Jean-Marie Le Clézio - The Flood

At the bottom of the building there hung a kind of frayed blind. Then came a cigarette-end, an empty box, a stained handbill; and another cigarette-end, another empty box, another handbill. They were no longer attached to any living entity, and it was this fact of withdrawal which alone endowed them with some sort of tangible surface. From a sheet of glossy newsprint carrying the photograph of a Pakistani girl, and a continual, endlessly repeated stream of phrases which told the same vague, semi-legendary story (crammed with dates and proper names — Naaz, Pritibala, Mehmood, Dattaram, Ved Madan, Shashi Kapoor, opp. Tooting Bec 19 18 49), some indefinable pattern was beginning to take on shape and substance. In an arbitrary and random sequence words were replacing fragments of reality, and inscribing themselves one below the other on this white placard-like object, the back (it seemed) of some gigantic poster. This done, they remained there, mere senseless signs now, no longer hoping for decipherment. The letters followed one another (sometimes dropping out of place or even disappearing altogether), detached themselves, fell from sight, were gone. Here, caught in the cold beam of reality, was an abstract, illegible poem, which restored the sense of physical immediacy, of direct contact and understanding. All in an atmosphere of calm, absolute calm, unruffled serenity. The mountains had been flattened, the rivers all drunk dry, and the stains on the earth had dried out: all that remained were words, and still more words, a moving column of them, tapped out in a series of minuscule explosions on the white, jerkily advancing paper. They fastened upon it, bare and solitary as nails, dozens of nails.

12th floor

11th floor

10th floor

sun

9th floor

8th floor

7th floor

6th floor

5th floor

4th floor

night

3rd floor

p

2nd floor

p

1st floor

p

choice piece

p

gol

cigarette tzracks!

p

00000 fold

p

aaa

charabanc

tssktipptong!

he he she

‘Spada’

tree roof apartment block ORANGE

Imbert and Phelippeau Imbert and currant jelly January February March Apr feather pillow macadam

Chaos stood revealed, disintegration was complete; and yet from this piece of ground, this pile of sterile refuse, the movement was an upward one, a process of ascension. Each object was a source of radiance, and one let oneself be gently borne up on these rays, in the patient expectation that they would take one to some destination. The universe was constructed like an inverted pyramid; each element produced its angle, and the further one moved from the pyramid’s base, the greater grew the area comprehended, opening up like some splendid corolla. Every being and object on this surface, whether alive or dead, was a point from which two lines ran skyward, forming a sign shaped like a waterspout, which tore you free from the grasp of actuality, and inspired you to explore the more easily accessible depths.

Down below the town had been flattened: at some points houses and gardens repeated their two-dimensional geometric pattern ad nauseam . A layer of pale, silent cotton-wool padded the roofs and walls. Huge square gleaming blocks rested on the ground. Wires prolonged themselves to infinity, guttering was scored in the concrete beside the pavements like spreading roots. A unique and faintly sinister humming note could be heard under these carapaces of stone and steel, strong enough to make the soles of one’s shoes vibrate. In secluded corners of the squares, several men were curled up in hand-carts, as thought hibernating. On the esplanade, less than a hundred yards from the river, lay a litter of rotten tomatoes and potato cores: a scene of calm, cold desolation, like a photograph. To the left of the S.E.B.A. yoghourt shop, exposed to wind and rain, a great black dog stood barking fiercely in the middle of a barbed wire enclosure. At noon and seven p.m. (and when there was a war on) a siren screamed from the top of the hill. Perhaps it was the siren that began everything.

One day, 25th January, at half past three in the afternoon, it started up for no apparent reason. At the precise moment when its wailing note first burst upon the air, at the precise moment when it began to sweep round from one concrete structure to the next, growing louder every second, at that absolutely precise moment when everything seemed to be collapsing in total disorder the following incident took place. A young girl on a moped appeared at the corner of the boulevard, between the avenue of chestnut trees and the main entrances to the S.P.A.D.A. store. Her passage down the street coincided exactly with the noise of the siren. She had emerged from the tall clutter of buildings just as the first ululation went up; and she disappeared three hundred yards farther on, swallowed up by another group of office blocks, just as the sound died away into silence once more. What took place between these two points was unbearable. She rode on, sitting very stiff and straight in the saddle of her blue moped, hair drawn back round her childish face, eyes staring straight in front of her. The wheels whirred as she moved, light, transparent. Their hub-caps gleamed, their dirty tyres crunched over the asphalt. Legs bare, knees gripping tightly, the young girl kept going; but already she had lost some part of her own identity. Under the pressure of that unique sound, that blind and strident note, she underwent a metamorphosis. Her body shredded away into scraps, became fine dust, and gradually vanished altogether. Her moped, pierced through by the tension which the vibration-frequencies set up, became mere shrill metal. What took place at this moment, without warning, was something like the conservative influence of long final i labializing short i into ü . The young girl continued to advance down the middle of the soaking wet street, her black-and-white body held stiffly forward. The wailing of the siren was (it seemed clear) inside her, and echoing waves of sound burst from her eyes and mouth and nostrils. She was utterly alone, like some mechanical doll, and passed into oblivion at the bottom of the street; some indescribable impulse was urging her towards annihilation. The monolithic masses of the buildings on either side hemmed her in, guided her, traced out the route which, now, there was no escaping. The slightest deviation from it would have stripped away her skin and flesh, ripped out her nails, broken every bone in her body. All that would have remained to commemorate her gesture of rebellion would have been a spatter of blood and hair and brains on the grey surface of the wall.

So, cleaving through the air on her moped, the young girl advanced towards the end of her journey. A damp film covered her eyes. Her half-parted lips looked as though they were drinking some invisible liquid, and light shone from the glass of her head lamp. This was how she looked as she passed straight through the various barriers and bridges, the multiple layers of sounds and odours, smoke and ice. She rode through them all, supported by the single wire of that harsh, sawing noise, then dwindled away and vanished at the bottom of the street. At the same instant as I, or we, saw this door (as it were) opening for her between two solid blocks of houses, the siren stopped. There was absolute silence. And nothing, nothing remained in our minds, not even a living memory. From that day everything began to go bad, rotten. Today I, François Besson, see death everywhere.

From time to time (I may either be up or in bed) I stiffen, and stare out through the window, forehead pressed against the cold glass. Behind the closed shutters I see a long curving street with people walking up and down it. A violet shadow has fallen across the ground; and it is on this shadow that men and women walk, not saying a word, slip away into oblivion and are gone. The glow of the lighted street-lamps and the glitter from the shop-windows are both reflected all around: the shadows retreat reluctantly, like fringes of dark fur. Everywhere twinkling points of light are visible.