Birth of a Bridge

by Maylis de Kerangal

  FROM THE airport onward he had trembled, rigid with exhaustion from the trip and the spectacle of corpses on display on the concourse. A magnificent collection of stuffed specimens from Alaska, land and aquatic wildlife, animals he’d taken the time to gaze at, impressed by the reflective gleam of their pupils – they too had a gaze – and by the shine of their teeth moistened with varnish – they were hungry; among them, a moose with flat antlers and gentle eyes, a strange amphibious and vaguely prehistoric creature, solitary and independent, who crosses large rivers and grazes with its head underwater; a white bighorn sheep with large amber-coloured horns curving in hoops like the rolled coiffure of Madame Bovary; and finally a brown bear standing on its hind legs, colossal: ten feet tall and at least a thousand pounds. Soren is fascinated by the power and the violence – two nouns that, to him, are strangely synonymous, and he has blithely confused them since childhood – that subsist in this furry carcass staged in the airport terminal. A handsome welcoming committee. One that nightmares are made of – and nightmares would come, the animal would come to life on the flagstones.

  First there was the boat to build, a hull a hundred feet long with a steel frame that Soren and three other guys had put together over a few months; the owner, a rich restaurateur from Anchorage, is starting up a hunting business and wants to transport hunters and fishers in groups of thirty to the lodges he owns in Kodiak, Seldovia, and Eagle River. It’s on this building site that Soren meets his first bear, a hungry young male who pulverizes the empty beer cans left behind after the break and flees at his approach. A few days later, when he sees it again, Soren decides from then on to prepare a bundle of berries, roots, and dried fish for the bear – he leaves it behind the shed, in the animal’s path (he does this in secret: taming a bear on the work site is strictly forbidden). Ten days later, when he goes out behind the shed to see, there’s nothing left of the bundle, and paw prints are clearly visible in the snow; Soren smiles, quivers with joy. A few days later he hears it growling again behind the fence, rushes to see it finish devouring the enormous bundle he’d brought so carefully onto the site; when it catches sight of him, the bear freezes, and they watch each other – Soren notices the red crescent mark above its eye – this lasts two or three seconds, no longer, and then the animal disappears behind a wall of containers.

  Once the hull is finished, Soren finds another job in a factory where he freezes his ass off all day long standing in front of trays of fish to be gutted before packaging. Yet he continues to bring provisions, once or twice a month, until the night when he finds the bundle intact – the bear’s not coming anymore. This desertion hits him hard: Soren lies around, gets drunk on weekends, feels himself foundering. When he hears word of a position as a bus driver that’s opening, he snaps it up, and, displaying some ultimate confidence, he begins to venture into nature, which is where he meets the woman who will drive him completely insane.

