Fever

by J. M. G. Le Clézio

  ‘It won’t take long,’ he said.

  ‘The thing is, I have to go,’ said Elisabeth.

  Tobie cast her a masterful glance.

  ‘I shall have finished in five minutes. You can surely spare five minutes?’

  He went on working, bending close over the paper, the hair plastered to his forehead with sweat. From time to time he raised his eyes, without moving, and wrinkles formed above his eyebrows, as though dug in with a pocket-knife. At such moments he would stare intently at some part of Elisabeth’s face—nose, chin, mouth, or the little channel running down from the nostrils to the upper lip. Then he would look down at the paper again and draw what he had seen. Every time she was looked at in this way Elisabeth felt herself melting, becoming transparent, hovering in the air, emptied of all her flesh, her bones, her substance. Nothing remained but her skin, a thin bladder filled with carbon dioxide, which was swaying in the wind. The man talked in short sentences.

  ‘Don’t you like this?’ he said.

  ‘No,’ said Elisabeth.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because, because I don’t like being looked at.’

  The man gave a short, derisive laugh.

  ‘Women like being looked at. But they don’t like being stared at.’

  ‘Do you live here?’ asked Elisabeth.

  ‘No, I don’t. I’m English,’ said Tobie; ‘and a Jew.’

  He looked at her right eye for two seconds.

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I live here,’ said Elisabeth.

  ‘Married?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Any children?’

  ‘No.’

  For a moment neither of them said anything more. The man was scraping the paper with his charcoal, making a faint, insect-like noise. Elisabeth turned her head to look behind her. People leant over Tobie’s shoulder for a furtive glance, as they walked past the café.

  ‘I draw everything I see,’ said Tobie, ‘absolutely everything. I need to. I have the impression that everything I see is drawn on a big sheet of paper. So I copy it. You see, it’s easy.’

  ‘Do you earn your living like that?’

  ‘Oh no, my father’s well off. Luckily I don’t need money.’

  ‘Do you exhibit?’

  ‘No, exhibitions are for selling one’s work. No, I make drawings and then give them away.’

  ‘You’ll never become known,’ said Elisabeth.

  ‘Known?’ The man stared at her ironically. ‘Certainly I shall. You know me now.’

  He began drawing charcoal lines close together, on the other side of the page; her hair, no doubt, or the shadow under her jaw-line.

  ‘What’s the use of being known,’ he said, ‘if I don’t want to sell?’

  ‘Do you travel a lot?’

  ‘Yes, I go about, drawing.’

  He fell silent again for a few seconds.

  ‘It’s the only thing I know how to do,’ he said, ‘so I only do that.’

  He softened off a charcoal line with his thumb; Elisabeth watched him with a kind of growing curiosity.

  ‘And you draw all the women you see, like this?’ she asked.

  He laughed. ‘No, not all of them. Only, only the ones I see. I mean, who give me a jolt. Not all faces neeed drawing. You understand.’

  ‘Are you married?’

  ‘I’m a widower,’ said Tobie.

  He shook the paper to get rid of the charcoal dust. He even blew on it.

  ‘My wife died two years ago. Tuberculosis of the skin.’

  ‘I’m terribly sorry—’ Elisabeth began.

  ‘No need,’ Tobie interrupted her; ‘towards the end she was in such pain that I wanted her to die. And she died. She—’

  He swallowed a mouthful of coffee.

  ‘When I first knew her she was so beautiful I made up my mind never to draw anyone but her. And that’s what I did for five years. I painted her every day. Until she died. I’ve got thousands of drawings of her at home, in London. In fact I went on, even after she died. But it was her ghost I was drawing, you understand. So—’

  ‘She was beautiful?’

  ‘Very. At least, I don’t really know. At first I found her very beautiful. And then, with drawing her so much, I stopped seeing her. A funny thing. But her illness had changed her a great deal, towards the end. Her skin had got like paper. Wrinkled. Brittle. Physical decay is a strange thing.’

  ‘It must have been terrible.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Tobie.

  He looked at Elisabeth’s right hand and began to copy it.

  ‘Have you been married long?’ he said.

  ‘Three years,’ said Elisabeth.’

  ‘What does he do?’

  ‘Oh—He’s got no permanent job. At the moment he’s working in a travel agency.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘Before I married I was studying to be a dispenser. But now I don’t do anything.’

  The man was still working hard at his sheet of paper. Little drops of sweat were trickling over his temples and down his nose; he wiped them away from time to time with the back of his right hand.

  ‘It’s hot,’ said Elisabeth.

