Birth of a Bridge

by Maylis de Kerangal

  THE OTHER bank disconcerts Summer. The large public square that meets the dock is still in shade, and it’s much colder and wetter here than on the other side at the end of May. A little crowd of poor folk – mostly Natives – come and go between shabby stalls, banged-up vegetables, frilly underwear, used tools, kitchen knives and machetes riddled with rust spread out on little braided rugs, bottles of fake spring water, everything drowned in a smell of boiled cabbage, fatty fish, and soap. Here and there, people toss offal into large cast-iron pots heated on makeshift stoves, cook them over low fires in a spicy sauce, then stuff them into a sheath of big bread sprinkled with lemon, disgusting thinks Summer, nauseated, crossing the square, goes into the first greasy spoon – a mosaic of compressed Coca-Cola cans wallpapers the facade – orders a coffee, the guy behind the counter looks her up and down without a word of greeting and mechanically pours bitter liquid into a plastic cup, turns his back, and picks up his paper again. Summer glances at her watch, almost seven o’clock. She takes a quick look over her shoulder and, through the half-open door, sees the ferry, already at the dock and ready for boarding. The excitement of this trip “to the other side of the water,” as everyone says here, dies away all at once, she’s cold, what an idea to come here, alone, without a plan, without anything to do. Indecisive, she sips her coffee, soon lukewarm, and while she’s counting her change, head down over her open palm, the guy at the bar calls, you looking for something? No, nothing, I’m fine, I’m gonna catch the boat back, she pushes her strap farther up her shoulder, turns towards the door, and behind her the guy continues, so there’s nothing for you here, you don’t like it? Mocking smile – translucent enamel at the edge of teeth that are very yellow and very straight – in contrast with a cold glance, transparent as a cat’s eye marble, Summer, uncomfortable, heads for the door, reconsiders and says simply, I’m looking for Sugar Falls. The guy joins her in the doorway of the greasy spoon, you go to the edge of the square on the left, the path that goes up from there, it’s straight till the pavement ends, then you’re at the viewpoint, keep to the left on the forest path, take it a little farther and then you’re there. His voice mixes in with the noises of the square that have bulked up now, just like the crowd that’s growing, the market is opening. Summer asks, it is far? An hour and a half walking, double that if it’s been raining. Oh. Summer looks at her watch. You’re in a hurry, eh, miss? He considers her, sarcastic, spiteful. You’re from the bridge, right? She nods her head. He takes a pack of hardened tobacco out of his pocket, rolls it quickly between thumb and index, lights up a skinny little smoke, props it in his mouth and tosses out, you should get off that site, take the time to go see it up there, it’s gonna shake up your identity, Miss Cannibal Bridge.

  SHE BUYS oranges, Coke, and bread, climbs the slope of the road, the river at her back, the forest before her. The little lopsided apartments and stone buildings that border the market square have disappeared, she’s now walking along beside wooden houses tangled in with one another, some of them in complex and ambitious shapes – Chinese pagodas, Swiss chalets, thatched cottages from the Auge region of France – most of them like western movie falsefronts, walls askew but with an abundance of decorative details. At this hour, children are slamming doors and running into the street, schoolbags dangling from their shoulders, women in worn old slippers lift a crocheted curtain to watch them, and, suspicious, stare at Summer who peels her first orange, we can hear dogs barking behind the hedges, the air smells of detergent and babies.

