Project for a Revolution in New York. Alain Robbe-Grillet

of being a cop. Nor do I tell her about JR’s disappearance and the investigations into her case which have taken up most of my working time.

      It is at the office that I hear the news. I have already told how this office works. To all appearances, it is a placement office of the United Manichean Church. But in reality, the domestics by-the-month, lady’s companions or various slaves, the part-time secretaries, the high-school-student baby-sitters, the call girls paid by the hour, etc, are so many information agents—of organized crime and propaganda—which we thereby manage to introduce into the establishment. The rings of call girls, high-class prostitutes and concubines obviously constitute our best cases, since from them we get both irreplaceable contacts with men in office and also the larger part of our financial resources, not to mention the possibility of blackmail.

      JR had been placed as a baby-sitter the week before, in answer to a tiny advertisement in The New York Times: “Unmarried father wants young girl, pleasant appearance, docile character, for night sessions with rebellious child.” The child in question actually existed, despite the oddly promising text of the advertisement: the words “docile” and “authoritarian” figuring, as is well known, high on the list of specialists’ code words. In principle, what was involved should have been the participation in the training of a novice mistress, giving her if need be a good example of submission.

      Therefore we sent JR, a handsome white girl with a fine head of auburn hair which always creates a good effect in intimate scenes, who had already handled similar cases on several occasions. She arrives that same evening at the address given, on Park Avenue, between Fifty-sixth and Fifty-seventh Streets, wearing a very short, close-fitting green silk dress which has always given us good results. To her great surprise, it is a little girl of twelve or a little older who opens the door; she is alone in the apartment, she says in answer to JR’s embarrassed question, her name is Laura, she is thirteen and a half, and she offers JR a glass of bitter lemon while they chat, to get to know each other …

      JR insists: “I really wanted to see your father …” But the little girl immediately declares, quite offhandedly, that in the first place that is impossible, since he’s gone out, and besides, “you know, he’s not really my father…,” these last words whispered in a much lower tone, confidentially, with a tiny smothered laugh to end the sentence in a very good imitation of polite embarrassment. Having absolutely no interest in the problem of adopted or illegitimate children, JR would have been ready to leave right away, if the opulence of the house—the avant-garde millionaire style—hadn’t made her stay after all, to satisfy her professional conscience. So she drank the lemon the little girl served her in a kind of boudoir where the seats and little tables were inflated by pressing on electric buttons. To make conversation, and also because it might be a useful piece of information under other circumstances, she asked if there were no servants.

      “Well, there’s you,” Laura answered, with her prettiest smile.

      “No, I mean, to do the housework, the cooking …”

      “You don’t plan to do any housework?”

      “Well, I … I didn’t think that was what I came for … There’s no one else?”

      The little girl’s expression now contrasted with her previous simperings of a child pretending to be the lady of the house. And in a very different tone of voice, remote and as though filled with melancholy, or despair, she finally said, as if with great reluctance: “There’s a black woman, mornings.”

      Then neither of us said another word for what seemed to me quite a long time. Laura sipped her bitter lemon. I decided she was unhappy, but I wasn’t there to deal with that question. And at that moment, there were steps in the next room, heavy and determined steps on a creaking floorboard; at first I didn’t think of how old it was to have that kind of floor in such an apartment building. I said: “Is there someone next door?”

      The child answered: “No,” with that same remote expression.

      “But I just heard someone walking … Listen, there it is again! …”

      “No, it can’t be, there’s never anyone there,” she answered, in her most stubborn manner, against all appearances.

      “Then perhaps you have neighbors?”

      “No, there are no neighbors. This is all the apartment!” And with a sweeping gesture, she included the vicinity of the boudoir in all directions.

      Nonetheless she got up from her pneumatic chair and took a few nervous steps to the large bay window which seemed to open onto nothing but the unvarying gray sky. That was when I noticed how silent her own footsteps remained on the white carpeting thick as fleece, even when she tapped on the floor with her little black patent-leather shoes.

      If little Laura’s intention had been to drown out by her movements the noises of the adjoining room, it was a miscalculation in any case, especially since they continued all the louder behind the partition, from which came now the quite recognizable echoes of a struggle: trampling, furniture knocked over, heavy breathing, clothes ripped, and even, soon after, groans, muffled pleas, as though uttered by a woman who for unknown reasons dares not raise her voice, or is materially prevented from doing so.

      The little girl, too, was listening now. When the moaning assumed a more particular character, she gave me a sidelong glance, and I had the impression that a fugitive smile passed across her lips, or at least between her half-closed eyelids which had perceptibly winked. But then there was a fierce scream, so violent that she made up her mind to go and see, though without seeming in any way surprised or alarmed.

      Having left my seat at the same moment, in an instinctive movement, I saw the door close behind Laura; then, since there was nothing more to be heard, I turned my head toward the sheet of glass. I was thinking, of course, of the fire escape; but aside from the fact that no such thing exists on any building of recent construction, I would have been very reluctant to use, once again, this convenient means of regaining the street, the subway, my abandoned house … In a few meditative steps, however, I reach the huge bay window, and raise the thick tulle curtains covering it.

      I am then amazed to discover that the room we were in overlooks Central Park, which seems to me quite impossible, given the position of the building JR entered a few minutes earlier. It would have required, in other words, that the complicated route she took to the apartment door from the entrance lobby, by various elevators and escalators, made her pass under at least one street. But now these topographical reflections divert me to a scene which is taking place at the very bottom, between the bushes, not far from a streetlamp casting a dim light over the figures, distorting their shadows.