The Interrogation Read online

  But I feel somehow that I’m wrong, because I don’t know what to say. I wish I could have a quiet talk with you, get you to explain why you acted as you did, and try to guess what it is you need. I don’t feel that a letter will do much good in that way – particularly a surreptitious one like this. But since you wanted it, I’m writing it all the same. I’ll try to make it a friendly one, to get you to understand the foolishness of your behaviour and the dreadful anxiety it is giving your father and me. As soon as you receive this letter, answer it by return, no matter what your plans are and what you may be doing. Tell me why you went off like that without a word, where you are now, and if there’s anything you need. You must realize that’s the first essential, so as to relieve our anxiety and soothe our feelings. Do that to please me, Adam, it’s all I ask.

  I’m enclosing the note you left us when you went away. If you read it you will understand that it was nothing like enough to set our minds at rest. We weren’t expecting anything of the kind. You’d said nothing to us about a journey, or about holidays. We thought your national service had tired you and that you’d stay with us for a rest – we were thinking we might all go to stay in the country with your aunt for a time. We didn’t say much about it, of course, but you had seemed tired lately, and I knew you didn’t like making plans. Needless to say, this has put an end to our holidays.

  Philippe had written to us the week before. He’d agreed to join us at Aunt Louise’s as soon as he could get away from his work, and to have a family August. Your father had managed to get leave for the whole month, and I took it for granted you would like the idea. I was looking forward to being all together again, like old times; you and Philippe are grown up now, but you know we only have to get together, the four of us, and you’re both my boys again and I forget your age and my own. Your father was very angry when he knew what you’d done. Why didn’t you say anything about it beforehand, Adam? Why not have told us? Or at least told me, your mother? Yes, why didn’t you try to explain things to me? If you had to go away for some reason or other, if it was absolutely necessary for you to be away for a time, you can be sure we should have understood. We’d have made no objection –

  Remember the time before, fifteen or sixteen years ago, when you wanted to leave home – You weren’t twenty-nine then, only fourteen; but you remember I made no objection to the idea. I felt you needed to get away from us for a while. The quarrel with your father was a silly business, of course, but I could feel it went deeper than a row about breaking the blue bowl. Your father’s a quick-tempered man, as you know – He didn’t really mind about the blue bowl either; but he thought you were being cheeky, defying his authority, and that was why he boxed your ears. He was wrong, and he apologized – but remember what I did. I caught you upon the stairs and asked you to think it over – I explained that you were too young to go away all by yourself, into the world – I said you’d do better to wait a bit and get over your anger. I said you might wait a week or two and then, if you still wanted to leave, you could look for a job somewhere, apprentice yourself, for instance. You could have made an honest living of your own, if that was what you wanted. You thought it over carefully, and you understood. You cried a little, because your pride was wounded and you felt you’d lost a battle. But I was glad for you, because I knew it was the only thing to do.

  So, Adam dear, what I can’t understand is, why didn’t you do the same this time as over the blue bowl?

  Why didn’t you come and talk to me? I’d have advised you like I did then, and have tried to help you. You can’t imagine how your note hurt me, it was so short and cold, and it put me in a position where I had no chance of helping you – Your father was angry, but with me it’s different. All these years of trust and affection can’t just be washed out, my darling boy. I’m sorry you didn’t think of all this before going away – for I’m certain you didn’t. But I hope it’s all nearly over now. As soon as you get this letter, do come home; we won’t criticize you or ask you to explain – it will soon be forgotten. You’re grown up, you came of age long ago, and you are free to go wherever you choose. We’ll talk about that, if you like. If you don’t want to come home right away, send us a long letter, addressed to both of us. But Adam, I do beg you not to leave us with the bad impression of a hasty note, scribbled at a café table. Don’t leave us feeling worried and disappointed. Send us an affectionate letter, Adam, to show that we’re still your parents, and not a couple of strangers you dislike. Tell us what you mean to do, where you want to work, how you’re getting along, where you intend to go – I see in the papers that teachers are wanted in central Africa and Algeria; it’s not particularly well paid, but it might do as a beginning and lead to something else.

  Then there are appointments as assistant professor of French in Scandinavia – and there must be lots of others like that. With your qualifications you could easily find a job in one of those countries, unless you’d rather stay here. In that case you could take a room in town, in whatever district you like. We would lend you the money, you could pay us back later on. You’d come to see us now and then during the week, or you’d write to us. In any case we should know what you were doing, if you were well, whether you were having difficulties about money or anything.

  You see, Adam, you must realize things can’t go on like this for ever. You can’t spend the rest of your life with a wall between yourself and us; you can’t arrange your life on a mere whim. You mustn’t. Sooner or later you’ll have to be on friendly terms with one or other of us – or else you’ll have to get along with strangers. You must form a circle of friends, where you can find affection; otherwise you’ll be unhappy and you will probably be the first to suffer for it. So as in any case you will have to give up this abrupt, suspicious attitude, why not do so right away, and with us? Everything your father and I have done for you we have done in the attempt to overcome your unsociability and shyness – we persist in our affection because we don’t want other people to criticize you, because you’re our own child. The Polio clan, as you used to call it, must hold together. It mustn’t split up, even over such a difficult member as you are. Please, Adam, do realize that we form a scrap of something indestructible. We brought Philippe up to look at it that way, and that’s how we should have liked to bring you up.

