Seeing

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THE SUPERINTENDENT DID NOT WISH TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE interior minister's prodigal munificence. He did not seek distraction in theaters and cinemas, he did not visit the museums, he only left providential ltd, insurance and reinsurance, to have lunch and supper, and when he paid the bill at the restaurant, instead of taking the bill with him, he left it on the table along with the tip. He did not go back to the doctor's house and had no reason to return to the garden where he had made his peace with the dog of tears or, as he was officially known, Constant, and where, eye to eye, spirit with spirit, he had spoken with the dog's mistress about guilt and innocence. Nor did he go and spy on what the girl with dark glasses and the old man with the black eye-patch might be doing, or the divorced wife of the man who had been the first to go blind. As for the latter, the author of the vile letter of denunciation and author, too, of many misfortunes, the superintendent had no doubt that, if he saw him, he would cross over to the other side of the road. The rest of the time, for hours on end, morning and evening, he spent sitting by the phone, waiting, and even when he was sleeping, his ears were listening. He was sure that the interior minister would phone in the end, he could not otherwise understand why the minister had wanted to drain to the very last minute, or more accurately, to the final dregs, the five days he had allocated for the investigation. The most natural thing would be for the minister to order him back to headquarters to settle all outstanding accounts, whether by enforced retirement or by resignation, but experience had shown him that anything natural was far too simple for the interior minister's tortuous mind. He remembered the inspector's words, banal but expressive, It smells very fishy to me, he had said when the superintendent had told him about handing over the photograph to the man wearing the blue tie with white spots at military post six-north, and it seemed to him that the heart of the matter must lie there, in the photograph, although he could not imagine how or why. It was in this slow waiting, which had an end in sight and which would not, as people say when they want to embellish a story, be interminable, and in thoughts such as these, which were often nothing but a continuous, irrepressible somnolence from which his half-watchful consciousness occasionally startled him awake, that he would spend the three remaining days, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, three leaves from the calendar which resisted being torn from midnight's stitching and which then remained stuck to his fingers, transformed into a shapeless, glutinous mass of time, into a soft wall that both resisted and sucked him in. Finally, on Wednesday, at half past eleven at night, the minister phoned. He did not say hello or good evening, he did not ask the superintendent if he was well or how he was coping with being alone, he did not mention whether he had questioned the inspector and the sergeant, together or separately, in friendly conversation or by issuing harsh threats, he merely said in passing, as if apropos of nothing, I think you'll find something in tomorrow's newspapers to interest you, I read the papers every day, minister, Congratulations, you're obviously very well-informed, nevertheless I urge you most strongly not to miss tomorrow's editions, you'll find them most interesting, I'll be sure to read them, minister, And watch the television news too, don't miss it whatever you do, We have no television set at providential ltd, minister, What a shame, although, on second thoughts, I rather approve, it's better like that, it might distract you from the arduous investigatory problems we set you, besides, you could always go and visit one of your new friends and suggest you all get together and enjoy the show. The superintendent did not respond. He could have asked what his disciplinary situation would be after Thursday, but he preferred to say nothing, it was clear that his fate lay in the minister's hands, and so it was up to him to pronounce sentence, if he did ask, he was sure to receive some sharp riposte, along the lines of, Don't be in such a hurry, you'll find out tomorrow. Suddenly, the superintendent became aware that the silence had lasted longer than is considered normal in a telephone conversation, a mode of communication in which the pauses or rests between phrases are, generally speaking, either brief or even briefer. He had not reacted to the interior minister's spiteful suggestion and this had not appeared to trouble him, he had remained silent as if he were leaving time for his interlocutor to think of a response. The superintendent said cautiously, Minister. The electrical impulses carried the word down the line, but there was no sign of life at the other end. The albatross had hung up. The superintendent put the phone back on its rest and left the room. He went into the kitchen and drank a glass of water, it was not the first time he had noticed that talking to the interior minister created in him an almost desperate thirst, as if throughout the conversation he had been burning up inside and now had to hurry to put out his own fire. He went and sat down on the sofa in the sitting-room, but did not stay there long, the state of semi-lethargy in which he had lived for the past two days had disappeared, as if it had vanished at the minister's first word, for things, that vague agglomeration to which we usually give the generic and lazy label of things when it would take too much time and too much space to explain or merely define it, had begun to move very fast and they would not stop now until the end, but what end, and when, and how, and where. Of one thing he was sure, he did not need to be a maigret, a poirot or a sherlock holmes to know what the newspapers would publish the following day. The waiting was over, the interior minister would not phone him again, any order still to be issued would arrive through the intermediary of a secretary or