I do not hate you. I simply want to understand you. I do not want to find truth. I simply want to tell you that you are not dead, yes, yes. If all that was needed to bring my flight to a halt was to go to Timbuctoo, I would go right away. If all that was needed to bring my flight, and yours, to a halt was to give you my passport photo, I would not only give it to you, I would have millions of copies of it scattered from airplanes.
Filthy, filthy writer, living off his feelings like a whore off her flesh.
I am saying all this out of spite!
Something is waiting.
Something is there, hidden behind the wallpaper, it
cannot be seen, no one knows what,
why, from where, but it is WAITING.
Something is there, quietly.
In silence, as though, everywhere, always,
an eternal night were approaching.
On the flat tabletop,
In the whiteness of the white paper that becomes smudged,
In the water, the sound of water,
the sound of the air,
something is waiting.
But nothing, of course.
Nothing, the old void, no doubt,
the void’s moulting wing with its silent glide.
There is nothing behind the wallpaper.
It is myself, waiting.
THE ONE WHO is fleeing does not know what he is fleeing from. Once upon a time there had been this steel-fanged monster behind him, making as if to devour him, but he has forgotten that, too. Now he is running breathlessly, knees knocking, belly knotted by fear. The one who is fleeing has no time to smoke or laugh. He is sliding along the taut rail, he is in motion, downward perhaps. The wind is whistling in his ears like a whiplash, the wind is rushing into his nostrils, pouring into his lungs. The wind of flight. When the moving wall of air passes over the cubes of the houses, it means that the entire town is now in flight. When imperceptible ripples begin to tremble on the surface of stagnant puddles, it means that the water has already gone.
Wars create strange suctions which sweep clean the shattered fields where columns of black smoke drift upward. Wars are blasts of air that scatter men’s bodies recklessly. While the fireball, the red and yellow kernel of fierce heat, lights up the horizon, the wind begins to travel; slowly at first, then with ever-increasing speed and force, until not a single tree is left, not a roof, not an animal.
The wind has risen from the depths of my own self. It has gushed out of the black mouth that I carry at the back of my head. The icy, burning wind, the wind of red sand that lights up the walls of my room, the dry, rocky wind that blows and blows interminably. Here it comes now, along my throat’s deep gully, perhaps. It is going to make a clean sweep. It is going to destroy the barriers that are set up inside me, here and there, like fringed whalebones. This wind that is stronger than myself will work its will with me. It will whirl round at enormous speed inside my head, that empty gourd rocking to and fro on its base of meat, and the axis of its invisible spinning-top will bore a well in the centre of my life.
The one who is fleeing is the wind, and does not know it. The one who is gliding on outstretched wings is the wind’s bird, the crazed sparrowhawk of immobility at the centre of speed, stationary self-awareness driven mad with rage by the exhalation of mobile self-awareness.
To flee. To hurl one’s body forward, so that it may smash doors down, so that it may shuck off its own weight.
How black is ink. The air is hard, so hard that a hammer is needed in order to breathe. Particles of welded stone stir in the veins.
Those are my thoughts. Those are my thoughts in motion. They have dug themselves a deep pit somewhere, and I am left no choice but to fill it up.
There is never any silence.
Whiteness is black, and the vast throat is agape, ready for the beastly spasm of deglutition.
The chasm awaits; it has half opened its larynx, revealing a glimpse of its inflamed undulations. Flame that consumes, water that drowns, earth that asphyxiates by entering the mouth and nostrils.
Fear is a black star that rises in the night sky.
Knot of wool,
death’s temptation, rupture,
door opening slowly on to solid air.
I quit.
I QUIT.
I abandon the familiar threshold, I make my way through the network of towns, I walk between the close-set poles of the forest of iron. I know, I know, I know perfectly well: I SHALL NEVER ARRIVE!
Impossible to reach the mountain.
Impossible to touch the empty sky.
Impossible, ever to sample the sun’s delights.
Impossible to live even a few inches outside one’s own skin.
