Some time later, Langlois and his friend Tower stopped at a canal that was flowing under a bridge. They leaned over the parapet and watched the water flowing along its concrete channel. It was quite dark by now. The cars that passed by all had their lights on, the streetlamps were glowing in the centre of drizzling haloes. It was getting cold. Daniel Earl Langlois offered a cigarette to his friend Tower, and they both smoked, and watched the canal flow under the bridge.
It was at that particular moment that Daniel Earl Langlois decided that the world was going to be ruled by twelve-year-olds. He explained to his friend Tower how they would put this plan into operation. They would visit all the Junior High Schools. They would organize mass meetings, and talk to all the kids. They would form an army, and there would be strikes, too, and demonstrations. And since there were more of them than there were grown-ups, they would easily win. Then they could condemn some of the grown-ups to death: their teachers, for example, and most cops. And they would pack the others off to jail. Then they would have elections, and instal a president. That might turn out to be him, of course, or his friend Tower, or perhaps Jimmy who was a whizz at maths. Or else Bernstein who was really good-looking, and made out all right with girls. Or Hal who knew how to drive. Easy as pie: just a question of getting started.
Tower agreed that it would be as easy as pie. Except, how about the army?
Daniel Earl Langlois flicked his cigarette butt into the canal, and remarked that the army was no problem. Everyone knew that grown-ups were no good at fighting. They were too heavy, for one thing, and couldn’t run fast enough.
‘But they’ve got the hydrogen bomb, haven’t they,’ said Tower.
Daniel Earl Langlois gave him a pitying glance.
‘If they drop it on us, they automatically drop it on themselves as well, don’t they! Ever think of that?’
Tower had to admit the truth of this argument.
‘You see how easy it is,’ said Langlois. ‘And it’s the same with the cops. They don’t even begin to know how to run. You remember when Clayton forced open the vending machine outside that supermarket and stole all those cigarettes? He ran as far as the parking lot and wriggled under the cars. And those cops searched everywhere without finding him. They are too fat, you see. No idea how to run.’
‘Yeah, but they have dogs,’ said Tower.
‘Ah, to heck with your dogs,’ said Langlois. ‘Any kid can drop a dog with the first shot of his catapult at twenty yards, can’t he?’
Tower agreed that he was capable of doing that himself.
‘Listen, Tower,’ said Langlois, ‘we know what we’re up to, and we know darn well who we can count on, but grown-ups just aren’t wised up: they’ll never expect this sort of thing. They’re so sure that they can go on making us do everything they want, without us even answering back or anything. And then we live with them, so they won’t be suspicious.’
He turned suddenly to face his friend Tower.
‘You got the nerve to kill anyone?’
Tower made an effort to concentrate.
‘Yeah, I guess so,’ he said.
‘You ever felt like killing someone?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Who?’
‘Well, the history teacher, to start with. That day he called me a liar. And my father, too, when he punched me in the face. Just because I was late. How about you?’
‘Me too. But, with me, it was a guy who lived next door to us. He killed my dog because it used to bark during the night. Once our war has got started, I’m going to pay a call on him and kill him.’
‘And I’ve got another on my list. This guy who’s always chasing my sister. Once, he forced her to kiss him. In the park. I saw it. He’s a real creep. I told him, I told him I’d kill him. He just laughed. But it’s true. I will kill him.’
Daniel Earl Langlois stared gloomily into the canal.
‘You know, the important thing is that we should all agree on things. All the kids, including the girls. If we all get together, we’ll be OK. We could really get going. You know what we’ll do? We’ll start by organizing a group. A real one. At school. We’ll need to find a good name for it, something terrible to scare the grown-ups. The Black Panthers, for example.’
‘Or the Vampires.’
‘Or the Tentacles, perhaps.’
‘The Red Wolves.’
‘The Cobras.’
‘Hey, how about the Scorpions?’
‘The Sharks.’
‘The Phantom Riders.’
‘Hold on. There was this movie I saw last year, I think it all took place in India. Anyhow, there was this gang in it that stabbed folks to death while they were asleep. Right through their hammocks. They were called the Tongs.’
Daniel Earl Langlois looked at his friend Tower with shining eyes.