directly from the police commissioner, a mere five days and five nights had been enough for him to go from being a superintendent in charge of a difficult investigation to a wind-up toy whose spring had gone and which was to be thrown out with the rubbish. It was then that it occurred to him that he still had one duty to perform. He looked up a name in the telephone book, mentally confirmed the address and dialed the number. The doctor's wife answered, Hello, Oh, good evening, it's me, the superintendent, forgive me for phoning you at this hour of the night, That's all right, we never go to bed early, Do you remember me telling you, when we were talking in the park, that the interior minister had ordered me to hand over that group photograph, Yes, I remember, Well, I have every reason to believe that the photograph will be published in tomorrow's newspapers and broadcast on television, Well, I won't ask you why, but I do remember you telling me that the minister wouldn't have wanted it for any good purpose, Exactly, but I never expected him to use it like this, What's he up to, We'll see tomorrow what the newspapers do apart from printing the photograph, but I imagine that they'll try to stigmatize you in the mind of the public, Because I didn't go blind four years ago, You know very well that the minister finds it highly suspicious that you didn't go blind when everyone else was losing their sight, and now that fact has become more than sufficient, from his point of view, for him to find you responsible, either wholly or in part, for what is happening now, Do you mean the blank votes, Yes, the blank votes, But that's absurd, utterly absurd, As I've learned in this job, not only are the people in government never put off by what we judge to be absurd, they make use of absurdities to dull consciences and to destroy reason, What do you think we should do, Hide, disappear, but don't go to your friends' apartments, you wouldn't be safe there, they'll be putting them under surveillance soon as well, if they haven't already, You're right, but, in any case, we would never put at risk the safety of someone who had chosen to protect us, right now, for example, I'm wondering if you haven't been foolish in phoning us, Don't worry, the line is secure, in fact, there aren't many lines much securer than this, Superintendent, Yes, There's a question I'd like to ask, but I'm not sure I dare, Ask it, please, Why are you doing this for us, why are you helping us, Because of something I read in a book, years ago now, and which I had forgotten, but which has come back to me in the last few days, What was that, We are born, and at that moment, it is as if we had signed a pact for the rest of our life, but a day may come when we will ask ourselves Who signed this on my behalf, Fine, thought-provoking words, what's the book called, You know I'm ashamed to say it, but I can't remember, Never mind, even if you can't remember anything else, not even the title, Not even the name of the author, Those words, which probably no one else, at least not in that precise form, would ever have said before, had the good fortune not to have lost each other, they had someone to bring them together, and who knows, perhaps the world would be a slightly better place if we were able to gather up a few of the words that are out there wandering around alone, Oh, I doubt the poor despised creatures would ever find each other, No, probably not, but dreaming is cheap, it doesn't cost any money, Let's see what the papers say tomorrow, Yes, let's see, I'm prepared for the worst, Whatever the immediate results, think about what I said, hide, disappear, All right, I'll talk to my husband, Let's hope he manages to persuade you, Good night, and thank you for everything, There's nothing to thank me for, Take care. After he had hung up, the superintendent wondered if he hadn't been rather stupid to declare, as if it were his property, that the line was secure, that there wouldn't be many lines in the country much more secure. He shrugged and murmured, What does it matter, nothing is secure, no one is secure.

He did not sleep well, he dreamed of a cloud of words that fled and scattered as he chased after them with a butterfly net, pleading, Stop, please, don't move, wait for me. Then, suddenly, the words stopped and gathered together in a clump, one on top of the other, like a swarm of bees waiting for a hive they could swoop down on, and he, with a cry of joy, lunged forward with his net. What he had caught was a newspaper. It had been a bad dream, but it would have been worse if the albatross had returned to prick out the eyes of the doctor's wife. He woke early. He pulled on some clothes and went downstairs. He no longer went out via the garage, through the tradesmen's entrance, now he went out through the main door, what one might call the pedestrian entrance, he greeted the porter with a nod of his head if he happened to see him in his lodge or exchanged a word or two with him if he was outside, but it wasn't necessary, he - the superintendent, not the porter - was, in a way, merely there on loan. The streetlights were still on, the shops wouldn't open for another two hours. He looked for and found a newspaper kiosk, one of the larger ones that receives all the papers, and he stood there waiting. Fortunately, it wasn't raining. The street lights went out, leaving the city plunged for a few moments in a last, brief darkness, which vanished as soon as his eyes grew accustomed to the change, and the bluish light of early morning descended upon the streets. The delivery van arrived, unloaded the bundles of papers and continued on its way. The newsagent started opening the bundles and arranging the newspapers according to the number of copies received, from left to right, from large to small. The superintendent went over to him, Good morning, he said, I'll have a copy of all of them. While the man was putting his purchases into a plastic bag, the superintendent looked at the rows of newspapers and saw that, with the exception of the last two, they all carried the photograph on the front page under banner headlines. The arrival