One day I shall hope to find the girl who is like this:
PROPERTY: SHE SEES AN APPLE
AND SHE THINKS THAT THE FRUIT
BELONGS TO HER BY RIGHTS
SHE PICKS IT UP FROM THE STALL
AND EATS IT
WITHOUT THINKING
THAT THE FRUIT HAS BEEN GROWN POLISHED BOUGHT
THAT IT COST MONEY
THAT IT IS FOR SALE
FARTHER STILL, LATER still. Days spent in railway trains are long, days racing backward at full speed, and there are great piles of towns and mountains stacked up on the horizon. Roads have no ends, they never come to an end. The great dusty avenues that sweep forward in a straight line are deserted. The wind blows hard on the plains, the sun in the centre of the blue sky is pitiless. Crushed dogs litter the roadside, and carcasses of cows are surrounded by gorging vultures.
The red truck with SATCO written on the side roars along the road at full speed, and Y. M. Hogan is sitting at the back, under the tarpaulin cover. He watches things as they go by. Sometimes he sees great empty intersections, with men sitting on the ground, waiting. The plains stretch out to the end of the world, the mountains are motionless, with filaments of cloud strung between their peaks. Rivers send their tainted waters rushing downward in their channels, telegraph poles bristle.
Occasionally, one becomes acquainted with large gas stations, pagodas made of grubby cement, all alone in the middle of space. Under the overhanging roof, the green and yellow pumps with broken dial-glasses vibrate stridently while the red liquid descends into the tank. One urinates into a blocked-up toilet, washes one’s hands under a cold tap, combs one’s hair in front of a greasy mirror, and gulps down a bottle of iced soda water that has a sulphurous tang. At a pinch, one may pass a few words with the driver, from the opposite side of the concrete platform, while gazing idly at the dusty road, the wooden notice boards, the sun, the tin shacks. People always say more or less the same thing:
‘How far to Habbaniyah?’
‘How many hours will it take to reach the frontier?’
‘Know of anyone who’s going to Rohtak?’
‘To get to Cuttack, is it necessary to pass through Raipur?’ And then the ports also contained wooden boats that carried you over the sea for two days and nights. Y. M. Hogan was sitting on the deck, watching the mass of black water that swelled and subsided ceaselessly. He could see, in the distance, the land’s thin belt with little lights twinkling along it. Then he slept, stretched out on the deck, in the shelter of a coil of rope, and the engine conveyed its vibrations to his body, shook him, punched him with thousands of tiny fists.
Around midnight, he woke up covered in sweat and went down to the lower deck for a drink of water. He groped his way towards the rusty drum which served as a water container, and scooped up in the hollow of his hand some of the black water: it tasted of gasoline. Cockroaches scuttled out of his way, their armoured wings giving off peculiar red reflections. Near the companionway, a sailor was sitting with his back to the bulkhead, his eyes closed. He was humming, in his throat, an interminable wordless song consisting entirely of nasals.
Mmmmmnn, mmmm, mmmnnn, mmmm, mmmm . . .
When Y. M. Hogan passed in front of him, the sailor opened his eyes for a second, revealing a disquietingly steel-like glint in the pupils. Y. M. Hogan climbed on deck again, and smoked another cigarette while contemplating the motion of the sea as it swelled and subsided.
He was not going anywhere. He was suspended in time, somewhere between two centuries, expecting nothing. He was floating on invisible waves, borne along by the wooden hull, not very far from the shore’s thin belt, at random. Anyone who knows anything should say his piece now. Anyone who has revelatons to make should make them now. This is the moment, this is exactly the right moment.
But perhaps there is nothing to say, nothing to reveal? Perhaps the only thing that is genuine is this pendulum movement, this monotonous sliding over the surface of the Amazon, this truck turned boat, this boat turned airplane, this airplane turned raft. The engine throbs, from an indeterminate point in space. Sometimes ahead, reverberating from somewhere on the far side of the capes and peninsulas. Sometimes pushing from behind, slapping at the water as though with two mechanical feet. The engine slips away on each side, burrows into the close-knit water, floats very high in the air. Or else the entire earth is fitted with its own engine; vibrating slowly, the earth vanishes into space, sailing broadside on, letting itself drift along its yielding roadway towards incomprehensible places.
