i do not know much about political policy but i cannot help noticing that the americans here have a knack for doing everything wrong; if there is a sniper holed up in a house, the marines simply bring up a heavy mortar and flatten the house. the americans are ready to pour money and material into this great cause of theirs but they do not have the slightest desire to give their lives. it is easy to see that they do not think the vietnamese are worth dying for.
hue was a sad business. i am not crazy about dogs, but i think the gis here go rather far, the way they use every moving animal as a target. i have seen marines shoot dogs and cats just for fun, and skewer pigs with bayonets. they do not seem to show much more consideration for human beings. i was watching a young woman carrying her invalid mother on her back while two younger relatives were loaded with the few bundles of clothing and possessions they had been able to rescue from the shambles, when a marine held out his automatic rifle to me, saying hey how about getting in a little practice on them . . . hue was a revelation to a lot of the marines because up till then they had not realized that there were other vietnamese besides those that lived in mud huts. hue is full of splendid houses, mostly far more beautiful than the ones back in the states, but the marines seemed to go mad when they went into these houses, and took everything they could lay their hands on – cameras, tape-recorders, watches, jewellery. i took a photo of one guy walking off with a tv set. the mercenaries in the congo have some excuse for looting because that is their main source of income. but the citizens of hue were supposed to be on the side of the allies, well, they certainly cannot be any more. for the north vietnamese army, hue was a complete success because they held on to the town for far longer than they had anticipated, as well as inflicting heavy losses on the americans, and in addition they gained a great deal of prestige by treating the citizens with respect. refugees with whom i spoke told me that the north vietnamese had behaved very correctly and never stole a thing while they were there.
I am continuing this letter a few days later. Meanwhile I’ve had this machine fixed. Talking about Hué, I forgot to tell you that I had a couple of narrow escapes while I was there. On one occasion, we had launched an attack on a school where two concealed Viet Cong were lobbing grenades down on us. The Marines had decided to gas them out, but since I didn’t have a gas-mask I had to get into a classroom a little distance away. I was in this room with a Marine who didn’t have a mask either, and I was showing him how to make one out of a handkerchief soaked in water. He was watching me from a couple of feet away when a bullet came through the window and struck him in the back. He fell like a log, but when they examined him they saw that the bullet had lodged in his bullet-proof vest without touching him. After I had left Hué I came across another guy from the same platoon. He asked me if I remembered the guy who had been hit in the back. When I said yes, he went on: ‘Well, he was hit again the next day. Only this time the bullet went straight through his back and killed him.’ Another time, while I was helping to carry a wounded Marine, a mortar shell burst a few feet away. When I came to my senses, I found myself holding one of this guy’s feet in my hands, while all the others who had been there were writhing around on the ground, screaming. Of the six of us, four died, but luckily I got off without a scratch. I’ll write you again soon, with more news. X.
That is the sort of thing that a person could write, during those times. One tried to understand what was going on, but there was this feeling of wanting to be everywhere simultaneously, in time and space. The noises of war grated from all sides, in the forests, the deserts, the swamps and the towns. They were all fighting: Macedonians, Goths, Huns, Normans. The Burmese burned temples and villages: one side was fighting to pillage and destroy, the other side was fighting in defence of its fields and cows. That is how things have always been. War was inside them, within their bodies; and it was war that throbbed in the rapid movements of their hearts. The English fought against the Portuguese, the Portuguese against the Spanish, the Spanish against the Venezuelans, the Venezuelans against the Arawak Indians. There was neither peace nor victory for anyone, ever. And, somewhere in the centre of the city, a girl called Bea B. fought day after day against all the noises, all the movements, all the lights, all the words, all those fierce entities whose chief aim is to murder sleep.
Ça qui ti voir li, napas li qui ti prend li; ça qui ti prend li, napas li qui ti manze li; ça qui ti manze li, napas li qui ti gagne baté; ça qui ti gagne baté, napas li qui ti crié; ça qui ti crié, napas li qui ti ploré?
–– Ptit noir fèque coquin mangue: so lizié qui té voir, napas so lizié qui té prend, so lamain qui té prend, napas so lamain qui té manzé; so labouce qui té manzé, napas so labouce qui té gagne baté; so léreins qui té gagne baté, napas so léreins qui té crié; so labouce qui té crié, napas so labouce qui ti ploré.
Mauritian ‘sirandane’
(nursery rhyme)1
OCCASIONALLY THE WAR grinds to a halt, and then there are moments of amazing peace. Moments of silence and love, broad reaches as calm as sleep. It’s true, that did happen now and then. It was all over, the same day: the noise’s terrible blows, the reflux of emptiness came very quickly, in one and the same second, perhaps.
The girl called Bea B. walked the streets of the city at night. As she watched all the lights coming on, like the phosphorescent auras of deep-sea monsters, she began thinking that it was difficult to know just where the war was really raging. She walked straight ahead, her feet treading the cement of the pavement, and she forgot a great many things. Or perhaps it was the other way round, and things were forgetting her, had suddenly withdrawn from her presence.
