Read The Erasers for Free Online

straightened up. He starts across the bridge.
    It looks as though it were going to snow.
    Anyone else in his place, weighing each of his footsteps, would come, clearheaded and free, to carry out his task of ineluctable justice.
    The cube of gray lava.
    The buzzer silenced.
    The street that smells of cabbage soup.
    The muddy paths that disappear, far away, among the rusty corrugated iron.
    Wallas.
    “ Special agent… ”

 

     
     

    CHAPTER ONE

     

 

     
     

    1
     
    Wallas is leaning against the rail, at the end of the bridge. He is still a young man, tall, calm, with regular features. The clothes he is wearing and his idle air provide, in passing, a vague subject of remark for the last workmen hurrying toward the harbor: at this time, in this place, it does not seem quite natural not to be wearing work clothes, not to be riding a bicycle, not to look hurried; no one goes for a walk on Tuesdays early in the morning, besides, no one goes for a walk in this neighborhood. Such independence of the place and the time has something a little shocking about it.
    Wallas himself thinks how chilly it is and that it would be pleasant to warm himself up by pedaling across the smooth asphalt, swept on by his own momentum; but he stands where he is, clinging to the iron railing. The heads, one after the other, turn toward him. He adjusts his scarf and buttons his overcoat collar. One by one the heads turn away and disappear. He has not been able to get breakfast this morning: no coffee before eight in that café where he has found a room. He glances mechanically at his watch and notices that it has not started again; it stopped last night at seven-thirty, which has not made things easier for his trip or for anything else. It stops every once in a while, he does not really know why—sometimes after a shock, not always—and then starts again afterward, all by itself, with no more reason. Apparently there is nothing broken inside, it can also run for several w eeks at a stretch. It is unpre dictable, which is rather annoying at first, but you can get used to it. It must be six-thirty now. Is the manager thinking about going up to knock at the door as he promised? Just in case, Wallas has wound the traveling alarm clock he had taken the precaution to bring along, but he has awakened a little earlier anyway: since he was not sleeping, he might as well begin right away. Now he is alone, as though left behind by the wave of bicyclists. Before him, vague in the yellow light, extends the street along which he has just walked before turning the corner onto the parkway; to the left an imposing five-story apartment building with a stone facade stands at the corner, and facing it a brick house surrounded by a narrow garden. It was there that this Daniel Dupont was killed yesterday by a bullet in the chest. For the time being, Wallas does not know any more than that.
    He arrived late, last night, in this city he scarcely knows. He had been here once already, but only for a few hours, when he was a child, and he does not have any very precise memory of the place. One image has remained vivid to him, the dead end of a canal; against one of the quays is moored an old wreck of a boat—the hull of a sailboat? A low stone bridge closes off the canal. Probably that wasn ’ t exactly right: the boat could not have passed under the bridge. Wallas continues on his way toward the center of the city.
     
    Having crossed the canal, he stops to let pass a streetcar returning from the harbor, its new paint gleaming—yellow and red with a gold coat-of-arms; it is completely empty: people are going in the other direction. Having reached Wallas, who is waiting to cross the street, the car stops too, and Wallas finds himself facing the iron step; then he notices beside him the disk attached to a lamppost: “ Streetcar Stop ” and the figure 6 indicating the line. After ringing a bell, the car starts up again slowly, its machinery groaning. It seems to have