of this keen customer with sufficient means to pay has got the newspaper kiosk off to good start this morning, indeed, we can safely say that the rest of the day will be no different, for every one of the newspapers will be snapped up, apart from those two piles on the right, of which only the usual number of copies will be sold. The superintendent was no longer there, he had run to catch a taxi he had spotted on the nearby corner, and having given the driver the address of providential ltd, and apologized for the shortness of the journey, he was now nervously taking the papers out of the bag and opening them. Alongside the group photo, with an arrow indicating the doctor's wife, was an enlargement of her face in a circle. And the headlines were, in red and in black, Revealed At Last - The Face Behind The Conspiracy, Four Years Ago This Woman Escaped Blindness, Mystery Of The Blank Ballot Papers Solved, Police Investigation Yields First Results. The still faint morning light and the swaying of the car as it bumped over the cobbled surface prevented him from reading the smaller print of the articles beneath. In less than five minutes the taxi had deposited him outside the door of the building. The superintendent paid, left the change in the driver's hand and rushed in. He raced past the porter without bothering to greet him and got into the lift, his state of excitement almost making him tap his toes with impatience, come on, come on, but the machinery, which had spent its whole life carrying people up and down, listening to conversations, unfinished monologues, tuneless fragments of songs, the occasional irrepressible sigh, the occasional troubled murmur, pretended that this was none of its business, it took a certain amount of time to go up and a certain amount of time to come down, like fate, if you're in that much of a hurry, take the stairs. The superintendent finally put the key in the door of providential ltd, insurance and reinsurance, turned on the light and made straight for the table on which he had spread out the map of the city and where he had eaten a last breakfast with his now absent assistants. His hands were shaking. Forcing himself to slow down and not to skip any lines, he read, word by word, the articles in the four newspapers that had published the photograph. With a few small changes in style, with slight differences in vocabulary, the information was the same in all of them and one could sense a kind of arithmetic mean calculated by the editorial consultants at the ministry of the interior to fit the original font. The primitive prose read more or less like this, Just when we were thinking that the government had decided to leave it to time, to that same time by which everything is worn away and transformed, the job of isolating and shrinking the malignant tumor that so unexpectedly grew in this nation's capital, taking the abstruse and aberrant form of the mass casting of blank ballot papers, which, as our readers know, vastly exceeded the number of votes cast for all the democratic political parties put together, our editorial desk has just received the most surprising and gratifying news. The investigatory genius and persistence of the police, in the persons of a superintendent, an inspector and a sergeant, whose names, for security reasons, we are not authorized to reveal, have managed to uncover the individual who is, in all probability, the head of the tapeworm whose coils have kept the civic conscience of the majority of the city's inhabitants of voting age entirely paralyzed and in a state of dangerous atrophy. A certain woman, married to an ophthalmologist, and who, wonder of wonders, was, according to reliable witnesses, the only person to escape the terrible epidemic four years ago that made of our homeland a country of the blind, this woman is now considered by the police to be the person responsible for the current blindness, limited this time, fortunately, to what used to be the capital city, and which has introduced into political life and into our democratic system the dangerous germ of perversion and corruption. Only a diabolical mind, like those of the greatest criminals in the history of humankind, could have conceived what, according to reliable sources, his excellency the president of the republic has so eloquently described as a torpedo fired below the water line of the majestic ship of democracy. For that is what it is. If it is proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, as everything indicates it will be, that this doctor's wife is guilty, then all those citizens who still respect order and the law will demand that the full rigor of justice falls upon her head. How strange life is. Given the singularity of her case four years ago, this woman could have become an invaluable subject of study for our scientific community, and, as such, would have deserved a prominent place in the clinical history of ophthalmology, but she will now be singled out for public execration as an enemy of her country and of her people. One is tempted to say that it would have been better if she had gone blind.

That last sentence, clearly threatening in tone, sounded like a judicial sentence, just as if it had said It would have been better if you had never been born. The superintendent's first impulse was to phone the doctor's wife, to ask if she had read the newspapers, to comfort her as best as he could, but he was prevented by the thought that, overnight, the probability of her phone being tapped had become one hundred percent. As for the phones of providential ltd, the red and the gray ones, they, of course, were linked directly to the state's private network. He leafed through the other two newspapers, which had not printed a single word on the subject. What should I do now, he asked out loud. He went back to the article, re-read it, and found it strange that they had not identified the people in the photograph, in particular, the doctor's wife and the doctor. It was then that he noticed the caption, which read thus, The suspect is indicated by an arrow. It seems, although there is no solid confirmation of this fact, that the doctor's