Jean-Marie Le Clézio - The Flood

Then, when everything had been touched, breathed, seen and heard with minutely detailed attention, Besson went across to the door and switched on the electric light. In a flash the room was filled with yellow radiance, which illuminated every remote corner, made objects stand out from the floor as though by levitation. Besson went back to his table, and sat down. But this time he did not touch anything. He simply rested both elbows on the wooden surfaces, and kept quite still.

Outside, the rain was still falling. There came a steady drumming from the swollen gutters, and another, softer sound, as each separate drop filled up another tiny patch on the exposed white stucco façade, very gently, without seeming to do so. The wind was blowing in sharp gusts, so that loose shutters banged to and fro, and twigs were torn from the trees and came pattering against the windows.

As he sat there Besson felt a numb torpor steal over him, the terrified urge to burrow right down to the bottom of a heap of leaves, and hibernate. He sensed something of what trees experience: sadness and melancholy clutched at his heart, his life seemed to ebb perceptibly. Beyond the ramparts of his room the sky still loomed heavily. Each time he drew breath, a pall of vapour penetrated his lungs, a strange sense of weathering descended on him. Was it for this that one was alive, was it for this that one tried to think , at all costs, that one fought to encompass the world by the power of reason? To be an organism scarcely distinguishable from a tree, to have, in the last resort, all these roots, these yellowed and slowly falling leaves? To become stooped and bent, to feel your bones creak, and wear out your ancient wrinkled skin in its long battle with time? To be shovelled away into the ground, held close in its vice-like grip, and achieve oneness with the turning seasons?

At this point someone knocked twice on the door of the room. Besson heard, but made no reply. A few seconds later the summons was repeated: four knocks this time. Besson turned his head towards the door and said: ‘Come in.’

A woman entered the room. She was about sixty, and wore a brown dressing-gown with red slippers. Her face was heavy with fatigue, and her grey hair hung loose down her back. Cautiously she took a step or two towards the table.

‘Can’t you sleep?’ she asked.

‘No,’ Besson said.

The woman sat down on the edge of the bed. She had very large eyes, with brownish rings under them. She smiled, tentatively.

‘You ought to go to bed,’ she said. ‘It’s nearly three in the morning.’

Besson made a show of searching for some paper on his table.

‘I’m not sleepy,’ he said.

‘You’ll make yourself ill—’

‘No, really, I’m not tired.’

The woman looked at the table.

‘Are you working?’

‘Yes.’

‘Tiring yourself out for nothing,’ the woman said. ‘You’d be better off asleep.’

‘Yes, I know,’ Besson said. ‘But I’m in the middle of sorting out these papers.’

She said nothing for a moment. Besson looked at her hands, and noticed that they were covered with thick bulging veins. Then he glanced up at her face.

‘What about you?’ he said. ‘You’re not asleep either.’

‘I heard you playing the tape-recorder just now,’ the woman said. ‘You’ll wake your father, you know. You ought to—’

She did not finish the sentence.

‘I’m going to bed in a minute,’ Besson said. ‘I had no idea it was so late.’

‘Very nearly three o’clock.’

‘I didn’t hear the clock strike.’

‘What about your watch?’

Besson glanced down at the table. ‘Twenty-five to three,’ he said. There was another silence.

‘Aren’t you cold?’ the woman said.

‘No.’

The woman turned her head a little to one side.

‘What a stink of stale tobacco-smoke,’ she said. ‘Don’t you think you ought to cut down your smoking a bit?’

Besson shrugged. ‘Yes, maybe,’ he said.

‘All those cigarettes can’t be doing you any good.’ She pulled her dressing-gown tighter round her. ‘Well, I’m off to bed then,’ she said.

Besson began to fiddle with the coffee-spoon.

‘Have you been drinking a lot of coffee?’ the woman asked.

‘No, just one cup.’

‘Because that isn’t going to help you to sleep, you know.’

‘Maybe, but it keeps me warm.’

She got up and came towards the table.

‘Don’t be too long getting to bed,’ she said.

‘No, of course not, I’ll be off in a moment,’ Besson said.

‘Up every night like this till three o’clock, you’ll end by making yourself ill.’

‘There’s no danger of that, I assure you.’

The woman looked towards the windows. ‘My, just look at that rain,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ Besson agreed. ‘It’s certainly coming down.’

‘The end-of-winter rains,’ she said, and began to retreat towards the door.

‘I’m going back to bed, then,’ she said.

‘Good,’ Besson said.

‘Don’t sit up like that too long, François.’

‘No, I’m going to bed too.’

She hesitated a moment, then said: ‘And — and don’t go on thinking about … all that business, François.’

Silence.

‘Do you hear me? Don’t go on thinking about—’

‘Yes. Yes, I heard you.’

She made a great effort. ‘It can’t — I mean, it does no good , do you see?’

He made no reply.

‘You mustn’t think about all that business. Go to sleep. Don’t think about anything.’

‘All right,’ Besson said.

‘If there’s anything you need, just let me know.’

‘I don’t need anything, thank you.’

She began to go out; and then she turned her puffy face back towards Besson, and the sight pierced him to the heart. Eyes, hands, mouth, grey hair — all carried the same message, of compassion and love. Besson lowered his head and looked away.

‘Goodnight, François,’ the woman’s voice said.

‘Goodnight,’ said Besson.

‘Sleep well,’ she said. ‘See you tomorrow—’ Then she gave a little laugh. ‘What am I saying, tomorrow’s today, isn’t it? I mean, three in the morning—’

‘Goodnight.’

‘Sleep well.’

‘Goodnight.’

The door closed behind her.

For a moment Besson remained quite still, as though his mother might have taken it into her head to watch his actions through the key-hole. Then he got up and, an imaginary gun in his hands, began to act out a vendetta within the four walls of his room.

In the street — The eyes — François Besson visits the first café and reads the paper — The broken glass — François Besson visits the second café and plays the pin-ball machine — Meeting with his brother

THE second day, as soon as the sun was up, François Besson dressed and went out. He walked quickly through the streets, observing the scene around him. The sky was grey, with a faint flush of pink towards the east. On waste lots, and around the buildings, patches of undried mud glistened in the morning light. Crowds of men were on their way to work. They stood queueing for buses on street corners, or hurried along on foot, with bicycles, in cars. Unaccompanied women walked very fast, wearing black or red macintoshes, or, very occasionally, tartan. The mist from the thickest clouds still floated down almost to ground level: drops finer than dust-particles hung suspended between earth and sky, rising and falling, till they finally dissolved on some flat surface, noiselessly, leaving not so much as a small damp halo behind. They melted before they reached the ground, and mingled with the substance of the air. A blanket of mist hung over the town, filled the trees, clung to the skin of those abroad in the streets. Nothing was distinct or clear-cut any longer: outlines blurred and ran into one another, or even vanished altogether, as though wiped out with an eraser.