neck.

"When I think," the man said, "that here we are, the two of us, calmly peeling potatoes together. . . ." He laughed and left his sentence unfinished. Indicating the crabs with his chin, he asked, "Don't you like hookers?"

Mathias answered in the affirmative, asked himself the same question, and decided that he had just lied. The odor, however, was not disagreeable. The sailor picked up one of the creatures and tore off its limbs one by one; with the largest blade of his knife he pierced the belly at two points and then stripped off the carapace with a precise, vigorous gesture; the body in one hand and the shell in the other, he stopped a moment to inspect the flesh.

"And they claim they're empty!"

This exclamation was followed by several insults intended for the fish merchants, and the man finished with a few recriminations about the low prices spider-crabs were bringing now. At the same time he had taken the hammer and begun to break open the legs with sharp taps, using the table between his own plate and the salesman's as an anvil.

As he was struggling with a particularly difficult joint, a little liquid squirted out, spattering against the girl's cheek. She said nothing but wiped it off with the back of her forefinger. She was wearing a gold circlet which might have been a wedding-ring.

The sailor continued his monologue, speaking in turn of the increasing difficulties of life for the islanders, of the development of the village at Black Rocks in recent years, of the electricity which a large part of the countryside was now installing, of his objections to the extension of the current to this house, of the "good life" he led here in his corner of the cliff, "with the little girl," among his traps and nets. The conversation presented no problems for Mathias, the other man never requiring an answer, even when he happened to speak in interrogation; on such occasions it was enough to wait until a few silent seconds had passed and then the monologue continued as if there had been no interruption.

From all appearances, the sailor preferred keeping to generalities rather than dwelling on his own experiences. Not once did he refer to the friendship which had bound Mathias and himself together for that vague period the salesman vainly attempted to determine in time. Sometimes the fisherman spoke to him as to his own brother, immediately afterward treating him as a guest or a casual visitor. The diminutive "Matt," which he employed in his bursts of intimacy, provided no illumination, for he could remember no one who had ever called him by this name.

There was no greater specification of place or circumstance than of date or duration. In Mathias' opinion, their friendship could scarcely have originated on the island—for all kinds of reasons—unless it was connected with his earliest youth. But the man was not speaking of his youth. On the contrary, he expatiated at length on the new system of lenses which had been installed in the lighthouse last autumn, attaining an unprecedented optic power capable of piercing the heaviest fog. He undertook to explain their operation, but his description of the apparatus, despite a certain technical jargon, was from the start so obscure that the salesman did not even try to follow its course. It seemed to him that his host was using the words without understanding their meaning, satisfied to set one here or there, almost at chance, into the surface of his discourse, which was itself quite vague and meaningless. He emphasized most of his sentences with rapid, expansive, complicated gestures which seemed only remotely connected with what he was saying. The various joints of one of the big claws thus described above the table a trajectory of circles, spirals, loops, and figure eights; since the shell had been broken, tiny fragments fell off and landed all around them. The crab and his own garrulity making him thirsty, the man frequently interrupted himself to refill his glass.

In the girl's glass, on the contrary, the level remained the same. She said nothing and ate scarcely at all. After each piece she swallowed, she carefully licked her fingers clean —perhaps in honor of their guest. She rounded her mouth, pushed out her lips, and passed her fingers between them several times, from back to front. To see better what she was doing, she half turned toward the window.

"It lights up the cliff like broad daylight," declared the fisherman in conclusion.

It was obviously untrue: the beam of the lighthouse did not reach the coast below them. An astonishing error on the part of a man who was supposed to be a sailor; yet he seemed to think that this was its function, doubtless in order to show navigators the detail of the rocks to be avoided. He probably never used his fishing-smack at night.

The "little girl" was sitting perfectly still, profile toward him, her middle finger in her mouth. Leaning forward, her head was bent; the outline of the nape of her neck, rounded and taut, gleamed in the light behind her.

But she was not half-turned toward the light to make sure she was cleaning her hand thoroughly. Her eyes, as far as Mathias could judge from where he was sitting, were looking sideways at the corner of the window, as if trying to make out something through the dirty pane.

"It's the whip she deserves, that trollop!"

At first the salesman did not know what his host was talking about, for he has not been paying attention to what had gone before. When he realized he was referring to the youngest Leduc girl, Mathias wondered how the sailor had managed to shift the conversation to such a subject. Nevertheless, he took advantage of a pause to agree with the master of the house: after everything he had heard since morning it really seemed that the girl deserved a good whipping, perhaps an even worse punishment.