Tropic Moon (15 page)

These were trifling details, nothing more. But they had an effect on Timar. They added to all the other reasons he had to be in a bad mood.

Music was coming from the hotel. They were playing a Hawaiian record that Timar had heard fifty times before. There was the click of billiard balls.

He paused for a moment before going in and scowled so as to assume a threatening air, but no one noticed him at all. A logger and the notary clerk with the enormous gut were playing billiards. Their backs were turned, blocking him from the sight of four other men who were leaning together conspiratorially at a table next to the gramophone. The clock showed eleven. There was no one behind the counter. The notary clerk stepped back, bumping into him. He turned around.

“Well! It's you, young man.”

Timar sensed the annoyance.

“Hey, everybody!”

And everybody looked at him, not much surprised but definitely hostile. He was a nuisance, it would appear. There was an exchange of glances. Bouilloux, among the four talking at the table, got up, came over, and cried out with fake delight, “Well, what do you know? This is a surprise!”

Timar's arrival was what he'd foreseen and feared the most.

“So, you came by plane?”

“By canoe.”

Bouilloux let out a brief whistle of admiration.

“What are you drinking?”

Timar had shaken his outstretched hand reluctantly. He hadn't been up to ignoring it. The players went back to their game of billiards. Someone changed the record on the phonograph.

“Have you eaten?”

“No … yes. I'm not hungry.”

“I bet, in any case, you haven't taken your quinine the last couple of days. Just look at your eyes!”

The tone was friendly, but veiled. Among the three people remaining at the table, the one-eyed man surveyed Timar grimly, while Maritain got up abruptly. He gave everyone's hand an angry shake.

“It's late—I'm going to bed.”

He seemed to be escaping, afraid of a scene he preferred not to witness. For the first time, Timar was at the center of attention—the situation was almost theatrical. He was the character everyone tiptoes around, and he remembered that he was carrying a gun in his pocket.

“Come on, have a drink!”

Bouilloux dragged him over to the counter. From the other side, he filled two glasses with calvados.

“Cheers! Have a seat.”

Timar hauled himself up onto one of the stools, drained his glass, and stared stonily at his companion. They weren't going to pull the wool over his eyes! He knew that the billiard game behind his back was only for show, just like the conversation going on by the phonograph off to the right.

Only one thing mattered to anyone: Bouilloux and him; or, rather, their fight.

“Another of the same!” he said, holding out his glass.

And Bouilloux hesitated for a second. He was scared. Timar found himself hamming up his threatening appearance and tough talk. He was acting a lot more confident than he felt.

“Adèle?”

And Bouilloux, with the bottle of calvados in his hand, was also playacting—to gain time.

“Still as much in love as ever? Ha! Ha! You two must be getting along just great up there, with no one to bother you!”

It was wrong, all wrong!

“Where is she?”

“Where is she? You're asking me where she is?”

“She isn't here?”

“Why would she be here? Cheers! So tell me, how long did it take to come downriver by canoe?”

“It doesn't matter. You mean Adèle didn't come to the hotel?”

“I didn't say that. Maybe she did, but she isn't here right now.”

Timar had taken the bottle from Bouilloux's hand and poured himself a third glass. Suddenly he wheeled around on the billiards players, catching them by surprise as they were standing there eavesdropping.

“The game's yours! Nice shooting,” the notary clerk said too loudly.

Timar had never felt so nervous and yet so clearheaded at the same time. He felt capable of anything, and of pulling it off with complete coolness. He looked at Bouilloux again. He imagined his appearance was terrifying, not realizing that he looked ravaged by fever. What had shocked Bouilloux so much was his pallor, his shot nerves. The logger picked up the two glasses and said, “Come on, young man. Let's talk.”

He led him to a corner in the café where they wouldn't be overheard. He set the bottle and glasses on the table, rested his elbows on it, and stretched out a hand toward Timar.

The guests at the other table left, mumbling, “Till tomorrow, Louis. Good night, all.”

