‘You won’t come indoors now?’ she said.
Martin shook his head.
‘To please me, do come.’
‘No. I told you, I must stay a little longer. It’s necessary. I’ve been thinking over a great many things, this afternoon …’
‘You must tell us about it presently—’
‘Yes, perhaps—I’ll tell you—if it’s worth while.’
‘Why do you say, if it’s worth while? It’s not—’
‘No, and anyhow it’s not quite finished yet. That’s why. I must stay here for another five or ten minutes. Until it’s finished. I shan’t be long now. I’ll come in right away.’
His mother hesitated again. She marked time for a step, facing Martin. She had heavy leather shoes, with low heels and crepe soles, which stuck to the wet concrete, making funny sucking noises. Then she cleared her throat and said:
‘Well, all right, then I’ll leave you, since—since you want to stay here a little longer. But don’t stay too long, all the same.’
Martin said:
‘Oh no, just—just five or ten minutes, not more’
She turned, as though about to go away; then she came back and held out the umbrella to Martin:
‘Here, keep the umbrella. Like that you won’t get too wet.’
‘Thank you,’ said Martin. And he took shelter beneath the umbrella.
In the distance, far beyond the outskirts of the town, there was a clap of thunder. Martin’s mother looked up:
‘You see,’ she said, ‘it’s coming this way.’
When she saw Martin was not listening, she really went away. She called to him for the last time:
‘I shall expect you!—In five minutes! What?’
And then she disappeared indoors. Martin was left alone in the courtyard, sitting under the resonant umbrella.
Twelve days later Martin had finished his big lecture. It had been a great success, and several newspapers were already speaking of Martin Torjmann as a religious leader to be reck oned with. Representatives of all countries had been present, there had been one interview after another, and someone had even coined the word torjmannism. But the great surprise, for Martin, had been the presence of quite a large crowd, waiting outside the lecture hall to applaud him. With the help of a loud-speaker which was hastily rigged up, Martin had been able to respond to this compliment by an improvised speech in which he exhorted all men, irrespective of race, religion or nationality, to unite in the spirit of holiness. He had concluded with a sort of prayer for mankind, in which he honoured the names of Auguste Comte and Swedenborg. The present day, he declared, was placed midway between two forms of ingenuousness, humanism and mysticism. On the eve of his departure for the United States, such popularity was certainly welcome.
The day after the lecture Martin again felt the desire to go down into the courtyard of the block of flats. This was in the afternoon, about half past three, and there was no trace left of the rain he had met with at this spot. The sun was quite round in the sky, and the heat was coming down to earth in waves. Martin began walking across the concrete courtyard. He looked closely at the ground, noting the smallest details as he went by —cracks full of dust, chalk drawings of varying obscenity, all kinds of spots, tins, scraps, refuse. Near a garage he found a sheet of crumpled, oil-stained paper on which a motor tyre had left a row of brownish crosses. Under the layer of dirt one could read this:
Hannibal saves his fortune from the cupidity of the Cretans
After Antiochus was defeated, Hannibal went to Gortyna, in Crete. That most subtle of men perceived that he was in great danger, owing to the cupidity of the Cretans. For he carried a large fortune with him. He therefore filled several jars with lead, and covered the top of them with gold and silver. Then, in the presence of the notables, he deposited these in the Temple of Diana, feigning to be entrusting his fortune to their honesty. Having thus misled them, he filled all the bronze statues he was carrying away, with his money, and left them, unguarded, outside his house. Meanwhile, the people of Gortyna were watching the temple closely, lest Hannibal should fetch his money unknown to them and carry it off. Thus it was that the Carthaginian saved his fortune; and having made game of all the Cretans, he arrived safely at the house of Prusias, at Pontus Euxinus.
