The Interrogation Read online

  ‘Listen,’ said the young woman, ‘you seem to me to be very young.’

  Suddenly she had her clothes on, her hair was dry, she lit a Du Maurier cigarette, flashed her sun-glasses darkly two or three times, called her dog, and walked away, up to the road.

  C. ‘You remember that time in the mountains?’ Adam asked. The girl smiled, but her smile was certainly pursuing a different conversation. He had to repeat his question, rather gravely, in a louder, more level tone, in more deliberate words not uninfluenced by a boyish desire to shock.

  ‘Now look, Michèle, surely you remember?’

  She shook her head, already beginning to find this tiresome.

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ he said, ‘every girl has some story like that to tell her mother. When she tells it she says “the time I was raped”. You too.’

  ‘Couldn’t we talk about something else?’ Michèle retorted; but Adam ignored this; he went on telling his story, for other people’s benefit, in a cheap parody of uneasy recollections.

  ‘Then you remember, too, that we’d gone off together on the motorbike. First of all I’d taken you to a couple of cafés, because it was in the middle of winter and practically freezing. Couldn’t have been more than 1 or 2 degrees above, or perhaps even down to zero. We’d both drunk black coffee, big cups of it. Or rather I’d watched you drinking it; you had a funny way of drinking black coffee, I liked the way you did it, in those days. You used to take the cup in your left hand, like this, put your hand under your chin like a saucer, and stick out your upper lip. You’d dip it daintily into the coffee and before beginning to drink – remember – you’d raise your head slightly, so that one saw the semicircular shadow the coffee had left round your mouth.’

  The waiter brought their order; Michèle extended a hand, chose one of the glasses of beer and swallowed several mouthfuls without pausing for breath. Then she put the glass down, with an abrupt movement of her wrist. The froth round the glass began to evaporate, slowly widening the gaps between the trails of bubbles. Little shafts of effervescence traversed the almost opaque yellow liquid from the surface downwards; to take only one of its aspects, it looked as rich and virile as the sea. Part of it, about a quarter, was now collected in the pit of Michèle’s stomach, like a liquid stone, a little petroleum, a suspicion of brilliantine. As for the other three-quarters, waiting in the glass, it might have been an empty goldfish bowl standing at noon on an Empire guéridon, its fish having died.

  Or even one of those fish-tanks you see in the windows of big restaurants, where solemn gourmets come to have fat carp hauled out for them in a net, each fish leaving a hole in the water between the pilot-light, the oxygen blowpipe and the artificial weeds – departing from behind its emerald-green bulkhead to enter a world of torture, of butter, of parsley in the eyes and tomato in the mouth.

  ‘After the cafés we went off again on the motorbike, along the main road. Then I took that narrow lane that led away into the country, and it got dark and began to drizzle a bit. It’s good to remember things so well. Really it is. Does it sound true, anyway? Won’t you tell me? Won’t you take your turn and tell me a little? Or just say “And then? And what happened next?” Because there’s only one way of telling that kind of thing, and that’s in the sentimental style – you see what I mean, it gives people confidence and has a certain air of truth about it. I like that.