  ‘I once knew a real painter,’ said Tobie; ‘it was ten or eleven years ago, in New York. I must have been sixteen then, or about that—not quite, perhaps. My father had sent me to the States for my education. That’s where I met this fellow, in New York. His name was Gobel, and I never found out where he came from. He spoke English very badly, I think he must have been Armenian or something of the kind. He was a sort of lunatic, he lived like a tramp, bumming all over the States. He only drew on the pavements, with bits of chalk. He drew extraordinary pictures, just like that, in the street, with his chalk, and then he sat down beside them and waited for people to throw him a few coins. That was all he wanted. And yet in that way he made the most beautiful pictures in the world. Next day, everything had disappeared. People had walked over it, or it had rained, or the sidewalk had been washed. And not a thing was left. But Gobel didn’t give a damn. He started another picture somewhere else, and waited for people to throw him a few cents.’ Tobie took another sip of coffee.

  ‘I don’t know what became of him. He must be somewhere around, in America or somewhere. I watched him working like that as long as I stayed in New York. He hardly talked at all. I think I got on his nerves in the end, standing there every day, watching him work. And yet he was a kind of genius, if there’s any meaning in the word. I’d have liked to be like him. Poor Gobel!’

  The drawing was nearly finished now. Tobie touched it up here and there, rapidly, with the tip of the charcoal.

  ‘He was a very gentle type,’ he said; ‘I never saw him lose his temper. Sometimes people would walk over his drawing, dragging their feet, to needle him. He didn’t say a word. Just repaired the damage, as though it were quite natural. But I think really he was a little cracked.’

  The drawing was finished at last. Tobie took a spray-topped bottle out of his portfolio and began spraying the surface.

  ‘That’s a fixative,’ he explained, ‘so the charcoal won’t rub off straight away.’

  He gave the paper to Elisabeth. Then, before she had time to look at it, he stood up and bowed.

  ‘Thank you for wasting time on me,’ he said simply. ‘Goodbye, madame.’

  Elisabeth watched him go; then she looked at the drawing. Her face was there, on the paper, with her bust and her right hand, as though they had been laid down there. There was just one curious point about the portrait—the man had forgotten to put in her ears.

  Roch was still lying motionless on his old double bed with its metal framework. Underneath him a kind of puddle of sweat had soaked into the sheet, and he was floating in this as though in a cesspool. Hours had gone by. The thermometer was still very high, at 29 or 30 centigrade. The sun was still moving across the slits in the shutters, but spreading a yellower mist by now. Out of doors the sky must be dead white, filled with phosphorescent light
. The walls of the house, with the plaster peeling off them, were still holding their own, standing erect with the false majesty of ruins. Above and below, to left and right, all was animation; cars were gliding along the streets, tramps were trampling, children were playing, women of ripe age were walking to and fro in their flats, sniffing and dragging their slippered feet. But here, in Roch’s room, there was complete and absolute immobility, the oppressive calm of a death-chamber, rigidity. Except, perhaps, for the infinitesimal tinkling of the cog-wheels inside the case of the wrist-watch Roch was wearing, and the racing of the second-hand, as it went round and round in angry little jerks.

  Roch had stopped shivering; heat had spread slowly all over his body, settled into every crease in his flesh, taking possession of all his organs and gradually stifling his nervous spasms. In some places it felt as though there were balls of fire: the sickness had developed there, no doubt, thanks to those little smarting suns, in the groin, in the armpits, at the base of the throat. A migraine had installed itself in his skull, behind his eyes, at the back of his head, close to his ears. It wasn’t throbbing, no. It was content to be there and to press lightly, very lightly, inside his head. In his chest his heart was beating fast, with an irregular rhythm. And his lungs were continually demanding air, new air, warm, sticky gas that scalded the nostrils and throat as it went in.

  It was in this stifling cave that Elisabeth would make her appearance any minute now. She wouldn’t have the least suspicion; she would ring the front door bell twice, as usual. Then she would put her key in the lock and let herself into the flat. She would put down her shopping-basket in the passage, so that the lemonade bottles rattled against the milk-bottles. Then she would go into the kitchen and wash her hands at the sink. The tap would spit once or twice, because of the air in the pipes. After that she would go to the w.c. and work the flush. Her Italian sandals would click across the parquet. She might even switch on the transistor radio that stood on the kitchen cupboard, and a man’s voice would be heard reciting the news. This sort of thing:

  Since August 27, death in masked form has been terrifying the families of Italian soldiers.

