“Of course I did, why wouldn’t I?”
“No, that’s very bad!”
The president frowned, almost angry.
“Give me your key.”
Herman reluctantly handed it over. The president passed it to Charlotte, whispered something in her ear, and Charlotte impassively left the table, dragging her feet slightly as always, just as her mother scuffed her espadrilles over the floor as she emerged from the kitchen with a big salad bowl of crudités, her upper body still bowed in the same affected, obsequious, but not entirely graceless pose Herman had seen two hours earlier.
“Charlotte’s going to unlock your door,” Alfred whispered. “Don’t ever lock it again, people will wonder what you’re hiding, and that would be the end of all your attempts to inspire confidence.”
“Who’s going to check to see if it’s locked?”
“Oh, everyone, the other customers, our tablemates, all these ladies, maybe Métilde, everyone will find some pretext to go upstairs when you’re out and have a look at your room, just to see.”
The president broke into a spirited laugh, patting Herman’s knee under the table. But Herman’s dismay had waned the moment he heard the receptionist’s name. Moved, he looked at her, and Métilde smiled back with an air of genuine friendship.
“Yes, you’re going to help me,” Herman said to himself, “and then…”
Flattered, happy, he was caught up in a sort of euphoria that made him want to talk to everyone around him, to explain, to earn their pity and esteem. When Charlotte came back and sat down, he leaned toward her and Métilde, and in a voice loud and clear enough to be heard by everyone in the room he recounted at length what had happened to his family, his failure at the gendarmerie, the idea he’d first had of going to see the mayor. All the while, he studied the two women’s faces respectfully turned toward his, their eyes attentive, their brows thoughtful. A flood of joy washed over him, and he forgot to be ashamed of it as he told them of Rose and his little boy. He didn’t think anyone had ever listened to him so closely, so patiently, with such consideration and goodwill. Everyone around him had fallen silent. Frozen in mid-bow, Charlotte’s mother pressed the salad bowl to her belly as if in prayer, meditative, drinking in Herman’s words. The corners of Métilde’s mouth were delicately turned up in a caring little smile. Herman exulted in feeling so tragic: Had anyone ever thought of him that way, had he ever, even once, moved someone? The thought of Rose turned abstract, supplanted by the intense pleasure of attracting the sympathy of the women around him, of holding their unknown, obscure minds in his grip.
When he finished, he glanced at the president. Alfred was contemplating him, leaning back in his chair. Herman couldn’t make out if he approved. But he was vaguely troubled, once again, by the strange, unpleasant sense of a syrupy wave of affection pouring from Alfred’s face, a face as fleshy and severe as a wary pasha’s the moment Herman turned toward him, even briefly.
“Poor man,” his neighbor with the many pens remarked in a soft, melodious voice.
She gave him a gracious smile, and, still sitting, made a kind of rudimentary curtsy, then went back to lunch, having put down her fork to hear Herman speak, like all the others. Then everyone stood up and came to press Herman’s hand, murmuring a few formal words of sympathy. The women bowed down until their chignons grazed his forehead, the three or four male colleagues touched two joined fingers to their foreheads, faintly clicking their heels.
“Yes, poor man,” said Métilde in her turn.
“Poor man,” repeated Charlotte, in the same light, perfunctory tone.
All around the table, everyone was smiling at him with great benevolence and a forced but still charming display of sympathy. And Herman smiled back, disconcerted, seeing no way to get out of reciprocating this barrage of fine feelings. The meal went on, the discussion turned to professional matters. Herman’s sad story never came up again. Métilde launched into a quiet tête-à-tête with Charlotte, and Herman had the impression she was chiding her for something; Charlotte merely nodded in reply, agreeing with everything, imperturbably serene. Herman wished he’d gone on a bit longer about his problem, asked these people some questions, all these people who now seemed so well disposed toward him, if they remembered what he’d just told them and understood the gravity of the situation (which, from the look of it, they didn’t). No one was paying him any more mind than they would a perfect stranger, who couldn’t be asked his opinion on the digitization of the survey maps and to whom there was therefore nothing to say.
Defeated, Herman leaned toward the president.
“So what about my problem? Have they forgotten it already? No one had a single suggestion, nothing that could possibly help me.”
“What makes you think your case is more important than any other?” Alfred whispered, shocked. “I think you’re making too much of it. Oh, it might come up again, but really now, there are other things to talk about, every bit as interesting: we’ve just renovated the town hall, everything’s modern and new, as you saw. Calm yourself, my dear friend, and be patient.”
He put his hand on Herman’s knee and squeezed it a little too hard. Irked, Herman stopped eating. A deep sense of aloneness contracted his throat. He couldn’t stop himself from asking Alfred:
“Well, where can they be? My wife, my son…”
“Oh, we’ll see.”
Alfred shrugged and tucked away a few healthy chunks of beef. But his indulgence toward Herman seemed bottomless. He often touched him, with his elbow, his foot, as if he didn’t realize he was doing it, and soon Herman stopped noticing. He even asked if the president would like to finish the food on his plate, and Alfred eagerly accepted, fixing his gluttonous, tender, cunning eyes in turns on Herman and on the plate. As it happened, Alfred didn’t care for that day’s dessert. He stood up, clapped his hands, and declared it was time to get back to the office. Everyone immediately pushed back their chairs, desserts untouched. Diligently silent, they lined up behind Alfred in single file, took their raincoats and umbrellas from by the front door, and hurried out, hunching their shoulders. Only Charlotte stayed behind.
“That Alfred has a lot of authority,” Herman observed.
“He’s the office director,” answered Charlotte, as if it were so obvious it didn’t need to be said. She soon got up to help her mother clear the tables. Having nothing to do, Herman went back to his room; he was disappointed that he’d missed a chance to get closer to Charlotte, but the mother’s presence, however discreet—and, in some way that still wasn’t quite clear to Herman, pandering—bothered him. He had no doubt that the benevolently smiling mother had deliberately left them alone in a corner of the dining room. But Herman was determined to have a talk with her later concerning the price of his room and board, and he didn’t want to have that talk after taking advantage of her faintly servile kindliness, which, he thought, she must reserve for guests she assumed were well-off. But the longing to talk to Charlotte tortured him, it even made his head spin a little. And he who had always loathed forwardness pictured himself taking Charlotte’s arm, putting his face close to hers, giving her a gentle shake to convince her. He was sure she wouldn’t be overly surprised. The sort of placid resignation he foresaw—already picturing it on her stolid face—gnawed at him painfully as he climbed the stairs, left him at once impatient and elated. It took some effort not to go straight back downstairs to take hold of Charlotte and bring to her face the submissive, unrepentant, unsurprised expression he found so mysterious.