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  On the twenty-third move, the bandit virtually handed him a castle, following an error that was so obvious it seemed a surrender. Without thinking, Langlais was about to take advantage of this when the voice suggested peremptorily, “Watch out for the king, admiral.”

  Watch out for the king? Langlais stopped himself. The white king was sitting in an absolutely innocuous position, behind the remains of a hastily contrived castling move. Watch out for what? He stared at the chessboard without understanding.

  “Watch out for the king.”

  The voice fell silent.

  Everything fell silent.

  A few moments.

  Then Langlais understood. It was like a flash that crossed his mind a moment before the bandit produced a knife from nowhere and rapidly sought his heart with the blade. Langlais was faster. He blocked his arm, managed to wrest the knife from him, and, following through the movement he had begun, slashed the bandit’s throat wide open.

  The bandit crashed to the ground. Horrified, the two women ran away. All the others seemed petrified by amazement. Langlais kept calm. With a gesture that afterwards he would not have hesitated to judge uselessly solemn, he took the white king and tipped it over on the chessboard. Then he got up, clutching the knife tightly in his fist, and moved quickly away from the chessboard. Nobody moved. He mounted the first horse he came across. He cast a final glance at that strange scene out of popular theater and fled. As often happens in life’s crucial moments, he found himself capable of a sole, absolutely insignificant thought: it was the first time—the first—that he had won with the black pieces.

  WHEN HE GOT BACK to his palace, he found Adams stretched out in bed, unconscious and in the grip of a brain fever. The doctors did not know what to do. He said, “Do nothing. Nothing.”

  Four days later, Adams came to. There was Langlais, at his bedside. They looked at each other. Adams closed his eyes again. And Langlais said, in a low voice, “I owe you my life.”

  “One life,” said Adams. Then he reopened his eyes and stared Langlais straight in the eye. It was not the look of a gardener, that glance. It was the look of an animal stalking its prey.

  “My life means nothing to me. It is another life I want.”

  What that meant, Langlais was to understand much later, when it was too late to avoid hearing it.

  A MOTIONLESS GARDENER, standing before an admiral’s desk. Books and papers everywhere. But orderly. Orderly. And candelabras, carpets, the fragrance of leather, somber pictures, blackish curtains, maps, weapons, coins, portraits. Silverware. The admiral proffered a leaf of paper to the gardener and said,

  “The Almayer Inn. A place by the sea, near Quartel.”

  “Is she there?”

  “Yes.”

  The gardener folded the sheet of paper, put it in his pocket, and said, “I shall leave this evening.”

  The admiral lowered his gaze and, as he did so, heard the other’s voice pronounce the word “Good-bye.”

  The gardener went toward the door. The admiral, without even looking at him, murmured, “And afterwards? What will happen afterwards?”

  The gardener halted. “Nothing anymore.”

  And he went out.

  The admiral said nothing.

  . . . AS LANGLAIS WAS LETTING his mind escape along the route of a ship that had flown away, literally, in the waters of Malagar, and Adams was considering stopping in front of a rose of Borneo to observe an insect that was laboring to climb up one of its petals until the moment came when it gave up and flew away, in this sense similar to the ship that had obeyed the same instinct when sailing off Malagar, both of them comrades in their implicit refutation of the real and in the choice of that aerial flight, and united, in that instant, by their being images that had simultaneously alighted on the retina and the memory of two men whom nothing could have separated anymore and for whom those two flights, of the insect and the sailing ship, embodied their mutual dismay at the bitter taste of the end and the disconcerting discovery of how silent destiny is, when, suddenly, it explodes.

  CHAPTER 8

  ON THE FIRST FLOOR of the Almayer Inn, in a room that gave onto the hills, Elisewin was struggling with the night. Motionless, under the covers, she was waiting to discover which would be the first to come, sleep or fear.

  The sound of the sea could be heard, like a continuous landslide, the incessant thunder of a storm that was the child of some unknown sky. It never stopped. It did not know weariness. Or mercy.

