Birth of a Bridge

by Maylis de Kerangal

  BIKE ALONG slowly, first rolling alongside the river, then for two miles follow the black paved path that weaves back and forth beside the frozen river, solid and intense as Chinese ink against the uncertain murk of the static waters, pass the juvenile financial district, effulgent, bristling with cranes that are too red, too high, too new, makes him think of a teenager at the peak of his growth spurt, leave the park on the left-hand side, promise yourself to go hang out there when it warms up, to go see if they barter here as much as people say – an HP printer for a Moroccan ottoman nailed together in Meknes, an issue of the Village Voice for a set of muffin tins, a water pipe for an IKEA duvet – if they deal here, if they turn tricks as much as people say, if they tire themselves out – martial arts under the trees, kites on the meadow, dodge-ball soccer and running everywhere – if they make love amid the vapours of New California Gold, compressed inside acid trips against a background of mind-blowing music, or breaking away to languish beneath the wide green leaves of the banana trees (so soft and welcoming), if you can hear poets in baggy jeans and fluorescent flip-flops droning the language of owls plaited together with that of capitalists, if people organize politically, if they dance on Native burial grounds, if they pray – if in fact the place creates a utopia at the heart of Coca, a clearing where unbridled words fluctuate, a gap where the world could reformulate itself, and Diderot pedals faster and faster, caressing the foliage with his eyes, leaves powdered with snow, the California black oaks against the chalky bronze and golden highlights of the ginkgos, speeds along beside the stone wall that breathes, snowflaky, and rings this park without gate or fence. Gain momentum and roll onto the boulevard that snakes along the side of the valley, inhale and exhale regularly, above all don’t force it, don’t waste your strength, don’t rush, instead climb in cadence, wait to change speed, and when the slope is at a good angle swing onto the plateau without pedalling harder, take advantage of the bends, pass the McDonald’s, the Trader Joe’s, the Walgreens, and the Safeways, and once you’ve reached the top of the boulevard, only then turn right and climb to the circular promontory that advances into space, balcony that overhangs the valley, the city, the river, and the bridge that rises up over the water, dome of the forest behind, get off the bike, unhook the flask, and drink the water that will have taken on the metallic taste that is, for Diderot, the very flavour of Coca, embrace the white landscape, sparkling under the hard sun, and measure how far you’ve come. This is the first stop.

  Diderot huffs and puffs, water dribbles down his frozen chin, his face is the colour of a beet, and sweat trickles into his eyes: he would never have believed he could have such a hard time making it up a hill. He’s leaning against the guardrail that drips melted ice, his feet buried up to the ankles in a grimy snowdrift, chin resting in his big paw bundled in a glove, he gazes at Coca at the bottom of the valley: I’m too old for all this, don’t have the body for it, don’t have the shoulders for the job anymore, nor the legs solid or feet nervous enough, and he soon thinks of the little house in the Finistère and quickly shakes his head, no way, the Finistère, dammit, the name alone makes him want to run because here we are at the edge of the continent – there, there would be only his mother like the crust of the earth, his mother in a blue blouse trimming the hedges, her hands between the leaves moving a pair of pruning shears much too heavy for her, his hunched-over mother in the mauve mountains, blue sky, roses, his tiny mother, all dried out except for her cheeks so red and waxed like apples, so brittle, osteoporosis and memory lapses, they’d go walking along the Bay of the Dead (Baie des Trépassés), on the sandy beach where stiffs drowned in the Raz de Sein wash up after eight days, they’d laugh at the macabre toponym and would promptly fall into the trap of the place, its implacable nature, its din; they’d watch the waves forming far off that would swell, powerful, great rolls of rough and nebulous force that pulverized light in their passage and imposed themselves with a kind of absolute fate, like the very first world, the very first proof of days, and maybe he’d even swim naked in the sea, lifting himself up onto his toes and raising his arms with each wave that smacks against his chest, yelling with cold, joy, fear, yelling with his mouth wide open soon smothered with so much oxygen and nitrogen, soon dry and silent, while the little old woman would recite the names of the capes and rocks to herself, her maroon cardigan buttoned to the neck, house shoes buried in the wet sand soaking up sea and crabs, yes, maybe it was time now to go home and set himself up in a part of the earth where there’s no more ground to dig, precisely, not many more gestures to make, a place where he could enjoy the world as it is, the simple perception, head on, without there being a need to add any action, without a need to make anything other than what already exists there, tangible as a pleasing flower that we pick with one simple movement, a pure sensation that would still – just like the motion of the waves, like their knowing and mysterious rolling – return him from the inside and shake out his bones, just a sandbank then, a bit of earth and water, animal exuberance all around and the bitter smell of seaweed, just a cape, a simple, rudimentary place, and leave airports behind for good.