Night had fallen, as it always did, at around six in the evening. The girl had seen the shadow advancing along the streets, had observed the ashen colour that crept over walls and roadway. Great holes had been hollowed out of the shop windows, and men’s faces had become livid. The cars and buses had kept going, but it was no longer quite the same. It was no longer possible to see the people imprisoned in the metal shells, and it seemed as though everyone was at last going to stop pretending.
The girl had sat down several times, at a café terrace, on a bench in a public garden, on some church steps. Each time, she had smoked a Kent cigarette, blowing the smoke out of her nostrils. She had even extracted from her airline bag a little book bound in blue rexine, on which was inscribed:
‘EZEJOT’ DIARY
and in the light of the electric air she had written several lines:
Another day coming to an end. Today
I feel happy (!) I’ve run into Monsieur X
twice, and the second time he spoke to me.
We strolled along together for a moment, and he told me
what a long time he had known me. Later,
I lost my sunglasses in a café. Now I’ll
need to buy a new pair. I came across
Danièle who immediately asked me why I wasn’t
working at the paper any longer. Then she asked me
what I was doing, and I answered: nothing!!!
Monsieur X looks terribly like Errol Flynn in
Morgan the Pirate.
After that, she had watched the pigeons doing their dance-steps, a young couple fondling each other, and a man falling off his moped.
Meanwhile, the night gradually took over. The platform of the city’s fiat roofs moved away slowly towards the east, and the girl joined it on its voyage. She travelled with Monsieur X inside the earth’s nacelle. They crossed many streams and rivers, mountain chains, deserts, steppes. They crossed empty lakes in which trails of bubbles were floating. They travelled in a spiral, then in a circle, then in a straight line. It was extraordinary, going off like this, completely free, through the darkness. From time to time, there were white flashes as one was passing through a station, and Bea B. tried to make out the names:
MURMANSK
ULAN BATOR
TENOSIQUE
LA CIOTAT
CEDAR RAPIDS
or else when one was passing another train hurtling in the opposite direction, there was this great wave of iron and light that hurled its explosion against the windows, and Bea B. tried to make out the people’s faces.
She also saw constellations, meteorites, nebulae receding at a tenth of the speed of light.
These were all things that could be seen, uncomprehendingly, simply while watching the night in the street. Monsieur X started up his big bike, and she climbed up on the saddle behind him and gripped his shoulders. The machine bellowed, tore its bulk forwards, and set the wind’s wall moving ahead of them.
Then there was no more need to talk. One was enveloped in the night’s thickness, one’s movements dictated by chance. The bike overtook long lines of idling traffic, made a right turn, another right turn, and emerged into an avenue.
Next came a wide esplanade where there was nothing at all. Then Monsieur X stopped the bike, and it was good to sit on the ground and gaze at the night together.
This is what one saw, what one thought:
SHE HE
The blackness which travels thousands of miles in a single stroke, which covers the whole earth. The sky and the ground, two steel globes going to seek each other out, they are bound to collide soon, then a spark will fly. The esplanade, the beach? Suppose the whole world were covered with round pebbles? It is an island, or the hump of a sperm-whale, and, all around, the sea. I am here, I am not thinking about the others, I don’t want to. They’ll never come as far as this. So I am someone. To be someone: the globe, the sphere differentiated from the others. How is that possible? Monsieur X is myself. I never knew. I thought that Monsieur X was someone else. I have his hand, it is my own, I have a motorbike. One night after so many others, the earth has turned and it is night again. On the other side, at Wakayama or at Vancouver, well, it’s daytime. But so what? It’s quite extraordinary, a place like this, in the centre of a town. One is simultaneously with others, and far from them. One has so many things to say, or nothing at all. One knows everything, yet one does not. One can speak, one can utter words, one can look at oneself, too. When one is eighty-eight years old, one will recollect that on this occasion one had not been afraid. That will be good.
Then Bea B. turned to Monsieur X and said:
‘What are you thinking about?’
‘Nothing. And you?’
‘Oh, nothing really, except perhaps, yes, I was thinking what an extraordinary thing the night is, just here, like this.’
‘True,’ said Monsieur X, lighting a cigarette, and Bea B. watched as the flare of the match lit up his profile for an instant.
‘In daytime people move, at night-time people sleep,’ said Bea B.
‘At night-time people are blind,’ said Monsieur X.
‘When I was small I was afraid of the night,’ said Bea B. ‘I used to believe there were animals that sprang out of the shadows, demons, creatures like bats. I believed there was a wicked god named Tezcatlipoca, who disguised himself as a jaguar, and the spots on his skin were stars.’
‘I used to believe that when mice died they turned into bats.’
‘And then I believed that the dead used to come at night and look at you through mirrors.’
‘And I believed they lived in tombs and so I was scared of cemeteries. So one evening I went out and spent the night in a cemetery, sitting on a tomb. I was very frightened, but I just had to know. Luckily, nothing happened.’
‘And I believed that God lived in flames. So I lit matches to try to see him and talk to him.’