‘That’s it. Beginning tomorrow, we’ll be the Terrible Tongs.’
And to seal the pact, he took a small knife out of his pocket and made a T-shaped cut in the palm of his friend’s hand, and then in his own. Then they went away, walking back in the direction of Eighth Avenue.
Y. M. Hogan always felt slightly apprehensive, each time children passed by. He searched their eyes for signs of impending revolution, and tried to see whether maybe their closed fists concealed a scar in the shape of a T.
Some time around the middle of the night, Y. M. Hogan found himself in a slum area. The streets were full of potholes, and the houses leaned against each other as though in the aftermath of an earthquake. The windows had panes missing, the doors were covered with graffiti. Going down a very long street, with the wind blowing in his face, Y. M. Hogan found himself among men with black faces, among women who were drunk. These people had some things in common: their eyes smouldered in sunken sockets, and their hair was thick, slicked down, frizzy, brushed back, sometimes glistening with oil. Silhouettes fled quickly in the streetlamps’ humid glow, feet echoed on the sidewalk. Here and there, clouds of steam seeped up from the middle of the black asphalt, and the cars slid through them. It was similar to a photo, shadowy patches and white blurs brought brutally into being, pinned to the ground. No sky was visible. It was also like a photo because of the silence.
Nothing expressed nothing. Movements that were the continuations of syncopated gesticulations passed each other slowly by. The buildings fled vertically, hurling their concrete ramps into the air. The street’s sharp angles cut both the wind and the light. Hogan proceeded in silence from one street to another, crossing wide-open spaces by keeping close to the walls, then suddenly vanishing in the broad shadows. Where had he gone? He was no longer to be seen. Did he turn right, out of this street? Or did he venture into this concrete wasteland? Or enter one of the tall buildings through a black door? No, here he is again, walking past a streetlamp that haloes him with a blur of light. His shadow shrivels beneath his feet, moves ahead of him, divides up. What is he doing? He is waiting at the curb, while a car with raised fins speeds past. He crosses the street. He stumbles over a pothole. He mounts the opposite curb. Why did he cross over? The wall contains a lighted window. He passes in front of it, and becomes lighted, too. A man in an overcoat walks toward him. He walks toward the man. The man veers slightly to the left, while he simultaneously veers slightly to the right. They give each other a quick glance. What is the man in the overcoat thinking? What is Hogan thinking? They manoeuvre safely past each other, the man in the overcoat to the left, Hogan to the right. For a split second there is only a single silhouette to be seen, but it immediately separates, and the two parts draw away from each other. Who is the man in the overcoat? Who is Hogan? By now, he has moved so far up the black and white street that it is impossible to make out his features. A silhouette, merely an anonymous silhouette like all the others, strolling along the sidewalk. A group of men is coming toward him, and another group is overtaking him from the rear. Suddenly there is a knot of people on the sidewalk, a dozen blended silhouettes with arms, legs, heads. The knot surges to and fro. The
n becomes untangled. Where is he? Where is Hogan? Is he the one over there who is walking quickly away from the spot? Or that second one? Or that third one? Is he the one who is crossing the street at an angle? Or is he perhaps the one who is retracing his steps, walking on the roadway so that he can get away faster? What does it matter? Let us assume that Hogan is this one here. He turns back and starts striding over the sidewalk’s stone slabs. Then he stops. He lights a cigarette. He throws the match in the gutter. Wait a minute, though, Hogan had a lighter; yes, but maybe he has lost it, or sold it, or maybe he has bequeathed it to a woman called Ricky? He passes the lighted window again. Another silhouette walks towards him and joins him, and then, in a flash from the window, he is off again, retreating to the far end of the street. He is on the point of disappearing. He glides over the smooth sidewalk, he is no bigger than a dot. Then he walks back again, crosses over between two stationary vehicles, passes a group of people. He is part of the group, which is now walking back up the street, talking very loudly. Occasionally he comes to a halt, turns towards the others, waves his arms around and shouts. It is not very easy to hear what he is shouting, but it is something like: ‘No! I tell you! No!’