  At the bottom of the valley Coca dazzles, and it’s as though the impatience, the avidity, the rapacious desire have been rendered visible. And this peps Diderot up, reinvigorates him. He jumps back on the seat, hup, and in one moment has turned his back on the city and on the future Finistère, spins towards the white plain, his tires whistling on the asphalt again, again the pleasure of being swift, of splitting the air as though it were matter, again the joy of penetrating space headfirst, laid flat over the handlebars in the position of speed, making his body one with the machine, hair and clothes flapping noisily in the atmosphere like so many minuscule flags, and Diderot laughs in spurts, the icy air he swallows dries his throat but he opens his mouth, and his teeth, spoiled by deposits of tobacco, gleam in the sun as his big all-terrain tongue flaps against his lower lip, the air he exhales is exchanged for that of the limestone plateau, it’s a strange vertigo, as though his presence were the only thing that made the space around him exist, as though he were at once the centre and the engine. At this point, it’s ecstasy: the conjugated forces of his body and his wheels propelling him forward with the firmness of a piece of artillery, every swerve seizing his senses. Diderot takes off, glides, lifted, and his thoughts also materialize, roll in his brain, tangible as stones and precise, he’s having clear ideas – it’s always on his bike that everything settles, everything crystallizes.

  RETURNING VIA Colfax, nearly noon, a barbecue joint, pickups with snow tires outside, and at the edge of the parking lot, an empty swing that grates dismally on a crossbar: Diderot’s hungry, he goes inside. Dim room panelled in yellow pine, no windows but Christmas decorations in abundance, club music turned up loud – Jefferson Airplane, “Somebody to Love” – and a phenomenal hubbub that finally covers his internal weather, the incessant come and go of servers with hard smiles, weak phrasing. A girl in a cowboy hat welcomes him with a menu in hand, reels off a commercial greeting in the form of a question – How are we doing today? – turns on her heel, leads him between tables populated with beers and men wearing large lumberjack shirts, two or three tables with girl duos, one with a family. For Diderot, a table in the corner and andiamo: triple burger, fries, Coke.

  When the door opens, the ray of light whitens the atmosphere and reveals the dust suspended in the room, thousands of particles without mass, without volume, mysteries of matter, and then dark silhouettes enter stamping their feet on the doormat with disproportionate ardour, on the pretext of knocking off the snow that’ll soon turn to puddles. Diderot’s irritated hearing them stamp stamp for ages, bloody racket, raises his eyebrows: a new family has been seated at the other end of the room. There’s a little girl in a high chair, two teens, a woman with auburn hair, a man in a wheelchair. The woman captures his attention. She shrugs off a fuchsia parka, lifts her hair from the hood of her tracksuit, and is now studying the menu while the man in the wh
eelchair drains his first beer.

