Birth of a Bridge

by Maylis de Kerangal

  THE ACCIDENT happened at lightning speed, a reflection in the eye, a flutter of lids, a sputter of Morse code, and several conversations continued after the splash, the guys teasing one another with their noses in their lunch boxes and then mechanically lifting their heads, blinking their eyes, themselves blinded or too stunned to believe it – so much so that a few seconds passed before the workers reacted, and suddenly those who had been laughing a moment earlier at the replay of the bowling move stand frozen, pillars of salt; then, having double-checked their harnesses, they approach the edge, slowly, holding on to one another. One of them threw up his meal, deathly pale, he had to be carried back to the ground; others were hot, dizzy, scared to go down – finally the siren was activated. The dead man was found mid-afternoon downstream from Coca, his body stuck beneath the roots and brambles festooning the bank on the Edgefront side. Disentangling him was a delicate procedure.

  SINCE IT was a workplace accident, there would be an investigation. This began the next day, and the question of the safety cable left undone during lunch hour would be dissected first. It seemed to be common practice, a lack of rigour or excess of confidence dominant among the workers on the Edgefront tower, those in charge not doing their job well enough, their books showing no fines, no reprimands, it was said without irony that the men held the reins, that sanctions were necessary, a diagnosis that infuriated the workers – Seamus O’Shaughnessy modulated the daggers of black hair on his gaunt face once more and promised to bring up the subject of the infernal pace again if a single worker – a single one – got any shit during the investigation – they would plead an isolated incident, while Diderot would pull out the climatic argument before the investigators, the warm spell, the light, and finally, in order to keep up appearances, and by way of making a compromise, he coldly decreed that alcohol was forbidden on all work sites, and warned them one last time that whoever was seen without a hard hat and a harness would be fired immediately.

  Diderot didn’t know the man who fell, didn’t play the grieving role, just did what had to be done – sent a funeral wreath to the family, people in Missouri to whom the reassembled body was sent in the hold of a plane with the Pontoverde insignia on the side – but the fall affected him, gathering as it did in its fatal trajectory all the confusion of the site. This entanglement of bodies and materials that struggled together on an unstable front, this mixture of slackenings and tension, this parcelled-out calendar, these composite procedures – this fragmentation, finally, that was at the heart of his work and the handling of which was his method – all this suddenly seemed just barely enough, precarious, infinitely friable in the face of the bridge that each day rose higher and more solid than the day before, but each day more monstrous, and in the nights that followed the accident, he thought he could hear again Jacob’s shout, bastard, bastard! and when he got up to open the window, trying to find something to breathe out there, all he saw in the blackness was a turbulent landscape, exorbitant waters constantly swollen with alluvium, and their endless ringing flow.

  IT’S 3:50 P.M. ON MAY 13TH AND THE COCA TOWER is now seven hundred feet high. Duane Fisher and Buddy Loo have their hard hats on and are properly harnessed but nothing can contain their desire to mess around. Only ten minutes to go before the siren; they’ve got eight hours of work behind them and are suffocating inside the box girders, sweating under their visors.

  They learned to weld in three days, some backup was needed up above, they were hiring young guys, strong ones with skills, and the notion came up again that Natives don’t get vertigo, that they possess a unique gene that exempts them from the fear of working at insane heights, funambulists with iron muscles walking fast along steel girders – the legend of the Mohawks always comes out, they who were discovered to be acrobats in the sky as early as 1886 by the foremen of a road bridge over the St. Lawrence, astounded to see them gambolling into the heights, agile and with grace, and from then on they were the chosen ironworkers, imported in groups from their reservations in the northeastern United States or from Canada to flesh out the contingent of workers on skyscrapers (including the Empire State and Chrysler Buildings in New York); and it was said that after the destruction of the World Trade Center towers, Mohawks – descendants of those who built them – were the ones who came back to the devastated site to dismantle everything, and it’s certain that it was all the more satisfying to distinguish them in this way – precisely because they had previously been debased to the lowest extent. Duane Fisher and Buddy Loo didn’t know about this election, not being Mohawk themselves – they are Ohlone – and yet they too are psyched to be sent way up there.