Mortal prison, bag, unnameable chain of my unknown name, yoke of my shoulders and mask of my face,
it is from you that I am fleeing,
and it is you whom I continually find at random among the millions of clouded mirrors that climb into the foliage of the trees.
What I lose, alas, I find.
At the end of the miles per second, at the end of the world, even on the opposite bank of the muddy Mekong, I am standing there like an idiot, and I AM WAITING FOR MYSELF!
ITINERARY
from Tokyo to Moscow
via Yokohama, Nakhodka, Khabarovsk, Irkutsk,
Cheliabinsk
FLIGHT FROM REALITY, but also, always, flight from dreaming. No more imagining. No more delirious frenzy. Facts, now, names, places, figures. Maps. The sort of straightforward, lucid mentality that one possesses for only a short period of one’s life, the cruel mentality that immediately precedes death. Precise writings, random jottings. Words with concrete meanings. All the words that are frightening, that one does not dare write down. The words for which people have invented symbols, mysteries, adjectives: desire, sex, hunger, thirst, evil, pleasure, fear, sickness, poverty, freezing cold, love, murder, beauty, air, sea, sun. Those words which shine, those words which sparkle in silence, which are cold, and burning hot, as distant as stars, and impossible not to see. The only true words. The only certainties. Those hard words launched into the future, pointed rockets rushing through space. To attain those words it is necessary to flee the other world. It is necessary to flee the grey spiral that wreathes upward inside the body, and makes the head with its dead eyes nod on its shoulders. It is necessary to flee sleep. To be alert all the time, ready to fight, muscles tense, mind crystal clear. For how long shall I manage to keep fleeing? How much time left to remain wild, savage? Rally to me, my harpoon-words, no pity, death to the slothful, glutinous whale. Rally to me, my revolver-words. I grasp you in my hands and riddle everything that approaches. Words of steel, words of glass, words of black bakelite. Language which goes straight to the centre of the storms of circles.
TRAVEL CONDITIONS
The People’s Republic of China is easily accessible, by air or by rail from Moscow, Pyongyang, Ulan Bator or Hanoi to Peking. Services by Pakistan International Airlines with direct flights from Karachi and Dacca to Shanghai and Canton. Garuda International Airways, services between Canton, Phnom Penh and Djakarta. Train services between Hongkong and inland China.
Entry by road (private car or motorcycle) not possible at the present time.
TARIFF OF RAIL FARES (Single) – in Yuan
International services
Internal services
Seats or couchettes
Shumchun–Canton 3.50
Canton–Shanghai 91.50
Canton–Wuhan 67.40
Canton–Peking 116.90
Canton–Hangchow 85.10
Shanghai–Hangchow 6.50
Shanghai–Nanking 11.50
Peking–Wuhan 71.80
Peking–Shanghai 83.20
Peking–Tientsin 5.30
Peking–Nanking 69.60
Hotels
Peking Hsinchiao Hotel, Chienmen
Hotel, Hotel de la Paix
Tientsin Grand Hôtel de Tientsin
&nbs
p; Shanghai Hôtel de la Paix, Overseas
Chinese Hotel
Canton Aichun Hotel, Yang Chen Hotel
Wuhan Shuankong Hotel, Shengli Hotel,
Kianghan Hotel
Hangchow Hangchow Hotel
Suchow Suchow Hotel
Wusih Lake Tai Hotel
Nanchang Kiangsi Hotel
Chengchow Chengchow Hotel
Loyang Yuyi Hotel
At Lok Ma Chaw, the road runs through swampland, the sky is grey, the hills are motionless. Little bands of ducks are swimming in the pools along the paddy fields. The earth is full of little wrinkles, the trees are very tall, very black. In the steel coaches, peasants wedged together on wooden seats stare straight ahead of them as they smoke. Women with domed foreheads gossip together as they stand in front of the fields, distant, scarcely discernable.