  Though he doesn’t entirely believe in this thing between them – she’s in university, she’s travelled, and she speaks French – he lets himself be taken in because they share a similar metabolism, both are solitary, independent early risers, two mute and graceless individuals fascinated by wildness. In the beginning, Soren’s not very physically attracted to her – she’s stocky and short limbed, with a closed face and dull hair, but he likes her arrogance and her big breasts beneath the aqua down jacket, breasts she lets him enjoy at will, breasts he kneads, licks, sucks; besides, he’s aware that she’s not clingy, doesn’t ask questions, and that his appetite for sex suits her. When she arrives at his place because of some story about a broken heater in her studio, he opens the door politely, specifies with a smile that this is only temporary, right, but he’s so transfigured that a girl is knocking at his door, it’s as though he’s asking her to stay forever. So she makes her entrance, royal and desired, and soon there he is waiting for her to come home each evening, organizing night trips into nature, now he’s driving her around, guiding her, and making casseroles for her. The end of the study she’s been conducting on wolves (communication within the pack: decoding the cries and the howls) – signifies the end of their honeymoon. The girl returns to university and is suddenly smug about it, doesn’t bother answering the questions he asks, is openly bored; soon she brings guys over to his place in the afternoon, students who are a little boorish but flush, who down his beers and drain his hot-water tank. Strangely, Soren takes it, says nothing, holding out – but the girl humiliates him more and more often, refuses to sleep with him anymore, refuses to let him touch her breasts, snickering at his handwriting – are you dyslexic or something? You should get that checked out, buddy, I won’t be here forever – or at his job, going out each night under the black netting of new stockings, breasts out in the open, and comes home at dawn drunk to toss used condoms in the garbage. He finally asks her to leave – he’s scared now that he might hit her, he knows himself, she’s gotta get out of here. But the girl digs in her heels, says she’s waiting for a money order from her father; Soren, crazy with rage, answers coldly I don’t give a shit tonight you are outta here – but that night, ridiculous, they end up sleeping together again, and it’s so intense for Soren that he doesn’t know what he wants anymore. This time again the girl screamed her pleasure loudly; gleaming with sweat, strands of her hair stuck to her temples, she looks at him for a long moment with brilliantly shining eyes – her mouth is cruel and disdainful. Soren, it’s time I told you clearly: I am not a big dog, not a mare or a goat: I’m a woman, a human being, can you get that straight? Then she turned towards the wall with a sigh, stifled a dirty little laugh, and, with her back arched, presented her ass to him again, and he took it. It was that same night that the bear from the site reappeared, foraging in the shrubby bushes behind his building. Soren is completely disoriented, the girl is asleep on her stomach. Not knowing how to find an outlet for the sexual violence that torments him, and feeling himself losing ground, he gets dressed and takes the garbage out, keys in hand. The animal is there in the small courtyard, resplendent, walnut brown and lustrous beneath an enormous moon; he lifts his head and looks at Soren with his little eyes, they recognize each other, the bear has the same sliver of red above his eye, it’s him – Soren is dazzled, spellbound, calls the animal softly and he comes, moving slowly on four paws, swaying with his whole enormous body, and warm, it’s magic, Soren climbs the stairs backwards, step by step, holding out the garbage bag to the bear who comes slowly, with no other noise than that of his fur against the walls at the turns, then once Soren’s on the landing he opens the door quickly and puts the bag inside, a few feet from the doorway; he leaves the door open and slips out to climb a little higher on the staircase, and as soon as the bear goes inside the apartment, he turns the key in the lock with a fevered hand, closing the door on the bear and the girl.

  THE MEN have just got off the bus. Alex immediately places himself behind Soren – who moves ahead reluctantly, desperate – and pushes him forward with a series of jabs to his shoulder. They plunge into a gleaming, oily neighbourhood, following narrow alleyways and finally enter an ordinary bar where a Frenchman is waiting for them. Have a seat. Beneath the grenadine bulbs that light the place, Soren learns their faces – Alex’s intrigues him, he recognizes him vaguely. As though this conversation was just a pleasantry, an interlude of sociability in good company, the Frenchman points at both of them with a whirling index finger, what are you going to have? The minutes that follow are exactly like a hand squeezing the throat. The Frenchman, silver fox with prominent Adam’s apple, says you’ll receive a package at the midnight change of shift – Alex will bring it to you, but he won’t come onto the site – you’ll have to pick it up outside and then stash it in your locker. You’ll still have time to catch the bus and have a drink with the guys. Soren looks at his hands trembling on the table: and then? Then you wait for instructions. Soren doesn’t blink, he lowers his head again, his eye is reflected in the bronze of his beer, he exhales: what’s in the
package? At this point Alex plants himself against his shoulder again and practically licks his ear whispering, shut up, while the Frenchman lifts Soren’s chin with the signet ring on his fist, listen up – you don’t ask any questions, you just wait for instructions and everything will work out fine. But Soren insists, tears in his eyes like glue, and if I say no? If you say no? If you say no we may just find ourselves a bear and lock you up with it.

  RALPH WALDO WILL BE STOPPING OVER IN COCA for twenty-four hours – this is what he tells Diderot in mid-January over the phone in a mild and international voice. Since the Boa is off in Dubai, Diderot and he will meet alone. Rendezvous in the Four Seasons bar, the last luxury hotel to open in Coca, a popular spot, built in the old prison like the one in Istanbul: the cells of the defiant Natives and the area’s worst crooks have been redone as deluxe suites that go for two thou a night, after the walls have been scraped of all the rebellious graffiti, racist insults and threats directed at the judges – when I get out I’ll stuff your balls down your throat – after sanding off the caricatures relegating the heads of these same judges to the darkness, cheeks colonized by scrubby sideburns, fur of corruption or intransigence; the visiting rooms are converted into meeting rooms for all kinds of conference calls, the workshops into business centres, the refectory into a jazzy lounge bar, and the slammer courtyard into a tropical garden with a mosaicked pool and beds of eternal, undying roses.