When the sun appeared in the east, and rose some way above the horizon, Y. M. Hogan woke up. He went forward and watched the extraordinary, insignificant landscape from the bows. He watched how the sky became red, pushing back the patches of darkness little by little. He watched the flat sea, and the sharp-edged waves which skimmed over it like rows of razor blades. The coast was always there, on the left, a thin grey-green belt dotted with huts and beaches. The ship’s bows sliced through the series of razor blades, one after the other, with a sort of crunching sound. In the stern, the engine thrashed away, and amidships the funnel sent out puffs of smoke. They would soon be arriving, in three or four hours, perhaps; there were various signs to this effect, the limpidity of the air, the neat disposition of the green trees along the coast, and so on. The sea has different smells in the morning and in the evening. This was certainly the moment to think about something. Y. M. Hogan thought:
Thoughts by Y. M. Hogan
on board the old tub Kistna
off Vishakhapatnam
6. 10 a.m.
‘Perhaps I should stop. Yes, perhaps it would be best if I stopped, I really don’t know. Perhaps it would be best if I did that: when the boat arrives, I’ll stop. I’ll walk along the docks with my bag on my back, I’ll go and drink a cup of tea in the marketplace. I’ll be in the shade. I’ll live in a house, in the shade. I’ll have some sandals with soles made from a truck tyre, a pair of white trousers, and a cotton shirt without buttons. I could live in the village, I would eat rice and dried fish, I would drink iced tea. I would wait. The years would pass, and I would at last play a part in one of those years. Never outside, any more. Never far away, any more. I would learn people’s names by heart, remember the location of all the lanes. I’d get to know all the dogs. Maybe I’d have a wife and children, and friends, and all those people would say memorable things to me. Or else I would write a very long poem, a few words each day, a poem that would be very beautiful and that would at last mean something. One day, I’d write: today, conscience is clearer and more sensitive. On another day, the sun is a red wheel in the sky. The following day, the sun is a black spiral in the red sky. The day after that, the sun is a coin. And then, the sun is an egg. There might be some days when I could at last write uninteresting things, such as, for example, after three months: the sky is a swift colour since one cannot see it. Or else profound things, such as: the state of lobha and the state of dosa are always accompanied by moha, since moha is the original root of all evil. Those are the sort of things I could write if I decided to stop. And every evening, too, I could stroll down to the beach and watch the boats in the act of floating. Sometimes I would go on to the beach early in the morning, to watch this boat arrive, this very one from which I would have disembarked. It would be a strange life, a really incredible life. The boat will soon arrive. The boat is crossing the river Styx. I would never have thought that the river Styx was so muddy and so wide. I would never have thought that the Acheron was like that. When I arrive, I shall walk on the beach, I shall bathe, and then I shall stop. Perhaps. If I have enough money, if there is a place for me. I shall stop. I shall stop.’
That’s what Y. M. Hogan was thinking, standing in the bows. Since a gull passed just at that moment, skimming the water, he added:
P.S. ‘I never knew that gulls’ wings were transparent. If you look closely at a gull flying above the sea, you will notice that its wings are blue.’
At night
-time, boats move forward secretly. When day comes, everything explodes. This is how Young M. Hogan was thrown out by a town. He had arrived there after days and months of travelling. At the end of the deserted roads, the railroad tracks, the sandy trails, at the end of the wakes left by boats, there was this city of more than two million inhabitants, with squat houses, broad symmetrical avenues in which thousands of vehicles agglutinated, vast squares laid out with artificial lawns, gleaming white eighteen-storey buildings, thick crowds with mechanical feet.
Young M. Hogan had been wandering through this enormous town for a very long time, but it rejected him.
He had arrived there, gliding, like an airplane, or else speeding in a stifling bus.
