Hubert Aquin - Next Episode

“I want to see your superior,” I tell him.

“It’s un-Christian to disturb someone this early in the morning …”

“I don’t care, I have to see him. I’m on an official mission and I have to know whom I’m dealing with before I disclose my identity. I’m serious: be quick, it’s very important … for you. In fact … I have a feeling that we’re in the same line of business and, besides, that we work for the same interests …”

There were many drawbacks to making the first move, especially because I didn’t know yet if my adversary had a clear picture of why I’d shadowed him the night before. I had to proceed cautiously and dissemble with style or I was liable to be taken unawares. The memory of the ruined evening that saw my elaborate race from the Château d’Ouchy to the Hôtel des Rochers de Naye in Montreux, then my round trip across the Col des Mosses to Château d’Oex with a stop in Geneva where I practised my running, was bitterly humiliating. While drawing on all the resources of my pride as I tried to look intelligent, I was still obsessed by my failure. The worst humiliation was still to come because, in a few hours, if I should be set free, I’d have to show K how ineffectual I’d been, give her a detailed account: my automobile exploit, my euphoria on the terrace of the Café du Globe, and my final rout. All things considered, I was disqualified by H. de Heutz, and if I’m now steering clear of a detailed review of my mission, it’s so I won’t twist the knife in the wound.

My armed guard was standing motionless between the windows while I, rotting with shame and impatience, stood against the light from the vast, extra-luminous landscape that spread out beyond the chateau. How to adopt a haughty attitude when all you want to do is cry and use the telephone, as if that were something to do in such a situation? Anyway, I didn’t have K’s number, and the only way we’d agreed to get in touch was to meet on the terrace of the Hôtel d’Angleterre late that afternoon. In the meantime, in return for such a display of imagination and boldness I had only one thing to do: leave the leaden chateau where an unknown man, H. de Heutz no doubt, was letting the butt of his 45 protrude from his jacket and, not without elegance, questioning me and forcing me to answer before I’d got my wits back. He interrogated me, and there was no question of not answering: it would have been impolite and awkward and it would have prolonged an incarceration that as far as my honour was concerned had already lasted too long. So I reply after a fashion. I speak, but what do I actually say? I don’t make any sense. My improvised remarks veer into insinuations. Why in hell should I recount this tangled tale about my office in Geneva and tell him that a phone call would set matters straight and bring this ridiculous misunderstanding to an end? I’m talking nonsense.

It’s painful, this conversation with me at the centre. I keep it from flagging, I say whatever comes into my head, I unwind the bobbin, I make connections, I cause no end of trouble. Then I really go overboard, tell him I’m having a nervous breakdown, try to look as if I’m high on drugs. And all this business about financial problems, the tall tale about my two children and my wife whom I’ve abandoned: a pack of lies … He still hasn’t moved. If he hasn’t slapped me, it may be because he’s taken the bait. Maybe I’ve even given him a good show. I make a last-ditch effort and go on telling my implausible story …

“I’ve been showing off for a while now; I’m trying to stand up and play the game. This business about an armed chase and espionage is a gruesome joke. The truth is simpler: two weeks ago I abandoned my wife and my two children … I don’t have the strength to go on living: I’ve lost my mind … In fact, I was heading for disaster, awash in debts, and I couldn’t do a thing, couldn’t even go home. I panicked: I took off, ran away like a coward … I’d intended to use the pistol in a holdup, make off with several thousand Swiss francs. I went into many banks, gripping the weapon, but I could never use it. I was afraid. Last night I walked all over Geneva — I don’t even remember where; I was looking for a deserted spot … to commit suicide! [All is well: H. de Heutz hasn’t moved a muscle yet.] I want to end it. I don’t want to live any longer …”

“Sure. That’s pretty hard to swallow …”

“You don’t have to believe me. At this point I couldn’t care less.”

“If you insist on killing yourself, it’s your business … But I’m not explaining myself very well: if you had the urge to do that in the middle of the night, why start tailing a man and not let him out of your sight?”

“But I wasn’t following you; I don’t even know you … Aha, so that’s why I’m here! Now I understand … My life is over in any case, so do what you want. You thought I was a spy: do what you have to do in such a case. Kill me. I’m asking you to …”

I was somewhat surprised to see that H. de Heutz almost believed my psychiatric rendition. One thing is certain though, he hesitated. Meanwhile, I was putting on the mask of a severely depressed man. I was thinking about the two young children waiting for me somewhere and about their mother who couldn’t tell them why Papa doesn’t sleep at home any more. Poor kids, they won’t even know that their father wanted to kill himself because he lacked the strength to remake his life or to rob banks. They don’t know that their father is disreputable, a degenerate. While I think about these expectant children, something unpleasant is going on inside me. Wanting to be taken for someone else has made me into that other person; suddenly the two children he abandoned are mine, and I’m ashamed. H. de Heutz is still looking at me. I slump down before him. I’ve swallowed whatever dignity I have. I no longer have even the old pride that used to let me eject myself from a flaming vehicle. I’m prisoner in a chateau that faces the blazing lake whose glimmers I can distinguish at the back of the landscape. Through the big windows light floods in and fills the opulent salon where I’m dying of lethargy and helplessness, ensconced in my invented depression. I no longer know what’s going to happen and I don’t even feel like maintaining the initiative to keep H. de Heutz from outdistancing me.

“And what’s this, a love letter?”

He unfolds a sheet of blue paper, the same one I found in my mail at the Hôtel de la Paix the other evening. He holds out the paper without moving the barrel of his gun away from my face. At once, I recognize the shape of that damned poem. I scan it again, not trying to decipher it but thinking it was a piece of evidence: CINBEUPERFLEUDIARUNCOBES-CUBEREBESCUAZURANOCTIVAGUS. While I murmured each syllable of this cryptogram, I told myself that I was finished because of this abstract message that may actually have been nothing but a huge joke on the part of Hamidou, dear man, a transcription into Latin characters of some vernacular dirty joke. Good old Hamidou had got me in a fine fix with his secret message: my time is definitely up, my goose is cooked, I’m kaput, versich! Nevertheless, to me the stream of syllables in that hypercoded message meant that I had better things to do than try to gain some time when time itself was working against me. The seconds were breaking into a thousand divergent hunches that wouldn’t lead to any precise action. I’d have to put an end to this rush of pointless hunches soon, and do something besides gawk at H. de Heutz and at the horrible Senegalese stomach rumble which I was trying to read between the lines, as if a signal might come to me from this sticky pile of consonants and vowels that was nothing but a brilliant example of black humour.