  DIDEROT IS late by an hour at least, but Waldo smiles at him, fifty years old, tall and slim, without a paunch, splendid hands – slender wrists, but a singular width of the palm and thumb, fuselage of muscled fingers – placed on his hips, elbows thrown back spreading the tails of his jacket, billiard-ball head haloed with a glory still sharp: they say he won the Coca bridge contest by drawing the bridge right in front of the jury, pencil in hand, a double-edged ruler in his pocket, this is all I need he said right off the bat, presenting his meagre supplies one after the other like the magician who shows the audience the inside of his hat before pulling out a flock of turtledoves, all I need is an idea and a strong philosophy. Then the oral part of the presentation, the dreaded challenge, had mutated into a master class, Ralph Waldo beginning his talk with murmurs whispered into the auditorium as though he was pondering aloud: how is a bridge conceived? How does its shape appear? Is it determined by the context, or does it define itself according to the stated needs? From there he had launched into a virtuoso demonstration led by his hands that suddenly inhabit all the space and by his voice that explains each detail on the board, nevertheless allowing himself a few fumbles, a couple of hesitations while he tears white sheets from the large board, pantomime of the violent and inhabited genius, and even though it is false – even grossly hypocritical – this work in progress becomes something daring, sassy, that captivates the judges: they will award the prize to this choreography, as well oiled as a number by the Bluebell Girls.

  WHISKY LIGHT and fluffy carpet, willowy women swaying between tables, golden dimness, the men start drinking. They get to the bridge immediately: how is the site going, Georges? The man scrutinizes Diderot from behind his fine, round, polycarbonate glasses; he’s dressed in black – polo shirt, Italian suit, and leather running shoes with rubber soles, the latest trend. Diderot takes off his jacket, mumbles, it’s going fine, we’ve dredged three-quarters of a million cubic yards of silt and sediment, a whole shit heap that we dumped back into the ocean, not a pretty picture, I’m not sure we’re totally within the lines, have to watch that the eco gang doesn’t crack down on us; then we had to dynamite a channel and level the shoals – we’ve prepared the bed for the beast, the anchorage phase is almost done, we’re raising up the towers, everything’s on schedule.

  Ralph Waldo smiles. His question was intended to evoke a general impression, an emotion, some interiority – not a technical report. A dialogue of the deaf ensues: while Ralph Waldo extrapolates on the question of the bridge, touching upon the aesthetics, the intimate experience of crossing over, and that of nature – he’s the man who returns from a great theoretical distance, the one who invents the form – Diderot delimits it, handles it technically, numbers it, sizes it, and finally gives his progressive rectilinear view of the crossing; this goddamn bridge, like all kinds of works, is nothing more than the calibration of a form we all know inside and out, and to talk about it means simply isolating a problem and breaking it down, breaking it down, always breaking it down, one more time, and then once more, and it’s in this methodical way that any appropriate response will arise – this is his method, his way of thinking.

  RALPH WALDO versus Georges Diderot. Two men face to face, deep in their armchairs, the alcohol going to their heads; the bar is closing, last call, they have one last stiff shot and then go, hugging themselves in the rain, Ralph Waldo teetering with his glasses in hand, my aim is always to intervene the least amount possible he shouts with his arm extended in what he believes to be the direction of the bridge, one must always find the lightest, purest, most modern form, an interpretation of the landscape – his glasses fall to the sidewalk as he stumbles in the gutter – an interpretation of the landscape, that’s what I deliver, he streams water and belts it out, happy in this moment, and Diderot inwardly visualizes the giant mechanism of the site, the deployment of forces, the physical expenditure of the men, haggard and dirty by day’s end, the deafening noise of the machines, the bundles of bills counted and recounted one by one in filthy hands before being folded into small squares at the bottom of leather wallets, the accidents that threaten and those that happen, the closed faces of the Natives and the violent movements of the men from Detroit, suddenly making out Summer concentrating on her concrete and Sanche, minuscule at the foot of his crane, holding all this with Katherine right in the middle at the controls of her excavator, he lets himself be overcome with emotion – an interpretation of the landscape! – a silent laugh shakes him as the architect takes great strides towards the river, chest slanting to the ground as though he is charging into a strong adverse wind, Diderot clings now to Waldo’s voice that cuts through the wind and declaims: a third landscape – not the welding together of two areas, Georges, but a new landscape! Waldo has put an arm through Diderot’s, and, hooked together like this, they make their way towards the river, drunk, spirited, magnetized by the banks, the tree-lined path, the little benches, the bushes, and soon hypnotized by the roar of the waters, the curvilinear signs traced on the surface, the bubbling filaments – illegible chalk messages on a blackboard – that disintegrate in a space of seconds.