The Interrogation Read online

  ‘Yes, I felt sure it was suicide. I said so to the others. The chap looked like a suicide; I felt sure from the start that he hadn’t been drowned naturally.’

  Swathed in black, M. Gourre’s widow and her daughter Andrée, aged fifteen and a half, will make their way along the corridors in the Mortuary, following a little bent, white-overalled man who jingles bunches of keys in his pocket as he leads them to the big cold-storage room. He will open the door, turn his bald or pallid skull towards the women and say to them softly:

  ‘This way, please.’

  They will follow him; they will watch him scanning the numbers on the drawers; he will pull aside a kind of very clean white sheet from drawer No. 2103 V, and whisper:

  ‘This is the one.’

  After identifying the fresh, pink corpse, the little corpse of M. Jean-Françoise Gourre, husband of one and father of the other, they will go away without a word. The subject will never be mentioned again, not at table, not in the living-room, among relatives and friends, nor even to the tradespeople when they do their shopping. At the very most somebody, now and then, may venture to say to one or other of them: ‘My deepest sympathy…’ without even shaking hands.

  Between them and him, all will be over; he was not a good man; he often told lies, deceived his wife, used to peer at his daughter through the bathroom keyhole when she was getting into the bath, quite naked. He was a good man. He was a good father. He never went to cafés and was not believed to go often to a brothel. He went to church sometimes on Sundays; and above all he earned an honest, regular living.

  He had even promised to buy a television set. He had never existed.

  Her husband had been killed in the war, dying a hero’s death during the attack on a Japanese stronghold. Andrée’s father had been killed in a car or plane crash when she was only three. He was handsome, rich and affectionate. Too bad that fate should have carried him off so soon!

  That was pretty much what must have happened, apart from Adam, among a few people, the day that chap was found drowned and then dragged to the roadside, when it was raining and everything was drenched.

  So now, as a result, there is a kind of God dwelling in each of them by turns and calling them to Himself, at the hour of His choice, that they may live in what they had never seen before, dead men.

  M. They would be forgotten. They would be left to lead their own lives, go home, do what they had to do, all those others, Hozniacks, Guéraud, Bosio, Simone Frère, Olivain, Véran, Joseph Jacquineau, Christberg and little Guillaume. Adam allowed them to pass him on the road. He had been one of the first to leave, but because he was tired, fearfully tired, he had dragged along the seafront. He had stopped for a minute under a plane-tree, to shelter from the rain. But the leaves were heavy with water and the shower easily came through. So he had trailed on again, soaking, his pockets full of rain. He wanted a cigarette, but the packet was wet and the cigarettes spoilt: the paper and tobacco had dissolved into a lumpy paste that lined his pocket.

  The idlers were going home in little groups; one could still hear vague snatches of conversation, not all connected with the accident. There was talking of drowning, avalanches, fainting fits, fly-fishing and politics.

  Adam had a stitch in his side. He did not feel at all alone now. He had even stopped trying to understand. He was beginning to remember that he must very often have been mistaken.

  When he got to the harbour he paused under the awning of a Bar-Tabac. He looked at the postcards on the revolving stand; there were coloured ones and black-and-white ones. There was a batch of several showing a young woman with a rather plain face but a lovely figure, wearing a bikini. Adam went into the bar and bought this, together with a packet of cigarettes. Then he came outside again and stood under the awning, sheltering from the rain and looking at the photo. It was in five colours and showed the young woman kneeling on a kind of pebble beach and smiling very hard. With her right hand she was pulling down the bottom half of her bikini, disclosing a patch of plump brown hip. With the other hand she was hiding the tips of her breasts. To make it quite clear that they were bare, her bra was lying on the ground beside her. And to make it quite clear that it was a bra, it had been laid out flat on the pebbles, with the cups sticking up. The whole thing was pretty ridiculous; the card was good quality, shiny, rich in texture, creamy, translucent as sugar, gleaming all over. Running his eyes over it and scratching it with the nail of his middle finger, Adam reflected that it was about a thousand times more erotic than the half-naked woman in the photograph. When you came to think of it, the communicative power of this commonplace object was completely separate from its pornographic intentions; the collective message was feeble and not likely to call forth more than laughter or melancholy; but its true essence lay far beyond, it rose to the heights of geometry or technique; sawdust and cellulose formed a halo that sanctified the girl, proclaiming her to all eternity virgin and martyr, blessed among women. She seemed to reign over the world like a madonna, remote from blasphemy, onanism and giggles; the glossy surface of the photo could preserve her for centuries, as safely as a glass case in a museum. A large drop of water, blown by the wind, fell off the edge of the awning, splash into the middle of the postcard. Here it spread out, suddenly, somewhere between the Venus’s navel and her left breast.

