Then, almost gleefully, he hunched his shoulders, rounded his back, and set off for the town hall. This time he didn’t glance into the shops, reflecting that he lived in the heart of the village now, and didn’t have to face the inquisitive stares of the beribboned, breast-bound shopkeepers. Would they still look at him like that, seeing him come out of the Relais? Very possibly not, he told himself. So everything was going according to plan. He stopped to pick up a few things at the Co-op. He was almost out of money. And there was no bank or cash machine in the village. He’d have to go all the way to L., an undertaking whose prospect he found tedious and, though he didn’t know why, worrisome. If not to be heading home to Paris, was it a good idea to leave the village?
In the town hall’s vast, brightly lit lobby, he spotted Charlotte slumped on a chair, hands in her coat pockets, legs outstretched. Delighted at this excuse to go in, as he’d been wanting to do since he woke up not long before, he pushed open the glass door and cheerily hailed Charlotte, who answered him as always without surprise, pleasant and neutral. What was she doing here? She was waiting for Métilde, who got off at six thirty. Did she wait for her every evening? Oh no, today they’d made special arrangements. Ordinarily she’d be helping her mother at the Relais right now.
Herman put down his umbrella, pulled up a chair. The fleet-footed office girls came and went with the same vigorous gait as early that morning, never glancing their way, displaying, Herman understood, a professional conscientiousness that nothing could be allowed to distract. Charlotte studied the floor, her feet, seemingly impervious to boredom. Little wrinkles marked the corners of her mouth and eyes. With a slightly unwholesome compassion, Herman observed that beneath her loosely tied blouse her body was saggy for a young woman’s, and she wasn’t displaying it to its best advantage half sprawled out like that, with an indifference that bothered and saddened Herman. Again he felt a nagging desire to grab and shake her, to make her mouth divulge everything that was in her, everything she was, which he assumed to be incomprehensibly ordinary and flat but which, for that reason, he thought, would never stop goading his desire to know more, his curiosity and impatience—the more ordinary it was, he told himself, the less his longing would be satisfied, and the more his imagination would chase after what he dimly saw as the essence of Charlotte, perhaps still hidden to him alone. But she didn’t seem like she’d ever had the desire or capacity to hide anything at all; she didn’t seem as if she’d ever conceived of any reason for doing so.
Herman pulled his chair closer to Charlotte’s, and she gave him a vague smile. Where exactly in the Relais did she live, if she didn’t mind his asking? No, she didn’t mind, room eleven, with the president, she’d been living there for three years. So she lived with Alfred? A little taken aback at Herman’s surprise, Charlotte sweetly shrugged her shoulders. With Alfred, yes, so she and Herman were neighbors, and besides room eleven was one of the best and most expensive in the hotel. Needless to say it was Alfred who paid for it. But Charlotte didn’t have any ribbons? She let out an amused little chuckle.
“We’re not married,” she explained, “or engaged, so no, no ribbons in sight yet for me.”
Suddenly her eyes were twinkling as if someone had told a good joke. Where had that come from, asked Herman, displeased, the idea of moving in with Alfred? Wasn’t that a slightly odd way to live? Oh no, because Charlotte had had a room of her own for a very long time, until she was twenty-three or -four, on the second floor, overlooking the courtyard, but once her parents had needed it for an extra customer, and since they didn’t know where to put Charlotte her mother suggested she move in with the president, who liked her and agreed right away, and who was away all day long in any case and didn’t bother her at all. That was how her life with Alfred began. Charlotte had nothing to complain about. It worked out for everyone. Besides, wasn’t she a little too grown up now to have a room all to herself, a room that could bring in money; even if, from another point of view, she did work at the Relais, to be sure, as hard as she could?
Herman snickered, and then, since the subject angered and saddened him, he dropped it to ask about Gilbert, Charlotte’s brother. He told her Gilbert had raised the possibility of a doubles match with the county councilor, but Herman wasn’t inclined to accept.
Charlotte blushed slightly, and for the first time since the start of their conversation she turned to Herman and looked at him straight on. But the tone of her voice was unchanged, slightly leaden, apathetic. She made pronunciation mistakes that offended Herman’s ears, however he tried to ignore them. He mustn’t refuse, she was saying, because Gilbert would be hurt and there had to be a good reason why Gilbert wanted Herman as a partner, something to do with the way he’d been courting the district councilor for two or three years—it was time something came of that, and why shouldn’t Herman help out if he could? Gilbert deserved it, Charlotte was convinced of that. And according to him when you live in such a remote village your only chance at bettering yourself is to climb onto the solid shoulders of some well-placed person, earning his goodwill and even making yourself—as Gilbert was doing with Lemaître—indispensable. No doubt the tennis match with Herman would put the crowning touch on certain specific efforts Gilbert had made, efforts whose nature Charlotte didn’t know, but all along he’d shown a willingness to do many things to ingratiate himself with Lemaître, in a spirit of self-abnegation that Charlotte admired and supported, she herself having no ambition to pride herself on. Gilbert’s willingness to do anything, yes, she admired that. His willingness, if necessary, to abandon all pride, respect for custom, decency, yes, she admired that too. Because she herself was far too weak and too stupid to set her mind on anything, that’s just how it was.
And Charlotte went on in a flurry of banal truisms, deformed proverbs, and tired clichés that Herman was no longer listening to. He simply looked at her, frowning, unsatisfied. And with great difficulty he held back from touching her, groping her, pawing her in some way—pitying her and vaguely resenting her for it.
“What about Alfred?” he said. “What are you hoping for from him?”
But she couldn’t think what she might hope for from anyone, because there was nothing she wanted. It was enough for her to help out by staying on at the Relais instead of moving to the Hôtel du Commerce, the village’s other boarding house, where the prices were slightly lower. She had nothing to complain about. Everyone treated her well, particularly Alfred, who was very nice to share his room with her. Charlotte’s mother didn’t even give him a discount.
“You’re not sharing his room,” said Herman. “He took you in, that’s all.”
But Charlotte didn’t understand these semantic subtleties. She shrugged, and her slightly weary face went even blanker than before. Doing nothing to hide it, she waited for Herman to change the subject or stop talking, and she too was capable of anything, although she hadn’t chosen to be, and didn’t realize that she was.
Finally, Métilde appeared, the last of thirty-some secretaries and office workers to come through the door. Emerging behind her, a man gently pushed her aside and hurried out into the street. He’d put on a rain hat, a yellow oilcloth hat, like a sailor’s.