  At the moment when the server brings their plates – three burgers for the five of them, two Cokes, two beers, they’ll share – Diderot catches the eye of the woman, who greets him with a nod of her head, murmurs something to the man in the wheelchair who also looks up at him, and finally she gets up, crosses the room, and comes to stand in front of his table, her jogging pants are loose, too big for her. Hello, she smiles, a heavy layer of turquoise eyeshadow on her swollen eyelids, clumsy mascara, lilac circles under her eyes, round smacks of apricot blush on her hollowed cheeks, mouth enlarged with a brown line, is it Carnival or something? Diderot puts down his cutlery and without getting up says hello. The woman holds out her hand: Katherine Thoreau, I work on the site, I’m the one who found you knocked flat the other day. Surprised, Diderot gets up – ah! – and shakes her hand, vaguely vexed by the use of the words knocked flat. Now they stand face to face. The woman is tall, her beautiful hair smells like family shampoo and cigarettes, she leans her eyes into his, sage-petal green eyes, softness itself, you’re feeling better, then? Her voice gets a little lost in the din of the restaurant, of the music and the cowboy servers shouting orders, but Diderot’s instinctively tuned in to the right frequency, and he hears her. Great, watch this – he lifts his arms in the air, would have even spun around – a server carrying a stack of dirty plates passes between them, he places his hands back on his thighs, great, no, really, excellent. I see that, she smiles, an exaggerated pout of admiration, her eyes shining now, you came by bike? Diderot clears his throat, yes – he wasn’t thinking of his bike shorts or of his flat little shoes, of his body, and feels suddenly naked and confused, forces himself to round up his memories – the man in the tie, the fight, the pain – but he doesn’t remember her, or that her hair caressed his face while he lay in the stinking muck, steeped in rain and blood, who is this woman? So everything’s great? she asks again, still cheerful, beginning to retreat towards her table – but I happen to know she’s lingering a little, wouldn’t even mind spending the whole day on this side of the room with this man, handsome as a continent. They’re standing straight as totems in the smell of the deep fryer, they’re hot, they shuffle, embarrassing the servers who graze past, held fast in this moment that’s quickly draining away. Great, Diderot watches her, twisting his mouth – how long has it been since he talked like this with a girl? Ignoring the three faces behind her and the little one who’s bawling, Katherine has put her hands in her pockets, there’s interest, she looks him up and down, pretend serious, we start up again tomorrow so better be in good shape, right? She’s pretty now, pretty because of her gaiety, a soft look, beautiful neck, body loose, so pretty that Diderot, looking for a way to keep talking, asks her abruptly: which team do you work on? End of the laughter – an end to the cat and mouse, the parenthesis of joking around and the molecular desire – what we have now, face to face, is the boss and the worker, and it’s as swift as a cudgel blow. Katherine Thoreau freezes and replies, I’m a driver, Anchorage Three. Ah, very good. Diderot bites his lips, thinks, you idiot, you complete idiot, while the woman takes a stronger step backwards, signifying that she’s returning to her table, in a hurry to be done now, but in that instant knocks against the wheelchair, stumbles, spins around. It’s a man Diderot hadn’t seen who’s come up behind her and announces, sugary sweet: your food’s getting cold, dear. Katherine lets out a cry of surprise, immediately covers her mouth; she hadn’t heard anything either, no one can hear anything in here, then she hurries through the introductions while looking away: Lewis, my husband, Mr. Diderot, the boss of the site – she feels miserable as she utters these words, the boss of the site! why not kneel before him and lick his boots while she’s at it! She grows hot with rage, wants to escape for good, but Lewis holds out a cheerful hand to Diderot, oh I see! You’re the one who was knifed by a wacko? Diderot nods, stepping back in turn towards his table, but Lewis insists and rolls closer to him, why don’t you come finish your meal with us, Mr. Diderot? It’s no fun to eat alone, isn’t that right, dear? Katherine, overwhelmed, breathes, let’s not bother him, Lewis. That is when Diderot, like an amateur actor, looked at his watch and then declined, thank you but you see, I’ve finished, I must go, after which he paid, picked up his things, and as he passed the family at their table, waved his hand, a wave that only Lewis returned, the boys just watched him hard, and she kept her turquoise eyelids ostensibly down at her glass of water, ignoring the little girl who wailed and held out her arms, demanding justice, they must have argued over the number of fries and sips of Coke, and now, on the plates, there’s nothing left for Katherine.

  SIZING UP THE PLACE

  WHEN NIGHT COMES OVER THE TERRITORY, COCA takes shape. Darkness suits it, heats it up, drives it mad, delivers it cruel and brutal, sharp edges and an interior disturbed by thousands of rival gleams; night reveals it as an orange, effervescent, vitamin C tablet tossed in a glass of troubled water, a jar of crude oil placed in a sink, a distributor of oxygen, speed, and light.