  Adam turned the card over; all it said on the back was:

  ‘Photo Duc’ ‘A genuine photograph, all rights reserved,’ ‘10, Rue des Polinaires, Toulouse.’

  For Adam, who had been betting he would find ‘Pretty girl on the beach’, or else something vulgar, ‘Come down and see me sometime’ – that kind of thing – this was a disappointment.

  Adam tramped the streets until nightfall. About eight o’clock he ate a piece of bread; he sat on a bench in the bus station. He watched people going past, sharing an umbrella or belted tight into raincoats.

  On the other side of the square, behind two or three parked buses, there was a cinema. The front was lit up and a small queue had formed in the rain, waiting for the doors to open. The cinema was called the Rex; the name was written in red neon lighting, which blinked now and then. Under the name ‘Rex’ there was a big poster, showing some man in a raincoat kissing some woman in a raincoat on a kind of breakwater. They both had red faces and yellow hair, as though they had stayed too long on the beach. The background of the poster was a black blur, except for a big yellow globe just beside them, which looked like a street lamp. But the weird, sinister thing was that this man and woman had such crudely coloured faces, frozen into clumsy stiffness; their eyes were ugly, rolling skywards, their eye lashes were broken, and their gaping mouths looked like wounds bleeding side by side.

  The film was called ‘Pick-up on South Street’, or something like that; Adam thought Samuel Fuller would have been glad to see the poster that had been designed for his film. For a moment he was tempted to go into the cinema. But he remembered he hadn’t enough money left. He ate the rest of his bread, and lit a cigarette.

  A little further along, under the arches, two or three girls were waiting for their bus. They were decked out in flowered dresses, shawls, flesh-coloured stockings, umbrellas, imitation leather handbags, and probably scent if one had gone close enough to smell it. Adam wondered whether it was Saturday. He tried to work it out, but in vain. In the end he decided it must be Saturday, Saturday the dance-hall night, etc. He thought of going to one of the places where he used to spend evenings in the old days, the Pergola, the Shooting Star or the Mammouth Club. To drink a glass of beer and have a girl for a few hours. What stopped him was that he had never enjoyed dancing. He not only danced badly, but everyone knew he danced badly. So, he said to himself, what would be the use? No one would learn anything new. Besides, he hadn’t enough money left.

  A bus arrived and carried off the girls; a few minutes later they were replaced by other girls, curiously similar in appearance. Near by, watching them and smoking, were two Algerian workmen. They said nothing, just smoked thei
r cigars, and while they smoked they stared at the girls’ legs.

  There were three buses like this, one after another, and each one took away a little group of girls and workmen. It really must be Saturday. A short time before the fourth bus arrived, a ragged man came in under the arches, dragging a bundle of old cardboard boxes and discarded newspapers, which he must have found in a dustbin. He propped his burden against one of the pillars, right opposite Adam’s bench, and sat down on it to wait for the bus. In this position he looked more like a tramp or a beggar than anything else. Adam noticed he wore spectacles.

  Adam suddenly got up and walked over to the man, determined to speak to him. After some mutual hesitation they exchanged a few brief remarks, almost in whispers. The spectacled tramp did not look at Adam. His head was bent slightly sideways, slightly forward, and he was staring at the toes of his shoes. Now and then he scratched himself, on the leg, under the arms, or on the head. He did not seem surprised or nervous, only a bit contemptuous, and bored. With his left hand he was steadying the bundle of cardboard and newspapers on which he sat, to keep it from toppling over. He was dirty, unshaven, and he stank. He made no gestures, except that once he pointed vaguely in the direction where the buses came from. He said he didn’t smoke, but asked Adam for money all the same; Adam wouldn’t give him any.

