Jean-Marie Le Clézio - The Flood

More time passed. Besson continued to stare at the glass, without moving a muscle. At first he had decided to make a complete study of it, until he knew it by heart. Then he saw that the glass continually changed its shape. It became more elongated. It swelled out like a soap bubble, then shrank back to its former size. It sharpened to a point, it turned upside-down, or assumed the shape of a square. Besson realized that he would never be able to know it; he had to content himself with looking at it, seeing it afresh every moment, in a never-wearying progression. The yellow texture of the table. The yellow. The glass . The foam. Tiny bursting bubbles. Its shape at the top, and at the bottom. The reflection of the light on its right-hand side. A tiny mirror-image of the street on the left. Its vertical line. The polished, rounded rim. An endlessly turning circle — now, and now, over and over again. Top, bottom, middle. Right, left, up, down. The yellow surface of the table.

This was true reality: something inexhaustible, never-failing. No words or ideas, no sensation even, could fully express it. For the glass was there , it had escaped time and memory. It was action, action that caught the spectator’s eye, multiple and simultaneous action which passed endlessly into itself without ever emerging. Triumph. Triumph.

But to see it was not enough; one had to touch it as well. It was essential to run one’s fingers over that cold, slippery, cylindrical surface, to grasp it, touch it to every exposed part of oneself, if one really intended to know it. Besson’s hand inched forward hesitantly across the table. His fingers touched the transparent surface, but too late; the glass tilted, rolled, and then — for no very comprehensible reason — disappeared into space. There came a terrible crash. Besson did not look, but he knew the glass was broken. The knowledge caused him distress, but perhaps it was better this way: such beauty, such immensity had nearly turned his wits.

A man in a white jacket came across, looked on the ground, and said: ‘ De profundis , eh?’

‘I didn’t do it on purpose,’ Besson said, in a hoarsely protesting voice.

The man began to laugh. ‘Here, don’t look so cut up — these things will happen—’

Besson said: ‘How much do I owe you?’

‘Nothing,’ the waiter said cheerfully. ‘Have this one on the house. I’ll just get a brush and dustpan and sweep the bits up. Broken glass can be dangerous.’

But Besson persisted, almost angrily: ‘Look, please, I want to pay for it. I really insist on paying for it—’

He put a few coins on the table, then went out without looking back. A little farther on, across the road, there was another café, with big open doors. Besson walked through them into the bar. It was a sort of white-walled corridor, fitted with strip-lighting. At the far end of it, lined up against the wall, were half a dozen illuminated pin-tables. Besson made towards them.

With some curiosity he studied these boxes, perched there on their tall legs, and the various signs written under each glass top. All the pin-tables were free except the end one, where a young boy, not more than ten or eleven, was busy playing. Beside him stood a man in his thirties, quite obviously his father, watching every move.

The boy played with a kind of obsessional frenzy, hands gripping the sides of the table or pushing the button to bring down the balls. There he sat, squarely balanced on his chair, mouth tight shut, frowning in concentration, a small, nervous, absorbed child, pulling the metal striker back each time as hard as he possibly could, watching every move of the ball as it blipped off the bumpers, totting up the figures as they flashed on the illuminated screen. Besson had never seen a pin-table player like him before. The balls pursued their labyrinthine course, blipping against one rubber bumper after another, shooting out with explosive violence. From time to time they rolled back down to the bottom of the table, whereupon the boy, with one neat, precise movement, would send them straight back to the top again. The man, who stood leaning over him on his right, watched all this in silence. The figures went up and up, multiplied rapidly. After the first shot the scoreboard indicated 1,300. A kind of sharp report resounded from inside the machine. The boy took no notice of it. He continued to play non-stop, never tiring, a serious, almost tragic expression on his face: fierce, stubborn, the implacable determination of a grown man. The total increased steadily: 1,600, 1,800, 2,000. Further sharp bangs could be heard from the machine’s innards, accompanied by various metallic clankings and rattlings. The boy’s forehead was finely pearled with sweat, and nervous shudders flickered along his legs in time with the electric motor. He grasped the table with his thin arms and shook it in all directions, or banged it with the flat of his hand. Face bent over the glass, he stared, fascinated, into the heart of this minuscule labyrinth, eyes following the ball’s erratic progress, calculating, working out the best route for it to follow, then sticking to it with fierce possessiveness.

Besson went a little closer. It seemed to him that the pin-table and the boy perched on his chair were a single entity, a strange and barbaric mechanism, something full of violence and noise and flashing lights. Heart pounding, he followed the little metal ball’s progress, noting the way it blipped off obstacles, spinning and turning, clacking against the trap-gates, with tiny flashes of blue electricity that ran right through his body, touched every nerve-centre. He flinched back. He had been wounded. The idea left him exultant.

When the last ball vanished into its hole, with a machine-gun-like rattle, the entire table lit up in a splendid variety of colours. The scoreboard indicated a total of 9,999.

The boy pulled himself away from the machine. He was very pale; his face was worn, almost elderly, and agleam with unhealthy sweat. The man helped him down from his chair and said: ‘Well done. That’s thirty-two goes you had.’

The boy wiped his hands on his shorts.

‘But I still missed it twice, you know,’ he said. ‘I mean, that second ball, I wanted to shift it over to the right and get it on target, because at that moment the score was 400 up. Well, that was all right, but then I calculated wrong, and it banged the bumper and came back straight down out of play — you saw it, didn’t you? I just couldn’t get it back. You must have seen. Straight bang through, right in the middle. I wanted to bounce it back, but I was afraid I might tilt the table too much—’

‘Yes, I know,’ the man said. ‘But you did pretty well on the last ball.’

‘Not too bad, I’ll give you that. Three times on the 100, and once on the 500.’

‘Well, you got the highest possible score, didn’t you?’

‘Yes, but it took five balls to do it. What about the time I hit the jackpot in two?’

The boy walked off towards the door. The man caught him up and they left the café together. Besson glanced briefly at the doorway through which they had disappeared. He saw a narrow section of pale grey street, with fine rain needling down over it.

Then Besson turned his attention back to the machine. It still seemed to be quivering all over from the bangings and other movements it had endured. It was transparent, metallic, coloured like a jellyfish. On its upright panel various numbers were inscribed: 0–9 999–32. Between the figures was a woman in a bikini, her pink body lit up by the lights, dancing in the middle of a circus arena. To the right of her some uniformed men were cracking their whips at a group of lions. On her left there were two elephants in fancy-dress, a seal juggling a ball, and a trapeze artist swinging on his wire. Almost wherever one looked there was some sort of inscription in red letters — JOLLY BUMPER, CIRCUS GIRL, Score, BINGO, REPLAY, Archibald Swanson, Salem, Massachusetts, and GAME OVER ( Tilt ).