A couple is walking down the street, holding hands. When he emerges from the other side of the group of men milling around on the sidewalk, it is Hogan who is holding the girl’s hand. He is tending to pull her along, either because she is tired or because she cannot walk as fast as he can. They are swallowed up by a big patch of shadow and grow invisible. All that can be heard is the clicking of the girl’s high heels on the ground. Then nothing more. Has he vanished for ever? No, no, something is emerging from the shadow and walking back up the street. The silhouette of a woman, moving rapidly and silently along the sidewalk. You don’t mean to say that Hogan has turned into a woman? Why, yes, that’s him all right, you can recognize him by the fact that he has two legs, two arms, and an indecipherable face. Man, woman, what difference does it make? Are they not all exactly the same, these little black insects with their rhythmic movements, the same eyes, the same thoughts? Hey presto! Man again, walking back down the street, quickly. Hey presto! Man crossing over, stopping to let a car go by. Hey presto! Man looking in the shop windows as he strolls along. Hey presto! Woman walking back, swinging her handbag. An interminable process that might very well go on for hours, days, years, longer even than that. Hogan came and went ceaselessly along that cold, motionless road resembling a photo, as he zigzagged, disappeared, reappeared again. Black, then white, then mottled, then woman, then man, then a woman. Mute insects with imponderable desires, praying mantises with wary gestures.
It was the place for exhilarating music, for sequences of identical sounds, with long monotonous slurs. It was the place for a song that repeats itself, and lulls people to sleep; for the strangled voice of the saxophone continually inventing the same phrase, losing it, picking it up again. The patches of shadow are the tremblings of the string-bass as it hesitates and gropes. Each repeated beat of the drums is a street, a street. The designs of the houses, the windows, the haloes round the streetlamps all ceaselessly trace the same thing, a voluble line that moves silently forward, mind and imagination soaring upward, inventing life where really nothing existed previously. And the adventures of the silhouettes, there, against the town’s pattern! Adventures which one can no longer understand very well, useless adventures. Cubes of tall, elegant buildings, cubes of music! Town crisscrossed by dark canyons, town of music! Automobiles with dazzling headlamps, pounding, gliding, speeding towards the unknown. Jazz automobiles! Graceful bridges across the sea, all of them summonses! Vibrant, electric expressways, soaring and swooping! Deserted squares, black gardens where the trees are silent: it is not birds that you need, now, it is clarinets! Hogan, Earl Langlois, Tower, or alternatively Wasick, Wheeler, Rotrou, names that no longer exist, that have become meaningless. It is the blocks that exist, the tons of houses made of concrete and iron, the tunnelled mountains, the cast-iron statues standing around the islands, the tunnels of the subway system along which massive, blind cars lurch. Insects don’t count. They are no longer to be seen. They pitter-patter in the cracks, they pullulate, ridiculous vermin, laughable army of long-legged aphides! Forgotten, forgotten! Never mention them again! No more sentiments at the level of aphides! We want sentiments as high-flown as twenty-five-storey buildings. Sentiments as lofty as towers, as broad as stadiums, as deep as tunnels.
Thinking! Thinking! The process should no longer be merely this feeble flurry of hailstones that raises a little dust. It should be something quite different. Thinking should be a terrifying process. When the earth thinks, whole towns crumble to the ground and thousands of people die.
Thinking: raising boulders, hollowing out valleys, preparing tidal waves out at sea. Thinking like a town, that’s to say: eight million inhabitants, twelve million rats, nine million pints of carbon dioxide, two billion tons. Grey light. Cathedral of light. Din. Sudden flashes. Low-lying blanket of black cloud. Flat roofs. Fire alarms. Elevators. Streets. Eighteen thousand miles of streets. 145 million electric light bulbs.
Solitude: here the rampart of autonomy is breached. For instance, he who climbs up to the top of a tower, one night, and dares to survey this town, and all the other towns with it. The glance he gives is so cold that he becomes an integral part of the tower. Is he not even more distant than if he were surveying the earth from the outermost ends of space, through the porthole of a kind of armour-plated torpedo? Is what he sees not more beautiful and more moving than the frozen mass confronting the snout of an interplanetary capsule? What he sees is colder than the high plateaux of the Antarctic, brighter than salt lakes, vaster than the North Sea, fierier than the Gila desert, lovelier than the Kamchatka, uglier than the mouth of the Orinoco. What he sees is so immeasurable that the bat can fly no longer and falls exhausted to the ground. What he sees is so precise that the mind becomes confused, he loses track of his thoughts and they evaporate. This is why there are guard-rails round the tops of all the towers, so that men should not climb up in droves, simply to throw themselves into space. This is why there are windows made of opaque glass, so that the terrible void should not lure them out, and devour them. This is why there are movie houses, paintings, picture postcards and books: to create walls, always more walls, protective ramparts.