  If you look at it, you don’t notice how much noise it makes. But in the dark . . . All that infinity becomes only clamor, a wall of sound, a blind, tormenting howl. You cannot switch off the sea, when it burns in the night.

  Elisewin felt a bubble of emptiness burst in her head. She knew well that secret explosion, that invisible, unspeakable anguish. But knowing it was useless. Useless. The insidious, slinking malaise—an obscene stepfather—was about to take her. It was come to take back its own.

  It was not so much that cold that filtered through from inside her, and not even her wildly beating heart, or the cold sweat all over, or the trembling of her hands. The worst thing was that feeling of disappearing, of losing touch with one’s mind, of being only vague panic and starts of fear. Thoughts like scraps of rebellion—shivers—her face set in a grimace, trying to keep her eyes closed—trying not to look at the dark, a horror with no escape. A war.

  Elisewin managed to think of the door that, a few yards from her, connected her room with that of Father Pluche. A few yards. She had to make it. Now she would get up and without opening her eyes she would find it, and then all that was needed was Father Pluche’s voice, even if it was only his voice, and it would all be over—all she had to do was get up from there, find the strength to take a few steps, cross the room, open the door—get up, slip out from under the covers, slip along the wall—get up, stand up, take those few steps—get up, keep the eyes closed, find that door, open it—get up, try to breathe, and then get away from the bed—get up, don’t die—get up from there—get up. How horrible. How horrible.

  It was not a few yards. It was miles, it was an eternity: the same distance that separated her from her real room, and her things, and her father, and her own place.

  Everything was far away. Everything was lost.

  Such wars cannot be won. And Elisewin surrendered.

  As if dying, she opened her eyes.

  She did not understand immediately.

  She had not expected it.

  The room was lit. A tiny light. But everywhere. Warm.

  She turned. On a seat beside the bed was Dira, with a big book open on her knees, and a candle holder in her hand. The candle was burning. A little flame, in the dark that was no more.

  Elisewin lay still, her head raised up a little from the pillow, looking. She seemed to be elsewhere, that little girl, and yet she was there. Her eyes fixed on those pages, her feet that did not even reach the floor and swung slowly back and forth: shoes on a swing, attached to two legs and a little skirt.

  Elisewin let her head fall back on the pillow. She saw the candle flame smoking motionless. And the room around her slept sweetly. She felt tired, a wonderful tiredness. She just had time to think

  “You can’t hear the sea anymore.”

  Then she closed her eyes. And she fell asleep.

  In the morning she found the candle holder, solitary, standing on the seat. The candle still burning. As if none of it had been consumed. As if it had kept vigil over a night only an instant long. An invisible flame against the great light that was bringing the new day through the window and into the room.

  Elisewin got up. She blew out the candle. From all over arrived the strange music of a tireless musician. A huge sound. A spectacle.

  The sea had returned.

  PLASSON AND BARTLEBOOM went out together, that morning. Each with his own instruments: easel, paints, and brushes for Plasson, notebooks and various measuring devices for Bartleboom. You would have said that t
hey had just cleared out a mad inventor’s attic. One was wearing a fisherman’s jacket and waders, and the other a set of professorial tails, a woolen hat on his head, and gloves without fingers, such as pianists use. Perhaps the inventor was not the only madman around there.

  In reality, Plasson and Bartleboom did not even know each other. Their paths had crossed only a few times, in the corridors of the inn, or in the dining room. They would probably never have ended up there, on the beach, walking together toward their respective places of work, had Ann Deverià not decided it would be that way.

  “It’s amazing. If someone were to put you two together, he would obtain a single perfect lunatic. According to me, God is still up there, with the great puzzle under his nose, wondering what happened to those two pieces that fitted so well together.”

  “What’s a puzzle?” asked Bartleboom at the same moment Plasson inquired, “What’s a puzzle?”