wife took this group under her wing during the epidemic of blindness. According to official sources, identification of these people is at an advanced stage and will be made public tomorrow. The superintendent murmured, They're probably trying to find out where the boy lives, as if that would help them. Then, after some thought, At first sight, the publication of the photograph, unaccompanied by any other measures, appears to make no sense, since all the people in the photo, as I myself advised, could seize the opportunity and vanish, but then the minister loves a spectacle, a successful manhunt would give him greater political weight and more influence in both the government and the party, and as for other measures, the homes of these people are almost certainly already under round-the-clock surveillance, the ministry has had more than enough time to get agents into the city and to set up such a programme. While all of this was true, none of it answered his question What should I do now. He could phone the ministry of the interior on the pretext that, since it was now Thursday, he wanted to know what decision had been taken about his disciplinary situation, but there was no point, he was sure the minister would not speak to him, some secretary would merely come on the line, telling him to get in touch with the police commissioner, the days of conversations between albatross and puffin are over, superintendent. What shall I do now, he asked again, just sit here rotting away until someone finally remembers me and sends orders for the corpse to be removed, try to leave the city when it's more than likely that strict orders have been given at the frontier posts not to let me pass, what shall I do. He looked at the photograph again, the doctor and his wife in the middle, the girl with the dark glasses and the old man with the black eye-patch to the left, the guy who wrote the letter and his wife to the right, the boy with the squint kneeling down in front like a football player, the dog sitting at its mistress's feet. He re-read the caption, Full identification will be made public tomorrow, will be made public, tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. At that moment, he was suddenly gripped by an idea for a plan of action, but the following moment, caution was immediately protesting that it would be utter madness, The sensible thing, it said, would be not to wake the sleeping dragon, the stupid thing would be to approach while it's awake. The superintendent got out of his chair, paced twice around the room, returned to the table on which the newspapers lay, and looked again at the head of the doctor's wife surrounded by a white ring that looked already like a hangman's noose, at this hour, half the city is reading the newspapers and the other half is sitting in front of the television to hear what the newsreader on the first news bulletin is going to say or listening to the voice of the radio announcing that the woman's name will be made public tomorrow, and not only her name, but her address too, so that the whole population will know where evil has made its nest. The superintendent went to fetch the typewriter and brought it over to the table. He folded up the newspapers, pushed them to one side and sat down to work. The paper he was using bore the heading providential ltd, insurance and reinsurance, and could, if not tomorrow, certainly the day after tomorrow, be used by the state prosecution as proof of a second crime, that of using civil service stationery for his own purposes, an aggravating factor being the confidential nature of that correspondence and the conspiratorial use to which it was put. What the superintendent was typing was neither more nor less than a detailed account of the events of the last five days, from early Saturday morning when he and his two assistants had clandestinely breached the city blockade, until today, and this very moment of writing. Providential ltd does, of course, have a photocopier, but it seems to the superintendent impolite to give the original letter to one person and a mere copy to the other, however convincingly the very latest reprographic techniques may assure us that not even the eyes of a hawk could tell them apart. The superintendent belongs to the second oldest generation of those who still eat bread in this world, which is why he retains a respect for form, which means that, having finished the first letter, he started carefully copying it out onto a clean sheet of paper. It is, to be sure, still a copy, but not in the same way. When he had completed this task, he folded up the letters and placed each one in an envelope bearing the company name, sealed the envelopes and wrote the respective addresses. While it is true that the letters will be delivered by hand, the addressees will understand, if only by the discreet elegance of the gesture, that these letters from providential ltd, insurance and reinsurance, deal with important matters deserving of the news media's attention.

The superintendent is about to go out again. He placed the two letters in one of his inside jacket pockets and put on his raincoat, even though the weather is as mild as one could hope for at this time of year, as, indeed, he could ascertain for himself by opening the window and looking up at the slow, sparse, white clouds passing by overhead. It is possible that there may have been another strong reason, for the raincoat, especially of the belted trench-coat variety, is a kind of identifying feature of detectives from the classic era, at least ever since raymond chandler first created the character of marlowe, so much so that seeing a man walk by, a slouch hat on his head and his raincoat collar turned up, and immediately proclaiming there goes humphrey bogart with his piercing eyes gazing out between the edge of his collar and the brim of his hat, is the kind of knowledge that is within easy grasp of any reader of detective fiction, p.o. box death. This superintendent is not wearing a hat, his head is bare, as determined by the fashion of a modern world that loathes the picturesque and, as they say, shoots to kill without even asking