  So Adam dear, nothing is lost. With good will all round, everything can go back to what it was. In spite of the way things may seem to you, we are still the Polio clan. You’re called after one of our ancestors – your great-grandfather’s name was Antoine-Adam Polio. You have to be an important member of the clan, even if you behave differently from the others – even if you stand out in other ways. There are a thousand ways of sticking together, Adam, remember that. You can choose the one that suits you; and you can rely upon it that it will always suit me.

  I shall look forward to a letter from you tomorrow, a long, friendly one. Be sure and tell me what you need. I’ll put aside a little money for you and give it to you when you come to see us – enough to keep you going till you begin to earn your own living. And I’ll get some clean clothes ready for you as well, if you like, some shirts and a suit and some underclothes.

  There, that’s all I wanted to tell you – forgive me for reminding you of the humiliating business about the blue bowl. But I feel so certain you haven’t changed since the day I caught you up on the stairs and persuaded you, gently, that you ought not to go away like that. We’ll keep all this a secret between the two of us, shall we? and we shall understand each other much better when you come to see us – So I shall expect you very soon, Adam dear, I love you very much and I have great hopes of you.

  Your affectionate mother,

  Denise Pollo.

  Adam folded up the letter; there was a scrap of paper in the envelope as well. It was all crumpled and dirty. A few hurried lines were pencilled on it, in a different handwriting. They said:

  Don’t worry about me. I’m going away

  for a time. Write to me at Pos
te Restante

  15, down by the harbour. Don’t be anxious

  about me, everything’s all right.

  Adam.

  When he finished reading, Adam put the letter and the note back into the envelope, slipped it inside his magazine, picked up his belongings and left the Post Office. A kind of sweat was plastering his hair down on his forehead and his shirt to his back.

  Everything was all right, indeed. The weather was still lovely, for the end of summer, and the Promenade by the sea was swarming with people. Outside the cafés, boys in T-shirts were strumming guitars and handing round the hat. Everything was so white in the light that it might have been black. The whole scene had a sunburnt skin. A huge ink-pot, why not, had emptied its contents onto the earth; it was like looking at the world through a photographic negative.

  Adam was no longer following anybody; in fact he was perhaps the one who was being followed now. He no longer strolled along casually. Each lingering step on the lozenges of gravel was calculated; he went straight ahead along the sea road, in the spirit in which one fills up an application-form.

  Surname................. First names.................

  Date and place of birth...................

  Address....................

  Occupation.................

  Are you (*) a Civil Servant

  Employee of the Gas or Electricity Board

  Local Government employee

  Unemployed

  Student

  Old-age Pensioner

  Voluntary Welfare Worker

  (*) Strike out which does not apply

  On the other side of the street there was a wireless shop with an ice-cream stall next door to it. Adam bought an ice cornet and looked at the TV show: two kids, a boy and a girl, dressed in black tights and dancing to the tune of ‘Paper Moon’; further back in the shop three other TV sets were tuned in to the same programme. They all looked terribly human, with their identical white rectangles traversed by thousands of greyish motes; superimposed on the picture, Adam’s tall figure was reflected in the shop window, with his two eyes, one nose, one mouth, ears, a trunk, four limbs, shoulders and hips.

  Adam smiled at all this, with a kind of smile that meant he was just getting over not understanding; he licked the ice-cream slowly, and for the first time for some days, he talked to himself aloud. He spoke in a melodious, rather deep voice, articulating each syllable distinctly. His voice rang out, fine and strong, against the plate-glass, drowning the bursts of music and the street noises. It was all that could be heard, as it emerged from Adam’s lips in the form of a pyramid and spread over the surface of the window like a cloud of steam. From the very first second it appeared to be self-sufficient, to require no addition or response, rather like the words in balloons coming out of the mouths of the characters in children’s comics.

