Jean-Marie Le Clézio - The Flood

…’cause I had no idea what to do. I tried writing to him, sent him a letter for Christmas. He’d written me once, a postcard from Coventry, without his name on it or anything. He’d even disguised his handwriting. That was silly of him, he knew very well it couldn’t be from anyone else. Even supposing, even supposing he didn’t think of that on the spur of the moment, when he printed the letters in capitals and the rest of it, all the same he can’t have helped realizing the truth when it came to signing the thing. It was a view of Coventry Cathedral, you know, something like that anyhow, and he’d sketched in a cowboy on top of the photograph, taking pot-shots at the passers-by with a revolver, and on the other side of the card he’d written, in English, Wish you were here . And he’d signed it with an imaginary name — scratched it out afterwards, but you could still read it, he couldn’t even be bothered to make a proper job of an erasure, and anyway he did it on purpose so that I’d try to decipher it. I looked through a magnifying-glass, and there under the ink-scratches was written John Wallon, or John Warren, something like that. It was so silly . If I—

Besson jumped off the bed and stopped the tape-recorder. Then he went through the whole rigmarole over again, except that this time he checked the spool when the dial showed 15. He pressed the button, and turned his head a fraction to one side, as though someone were on the point of entering the room. At the same moment, his eyes concentrated on a particular part of the wall, at the far end of the room. The tape played through in an uneasy silence, with tiny murmurs and whirring sounds from the motor, and the tense, quick note of his breathing. Something oppressive and conspicuous had dropped in on the scene, some single object as solid as a meteorite. The night was stifling, it must be like a tight band round people’s temples. The penetrating sound of the girl’s voice seemed held back in time for ten or a dozen minutes; and yet the genuine quality of this voice, the echo-presumptive of those preceding remarks, had already filled the whole place, was vibrating in every corner of it, spiralling out towards the kitchen door and the hall, exploring keyholes, sometimes comprehensible, sometimes not, disruptive of all ties, inimical to real life.

It was rather like making the attempt to catch a fragment of wind, entice it through an open window and shut it up in some bare, cube-like room. Or, more closely, like constructing a small cardboard box, lined with mirrors, in order to imprison a ray of light: the lid once shut, the ray of light would go on reflecting ad infinitum from one side of the box to the other. After catching it you would keep it a long time, a year, maybe, or even more, and then one evening, one particular evening, when it was dark, you would carry the little box into your room, and there, very gently, you would open it. And you would see the ray of light dart out, piercing through the night like a star, before it vanished into the black veils of darkness, oblivion’s pitchy chiffon.

François Besson went back to the bed. First he sat upright on it, keeping his eyes fixed on the traditional point some 22 cms to the left of the map of Europe pinned to the wall; then he let himself slump back, not even supporting himself on his elbows. His head missed the pillow by a good foot and a half, but he paid no attention. He stretched out his legs on the mattress, and avoided looking at the ceiling. Since he had to look at something, he preferred it to be an object which brought to mind the long hours he had spent on his feet during the past few days. He scrutinized his jacket, now suspended on a coat-hanger from the handle of the right-hand window. The winking neon-sign outside, by pure accident, suddenly began (having chosen an absurd reflection-point) to adorn the end of his nose, the cleft in his chin, and the tips of his eyelashes, at regular intervals, with little red patches. Every wink changed the colour-tone of the room by something like the ten-millionth of a degree. Then the girl’s voice began again, a hint of a tremor in it, like a guttering match:

François — my dear François. You’re going to find all this very silly. It’s just the way I felt like talking to you today, I don’t know why. How it came about I’ve no idea, but suddenly I began thinking of you. I was getting bored all alone in my room, and it was raining outside, and I had this attack of ’flu, oh you know — Good, you’re there at last, h’m? Then yesterday I ran into Lina, and she talked about you. Not directly, oh no, she just happened to bring the subject up in some other connection. She didn’t even remember your name, she told me: didn’t you ever see her again? That big thin gawky girl who was trying to make a career as an actress, remember? And then she went straight on to something else, so that I didn’t have time to think about you then. It was this morning, just as I was getting up, that I began to. I remembered I hadn’t even answered your letter, the one you sent two months ago. No, I hadn’t forgotten, but every time I meant to reply some snag came up, a visitor, something or other, and I put it off till later. Anyway, I had really made up my mind to get in touch with you, today, or a bit later. I tried to write a letter, but it wasn’t any good. The more I thought about the idea, the more difficult I found it. You know, generally letters are no bother to me at all, I mean, I just take a sheet of paper and the thing dictates itself as I write. But with you it was different. I read your letter through again, twice, do you realize? And the more I looked at it, the more it — the more it scared me. Really paralysed me, in fact. I mean, it was so well written, and so sincere too, and there was I with absolutely nothing to say. I know it’s absolutely ridiculous, but I just didn’t dare try to produce something in the same class. That’s the truth, I swear it, really it is. There was nothing so extraordinary about your letter, nothing all that literary, I mean, but it just, I don’t know, it just struck me as difficult . I didn’t even feel like trying to compete with it. In a way it was something that had to remain unique, like a compliment, do you see what I mean? I just couldn’t reply, if I had the whole thing would have been spoilt. I thought — well, for a moment I thought the best way out was to send you a very short little note, on a visiting-card, saying something like ‘Thank you for your letter’. I’m sure you’d have understood that. Or else I might have sent you a telegram, or come round to see you at your place. Or just done nothing at all. Nothing at all. Because, in the last resort, it was the kind of letter that doesn’t need a reply. I believe — But I was afraid you might be cross, and then I had an idea. Why, I told myself, I could tape my reply, and send you the spool. That way you can hear my actual voice. Besides, I can talk as I feel, I don’t need to make up any fine phrases, it doesn’t matter . I really do get the feeling that you’re going to listen, that I’m free to say what I like. So I went round to Lina and asked her to lend me her tape-recorder and a clean spool. I didn’t tell her why I wanted them. She agreed. Oh, there’s just one thing — when you’ve finished with the spool, she’d like it back. Just send it through the post, her address is 12 Rue de Copernic. That’s all.

