The Flood

by J. M. G. Le Clézio

  You know, when you get down to it, people like Morgenstein are about the lowest sort of bastards going. I might be sitting in some café, for instance, lost in my own thoughts—I mean, the kind of ideas that run through your mind sometimes when you’re on your own, and it’s raining, and you get the feeling that—that everything’s stopped. Then in come these types like Morgenstein, sit down, and begin to talk a lot of highflown guff about God, or Marxism, or that line you’ve got at the corner of your mouth—and about the sort of character you represent in their eyes, all alone like that in a café at two o’clock in the afternoon. It’s sure to remind them of some favourite quotation or other, some slop from Racine or Lorca—that kind of thing always gets me so mad! Then—as though you hadn’t thought about it enough on your own in the café or at home, as though you weren’t capable of such a reaction, as though the most you could rise to were silly whims and pseudo-problems—they say things like: Ah yes, I really enjoyed ‘Imitation Leather’, it reminded me of Conrad, or Kipling. You’ve got to go on writing, they tell you, you’re young: it’ll come, you see if it doesn’t. It’s not so much what they actually say to you at the time—what I can’t stand, what really disgusts me, is the thought that when you’ve left they’ll still be at it with some other victim. They couldn’t care less. They’ve had their little moment of friendship and private confidences, they’ve rinsed their mouth out with it and feel quite cock-a-hoop. They’re satisfied. The world belongs to them. I know what they make me think of, they make me think of all those half-wits who rush round back-stage after a performance to unload their crappy compliments on the actors. Just perfect, darling. I so much admired your performance. Honestly, no kidding, you were just great. You try to hide, but they pursue you into every corner, and the more compliments they shower on you, the more naked and half-witted you feel yourself. This sort of thing’s worse than any insult. Oh, I know I’ve no right to talk about you like this, I mean, I haven’t any experience, I only acted once in my life, with Morgenstein’s group. When it was over I was exhausted, you’ve just no idea how exhausted I was. I felt like throwing up, I was trembling from head to foot, I wanted to kill everyone in sight. Yet at the same time, isn’t it odd, I felt empty, flaccid, incapable of doing another thing. And there were other types who managed to catch hold of my arm, and embrace me, and offer their congratulations, and all that jazz. I mean, it’s the same sort of thing if you’re a writer, these days. Morgenstein’s remarks didn’t add up to anything on their own. But before that, you know, when Paul left—no, I’m wrong, it was several days earlier, I think—oh hell, it doesn’t matter anyway. Well, this is the honest truth, I damned nearly emptied all my mother’s tubes of Gardenal down my throat. I’d just finished a short story about a snail called Albert, pretty pretentious stuff, but at least I believed in it this time. All the same, thinking it over again now I can see I’d picked up all the smart mannerisms, you know, bombastic tricks of style, and cute jokes, and crude bits of allegory about self-awareness—and it all had a most unhappy ending, I mean, the snail was cut off from the rest of the world by having the opening in his shell sealed up, just a layer of calcareous matter did the trick, and there was Albert, immobilized. And died. It had amused me to believe in the whole idea, not so much because it might prove a work of genius, or any junk like that—but simply because it was good for a giggle. Well, that wasn’t how it turned out. Quite the reverse, in fact. I thought I’d got the thing under control, but I hadn’t. That snail really took it out of me. At first I set myself to love it a little, just a shade more than was normal. I spent whole days correcting and rewriting the story. Each time I gave the snail a different first name, to see which one suited him best. I tried calling him Jules, Baptiste, Jean-Bernard, Mathieu, Antoine, and heaven knows what else. This probably strikes you as childish, and now I come to think of it again, it strikes me as childish; but at the time I felt it was terribly important. I felt I’d caught, well, a kind of realism, if you like—realism which went far beyond the bounds of the plain narrative. And that as a result there had to be a special first name for every kind of character. I mean, a snail can’t be called anything but Albert, and a goldfish is always Stanislas, and alley-cats have to be called Rama. You know the kind of thing. In fact they were the last props, the last underprops I really mean, of my entire, well, my entire hypocritical life, no not that exactly, but—oh you know, that sort of sudden realization that your life’s one great lie, that you’re lurching on through a mass of trick-effects like a damned doll, a puppet with someone else pulling the strings, and the worst thing of all is that throughout you’re convinced you’re you, your real self. You let yourself be manipulated like this, and all the time you’re beaming a sunny satisfied smile, you’re happy, you imagine you’ve actually invented something on your own, that you’re writing because that’s the way things are. And all the time someone else is pulling the strings, some mentor is controlling your comings and goings, making you write words on bits of paper, and remember bits of your past, leaving you alone in your room, or on the street, in cafés, cinemas, buses, on the stage—do you understand? He’s the one who always leaves you in silent solitude, he’s the one who gnaws away at your confidence, who gets you down, little by little, breaks your spirit, an endless process of slow attrition.

