Jean-Marie Le Clézio - The Flood

Best not to think about such things, best to see no further than the surface appearance of reality, to play with it continually like a set of knuckle-bones. Obstinately Besson set himself to count the cars passing by outside. He took a sheet of paper and a ball-point pen. A few minutes later he had produced the following list:

Citroën

14

Fiat

9

Renault

51

Alfa-Romeo

1

Dauphine

29

Volkswagen

1

4 CV

12

Ford

1

R4, R8

10

Porsche

1

Peugeot (403, 404)

25

Dodge Dart

I

Panhard

5

Volvo

1

Simca

6

Unidentified makes

3

People still crowded along the sidewalks behind one another. From his high eyrie François Besson watched them attentively, forehead pressed to the window. He saw young women dressed in red and black macintoshes, some bare-headed, others wearing scarves or hats. There were men in their forties, smoking as they walked. There were old men, and soldiers in uniform, and middle-aged women with children, or dogs, who dithered a long time on the edge of the pavement before crossing the road. Besson saw groups of little girls on their way to or from school, satchels slung over their shoulders, always jostling each other and squealing. He saw a man in a dark grey overcoat who stared at all the women passing by. He saw dawdlers and hurriers, cripples, polio cases, one-legged men on crutches. Some walked with a brisk, decisive step, others slouched; one or two turned their toes in. He saw them all, tiny manikins stretched out in insect-like columns, tight-packed, wedged against one another, timid, ridiculous, anonymous creatures — it made one feel sick to look at them. These were the people who owned the town, who had jobs and professions, who thought a little, who spent all their time swarming through this labyrinthine gallery-ridden termite-hill of theirs. Life here belonged to them. They had taken possession of this territory and become its exclusive occupants. None of them ever gave up. None of them ever renounced his shadowy status as a living creature, none of them ever simply stepped out of his clothes and his skin, and quietly melted away on the tarred asphalt. Such an idea never occurred to them. They were strong, incorruptible. Amazingly strong.

With a twinge of regret Besson sensed that from now on he would not be able to look at them all that often. He opened the window, and took a deep breath of cold, rain-damp air. For a little longer he continued to watch the wet street below, with its endless stream of mauve and green cars (more figures for his list) and all the women in loud raincoats, heels tapping a frenzied tattoo along the pavement. Then he drew the shutters to, and carefully closed them. He walked back to the middle of the darkened room, hesitated a moment, then went over to the door, pressed the light-switch, and watched brightness instantly spring out from the bulb.

The light hung directly above the table. Besson stood facing it for a moment; then he sat down in the chair and stared at the litter of papers spread out in front of him. The sheet of newspaper he had been looking at now lay close to one corner of the table: Besson gently dropped it on the floor. The entire working surface was cluttered up with scribbled sheets of manuscript, letters half-sticking out of their envelopes. Everything was in a chaotic muddle, but the muddle possessed a small confused life of its own, that kept whispering endless confidences in one’s ear. It made one want to send messages everywhere, all over the world, postcards with ‘kind regards’ written in the space reserved for correspondence — just ‘kind regards’, nothing more. It made one want to write stories, odd and trivial stories with the names of places or people, and dialogue, and inverted commas and exclamation-marks and question-marks and dashes. It made one want to doodle little patterns on a scratch-pad, crosses and spirals and circles. Or to play soldiers, sketching a mountain range at the bottom of the page, and putting in rows of little men with guns — white heads on the left, black on the right. A flag and a colour-bearer in each camp, too, that was essential. Then you made them shoot at each other, by tracing a long black line from the muzzle of the gun, which would curve over and down into the enemy’s camp. One for the whites and one for the blacks. After that you counted up the corpses to decide which side had won.

Besson took a sheet of paper and began to write. Slowly and hesitantly at first he traced each letter, one after the other, watching his pothooks marching forward all by themselves (well, almost by themselves) across the paper, navy blue on white. He took great care over capitals; he dotted every i and crossed every t. After a moment or so he began to go faster. He forgot the jerky motions of his hurrying hand, he no longer noticed each loop and flourish in the words he set down. He plunged into the act of writing like a landscape, without any conscious goal, never slackening speed. He saw whole phrases pour out of his pen, filing swiftly to the right like tiny animals. He heard the soft abrasive squeak of the hurrying nib, and the regular rub of his hand against the paper, What a strange phenomenon it was, this meticulous scribbling which — little by little, line by line — filled the entire sheet, besmirching it with a whole private system of strokes and and loops, this strange object marching on of its own volition, how, no one could tell, forward, always forward, describing, erasing, pointing the flow of time. There was something alarming about it, it was quite capable of pulling a fast one on you, saying things off its own bat, things you had no idea of. It was language in isolation, a kind of Braille alphabet in which each sign or group of points had stolen something from the substance of life and was preserving it in minuscule form. Like an obscene wall-inscription, a thumbing of the nose against the ineffable weight of eternity. Or perhaps more like some magical formula, some highly complex and specific spell which, if pronounced correctly, can bring about ignoble metamorphoses, trigger off strange chemical reactions, turn children into toads, moonbeams into emeralds, sunlight into rubies.

On the sheet of paper Besson wrote:

‘Cavalcade.

Venenom.

Leaf

Selor — Bergue — Wiggins Teape Papers.

I am writing. I am writing that I am writing. I am writing that I am writing that I am writing. I am writing that I am writing that I am writing that I am writing.

I am looking at my watch. I am very fond of my watch. I would not like to lose it. I would not like anyone to steal it. I have already damaged it once: I forgot to take it off in the bath. I had to take it round to the watch-mender for cleaning and oiling. It has a beautiful white metal dial, with tiny strokes instead of figures. Right at the top, where the hands indicate noon or midnight, there are two strokes instead of one. Near the centre of the dial is written, in English: JUNGHANS. Shockproof. Anti-magnetic. Waterproof. Made in Germany. There are two hands, the shorter one pointing towards the stroke which represents 4, the larger one vertically aligned downwards, covering the stroke at 6. So this is the time my watch tells me it is: half past four. Oh, and there’s another indicator, a very long fine needle, which sweeps round the dial with a vibrating motion. It’s really a very fine watch. I would hate to break it. I am glad it belongs to me. It has a nice pigskin strap, and a bright metal buckle. The glass has been a bit scratched on the outside, ever since I banged my wrist against the school wall. It was a present from my mother, two years ago. For my birthday. When I put it close to my ear I can hear its tiny heart beating away, tick-tick-tick, never stopping. It’s nice to have a watch of your own. Wherever I go people can ask me the time, and I can look at my watch and say “A quarter to two”, or “Half past seven”, or “Three minutes to twelve”, or whatever it may happen to be.’