  Soon the sun is beating down, the pavement heats up beneath running shoes, the houses line up poorer and poorer, bricked-up windows or broken panes, garbage and scrap metal heaped up here and there in unkempt yards. Soon unmovable trailers with dusty windows alternate with crude wood cabins, done up with tires or tarps coated with tar, and (always ingenious) outdoor showers through a gleaming slotted spoon, a roof of nailed-on planks, one or two deboned mopeds in the grass, red, yellow, and blue plastic kids’ toys, an atmosphere of shacks on the verge of becoming junkyards, a smell of boiling iron, surprised insects bouncing off old axles, grilled instantly, no more children, no more shouts. This is the last section of the road now. Apparently uninhabited, not a soul in sight, but the forest like a bellows, the roots of young trees smashing the pavement open, grass infiltrating every corner and waist-high ferns on the sides of the road, the last huts, a tire-marked porn magazine forgotten on a stony berm, the last bits of trash, more cans, a bunched-up T-shirt, worn-out sneakers, finally a sign that indicates the viewpoint and Summer reaches a little bench graffitied with dicks and sexual insults, a phone number or two. She sits down, heart beating, out of breath, and suddenly discovers Coca silver-plating itself in the juvenile sun, on the other side of the river, the metallic brassiness of the financial district, the shattering whiteness of city hall and the bridge work site; she struggles to assemble the landscape, a light suffocation seizes her, a faintness she recognizes and she forces herself to breathe slowly, images pass – the Tiger who’s fallen off the face of the earth and whose eyes are disappearing, the Blondes who laugh on Skype with large movements of their hair, her father – she breathes deeper and deeper, thinking I’ve got to get a hold of myself, without being able to, submerged by her internal cacophony, displaced, unable to attune herself to what’s around her, she sways forwards, spits on the ground, finally closes her eyes. Then lifting her head again looks at Coca, looks at the edge. And suddenly enters the forest.

  FIRST THE undergrowth, penetrated by a multitude of wells of light, the coolness that falls into indistinct space, then darkness.

  It’s night in here, a green and humid night, the clamour of a fairground. Summer is surprised that the path is so wide and the earth so well packed, traces of tires, of paws, of soles, soon she passes two children following each other on skateboards, is this the freeway or what? She feels good now, back on her feet after the weak-kneed episode at the viewpoint. Around her, sequoias like gigantic stakes, ferns in compact masses, fluorescent mosses that cushion the roots, long sharp sedges, and all over the embankment are black holes – Summer shudders, imagining putting a hand in there and the prehistoric beast that would bite it, a cross between a wild boar and a red-eyed otter, some kind of duck-billed platypus that she would be waking. Little by little the forest grows more dense, the light doesn’t pass through the canopy anymore, you’d think you were at the bottom of an aquarium, and actually Summer does hear the sounds of water, turn in the path, a stone shaped like a rocket that reminds her of the ones in the Bois de Vincennes, and immediately the acrid smell of a fire from a berm on the river, she goes closer, two guys, both standing with a stick in hand, are watching a patch of earth perforated with holes that let out smoke, the smell is heavy, bloody flesh is visible here and there under the screed of earth: Duane Fisher and Buddy Loo are smoking game, and chewing tobacco from their own harvest.

