The Man in a Hurry

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AT THE POINT at which the road reached the top of the slope and was about to dip down on the other side again, the man jumped out of the taxi without waiting for the driver to brake. He went into one of those suburban taverns where in the summer you can have lunch with a view and where you can dine in the cool of the evening. With an anxious step, he charged down the path lined with box hedges and rushed over to the terrace. There was such a contrast between the sweltering, glare-filled outskirts of the city and the still, stony silence of this panorama that he stopped in his tracks. Paris fanned out beneath him; an incline plunged towards the Seine, hemmed in by the hills of Clamart and the heights of the Sénart forest. The eye could look down from Villeneuve-Saint-Georges as far as Kremlin-Bicêtre. He took a seat at a metal table and clapped his hands. Twice, he glanced at his watch, as if it were a friend. Nobody chose to bring him a drink. Finally, a waiter in his seventies whose rheumatism was aggravated by working at night came to wipe the table with a duster. Why, since he had achieved his aim, did the visitor appear disconcerted?

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