Jean-Marie Le Clézio - The Flood

‘My name isn’t Paul Thisse,’ Besson said. ‘My name is François — François Besson—’

But it was already too late. She did not hear him. So Besson entered the sphere of action, alone amid a gigantic rosette of expanding hieroglyphs, all of which bore the same identical message.

During this time night had fallen over the town. Darkness had covered the high relief of the buildings and the deep crevasse-like streets. Wrapped in silence, the ruins rose straight into a sky where clouds scudded invisibly past. The sea had become opaque, impenetrable, with the hardness of a vast polished steel ball, so that the earth could no longer slip softly by along the strand which divided them. Street-lamps glowed steadily amid a halo of mosquitoes and butterflies. Far away, over the roof-tops, the beam from a lighthouse intermittently slashed through the curtain of rain and darkness. The night was teeming, black, rich with the smell of smoke and momentary glimmers of light. Nothing could break down its barriers. Occasionally something would happen — a car travelling slowly through the streets, a bat flitting after a swarm of insects. But such moments did not last. The blind, heavy mass, like a tide of jam or molasses, would close over these brief points of action and at once obliterate them. One was caught in the trap, and nothing one could do would get one out of it. This whole sector of the earth was wrapped in the same vertiginous and glacial abyss, was held captive by its static immensity. No landmarks, no lights, no scintillating warmth: nothing but the dryness and barren expanse of the desert, crystalline hardness, opaque transparency, the diamond quality of utter nothingness, the void.

What difference did it make if there were a few patches of moisture here and there, one or two small warm humid droplets? They would not last long. Soon, too soon, they would be absorbed by that gigantic ever-thirsty mouth, always sucking, consuming. Minuscule sparks were born in the darkness, and floated swiftly away into space, so swiftly that they might have been mere illusions. What mattered, the only reality, was this eternal blackness, this silence, this unfathomable and all-engulfing infinity. Blackness. Blackness. An ocean of boundless shadows, where invisible waves surged to and fro from one edge of eternity to the other; an ocean activated by a slow, constant ground-swell; the great black flag ceaselessly covering all moving objects with its folds, gathering in and appropriating everything. An indescribable flux, the breathing of some never-to be-recognized giant. In the space of one-tenth of a second he could consume everything, so greedy was he for living sustenance. Water, fire, rocks, pale stars and red stars, disintegrating suns, delayed explosions and torrents of lava — all this he would devour without ever being satisfied. Time, the dimension of attrition, was made out of these elements. Seconds, seconds — grains of salt falling gently on top of one another. Whole years of honey, fat centuries dissolved magically in floods of acid. Nothing remained. Nothing here was left in peace any longer. Meals chased one another interminably, the process of digestion never reached an end. And in this expanse of darkness there was no more measure or proportion. Continents, whole galaxies were as grains of dust. High and low merged indistinguishably into one another: circles and angles, parallel straight lines and spirals, colours, distances, weights — all these, even when you examined them closely, were reduced to tiny identical points. Things that had been really hard-textured, like concrete or marble floors, opened up under the pressure of foreign bodies and engulfed them gently, like a quicksand. Everything had been reduced to a common, formalized identity, and the world might just as well have been nothing but a page of writing.

The blackness of the night, blackness fallen from the uttermost depths of the empty heavens, had descended on earth, and was implementing the true reign of matter: sleep, chill non-being, mastery over death. Under its sway days and months had fallen silent, had increased their numbers in darkness, and now there was nothing left to cover the minuscule activities of life but this profound eternity, its dull and constant sound-waves expanding all around, ecstatically unfolding its sumptuous petals of dying light and mingled colours, to reveal, at last, the face of darkness.

Night had spread its substance evenly over the town. Out in the streets the cold air stirred from time to time, and blew along the rows of closed shutters. Bright white or red holes in the darkness, near the bottom of buildings, formed words such as: CAFE CINEMA BAR PIZZA MOTEL. Pigeons slept in corners of ledges, each with its head tucked under its left wing. There was also, running through the middle of the town, a river, its wide bed choked with stones and thorns. The night had poured into this

channel, and now it was a mere carbonaceous crevasse that looked as though it went right through to the centre of the earth. The sound of its waters rose up with the mist, and it was a noise of blackness and terror. Not far from the sea a bridge, with three still arches, spanned the river. Cars sped over the damp macadam, each with two red, mistily shimmering stars of light behind it. Far away to the north the mountains blended with the vast yawning gap of the sky. And in the country, not to mention along the boulevards, countless trees were sleeping where they stood.

They were not the only sleepers. Men and women slept too, inside their little private castles, lying on their flat beds, in numbers past counting — many millions, probably, stretched out stiff and chill, eyes turned up, breathing lightly. Jacques Vargoz, for instance. Or Sophie Murnau. Noëlle Haudiquet. Hott Ben Amar. Infinity had descended upon them, and they were gently breathing it in without knowing it. They were savouring the calm of eternal being, and their bodies were sliding perilously on the slippery slope of peace. Tomorrow, perhaps, when the feverish day began its course once more, some of them would remain prisoners of the night, and never wake again. Children, curled up in their cots, would begin to dream of monsters. One of them, torn abruptly awake for no particular reason, open eyes trying vainly to brush away the veils of darkness, began to scream, all by himself, drilling his red point of life in the heart of the void, making an act of creation, standing up against the flatness and emptiness, taking chisel and hammer and carving into that vast indifferent wall the words that liberated him: I AM ALIVE I AM ALIVE I AM ALIVE.

François Besson watches the sun rise — The vegetable market — Besson looks at the river-bed — Brief discussion with the man with the cigarette-stub — Besson packs his bag — The adventures of Texas Jack: Episode 26: The fight against Rattlesnake the Indian

ON the seventh day, the rain more or less stopped. Besson had not slept at all. Very early in the morning, before first light, he left the flat. The redheaded girl and the little boy were still asleep. He went into a truck-drivers’ café and had a hot espresso to keep out the cold. Down the far end of the bar, near the door to the W.C., was a very old man, all covered with wrinkles, and dead drunk. A group of three or four men, plus a woman who looked like a tramp, were standing by the counter, talking, laughing, shouting, singing. Suddenly a corpulent, elderly man began a row with a bearded youngster, and after a preliminary barrage of insults, began to beat him over the head with both hands. The bearded one backed away, holding up his arms to protect himself. A general brawl ensued, and while it was going on the young man slipped out of the bar. Besson waited a few minutes, until things had quietened down again. Then he walked out and sat down on a bench facing the sea.