Reticence

Jean-Philippe Toussaint, John Lambert

• Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781564787101
• eBook ISBN: 9781564787453
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

"A little thing happened to me. Which could have just as easily happened to you. You're on vacation in a hotel with your son in a small village and you're about to go see some friends, but something holds you back, a mysterious reticence that prevents you from going to find them. Here is the novel of this reticence, small and specific, and of the fears that it instigates, little by little. Because not only are your friends not there when you do decide to go find them, but, several days later, you find a dead cat in the harbor, a black cat floating in front of you on the water..."

In Jean-Philippe Toussaint's take on the detective novel, we find a man on vacation in a tiny village, where a writer named Biaggi appears to be keeping him under surveillance. To what end? Ah, but it's far more pleasant to enjoy the Mediterranean night air than to look for answers, make deductions, or get upset—isn't it?

I

There was a dead cat in the harbor that morning, a black cat floating slowly on the surface of the water alongside a small boat. It was straight and stiff, and a decomposed fish head hung from its mouth out of which protruded a broken strand of fishing line two or three inches in length. At the time I’d simply imagined the fish head was all that remained of a piece of bait. The cat must have leaned out over the water to catch hold of the fish, and once he’d caught it the hook had become snagged in his mouth, he’d lost his balance and fallen in. The water in the port was very dark where I was, but from time to time I could make out a school of fish swimming silently down below, wrasse or mullet, while down at the bottom among the seaweed and stones swarming myriads of fry went at the gutted corpse of a decomposed moray eel. Before moving on I lingered for a moment on the jetty looking at the dead cat, which continued to drift slowly back and forth in the harbor, first to the left then to the right, following the imperceptible flux and reflux of the current on the surface of the water.

I’d arrived at Sasuelo at the end of October. It was autumn already and the tourist season was drawing to a close. A taxi had dropped me off with my bags and suitcases one morning on the village square. The driver helped me unfasten my son’s stroller from the roof rack on top of the car, an old 504 Diesel that he’d left running and whose motor continued to purr leisurely on the square. Then he’d pointed me in the direction of the only hotel in the vicinity, which I knew because I’d stayed there once already. I left my bags and suitcases near a bench and headed off toward the hotel with my son, who I’d sat in his stroller in front of me and who was oblivious to everything, absorbed as he was in the contemplation of his stuffed seal. This he examined from all sides, turning it over and over in his hands while burping unflappably from time to time with a royal disposition. A little flower-lined staircase led up to the hotel entrance with a double glass door, and I took the stroller in my arms and mounted the short flight of steps. No sooner had I pushed open the door than I found myself in the presence of the owner, who was squatting on the tiling with a cloth in his hands and now lifted his head suspiciously at the stroller I was still holding in my arms. Not knowing quite where to place it, as the floor seemed so clean and lovingly maintained, I held onto it and asked him if it would be possible to have a room for a couple of nights, three or four nights or perhaps more, until the end of the week, I wasn’t quite sure myself.

During my first few days in Sasuelo I spent my time taking long walks, sometimes along the narrow streets that led up to the neighboring villages, sometimes exploring the wild beach that stretched out for a mile or so behind the village. The sound of the wind and the waves blended in my mind as I walked slowly along the shore. It was an immense, deserted beach, continuously swept by swirling winds. I stopped and sat down on the sand from time to time and, while all around me filaments of dried seaweed blew toward the dunes, I absently collected a stone or two and threw them lazily into the sea. My son watched me with a biscuit in his hand, strapped firmly in his stroller by a little harness. Occasionally he leaned forward and tried to grab something or other that had washed up onto the beach, and as time went on I handed him everything he desired, beached pieces of driftwood shaped like strange talismans, pebbles, and twigs (as well as an old plastic sandal, whose sandy sole he kissed while letting out little squeals of joy).