  ‘What I wanted to say. Here it is. We’re all alike, all brothers, eh. We have the same bodies and the same minds. That’s what makes us brothers. Of course it seems rather ridiculous, don’t you agree, to make such a confession – here – in broad daylight. But I’m telling you because we are all brothers, all alike. Do you know something, do you want to know something? My brothers. We possess the earth, all of us, just as we are, it belongs to us. Don’t you see how it resembles us? Don’t you see how everything that grows on it and everything that lives on it has our faces and our style? And our bodies? And is indistinguishable from us? For instance, just look round you, to left and right. Is there one single thing, one element – within sight, which isn’t ours, which isn’t yours and mine? Take that street-lamp I see reflected in the shop window. Eh? That street-lamp belongs to us, it’s made of cast-iron and glass, it’s upright as we are, and topped by a head like ours. The stone jetty down there by the sea belongs to us as well. It is built to the scale of our feet and hands. If we’d wanted, it could have been a thousand times smaller, eh? Or a thousand times bigger. That’s true. The houses are ours, houses like caves, with holes pierced in them for our faces, full of chairs for our buttocks, beds for our backs, floors that imitate the ground and consequently imitate us. We are all the same, comrades. We have invented monsters – yes, monsters. Such as these television sets or these machines for making Italian ices; but we have remained within the confines of our own nature. In that we show our genius – we have made nothing that merely cumbers the earth, like God himself, my brothers, like God himself. And I tell you, eh, I give you my word, there is no difference between the sea, the tree and television. We make use of everything, because we are the masters, the only intelligent beings in the world. There you are. The TV is us, men. It is our strength we have poured into a mass of metal and plastic, so that it may answer us back one day. And that day has arrived, the mass of metal and plastic answers us now, captivates us, enters our eyes and ears. An umbilical cord links this object with our own bellies. It is the useless, many-splendoured thing in which we are adrift, in which we lose ourselves, in a little pleasure, yes, in our general happiness. Brothers, I am the Telly and you are the Telly and the Telly is within us! It has our particular anatomy, and we are all square, all black, all electric, all sonorous with purrings and music when, drawn to the Telly by sight and hearing, we recognize in its voice a human voice and on its screen a figure identical with ourselves. Judge for yourselves, brothers. We share this image like love, and our vague, obscure unity begins to appear; behind that glazed surface it is as though thick, warm blood were flowing, it is like a set of chromosomes, with one extra pair, which is at last going to make us into a race again. Who knows if we shall not draw the cruellest revenge from this, for having been so long separated. Having misunderstood one another. Having believed falsely. Who knows if we may not at last again discover some tyrannosaur, some ceratosaur, some deinotherium, some huge pterodactyl bathed in blood, against which we can fight side by side. Some opportunity for sacrifice and slaughter, which may prompt us to clasp our hands again at last and pray in a whisper to pitiless gods. And then there will be no more TV, brothers, no more trees or animals or earth or dancers in tights; there will be only us, brothers, for ever, us alone!’

  Adam was now on the opposite pavement. He had laid his parcel of belongings and his magazine on the ground beside him. He stood with his back to the sea, and the wind flapped his yellow trousers. There was something slightly pedantic in the stance he had adopted: behind him the rail with its cross-pieces of painted iron; through the gaps one could see the stretch of quays and docks, with the dockers at work. All this bustle was supposed to form a contrast to Adam’s impassive, vaguely oblong face. One felt that had there been a bench just there, Adam would have been standing on it. And yet his attitude was not that of a public speaker; he managed to convey a general impression of nonchalance by his whole bearing. His voice was now less vibrant in the lower register, at times it struck a shriller, rather flat note. In any case he was not trying to make a harmonious effect: nothing, in fact, was more discordant than the presence of this man, standing upright and motionless amid the shifting chiaroscuro of his surroundings; and nothing more disagreeable than the idea of this man talking aloud, all by himself, in front of a crowd of idlers, under the sun at approximately 1.30 p.m.

  Adam was now speaking more distinctly; he had assumed a tone half-way between fanatical ranting and wedding-breakfast oratory. He was saying:

  ‘Stop, ladies and gentlemen, and listen to me for a little. You don’t pay enough attention to the speeches that are made to you. Although you hear them all day and every day, hour by hour. On the wireless, on the television, at church, at the theatre, at the cinema, at banquets and at fairs. Yet words come easily, and nothing is nicer than a tale told like that, at point-blank. Off the cuff. You’re used to it. You are not human beings, because you are not conscious of living in a human world. Learn to speak. Try it for yourselves. Even if you have nothing to say. Because, I tell you, the floor is yours. Why not try, just as you are, to act as substitutes for your own machines: go ahead
, talk, right and left. Spread the good word. You’ll see, before long you won’t need the radio or the telly any more. You’ll just meet yourselves at the corner of a street, as I did today, and you’ll tell yourselves stories. No matter what. And you’ll see, your wives and children will come flocking up and listen to you with all their ears. You can go on telling them the loveliest things, indefinitely.’

  By this time an audience had gathered, consisting more or less of:

  (1) a dozen women, men and children, the hard core;

  (2) about twenty others who moved on after a minute or two.

  Altogether, an average of about thirty listeners, gathered in a knot on the pavement.

  ‘I’ll tell you something. Listen. I – a little time ago now, I was sitting on some steps, up in the hills, smoking a cigarette. There was a fine view from there, and I was enjoying it a lot. Across from where I sat there was a lower hill, and then the town, stretching away to the sea, and the long curve of the shore. Everything was very quiet. The sky took up three-quarters of the view. And below, the earth was so peaceful that one would have said – that it was a continuation of the sky. You see the kind of thing. Two hills, a town, a small river, a bay, a little sea, and a column of smoke curling up to the clouds. All over the place. I’m describing these features so you’ll understand what comes next. You understand?’

  Nobody answered, but a few people nodded, laughing.

  Adam singled out one bystander, at random, looked at him and asked: