The Mahé Circle (14 page)

The building, on the left-hand side of a street running steeply uphill, looked like a barracks, or rather, with its pale green, unornamented façade, like a child's drawing of a house. The resemblance was all the more striking since in the
afternoon it was on the shady side of the street, and all its open windows were black holes, as if cut out of paper.

The doctor had had some difficulty finding it. He had scarcely finished lunch at the Pension Saint-Charles than he was racing down to catch the
Cormoran
's one-thirty sailing. At La Tour-Fondue, he had just time to note that the
battery of his car was flat before jumping on the bus for Hyères, which was on the point of leaving.

There were only five or six passengers in the vehicle, which bowled along belching oil in the blazing sun and heat. They were mainly island women, shopping for food. Polyte was on board too: canvas trousers, espadrilles, no jacket, and his naval
cap on his head. They could hardly carry on a conversation, because of the racket from the engine. The doctor gathered, however, that Polyte was going to Toulon, and he saw him, when they reached a crossroads, leap from the bus to catch another one.

Hyères, when they reached it, seemed dead, emptied of its inhabitants. The sun was striking down directly, and in
the wide avenues of the lower town, around the casinos and cinemas, there were only ragged
scraps of shade around the plane trees. The pavements were as deserted as at three in the morning. What gave the place a strange aspect was that all the front doors stood open, with bead or bamboo curtains hanging in front of them, or sometimes simply shabby strips of muslin, hardly moving
in the still air.

On one side of each street, the shutters were closed, but on the other, since the sun had left it, the windows were wide open.

The people were all indoors, of course. They had to be somewhere. And although nothing separated the street from the interiors of the houses, there was not a soul to be seen: just the odd dog, lying on a doorstep, interrupting its dreams now and
then to have a furious scratch.

He had gathered where it was:

‘Up on the ramparts, two houses down from the whorehouse …'

He had looked everywhere for some ramparts surrounding the town, but had been unable to locate any. Perhaps they had once existed, and the name had remained? Because of the brothel, he felt awkward about asking the way. And in any case, he had
walked for hundreds of metres through the streets without meeting a living creature, accompanying his tiny shadow, which sometimes changed sides, and breathing in the strong smell of melting asphalt.

It was by chance that he found himself in a square lined with artisans' shops where, on a wall at the far end, he finally spotted the sign ‘rue des Remparts'.

It was on the edge of town. The street was very steep. The first buildings were workshops or sheds, sometimes with a large double door, through which you could see a building site or waste ground.

He started by walking past the house; then he saw, right on the pavement, three women lying on mats on the ground, three women in kimonos taking their siesta. The door and downstairs windows behind them gave a glimpse of café tables and a large
pianola, decorated with a profusion of chrome and mother-of-pearl.

One of the women raised herself on her elbow and looked at him. So, out of embarrassment, he continued to walk up the hill. But there were no more houses. It stopped being a street, and had turned into a simple country road with hedges on both
sides, small allotments, and then fifty or a hundred metres further on, nothing but a sort of mound covered with weeds.

He hadn't got a plan. He had arrived at Hyères without anything firm in mind. He had been wrong not to dress like Polyte – instead having encased himself in a wing-collar, tie and formal jacket. It made him conspicuous. He was sweating.

He went back down the hill, passing the three women again, and the one who had seen him before made a gesture of invitation which he pretended not to see.

He hurried down the length of the street, but not without taking in the large green façade, and as he went past, he glimpsed a wide shady entrance hall and a broad staircase with iron bannisters.

This was where Elisabeth lived. She had left Porquerolles
with her brother and sister. He had gathered as much, as soon as he had seen her army hut from a distance, its door now open on to an empty room,
empty of life and simply cluttered with old fishing tackle and random junk.

He had already gathered as much before he even went up there, from Frans's appearance: his shirt and trousers were in tatters.