  The next morning they were walking on the seashore, each with his own instruments, but together, toward the paradoxical duties that constituted their daily labors.

  Plasson had made money in the preceding years, by becoming the capital’s best-loved portrait artist. You could say that in all the city there was no family genuinely greedy for money that did not have a Plasson in the house. Portraits, let it be well understood, only portraits. Landowners, sickly wives, bloated children, wrinkled great-aunts, rubicund industrialists, marriageable young ladies, ministers, priests, operatic prima donnas, military men, poetesses, violinists, academics, kept women, bankers, infant prodigies: from the walls of the capital’s most genteel residences peeked, suitably framed, hundreds of astonished faces, inevitably ennobled by what in the salons was known as “the Plasson touch”: a curious stylistic characteristic otherwise expressible in the skill, genuinely singular, with which the esteemed painter could bestow a glint of intelligence upon any gaze, no matter how bovine. “No matter how bovine” was the specification that was usually employed in the salons.

  Plasson could have carried on like that for years. The faces of the rich are never-ending. But, out of the blue, one day he decided to drop everything. And to leave. A very precise idea, secretly nursed for years, carried him off.

  To make a portrait of the sea.

  He sold everything he possessed, abandoned his studio, and left for a journey that, as far he knew, might never end. There were thousands of miles of coastline, around the world. It was going to be no small matter, finding the right place.

  When gossipmongers asked him the reason for that unusual desertion, he made no mention of the question of the sea. So they wanted to know what lay behind the retirement of the greatest master of the sublime art of portraiture. His response was a laconic phrase that subsequently lent itself unceasingly to a wide variety of interpretations:

  “I am fed up with pornography.”

  Then he left. No one would find him anymore.

  Bartleboom knew nothing about any of these things. He could not know them. That is why, there on the shore of the sea, having exhausted all small talk about the weather, he ventured to ask, just to keep the conversation going, “Have you been painting long?”

  On that occasion, too, Plasson was laconic.

  “Never done anything else.”

  Anyone listening to Plasson would have concluded that there were only two possibilities: either he was intolerably haughty or he was stupid. But there, too, you had to understand. One curious thing about Plasson was that when he talked, he never finished a sentence. He could not manage to finish one. He would arrive at the end only if the sentence did not exceed seven or eight words. If not, he would get lost halfway. For this reason, especially with strangers, he would try to limit himself to brief, succinct propositions. And it should be said that he was talented in this sense. Of course, this made him seem a little superior and irritatingly sententious. But it was always better than seeming vaguely doltish, which was what regularly happened when he launched into compound sentences or even only simple sentences, as he could never manage to finish them.

  “Tell me, Plasson: Is there anything in the world that you manage to bring to a conclusion?” Ann Deverià had asked him one day, pinpointing the heart of the problem with her customary cynicism.

  “Yes: disagreeable conversations,” he had replied, getting up from the table and going off to his room. He had a flair, as has been said, for finding brief replies. Real flair.

  Bartleboom did not know these things, either. He could not know them. But he was quick to understand them.

  Under the midday sun, Plasson and he seated on the beach, eating the few things that Dira had prepared. The easel stuck in the sand, a few yards away. The usual white canvas, on the easel. The usual north wind, on everything.

  BARTLEBOOM: Do you paint one of these pictures a day?

  PLASSON: In a certain sense . . .

  BARTLEBOOM: Your room must be full of them . . .

  PLASSON: No, I throw them away.

  BARTLEBOOM: Away?

  PLASSON: You see that one there, on the easel?

  BARTLEBOOM: Yes.

  PLASSON: They are all like that, more or less.

  BARTLEBOOM: . . .

  PLASSON: Would you keep them?

  A cloud obscures the sun. The sudden cold catches you by surprise. Bartleboom puts his woolen hat on again.

  PLASSON: It’s difficult.