Their footsteps could be heard outside. Only the billiard players were left—so animated that it looked suspicious.

“Keep calm. This is no time to do something stupid.”

The tone was patronizing, but so warm that it reminded Timar of the voices of some priests he'd known when he was a teenager.

“I'm not playing games. We're both grown men.”

He looked at his companion's face, sipped his drink, and took back the bottle Timar had commandeered.

“Not now!”

The masks were in their places on the pastel walls. Nothing had changed in the café except for the fact that Adèle, wearing her black silk dress and serious look, was no longer behind the counter, absorbed in her accounts, her chin on her folded hands while she stared off into space.

“The business is going to court tomorrow. Get it?”

His face was very close to Timar's. It was a strange face. Seen up close, it wasn't as brutish as Timar had imagined. Again he was reminded of one of his confessors, who'd had the same gruff voice.

“Everything's set. There's no reason for Adèle to worry. Only it took a lot of doing.”

“Where is she?”

“I'm telling you, I don't know. You mustn't come up at the assizes. It would be better yet if no one even knew you were in Libreville. Don't you get it? Adèle's a good girl—who doesn't deserve eight to ten years of hard labor.”

It was hallucinatory: Timar heard the words and understood them, but at the same time he had the impression of seeing through them, as if through bars.

Adèle was a good girl—that's how they talked about her! And they'd slept with her, for God's sake! They were all friends—all part of the same crew, and he was in their way.

Like an angry child who won't listen, he repeated, “Where is she?”

Bouilloux almost gave up. He drained his glass but forgot to prevent Timar from refilling his.

“Listen—the whites here, we stick together. What she did is what she had to do. It doesn't do any good to talk about it. Once again, I'm telling you everything's set—there's nothing you can do but wait and hope things turn out all right.”

“When you were her lover, did—”

“No, my boy, no!”

“You told me—”

“It's not the same thing! You have to try to understand, because the situation is serious. I said I'd slept with Adèle. So did a lot of people. That has nothing to do with it.”

Timar laughed bitterly.

“Nothing to do with it, I said. And that's why, now, I'm not going to …”

He saw how pale Timar was and how he was clenching his fists and hurried on: “There are things in life that sometimes you just have to do. Adèle, back then, had Eugène's full support. The proof it wasn't the same all those times is that Eugène never got jealous. He knew what was necessary.”

Timar laughed. He wasn't sure that he wasn't going to break down sobbing with humiliation.

“We here—and the big shots like the governor and company—it was all like a favor she was doing us, the cost of doing business.”

Bouilloux's voice turned hard, almost threatening.

“I'd known Adèle for ten years. So! With you, I think, it was the first time. And if I'd known anything about it, I would have done my best to stop it. So there!”

His tone became passionate.

“It was pure chance that Eugène died that night, because if he hadn't I'm certain things would have turned out badly. Don't you see yet? Do I have to dot the i's? I swear: Adèle's in danger. It's a miracle that she's almost in the clear—almost, because it's tomorrow that'll settle the matter one way or the other. So once again I'm telling you that there are some of us here who aren't going to allow …”

He fell silent. Had he thought he'd said too much? Or was he horrified by the sight of Timar, his pale face with its feverish red patches, his shining eyes and blue lips? Those emaciated fingers trembling on the table.

“It doesn't do any good to speak ill of someone. Adèle knows what she's doing.”

The billiard balls were still clicking; the two men went on diligently circling the green felt.

“So she's got her plan. Tomorrow night, everything will be over. She can go back up there with you. As to knowing whether she should have left Libreville and all, that's her business.”

“Where is she?”

“Where is she? I don't know! And no one here has the right to ask her, get it? Least of all you. Where is she? Probably between someone's sheets, trying to save her skin!”

Bouilloux turned abruptly to the boy standing motionless by the counter.

“Close the place up!”

Then he turned to the players.

“Hey you, get out!”

He was the one who was angry now. Timar didn't know what to say. His hand itched with his desire to pull out his revolver. He heard the sound of the shutters closing, the last guests going off.