  Or: more race riots, a crime at Courbevoie, the King of Cambodia holds a press conference. The following temperatures were recorded in the shade at 1 o’clock this afternoon: Lyons 88° fahrenheit, Saint-Etienne 88°, Paris 86°, Ajaccio 84°, Limoges 84°, Dijon 84°, Valence 84°, Nice 83°, Marseilles 83°, Bordeaux 83°, Monaco 83°, etc. The results of the Longchamps races. Paris Stock Exchange quotations. Meanwhile, footsteps would be hurrying to and fro. Movement would have begun again in the little flat, in fits and starts, sometimes missing fire like a clogged engine. Movement would come. It would squeeze under the door and begin to crawl furtively, like a snake, towards the sick man’s bed.

  Roch suddenly realized that the motionless surroundings in which he was lying, the whole thing—the thick walls, the mist, the furniture standing on the floor like so many tombstones— was a ruse. It was a feint, a fragile comedy that might be unmasked by the veriest trifle. It would be enough for a mosquito to come in through one of the slits in the shutters and make straight towards him. He would leap up.

  In fact, everything in the room was swarming with life; it was full of worms, of animalculae, of species of threadlike phantoms that were stretching in all directions, floating on the surface of things. One need only look at them attentively. The ceiling, for instance: one might imagine it was doing nothing flat, greyish, with the plaster flaking off in places. But the ceiling was on the move. It would come down towards Roch until it crushed him as he lay on his bed; then, all of a sudden, it would be a hundred and fifty feet up in the air, sucking everything towards it like the vaulted roof of a church. It was undulating, too. Waves rippled across it, throwing rainbow tints on the paint and plaster. Patches suddenly spread out, red, purple, greenish or gold-flecked pools; then they shrank away of their own accord, and were replaced by deepish, moulded depressions, rather like elephants’ footprints. For no apparent reason, a magnificent rose-window in relief formed itself in the twinkling of an eye in the middle of the ceiling, round the electric light wire—an immense cluster of flowers and cherubs, with a few doves flying out of it.

  There were even moments when the ceiling turned into the floor, so that the tables were stuck upside-down; one could see that they were laid with plates of succulent food, with crystal glasses full of ruby-coloured wines and dishes heaped with juicy fruits, some of which had rolled off on to the tablecloth.

  Roch could feel the bed pitching under him: by now the floor must be behaving like the ceiling; the waves were about to crash down on it, no doubt, and the furniture would roll together pellmell, caught by an invisible waterspout. Then it would be the turn of the walls, the shutters, the curtains, the doors. In a few minutes all would be chaos and movement. The very air would start dancing, in the cubic room. Sounds and colours would mix together anyhow, almost joyfully. In fact there would be no sounds or colours any more, only species of long impulses which would run through the air and into which one would melt uncomprehendingly. Objects would interpenetrate one another, and the room would be filled with a delicate cloud, inflated with metamorphosis. Roch saw everything vanishing around him, and could feel himself being carried away on a strange journey. Puffs of cold and hot air lifted him like a feather, and watery currents made his skin, his limbs and hair run like a blot of ink spreading over damp paper.

  He uttered a terrible, silent cry which did not even get beyond the depths of his throat. A HAAAA! of terror that echoed inside his head for a long time and made him sweat. When the cry stopped, Roch saw his wife, who had joined the general swaying movement. She didn’t make her appearance all at one go; to begin with Roch saw her body, very white and elongated, hovering naked in mid-air. Then the body was absorbed by a huge face, so large that it must be filling the whole room. In this gigantic face the wide-open eyes looked like two deep windows through which one gazed out at the sea. The iris was round and translucent, with a sort of emerald-green crystallization; slender rays shot out from the black pupils and spread into stars, scattered with a host of opaque, goldish spots. Round them the sclerotic shone with superhuman brilliance. Near the eyelids this snowy mass was traversed by faint blue lines and tiny veins congested with blood, a few of which had burst. Surrounded by flesh, the two globes were motionless, moist with a dew that evaporated into the over-heated air. There they were, the two machines for seeing with, the two pearly spheres with their rainbow colours. The light from outside went into them, through those black portholes, and remained there, shut in, devoured in a matter of seconds, soaked up by the walls of the retina.

  Under the eyes the cheeks spread out with their smooth surface, yards of delicate skin traversed by imperceptible wrinkles. Near the eyelids and brows there was a curious area, a kind of shadowy fall in the ground with no bone supporting it. Continuing downwards, one reached the nose. Straight but soft, it stood in the middle of the face like a monument; the nostrils were dilated, palpitating, pouring out torrents of hot, odorous gas at regular intervals. The respiration vibrated through these channels and then spread outside in a sort of volatile arborescence. It must certainly be here that life originated and drank greedily from the atmosphere with an imperious, secret, almost invincible force. It was here that great draughts of air were swallowed, that the inert elements were sucked up rhythmically into a vacuum in the furthest depths of the breast; here that their way was appointed to them, to go reeling through the body, feeding, instilling, filling its tunnels with blood.

