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  He found Baldabiou at Verdun’s, playing billiards. He always played alone, against himself. Strange games. The normal man against the one-armed player, he called them. He made one shot in the usual way, and the next with one hand only. The day the one-armed player wins – he said – I will leave this city. For years, the one-armed player had been losing.

  ‘Baldabiou, I have to find someone, here, who knows how to read Japanese.’

  The one-armed player made a two-cushion draw shot.

  ‘Ask Hervé Joncour, he knows everything.’

  ‘I don’t understand anything about it.’

  ‘You’re the Japanese, here.’

  ‘But, just the same, I don’t understand anything.’

  The normal man leaned over his cue and made a follow shot for six points.

  ‘Then there is only Madame Blanche. She has a fabric shop, in Nîmes. Above the shop is a bordello. That also belongs to her. She’s wealthy. And she’s Japanese.’

  ‘Japanese? And how did she get here?’

  ‘Don’t ask if you want something from her. Shit.’

  The one-armed player had just missed a three- cushion for fourteen points.

  26.

  TO his wife, Hélène, Hervé Joncour said that he had to go to Nîmes, on business. And that he would return the same day.

  He went up to the first floor, above the fabric shop, at 12 Rue Moscat, and asked for Madame Blanche. He was made to wait a long time. The parlour was decorated as if for a party that had begun years earlier and never ended. The girls were all young and French. There was a pianist who, with a mute, played tunes that had a Russian flavour. At the end of every piece he ran his right hand through his hair and murmured softly

  ‘Voilà.’

  27.

  HERVÉ Joncour waited for a couple of hours. Then he was led along the hallway, to the last door. He opened it and entered.

  Madame Blanche was sitting in a large armchair, beside the window. She was wearing a kimono of a light material: completely white. On her fingers, as if they were rings, she wore little flowers of an intense blue. Shiny black hair, Oriental face, perfect.

  ‘What makes you think you are rich enough to go to bed with me?’

  Hervé Joncour remained standing, in front of her, with his hat in his hand.

  ‘I need a favour from you. The price doesn’t matter.’

  Then he took from the inside pocket of his jacket a small piece of paper, folded in quarters, and held it out to her.

  ‘I have to know what’s written there.’

  Madame Blanche didn’t move an inch. Her lips were slightly parted, they seemed the prehistory of a smile.

  ‘I beg you, madame.’

  She had no reason in the world to do it. And yet she took the piece of paper, unfolded it, looked at it. She raised her eyes to Hervé Joncour, lowered them. She folded the piece of paper, slowly. When she held it out, to give it back, the kimono fell open slightly, revealing her chest. Hervé Joncour saw that she had on nothing, underneath, and that her skin was young and white.

  ‘Return, or I will die.’

  She said it in a cold voice, looking Hervé Joncour in the eyes, and betraying not the least expression.

  Return, or I will die.

  Hervé Joncour put the piece of paper back in the inside pocket of his jacket.

  ‘Thank you.’

  He made a slight bow, then turned, went towards the door, and started to place some bills on the table.

  ‘Forget about it.’

  Hervé Joncour hesitated for a moment.

  ‘I’m not talking about the money. I’m talking about that woman. Forget about it. She won’t die and you know it.’

  Without turning, Hervé Joncour placed the bills on the table, opened the door, and went out.

  28.

  BALDABIOU said that they came from Paris, sometimes, to make love with Madame Blanche. Returning to the capital, they displayed on the lapel of their evening jacket little blue flowers, the ones she always wore on her fingers, as if they were rings.

  29.

  THAT summer, for the first time in his life, Hervé Joncour took his wife to the Riviera. For two weeks they stayed in a hotel in Nice, frequented for the most part by English people and known for the musical evenings it offered its guests. Hélène was convinced that in a place so beautiful they would succeed in conceiving the child that they had expected, in vain, for years. Together they decided that it would be a boy. And that he would be named Philippe. In moderation they took part in the worldly life of the seaside resort, and enjoyed themselves later, in their room, laughing at the strange folk they had met. At a concert one evening, they met a fur dealer, a Pole: he said that he had been in Japan.

  The night before they left, it happened that Hervé Joncour woke up, when it was still dark, and rose, and approached Hélène’s bed. When she opened her eyes he heard his own voice saying softly:

  ‘I will love you forever.’

  30.

  IN early September the silkworm breeders of Lavilledieu met in order to decide what to do. The government had sent to Nîmes a young biologist whose mission was to study the disease that made the eggs produced in France useless. His name was Louis Pasteur: he worked with microscopes that could see the invisible: they said that he had already obtained extraordinary results. From Japan arrived news of an imminent civil war, stirred up by the forces opposed to foreigners entering the country. The French consulate, recently installed in Yokohama, sent dispatches that discouraged for the moment commercial relations with the island, suggesting that commerce should wait for better times. Inclined to prudence and sensitive to the costs that every clandestine expedition to Japan entailed, many of the leading men of Lavilledieu advanced the hypothesis that the journey of Hervé Joncour should be suspended that year and that they should trust to the shipments of eggs, mildly reliable, that came from the big importers in the Middle East. Baldabiou listened to them all, without saying a word. When at last it was his turn to speak, what he did was place his cane walking stick on the table and look at the man sitting opposite him. And wait.