Martin folded this paper carefully and put it in his pocket. Then he continued his circling of the courtyard. He went through sunny places and shady places, close under the walls of the building, glancing into the open windows on the ground floor. After a quarter of an hour he reached the middle of the courtyard and sat down on the rim of the sand-pit. Behind him, the sand was dry and dusty. Martin picked some up in his left hand and studied it. He looked at the tiny quartz crystals, one by one. One ought to have counted them all, for hours, days, years at a time, not forgetting a single one: each of them should have had a name, a number, a resounding word, something in the nature of 334 652 or 8 075 241, which would have given it a place in the scheme of things. One ought to have snatched them, like that, by spelling them out softly in an undertone, from the vile confusion of the indeterminate. To have called them back to life, making them into objects, rescued from the eternal darkness of the unnameable. But it was too late, already. A long time ago the world had become, for Martin, this impalpable, immense, irresolute expanse. A sea, a glaucous, compact ocean where all was endlessly mixed together, where everything eluded capture, orders, knowledge. Turning half-way round, Martin looked for the place in the sand-heap where he had left the weevil twelve days ago. But he couldn’t find it. Micro-earthquakes had passed that way, they had changed the face of this fragment of nature, and the dusty little insect must be forgotten, too, somewhere right at the surface, dried and buried between two strata of crushed rock; dead at last, departed for ever from its tiny body, blended into the hard silence of the kingdom of inanimate things.
It was as he looked up again that Martin noticed the group of children coming into the courtyard. There were about half a dozen of them, boys and girls together, all strangers to him. Martin saw their leader first, a boy of about twelve, wearing blue jeans and a white sweater. He had a rather pale, freckled face, and red hair. He was walking slowly, dragging his feet, his head turned aside as though nothing around him really deserved his interest. Sometimes a child younger than the others broke away and ran in a zigzag across the courtyard, imitating the noise of an engine. Thus, casually, the group came over to the sand-pit where Martin was sitting. When they got there they began by completely ignoring Martin and pretending to play in the sand. Some of them rolled in the middle of the sand-pit, uttering loud, savage cries; the others sat down in a semicircle on the stone rim, not far from Martin. As for the eldest boy, he stood with his back turned, still scraping his feet on the ground. Sometimes he cast an indifferent glance towards the windows of the block of flats. It was at this point that a spadeful of sand suddenly hit Martin in the back. He turned round and saw one of the boys, aged about ten, standing behind him. He had dug one shoe into the ground and was amusing himself by kicking up sand in front of him, mechanically. Martin said something to him. At that moment the whole band emerged from the sand-heap and surrounded Martin, who was disconcerted. The eldest of the group turned casually round and came and stood facing him. They all remained silent for a few seconds, and then the leader began to speak; he was still rubbing the tip of his rope-soled sandal over the concrete pavement, and his hands were thrust deep into his pockets.
‘What’s your name?’ he said.
‘Martin,’ said Martin.
‘Martin what?’
‘Martin Torjmann.’
The other boy hesitated for a second. Then he jerked his chin towards the windows of the building.
‘That where you live?’
‘Yes. Why?’ said Martin.
The boy ignored the question.
‘My name’s Pierre,’ he said slowly. Then he jerked his chin again, this time in a half-circle. ‘They’re with me,’ he said. ‘The boy
who kicked sand at you is Bobo. The other is Frédéric, his brother. Next to him is Sophie, her father’s a cop. Roger, Max, Annie, Philippe; and the youngest, there, is my own brother, Edouard. But he’s called Donald. Donald Duck, because he waddles like a duck. Get it? And you, Dumbbell, what did you say your name was?’
‘It’s not Dumbbell,’ said Martin, ‘it’s Martin Torjmann.’
The boy turned half round towards the group.
‘Hear that, you others?’
Immediately, pandemonium broke out; they all began shrieking with laughter, jumping up and down and uttering hideous animal noises. Martin tried to get up and go away. But one of the boys, who had a crew-cut, pushed him down again.
‘Stay sitting, you,’ he said.
They went on laughing and jumping about. Finally the one who had said his name was Pierre made a sign, and they all calmed down. Then he came close up to Martin.
‘Say, Squinter,’ he said slowly, ‘did no one ever tell you you’d got a big head?’
The laughter began again; once more, Martin tried to get up. This time Pierre pushed him back with his foot, and he nearly toppled over in the sand. Martin straightened his spectacles.
‘Let me pass,’ he said.
‘Leeht me paahss,’ drawled one of the boys.
‘Well, didn’t you hear?’ Pierre went on; ‘I asked you if no one had ever told you you’d got a big head?’
‘Bet his mummy never told him,’ said Bobo.
