CROSSING PARIS
577
Martin again. Suddenly the corpse of the Turk receded to the far
horizon of his memory and was lost to sight. Around the corpse of
Grandgil the interior of the studio sprang into view, Grandgil lying
now in the disorder of scattered canvasses and the overturned easel.
His blood was flowing from two wounds, one in his belly, the other
in his side, and soaking his garments. On the gray landscape of the
Boulevard of the Bastille, a spot of red was now spreading out like
a setting sun. For the first time since the event, Martin had the
feeling of being alone with his crime. His first thought was for his
landlady. He imagined her reproachful face, and realized that he
had now become an object of aversion to society. He was arriving at
the intersection of des Abbesses and Ravignan Streets. The frozen
solitude of this square made
him
dizzy with fear. The landlady had
a stern face. She was the center of a group in which he recognized
the neighbors on his floor, several Saintonge Street merchants, rela–
tives, his brother Henry who kept a grocery and sandwich shop in a
little street in Chartres, his cousins from Menilmontant, and some of
the men who worked with him, besides friends of his childhood.
They were all saying to each other: "One would never have believed
this of Martin." On these faces, which made up his world, he had
always found the reflection of his own personality. Now the reflection
that they gave back to him was the face of a murderer, and he had
a foretaste of his punishment. He, the most sociable of men, was
condemned henceforth to be always alone and to meet, on, all sides,
nothing but harsh looks. Impassable distances now stretched between
him and his landlady. Never again would he dare to write to his
brother Henry, nor to go to visit his cousins at Menilmontant. He
would pass his former companions in the street without a glance or
a greeting. He would speak humbly to his employers. He wouldn't
ever argue again.
In the deserted streets of Montmartre, the bright moonlight
made the solitude more cruel. The zones of shadow harbored in
their recesses only despair. Martin was forgetting Grandgil, thinking
now only of the criminal that he had become. He walked fast. Had
he been less fatigued he would have run to escape from this solitude,
and perhaps to find himself again among other men, strangers to
whom he himself would be a stranger. Now his course lay through
dark and frightening alleys. Sick with fear, it seemed to him that he