Bouilloux stood, almost as worked up as Timar. He leaned over him from above, dominating him with his bulk.

“If she has to do that to save her skin, are you going to get in the way?”

His fists were clenched and he was ready to strike. Timar, for his part, was thinking seriously about shooting.

But no—the brute regained self-control, even warmed up. He put his hand on the young man's shoulder.

“Look, my boy, don't start getting any funny ideas. We're going quietly off to bed. And tomorrow night it'll all be over. You can go back up there, the two of you, and love each other in peace.”

Timar poured himself one last glass of liquor and gulped it down. He still looked troubled and anxious, but when Bouilloux pushed him toward the stairs, he didn't resist.

“She's a woman you have to take your hat off to,” the logger said from behind him.

Timar never found out who put the candle in his hand or how he made it up to his room or why, when he fell fully dressed on the bed, he tore the mosquito net down.

All he remembered were his great convulsive sobs and waking up with a start when the candle had gone out. He clutched the pillow in his arms as if it had been Adèle.

T
HE COURTHOUSE
, like the cemetery, had a provisional flavor, an atmosphere of anything goes, a contempt for tradition. Probably that was why it made Timar think of the burial of Eugène Renaud.

No molding, no dark wood paneling, nothing to give the décor the wonted solemnity. The great bare room might as well have been a factory. The walls were peeling in the heat. There were four openings out onto the veranda, where at least two hundred blacks—blacks dressed city-style along with naked blacks from the bush—were pressed tightly together, some standing, others seated on the ground.

There were no chairs or benches for the spectators inside, and no box for the accused—nothing that makes a court a court. A rope was the only thing separating the officers of the court from the crowd, though almost all of the whites had been admitted into the reserved section.

The blacks, some Spaniards and Portuguese, and a couple of Frenchmen who'd arrived late, like Timar, were on the other side of the rope.

The judge was set to preside over the proceedings from behind a table covered with a green cloth. Were those the assistant magistrates around him? Was he the only judge? The one writing had to be the court clerk. But what were the prosecutor and chief of police doing there, sitting on wicker chairs, their legs sprawled out in front of them? And all those other people Timar didn't know who'd gotten seats?

The windows were open and the blacks on the veranda were profiled against the light, motionless. All the white men were in linen suits. They wore their sun helmets as a protection from the glare.

People were smoking, getting comfortable.

Lost among the blacks, Timar looked for Adèle a long time before spotting her.

Only in the morning had he managed to fall asleep. Bouilloux, no doubt intentionally, had failed to wake him, and when he'd opened his eyes, it was ten. He'd gone downstairs without shaving and found nobody in the house but the boy. Timar had run to the courthouse, his suit wrinkled and his cheeks covered with stubble. He hadn't had any coffee. He'd pushed his way through the crowd of blacks and into the courthouse, and it had taken him a long time to get the hang of things, to see and understand what was going on.

The whites, without exception, seemed overwhelmed by the heat. In front of the cord, in the very front row, a half-naked black with the fat face of someone from the bush was plaintively droning on with the occasional timid gesture of his rose-colored palm, though standing rigidly at attention throughout.

Was anyone listening? The whites were chatting with one another. From time to time the judge turned toward the windows and shouted something; the black crowd withdrew a little before pressing forward again moments later.

Timar didn't understand what the man was saying. He didn't know who he was. But now, not far from the prosecutor, he spotted Adèle's black dress and the corner of her profile. She hadn't seen him yet. She was signaling to someone else.

The black droned on, rattling off sentences in his pitiful voice. On the wall there was a large white clock of the sort found in government offices. The hands advanced with a jerk. A boy carrying a tray with glasses, a siphon, and a bottle made his way up to the judge. He set the tray down in front of him, and the men around the table all had a drink while ignoring the black man. Adèle had just seen Timar. White as the clock and holding her breath, she looked at him from afar. He fixed her with a malevolent stare.