“Forgive me,” answered Herman, red-faced.
They walked past a tinted-glass door, through which Herman glimpsed a sizable conference room and many faces around a table, some of which he recognized: the village fishmonger was there; the grocer and her husband; a café owner; the charcutière, all poring over papers or, pen in hand, listening to someone Herman didn’t have time to see. Intrigued to find all these merchants gathered on the fourth floor of the town hall—people he’d never pictured away from their shops, now divested of their aprons, almost enigmatic—his curiosity got the better of him, and he asked the receptionist what they were doing there.
“From what I could see, they were all shopkeepers,” he added, lowering his voice, sensing he’d already shown a lack of discretion.
“Well, that’s the weekly assembly.”
This time she stopped and turned toward Herman, her pale, smooth face registering a surprise that worried him and immediately made him regret his inquisitiveness.
“Aren’t you from the village?”
“No,” he murmured. “Actually, I’m a Parisian.”
She let out a polite, distant little “Oh!” then whirled around and walked on without a word. But her back and hips were stiffer now, her gait quicker and more businesslike, thought Herman, and he felt more distressed than he would have imagined, saddened and afraid in a way he thought excessive.
“Anyway, what harm can this receptionist possibly do me? She doesn’t even know what I’m here for.”
He gave a little laugh, trying to put on a good front. Reaching the end of the hallway, the young woman knocked on a door, opened it, then stepped aside to let Herman through.
“Here we are. I’ll be on my way.”
She strode off before he could thank her as he was planning, to his deep mortification. The president of the Chamber of Commerce—a short, wide man with a big drooping mustache—came forward, hand outstretched and pointing at the receptionist, still in sight, very small now, down the endless hallway.
“Did you notice? She doesn’t have any ribbons.”
“Meaning what?” Herman asked coldly.
“Meaning you can talk to her in a certain way, and she’ll answer the same way.”
“That’s barbaric!” cried Herman, furious and disgusted. “What archaic customs! I can talk however I please to whomever I please.”
“But it’s very exciting this way,” the president said in surprise.
“I’m not from around here,” Herman interrupted.
Trembling with anger, he stepped into the office and looked around at the posters hung on the wall, showing various views of the region. It was a windowless little room (“We’re under the hill,” he reminded himself), thick with the smell of damp and saltpeter. Indignant at the manner of the president whose appearance alone, pudgy and unctuous, seemed to lessen the chances of his case being solved, Herman crossed his arms and raised his chin, determined not to speak first. Were it not for the prospect of a long walk back, he would have left then and there.
“Where are you from, then?” asked the president, jovial, manifestly delighted at Herman’s visit. “From C.? From M.?”
He had named two nearby villages.
“I live in Paris. I should have been home yesterday.”
The man let out a cry of astonishment.
“You’re a Parisian? But summer’s over!”
“That’s what I’m saying,” answered Herman, impatiently. “I’m only here because something terrible has happened.”
And to himself, he said, “Although we did insist on waiting till the second to go home, God knows why, knowing perfectly well we were crossing the line into fall, even if we had no sense of what fall means here.”
“Well now, that’s extraordinary,” the president cried.
He was suddenly very animated, his face deep red, and he looked at Herman with an irritating stare of disbelief. Herman did his best to be distant and superior, but saying the words “something terrible” had brought all the misery of his situation crashing down on him again. And so, he thought, rather than expressing his dislike for his host, he would do better to give him a quick summary of his misfortune, then go off and start his own search. He pulled up a chair, sat down on the edge, took his head in his hands, and in a dull voice recounted Rose and the boy’s disappearance and how he was shown to this office instead of the mayor’s after his failure at the gendarmerie the evening before.
“Oh, I can just see all that,” the president said slowly and emphatically, now ensconced behind his desk.
“There’s probably not much you can do for me.”
“More than you think, much more.”
Dully, Herman observed that every picture of the region had been taken during the summertime. It was all cows and pastures, gentle wooded hillsides, skies unmarred by the slightest stippling of cloud.
Still as enthusiastic as ever, overflowing with a slightly abstract interest in Herman, the president went on:
“First of all, I’m going to see to it that the mayor hears of your misfortune, I mean before your turn comes to meet with him officially—not as easy as it seems, believe me, but at any rate I’ll do what I can. That said, it’s simply a formality, it will comfort you, nothing more. The mayor will listen gravely, give orders, make promises, but nothing will happen, and as a matter of fact there’s nothing that can happen as things currently stand.”
“But this is a very serious case, very urgent,” Herman said, frustrated and out of patience.
“Oh, don’t worry, he’ll see that at once. Our mayor is a man of superior intelligence, a sort of sage, do you see? No, that’s not the issue. Nor is the issue the power he does or does not have over the various authorities in the township. The fact is that our mayor can get essentially anything he wants—inquests, investigations, mobilizations of all the top men. He can get all the resources he asks for, but when it comes to results, that’s another thing entirely, you understand.”
“No I don’t, I don’t understand any of this, and it’s not acceptable.”
“The result depends on you, dear Monsieur, you must get that through your head.”
At once grave and delighted, jubilant and serious, the president gave his desk a resounding smack. Herman vaguely sensed that some expertise this man had avidly acquired was finally finding an opportunity to come out, and that if Herman wished, it would take very little effort to gain this man’s friendship. The mere thought of it disgusted him, but he was now ready to throw his lot in with anyone at all if it would serve his interests.
“What am I supposed to do, then?” he murmured.
“Well,” said the president, his air wise and experienced, “the goal of our strategy, if I may put it that way, is to locate your family, or uncover information leading us to them. Very well. What do you do? Do you go out and question the townsfolk, plant yourself in front of them with your Parisian face and ask what they know? No! I know this place, people are as agreeable as can be but they only give outsiders the most superficial sort of help. You’ll need great patience, a delicate touch, and you’ll have to discreetly work your way into the life of the village, become a villager yourself—invisible, insignificant—and above all erase any memory of the fact that you’re a Parisian who’s stayed after summer, which is to say an intruder, who in theory has no right to see something that’s none of his business, that never interested him before, that we’d rather he know nothing of: the long, springless winter existence that begins here with the month of September.”