if you're still alive. He has got out of the lift, walked past the porter's lodge, from where the porter waved to him, and now he is in the street ready to carry out his three objectives for that morning, namely, to eat a belated breakfast, to take a walk down the street where the doctor's wife lives, and to deliver the letters to their addressees. He achieves the first in this café, a cup of milky coffee, a couple of slices of buttered toast, not as tender and succulent as those he ate the other day, but there's no surprise there, life is like that, you win some, you lose some, and there are very few cultivators of buttered toast left, both amongst those who prepare it and those who eat it. Forgive these extremely banal gastronomic thoughts in a man who is carrying a bomb in his pocket. He has eaten and paid, now he is striding toward his second objective. It took him almost twenty minutes to get there. He slowed his pace when he reached the street and adopted the air of one just out for a stroll, he knows that if there are any surveillance police about they will probably recognize him, but he doesn't care. If one of them sees him and informs his immediate boss of what he saw, and if the boss passes on the information to his immediate superior, who then tells the police commissioner, who then tells the interior minister, you can guarantee that the albatross will croak out in his harshest tones, Don't come bothering me with things I already know, tell me what I don't know, namely, what that wretched superintendent is up to. The street is more crowded than usual. There are small knots of people standing around outside the building where the doctor's wife lives, they are locals moved by a curiosity which is in some cases innocent and in other cases morbid, and who have come, newspaper in hand, to the place where the accused woman lives, a woman they know more or less by sight or from an occasional exchange of words, and there is the inevitable coincidence that the eyes of some have benefited from the expertise of her ophthalmologist husband. The superintendent has already spotted the surveillance policemen, the first has positioned himself next to one of the larger groups, the second, leaning with feigned idleness against a wall, is reading a sports magazine as if, in the world of letters, nothing more important could possibly exist. The fact that he is reading a magazine and not a newspaper can be easily explained, a magazine, while affording sufficient protection, takes up much less of the watcher's visual field and can be quickly stuffed into a pocket should it become necessary to follow someone. Policemen know these things, they learn them in kindergarten. It happens that the men here have no inkling of the stormy relations between the superintendent walking along and the ministry they all work for, which is why they assume he is just part of the operation and has come to make sure that everything is going to plan. Nothing odd about that. Although at certain levels in the organization, there are already mutterings that the minister is dissatisfied with the superintendent's work, the proof of which is that he has ordered his two assistants to come back, leaving the superintendent to lie fallow, or, as others say, on stand-by, these mutterings have not yet reached the lower levels to which these officers belong. We should point out, however, before we forget, that the said mutterers have no very clear idea what the superintendent came to do in the capital, which just goes to show that the inspector and the sergeant, wherever they are now, have kept their mouths shut. The interesting thing, although not in the least amusing, was to see how the policemen went over to the superintendent and whispered conspiratorially out of the corner of their mouth, Nothing to report. The superintendent nodded, looked up at the windows on the fourth floor and walked away, thinking, Tomorrow, when the names and addresses are published, there will be far more people here. Further on, he saw a taxi and hailed it. He got in, said good morning and, taking the envelopes out of his pocket, read the addresses and asked the driver, Which of these is closest, The second one, Take me there, then, please. On the seat next to the driver lay a folded newspaper, the one that bore the striking headline, in letters the color of blood, Revealed At Last - The Face Behind The Conspiracy. The superintendent was tempted to ask the driver his opinion of the sensational news published in today's newspapers, but abandoned the idea for fear that an overly inquisitive tone in his voice might betray his profession, One of the hazards of being a policeman, he thought. It was the driver who brought the subject up, I don't know about you, but I reckon this story about the woman they claim didn't go blind is just one of those whoppers they dream up to sell newspapers, I mean, I went blind, we all went blind, how was it that this one woman kept her sight, you'd have to be a fool to believe that, And what about them saying that she was behind all those people casting blank votes, That's another load of old nonsense, a woman is a woman, she wouldn't get involved in things like that, I mean, if it was a man, possibly, he could be, but a woman, pfff, Yes, it'll be interesting to see how it all turns out, Once they've squeezed the juice out of this story, they'll invent another one, it's always the same, oh, you'd be surprised the things you learn behind the wheel, and I'll tell you something else too, Go on, Contrary to what everyone thinks, the rear-view mirror isn't just for checking on the cars behind, you can use it to look into the souls of your passengers too, I bet you'd never thought of that, No, I certainly hadn't, you astonish me, Like I say, this steering-wheel teaches you a lot. After such a revelation, the superintendent thought it best to allow the conversation to lapse. Only when the driver stopped the car and said, Here we are, did he dare to ask if that business about the rear-view mirror and the soul applied to all cars and all drivers, but the driver was quite clear about it, No, only taxis, sir, only taxis.

