An intermittent, quantic history. Expansion of phosphorescent traces. Vast protective darkness. Electric flashes. Each single scene is verifiable, even the layer of dust on the furniture. Absolute uncertainty about the sequence. Ramblings of forms. Quiet in a glasshouse, at night.

On July 22, 1809, three bogus sailors turned up at Nordendaal, a village now vanished from the maps. Many could see them arrive, in the flat countryside that offers no place to hide. They had come to kill and steal from a couple of elderly innkeepers. One of them slit the throat of Elisabeth van Aart with a pocketknife while she was showing them the bed where they were to sleep. They found a few florins and some jewelry. They also took some wine and food. They drank one bottle by a stream. Next morning they sang a requiem for the souls of the murdered couple in the village church at Essen, on the frontier. They did the same at Antwerp, a few days later. They were seen in various taverns, played cards, talked too much, slept three to a bed. At Antwerp they drank with three filles de joie at an inn called La Vigne and were arrested as they returned to their own inn, Le Cygne. On February 28, 1810, the three bogus sailors were hanged in the square before Steenbergen town hall, and were left there until dusk. Over the head of each was a wooden board with the words: “Murderer of two people.”

Cobb studied the records of this sordid and senseless crime. There is nothing in this story that might arouse curiosity. In every detail we sense the normality of that sordidness—and everything seems to come out of a dull mind. The actors in the story had few words—and even fewer were those that filtered from the interrogators, passing from Flemish to French. But the historian wants to go further than the judge, who is satisfied with a death sentence. The historian wants to sentence people to life. Through his intrusive investigation, he wants to snatch thoughts and even words from the unknown person who couldn’t express them. During their months in prison, the three bogus sailors were forced to recall every detail of the week of life they had spent squandering the modest fruits of their murder: “A week, in such very young lives, is a very long time indeed.³⁴⁹ And most of the time that remained to them to live was used to find out all that there was to be found out about that week, all at least that could be expressed, put into words, by people who had few words. We have tried to go one better than the judges, whose curiosity did not go beyond the point of obtaining a conviction and of wresting from the three poor wretches a plea of absolution, and to attempt to reconstruct thoughts and sensations that could not be put into words. The historian has much the same assignment as Proust, but he does not have the advantage of Proust’s own memory; he has to construct, then to pillage, other people’s.” That is history.