J. M. Le Clézio - Terra Amata

A few days later there was the funeral.

Chancelade didn’t know that every so often there was a dead man’s day like this. You know — they get the house ready, paint it black, put hangings all over the place, pedestals, vases with orchids and violets, candles, and tables with saucers full of visiting cards. For a few days everything is different. Some things are hidden away, others are brought out. Clothes, to start with: there are veils, black dresses, black stockings, black aprons, black hats, black scarves, purple socks, black shoes, black suits, bands, ties, sashes. Then there are bits of cardboard with black edges that you put in matching envelopes, and that have written on them:

Madame Claude Chancelade

Monsieur Adrien Chancelade

Monsieur and Madame Philippe Mendes

Monsieur Sébastien Magnan

announce with regret the death of

Jean-Antoine Chancelade

The burial will take place on August 3, 1952.

The funeral will start from the house at 4 p.m.

De Profundis!

There are also the people nobody knows who suddenly invade all the rooms and keep whispering and shaking hands and kissing, dabbing at their eyes with handkerchiefs. When they speak they say strange and rather disturbing things, like:

‘My goodness, what a terrible thing, what a blow …’

‘Yes, awful.’

‘The worst was getting him dressed. The skin gave, you know.’

‘Oh my goodness.’

‘Yes, we’d put his black suit on and the skin on his back went and we had to clean everything up and start all over again. And then we put on another suit.’

‘You’d never have thought it, he looked so calm, so ha—’

‘Yes, that’s true, but we had to bind the chin too …’

‘And did you powder him?’

‘Of course, what do you expect, he …’

‘Oh how awful, what a trial for his wife.’

‘She couldn’t do anything, poor thing, she was too upset.’

‘What a good thing you were there.’

‘Yes, but it’s dreadful. He soiled the sheets even two days after, you know.’

‘You don’t say!’

‘Ah, it’s all very sad!’

‘Yes, dreadful.’

‘But he didn’t smell.’

‘That’s because the doctor gave him a camphor injection right away.’

‘Yes, it was the only way, otherwise in this heat …’

Or else things like:

‘Did he suffer much?’

‘No, not much, it just carried him off in a few days.’

‘Yes, it was a good thing he didn’t linger.’

‘It was difficult towards the end, but fortunately, no, he didn’t linger.’

‘Did it happen during the night?’

‘Yes, about four in the morning. He was a bit delirious during the night and kept being sick and so on, and then he gave a cry at about four in the morning, and I came running, but it was all over.’

‘I’d never have believed it, he was so young, so—’

‘Yes, but the doctor was always here. It was only to be expected.’

‘But it’s a comfort he didn’t suffer. Some of them drag on like that for years’.

‘Yes, indeed, take my mother-in-law. It was terrible. And the worst of it was she knew she was going. She kept calling out “Don’t leave me, don’t leave me!” And when she saw people round the bed — she was delirious, of course — she used to say, ‘What do all these people want? Send them away, tell them to go away.” Oh, with her it was very difficult for everybody.’

‘Yes, sometimes you wonder whether it wouldn’t be better just to drop down in the street—’

‘And she suffered so much she wanted someone to kill her. She used to say to me: “Please, give me a gun and let me finish myself off”.’

‘Yes, it’s dreadful.’

‘But we shouldn’t really talk about such things in front of the boy.’

‘Poor little thing, he doesn’t understand.’

And so on.

Also, somewhere in the shadows, there’s the veiled face of the woman in black. She sits with both hands in her lap and her back bowed, propped crookedly against the back of her chair. She doesn’t say anything. She just sits there quietly, her body slightly collapsed as if she were asleep. Through the veiling you can just make out a very white face; but you can’t see her mouth or nose or eyes. Only, on either side, the brown mass of her hair. And the middle of the veil rises and falls regularly, there where the warm breath issues from lips and nostrils. The shapes of others come and go about her. Now and then a woman leans over her, puts an arm round her shoulders, brings her face close to the veil and murmurs a few words. But she doesn’t answer; she doesn’t even move. The white expanse of her hidden face stays turned towards a certain spot on the floor, a few inches left of the leg of the table on which the coffin rests. No one can do anything at all for her, or for anyone else. All you can do is look at her, as the boy Chancelade does, thinking proudly that something very unusual is happening to him, and also feeling pity, and wondering how it will all end.

Then everybody began to walk behind the black car that the coffin was in. Chancelade was among the first, holding the hand of a middle-aged woman in a hideous black dress. The cortège began to wind very slowly round the square. The sun was high in the sky, and a sort of dazzling white light was reflected back so strongly from the pavement and the walls of the houses that it made everyone’s eyes water.

Directly behind the hearse the woman in black glided along as though the movement were quite natural to her. It was as if she weren’t moving her legs at all; as if she were a ghost. On her right was an old man in a black suit, and on her left a young woman in a black coat and skirt with a scarf over her head.

At the head of the procession the black car gleamed in the sun. It was a splendid new car. The back part was fitted up as a hearse, and it had gilded metal columns and thick black velvet curtains with silver tears on. It drove along slowly, noiselessly, and the sun struck dazzling gleams from the hubcaps and chromium bumpers. Inside the hearse you could see the dark wood of the coffin with its brass handles, the crimson cushions, and bouquets and sheaves of flowers inscribed with the words:

‘Everlasting sorrow’

or

‘To my beloved husband.’

Before setting out they’d given Chancelade a wreath which he’d had to place solemnly on the coffin. It was a circlet of plastic violets with a silver ribbon across on which was written:

‘To my father.’

As he walked along Chancelade tried to see if it was still there. But it must have slipped off on the way because it had disappeared.

The heat was intense. Chancelade felt himself being gradually overcome with drowsiness. He thought how much he’d like to climb into the splendid black car and lie down on the red cushions and be carried slowly, like that, round the square. He would watch the procession following with measured tread, and wave to the idlers along the side of the road. Some men would raise their hats as a token of respect, and some women would lower their eyes and furtively cross themselves.

It took a very long time to go round the square the first time. Already some of the mourners were starting to feel tired. A big bald man behind Chancelade puffed and blew and mopped the back of his neck with his handkerchief, saying over and over again:

‘This heat! …’

Only the woman in black behind the hearse kept gliding imperceptibly forward like a ghost, looking neither right nor left. The crowd followed her slight figure round the square; seen from above it must have looked like some strange snail or centipede. In the middle of the square, now, an immense emptiness stretched up towards the sky and touched the sun. It was an invisible marble column, like the hub of a roundabout, turning slowly on itself and drawing the long black caravan round in its circle. It was also an eye that judged men and sentenced them; an eye, yes, a sharp pitiless eye was fixed on the square and held it hypnotised. Bodies sweated, buildings rose up like insurmountable ramparts, and the ground melted underfoot. There was no way out, no opening through which to escape. Everywhere there was this inhuman gaze crushing you, turning you into a slave. Everyone was gathered together there, at that moment, to take part in that barbaric rite. And the unwearying engine of the black car drew the crowd along, noiselessly, smoothly, with all the dreadful power of its steel pistons. All the looks that had failed of their objects in the past were now directed on to the dark wooden coffin covered with gaudy wreaths, and avenged themselves for their sufferings. When Chancelade realized that he was in the centre of this hell and couldn’t escape, he felt a strange dizziness, and shivered. He had never seen so much emptiness, so much fated violence, so much fear and fatigue concentrated in such a small space. It was worse than climbing the stairs of an endless tower or walking across a room in the dark. Intelligence was suddenly overthrown, and you were swept by the current of tragedy through the icy regions of that which you do not understand, that which you never will understand, that of which you know you will always know nothing.