J. M. Le Clézio - Terra Amata

‘And another thing that would be fun would be to live 50 million years from now.’

‘Yes, that would certainly be very strange.’

‘Do you think there’d still be human beings?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Perhaps people wouldn’t die any more then?’

‘The world would just be a single town—’

‘With other towns in space, on Mars, on Venus, everywhere.’

‘Yes. Difficult to imagine.’

‘Frightening.’

‘I read, I read in some book that every species lasts about the same time, about 300,000 years. That’s what happened with all the animals that are extinct. After 300,000 years a species dies naturally, of old age, as people do.’

‘Hmm.’

‘Yes, and I think the human race is estimated to have lived about 150,000 years so far. So if the theory’s correct that means man has got just as long to live again. And after that he’ll just gradually disappear, down to the last one.’

‘What will the last man be called? I’d love to know.’

‘It may be a woman …’

‘How awful for her … All alone in an empty world.’

‘Perhaps she wouldn’t even realize it. If all that’s true, you know, it means the human race has already reached its highest point. Henceforth it will just gradually decline. All that’s been invented will be forgotten, people won’t know how to write any more, fire and tools and language will all be forgotten. They won’t know how to walk on two legs any more, and then one fine day it will be all over.’

‘It’s awful to think of it.’

‘Not really. There may be other species, other forms of civilization.’

‘It’s still awful to imagine. All that trouble for nothing.’

‘Yes, but it’s only natural.’

‘Yes, but just the same it’s hard, terrible.’

‘After all, people don’t think about the men who were alive 2000 years ago or more …’

‘Yes, but they know that they were there.’

‘No, they don’t know. People judge everything in relation to, in relation to what they are themselves.’

‘But the—’

‘People don’t think now as they used to think before.’

‘Don’t you think so?’

‘No, I mean, they thought they possessed the truth and decided what should happen in the world and knew everything. And look where they are now.’

‘Yes, that’s terrible too.’

‘It’s true, you know, there must have been a chap, or a woman, in 722 B.C. say, who thought he knew a great deal, thought he knew the truth. It’s queer when you think of it. He spoke, he believed in God, he ate and drank, he was really alive. And now he’s gone, and there’s nothing left of him, perhaps not even a little piece of bone, or a tooth.’

‘Yes, and people who are alive are descended from him.’

‘What do you think he did?’

‘Hunted bears with a stone axe and let out horrible yells, rrrhaaoou rrhaaoou!’

‘Do you think he thought about us?’

‘Hardly likely!’

‘Yes, it’s depressing in a way to think about all that.’

‘One day my grandmother said something terrible that shocked me very much. She was eighty, and I was twelve or thirteen, something like that. And she said to me, “People don’t realize it, but a life is soon over.” That really upset me. It’s terrible.’

‘Yes, touching.’

‘It must be terrible to grow old.’

‘Yes, when everything is all over. You don’t know how much time you’ve got left, a day or a year.’

‘Fortunately most people don’t think about it.’

‘The worst must be — the thought that your life is ending.’

‘Eighty years seems such a long time, and yet to her it was nothing.’

‘When people think about eternal life what they’re really thinking of is youth.’

‘Yes, they wouldn’t want eternal life at eighty years old.’

‘It’s the active part of life they want to keep. They don’t see themselves living eternally with lumbago, or paralysed.’

‘Yes, it’s queer.’

‘Do you believe in it?’

‘What, eternal life?’

‘Yes.’

‘I don’t know, I don’t think so, no, do you?’

‘No, neither do I.’

‘It depends, what I think is — I mean, I can’t believe that you can just die like that, in five minutes.’

‘How do you mean, in five minutes?’

‘Well, yes, there was someone there, and then five minutes later there’s nothing. That’s what I can’t believe.’

‘Why, because it’s humiliating?’

‘No, that’s not it, but — I just can’t believe it, that’s all.’

‘That a person can die in five minutes?’

‘Yes, not just die, but suddenly disappear just like that. A whole life, just like that, in five minutes.’

‘Perhaps it takes a whole lifetime to die.’

‘I–I knew a girl once, at school. We weren’t exactly friends, but we knew each other very well. Her name was Hélène and she was a year younger than me. She lived near me and we went to the beach together sometimes. I was sixteen then, and she was just fifteen. We didn’t talk much, but we knew each other quite well without it. And then she was very like me — tall, with fair hair and blue eyes. That was important to me because all the other girls were dark, with black eyes. Then one day I heard that she’d been drowned. I was stunned. She’d gone out in a boat and — and there was a storm and the boat overturned and three days later they found her. I couldn’t believe that she’d gone like that, so easily. Drowning’s such a terrible way to die, and I still saw her as she was when she sat next to me in class, and I remembered everything, her voice, her face, her hands. I — she was such a live person to me, and when I heard, when I read it in the papers, I couldn’t, I just couldn’t believe it was her …’

‘Hmm …’

‘And I did something very silly, do you know what I did, I rang up her home straight away and said, “Hallo, can I speak to Hélène Marchese, please?” It was the first time I’d ever telephoned her, and her mother said, in a strange voice, “You shouldn’t do things like that”, as if it were a practical joke, and I hung up quickly without saying who I was. But it upset me so much, I—’

‘Hmm …’

‘Yes, it’s very hard to believe, how you can be there one minute, and then suddenly it’s all over.’

‘I know someone who was killed in Algeria during the war. He was a pacifist, and I couldn’t bring myself to believe that it was him. It wasn’t at all the sort of thing to happen to him. Apparently he was shot in the back of the neck with a machine-gun. Eleven bullets.’

‘Yes, it’s—’

‘Especially as he didn’t even know how to use a gun.’

‘I can’t believe it’s all over as easily as that.’

‘I’m afraid it may be.’

‘In five minutes?’

‘Yes, five minutes. And all that about eternal life and resurrection and Karma, etc., I’m afraid all that’s just illusions, dreams.’

‘Yes, it seems rather childish, I know, but—’

‘Have you ever thought about all the millions, billions of people who are dead, wiped out, swallowed up, just like that, and no one has the least idea that they ever existed?’

‘Mmm, yes, it’s true, it’s ter—’

‘And yet they did exist, and had children and wives and — and ideas, thoughts, and there’s nothing of it left.’

‘Yes … And yet I still can’t — I still can’t believe that that girl, Hélène, that she was drowned, and that as she was choking in the water all her life was being wiped out, all her soul and personality and—’

‘But I’m afraid that’s how it is.’

‘Do you — You don’t believe in God, then?’

‘I don’t know, I — it depends.’