Little by little, the countryside had been strangled in the grip of concrete-surfaced houses, waste ground, shanty towns. The white cubes had squeezed together more tightly, had piled on top of each other, and at each new accretion the weight on his mind grew heavier still. Buildings had sprouted from the grass, shiny automobiles had appeared, resplendent with enormous radiator grilles. Human faces had loomed up, suddenly, from nowhere, brown faces with inquisitive eyes. More and more women and children had appeared; soon, Young M. Hogan could no longer count their feet and their hands. He was obliged to calculate them by tens, and even then so rapidly that mistakes were quite possible.
The heat was suffocating. In the bright light the cubes of anguish multiplied endlessly, white boxes with tin roofs, walls pierced by windows without panes. The noises grew gradually louder, cries, snarls, rasping breaths all casting their frightening nets. All that, without a stop, marching past, swelling the ranks, until there is no grass left, no more hills or rivers, nothing but town, town, town.
Young M. Hogan was hurled into the furnace. Everything around him was burning, trembling with heat, blistering. It was like walking through the desert, but this time the thirst was no longer the same. It was no longer water that one yearned for, or the flesh of a lemon. There was no longer a water bottle in the bag to combat this thirst: what was needed now was oblivion and calm, with closed eyes.
At about two in the afternoon, Young M. Hogan was walking along a street called Païtaï. It stretched in an absolutely straight line from one end of the earth to the other, a river of asphalt and cement bordered by houses. Neither the beginning nor the end of the road was visible. On the horizon the lines all met, lines of windows, lines of vehicles and sidewalks, lines of sky. There was this point of infinity where everything was mingled, this point of silence and death. Young M. Hogan walked toward it.
It was hot. In the sky, the clouds were very low, little balls of tow gliding gently along. The cars followed each other without interruption along the road’s concrete river, and people were wafted away in the cabins of scorching metal. The noise was continuous, too, and violent. It growled from all the motors, from all the horns, from all the mouths and from all the feet. The crowd swayed in front of Young M. Hogan, pranced, stamped the ground. In the faces, the inquisitive eyes darted to and fro, and the mouths smoked, chewed gum, spat. Children ran around, darting in and out of the traffic. Above all, though, there were walls: walls that repulsed violently, that crushed, that were white. Sweating profusely, Young M. Hogan forged on, keeping close to the walls and avoiding the crowds. Each time he passed a door, a vibrating machine blew hot, odorous air into his face. The shop windows had steel shutters covered with red signs and exclamation marks. The neon tubes crackled in the sun, and the electric music howled.
Young M. Hogan walked for a long time along that street, without finding its end. Over there, at the opposite end of the earth, there was this blanket of haze, compounded of gas and light, into which the road plunged. It would certainly have taken him days to get there. The cars’ shells sped along the roadway, fled towards the vanishing point. Perhaps they would never come back . . .
Young M. Hogan changed streets. He took a different one, and then a different one again. And they all went straight ahead, laden with cars and insects, for all eternity. Sometimes there was a bridge straddling a canal, or a main drain. Sometimes one caught sight of a white tower, a building floating nonchalantly high above the others. Or else a kind of cement-work fountain from which the water spurted in plumes. But the road skirted the obstacle and went on its way. It was a meadow of stones, a beach of gigantic pebbles, and each boulder was eroded, hollowed, inhabited by colonies of grubs. Taxis passed, horns honking, their drivers leaning out to yell at pedestrians. Grey buses with glassless windows careered along, a few inches from the curb, their cutouts screeching. Motor-tricycles jolted along with crab-like movements. Occasionally, an airplane crossed the sky ponderously, covering the town with its shadow, with its thunder.
Young M. Hogan had been living in this town for years. Maybe he had been born there. He had worked in a real estate agency, in a newspaper office. He had suffocated between walls, he had breathed in the vapours of gasoline, he had listened to the purring of air conditioners. He had taken trips in boats with roaring motors, he had eaten in restaurants illuminated by strips of yellow and pink neon, where a jukebox blared out ‘Evergreen’, or ‘Maï Ruchag’ or ‘La Raspa’. He had talked with men: Wallace, Chayat, Jing Jai, F. W. Hord. With women: Suri, Janpen, Doktor, Laura D. He had slept in all sorts of rooms, lightless concrete cells where the air was a solid block of foulness, air-conditioned rooms with blue carpets, and windows opening on to swimming pools, rooms with wooden walls through which the air filtered gently and where red cockroaches paraded up and down.