Back at the hotel I spent hours lying on the metal bed in the center of the room. I did nothing and wasn’t waiting for anything in particular. The walls around me were humid and dirty, covered with old orange wallpaper that matched the dark flowers on the bedspread and curtains. I’d installed my son’s travel cot beside me in the room, a small and rather practical little folding bed fitted together with different-colored metal tubes to form a rectangular frame, a sort of little Centre Georges Pompidou erected beside my bags and suitcases in the dim light of the room. Sometimes, as my son slept peacefully with one little arm folded like a shield across his chest and his treasured plastic sandal placed carefully beside him in the cot, I got up and walked around the room in my socks. I went over to the window and lifted the curtain to look out onto the road, a deserted swath of road running along a weed-covered lot at the back of which, beside a desiccated fig tree bending under the weight of its dead branches, a solitary donkey grazed on fennel sprouts among various bits of refuse, old planks, abandoned tires, and an upturned rowboat that rotted where it lay.

To a certain extent if I’d come to Sasuelo it was to see the Biaggis. Until now, however, held back by a mysterious apprehension, I’d always put off the moment of going to visit them and steered clear of the area around their house when I went for walks in the village. Even on the day of my arrival, when I was still planning on going over to their place as soon as I’d got settled into the hotel, I’d stayed in my room all afternoon. Two days had now gone by since then and I was starting to wonder at the fact that I hadn’t yet bumped into them in the village, even if I’d been careful to avoid their house every time I went out. One evening, however, after lingering in the hotel dining room after dinner, I finally decided to drop in on them, very briefly I thought, just to say hello.

The Biaggis’ house was situated somewhat outside the village on the road leading up to the next hamlet. It was protected from the outside by a rather high stone wall, which was covered by a tangle of withered ivy that spread out from a thick network of gnarled gray roots and meandered along the rock. A few big trees, pines and palms, were planted here and there in the garden and could be made out through the gate leading into the property. Night had fallen now and the contours of the villa were visible in the shadows behind the bars of the gate. The house had gone up recently, it was long and low, fronted by a tiled terrace where a few pieces of white iron garden furniture had been left outside beside an enigmatic, dilapidated garden umbrella that lay half open on the ground. An old gray Mercedes was parked on the little gravel driveway leading over to the garage, and I noticed that the front fender was dented. I’d never seen the car before, and was just wondering what it was doing there when I heard a sound coming from behind the house, from behind the garage to be exact, like a falling rake immediately followed by hurried steps. I listened attentively but everything was silent around me. There wasn’t a sound in the night, and all of the shutters in the Biaggis’ villa were closed—as were the metal blinds over the bay window and the pale wooden shutters of the rooms on the first floor.

I stood there on the side of the road looking at the house for another moment, and was just about to go back to the hotel when I noticed a mailbox on the gate, hanging in the darkness at about chest height, fixed loosely to one of the bars with a twisted bit of wire. Even though it looked old and rusty the box was locked, and resisted when I tried to lift the little metal lid. I didn’t force it and, slipping my fingers into the crack, I had no difficulty removing the six letters inside. I examined them absently for a moment and saw that they were all very recent—the last one dating from October twenty-fourth—before putting two letters that looked like junk mail back into the box and keeping the others, which I slipped into my pocket. Of course, among the four I’d immediately recognized my own letter, which I’d posted from Paris a couple of days earlier. I could perfectly well have left it in the box, but perhaps there was no reason—no longer in any case—to leave a letter there announcing my presence in Sasuelo.

The next morning at around ten a taxi came to pick me up at the hotel. We’d left the village and had been driving for some time along a rainy road that led uphill among the trees. My son sat beside me in the back, his legs spread on the seat and his two feet clad in little leather boots that stuck straight up in the air. One of his hands was lying on my leg, and with the other he clutched his stuffed seal against his anorak. A transparent plastic nipple in his mouth, he looked at me with a terribly serious, thoughtful air. The driver hadn’t said a word since we’d left the hotel. A corn-paper cigarette was wedged between his lips, which he couldn’t remove from his mouth moreover because he had to keep both hands on the wheel to negotiate the numerous curves, to the point where not surprisingly his face became slightly flushed and a wisp of smoke played around his ears. For my part I drowsed on the back seat, looking vaguely at the smoke that wafted hesitantly over the driver’s temples and formed an immaterial halo about his head, which it soon enshrouded in a splendid evanescent ring. I’d gotten his telephone number that morning and called him shortly before ten o’clock to take me to the little neighboring port of Santagralo, where I wanted to do some shopping.

