Jean-Marie Le Clézio - The Flood

Now Besson leaned forward a little, and with hand outstretched towards the shadows flitting by, began to intone, in a whining monotonous voice: ‘Kind sir, kind lady…. Not a bite of food for two days…. Kind sir, kind lady … please spare a copper.… Not a bite of food for two days….’

To his great surprise, several figures detached themselves from the crowd, one after another, and put a coin in the palm of his upturned hand. He kept the money there, and thanked each donor; but the shadows flitted away without saying saying a word, and vanished in the distance.

In this way he soon acquired his own special section of pavement, a kind of invisible circle with him at its centre, and a protective empty space around him. Groups of men or old women would approach, and then make a detour, giving him quick curious glances, then looking away again, attention wandering. Little by little, as time went on, Besson began to learn his new trade. It was simple enough, but required a certain amount of tact. You had to huddle up at the foot of the wall, letting your legs and the bottom part of your body sprawl like a heap of dirty rags. When a group of people passed by, you had to be careful not to scare them off: this meant keeping quite still, so that you were not mistaken for a drunk, or someone who had been taken ill. Watch the feet passing by, keep your eyes fixed on the ground. When people were just coming abreast of you, you lifted your head and looked at them with a mildly worried expression, that could not be interpreted as containing either hatred or cupidity; at which point, with a firm, decisive gesture, you stretched out your hand towards theirs, and softly — yet with as clear an articulation as possible — muttered the words ‘Nothing to eat’. Then you followed their movement with your hand, as though merely asking for someone to help you up. The most important thing was not to shout insults at those who went past without giving you anything, but just to let your arm drop very slowly, in a discouraged fashion. Often people would be stung by remorse and come back to make you some contribution. You also had to be careful when deciding who you were going to ask: women were the best bets, especially when on their way to a restaurant or the cinema, and escorted by a man. Children accompanied by their parents were also pretty good customers more often than not, though you had to take care not to scare them, or look them straight in the eye. They would come forward hesitantly, pushed on by their mothers, thrust their coin into Besson’s hand, and run off. But as they fled they would look back over their shoulder, with those proud, nervous, inquisitorial eyes they all had. Besson also had to keep glancing up and down the street the whole time, ready to take off if a policeman appeared.

Two or three times people stopped to take a good look at him. The first of these was a man of about fifty, with a crew-cut, and wearing a navy-blue gabardine raincoat. He strolled past Besson a couple of times, then lingered on the kerbside, pretending to watch the cars go by. But his eyes kept glancing towards Besson: there was a very odd glint in them.

Then there was the very old woman who came limping up the street on a cane, step by step, till she at last drew abreast of Bessson, her puffy face thrust forward with the laborious effect she was making. Besson heard her quick, shallow breathing, interspersed with the occasional groan; then he caught sight of her legs, dragging along over the black asphalt like two granite pillars, both of them covered with huge varicose veins and bandaged ulcers. The cane tapped along the pavement to the right of her legs: it had a rubber tip. She advanced slowly, shoulders and buttocks working, a heavy, massive figure whose every step pressed into the ground and left the mark of her suffering there; heaving the solid burden of her body forward, on and on, panting, groaning, coughing, eyes fixed, eyelids snapping, mouth open, dirty strands of grey hair streaming down loose on either side of her forehead.

When the old woman drew level with Besson, she stopped, turned her head very slowly, gave him a terrible look, and began to mutter incomprehensible noises: ‘ Bé ,’ she mumbled, ‘ Hé … Mana … Bé ….’ And it was as though no one on earth would ever, from now on, be able to die. It was a kind of boundless malediction, projected through the broken utterance of this creature standing beside him, a piteous cry of outrage that shattered the silence of the street with its longing for death, for peace at the last. She stood there in front of Besson like a statue sculpted in grease, heavy-faced, mouth open, eyelids snapping continuously. Without a word or gesture she still contrived to demand, to implore, using instead her bloated bosom and deformed legs, her aged hands, her sparse, straggling hair, her hunched and dirt-encrusted back. Like a sick rhinoceros, she was looking around her for the instrument of her own destruction. She wanted to see the darts, she was impatient to find some strong enemy lying in wait for her, ready to floor her with a single blow and then — ah, ecstasy — choke the life out of her. But no such saviour appeared. The sharpened weapons remained hidden behind the arras, and the air continued to flow into her lungs, without interruption. This was why she gave Besson that terrible look: it was, quite simply, an appeal for someone to kill her. But did death really exist? Was it not a mere legend, an abominable legend created specially for her, to give her hope, to make her bear her affliction with patience, and accept the agony she suffered? There was nothing, on the face of it, to stop someone chopping her to pieces. She would have collapsed on the ground, bleeding sparsely and with difficulty. Even if one were to carve her limb from limb, and decapitated her, there and then, in the gutter, life would still persist in her; no eternal repose would descend on her body.

To be cursed by an old woman who wanted to die was something Besson could not stand for long. He got up, grabbed his beach-bag, and rushed off down the street without looking back.

Later, he went and had a meal at the Soupe Populaire. Here, in a bare room illuminated by the livid glow of strip neon lighting, the down-and-outs stood eating at a clean, sterilized counter. The menu had been pinned on the wall:

Soup

Boiled Beef and Carrots

Bread and Cheese

Fruit

Besson ate quickly, standing between an old man in a threadbare suit and a bearded tramp with a large wen on the back of his neck. Nobody said a word. Men and women bent over their plates, toothless jaws working rapidly. The ultra-white light gleamed on polished zinc and plastic, making the filth and ugliness of this human flotsam stand out all the more by comparison. A strange mixed odour of stew and disinfectant floated in the chilly, silent air. The bare room reeked of shame and embarrassment.

When he had finished eating, Besson left the canteen and walked through the night smoking a cigarette. It was his last packet. When that was gone he would have to pick up tab-ends from the pavement, or else smoke rolled-up newspaper, which has a foul, acrid, sugary stench while burning.

He climbed down some steps to the river-bed, near the caissons of the new bridge, and spent some little while hunting round for a snug corner where he could sleep, without being too much exposed to the icy wind that was set to blow steadily all night.

The river flows along its channel through the heart of the town — François Besson does hard labour — The story of Siljelcoviva — Mass attack by nocturnal enemies — François Besson kills an unknown person — A walk through the dark tunnel under the town esplanade