The invention of Morel - Adolfo Bioy Casares [19]
The bearded man kept on walking toward Faustine, and if I had not moved in time he would have walked right into me. The woman did not stop asking questions; she did not interrupt her look of contentment. Her serenity still appalls me.
Since that moment I have been miserable and ashamed, and I have felt an urge to kneel at Faustine's feet. This afternoon I could not wait until sunset. I went straight to the hill, ready to give myself up, certain that if all went well I would soon be involved in a sentimental scene with Faustine. But I was wrong. There is no explanation for what has happened. The hill is deserted now!
When I saw that there was no one on the hill, I was afraid that this was some sort of a trap, that they were really hiding, lying in wait for me. Overcome with dread, I searched the whole museum, exercising extreme caution. But I had only to look at the furniture and the walls, which seemed to be invested with isolation, to be convinced that no one was there. What is more: to be convinced that no one was ever there. It is difficult, after an absence of almost twenty days, to be able to state positively that all the objects in a house with a great many rooms are exactly where they were when one went away,- but it seems clear that these fifteen people (and an equal number of servants) did not move a bench, a lamp, or if they did they put everything back in its place, in the exact position it occupied before. I have inspected the kitchen and the laundry room; the meal I left twenty days ago, the clothes (stolen from a closet in the museum) that I hung up to dry twenty days ago, were there; the former spoiled, the latter dry, both untouched.
I shouted in the empty building, "Faustine! Faustine!"
There was no reply.
(I can think of two facts—a fact and a memory—that may be an explanation for these strange occurrences. Recently I started to experiment with new roots. I believe that in Mexico the Indians make a drink from the juice of certain roots, and—if I remember correctly—it causes a person to become delirious for several days. The conclusion, used to explain the presence of Faustine and her friends on this island, is logically admissible; but I do not seriously believe it applies in this case. Now that I have lost Faustine I should like to submit these problems to a hypothetical observer, a third person.)
And then I remembered, incredulously, that I was a fugitive and that justice still had its infernal power. Perhaps these people were playing an outrageous trick on me. If so, I must not give up now, or weaken my powers of resistance, for a horrible catastrophe could result.
I inspected the chapel, the basements. I decided to look at the whole island before going to bed. I went to the rocks, to the grassy part of the hill, to the beaches, the lowlands (my caution was excessive). I had to accept the fact that the intruders were not on the island.
But when I returned to the museum it was almost dark, and I felt nervous. I wanted the brightness of the electric light. I tried many switches; there was no illumination. This seems to confirm my belief that the tides furnish the energy for the motors (by means of that hydraulic mill or water wheel I saw in the lowlands). Those people must have wasted the light. There has been a long period of calm since the last two tides. It ended this very afternoon, when I went back to the museum. I had to close all the doors and windows,-1 thought that the wind and the sea were going to destroy the island.
In the first basement, standing alongside motors that looked enormous in the shadows, I felt very depressed. The effort needed to kill myself was superfluous now, because with Faustine gone not even the anachronous satisfaction of death remained.
To justify my descent into the basement, I tried to make the machinery work. There were a few weak explosions and then everything was quiet again, while outside the storm raged and the branches of the cedar tree scraped against the thick glass of the skylight.
When I came upstairs I heard the hum of a motor; with incredible