  Then day falls and multiplies its light, abounds its noise, the city doubles its speed, racing tongues rave inside big excited mouths, and this name propagates left and right: Coca! Coca! Coca! The Brand New City! A zone of proliferation with swarms of febrile businessmen, dealers of all kinds, sly teenagers, opium dandies, usurers, ladies of the night, and murderers in wigs. Each week the big coastal newspapers (the first to be enticed by its reputation and fascinated by its rapid growth) publish a hot and nervous image, compare it to a nubile virgin, unpolished and cunning, still a little gawky, look, look at her, her blatant come-on, decked out like a little whore, hand on one sequined hip, ferocious, determined, listen to her calling you, come on in, boys, come see, come taste. They’re exaggerating of course, making a show of it, because columns always have to sizzle snap pop, but basically they’re telling it like it is – and sex is definitely one of the main activators of the big global mix, practised in order to abolish differences (or so they tell themselves) – social, physical, and generational – it’s no secret, just driving through Coca at any hour of the day you can feel the frenetic pace of a city doped up on sweat and money, stretched to the limit as though pumped full of Botox, you can measure the formidable Joule effect that’s constantly at work.

  Coca promises the high life. People come here from all over, bodies impatient, pockets holding just enough to get by for a few days; constant turnover of people and desires, burning cheeks and boiling pupils, fast streets like centrifugal motors and skyscrapers opening onto a sky that dispenses good fortune: the power of the territory in action. Here you come into contact with everything that makes up the great stew of a city, you hear the spasms of concrete and the violent scansion of hearts immersed in a common turbulence. Yet the secret of this incomparable flow that makes the blood pump harder in the arteries and sweat pearl in the small of the back, this secret is no secret to anyone, it circulates through all possible networks like breaking news: don’t come to Coca unless you’re ready to join the hustle! Don’t lay down roots here, and certainly don’t come for fun or for some rest. Approach it like an ambitious wild beast, breathe deeply and kick open the door, show up without waiting to be announced, without checking in, go ahead and put your plan into action.

  AND YET, it’s still hard to understand how people could have dreamed of setting themselves up in such a dented cleft of the red limestone plateau, at the flat bottom of a valley with asymmetrical sides where jackals and lynx descend at dawn, incisors still gleaming with blood. Yes, it’s hard to understand how starving fanatics, carried forward solely by their mission to give their cult a piece of land, to give their god a cult, to give their deaths a god – how they had managed to cross the enormous continent, to carve through the prairie and the mountains, along the way finding grasses tall enough to feed their animals; how they cleared a path through the forest of cacti encircling the plain – plants with branches sharp as folding razors or machetes – borderlines of barbed wire as ta
ll as a man on horseback; how they strangled rattlesnakes with their bare hands, walked along the canyon floor; how they got around the murky ponds transmuted into frozen lakes in winter, and into sanctuaries for deadly mosquitoes in summer. How they braved the bestial heat and the beggar’s cold. Hunted deer, trapped hares, harpooned carp. Killed Natives. How they dragged their families heaped onto grimy wagons, built houses, raised bison, fattened pigs, fenced in fields of potatoes and corn to feed them all. How many corpses and how many gone mad by the end of the journey? How many horses carved into steaks over primitive fires? How many scalps? Above all, how could they have stayed here, and continued to take wives here, to have children here, to bury their dead here, spring summer fall winter, one year then two then ten, spring summer fall winter, continued to burn brains and put holes in chests, to eviscerate bodies, spring summer fall winter, how did they do it, yes, we wonder in earnest, because to stay here, on this tongue of land flared like a skirt at the river’s edge; to grow up between the high plains and the howling forest; to take root here was, after all, to defy Heaven and all of Creation. It was to claim to call the coyote by name and outwit the grizzly, to drink melted snow till they got the runs, to roast scorpions squatting shoulder to shoulder, to spit out sand and rub flint. They did it, though, these bearded men with hemp twine hair, these women in their bonnets, these fevered children, all of them dirty and deathly afraid, chanting canticles with one hand on the trigger, all of them murderers: they founded a city.