  ‘D’you know what you said? You said – they were your very words – “It’s not worth it.” It’s not worth it! Not worth what? The extraordinary thing is that I understood, and yet I went ahead all the same. Until we came to a big patch of mud that barred the way. Besides, no – after all, I hadn’t understood what you said “It’s not worth it.” I think I was doing everything without realizing, just anyhow. I propped the bike against a tree and we walked on, through the wet grass; the grass was wet. You said you were cold, or something, and then I said we ought to shelter under a tree till the rain stopped. We found a big umbrella-pine and we stood with our backs to the trunk, one on each side. That was where we got sticky patches on our shoulders. There was a carpet of pine-needles and grass all round, very pretty. That’s true. All of a sudden the rain came on harder, and then I sidled round the trunk and put my hand behind your neck and pulled you down on the ground. The raindrops were coming through the leaves, I don’t know if you remember, joining together in twos and threes and splashing down on us, as big as your hand. Yes, I tore your clothes, because you were getting frightened and beginning to yell; I slapped you twice, full in the face – not very hard. I remember you had a zip that was absurdly stiff; it kept on sticking; in the end I managed to pull it down by tugging with all my strength. Wait – afterwards you went on struggling, but not too hard. I think you must have been scared stiff, of me or of the consequences. At least I think so. Well, and when all your clothes were off I held you down on the ground with your feet against the trunk of the tree and your head right out in the rain, and I held your wrists in my hands and squeezed your knees between my legs. And in theory I raped you – like that, easily, you see, as wet with rain as though you’d been in a bath; listening all the same – if you’ll excuse me – to your cries of rage, the little noises of the storm, and the shots fired by the sportsmen who were beating the under-wood on the opposite hillside. I say “in theory”. Because in practice it was a flop. But after all, perhaps that doesn’t matter much so far as I’m concerned. Once I’d managed to get your clothes off. Anyhow – to make a good story of it, literary and all that – let’s say I saw you getting gradually covered with wet hair, earth, prickles and pine-needles and I saw your mouth wide open, you were breathing hard through it, getting your breath back and a trickle of muddy water was coming from an imperceptible spring somewhere near the roots of your hair. Honestly, by the time it was all over you looked like a garden. You wriggled free and sat up with your back against the tree. For me, you understand, you’d become just a heap of pinkish earth mixed with grass and raindrops. With some vestiges of a woman here and there; perhaps because you were waiting. All the same we stayed there for quite a while, doing nothing – I couldn’t say how long exactly, ten minutes, perhaps twenty – less than an hour in any case. That was absolutely ridiculous, considering it was icy cold, zero degrees above zero in fact. When we – or rather no, we got dressed without looking at each other, you on one side of the trunk and I on the other. And as your clothes were torn I lent you my raincoat. It was still pouring as hard as ever, but we were tired of waiting, so we got on the bike again and went away. I left you outside a café and, without your asking me or anything, I made you a present of my raincoat. You didn’t look too good in it, did you? I don’t know what you told your father, whether you went to the police or not, but – ’

  ‘Yes, I did go to the police,’ said Michèle. This was pretty incredible.

  ‘You knew what you were about? I mean, you knew what it might lead to?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And then?’ said Adam. ‘And then?’ he repeated.

  ‘Then, nothing…’

  ‘What d’you mean, nothing? What did they say?’

  Michèle shook her head.

  ‘They didn’t say anything. I shan’t tell you, so that’s that.’

  ‘I didn’t see anything in the papers, so far as I know.’

  ‘The papers have other things to talk about – haven’t they?’

  ‘Then why did you go to the police?’

  ‘I thought – oh, I don’t know; I thought you needed a lesson.’

  ‘And now?’

  Michèle swept her hand in a curve, presumably by way of negation.

  Adam pretended not to be satisfied with this.

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Now it’s over, what the hell does it matter?’ she retorted, almost shouting.

  It was his turn to be annoyed; he explained:

  ‘You ask me what the hell it matters, do you, when a chap’s a deserter into the bargain? You don’t realize that a charge like tha
t might land me in the nick? Are you really crazy, or what, Michèle? Can’t you see, can’t you see that Adam Polio, a deserter from the army, is at the mercy of the first informer who comes along, and that any day – or rather any hour, any minute – two fellows in uniform may appear on the scene, beat me up, kick me, shove me into a strait-waistcoat, handcuff me – the lot – and not rest content till they’ve clapped me into the darkest cell in some army barracks, with no food, no heating, no women, no nothing, and even less than that?’

  Michèle, after a moment’s hesitation, decided to call a halt to the game.

  ‘That’ll do, Adam, you’re beginning to make me really tired.’

  He went on, however.

  ‘Michèle, I can’t understand you! Do you really favour the version of life where people always pretend to disbelieve everything? According to you I deserve hanging, or don’t I? Answer me!’