  Hervé Joncour knew of Pasteur’s research and had read the news from Japan: but he had always refused to comment on it. He preferred to spend his time perfecting the plan for the park that he wanted to build around his house. Hidden in a corner of his study he kept a piece of paper folded in quarters, with a few ideograms drawn one on top of the other, black ink. He had a substantial sum in the bank, he led a peaceful life, and he had the reasonable illusion of soon becoming a father. When Baldabiou looked up at him what he said was

  ‘You decide, Baldabiou.’

  31.

  HERVÉ Joncour left for Japan in early October. He crossed the French border near Metz, travelled through Württemberg and Bavaria, entered Austria, reached Vienna and Budapest by train, and continued to Kiev. On horseback he traversed two thousand kilometres of the Russian steppe, crossed the Urals into Siberia, and travelled for forty days to reach Lake Baikal, which the people of the place called: the last. He followed the course of the River Amur, skirting the Chinese border, to the Ocean, and when he arrived at the Ocean he stopped in the port of Sabirk for ten days, until a Dutch smugglers’ ship carried him to Cape Teraya, on the western coast of Japan. What he found was a country in chaotic expectation of a war that wouldn’t break out. He travelled for days without having to resort to his usual caution, since around him the map of power and the network of boundaries seemed to have dissolved in the imminence of an explosion that would totally remake them. At Shirakawa he met the man who was to take him to Hara Kei. In two days, on horseback, they came in sight of the village. Hervé Joncour entered on foot so that the news of his arrival could arrive before him.

  32.

  HE was led to one of the last houses in the village, high up, in the shelter of the wood. Five servants awaited him. He entrusted his baggage to them and went out on the veranda. At the opposite end of the village the house of Hara Kei was vi
sible, not much bigger than the other houses, but surrounded by enormous cedars that protected its solitude. Hervé Joncour stood looking at it, as if nothing else existed, from there to the horizon. So he saw,

  finally,

  suddenly,

  the sky above the house stained with the flight of hundreds of birds, as if they had exploded from the earth, birds of every type, astonished, fleeing everywhere, gone wild, singing and shouting, a pyrotechnic burst of wings, a cloud of colours shot into the light, of frightened sounds, music in flight, flying in the sky.

  Hervé Joncour smiled.

  33.

  THE village started swarming like a crazed anthill: everyone ran and shouted, looking up and pursuing the fugitive birds, for years the pride of their Lord, and now a flying mockery in the sky. Hervé Joncour came out of his house and walked down through the village, slowly, gazing straight ahead with infinite calm. No one seemed to see him, and he seemed to see nothing. He was a thread of gold running straight into the woof of a carpet woven by a madman. He crossed the bridge over the river, descended to the great cedars, entered their shade and emerged from it. Facing him was the enormous aviary, with the doors wide open, completely empty. And in front of it a woman. Hervé Joncour didn’t look around, he continued simply to walk, slowly, and he stopped only when he was before her.

  Her eyes didn’t have an Oriental shape and her face was the face of a girl.

  Hervé Joncour took a step towards her, reached out a hand and opened it. In the palm was a small sheet of paper, folded in quarters. She saw it and every corner of her face smiled. She placed her hand in Hervé Joncour’s, she pressed it gently, hesitated a moment, then withdrew it, clutching that piece of paper which had gone around the world. She had just hidden it in a fold of her dress, when the voice of Hara Kei was heard.

  ‘Welcome, my French friend.’

  He was a few steps away. His kimono dark, black hair gathered, in perfect order, at the nape. He approached. He began to examine the aviary, looking at the open doors, one by one.

  ‘They’ll come back. It’s always difficult to resist the temptation to come back, isn’t that true?’

  Hervé Joncour didn’t answer. Hara Kei looked him in the eyes and said softly

  ‘Come.’

  Hervé Joncour followed him. He took some steps, and then turned towards the girl and made a slight bow.

  ‘I hope to see you again soon.’

  Hara Kei continued to walk.

  ‘She doesn’t know your language.’

  He said.

  ‘Come.’

  34.

  THAT evening Hara Kei invited Hervé Joncour to his house. There were men from the village and elegantly dressed women, their faces painted in garish colours and white. They drank sake and, in long wooden pipes, smoked tobacco with a bitter and stupefying aroma. Jugglers arrived and a man who got laughs by imitating men and animals. Three old women played stringed instruments, with never a break in their smiles. Hara Kei was sitting in the place of honour, wearing dark robes, his feet bare. In a splendid silk dress the woman with the face of a girl sat beside him. Hervé Joncour was at the extreme opposite end of the room: he was assaulted by the cloying perfume of the women around him, and he smiled in embarrassment at the men, who amused themselves by telling him stories he couldn’t understand. A thousand times he searched for her eyes and a thousand times she found his. It was a kind of sad dance, secret and impotent. Hervé Joncour danced late into the night, then he rose, said some words in French to excuse himself, somehow got free of a woman who had decided to accompany him, and, making his way amid clouds of smoke and men who addressed him in their incomprehensible language, he went out. Before leaving the room, he looked at her a last time. She was looking at him, eyes perfectly mute, centuries distant.