After this, there is yet another town of steel and glass, on the other side of the Ocean. A town vaster than a lake, stretching out, unfurling its roads, counting out its blocks, its towers, its millions of inhabitants. The avenues, there, are eternal, the cars drive along them eternally. Bridges straddle the highways, but nothing has changed. At the airport, the paths of individual ants wind ahead. Each ant’s brow juts out ahead of it, and within each brow is the humming of secret, invincible orders from outer space: Drive! Walk! Crush! Multiply! Be there! These words cannot be heard, but they are present everywhere. Up the escalators move lines of human beings, cans of living preserves. Three workmen in white overalls are cleaning the marble floor, frantically, calmly. They, too, have received their orders, and they never stop. The soft fringes of their mops absorb the dust, fold and unfold, glide over the white marble. I am there, then I am no longer there. What would be the point of staying? I no longer have enough words to express all the purity, the rapidity, the extraordinary reality contained within these human citadels. I mean: glass, glitter, neon, red plastics, white plastics, signals, electric voices, movements on almost silent tyres!
Glorious machines
Steel bodies, ball bearings, cogwheels,
Thumping pistons
Oil, oil everywhere!
Man is an infinitesimal sound.
Doing is nothing
What counts is being there.
Enough
Enough shouting
Enough display of feelings enough confessions
It’s indecent.
From now on, no more talk of tears, ever again.
Machines are beautiful and clean-cut,
They have no griefs.
They lead lives that are as calm as trees
Lives of rock and water.
They never crumble away.
Man waiting around with
his religions
his desires
his novels
his poems
his operatic airs
his cigarettes
Pathetic braggart conceited ass
Man who has never possessed the jaguar’s intelligence
or even the monkey’s sharp teeth
has absent-mindedly created machines of silvery metal
that make great meticulous gestures
Gods alive at last, erect upon their plinths,
Who must be worshipped, do you hear, who must be
worshipped!
In the underground galleries of the University, men are fighting. They are wearing long tunics and leather plastrons. Their heads are covered by iron masks with slits for the eyes. They are squatting on the ground, in this great hall with its clammy walls. Then, two of them get up, and approach each other on the tips of their toes. They raise their right arms high in the air, and at the end of each arm is a fake sword with a wooden slat for a blade. When they are face to face, they halt, their swords still poised above their heads. Then suddenly they bring their arms down and strike, letting out a savage yell. The swords smack against head and shoulders, graze hands, withdraw, return to the attack. The cries of wild beasts echo through the underground room. Then the fight ends as abruptly as it had begun. The two men withdraw, unbuckle their plastrons and take off their masks. They go over and squat against the wall. Two others get up, tighten their belts, buckle on their leather protective pads, and walk towards each other on tiptoe, gliding forward on their naked feet. They brandish their swords. When it is all over, the men put on their grey suits and their ties once more, and disperse through the streets of the town. Their faces are as hard as fists.
Three young men are walking down the sloping street, in the sunshine. They stride straight through the crowd, and people draw aside hastily. They are wearing short, wide-sleeved white robes that are secured at the waist by a kind of black belt. Their smooth faces are brutal masks. Only their eyes move, under their bushy black eyebrows.
At the top of a flight of stairs there is a long hall. When night falls, it shines with hundreds of parallel neon rods. In this vast corridor, men and women are standing in front of machines that are attached to the walls. They are staring through the glass fronts at the little steel balls that are bouncing through a maze of nails, dancing downward along a path that is never the same. The spring-levers are released with a snap, and the little steel balls trickle endlessly down in hundreds of machines. Rapidly, without losing a moment, the little balls jump, fall back, collide, vanish, and the faces of the men and women have an odd sort of fixed expression that is serious, or mournful, or crazed, as they stare with eyes shaped like steel balls at the machines which are twitching with nervous tics.
Surrounded by the pitch-black night, a great tower rises in the centre of the town. At the tower’s summit there is a revolving wheel. But it is a wheel with windows, for thousands of people are seated inside it, drinking, and watching the town circle round them.
Flight is precise. It never makes a mistake. What it rejects, it rejects for good. But what it takes, it keeps in the region of its heart, transforming it into blood and lymph, feeding on it.