  THE FIRST time they found themselves at the top of the Coca tower, they were stunned at the vastitude of the sky, got a violent smack; the air was iridescent, rapid, billions of microscopic droplets diffracted light and movement, euphorizing space that suddenly dilated to the full extent, and they laughed, intoxicated. It didn’t take them long to learn how to provoke danger as you might provoke a dog – they quickly figured out how to pierce the gangue of the prohibited, within which they performed a select repertoire of actions. The void with the river beneath, the red bay that divided the landscape, the others who looked on in amazement, all this made for a kind of theatre, articulated a field of action where their desire for thrills exploded – and so they began the leaps. The first time, Duane had checked his harness a little before four o’clock and turned his face towards Buddy, ivory white teeth and anise pupils, had said flat out – hey, wanna bet I won’t jump? – and Buddy, a hand shading his eyes had cast a quick glance down, evaluating the height, yeah, I’ll go after you, we’ll be like paratroopers, yes, we’re fighters, we’re Indian warriors, and he let out a whoop that Duane echoed before adding, we’ll show the new boys on the block how we party – and for sure they got off on it. It was break time now and the guys were coming out of the locker rooms, Duane waited till they were assembled and then placed himself in starting position like a parachutist about to exit, one leg bent in front, the other stretched out behind, then he let out a cry – the classic Tarzan cry – and threw himself into the void, the cable unrolling behind him at a mad speed, like a lasso, like a crack in the wall of time; the harness squealed in his ears while his yell lost itself, naked, no echo anymore, and suddenly the landscape rushed into him, tearing at his chest, cutting off his breath, and then he crashed into the sky without bouncing back – the cable wasn’t very elastic – but his body swung back violently towards the column and he had to bend his legs, knees to his abdomen and feet vertical to soften the shock of crashing into the structure; he pushed himself off the steel surface like a tumbling alpinist pushes the mountain away, once, twice, three times, until it diminished to a gentle swinging; he remained suspended in the air, stunned, tipped his head back to look up at the top of the tower where the workers on the team were pressed together, heads leaning over, backlit, a necklace of black beads – he couldn’t see their faces but could hear their applause, and then Buddy jumps, he too with the shock and the cry of the warrior, he too the assimilation into the sky.

  These stunts became an attraction – the rumour of them spread throughout the tower – and it’s certain that Diderot heard about them, and possibly even right from the first jump; word spread quickly on the site and certain residents on the Coca side would have been able to tell him, those who were positioned all day long at the window and saw plain as day all that happened on the tower, who enjoyed making reports to the site foremen, informing themselves about pollution statistics and the construction schedule, and formulating complaints about the dirtiness, the noise, the pickpocketing that was steadily increasing and which they blamed on the workers; and they began to report all this at the end of the day when the bosses were coming back to their makeshift offices at the foot of the tower, they’re messing around, they say, winning themselves a few rounds and songs on the jukebox, since the site was in a paradoxical time: the heaviness after the man’s death on the Edgefront tow
er was now rolled up into a new tension – the preparation of the cables, the placing of the bridge deck.

  THEY’RE UP top, the siren’s gonna go in ten minutes and with a quick glance at each other, Duane and Buddy have decided on a leap. They stroll up to the deck, exaggeratedly relaxed, roll their necks, rotate their torsos as though spinning hula hoops, chewing gum buzzes in their show-offy mouths, they haven’t heard the engine of the shuttle that let Diderot out, haven’t seen him ascending the levels of box girders using small archaic elevators; and once the workers are gathered for the show, they throw themselves into the air to the sound of shouts, cheers, sputters that Diderot hears too, speeding up, and once he’s on the last deck section, stupefied, moves to the edge of the structure, making his way between the hard hats stuck together, and his head is now an extra bead on the necklace that adorns the tower. No one sees him arrive – the workers have their backs to him – but they all jump and turn as one when they hear him exclaim, dammit to hell! They clear the way immediately, then back off, leaving Diderot alone with the two boys who sway in the air, about to light up a smoke since they’re off-site now, since they’re swinging, since they’re braves. Diderot whips around to the workers grouped together at the back, and what happens next? You haul them up, is that it? Yeah, that’s it. Diderot leans over again, the two boys have tipped back their radiant faces, surprised their audience has disappeared, all except for this one head, a head they don’t recognize, they call up, hey guys, start hauling! Straightening up again, Diderot orders the other workers to leave, get out of here, I don’t want anyone else here. A slow movement can be seen, a shuffle of workboots towards the stairs, one woman is worried, turns an anxious face over her shoulder, you’re not gonna leave them there, are you? Diderot doesn’t answer. He’s livid with rage. Once the deck is empty, he leans out again over Duane and Buddy, who grow worried as they hear the sounds of footsteps in the tower’s staircases, as they see their friends descending and calling out to them once they’re at their level, Diderot’s up top, the boss is here. The two boys think oh shit, then hear Diderot’s voice shouting at them, you have five minutes to get back up here before the siren, move your asses.

  They look at each other, then up at the length of the cable with alarm – more than a thousand feet, at least. And then, without exchanging a single word, they start swinging. Using what sway is left to regain momentum, to increase their oscillation so they can touch the structure again and use it to climb up – they manage, and once their feet are solidly against the metal plate, dark still at this hour, crimson almost black, they tense the muscles of their arms, hard as they can, and haul themselves, inch by inch, up the entire side of the tower; it’s long and exhausting, they’re liquefied by the effort, clenching their faces and hardening their stomachs, they climb, using little jumps to gain a little more height on the cord, and once they’ve hoisted themselves onto their bellies at the level of the deck, hair plastered with sweat to their muddy foreheads, hands bleeding, they grab the first bar at the base of the guardrail and pant hard for a few seconds, cheeks resting against the steel deck, still warm, and then Diderot’s shadow falls over them and cools them off. He holds out his hand and with a powerful motion lifts them one last time, one after the other; they stay collapsed for a few moments, exhausted, shipwrecked sailors washed up on a beach, survivors, eyelids closed, catching their breath, while Diderot tells them curtly that they’re fired, tells them to collect their things from their lockers and then go to the administrative offices for an envelope with their final payment.