In the past, Frans had shaved fairly regularly. Almost always, his cheeks had been smooth. But now they were covered with half an inch of reddish stubble. The previous evening, a little way from the harbour and not far from the rubbish dump, the
doctor had seen him crouching in front of a home-made fire, cooking fish in a pan.

He had used naïve stratagems to raise with the boules players a subject which made him blush foolishly.

‘Elisabeth? Oh she's away! That's one little miss who knows what she wants. If you were to meet her in Hyères now, you wouldn't recognize her.'

The nuns had taught her to sew, and she had apparently become an excellent linen- and laundrywoman. Her brother was increasingly in the good books of the musician who lived in a villa in Hyères and was taking charge of his education.

One fine day, she had left, taking her little sister, who was about ten years old, with her.

‘She never comes back to Porquerolles. She has too much work over there. Frans agreed to it. He goes to see them now and then, about once a month. You can tell, because he starts by washing out his trousers and drying them on the harbour
wall! He has a shave, he borrows
some shoes from one of the fishermen. Seems that in Hyères, he always buys some sweets before he goes up to see them. But then afterwards, off he goes to Toulon, knocking it back like nobody's
business …'

What reason could the doctor have for turning up on their doorstep? If only those women from the brothel weren't lying on the pavement! He had never seen that anywhere before. No one here seemed offended by it. He went back up the street,
and without warning, about twenty metres before reaching the women, he slipped quickly inside the entrance hall of the house. His heart was pounding. He only had a few seconds to invent some excuse.

The floor was grey. All the doors stood open, most of them with bead or muslin curtains. He had the feeling that invisible eyes were spying on him from behind those curtains, and not knowing which door to try, he went awkwardly up the stairs.

The building seemed to have several households living there. The first-floor landing was bigger than a room and cluttered with a pram, a washtub and a few toys. He approached an uncurtained door, coughed and knocked discreetly.

Someone moved inside, a cane chair creaked, he could see a red geranium on a windowsill and a bird in a cage; finally a little old man appeared, walking with a stick, a railwayman's cap on his head. The man stared at him without saying
anything, as if he were a ghost, and his eyes, in the half-light, were so vacant that the doctor wondered whether he had chanced upon a madman.

He spoke quietly, because of all the open doors and all the ears listening behind the walls.

‘Excuse me … I'm looking for Mademoiselle Klamm.'

He had made up his mind that if the old man did not understand, he would not insist and would go away. But he insisted anyway:

‘Mademoiselle Elisabeth …'

The old man was thinking. He hadn't understood. Ah, yes he had! A word had struck him, because he was knotting his brow, and finally pointed at the ceiling over their heads. He was even capable of speech. He said in a cracked voice:

‘I'll show you.'

But seeing him so decrepit, leaning on his stick, the doctor was afraid, foreseeing some ridiculous scene in the corridor or on the stairs.

‘I'll find it myself. Sorry to have troubled you.'

He climbed quickly to the second floor, and the old man remained standing in his doorway. If it was the room directly above …

He knocked at a closed door. A very young voice said:

‘Come in.'

He was red in the face. He had never felt so awkward in his whole life. He found himself in a large room, one which, later, was to grow larger and larger in his memory. In this huge space, her back to the window, a little girl was sitting at the
table, turning the pages of a book.

He hadn't recognized her at first and stammered:

‘Mademoiselle Klamm?'

‘Yes, that's here.'

The little girl slipped off her chair, closing the book, which looked like a school prize, with its red cover and gilt-edged pages.

She was clean, well turned out, with a red and white gingham smock over her dress. She showed no fear of him. He wondered whether she recognized him. But that wasn't possible.

‘You wanted to see Elisabeth perhaps?'

‘Your sister, yes.'

‘She's just gone to deliver some work. If you want to wait.'

Like a well-brought-up little person, she offered him a chair, and not knowing what to do, he sat on it, his hat on his knees. In front of him he could see the closed shutters of the house opposite. Perhaps someone was spying on him through the
cracks? People must have heard him coming up here. The whole house knew he was in this room, like an enormous ogre, with a little girl in a gingham smock.