One passes above things, in a precise dream. One makes a count of doors, all the doors that one will never open. The houses with paper walls stand motionless beside their gardens. The thick green tea froths to a boil in little pots. Then it passes from lip to lip, and that too is a kind of flight. The wooden sanctuaries stand rigid at the edge of their ponds, their floorboards biting cold to naked feet. Since far back in the centuries, those in flight have made their way there, astride speedy steeds, or else cleaving the waves in a stone boat. The gestures continue, the old needless gestures, the dull blows on the gongs, the kites, the grinning masks, the ritual wrestling matches, the snake-dances, the bowing and backing. Might not the world in fact be empty, might the world not be hollow, a vast mountain undermined by endless galleries? People swarm by their millions into the great concrete buildings. The cohorts march through the labyrinths of the banking houses, in the snow-white light. In the streets the vehicles plough through the rain, and no one knows where they are going. Was there not a war, one day? Will there not come another day, like that one, when the lightning will strike the anthill, will bore its volcano into the mud and into the flesh, will mow down the shadows against the brick walls? Pitiless hardness and dryness waiting everywhere! Wriggling of insects, voracious mandibles that will strip the great animal’s carcass down to the bone! Am I really here, is it really myself crossing this desert full of rooms? I am here, then elsewhere, then there again. I must try to remember: I have thrown pebbles. I have established my landmarks, I have made my notches in tree trunks. I have taken snapshots: a woman’s face, a little red car wheeling along the expressway, a temple whose beauty makes it seem unreal, a restaurant where the customer chooses his fish live from a tank, a massive stone gateway from which there hangs, motionless, a paper lantern as big as a Montgolfier balloon. I have recorded on tape: sonorous words that rise and fall, that say Ga akarí no mawarí wo tónde irú. Kakitáku nái nára. Sakaná to góhan wo tabémashĭta. Taihén arigāto gozaimásǔ. Dō itashimáshite.
Groups of men wearing tight
-fitting black vinyl jackets and trousers, riding high-powered motorcycles, are streaking down the broad highway that stretches as far as the eye can see. It is just a little gang of adventurers.
On its single rail going in a straight line to the horizon, the train called Streak of Lightning demolishes the air’s barrier. At 170 miles an hour it glides above the blocks of houses, above the highways’ broad rivers. It speeds effortlessly on, forsaking all the millions of humanity, and its white and red snout butts against the wind’s taut sheets. There may be someone called Hogan in the car, sitting in one of the plastic-covered club chairs, someone looking through the big window and seeing a sort of volcano loom up through the clouds and pass by. That, too, is the direction that has to be taken, one movement more, so as to be always farther away, more unknown. At the end of the rail there will be a different station, and other streets. A woman’s face, perhaps, with long black hair like seaweed, a bulging forehead, narrow eyes, lips firmly closed; she will be waiting, silently, and it will seem as though she had been there for centuries, standing there on the station’s cold platform. There will be gardens, too, ornamental lakes covered with a layer of ice, towers of brown wood, houses that all look alike. Flight is not ruled by the clock, it never sleeps. When night comes, it continues through the dream, and when the sun rises one is still farther away, just a little bit farther away.
Masked race! I am not one of you. Intelligent faces! My features are more those of an animal, heavy and low-slung, with round eyes. Nara, Tokyo, Mishima, islands that float abandoned. Wooden theatres, fairs where blind soldiers beg, revulsive music, violence, intelligence of the sculptured gardens in which the trees are alternately large and small, to break the monotony. All that, tossing on the ocean, praying, crying out, lifting its poles towards the grey sky. Might not the earth be empty, by chance? Might not the airplanes be flying for no reason at all, might not the trains be torpedos, simply torpedos, is it not possible that the expressways and subway systems are carrying their clusters of anonymity round and round in an eternal circle? I have neither words nor signs to express what I know. What is to be is already here, it descended upon the world in this very spot. It has drawn its plan. I am ready, perfectly ready.
The Book of Flights Page 16