  They recognize Summer who doesn’t recognize them but quickly spots, against their dark skin, the sparkling yellow bracelets they wear on their wrist, a plastic strip with a barcode, stamped with the company logo, beeped each morning at the entrance of the site, an open sesame. The two guys throw each other a look that says, what’s Miss Concrete doing coming over here? Can’t stay where she belongs, “on the other side of the water”? She’s got to turn up out of the blue, naively play the tourist? What is she deluding herself with? They all sit down cross-legged around the fire and munch on a nice piece of the meat, telling one another jokes, as though they weren’t one girl and two guys, one white and two others, a black guy and a Native, one senior exec on the bridge and two workers who aren’t even skilled, who were immediately assigned to cleaning out the canal; in other words, one engineer and two garbage collectors, so what does she want, coming to see them up close? Since when do white folks come and barbecue with blacks in this country? Buddy Loo is cautious. He’s had problems before – in January 2006, a Friday night, fifteen degrees below zero, a girl is passed out drunk in the parking
lot of a bowling alley on Colfax, Woody’s, Buddy picks her up, she had thrown up on her cream-coloured down coat, her eyes are rolled back, he hoists her into his car, leans the seat back, thinks it over, gotta go to the hospital, no desire to keep this girl in a full-on alcoholic coma in my ride; later, at the hospital, he signs the forms and hits the road, but the next day the cops turn up at his place while he’s at school, search his room, twenty-seven dollars are missing from the girl’s wallet, when he gets home Buddy is nabbed, sent to the hole, held in custody, they verify that the girl hasn’t been raped, no, nothing, Buddy makes bail, a month in reform school and community service for stealing, he’s sixteen, swears he’ll find that girl again and roll her for real, once he’s out he starts hanging around the bowling alley again, one night that same bitch staggers out accompanied by a giant with a bull’s neck, empty eyes, they’ve been drinking, Buddy holds himself back from head-butting the girl right away – she can’t recognize him, of course – he springs up from the darkness between two big cars, pulls out a gun, threatens the two of them, the girl laughs and then cries when he orders them to get undressed, but for Christ’s sake keep your panties on, I don’t wanna see your little white asses, your snitchy asses, empty your pockets, oh-ho, forty-three dollaaars; makes a pile with the clothes and puts the two pairs of shoes on top, sprays it all with mineral spirits, strikes a match, and leaves them naked and poor, feet in the snow, he took off and never went back to the bowling alley on Colfax, they say there’s a price on his head, set by empty-eyed bullneck. So he tells himself he should limit his contacts. Summer intercepts their stare, clears her throat, asks where Sugar Falls is – to have something to ask ’cause she doesn’t know what to say, there’s nothing to say – she sputters, the smoke stings her eyes, Buddy Loo gestures limply towards the heart of the jungle without even looking at her, while Duane Fisher turns his back and throws stones harshly into the water. She’s not welcome here, no, not at all. Buddy Loo doesn’t make another move, silently uses a giant rhubarb leaf to ventilate the coals. Summer nods her head once more, bye, takes a step or two backwards and then turns and picks up the path once again, keeps moving forward because she can’t turn back now, the falls are there, she can hear them.

  DISSOCIATE THE light from the noise of the water. The clearing is vast, bathed in an electric whiteness, so brilliant that it takes Summer a few seconds to filter through the jumble of her perceptions, to distinguish the waterfall that bubbles, the high grass of an intense green colour – a soccer field lit up at night; to discern the bare-chested children armed with little yellow plastic water guns, the women, fewer men, all Native. She walks towards the falls, the little ones come running, their eyes shine, they laugh, call to one another in a language Summer doesn’t understand, they make a cortege around her all the way to the stone pool; she casts a glance at the adults who stare at her, greets them with a nod of her head. Then she crouches to drink, plunging her hands several times into the water, splashing her neck, her forehead, her forearms. Suddenly not a peep is heard in the clearing, the hubbub has gone silent. Noticing a large wooden signboard headlined Sugar Falls, she gets up to go read it, but a voice behind her stops her – don’t waste your time, it’s just propaganda, she turns around, the guy is white, the only white guy here. They look at each other. Sugar Falls! What a joke! the man says with irony, then says to her, you shouldn’t have drunk the water from these springs, it’s special here. Summer responds simply, I was thirsty. Looks around at the space that grows sharper now, perfectly spherical, but can’t pick out the beginning of the path she took to come here. Where are we?