  Hervé Joncour wandered through the village breathing the cool night air and getting lost in the alleys that climbed the hillside. When he reached his house he saw a lantern, lighted, swaying behind the paper walls. He entered and found two women standing before him. An Oriental girl, young, dressed in a simple white kimono. And her. She had in her eyes a kind of feverish joy. She didn’t leave him time to do anything. She approached, took one hand, brought it to her face, touched it with her lips, and then, holding it tight, placed it on the hands of the girl who was beside her, and held it there, so that it couldn’t escape. She removed her hand, finally, took two steps back, picked up the lantern, looked for an instant into the eyes of Hervé Joncour, and ran off. It was an orange lantern. It disappeared into the night, a tiny light in flight.

  35.

  HERVÉ Joncour had never seen that girl, nor, really, did he ever see her, that night. In the room without lights he felt the beauty of her body, and knew her hands and her mouth. He loved her for hours, with gestures that he had never made, letting himself be taught a slowness that he didn’t know. In the dark, it was nothing to love her and not to love her.

  A little before dawn, the girl rose, put on the white kimono, and left.

  36.

  IN the morning, Hervé Joncour found a man from Hara Kei waiting for him, across from his house. He had with him fifteen sheets of mulberry bark, completely covered with eggs: tiny, ivory-coloured. Hervé Joncour examined each sheet, carefully, then negotiated the price and paid in gold scales. Before the man left he made him understand that he wished to see Hara Kei. The man shook his head. Hervé Joncour understood, from his gestures, that Hara Kei had left that morning, early, with his entourage, and no one knew when he would return.

  Hervé Joncour went through the village quickly, to the dwelling of Hara Kei. He found only some servants, who responded to every question by shaking their heads. The house seemed deserted. And although he looked carefully all around, even at the most insignificant things, he saw nothing resembling a message for him. He left the house and, returning to the village, passed the immense aviary. The doors were closed again. Inside, hundreds of birds were flying, sheltered from the sky.

  37.

  HERVÉ Joncour waited two more days for some sign. Then he left.

  It happened that, no more than half an hour from the village, he passed a wood from which came a singular, silvery din. Hidden among the leaves he could make out the thousand dark patches of a flock of birds that were still and at rest. With no explanation to the two men who accompanied him, Hervé Joncour stopped his horse, took the revolver from his belt, and fired six shots into the air. The birds, terrorised, rose into the sky, like a cloud of smoke released by a fire. It was so big that you could have seen it days’ and days’ walk from there. Dark in the sky, with no other purpose than its own bewilderment.

  38.

  SIX days later Hervé Joncour embarked, at Takaoka, on a Dutch smugglers’ ship, which took him to Sabirk. From there he went back along the Chinese border to Lake Baikal, journeyed over four thousand kilometres of Siberian territory, crossed the Urals, reached Kiev, and by train traversed all Europe, from east to west, until, after three months of travel, he arrived in France. The first Sunday in April – in time for High Mass – he reached the gates of Lavilledieu. He halted the carriage, and for some minutes sat without moving behind the drawn curtains. Then he got out, and continued on foot, step after step, with infinite weariness.

  Baldabiou asked him if he had seen the war.

  ‘Not the one I expected,’ he answered.

  At night he went to Hélène’s bed and loved her so impatiently that she was frightened and couldn’t hold back her tears. When he noticed, she forced herself to smile at him.

  ‘It’s just that I’m so happy,’ she said softly.

  39.

  HERVÉ Joncour delivered the eggs to the silkworm breeders of Lavilledieu. Then, for days, he did not appear again in the town, neglecting even his usual daily outing to Verdun’s. In early May, to general amazement, he bought the house abandoned by Jean Berbeck, the man who had stopped speaking one day and had not said another word for the rest of his life. Everyone thought tha
t he intended to make it his new workshop. He didn’t even start to clear it out. He would go there, from time to time, and remain in those rooms alone, doing what, no one knew. One day he took Baldabiou there.

  ‘Do you know why Jean Berbeck stopped speaking?’ Baldabiou asked.

  ‘It’s one of the many things he never said.’

  Years had passed, but there were still paintings hanging on the walls and dishes in the drain, beside the sink. It wasn’t a happy sight, and Baldabiou, on his own, would willingly have left. But Hervé Joncour continued to look with fascination at those dead, mouldy walls. It was obvious: he was looking for something in there.

  ‘Maybe it’s that life, at times, gets to you in a way that there’s really nothing more to say.’

  He said.

  ‘Nothing more, forever.’

  Baldabiou wasn’t much cut out for serious conver- sations. He was staring at Jean Berbeck’s bed.

  ‘Maybe anyone would become mute in such a hideous house.’

  For days Hervé Joncour continued to lead a retired life; he was hardly seen in the town, and spent his time working on the plan for the park that sooner or later he would build. He filled sheets and sheets with strange designs that looked like machines. One evening Hélène asked him