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PARTISAN REVIEW
felt there was something lacking, something was incomplete. He was
waiting-not impatiently, but confidently-for something, perhaps,
though more probably for someone.
The Urbino Circus had already been on tour for five months
when it pitched its tents in Nice . It was to stay there a week, and
then cross the frontier back to its native Italy. The evening perfor–
mance of the third day had been brilliant, and the giant hand act had
been a sensation. Lucien had removed his makeup and was relaxing
in the luxurious mobile home he had been promoted to since his great
success, when he heard a soft knock at a window. He put the light
out and went over to the looped curtains framing a pallid rectangle .
A tall, massive silhouette was outlined against the phosphorescent
sky. Lucien half-opened the window.
"Who is it?"
"I'd like to speak to M. Gagnero ."
"But who
is
it?"
"It's me, Bob."
Lucien was so overcome by emotion that he had to sit down.
He knew now what he'd been waiting for, whom he had come to look
for in Nice. He had been keeping a kind of rendezvous, a rendez–
vous with Edith Watson. He let Bob in, and the awkward mass of the
water-skier immediately filled all the space of the narrow abode in
which Lucien was perfectly at his ease . Once again he despised stilt–
walkers, who are nowhere in their right place.
Bob explained his situation in a whisper. Ever since Edith's
death he had led a hunted existence in sunbaked attics or dank cel–
lars, fed like an animal by his mother and a friend. He was obsessed
with the temptation to give himself up to the police, but just the very
idea of being remanded in custody terrified him, and, worse still ,
there were those accursed letters of rupture, full of threats to kill her,
which made his case look even blacker. But Lucien could testify that
it was he who had dictated these letters to Bob for the purposes of his
divorce, and that the threats they contained were fictitious - purely
conventional.
Lucien fully savored his omnipotence over this giant with the
girlish face. Curled up in the hollow of a nest of cushions, his only
regret was that he didn't smoke- a pipe, in particular- for then, be–
fore replying, he would have taken infinite time in cleaning it, then
filling it, and finally lighting it, according to all the rules of the art.
