Words.

What can I decipher from a single look? What are possible number of meanings and reasons that could lie behind a single glance, either sidelong or straight on, or a stare, or even in a blank look? Perhaps of these three examples given, the most could be read from a stare. But it wasn’t exactly a stare that M. had received. It was more of a passing glance. No, he couldn’t be sure what it was. He couldn’t classify the look, but he knew that when that single stranger walked by him just yesterday along the crowded Parisian streets, he knew that something was wrong, and he set himself out to find out what that look meant.

M. looked into the mirror the first thing in the morning when he woke up. In fact, the whole issue about the look that was given him by this stranger, who happened to be a man, had been on his mind throughout the whole night, so much so that he could not fall asleep peacefully. Jumping out of bed, he ran straight to the toilet and looked himself straight on into the mirror. One couldn’t say that M. wasn’t bad looking after all. His hair was short and cropped, a reflection that he had once served in the army, a fact that he was quite proud of, for he served in a regiment that had a rich heritage, known for producing brave warriors. He never kept a beard or a moustache, for his own personal hygiene reasons, he believed that only beggars and the homeless kept facial hair only because they didn’t have enough money to maintain their bodies, let alone their faces. There were barely any lines or creases on his face, showing that he was still keeping his youthful skin, even though he was really advancing on to his thirties very soon.

And M. looked.

He tried to remember how the stranger looked like, but the streets were way too crowded, and he could not have stopped in the middle of the pavement to hold back that person. He would have been pushed forward by the crowd, for the Parisian mob is not to be trifled with. But the look! That accusing look! He knew that something was wrong, terribly wrong, for if it did not matter to M., he would not have been so bothered by this person. There was certainly something that this person knew about M.