Alain Robbe-Grillet | The Erasers / 1964

murderer in the dark

by Douglas Messerli

 

Alain Robbe-Grillet Les Gommes, translated from the French by Richard Howard as The Erasers (New York: Grove Press, 1964)

 

If Robbe-Grillet’s 1953 fiction, The Erasers, is a kind of metaphysical novel posing as a detective tale, it is also a dark comedy about the absurdity of trying to comprehend and intercede in the forces of human destiny.

     As the novel opens a professor of economics, Daniel Dupont, has been shot by an intruder in his home. But the would-be murderer, Garinati, has failed in his attempt to murder Dupont, and the wound is superficial, producing only a few drops of blood.

     Dupont, however, is certain that if it is discovered that he has survived the murder-attempt the murderer may return to kill him, and accordingly, he arranges with a local doctor, Juard, to be declared dead. Dupont, meanwhile, hides in the Doctor’s clinic until he can retrieve an important document he has left behind before he escapes into anonymity.

      A new detective Wallas, on temporary assignment while he proves his prowess, is assigned to the case, but from almost the moment he enters the strange neighborhood where the murder has supposedly occurred, he discovers not only a confusing landscape in which he finds himself constantly lost, but begins to uncover details so absurdly intertwined and labyrinthine that he is thwarted at nearly every turn.

      He feels, moreover, a certain strange recognition of the place, and senses that he visited the location as a child with his mother. That vague feeling of recognition, despite his inability to easily find his way about, leads, in turn, to a feeling of lethargy. As he goes about his job, beginning with an interview with Dupont’s strange housekeeper, to be followed by numerous failures to meet up with Doctor Juard (each time he returns to the clinic, he is told that Juard has just left, and when Juard is found to be in his office, he as quickly escapes the premises), leads to other strange encounters at a stationery store—where he uncovers a postcard picturing Dupont’s house—and at the local post office, where he is mistaken for the man he believes may have murdered Dupont.

      Wallas also perceives that the murder (attempt) may be related to a series of murders that may or may not be the acts of a mysterious group of business men who have determined to murder men at the same hour, night after night.

      Laurent, his superior, moreover, refuses to find any of Wallas’s theories to be creditable. When another man, Marchant, reports to Laurent that he has seen Dupont at the clinic shortly before his death, and has been asked to return to Dupont’s home to retrieve a document—something he refuses to do, fearing for his life—Laurent declares him a mad man.

     Later, when a neighbor suggests that Dupont has been visited by a young man who may be his son, who argued with him about money, Wallas suggests the possibility that Dupont has been murdered by this boy and another man accompanying him. Laurent dismisses both these and other theories, arguing again and again for the simplest of solutions: Dupont has been murdered by a thief.

     By this time, as in Robbe-Grillet’s subsequent fiction, The Voyeur, the reader has grown so confused that he suspects Wallas himself. And when Wallas suddenly remembers that the home his mother visited with him in tow years before was Dupont’s house, we can only wonder if the son is not Wallas.

      Strangely enough, when the reader has lost all confidence in Laurent’s ability as a chief of police, he perceives the truth: that Dupont has not been murdered at all, but remains alive in Juard’s clinic! His attempts to notify Wallas fail.

      For by this time, Wallas has returned to the scene of the crime to await in the dark for the possible return of the murderer. Since Marchant has refused to retrieve the manuscript, Dupont has been forced to return to the house himself, and suddenly we foresee the inevitable ending: Wallas does shoot and kill Dupont.

      Meanwhile, another murder has occurred nearby, the murder of a certain Antoine Dupont…. Perhaps Wallas has been correct, after all, in his speculations, but it now no longer matters. He has used up his future life, erasing his and Dupont’s life.

       In short, although Robbe-Grillet has created a profound conundrum of sorts, he also presented us with a kind of boulevard farce played out in a world so confounding that the poor flat-footed detective hasn’t a chance of discovering truth.

       

Los Angeles, July 9, 2008

Reprinted from Reading with My Lips (June 2024).