  TOO LATE. SOREN SEES ALEX WAITING FOR HIM IN front of the doors, recognizes him in the shadows, tries to back away towards the work site, casting quick lateral glances to find somewhere he can fold himself away into the dark, but it’s too late – Alex has seen him and comes forward, thrusts the bag into his arms whispering don’t tell me you forgot about our little deal, it’s on for tomorrow, the instructions are inside. Soren staggers under the weight of the bag and lets out a cry, makes a half-turn towards the locker rooms but in the same moment a hand grabs him by the neck: a word of advice – no funny business. Soren shrugs him off with a movement of his shoulder and hurries towards the workers’ facilities, those he passes headed in the opposite direction barely nod, no one questions him. Once he’s inside, he rushes to his locker, unlocks it, puts the bag in, at the last moment unzips it, plunges a hand in, feels a piece of paper folded into quarters, stuffs it in his pocket, closes everything up again, and rushes to the bus that’s waiting outside. Later, sitting alone at the back, head against the window, he catches his breath – how could he have believed they had decided against the sabotage – he uses the small overhead light to read the paper, typed, and turns pale – the bag contains four dynamite cartridges equipped with suction cups – no seepage of nitroglycerine, the explosives are stabilized, reliable – the cartridges are to be stuck to the four sides of the upstream pier of the Edgefront tower, at the point where the base narrows, so that the whole tower, suddenly one legged, will topple; and their explosion will be set off by activating a programmed detonator from the opposite shore – not a sequential ignition system, and not a delay system – through a remote, which will allow him to act at the last minute.

  Of course, he thinks of running – nothing could be more simple, he could go back to his digs, pack his bag, pick up his cheque, and disappear on a night bus headed south, any old bus and no one would be the wiser – but he abandons this idea, sure they would find him, these guys always find their man and when they find him they kill him, he’s been warned. This is why, tonight – a beautiful night too, odours of mud and detritic ground are a reminder that Coca was built on an alluvial plain, a breeding tank teeming with worms and coypu – he doesn’t stray from his routine, stops in for a game of pool at a bar in Edgefront, and then goes home.

  HARD TO describe the day that follows when each movement, each word, each intention is obliterated by the sabotage to come, by the conviction of such precariousness that nothing else really matters, as though the future was only a hazy aureole, the cigarette hole in the film, disintegrating time. Soren floats, cottony. He gets to the Pontoverde platform half an hour before the first siren sounds so he can be alone in the locker room. When he opens his locker, the bag jumps in his face like a fierce animal: it’s a small black knapsack that weighs as much as an eight-year-old child. He stuffs in a sandwich and a sweater, and goes to the river-shuttle dock, forcing his form not to fold under the weight, making sure that this bumpy mass on his back doesn’t alter his walk, and keeps his expression steady.

  IT’S NEARLY midnight on the Edgefront site and Soren is waiting for the lights of the last shuttle headed back to the esplanade to disappear. He didn’t have to pretend he had forgotten something inside a crate, didn’t have to tell the others not to wait for him, he’d go back and then take the next boat, no, he didn’t have to say a word, because no one here asks him anything – and you could even bet that Diderot himself, who professes to know every person on the bridge, wouldn’t be able to hail him by name or even recognize him if he passed him off-site – similarly, no one noticed the bag from which he ostensibly pulled a sandwich and a bottle of water at break, exposing a pile of dark clothing inside. At the moment, Soren is cold. He shivers under the pier, a few steps back from the water’s edge, and nature rumbles, the torrent is large, each sound amplified by the presence of the steel column standing behind him. Once he’s alone, while the site foremen go back to their portables (Algecos with kettles) giving themselves a break before the next batch of workers, Soren, dressed all in black now, quickly places the dynamite cartridges all around the upstream pier that’s sheathed in concrete at this height, making sure to stay hugging the sides, in the shadow of the tower – the rest of the site is lit up like a fairground, a village dance, garlands of tiny lights, he has never performed these movements but he’s studied the diagrams on the folded paper, and as it turns out, it’s dead simple. In less than three minutes the ca
rtridges are suctioned onto the pier, Soren breathes hard under his hood, picks up the bag, throws it over his shoulder and, camouflaged silhouette already fleeing, he veers towards the brownish, lumpy-looking bank: he has a hundred and fifty feet to cross in the river. A break in the levelling of the pier, a gash three feet wide, Soren squats and slips into the water silently, terrified at the thought that the noise of his specific splashes – the body of a man penetrating a liquid – multiplied here, could alert the site foremen who, in a few minutes, will put their hard hats with headlamps back on and go out to meet the new contingent of workers, while on the other side of the river, on the twenty-seventh floor of a waterfront building, the Frenchman and his posse are opening bottles of champagne, filling crystal glasses, and moving to the picture window, ready for the fireworks.