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slowly than usual, started off down the hotel drive. Ingrid and
Rigaud stood at the door for a moment, waiting to hear the
sound of the hooves grow fainter.
Rigaud was filled with apprehension, which Ingrid must
have shared, as she said:
"Maybe there's going to be an earthquake . . ."
And the sunlight all around them deepened the silence.
"
In the hotel lobby - no one. At this time of day the guests
were usually sitting at the tables at the far end, having their
aperitifs, and when Ingrid and Rigaud came back from the
beach they were greeted by the murmur of conversation.
4
5
The hall porter was standing behind the reception desk.
"You can spend one more night here. Tomorrow, I'll take
you to the villa. "
"Are we the only ones left?" Rigaud asked.
"Yes. The others left after lunch. Because of an article
yesterday in a Paris paper . . . "
He turned to the pigeonholes behind him, where a few now
useless keys were hanging.
"I've changed your room," said the porter. "It's wiser . . .
You're on the first floor . . . I'll bring you up some dinner
later . . . "
"Have you got the article?" Rigaud asked.
"Yes."
This time they went up the stairs and along the corridor lit by
a nightlight, to Room I I 6. The blinds were drawn, but even so
the sun filtered through and formed little rectangles of light on
the floor. There was just a bare bed-frame. Rigaud went over to
one ofthe windows and unfolded the paper the porter had given
him. The headline of the a icle, on the front page, hit him in the
eye: "The Perfumed Ghetto . . . Who's Who in the hotels on
the Cote d'Azur." A list of names at the start of the article. His
name wasn't there, as it sounded French.
"What does the article say?" Ingrid asked.
"Nothing of any interest . . . "
He folded the paper and stuffed it into the drawer of the
bedside table. A few years hence, when the war was over and
the hotel was once again full of life, a guest would discover this
paper as he, Rigaud, had found the empty packet of Craven A.
He went and lay down beside Ingrid on the bed-frame and
held her close to him. There was not even any point now in
picking up the card on the bedside table and hanging it outside
the door: "Do not disturb. "
"
5 5
He slept fitfully. He woke up suddenly and made sure that
Ingrid was still lying beside him on the frame. He had wanted
to lock the door, but that was a useless precaution: the porter
had given him a masrer key which opened the communicating
doors between the rooms.
Some men guided by the dark patch had entered the lobby
and were about to raid the hotel. But he wasn't at all afraid
for Ingrid. The men were going along the corridors on all five
floors with torches which barely pierced the darkness. And
they'd have to open, one after the other, the doors to the two
hundred and fifty rooms in the hotel to check whether or not
they were occupied.
He could hear the regular banging of the doors on the upper
floors. The bangs came nearer, and occasionally he heard
voices: the dark patch and the others had now reached their
floor. His hand tightened on the master key. As soon as he
heard them open the door to the room next to theirs he would
wake Ingrid and they'd slip into the room on the other side.
And this game of cat and mouse would continue through all
the rooms on the floor. The men really hadn't the slightest
chance of finding them, because they'd both be hidden in the
depths of the shadows of the Proven
Once again he awoke with a sta . Nor a sound. Not the
slightest banging of a door. The blinds let the daylight
through. He turned to Ingrid. Her cheek resting on her arm,
she was sleeping like the child she was.
"
At the end of the palm-lined drive stood the villa, with its
medieval-style fa
when he used to come here with his mother, Rigaud was
reading Walter Scott, and he imagined that the castles in Ivan
hoe or en Du ard were like this villa. The first time he
came, he had been surprised that the American woman and
;6
"Monsieur Bailby" were not dressed like the people in the
illustrations of these books.
The porter wanted to show them the garden first.
"I know it by heart," Rigaud said.
He could have walked down the paths with his eyes shut.
Over there were the well and the phoney Roman ruins, and
the big lawn cut like an English one which made a contrast
with the umbrella pines and oleanders. And over there, at the
edge of the lawn, was where he'd been when his mother had
forgotten all about him one evening and gone back to Cannes
without him.
"You'll be safe here."
The porter looked round the garden. Rigaud tried to con
quer his uneasy feeling by gripping Ingrid's arm. He had the
unpleasant impression that he was returning to his point of
departure, to the scene of his unhappy childhood, and that he
was sensing the invisible presence of his mother, just when
he had managed to forget the wretched woman: all his memor
ies of her were unpleasant. And now once again he would
have to remain a prisoner in this garden for hours upon hours
. . . The thought made him shiver. The war was playing a
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