The superintendent entered the building, went over to the reception desk and said, Good morning, I represent providential ltd, insurance and reinsurance, and I'd like to speak to the director, If you're here about insurance, perhaps it would be better to speak to the administrator, In principle, yes, you're quite right, but what brings me to your newspaper is not a mere technical matter, and it's vital, therefore, that I speak to the director himself, The director isn't here right now, and I don't imagine he'll be in until the afternoon, Who do you think I should speak to then, who would be the best person, Probably the editor-in-chief, In that case, I would be grateful if you could tell him I'm here, providential ltd, insurance and reinsurance, Could you tell me your name, Providential will do fine, Oh, I see, the firm bears your name, Exactly. The receptionist made the phone call, explained the situation and, when she had hung up, said, Someone will be right down, mister providential. A few minutes later, a woman appeared, I'm the editor-in-chief's secretary, would you care to come with me. He followed her down a corridor, feeling quite calm and serene, then, suddenly, without warning, a realization of the bold step he was about to take took his breath away as if he had been punched in the solar plexus. There was still time to go back, to make some excuse, Oh, no, what a nuisance, I've forgotten a really important document which I really must have if I'm to talk to the editor-in-chief, but it wasn't true, the document was there, in his inside jacket pocket, the wine has been poured, superintendent, you have no option now but to drink it. The secretary showed him into a small, modestly furnished room, a couple of battered sofas that had fetched up here in order to live out the rest of their long lives in reasonable peace, a table in the middle with a few newspapers on it, a jumbled bookshelf. Sit down, please, the editor-in-chief asked if you wouldn't mind waiting for a moment, he's busy right now, That's fine, I'll wait, said the superintendent. This was his second chance. If he walked out of here and retraced the path that had led him into this trap, he would be safe, like someone who, having glimpsed his own soul in a rear-view mirror, had decided it was a fool, and that souls should not go around dragging people into the most terrible of disasters, but should, on the contrary, keep them safe from such things and behave themselves, because souls, if ever they do leave the body, almost always get lost, they simply don't know where to go, and it is not just behind the wheel of a taxi that one learns such things. The superintendent did not leave, not now that the wine has been poured, etc. etc. The editor-in-chief came in, I do apologize for keeping you waiting for so long, but I was in the middle of doing something and I couldn't leave it half-finished, There's no need to apologize, it's very good of you to see me at all, So, mister providential, what can I do for you, although from what I've been told, this does seem to be more a matter for the administrative office. The superintendent raised his hand to his pocket and took out the first envelope, I'd be grateful if you would read the letter inside this envelope, Now, asked the editor-in-chief, Yes, if you wouldn't mind, but I must tell you first that my name is not Providential, So what is your name, You'll understand when you've read the letter. The editor-in-chief tore open the envelope, unfolded the piece of paper and started to read. He stopped after the first few lines and looked, perplexed, at the man before him, as if asking if it wouldn't be more prudent to stop right there. The superintendent made a gesture urging him to continue. The editor did not look up again until he had finished reading, on the contrary, it seemed as if, with each word, he were plunging deeper and deeper in, and as if he could not possibly return to the surface wearing his usual editor-in-chief's face once he had seen the fearful creatures inhabiting the lower depths. It was a deeply troubled man who finally looked up at the superintendent and said, Forgive the blunt question, but who are you, My name is there in the signature, Yes, I can see the name, but a name is just a word, it doesn't explain anything about who the person is, I'd prefer not to have to tell you, but I understand perfectly your need to know, In that case, tell me, Not unless you give me your word of honor that the letter will be published, In the absence of the director, I'm not authorized to make that commitment, They told me in reception that the director will only be in this afternoon, Yes, that's true, at around four o'clock, Right, I'll come back later then, but I just want you to know now that I have an identical letter with me and that if you're not interested in the matter, I'll deliver it to that other addressee, The letter is, I assume, addressed to another newspaper, Yes, but not to any of the papers that published the photograph, Of course, but you can't be sure that the other newspaper would be prepared to take the inevitable risks involved in publishing the facts you describe, No, I can't be sure, I'm betting on two horses and I risk losing on both, My feeling is that you risk much more if you win, Just as you do if you decide to publish. The superintendent got to his feet, I'll be here at a quarter past four, Here's your letter, since we haven't yet come to an agreement, I can't and shouldn't hold on to it, Thank you for not making me ask you for it. The editor-in-chief used the telephone in the room to call the secretary, Show this gentleman out, will you, he said, and make a note that he will be back at a quarter past four, and you'll be there to receive him and take him to the director's office, Yes, sir. The superintendent said, See you later, then, Yes, see you later, and they shook hands. The secretary opened the door for the superintendent, If you'd like to follow me, mister providential, she said, and once they were out in the corridor, If you don't mind my saying, this is the first time I've ever come across someone with that surname, it didn't even occur to me that it could exist, Well, now you know, It must be nice to be called Providential, Why, Well, because it's providential, That's the best possible answer. They had reached reception, I'll be here at the time agreed, said the secretary, Thank you, Goodbye, mister providential, Goodbye.