‘Let me pass, you idiots,’ said Martin. He was beginning to feel scared; anger was rising in him too, and again he tried to get up. Two boys at once jumped to either side of him and held him down on the rim of the sand-pit. The eldest boy was still scraping his shoe on the ground, close to Martin’s feet.
‘He can’t answer,’ he said; ‘he’s never looked at himself in a glass. Isn’t that so, Squinter?’
‘Me, I never saw such a big head, that’s sure,’ said Roger. ‘Not even at the circus.’
‘Just like the giant in the carnival,’ agreed Frédéric.
‘Let me alone,’ said Martin, ‘or I’ll call my father.’
‘Go on then, call him,’ said Pierre, ‘that’d suit us fine, wouldn’t it, you fellows? Suppose his head was even bigger!’
The children closed in round Martin and began laughing and shouting louder than ever. Martin tried to get away, but the two boys had him by the arms, and they were stronger than he was.
‘I say, those are grand spectacles,’ said Pierre. And he plucked them off Martin’s nose and began to twirl them in his right hand.
‘See better now, Fat Head?’
‘Give them back! Give me back my glasses!’ shouted Martin, trembling with rage.
‘Shut up!’ said Pierre. ‘If you yell we’ll smash your glasses —understand?’
‘Here, let me have ’em,’ said Bobo.
He took the spectacles and perched them on his nose. Then he began pretending to walk round the courtyard, with shoulders bent and knock-knees. The others yelled with laughter and took turns to try on the glasses, each one making worse faces than the last. Martin saw the scene through a kind of haze, in which dark, contorted figures danced in front of him like gnomes. He sat there on the rim of the sand-pit with his eyes bulging and his lungs gasping, unable to speak. When they had finished the eldest boy took the glasses back and twirled them in Martin’s face.
‘Like to have them, wouldn’t you, Fat Head?’
‘Smash ’em, Pierre,’ said one of the little girls. ‘That’ll teach him.’
‘No, I’ve got an idea,’ said Donald Duck; ‘you know what we’ll do? We’ll hide ’em in the sand and watch him hunt for them.’
They all burst out laughing.
‘Yes, yes, that’s it, let’s hide ’em in the sand!’
‘Right,’ said the eldest boy. ‘We’ll hide his glasses in the sand. But he mustn’t see where.’
‘We’ll hold him with his back turned,’ said Bobo.
‘And besides, he can’t see anything without his glasses,’ said Donald Duck.
Martin tried to resist.
‘No, no, give me back my glasses! Idiots! Give me back my glasses!’
But the two boys held him tight. To be on the safe side one of the little girls joined them and clung to his legs.
‘Go on, dig me a good deep hole!’ said Pierre. And he climbed on to the rim of the sand-pit.
All the others began digging in the sand, towards the middle. In a few minutes they had a fairly deep hole. Pierre was just about to drop the spectacles into it, when he changed his mind. He beckoned the others closer and whispered to them:
‘I’ve had a better idea. We’ll make Fat Head believe we’ve buried his glasses, and I’ll put them in my pocket. Like that, he’ll go digging for nothing.’ The others guffawed; then they filled in the hole, climbed out of the sand-pit, and surrounded it like an arena.
Pierre mounted on the rim of the sand-pit, turned to Martin, and said quietly:
‘Go ahead. Dig!’
Martin made no response. The other boys had let go of him and were standing menacingly in front of him. He looked up at the windows, but his short-sighted eyes could see only a confused mass of sky and concrete.
The leader of the gang scraped the sole of his shoe on the rim of the sand-pit.
‘Well? What are you waiting for, Fat Head? Go and look for your glasses!’