He had done all that very quickly, almost without being aware of it.
And, little by little, the town was driving him away.
It applied imperceptible pressure on him, cornered him with its walls, exhausted him with its volcanic rumbles, drove him mad with its straight roads stretching farther than the eye could see. Through the centre of the town, the wide river flowed ceaselessly, carrying branches along with it, and the corpses of dogs. This was a hint to him to get out, a move to dump him back in the sea.
One day, Young M. Hogan arrived at a place that was the avenue of evil. It was a street just like the others, straight and broad, packed with crawling cars, lined with identical white cubes. But in the centre of the cubes, towards their base, were series of openings, rather like the mouths of caves. No one to be seen in front of the closed doors. But when Young M. Hogan walked through one, it was as though he had suddenly closed his eyes. An icy blast struck his face, and he was bathed in a black-red glow. He groped his way forward, feeling moist bodies press themselves against him, clutch at him. The room was very big, and cardboard stalactites hung from the ceiling. In the centre was a big red blob illuminating a band that was playing jazz. He heard nothing, he saw nothing. He was cold. He sat at a table and started drinking beer. Nothing was going on, in this black room: some women in glittering dresses crossed the floor slowly. A black soldier was dancing. The alcoves contained peculiar kinds of motionless human bundles. The music shrieked from every direction, without finding the exit. Young M. Hogan stayed there several hours, drinking beer. Then he left. Outside, the sunlight was still whiter, the heat more scorching. Young M. Hogan entered the next grotto, then another, then many others. It was the same every time. Bodies pressed against him, fondled him, drew him towards a table. A young girl looked at him through the black coal that covered her eyes. She drank beer and spoke in a lilting voice. The strident music echoed round the cave, among the muffled, ponderous blows that made the floor shake. An American soldier leaned over to him, across the table, and started a sentence that gradually tailed away. While speaking, the man knocked over a glass of beer, the liquid ran over the table, very quickly, although it was possible to follow each detail of its route, and dripped on to the ground. The music raised its head, its shoulders, and projected them endlessly towards the ceiling. Young M. Hogan dug an elbow into the soldier’s stomach. The girl with coal-black eyes opened her lips and began laughing. This revealed two gold teeth, and Young M. Hogan as
ked her about them. She said that she had been beaten up. She said that she had had a motorcycle accident. She said it was all the dentist’s fault. She said nothing. Young M. Hogan had no more money. He asked for some from the American soldier, who handed him a few bills. Everyone was dead drunk. The music penetrated the beer glasses, fused with the bubbles, shattered the glasses into fragments, flowed down the throat. At the back of the cave, a Negro in a grey suit was banging a drum, but it could not be heard. The electric guitar was scratching away, but that could not be heard either. All that could be heard was the traffic noises, the vibrations of the light, the busy clicking of feet on cement. They were underground, yes, they had descended the long tube of a well-boring, and now they were moving about in the world’s belly. Above their heads, the town was seething, for no reason at all, simply for the sake of making a noise. Young M. Hogan gave a cigarette to the girl with the gold teeth, and offered one to the American soldier who was falling asleep, his head on the table in the puddle of beer. Then he wanted to say something. But the din drowned his words. So he cupped his hands round his mouth and, leaning in the direction of the girl’s ear, shouted:
‘I DON’T UNDERSTAND!’
The girl yelled:
‘WHAT?’
He took another breath and yelled:
‘THAT! I DON’T UNDERSTAND! WHY! EVERYTHING IS SO! SILENT!’
The girl yelled:
‘SO WHAT?’
‘SO SILENT!’
The girl thought he was joking, and began to laugh.
‘NO!’ yelled Young M. Hogan. And after a pause:
‘IT’S TRUE! THERE’S LOTS OF NOISE! BUT NO ONE! EVER SAYS ANYTHING.’
He took a sip of beer to clear his throat.
‘WHY IS EVERYONE! SILENT! INSIDE! I DON’T UNDERSTAND!’
The girl laughed, flashing her gold teeth, and yelled:
The Book of Flights Page 11