J. M. Le Clézio - Terra Amata

A long time after, Chancelade and Mina were cast out again. Before they left the terrible zone in which the beast with no head and no belly thrashed about, they looked at the dodgem cars. They saw the little trucks gliding over the black floor in all directions giving off sparks. They moved about at random, colliding, stopping, starting for no reason beneath their antennae. This was the boundary of noise and madness. Beyond the dodgem cars was the black night, silence, solitude. Chancelade took the girl by her left hand this time, and in that direction they disappeared.

There were so many ways of saying such things without speaking. You could do a drawing, for example, a portrait of a woman, with two shadowy anxious eyes, fair hair down to her shoulders, a delicate nose, and a mouth with parted lips revealing very white teeth. You could write a letter, a long letter full of adjectives and adverbs in which, lying slightly, you tried to say what you think.

At the end you’d put:

‘Yours with love

C.’

Then you’d put the letter in an envelope, and the envelope in the letter-box, trying not to think that it might get lost or end up screwed into a ball in a dustbin.

Or you could go down to the sea-shore with an empty bottle and put a note in it with a message. Then you’d throw the bottle in the water and watch it drift along the coast.

It was all very simple really. All you had to do was leave messages anywhere and everywhere, under stones, fixed to trees, between the pages of the telephone directory or the Divine Comedy, and one day Mina would come and find them, one after the other, and understand.

Or you could take a knife and carve letters on the leaves of aloes or in the trunks of plane-trees. It was there all round you if you could only read. Inside the bells on dogs’ collars, inside sardine-tins. In Coca-Cola bottles, or on the backs of cinema tickets. One letter here, another there. You took the V from television, the O from florist’s, the Z from Cinzano. And you made up your message. There was nothing mysterious about it, or even hidden. If only you wanted to be able to read, the message appeared in the street, over the sky, or on the grassy earth. All the millions of different messages that all meant the same thing.

You could send a telegram something like

SO SAD PRETTY DRAUGHTBOARD OF

RASPBERRIES STOP SO SAD

MAHARADJAH OF RAGE STOP CHANCELADE

Or you could send a book, with the relevant words underlined. Or a message in code, putting i for o, t for b, k for z, u for i, and o for a. You could leave signs in the street — a knotted handkerchief, a broken match, a chicken-bone, two crossed cigarettes, an arrow chalked on the pavement. At the end of them all would be perhaps the treasure. Drinking water, or happiness.

It was quite easy, really, to talk to each other from a distance There were so many games, so many languages! There were marks on trees, heaps of stones, semaphore, shadows, ciphers, smoke signals, the highway code, fingerprints, seeds, shells, carrier pigeons, Quipu, coins, calendars, classified advertisements, rebuses, charades:

My First is a nut to crack.

My Second is a nut to crack.

My Whole is a heart to break.

But that’s not all. You can speak in gestures like the Nootka Indians; with wings like bees; by whistling like porpoises; by making faces like gibbons. You can feel with your fingers like the blind, or play the organ like musicians. The world is spread out all around, perfectly comprehensible. The wind makes a noise in the trees, the clouds mass on the horizon: that means it’s going to rain. The moon is yellow with a misty halo: that means that winter’s coming. The insects grate furiously, the frogs croak in the darkness: that means it’s summer. A few waves move over a perfectly flat sea: it means a ship is passing, or there’s a submarine earthquake somewhere. All that’s quite plain and evident. The world is intelligent, transparent and pure, and all you have to do is sink into it and disappear.

When night fell Chancelade went up to a hill overlooking the town. Then he turned towards the west and began to speak silently with his electric torch. He said:

Chancelade peered into the darkness, straining his eyes to the utmost. But in the house far away at the other side of the town the yellow light went on burning without interruption. So Chancelade put the electric torch in his pocket and went back down the slippery stairways that led to the town.

Another time, Chancelade and Mina spoke in deaf-and-dumb language. They went into a café in the town centre and sat down without saying anything. When the waiter came Chancelade merely pointed at the ashtray, which had PHOENIX BEER written on it, and put up two fingers. The waiter gave him a queer look, then went to fetch the two glasses of beer. It was easy to make yourself understood without speaking. Then, as he lit a cigarette, Chancelade looked at Mina, and started to make signs with his right hand, just moving his lips:

C: Open hand profile little finger down. Closed hand thumb crosswise. Closed hand thumb up. Hand profile index pointing up. Closed hand thumb and little finger up.

M: Open hand profile fingers touching. Hand profile two fingers up.

C: Hand profile forefinger outside thumb. Hand profile two fingers moving down. Hand closed little finger up. Open hand profile little finger down. Closed hand profile. Hand profile outside thumb. Closed hand thumb and little finger up.

M: Two fingers pointing down. Open hand profile fingers touching.

C: Open hand profile. Open hand profile fingers touching. Three fingers pointing down. Hand profile forefinger inside thumb. Closed hand thumb and little finger up.

M: Closed hand thumb and little finger up. Closed hand thumb crosswise. Closed hand profile. — Closed hand thumb up. Two fingers pointing down. Hand profile index pointing — Closed hand thumb and little finger up. Open hand profile fingers touching. Two fingers together pointing up.

C: Three fingers pointing down. Closed hand thumb crosswise. — Hand profile forefinger outside thumb. Open hand profile fingers touching. Open hand profile fingers touching.

M: Hand closed little finger up. Three fingers pointing down. — Hand profile two fingers moving down. Closed hand thumb up. Hand profile index pointing. Hand profile index pointing. Closed hand thumb and little finger up.

C: Three fingers pointing down. Closed hand thumb crosswise. — Hand profile forefinger outside thumb. Open hand profile fingers touching.

M: Closed hand profile. Closed hand thumb crosswise. Closed hand thumb crosswise. — Hand profile forefinger outside thumb. hand profile two fingers moving down. Hand closed thumb up. Hand profile forefinger outside thumb. — Hand profile forefinger inside thumb. Hand closed thumb up. Hand profile forefinger outside thumb. — Three fingers up. Open hand profile fingers touching. Three fingers pointing down. Hand closed thumb up. Two fingers pointing down.

C: Three fingers up. Hand profile two fingers moving down. Hand closed thumb crosswise. Open hand profile little finger down. Hand closed thumb crosswise.

M: Open hand profile fingers touching. Two fingers pointing down. — Closed hand thumb and little finger up. Open hand profile fingers touching. Two fingers up. Open hand profile little finger down. — Open hand profile little finger down. Hand closed little finger up. Hand closed index pointing. Hand closed two fingers moving down. Hand profile forefinger outside thumb.