A new life was surreptitiously knitting itself around him, a life made up of recent habits—hastily acquired, but already, it seemed to him, locked in place.
The coffee cup still next to the telephone told him at a glance that the cleaning lady had not come. He found the apartment in the same disarray in which he had left that morning—a livable disarray typical of many men who live alone. The French doors that gave onto the balcony had been left open, allowing dry leaves to blow inside. A film of dust covered the furniture.
Quentin went over to close the doors, saying that Yassa absolutely had to come and clean tomorrow. This was already the second day she’d skipped. It was troubling to think that she might not come back at all and that he would need to find someone else. It happened all the time. These people came from who knows where to do this kind of housework. All one knew was their first name, probably not their real one, and that was it. One fine day, they would fail to show, and there was no way to look for them, to find out why they had stopped coming, whether they had found a better job or were dead. They would simply vanish without a trace. One would then change the locks and look for someone else.
Were it not for the looming threat of Yassa’s defection, Quentin wouldn’t really mind her absence, for she had a peculiar way of mopping—she would throw herself onto the floor with her wet rag, scrubbing the tiles on her knees, almost prostrate at times, as if to demonstrate the full extent of her abject condition. She always looked tired and sickly, though whether this was real or feigned was hard to tell. He fell for it sometimes, feeling confusedly guilty over having somehow offended her and, to make amends, he would give her some small household object. Then, unfailingly, he would wish he hadn’t.
Breaking with habit, he was going out this evening: Gaudin had asked him the favor of standing in for him at a party he couldn’t attend, since he had to pick up his wife, who was returning from a two-month trip in Europe, where she’d had to go for surgery.
“So, you understand? It’s a vernissage for Sanariglia’s son . . .”
Of course he understood, and at that moment he’d even been glad to oblige, in return for Gaudin’s many services. But when it came time to put on a suit and tie, and to slip into his socks, he could see no reason why his presence was required that night at some exhibit, at the home of people he didn’t know.
He looked at his watch. It was time to get ready. A look out the window confirmed his hunch that it wasn’t the sort of weather to be going out in, and that he would be better off staying at home that evening. The afternoon was waning, and it would soon be nightfall. Every evening, night came abruptly, unannounced by dusk—unless by “dusk” one meant that very brief instant when the sunless sky turned mauve. Then the city was suddenly flooded in darkness, as if somewhere an enormous dike had given way.
He had never been to the Sanariglia’s, but he had no trouble understanding that they had done some substantial furniture rearranging to turn their living space into a gallery. The tables and sofas, arranged in a studiously haphazard fashion and draped in moiré silk and sumptuous satin, had abandoned their original function for the evening. The paintings, whose predominant color was a greenish yellow, were propped casually here and there. From the four corners of the central living room, loudspeakers were emitting a rather unpleasant monochord whistling sound. The lady of the house and mother of the artist moved from group to group explaining the fundamental importance of music to the visual arts. Thus Quentin realized that all the paintings represented different tunings, and that the whistling one heard was not simply the result of a faulty sound system. In the adjacent room, the hosts had spread a buffet of tiny edibles on trays and in baskets, shaped into checkerboards, pyramids, fans. He considered all this fragile, futile architecture for a moment, and decided he wasn’t hungry.
Guests kept arriving, all dusty and teary-eyed, for a violent sandstorm had descended on the city. Now that enough people had gathered, no one felt any further need to look at the paintings (Madame Sanariglia herself, busy shaking hands, never left the foyer). Quentin wanted to seize the moment to make his exit. A waiter took his glass with gratitude and compunction, placing it on a tray already overflowing with empty glasses showing fingerprints and lipstick. Quentin was making his way to the door to take leave of Madame Sanariglia when a new couple entered, very different from the other people present.
The woman had felt no need to extinguish her cigarette, but simply switched it to her left hand, greeted the hosts, then immediately switched it back to her right. Her reddish-brown hair was pulled back so tight that her eyes, her smile, and her entire face seemed to be converging toward the mass of chignon at the back of her head. She was very heavily made-up, and wore an extraordinary amount of jewelry (a mix of genuine and fake, no doubt). Her escort, a man in a white suit, was wearing a splendid tie. Quentin thought that her entire person must correspond to many people’s notion of beauty. Based on their age difference, they could be mother and son.
Quentin, who by then was on his way out, was the first person they met. Their names dissolved into the din of voices. The piped-in music had stopped, for a pianist who had emerged seemingly out of nowhere was now playing a piece that no one could hear. This man was overweight and getting on in years, and from where he stood, Quentin could see drops of sweat falling like tears onto the keyboard as he labored through his pathetic routine. Quentin repeated their names, almost shouting. The man in the white suit must have been Italian, since his first name was Luigi, but the woman, oddly, called him Sasha. Perhaps Quentin had misheard. The woman had a Russian-sounding name, however, which made sense out of Sasha.
The three of them made a quick exit, as they truly couldn’t hear a word. Outside, the sandstorm had ceased.
Quentin let himself be dragged along to the home of some of the woman’s friends to finish out the evening. There were a dozen people present, all younger than the three of them, with the exception of a man who may have been in his fifties, and whom Quentin assumed to be the host. He was wearing a palm-tree print shirt, and was laughing for no apparent reason other than the presence of the girl next to him, whose neck he fondled while whispering into her ear. His obvious desire to look younger than his years made him look older. On second thought, Quentin guessed that the man’s age must be closer to sixty. Very unlikable.
Conversation was lagging. Everyone seemed to have had quite a bit to drink. A boyish-looking girl gave a self-important account of her trip down south on some humanitarian mission. That kind of misery, it’s just unimaginable. And every night, you hear gunfire. They had even shot at her jeep. Quentin suppressed a yawn that made his eyes water.
Next to him, a tall, lanky American spoke in a groggy voice:
“Your bath, for instance, you take a cold one first, it’s refreshing in this heat. And then, after a little while, you want to get warmer, so you add some hot water, and that feels good. But how much is enough, huh? Because if you put too much in, you burn yourself. Then what?”
Having arrived at this point of his little speech, the American lost his train of thought and poured himself another drink. Within a few moments, he had completely changed topics; Quentin heard him trying to convince the girl sitting to his left to come spend the night at his place.
“But I’m warning you, it’s a pretty small apartment, I hope you enjoy doing it standing up,” he said.
At that, he rose and, with no further concern for the girl, issued a general “Good night, everybody,” then asked the palm-tree shirt if he could have a little bread for his breakfast in the morning. He’d completely forgotten to buy some.
Quentin, who was bored to tears, took advantage of this departure to make his own exit,