  ‘Adam, please, I really have a headache, I – ’

  ‘Answer me first.’

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘Well? Do I deserve hanging?’

  ‘Yes – there – are you satisfied?’

  Adam decided to say no more. As for Michèle, she took a mirror out of her handbag and smoothed her eyebrows with a fingertip. Some people going by along the pavement glanced at her furtively. She looked by no means one in a thousand. Defeated by her obstinacy, Adam waited while she combed her hair, powdered her nose and touched up her lipstick; all he had left was to drink his nearly cold coffee.

  Then for a few minutes they played a game; it consisted of moving the things on the table by a fraction of an inch; they took turns, attacking and counter-attacking, shifting the beermats, the saucer, the cup, the spoon, some scraps of wool, a dead fly, the little square paper the bill was marked on, the white ashtray, a match, their sun-glasses, the butt of a gauloise cigarette, a drop of coffee (spread towards the right), etc.

  Adam won in the end, with a big speck of fluff that had fallen off Michèle’s sweater; he pushed it forward by a hair’s breadth. Immediately after that they got up together and left the café. The waiter called to them as they went past the bar; Adam was the only one who looked round. He paid with small change, glanced at himself in the big mirror on the wall, and went out.

  They walked side by side without a word, staring straight ahead; the street ran gently down towards the sea, and they were watching for any glimpses of the horizon that might appear between the square blocks of the houses. On reaching the promenade they paused and almost turned in opposite directions; finally Adam followed Michèle. A bit further on they sat down, on a bench that had lost its back three months previously in a driving accident: a six-ton lorry had knocked over a scooter which had suddenly appeared from the right, and had then lost control and toppled on to the pavement – damaging the bench and causing two deaths.

  ‘I wrote to you,’ Adam said. ‘I wrote to you and I raped you. Why didn’t you do something as well?’

  ‘What did you expect me to do?’ asked Michèle wearily.

  ‘I wrote to you, and I put my address.’

  ‘You surely didn’t expect me to answer?’

  ‘Of course I did! For heaven’s sake!’ He enjoyed shouting. ‘Of course I did! Or else you should have fetched the cops.’

  ‘I’ve no use for cops.’

  ‘You brought a charge, or didn’t you?’

  ‘I can’t help that…’

  ‘I can’t help that…’ she protested several times.

  They walked along the seafront for a considerable distance; the wind was blowing in gusts, now cold, now hot. Nobody went past on their pavement. To one side lay the sea, absolutely smooth, dirty with oil in places, the beacon flashing from the sea-wall, and a few street lamps whose vertical reflections seemed to be moving forward. On the other side was the great mass of dry land, systematically covered by the town, by telegraph-poles and trees, exaggeratedly curved, as though one were looking at it with one’s head upside-down. In Adam’s mind, they say, the scene was reversed as though in a convex mirror. So he felt he was balanced on his toes, perched right above the continents, with the round earth like a globe under his feet, imitating the position of Mary and doing the opposite of Atlas’s task. It was like the time when (aged twelve or thirteen) he used to throw his whole weight on his rubber beach-ball, forcing it below the surface of the water so that, dilated by the pressure, it slipped up along his calves in little uncoordinated jerks.

  As they walked they exchanged a few more remarks.

  ‘Why can’t you help it?’

  ‘Because. Because I don’t know.’

  ‘Do you know what? You lack concentration.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘And you’re too emphatic.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Wait. You’re not persuasive.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, really. Not that you care a damn. Because it makes no difference in the long run. I believe just as much in whatever I do; the great thing is always to talk as if it were to be put in writing; that way one feels one’s not free. Not free to talk like oneself. And then one mixes better. One’s no longer alone. One exists with the coefficient 2, or 3, or 4, instead of that infernal coefficient 1. You understand?’

  ‘I understand. I’ve got a headache,’ said Michèle.

