“For now, I’d just like to withdraw some money from the bank,” said Herman.
“Then ask Gilbert to drive you to L.”
The mayor stood up. He probably knew the details of Herman’s life in the village better than Herman did himself.
Back at the hotel, as Herman lay stretched out on the bed, drifting off to sleep, Charlotte’s mother came to tell him he was wanted on the telephone downstairs. He went down in his stocking feet, as he inevitably did in the Relais now, lacking the initiative to put on his shoes.
It was the principal of the Parisian high school where Herman had been teaching for nearly twenty years. Herman listened in contrite silence as the principal complained about the difficulties he’d had getting ahold of him. It was a little after ten o’clock. Herman heard recess sounds on the other end of the line. A little surge of nostalgia made him tighten his grip on the receiver, absorbed in his thoughts. They were worried; they’d been surprised not to see him there on the first day of class. What were they supposed to think, what decision should they make? Herman wearily explained that he couldn’t possibly consider going back to work until he’d seen Rose and the child, which the principal entirely understood, his tone turning grave and respectful. He was aware of Herman’s case, thanks to a brief story from the local press reprinted in a Paris newspaper. It was known in Paris that such things happened, and the principal was deeply sorry, but not shocked. He simply hoped Herman would be home before they were forced to find a replacement for him. He offered his condolences. And when, with a little laugh, Herman refused them, the principal didn’t back down, defending the opinion of the newspaper he’d read, which said people who disappeared there disappeared forever.
“That’s not exactly what they told me,” Herman asserted.
But the principal was sure of his information, although that was as much as he knew: no family thus separated had ever been reunited.
“Well, we’ll see,” said Herman, breezily.
And he shivered with relief as he heard the end-of-recess bell ring back in Paris. He was so happy to be standing in his socks in the Relais’s silent dining room, observed and spied on by Charlotte’s mother, to be sure, and robbed of any opportunity to be completely alone, but, he reflected, since he never had to deal with anyone who thought like he did, as his Parisian friends and colleagues did, strangely delivered of the obligation to keep up a dignified appearance.
3 – Two or three days later, just before dinnertime, Herman was coming home from Métilde’s, where they’d examined a pamphlet she’d gotten on the career opportunities offered by a Vocational Training Certificate. With Gilbert not there and both of them sitting on the bed, she’d taken the opportunity to vigorously press her body to Herman’s.
“I’m bothering you,” she’d said sadly, as Herman sat stock still.
He was simply a little afraid of Gilbert, now that it had been agreed he’d be taking Herman to L., but he didn’t dare admit it to Métilde, who sighed, turning away. In profile, he saw her nose turn red. And so his mood was downcast when he left her.
Out on the main street, he didn’t immediately open his umbrella. The cold was sharper than the day before, and he thought there would be a freeze that night, the rain had become a fine drizzle. And then, as if they’d just come out of the closed house-wares store on the corner of the main street and the square, he saw Rose and the little one, hand in hand. They came toward him, bareheaded, in the same summer clothes they were wearing three weeks ago. Like Herman’s, their hair was dripping, and Rose’s short skirt clung to her thighs. The boy looked terribly thin, and his T-shirt was plastered to his ribs. Herman stood frozen in terror. Why was he afraid? In spite of the cold, neither Rose nor the child trembled. There was nothing unusual about the look on their faces: it was peaceful, a little misty, but not so changed that Herman had any reason to be petrified. And yet he was. The umbrella fell to the ground and rolled into the gutter. Rose looked at him and smiled as they strolled past. It was a distant, impersonal gaze, a polite smile, nothing more. The sidewalk wasn’t wide, and Herman thought Rose’s arm had to have brushed against his. But he hadn’t felt it—he was in fact sure there’d been no real physical contact. With great difficulty, he forced himself to turn around, and—relieved but still shivering—he watched them walk off, quickly, lightly, with eminently graceful steps. It almost seemed that the boy’s slender legs were being moved by strings, delicately pulled to make him look as if he were dancing. Shouldn’t Herman catch up with them and take them in his arms? It was only his fear of Gilbert that had stopped him from going to bed with Métilde a while ago, and so perhaps this meeting with Rose filled him with guilt, however convinced he was that she couldn’t possibly know.
He forced himself to follow them all the same. In a tiny little voice, he even called out:
“Hey, Rose!”
But he was glad to see that she didn’t turn around. They soon stopped at the window of the shoe store, and Rose seemed to reach for the door. Before Herman could see the door open they went in, disappeared into the dark shop, and if the door had opened, it was now closed again. Nothing was moving on the main street. No light filtered from the windows of the shoe shop. Herman didn’t hear a sound, not even the rain, which his ears had grown used to and no longer noticed, by day or by night.
He hurried back to the Relais, but he didn’t dare speak of what he’d seen to Alfred. He’d already noticed that the president walked with a perfectly relaxed gait back and forth in front of his window, in front of the attentive, ever benevolent gaze of the form across the way, sometimes glancing toward the glass—never speaking of the face, but never avoiding it either.
But the next morning Herman went back to the shoe store.
“If Rose did recognize me,” he asked himself, “what must she have thought?”
Now he was thinking he could make up for his behavior the evening before by showing Rose he had been looking for her. He stood for a moment at the rain-blind window. The shop sold nothing but slippers, espadrilles, and rubber boots. He was afraid to go in, terrified at the idea of seeing Rose again. The shopkeeper welcomed him into the empty store with the wide, charming, cold smile Herman was now so used to seeing in the village, which he sensed he was slowly coming to imitate, showing his teeth more than he ever did before, ducking his head until his chin almost touched his chest, and so peering up in an involuntarily cajoling way. Severely confined by her blouse, the woman’s breath was labored and loud. Her face was deep red from the tightly pulled cords, her posture was unnaturally straight, and she often put her hand to her chest as if asking its forgiveness for what she was forcing it to endure. Ill at ease, Herman tried hard to seem relaxed. He wandered around the shop for a moment, then asked, too abruptly: did she have any rooms that weren’t occupied by the house’s inhabitants?
“Yes, we have two or three empty bedrooms,” she graciously answered, and she nodded once, twice, although every move left her even more short of breath. Pulled up into a chignon, her hair was so pale and fine that Herman began to wonder if it was indeed a physical substance and not a sort of halo, discreetly ordinary in its appearance, but a halo all the same.