  THE WATER in the falls isn’t sweet, not even a little. The young Franciscan monk who founded the first Spanish mission had not changed it into syrup by some miracle, contrary to what was written in a few tourist guides or other books given to children. But for the Natives, these headwaters are a blessing, a place populated by spirits, they like to meet here on the solstice, the most well-off among them leave their four-by-fours gleaming at the entrance to the uplands, at the level of the viewpoint, and come the rest of the way on foot. All of them know about it, the path. The guy has thus logically chosen this clearing to teach them archaeology, botany, their pharmacopeia, and their language. He counts on the women, the most regular ones, some of them coming all the way from the other side of Coca to listen to him. He has his theory: teach the Natives to be their own archaeologists so that they can claim ownership of their burial grounds – thousands of them scattered along the shores of the bay at the far reaches of the high plains, beneath supermarket parking lots, along freeways, in the foundations of buildings – and rename their territory, learn how to use the technologies that kept them isolated in order to reverse the situation. He was both full of passion and worn out, operated in a sawtooth rhythm alternating between surging forward and sinking back in depression; his violent fervour cut into the quiet of the clearing, the peaceful atmosphere of this Native picnic. During the lessons, they listen attentively to the man, some women get up to give evidence, unfold signs, pass documents around. Several times someone comes up to Summer, brings a black coffee, a cheddar-cheese sandwich, offers her cookies and cigarettes. Children come to flop down beside her at naptime, and one of them even puts his head on her knees, she looks closely at the inside corners of his eyes, flat and smooth like the interior of a shell, asked herself again how her eyelids work, drunk with sensations, and calm, inside an absolutely porous solitude at present, she simply sits there, listening to this man whose voice carries louder than the falls, dozing when he refers to the idiots at the university who had decreed the forest tribes extinct – Ohlone, Muwekma – their language, their ceremonies, and reviving when he concludes his talk: we want to take back the burial grounds to compare the DNA of the dead and the living – he points to the children who chase and squirt one another – and it will quickly become clear that these tribes are still alive and well! Suddenly his face grows tense and Summer recognizes the guy she passed on the site, the one who attacked Diderot.

  She decides to head back before dark and there are children to accompany her, they are heading back to Edgefront themselves, the parents will follow later. All the way down, they whirl around her, fiercely playful, constantly changing speed, stopping for long moments only to catch up to her again, passing between the rays of golden light that sabre the woods, whistling in the zebra stripes that hide them and reveal them all at once. She can spot a head, an arm, sometimes a whole body, she points them out calling found you! When they get farther away, she can still hear their exclamations, without really knowing if they are joking or fighting, but soon she can understand their language again: their Native language gradually disappears the closer they came to the city and Summer admires this way they have of matching the world.

  IT’S NOW WEEK FORTY-TWO, LAPPING WAVES ON the river, the sky slumps, it’s evening. Coca lights up slowly, Sanche watches from the top of his crane, never gets tired of watching it, a hundred and fifty feet – a height that truly suits him. Dashboard at rest, indicator lights on green, and joysticks raised, a mickey of Jack Daniel’s, cookies, a CD player, Sanche is at the footbridge and he’s waiting for Shakira.

  He called her before starting his shift at four o’clock this afternoon – more precisely, he sent her a text, prefers to communicate by SMS, lapidary signals or a quick joke without preamble, distance conserved, risk management – are you afraid of heights? No, she answered after twenty seconds. Meet at midnight? Okay. Sanche immediately put the phone down and rubbed his hands together because he had to do something, he was trembling with excitement, then three running steps knees to chest, one full spin, oh baby it’s yes, tonight’s the night and a little later, knees to chest still, he went to buy the whisky in a little joint beside the supermarket in front of the entrance to the site, and, on his way back, met Diderot who was at the wheel of the Chevrolet, about to leave, told him through the lowered window that he would be staying late tonight, two or three things to go o
ver.

  AND NOW he’s perched in the night, and the stars and the electric lights get all mixed up. But Sanche holds himself back from any nervousness that would cloud his attention and keeps his eyes fixed on the river that snakes towards him, a path punctuated with light, powdery halos, upon which long shining leaves move, a magical view from so high up, this river that, in less than four hours, will carry Shakira to the foot of the crane – she’ll arrive on time, 10:55 in front of the main entrance to the Pontoverde platform, welcomed at the door by a contact who’s been paid to bring her across the diagonal of the esplanade to the quay, where another accomplice will take care of her; they’ll board the management shuttle and head for the Edgefront tower at full speed, where Sanche (who will be keeping watch) will phone her cellphone to guide her along the pier to the elevator door, and while the shuttle does a U-turn to go back on the double without passing the large shuttle of the night team, Shakira will rise to him along the length of the lit-up crane, a golden-yellow projection, and as soon as she steps into the cabin, Sanche will be amazed: this tall body enlarges the cubicle, it makes room.