  She waited a little for him to reply; then, sensing that he would say nothing more for a long time, she kissed him, said good-bye, and turned back towards the middle of the town. She strode away, with her man’s raincoat tightly belted, her hair flattened by the rain, a black spot of oil on her left ankle; her face was set, almost vicious.

  D. It almost seemed as though raising artificial problems had become a habit with him. He had four or five tries before making up his mind; asking questions to right and left, consulting old postcards received at Christmas or on New Year’s Eve and calendars dating from last year or last month; even asking the advice of grandparents. Several people invited him to have an apéritif, a little glass of Cinzano at the bar; kind of them, but he had his own idea. He refused their invitations and sat down at the far end of the room, with his back to the wall. He dwelt on the fact that by now he must be the oldest of them all, something like twenty-eight to thirty, or thereabouts. That was certainly the age when, if ever, one should be able to understand everything at a hint and capable of action, especially where resolutions of this kind were concerned.

  28 August, heat-wave, height of summer; 7.30 p.m.; he stared straight ahead of him, past the customers moving about in the foreground, and saw it was beginning to get dark outside. He had chosen this bar carefully, as one of those where Michèle often went. He sat waiting, with a glass of orangeade in front of him; he was searching his memory.

  Three American sailors, probably drunk, came into the bar, singing American songs. Adam watched them as they walked across to lean on the bar, beside the till. One of them left the others and came past Adam’s table. He pushed a coin into the slot of the juke-box, bent down to read the titles on the screen, and then suddenly realized that this was unnecessary because every song in the box must be American. He pressed two buttons at random and stepped back, finding it hard to tear his eyes away from the circle of light on the record. Nevertheless he walked off, found his way to the cloakroom door, and was going out just as he heard the first words of the Red River Rock.

  ‘Heigho Johnny rockin’

  Rock-a-goose by the river,

  Ho red river rock ’n roll.’

  Adam listened to the song right through, beating time with his left hand on the table-top. When the record was over he paid and was leaving the bar as the American sailor came out of the cloakroom and joined his friends.

  An hour later Adam ran into them again in a grill-room in the old part of the town. One of them recognized him, heaven knows why, caught him by the arm and muttered into his ear in English. Adam didn’t listen; he offered the man a cigarette, lit it for him, and sat down beside him on a stool. He ordered a
cheese and salad sandwich and then turned to the American sailor. His mind was empty of thought, he was half-dead. The sailor said his name was John Beaujolais and he came from Portland, Maine. Then he asked ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Puget-Théniers,’ said Adam, taking a bite of his sandwich and wondering why he had chosen that particular town.

  ‘I used to know a French girl, Mireille her name was,’ said the American; he turned to his companions and told them some story in an undertone; they all burst out laughing. Adam went on eating for a time; he felt a kind of boredom stealing over him, as though he had spent the afternoon among Martians, trying one language after another on them.

  ‘Are you fellows still at war?’ he asked Beaujolais, pointing to his uniform with a crust of bread.

  ‘No, not at war,’ said Beaujolais, ‘but – le service national eh? You too, I guess?’

  ‘No, I’m through with that,’ said Adam. He paused to swallow a mouthful of bread and salad and then went on:

  ‘I like American books. I enjoyed reading Wigglesworth, Child, and that poet Robinson Jeffers, who wrote Tamar. I enjoyed Stuart Engstrand. You know him?’

  ‘No,’ said Beaujolais. ‘Me, I’m a jazz musician. Tenor sax. I played with Horace Parlan and Shelly Manne, a couple of years back. Romeo Penque, too. He’s a flute-player. I know John Eardley well. He’s great. Real great.’ He tapped the counter with his finger. ‘But I had to quit – yes, quit – so…’

  ‘Yes, Stuart Engstrand,’ Adam went on. ‘He’s not well known here, and in America he’s looked upon as a guy who rather writes down to the public, isn’t he? But personally I think he’s good; he writes straightforward stuff. He tells simple stories. Guys who want pretty girls and marry them. And because they’re pretty it doesn’t go so well. But the fellows are tough, not like over here. So they always win out in the end.’