Recollections of the Golden Triangle by Alain Robbe-Grillet

Author:Alain Robbe-Grillet
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

So here I am again, chased from my hiding-place, driven out of myself along these corridors that are continually interrupted by unpredictable right-angled turns made even more disagreeable by the successive narrowings of the passage with each change of direction, jostled from smooth surface to blind wall by the trampling pack of black uniforms with their leather-belted tunics to the pallid, cube-shaped, and abruptly silent cell, the three functional poles of which are starting to become clearer to me: first the judas, where two staring eyes appear and disappear between the tilting slats, or which, pivoting on its hinges at irregular intervals, opens wide all of a sudden to admit various objects held out at arm's length before falling—or not—on the resonant floor (engraved boulder, ordinary, clear-glass bottle, thick slice of bread, woman's shoe with the heel torn off, rutilant apple, black notebook . . .), then the interrogations with their disconnected questions revolving—or not—round these same exhibits, some more, some less deformed with use, and thirdly the mirror-like screen taking up the whole of the rectangular wall opposite the door, which is pierced at eye level by its square judas through which, probably, the projections are beamed also, actual-size fragments of narrative that I have afterwards to give account of. Why afterwards?

But three other, far more pressing questions arise with regard to these images. What is the mechanism organizing their constituent parts? Do they really give a complete illusion of reality? Why did I write “mirror-like"? Moreover it seems to me that, if I could answer just one of these question marks, the other two would then be spontaneously resolved—as in a glass, in fact. I have already described this broken mirror, unframed and insecurely fixed by three loose cramp-irons, that has been allowed, contrary to all custom, to remain on the wall of my prison (the left wall, looking towards the door). It is so high up that I have to climb on the chair (made of turned wood, painted white) in order to catch a glimpse, cut off by the curved and very sharp lower edge, of the upper part of my face down to about the middle of the nose. Make a note of this detail, which is not without importance.

All the other glasses are from now on in the same ruined state on the terraces of the three big sea-front cafés that date from the period of the three assassinated emperors whose names they bear: Maximilian, Rudolph, Christian-Charles. More or less deserted, depending on the time of year, throughout the war against Uruguay, they were subsequently given over to temporary occupation and systematic sacking by the hordes of wild children operating from their nearby dens: disused remnants of coastal fortifications, former cordage works or fish canneries, abandoned bathing establishments with their innumerable rooms for the wealthy guests of bygone days succeeding one another down both sides of interminable corridors in a maze of forks and right-angled turns where, after many detours, one finds oneself brought

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