  When the bus arrived the man rose unhurriedly, picked up his bundle of newspapers and cardboard, and got in without so much as a glance at Adam. Following him with his eyes, Adam watched him through the window of the bus as he rummaged in the pockets of his overcoat, which was too big for him, and found the money for his ticket. His bony head was tilted forward, and with his left hand he steadied his glasses because of the jolts, which sent them sliding down his nose a millimetre at a time.

  Adam hadn’t the courage to wait for the fifth bus. Men were eternal and God was death. Men were eternal and God was death. Men were eternal and God was death. Men were eternal and God was death.

  Going into the ‘Magellan’, you found the cloakrooms and the telephone on your left, at the far end. When you had finished with the cloakroom and opened the door marked ‘Gentlemen’, while the water gurgled and splashed out of the tank, you looked on a shelf below the telephone to find the directory. To make a call, you had to give the number to the barman. He wrote it on a scrap of paper – 84.10.10 – dialled it on the telephone that stood on the counter, and then put the call through to the other telephone, under its sound-proof hood at the far end of the bar. As he did so he waved to you, saying:

  ‘Your number!’

  Whereupon you pressed a little red button in the base of the telephone, and heard a nasal voice replying:

  ‘Hello? Hello?’

  ‘Hello? Michèle?’

  ‘This isn’t Michèle, it’s her sister. Who…’

  ‘Oh, I see. Tell me, Germaine, isn’t Michèle there?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Is she out?’

  ‘This isn’t Michèle, it’s her sister. Who…’

  ‘Listen, you don’t happen to know where she is?’

  ‘But who’s that speaking?’

  ‘A friend of Michèle’s, Adam.’

  ‘Adam – oh, Adam Polio?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  ‘Yes – you’ve got something important to say to her?’

  ‘Well, yes, rather.… That’s to say – I just wanted to know what, what’s become of Michèle. I’ve not seen her for quite a time, and you understand…’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You don’t know where she’s likely to be now?’

  ‘Michèle.’

  ‘Yes, Michèle.’

  ‘Listen, I don’t know – she went out about two o’clock, taking the car. She didn’t say anything special as she left.’

  ‘And… about what time do you think she’ll be back?’

  ‘It all depends, you know. It all depends where she’s gone.’

  ‘But in the ordinary way?’

  ‘Oh, in the ordinary way she’s always home by – by eleven or thereabouts…’

  ‘Do you mean you don’t know whether she’s coming back this evening?’

  ‘This evening?’

  ‘Yes, all night.’

  ‘Oh, I shouldn’t think – I shouldn’t think she’d be out all night. It does happen sometimes, of course; she has a girl friend with whom she sometimes spends the night. But I shouldn’t think so, all the same. When she’s not coming home she usually lets us know, either by ringing up or as she’s going off. So as she said nothing to me, I imagine she’ll be back before long.’

  ‘I see. And – you think after eleven o’clock?’

  ‘Oh, before that, I think. I don’t know.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Listen, the best thing – if you have a message for her, would be to leave it with me, and I’ll tell her as soon as she gets home.’

  ‘The thing is, I’ve no message. I wanted, I wanted just to ask how she was getting on.’

  ‘I know. But if you want to arrange to meet her, or something. Or if you’d like her to ring you back when she gets in. Have you a telephone number or something?’

  ‘No, I haven’t got a telephone. I’m in a bar.’

  ‘Then the best thing would be for you to ring back in an hour or two. Before midnight, of course.’

  ‘Before midnight?’

  ‘Yes, about eleven.’

  ‘Yes – the trouble is, I can’t. You see I have a train to catch an hour from now. I have to get the boat for Senegal. I’d have liked to say goodbye to her before leaving.’