Santagralo wasn’t very busy in the winter but fifty or so pleasure craft were anchored there permanently and, aside from a few shops specializing in marine supplies, there was a post office and a bank, a supermarket and a couple of restaurants. I was planning to stay and have lunch at noon, so when the driver left me on the main square I arranged for him to come and pick me up again thereafter. The sky was still very menacing above the village, and I headed off toward the supermarket with my son ahead of me in his stroller, very upright in his seat and looking intensely in front of him, an immobile little figurehead at the front of our convoy, who deliberately dropped his seal onto the sidewalk from time to time and watched me pick it up with a blend of total indifference and guarded curiosity. You watch it, I said. In the supermarket, as I pushed his stroller between the shelves making a quick note of what I had to buy, he took to thrusting his arm out suddenly to try to get hold of whatever he could, so that I was obliged to maneuver the stroller skillfully back and forth to keep him out of reach of everything he tried to snatch from the shelves. Somewhat put out by my stops and starts, he needed a bit of time to right himself each time I swerved, which didn’t stop him from sticking out his arm again as soon as he could and trying to grab something else that was shelved at just his height. Finally, wanting to do my shopping in peace, I asked an elderly woman waiting at the checkout if she wouldn’t mind taking care of him for a few seconds, the time it would take for me to go get one or two things. The woman was more than happy to accept and, as I crouched down at my son’s feet to explain that he had to stay with the woman for a moment and that he should give her a little kiss on the cheek, my son looked very sad in his stroller all of a sudden. But she’s a very nice woman, I said to him. What’s your name, Madam? Marie-Ange, said the woman, who’d come nearer and bent down toward my son. She’s very nice, Marie-Ange, I said to my son, you don’t want to give her a little kiss? Look, like this, I said (and I kissed the woman, who seemed somewhat taken aback, on the cheek).

Leaving the supermarket I walked back to the center of the village and sat down at a café terrace on the main street. There were just a few tables outside, round white plastic tables that had been out in the rain that morning, with a few raindrops still clinging to the seats. I’d lit a cigarette and looked out at the port on the other side of the street, where dozens of sailboats rocked softly in the wind to a continual clinking of booms and stays. Most of the masts were stripped of their sails. Naked and metallic, they rose very high in the sky, with a couple of wisps of cloth fixed here and there to the tops of the spars, little flags or white handkerchiefs, which fluttered in the wind and beat against the yardarms. A large fishing boat was being repaired in front of the port authority a little way off, heaved up onto chocks in the middle of the careenage, and two men stood there talking about the hull by the looks of it, while a third, sitting at the wheel of his car with the door open, watched them talking, intervening from time to time to shoot down any suggestions they made with a sort of resigned fatalism that his companions accepted good-naturedly, as if the man in the car was the skipper and his boat was in fact a lost cause. The rest of the village was very calm, and I drank my aperitif on the terrace while looking over at my son from time to time, who was sitting beside me in his stroller, his eyes fixed on the large horizon. Occasionally a car passed, crossing the village without stopping, and my son watched it with interest, a cookie in his hand, tilting his head forward to watch it drive off without taking his eyes off it for a second.

I’d taken the four letters I’d removed from the Biaggis’ mailbox the night before out of my pocket and I looked at them while wondering what on earth could have induced me to take them. Because even if I might have thought for a moment that I’d give them to the Biaggis in person, returning them now struck me as highly difficult without also giving them an explanation. And what explanation could I give? Then should I act as if nothing had happened and go back to their place one evening to put them back in the mailbox? I didn’t know. In any case I was thinking it wasn’t such a bad thing that the Biaggis hadn’t received the letter I’d sent them from Paris a few days before, even though all it contained was a few words saying I was thinking of spending a couple of days in Sasuelo. But if they had rece...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Also By
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• I
• II
• III
• About the Author