She felt no need to make conversation. Standing two metres from him, she was looking at him with curiosity from head to toe, but still did not appear frightened.

‘Do you know if she will be back soon?'

‘I don't know.'

A doorway led to another room, smaller probably, but it was not possible to see inside, as the door was only slightly ajar.

In the room he was in, there was a big table covered with an oilcloth and two beds, one of them a child's cot, for the little girl presumably; Madeleine, her name was, the doctor remembered it now.

What struck him most was the counterpane on the larger of the two beds – Elisabeth's of course – a white counterpane with a honeycomb weave, exactly like the one on his bed when he was twelve years
old. He could see it now, in his bedroom in the country, lit by a slanting ray of sunshine. He could hear his mother's voice saying, when he flung himself on top of the bed fully dressed:

‘Take the counterpane off, at least!'

Strangely, he had found the same kind of counterpane in Paris, in Madame Chaminade's boarding house behind the Pantheon. And Madame Chaminade, who was protective of her belongings, and checked every week that no one had kicked the
furniture, would repeat to her tenants:

‘Now please, if you go for a nap, take the counterpane off first.'

And here, on Elisabeth's bed, he was finding the same counterpane a third time. He looked round. He knew that he would never forget the placing of the slightest object. There was a sewing machine by the window, a smaller table with some
half-finished pieces of needlework, a gas ring and some sort of chest, evidently second-hand. Everything was clean and polished.

‘I think I'd better come back another time,' he stammered.

He could stay there no longer, under the curious but friendly gaze of the child. What goes through the head of a little girl of ten? She was about the same age as his daughter. Jeanne did talk to him. He listened to her. He sometimes smiled at
her remarks, but he had never wondered what she
was thinking, and nor had she ever stood in front of him, scrutinizing him.

He explained:

‘I was just passing and I thought I might ask if your sister could do some sewing for my wife.'

The child replied, already very self-possessed:

‘I can't say. I know she has a lot of work on her hands.'

‘I'll come back some other time.'

She went to open the door for him and held out her hand.

It was over. He went away, delivered of a great weight. In a few moments he would be out in the street and would have nothing worse to face than the gaze of one or other of the three lounging women. He had only one fear: that he might meet
Elisabeth on the stairs. If she didn't recognize him – and she probably wouldn't even look at him – he would go away with head bowed. If she did recognize him …

He reached the entrance hall, then the pavement, without meeting any obstacle and strode off towards the centre of town. He hadn't seen her, but it came to the same thing, and was perhaps better anyway.

What would be really marvellous would be to bump into her at the corner of one of the little sloping streets of the old town, where all the houses were shops.

He had some time to wait. The bus did not leave until four o'clock. Here and there in the picturesque alleyways, despite the time of day, a little human activity could be glimpsed. Very simple, very poor, and yet somehow gentle and
reassuring, this was not sordid poverty but a kind of
poverty that was almost sumptuous. In the sunshine, the rendered walls of the houses glowed golden. They clustered together with unexpected curves and bulges. The shops were so low-built that you
could touch their ceilings with your hand, and in some places, you could almost reach up to the windows on the first floor.

Outside a blood-red shop front, with a sawdust-covered floor behind it, sat a butcher. Arms folded and mouth wide open, he was fast asleep on his chair, a fly perching on his eyelid.

Nearby were piles of Italian cheeses, kegs of anchovies or cod, hams suspended from the ceiling, and all these smells mingled together, flies buzzed, while the water from a fountain ran down the edge of the pavement, gurgling like a running
stream.

Yes, he should have dressed like Polyte, in canvas trousers, a cotton shirt and espadrilles, to be free to jump from one bus to another.

He didn't meet her. He would surely not meet her in the old quarter, since if she was handling fine linen, she must work for the rich or the middle classes. It would be on the avenues lined with plane trees, with garden fences and
sprinklers on the lawns, that she would be found.