The superintendent looked at his watch, it wasn't yet one o'clock, too early to have lunch, besides, he wasn't hungry, the buttered toast and coffee were still there in his stomach. He h ailed a taxi and asked to be taken to the park where, on Monday, he had met the doctor's wife, there's no reason why one should always do the thing one first decided to do. He had not thought of going back to the park, but here he is. He will then continue on foot, like a police superintendent quietly carrying out his patrol, he will see hew crowded the street is and may even exchange professional notes with the two guards. He walked through the garden and stopped for a moment to study the statue of the woman with the empty water jar, They left me here, she seemed to be saying, and now all I'm good for is staring into this grubby water, there was a time when the stone I'm made from was white, when a fountain flowed day and night from this jar, they never told me where all that water came from, I was just here to tip up the jar, but now not a drop falls from it, and no one has come to tell me why it stopped. The superintendent murmured, It's like life, my dear, we don't know why it starts or why it ends. He dipped the fingers of his right hand into the water and raised them to his lips. It did not occur to him that the gesture could have any meaning, however, anyone watching him from afar would have sworn that he had kissed that murky water, which was green with slime and came from a muddy pond, as impure as life itself. The clock had not advanced very much, he would have had time to sit down in the shade somewhere, but he did not. He repeated the route he had taken with the doctor's wife, he went into the street, where the scene had changed completely, now he could barely push his way through, there weren't just small knots of people, but a huge crowd that blocked the traffic, it was as if everyone from the neighboring area had left their houses to come and witness some promised apparition. The superintendent beckoned the two policemen over to the doorway of a building and asked them if anything had happened in his absence. They said that no one had left, that the windows had remained closed at all times, and they reported that two people unknown to them, a man and a woman, had gone up to the fourth floor to ask if the people in the apartment needed anything, but that the latter had replied in the negative and thanked them for their kindness. Is that all, asked the superintendent, As far as we know, replied one of the policeman, it's certainly going to be an easy report to write. He said this just in time, clipping the wings of the superintendent's imagination, which had unfurled and were already carrying him up the stairs, where he would ring the bell and announce, It's me, and then go in and tell them about the latest events, about the letters he had written, his conversation with the editor-in-chief, and then the doctor's wife would say Stay and have lunch with us, and he would, and the world would be at peace. Yes, at peace, and the policemen would write in their report, A superintendent who joined us went up to the fourth floor and only came down again an hour later, he did not say anything about what happened up there, but we both got the impression that he had had a good lunch. The superintendent went to have lunch somewhere else, but he did not eat much and showed no interest in the dish they set before him, at three o'clock, he was sitting in the park again looking at the statue of the woman with her pitcher inclined like someone still expecting the miraculous restoration of the waters. At half past three, he got up from the bench where he had sat down and walked back to the newspaper offices. He had time, he didn't need to take a taxi in which, however reluctantly, he would have been unable to keep himself from looking in the rear-view mirror, he knew quite enough about his soul already and he might see something in the mirror that he didn't like. It was not quite a quarter past four when he arrived back at the newspaper offices. The secretary was already in reception, The director is expecting you, she said. She did not add the words mister providential, perhaps she had been told that it was not his real name and perhaps she felt offended by the trap into which she had, in all good faith, fallen. They walked down the same corridor, but this time they continued to the end, where they turned the corner, on the second door on the right there is a small notice which says Director. The secretary knocked discreetly, and someone inside answered, Come in. She went in first and held the door open for the superintendent. Thank you, we won't be needing you for the moment, said the editor-in-chief to the secretary, who left immediately. I'm most grateful to you for agreeing to talk to me, sir, began the superintendent, Let me be perfectly frank with you, I foresee enormous difficulties in our publishing the material that the editor-in-chief here has described to me, although I would, of course, be delighted to read the entire document, Here it is, sir, said the superintendent, handing him the envelope, Sit down, said the director, and just give me a couple of minutes, will you. The reading of the document did not make him bow his head as it had the editor-in-chief, but he was clearly a confused and worried man when he looked up, Who are you, he asked, unaware that the editor-in-chief had asked the same question, If your newspaper agrees to make public the contents of that document, then you will find out who I am, if you don't, then I will take back my letter and leave without another word, except to thank you for letting me take up so much of your time, The director knows that you have an identical letter which you intend to give to another newspaper, said the editor-in-chief, Exactly, said the superintendent, I have it here, and if we don't reach an agreement, I will deliver it today, because it's vital that this is published tomorrow, Why, Because tomorrow there may still be time to prevent an injustice being committed, You mean to the doctor's wife, Yes, sir, they are doing all they can to make her the scapegoat for the country's current political situation, But that's ridiculous, Don't tell me that, tell the government, tell the interior minister, tell your colleagues who write what they're told to. The director exchanged a look with the editor-in-chief and said, As you can imagine, it would be impossible for us to publish your statement as it stands, with all these details, Why, Don't forget, we are still living under a state of siege, the censors have their eyes trained on the press, especially on a newspaper like ours, Publishing this would get the newspaper shut down immediately, said the editor-in-chief, So is there nothing to be done, asked the superintendent, We can try, but we can't be sure it will succeed. How, said the superintendent. After another brief exchange of glances with the editor-in-chief, the director said, It's time you told us, once and for all, who you are, there's a name on the letter, it's true, but we have no way of knowing that it's not a false name, you could, quite simply, be an agent provocateur sent here by the police to put us to the test and to compromise us, we're not saying that you are, of course, but I have to make it quite clear that we cannot take this conversation any further unless you identify yourself right now. The superintendent reached into a pocket and pulled out his wallet, Here you are, he said, and handed the director his police identification. The expression on the director's face changed at once from mistrust to stupefaction, What, you're a police superintendent, he said, A police superintendent, repeated the editor-in-chief dully when the director passed the document to him, Yes, came the calm response, and now I think we can continue the conversation, If you'll forgive my curiosity, said the director, what made you take a step like this, Personal reasons, Tell me one of those reasons, so that I can persuade myself that I'm not dreaming, When we are born, when we enter this world, it is as if we signed a pact for the rest of our life, but a day may come when we will ask ourselves Who signed this on my behalf, well, I asked myself that question and the answer is this bit of paper, You do know what might happen to you, don't you, Yes, I've had time enough to think about that. There was a silence, which the superintendent broke, You said you could try, We've thought of a little trick, said the director, and indicated to the editor-in-chief that he should continue, The idea, the editor said, would be to publish, albeit in very different terms and without the tasteless rhetoric, what was published elsewhere today, and then, in the final section, weave in some of the information you've given us today, it won't be easy, but it doesn't strike me as impossible, it's just a matter of skill and luck, We're relying on the boredom or even laziness of the civil servant in the censor's office, added the director, praying that he will think that since he knows this bit of news already, there's no point reading to the end, What's the probability that we'll succeed, asked the superintendent, To be perfectly frank, pretty low, admitted the editor-in-chief, we'll have to content ourselves with possibilities, And what if the ministry of the interior want to know where you got your information, To begin with we'll take refuge in insisting on the confidentiality of our sources, but that isn't going to be much use in a state of siege situation, And if they press you, if they threaten you, Then, much against our will, we will have no option but to reveal our source, we'll be punished, of course, but you will suffer the worst consequences, said the director, Fine, said the superintendent, now that we all know what to expect, let's do it, and if praying serves any purpose, I'll pray that the readers don't do as we're hoping the censor will do, that is, I'll pray that the readers do read the article through to the end, Amen, chorused the director and the editor-in-chief.