  Further down, below the nostrils, the mouth, too, was open, a pair of soft lips yawning to show the eye-teeth. At either side of the mouth a little furrow ran down towards the chin, finishing off the curve of the lips. This was the machine for words, now at rest, the quivering area where consonants took form before bursting out. The occlusors came to birth on this barrier of flesh, the labio-dentals were uttered softly there, with a faint hiss of air. The br
eath from the diaphragm struck against this obstacle and turned into bilabials, light or deep vowels. Inside the mouth the tongue moved too, turning up towards the palate or arching against the back of the throat. Words had resulted from these spasmodic movements, for years past, and they had changed the actual shape of the mouth, continually preparing it for attack by the nasals or the velars. Sentences came slowly up the throat like this, a brilliant, tense architectural structure flashing up with the speed of lightning. The vocal cords were organs booming through this hollow place of flesh and cartilage, and then the sentence flung itself out, all one piece, like a confused thunder of clicks and cries. Or else the words floated up like a very soft, incomprehensible song, hovered round the moving lips like a halo, and fled away, writhing along and gradually dissolving into the atmosphere. Speech, delicious, divine speech, was softer than a mane of hair, more musical than the lapping of lake water. It faded away in light wisps of smoke, modulated into luminous patches amid the blackness of night. And, along its course, the darkness slowly gave way, the shadows parted and drew aside, the blackness was diluted by cool, fresh water, every drop of which had the power to turn it pale.

  Parting the lips, filtering between the cold eye-teeth, the voice was speaking; it was saying light, fragile things, it was telling imaginary stories.

  ‘You know, Roch, last night I had a really strange dream. It was absolutely wonderful, so wonderful that I knew it would come to an end and I wanted to sleep for a whole week without a break. So that it wouldn’t disappear. You remember the tree that had moved, outside the window, the other night? You do remember, don’t you? I’d been scared, I thought it was a burglar who’d hidden in the tree, you remember, and I’d told you to go and find out. You’d said it was nothing, that it must have been the wind moving a branch, or something of the kind. A rotten branch that had fallen from the top of the tree of its own accord. You remember all that, don’t you? By the way, I assure you it couldn’t have been the wind. Because when I was standing at the window I saw quite clearly that the tree moved with a sudden jerk, as though something had shaken it. And it must have been something very, very heavy. You just laughed at me and said that after all trees were alive and why shouldn’t they shake themselves, like dogs do, if they’ve got a tickle? All right. Well, last night I dreamt I was walking about outside the house, in the evening, and all at once the tree began moving again. And then an enormous bird hopped down out of the tree and said to me, “It was I who shook the tree like that the other day.” And I was very glad, and said to him: “Oh good, that’s fine, I was afraid it was a burglar!” and he answered: “No no, it’s always I who shake the trees …” he said all this in a little piping voice, he sounded really strange. And then he began to follow me everywhere, like a pet dog, everywhere. He came indoors with me and went from room to room, you know, exactly as though he’d been on a leash. There were people in the house, and as we went past them I told them: “It’s the bird. It was he who was shaking the tree like that the other day.” And he went on following me everywhere. You can’t imagine how strange it was, that big bird hopping along behind me! It was absolutely wonderful. And if you could have seen the bird! He was enormous, with a round body, just like a ball! Short, downy feathers, immense legs that went on and on, and a tiny round head with big eyes and eyelashes! He was quite unique, I assure you! Especially his round body like a ball, fluffy like a baby chicken, you know, and those long, thin legs. He made such strides, behind me, very slowly, you know, putting down his claws with a very delicate tread. Wherever I went he followed me, turning his little head to look at me, and his eyes, with those lashes. He had a sort of sparrow’s beak, and no neck at all. His head rested on his fat body, like that, and he paced solemnly forward on his legs, which were at least a yard long! He was really strange. He had a sparrow’s head, with very big eyes and very long lashes, a chicken’s body, you know, quite round, no wings at all, just down all over him, and legs like a heron’s. A really extraordinary bird! I enjoyed seeing him following me like that, I talked to him as we went along, and he answered in his little squeaky voice. I’d have liked to have a bird like that, who’d follow me everywhere I went. You must admit it was a really strange dream! But he was so wonderful, that bird! I’d love to see him again, I really would love to see him again one day!’