‘And I believed that if one said certain words, if one pronounced them in exactly the right way as one said them, one would die. I can’t remember any longer what the words were, but I was very scared of saying them accidentally and dropping dead.’
‘And then there were the things that it was fatal to see.’
‘And salamanders, I was really scared of salamanders, I believed they slid around everywhere.’
‘And that kind of underwater seaweed, that coils itself round your legs and then you drown.’
‘And scorpions.’
‘And night moths.’
‘And I used to be scared of people going mad, all of a sudden, just like that. I believed that my father might go mad and kill me.’
‘And hands reaching out of walls.’
‘The Devil, too. A few evenings, I called the Devil, and then looked around my room to see if he had come. I could hardly open a book for fear of seeing his face staring up at me from a page.’
‘And I used to be afraid to stand at a window. I believed, I really thought that I might suddenly get the urge to jump out and plummet to the street.’
‘I used to get the same feeling in cars. I used to say to myself, now if I grab the wheel and twist it and the car crashes before my father has time to –’
‘You know, sometimes I used to get a sudden urge to kill people, and then I had to look away so as not to see them any longer, so as not to think about it any longer, because otherwise, I thought, perhaps the feeling would have been stronger than myself, and I–’
‘The people never suspected.’
‘No, they thought I was just another little girl, they didn’t understand, they used to pat me on the cheek and stroke my hair, and then I closed my eyes and whispered to myself for them to go away quickly, quickly, for them to go away, and my hands were trembling and my whole body was soaked in sweat. In the end I was forced to run away so as not to have to kill them, and they laughed and said how silly to be so timid, and what a wild little monkey I was, and they never guessed what a narrow escape they’d just had.’
She smoked a cigarette, trembling a little because of the cold and the night. The esplanade stretched out in all directions, one no longer knew where one was, or who one was. The girl went on talking, as she sat on the ground beside Monsieur X. She said:
‘It was the same at college, you know. I didn’t want to see anyone. When the lectures were over, I used to go off without speaking to anyone. The other girls were trying out lipsticks and bursting out of their new bras, and that’s all they talked about, that and the fellows they had seen around. They made fun of me, but I think that at heart they were a little bit afraid, they found me really weird. The professors, too, because I did everything they told me but I never answered when they asked me questions. So in the end they left me alone.’
‘They were all ham actors . . .’
‘Exactly. They went through their old routine, there, and I just stared at them and wondered when they were going to stop talking and moving around, when they were going to quiet down. There was one in particular, I remember, Passeron, the professor of philosophy, he was a chap who had a lot of problems, I think, and he wanted the whole world to have problems. He gave lectures on responsibility, liberty, the myth of Er, stuff like that, but it was all words, hot air. From time to time he asked the students questions, and that made him very pleased with himself because he could demonstrate that everyone was an idiot and that nobody had understood a thing. He used to worry about me because of my refusal to answer, and at first he imagined I had problems like he did, then later he realized that it wasn’t that at all, that they weren’t the same problems, that I simply didn’t give a damn, and then he got very cross.’
The girl lit another cigarette, and Monsieur X watched the flame from the match light up her profile. Cars were circling the esplanade, sounding their horns. The lamp-posts shone brightly. The sky was very black, starless, and the moon was swimming in the centre of a halo that looked like a swarm of flies.
‘Yes,’ said Monsieur X, ‘it’s funny how people can’t resist hamming it up like that, even when they know quite well that nobody’s going to be taken in.’
‘It’s like when I was working at the paper, you know, it’s incredible the way they all took themselves so seriously. They had political ideas, ideas of all kinds, each wanted to be one up on the others. And then they all wanted to give the impres
sion of being in charge. And then they got so involved, with all their hates and sympathies and marital dramas and jealousies. The extraordinary thing, to me, was that they never seemed to realize what a ridiculous farce it all was.’
‘Yes, it’s like the whole thought-process –– when I just look at people, casually, at a café terrace, for instance, or in the street, I see all these heads bobbing up and down, men, women, old, young, all these skulls. And they are all thinking about something. Then I tell myself that ultimately thought cannot be such an extraordinary process, it must surely be something quite trite, the same sort of thing as myelin or sweat, simply the activity of the brain, and that it wasn’t worth writing so many books about thought, and that it certainly wasn’t worth inventing so many metaphysical theories about such a normal activity.’
‘Yes, when it comes down to it, perhaps everyone is thinking the same thing, and one day we’ll know what it is.’
‘Perhaps, but that will be terrible, because at that moment people will no longer feel original, they’ll see that they are not superior but all alike, so they can no longer attempt to impose their way of thought, and then they won’t be able to fight each other any more.’
‘It’s true –’ said Bea B. She looked at the town surrounding the esplanade, the black houses divided up into little compartments, the rectangles of the lighted windows, the steeples, the towers, the skyscrapers, the pylons, and then the crevasse-like streets where cars festooned with headlamps and red lights moved to and fro, she looked at all that and she went on, slowly:
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