Martin didn’t move. One of the boys who had just been holding him down came suddenly closer and gave him a push. Martin fell heavily on his back in the sand, and all the children burst out laughing. The jeers and laughter came from all sides, rising out of the circle of little dwarfs, shooting up and falling back on him, higgledy-piggledy in the sand, compelling him to crawl. Martin advanced on all fours towards the middle of the sand-pit, his eyes clouded, his throat tight, his lungs choking. Rage and fear had entered into him, had taken possession of this limited space, the sand-heap, the circle of hooligans, the courtyard. Everything seemed silent, pale, tragic, except for the dull thuds of his heart beating vastly over the whole surface of this ground. Exploding deep down, like subterranean mines, buried dynamite. He moved painfully forward, dragging his knees through the coarse sand, his hands sinking wrist-deep in the hard, shifting soil, his head all of a sudden so big and heavy that he could scarcely hold it off the ground. The children’s yells were going through him faster and faster, wounding him each time in a different part of his flesh, like arrows, just like arrows. He was the hunted animal, the kind of big elephant taken by surprise in a clearing in the forest, and the dwarfs were draining away his blood, little by little, with pricks of their spears.
‘Come on, get going!’
‘Dig! Dig!’
‘Go on! Go on!’
‘Go on! Seek, good dog, seek! Bow-wow!’
‘Further on! Further on!’
‘Dig! Feel in the sand! Go on!’
‘Bow-wow! Bow-wow! Seek! Seek! Sniff! Sniff! Bow-wow! Bow-wow!’
‘Go on, Fat Head!’
‘No, to the left! To the left! Dig harder!’
‘Go on, show some grit!’
‘Dig! Dig! Dig!’
‘Faster, Fat Head! Faster!’
‘Use your nose, Fat Head! Use your nose now!’
‘Go on, faster! Faster!’
‘Go on, good dog!’
‘Hey, you’re getting warm! Warmer!’
‘That’s it! Carry on! Look that way!’
‘Go on, old Mole! Go on! Dig! Dig! Dig!’
‘Bow-wow!’
By this time Martin had fallen on his face in the sand. And he was digging. Slowly at first, his hands paddling feebly in the liquid, dusty matter. Then faster, scuffling with his arms, sending up spadefuls of smelly dust into his face. And in the end, frantically, his whole body transformed into a digging-machine, into an insect struggling and twisting in the middle of the sand-pit, making holes in all directions, with his arms, his legs, his shoulders, his hips, even his head. He
buried his chin in the sand, then his whole face, he was eating, thrusting, breathing in the sand, he was suffocating, grovelling, drowning! Delirium had taken entire possession of him, and it was like a bottomless abyss, a well that grew deeper and deeper as he fell. He was part of the falling movement, he was in the centre-line of the abyss itself, he was his own cavern, more and more a cavern, and nothing could stop him. Time had gone by, he had served as the frenzied victim of this metamorphosis, and nothing could turn him back.
But his strength was ebbing. He lay stretched out in the centre of the lists, flat on his face in the sand, his limbs hardly moving now. Only a slight tremor in his arms showed that he was still alive. The sun poured down on his motionless body and mingled with the sand that covered his skin and clothes. Martin was grey all over, now, as grey as a lizard’s cast-off skin, a dull, dirty grey that seemed to cut him off from the world of the living.
Almost instinctively the children fell silent. They stood still, round the sand-pit, staring at Martin’s corpse-like form. Then Pierre put the toe of his shoe into the sand-pit and jerked his ankle to send a spray of sand on to Martin. The sand fell on the inert body, scattering over the tangled hair, the back of the neck, the shoulders, the ears. When he saw that Martin didn’t move, Pierre pulled the spectacles out of his pocket and threw them down on the sand beside the sprawling body; then he stepped down among the other children. He had no need to say a word: the others understood at once; they took to their heels and ran out of the courtyard.
Five minutes later, Martin looked up from the sand-heap. He stared round, dazed, feeling the little streams of sand running softly down inside his clothes, against his skin. He shuffled on his knees, just as he was, further into the sand-pit. Then he touched the wire frame of his spectacles and put them back on his nose, mechanically. The world suddenly became clear again, naked, hard, and shining with all its strength, full of square objects, of straight, sharp lines, of colours as sticky as sheets of jam. The sky too was very beautiful, very white and very firm, like a window opened abruptly right in front of your retina. It was all so calm and so brilliant that it must surely be unchanging, eternal, filled for ever and ever with an incomparable old age. Martin’s eyes, behind his spectacles, suddenly dimmed again. Tears, but were they really tears? For they came from his innermost depths, they flowed easily and without shame, like a natural liquid, they were veritably water, the source of his being, his own life, gently overflowing and pouring out.
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