It was shortly after five o'clock when the superintendent left. He could have taken advantage of the taxi that someone else had just left at the door of the newspaper offices, but he preferred to walk. Oddly enough, he felt light and serene, as if someone had removed from some vital organ the foreign body that had been gradually gnawing away at him, a bone in the throat, a nail in the stomach, poison in the liver. Tomorrow all the cards in the deck would be on the table, the game of hide-and-seek would be over, and so he has not the slightest doubt that the minister, always assuming that the article does see the light of day, and, even if it doesn't, that news of it reaches his ears, will know immediately at whom to point the accusing finger. Imagination seemed prepared to go further, it even took a first, troubling step, but the superintendent grabbed it by the throat, Today is today, madam, and tomorrow will come soon enough, he said. He had decided to go back to providential ltd, his legs felt suddenly heavy, his nerves as lax as if they were an elastic band that had been kept fully stretched for far too long, he experienced an urgent need to close his eyes and sleep. I'll hail the first taxi that appears, he thought. He still had to walk for quite a way, all the taxis that passed were occupied, one didn't even hear him call, and finally, when he could barely drag his feet along, a small lifeboat picked up the shipwrecked man just before he drowned. The lift hoisted him charitably up to the fourteenth floor, the door opened unresistingly, the sofa received him like a dear friend, and a few minutes later, the superintendent was lying, legs outstretched, fast asleep, or sleeping the sleep of the just, as people used to say in the days when they believed that the just existed. Snuggled up in the maternal lap of providential ltd, insurance and reinsurance, whose peaceful atmosphere did full justice to the names and attributes conferred upon it, the superintendent slept for a good hour, at the end of which he awoke with renewed energy, or so at least it seemed to him. When he stretched, he felt the second envelope in his inside jacket pocket, the one he had not delivered, Perhaps I was wrong to bet everything on one horse, he thought, then quickly realized that he could not possibly have had the same conversation twice, that he could not have gone straight from one newspaper to the next and told the same story, and by repetition, worn away at its veracity, What's done is done, he thought, there's no point thinking about it any more. He went into his bedroom and saw the light on the answering machine flashing. Someone had phoned and left a message. He pressed the button, the telephonist's voice spoke first, then that of the police commissioner, Please note that tomorrow, at nine o'clock, I repeat, at nine o'clock, not at twenty-one hundred hours, your colleagues, the inspector and the sergeant, will be waiting for you at post six-north, I should tell you that, not only has your mission failed due to the technical and scientific incompetence of the person in charge, your presence in the capital has now also come to be considered inappropriate both by the interior minister and by myself, I need only add that the inspector and the sergeant are officially responsible for escorting you to my presence and have orders to arrest you if you resist. The superintendent stood staring at the answering machine, and then, slowly, like a person saying goodbye to someone setting off on a long trip, reached out his hand and pressed the erase button. Then he went into the kitchen, took the envelope out of his pocket, soaked it in alcohol and, folding it to form an inverted V in the sink, set fire to it. A gush of water carried the ashes down the drain. Having done that, he went back into the living-room, turned on all the lights, and devoted himself to a leisurely perusal of the newspapers, paying special attention to the paper to which or to whom, in some way, he had handed his fate. When it was time, he went and looked in the fridge to see if he could prepare something resembling supper from whatever was in there, but soon gave up, scarcity was not, in this case, a synonym for either freshness or quality. They should install a new fridge here, he thought, this one has given all it had to give. He went out, ate quickly in the first restaurant he came across and returned to providential ltd. He had to get up early the following day.