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you, so I’ve got an excuse for saying I hope all goes well with you. There’s a whole heap of news I could tell you about me and the rest of us — but I’m not all that anxious to hold forth to you on that particular topic. Well, anyway, I’m still very much the same — going to psychology lectures, and working now and then. I’ve been doing some painting recently, too. I find it absorbing, but heaven knows if my stuff’s any good. For several days now I’ve been having a red phase. You simply have no idea what an extraordinary colour red is. I never realized till I started using it. I cover vast canvases with red and nothing else. Now I find myself noticing every red object, and you know, there’s an awful lot of them around. I’ve begun collecting them, too. Anything, so long as it’s red. I’ve got bits of material and cardboard boxes and scraps of paper, oh yes and cigarette packets, those Craven A ones, you know. I even keep bits of cotton-wool with blood on them, but the trouble about that is that the blood turns black when it dries. Remember the letters we used to write each other in the old days? Funny the way we invented excuses to send a letter, anything would do. And then we’d post them, very seriously, going home from school, and read them privately in our bedrooms. It was a fine idea for public holidays, or New Year’s Day or Easter, or celebrations like 21st September and 5th July. If we wanted to correspond at other times we had to find some special reason. I used to look in the calendar to see which saint’s day it was, and then write: My dear François, I’m sending you this note today with all my good wishes on the feast of St. Thingummy or St. Whatsit. I even remember there were occasions on which no saints appeared in the calendar, and then I’d send you good wishes for the Immaculate Conception, or the feast of Christ the King. Remember? But that’s all over and done with now. I can’t use dodges like that any more. Even with you. Even if I could be certain you’d understand. Even if I was sure you wouldn’t tell me I was trying to play arty poetic tricks with past memories. Anyway, my position nowadays is very simple on that score — I just can’t write any more, not a word. It’s — it’s a kind of illness. The mere sight of a blank white sheet of paper’s enough to depress me half out of my mind. Frankly, it beats me how anyone still manages to go in for writing — novels, poetry, that kind of kick. Because in the last resort it’s quite useless. Pure dumb egotism. Plus the urge to expose yourself, let other people gobble you up. Anyway it’s so exhausting. Honestly, I just don’t get it. I tell you, I can understand people writing letters and postcards better than I can someone settling down to a novel. It serves no purpose, there isn’t any truth in it. I mean, you don’t make any discoveries or isolate any area of knowledge, you just wallow in illusion. To my way of thinking, it’s like an animal manufacturing its own parasites, a shellfish that creates its own seaweed and attaches the stuff, personally, to its carapace. Art. As far as I’m concerned, I’ve had it. I just don’t believe in it any more. You know, when I told Marc Morgenstein that the other day, he just laughed at me. He said it was all nonsense — I wrote far too well, he liked my stuff, and I was crazy to take myself seriously on such a subject. He also told me that art’s never existed anyway, people talking about it is the only thing that counts. According to him, anything can be reduced to conversation. He also said that when someone had written a piece like ‘Imitation Leather’—you know, the story of the housewife who gets an obsessional thing about her trolley-bus — well, that proved they had something to say. And when one’s got something to say, sooner or later one always manages to say it. I told him that made no difference — everyone in the world had something to say. But he didn’t get it. All the same, I really believe it’s true. I do want to say things, yes, but not in the way I did before. I get the feeling one can express them equally well by — by doing almost anything, going round to the baker’s for bread, or having a chat with the concierge. Obviously I don’t talk about this to the others. You’re no longer in favour. But I don’t think it matters. What’s the point of being regarded as a person of intelligence? One can get along very well on one’s own, don’t you agree? What’s really needed, I feel, is the ability to detach oneself, stand aside. Anyway as far as I’m concerned it’s the end of the road. I can’t stomach lies and poetry any longer.