  ‘Ah – you have to catch a boat for Senegal?’

  ‘Yes, I – ’

  ‘Oh, I see…’

  ‘Listen: do you think Michèle may be with that girl friend now?’

  ‘I don’t know at all.’

  ‘You don’t know at all. And – you couldn’t give me her friend’s name? What is it?’

  ‘Sonia. Sonia Amadouny.’

  ‘Has she got a telephone?’

  ‘Yes, she’s got one. Would you like me to go and find you the number?’

  ‘If you would, yes.’

  ‘Half a minute, I’ll go and see.’

  Adam was sweating beneath the sound-proof hood. All sorts of strange noises were going on close to his ear: footsteps, incomprehensible phrases, and then a kind of far-off explanation, between the living-room and the stairs to the first floor: ‘Who was that, Germaine?’ ‘A friend of Michèle’s, Mummy, he’s going off to Senegal and he wants to say goodbye to her.’ ‘To Senegal?’ ‘Yes, and he wants Sonia’s telephone number – what is it, exactly, 88.07.54 or 88.07.44?’

  ‘Whose number?’ ‘Sonia’s – you know, Sonia Amadouny.’ ‘Oh, Sonia Amadouny – 88.07.54.’ ‘88.07.54 – you’re sure that’s it’. ‘Yes… Are you going to give it to him?’ ‘Yes.’

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘88.07.54.’

  ‘88.07.54?’

  ‘Yes, 88.07.54. That’s right. Sonia Amadouny, 88.07.54.’

  ‘Thank you very much.’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘Good, then I’ll give her a ring. Anyway, if Michèle did happen – did happen to come in before eleven…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘No, never mind, it doesn’t matter. I’ll try to get hold of her like that, otherwise it doesn’t matter. Just tell her I rang up.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Right, thank you. Excuse me, and thank you.’

  ‘Goodbye.’

  ‘Goodbye, Mademoiselle.’

  Once you begin playing about with the telephone there must be no hesitation; you must never stop to think, not even for a few seconds. What can I say to Amadouny? Isn’t it too late to ring her up? Michèle probably won’t be there; and so forth. You must go right ahead, call the barman, shout 88.07.54, add ‘Please, it’s very urgent’ rush over to the other telephone, press the red button, and let yourself slip into that spectral language where the words see
m to rise up towards invisible clouds, like a mystic’s cries of pain. You must cast aside all misgivings, all fear of being laughed at, confer humanity upon the swarthy instrument that skids about in your damp clutch, presses its filter-shaped mouth to your ear and, while waiting to establish some nasal communication, murmurs its mechanical chant. You must wait, with your head almost invisible between the bakelite shells, warmed by their electricity, until the hissing stops, the sparks begin to click, and from the depths of an abyss there rises a treacherous voice whose falsehood will enfold you, lead you on to a point at which, whether you believe in it or not, you will be obliged to say – hearing your own voice as it passes along the wires and mingles with those distant hellos:

  ‘Hello – Monsieur Amadouny? Could I speak to Sonia, please?’

  If she’s not there you must stick to it, explain you’re leaving for Senegal in half an hour and absolutely must get hold of Michèle. You then learn that Michèle and Sonia have gone out together in Michèle’s car. That you missed them by two minutes. That they may have gone into town to dance; but that in any case they’ve certainly not gone to the cinema, because they talked about that at dinner and said there was nothing worth seeing. They went off together, apparently, not more than two or three minutes ago. They probably won’t have gone to dance at the Pergola or the Hi-Fi or the Mammouth, because those are too crowded on Saturday evenings. That leaves the Staréo and the Whisky. Sonia wouldn’t mind which, but if Michèle’s a snob she’ll no doubt have chosen the Staréo. Michèle is 67 per cent snob.

  Sixty-seven chances out of a hundred that she’d have dragged Sonia Amadouny to that pretentious night-club, with its fake indirect lighting, its fake easy-chairs upholstered in fake red satin, and its fake gigolos dancing with the fake daughters of fake tycoons. Luckily no one was taken in by it.