  BARTLEBOOM: You don’t have to tell me that. I couldn’t even draw this piece of cheese, it’s a mystery how you manage to do those things, it’s a mystery to me.

  PLASSON: The sea is difficult.

  BARTLEBOOM: . . .

  PLASSON: It’s difficult to know where to begin. You see, when I used to do portraits, portraits of people, I used to know where to begin, I would look at those faces and I knew exactly (stop)

  BARTLEBOOM: . . .

  PLASSON: . . .

  BARTLEBOOM: . . .

  PLASSON: . . .

  BARTLEBOOM: You used to paint people’s portraits?

  PLASSON: Yes.

  BARTLEBOOM: My goodness, I’ve wanted to have my portrait painted for years now, really, now you will think this stupid, but . . .

  PLASSON: When I painted people’s portraits, I used to begin with the eyes. I would forget all the rest and concentrate on the eyes, I would study them, for minutes and minutes, then I sketched them in, with a pencil, and that was the secret, because once you have drawn the eyes (stop)

  BARTLEBOOM: . . .

  PLASSON: . . .

  BARTLEBOOM: What happens once you have drawn the eyes?

  PLASSON: It happens that all the rest just follows, it’s as if all the other pieces slip into place around that initial point by themselves, there’s not even any need to (stop)

  BARTLEBOOM: . . . There’s not even any need.

  PLASSON: No. One can almost avoid looking at the sitter, everything comes by itself, the mouth, the curve of the neck, even the hands . . . But the fundamental thing is to start from the eyes, do you see, and this is where the real problem lies, the problem that drives me mad, lies exactly here (stop)

  BARTLEBOOM: . . .

  PLASSON: . . .

  BARTLEBOOM: Do you have an idea where the problem lies, Plasson?

  Agreed: it was a little contrived. But it worked. It was only a question of getting him under way again. Every time. With patience. Bartleboom, as can be deduced from his singular love life, was a patient man.

  PLASSON: The problem is, where the dickens are the eyes of the sea? I shall never get anything done until I find out, because that is the beginning, do you see? The beginning of everything, and until I know where they are, I shall carry on spending my days looking at this damned stretch of water without (stop)

  BARTLEBOOM: . . .

  PLASSON: . . .

  BARTLEBOOM: . . .

  PLASSON: This is the problem, Bartleboom . . .

  Magic: this time he got started again on his own.

  PLASSON: This is the problem: Where does the s
ea begin?

  Bartleboom said nothing.

  The sun came and went, between one cloud and the next. It was the north wind, as usual, which organized the silent spectacle. The sea carried on imperturbably reciting its psalms. If it had eyes, it was not looking in that direction at that moment.

  Silence.

  Minutes of silence.

  Then Plasson turned to Bartleboom and said, all in one breath, “And you, sir, what are you studying with all those funny instruments of yours?”

  Bartleboom smiled.

  “Where the sea ends.”

  Two pieces of a puzzle. Made for each other. In some part of the heavens, an old Gentleman, in that moment, had finally found them again.

  “What the devil? . . . I said that they couldn’t have disappeared.”

  “THE ROOM IS on the ground floor. Down that way, the third door on the left. There are no keys. No one has them here. You ought to write your name in that book. It’s not obligatory, but everybody does it here.”

  The register with the signatures waited open on a wooden bookrest. A freshly made bed of paper that awaited the dreams of other people’s names. The man’s pen barely brushed it.

  Adams.

  Then he hesitated a moment, motionless.

  “If you want to know the names of the others, you can ask me. It’s hardly a secret.”

  Adams looked up from the register and smiled.

  “It’s a nice name: Dira.”

  The little girl was stunned. She instinctively shot a glance at the register.

  “My name isn’t written there.”

  “Not there.”

  It was already hard to believe she was ten, that little girl. But when she wanted, she could seem a thousand years older. She fixed Adams smack-dab in the eye, and what she said, she said with a cutting voice that seemed to belong to a woman who, wherever she was, was not there.