Terror in the Radiant City

Terror in the Radiant City turns an admired district into a place its own residents are trying to escape. The crisis is marked not only by repeated drownings but by a collapse of ordinary public life: people hide indoors, emerge in small groups when they must, and watch official procedure continue even as the killer strikes again.

A Beautiful District Under Pressure

The Architect explains that the people who live in the district want to leave, but have nowhere else to go. Their continued presence is therefore not evidence that they feel safe. Some, he suggests, also make a point of honour of not running away; instead, they remain inside their beautiful flats and venture out only when necessary. Even then, they go in groups of ten or fifteen, a precaution that does not reliably protect them. The contrast between handsome homes and constrained movement makes the district’s beauty feel less like a promise of security than a shelter residents cannot afford to abandon.

The name Radiant City sharpens that contradiction. When Bérenger later describes the place to Édouard, he stresses that it is not a model neighbourhood or a happy, perfect one: an insatiable murderer has turned it into hell. The district is becoming deserted and, in Bérenger’s account, may soon cease to exist. Terror thus threatens more than individual lives. It is dismantling the population and the shared civic world that makes the district a place at all.

The Drowning Trap and Its Repetition

The Ornamental pool first appears as a place Bérenger has passed without understanding its significance. The Architect points it out again and identifies it as the daily scene of two or three drownings. The revelation converts a familiar feature of the district into the centre of its danger: the threat is not remote or hidden in an unknown quarter but attached to a place people encounter in their ordinary movement through the neighbourhood.

The victims’ bodies have carried the Colonel's photograph, and some have been brought back to life briefly and provided further information. The district therefore knows what the killer looks like and, as the Architect says, knows how he sets about his crimes. Knowledge has circulated widely; it has not produced control. Bérenger assumes people need only avoid the killer, but the continued pattern defeats that simple explanation: every evening, two or three still fall into the trap, and the killer is never caught.

The danger becomes audible before it is explained away. As Bérenger proposes stationing a plainclothes inspector at the site, a cry is heard, followed by the heavy sound of a body falling into the water. Bérenger jumps to his feet. The Architect remains seated, biting his sandwich, and identifies the sound as another attack. His explanation is precise: a turned back and a second’s inattention are enough. The scene’s abrupt sound makes the recurring violence immediate, while the Architect’s composure shows how thoroughly repetition has entered the district’s everyday routine.

Investigation and Dany’s Death

The Architect dismisses Bérenger’s proposal for a permanently posted inspector as technically impossible. Inspectors are overworked and have other duties; five have already drowned in the same manner. He adds that proving the killer’s identity would make it possible to find him, even though the district has circulated his image and understands his method. The account exposes an investigation caught between abundant warning and inadequate capacity: the danger is recognized, but the means to stop it are absent or unavailable.

When the Owner identifies the latest victim as the blonde girl, Bérenger recognizes her as Dany. The Architect confirms that she was his secretary and former secretary, and says he warned her not to leave his staff because she had been safe there. Her death makes the crisis personal to the people discussing it, while also revealing how safety has narrowed into dependence on an employer’s protection rather than public security.

The Architect makes the usual report and phones in the details: a young woman, Dany, formerly employed with them; nobody caught in the act; only the same suspicions as before. He then tells Bérenger to control himself and let the investigation take its usual course, grounding that advice in the claim that everyone must die. Bérenger instead insists that the situation cannot continue and rushes out. The contrast is not simply between knowledge and ignorance: it is between the Architect’s acceptance of routine and Bérenger’s refusal to treat another preventable death as routine.

Recognition Beyond the District

Bérenger carries the news outward, telling Édouard that the district is being terrorized and may disappear. Édouard already knows the basic method: a beggar shows people the Colonel's photograph and throws them into the water while they are looking at it. His familiarity makes the crisis seem less like a secret than a public fact that has become strangely ineffective. Recognition has not ended the killings; even the means of the trap can be recounted without stopping it.

The crisis is built from that gap between what people know and what they can do. Residents understand the danger, victims have supplied information, the killer’s image is displayed, and reports continue to be made. Yet the pool remains lethal, inspectors have become victims themselves, and Dany is killed after leaving the protection of the Architect’s staff. The Radiant City’s terror is therefore both physical violence and civic paralysis: a visible, repeatedly reported emergency that continues to empty the district while ordinary procedure absorbs each new loss.