Thought, infinite thought that longs to spread out and cover the whole of space. The mind is in flight. The mind escapes into the urban labyrinth. A single thought that has been allowed to circulate freely, and man is lost. Watches, calendars, rally to my side! Chronometers, help! Cigarettes, help, help! Houses, clothes, dictionaries, photographs, quick, quick, come to my rescue! Heap yourselves upon me! Money, cars, professions, quick, or it will be too late! Come and extract me from the tower, come and restore me to my rightful place among the insects. Come, mealtimes! Naked women, familiar obsessions, manias, do not delay! The void has already seized an arm, a leg, it is drawing me in. Hold your screen between my eyes and this gaze, or I shall topple!
At ground level, the little men and little women continue on their paths.
Y. M. Hogan found himself in a street where gangs of vagrants were stopping passing vehicles. One of them threw himself in front of the car’s wheels, and when it came to a halt with a great squealing of brakes the others hurled themselves at it, making as though to smash the headlamps and windscreen. Then they hammered on the windows, and the driver hastily gave them some money.
In corridor-shaped bars, drunks were asleep, heads sprawled on tables.
A group of gigantic Negroes appeared on the sidewalk, striding forward in step, and staring straight ahead of them. Passers-by drew aside or flattened themselves against the wall, and the group of haughty, indifferent giants swept on.
Men with made-up faces and bleached hair minced along. From the corners of doorways, women whistled. A young man wearing tennis shoes, stretched out on the ground with his head in shadow, injected himself with a drug, then fell asle
ep.
At a bus stop, a fat woman with innocent eyes was holding her handbag open against her stomach. She passed her right hand over the bag and slipped the fingertips inside the pocket of a man standing there, waiting for a bus. Her fingers emerged from the pocket holding a billfold which she dropped into the bag. She then walked off down the street, keeping an eye open for other bus stops in the vicinity.
At an intersection, there was a man gripping an iron bar. Every time a passing car came close enough, he lifted the bar and brought it down with all his might on the car’s coachwork. Y. M. Hogan watched him doing this. The first two times, the cars accelerated and sped away, with a great dent in the boot. But the third time, Y. M. Hogan was not particularly surprised when the car stopped. Two men got out of it, without saying a word. The man raised his iron bar, meaning to strike them with it. But the two sprang forward, knocking him to the ground. For a whole minute Y. M. Hogan listened to the sound of the two pairs of fists smashing into the fallen man’s face. The driver from the car stamped on the man’s arm, forcing him to let go of the iron bar. Then, after gesturing his companion aside, he started hitting the man on the ground with the iron bar. The first stroke glanced off. The second crushed the man’s skull, and a single brief little cry of ‘Aah!’ could be heard coming from the man’s mouth. At the third stroke, the man was already dead, but the driver did not stop. He went on smashing the dead man’s crushed head into a pulp, a process that produced a series of peculiar-sounding soft thuds. Cars whizzed by on either side, with their lights blazing. When he had had enough, the driver threw the iron bar on to the ground beside the body and he and his companion climbed back into their car. The car shot away, gliding up the street with its red rear lights gleaming. Then it turned down a side street and vanished. The man was sprawled on the roadway, beside the iron bar. Cars, beams of white light shining from their headlamps, continued to pass on either side of the corpse. One of them came so close that it was possible to hear, quite distinctly, its right-side tyres squelch in the pool of blood. Y. M. Hogan stayed a moment at the edge of the sidewalk, just to see whether some car would finally pass over the man’s body. But people drive better than is generally supposed, and they all managed to swerve aside in time. So Y. M. Hogan went away. These were things that one could see going on in New York, or Baltimore, or maybe San Antonio, some time between 1965 and 1975.
The Book of Flights Page 18