  That’s what really makes me sick. You know, there I was, working on this story of Albert the snail, spending all day pounding my typewriter—and then Paul took off, just walked out on me. I—I told you all about that before, in the park, remember? But I didn’t tell you everything. You must have thought me a complete ninny, going overboard for someone like Paul. It’s true he’s not an interesting sort of character, really, but all the same—I don’t know how to explain this—he’s got something, there are amusing sides to his personality, and he’s so unpredictable. One day he’ll come home and set about being a sort of caricature drunk, without taking any notice of a word you say for anything up to a quarter of an hour. Or else he’ll hurl himself at the typewriter and knock out a surrealist poem. I’ve known him get back at midnight, turn on the light, and start walking round and round the table like some sort of nut, pretending to be two people at once, answering his own questions. When he’s like that, he’s fine. Just fine. But he’s a bastard, all the same. I didn’t realize that at first. I couldn’t understand how anyone could spend fifteen minutes making you laugh, and then, the next instant, behave as though you just didn’t exist. I thought that under it all Paul must be an unhappy character, full of complexes and the rest of it, who wanted to hide his real personality. I felt that because it’s the way I am myself. What struck me as so incredible, though, was that anyone could play the kind of game that seemed to be saying to people, Look, you know I really love you deep down, the way children carry on—and then not give a damn when it came to the crunch. I didn’t understand, then, that people like that are really the worst of the lot, because they’re so totally self-obsessed. Like Morgenstein. It’s true, you know—it never struck me before, but when you get down to it Paul and Morgenstein are two of a kind. Every time they put on a comic act, or look hurt, it’s pure eyewash—they’re thinking about themselves the whole time, cocking an eye to see if they’re catching any applause—they fairly gorge themselves on praise, the conceited creatures. They can’t stand being losers, either. Oh I know I sound as though I’m working off some personal grudge against them, that’s obvious, but I’ll swear to God that’s not what really turns me up about them. No, what gets me is that these bastards always come out on top. I’m a sucker, I fall for it every time. They pretend to be drunk, but they’re—they’re just making a fool of me really, and even then it doesn’t make a damn of difference, I’m happy as Larry, I think they’re so good-looking and sensitive and intelligent they just make me melt. That’s the way it goes, every time. They’re always the winners. Even now. Paul really hurt me, do you realize that? There was I, wasting my time trying to get words down on bits of paper, going round the bend
over this nonsense about a snail and its limed-up shell, while all the time he, he—God, he just didn’t give a fuck about the whole set-up, he knew perfectly well he was going to get out. He used to take off down the street in his new suit, and spend every evening going round the night-clubs—he picked up other girls, too, he—and on top of all this he was just plain bored, and made no secret of it. When he was with me he never said a word, unless he put on his drunk act. I want to tell you what happened the night before he left, though. I was sitting typing at my table—still the story about the snail. I’d made up my mind to start the whole thing again from scratch, changing all the names. I left nothing the same except the verbs. Some time between eleven and midnight he came in. He stared at me a moment without saying a word, narrowing his eyes the way he does when he’s looking at something that doesn’t interest him. As though he were examining you through the glass wall of an aquarium. I stopped my work and asked him what he wanted. He made no reply, just went on staring at me in that vague way, completely silent. So I started typing again, and just behaved as if he wasn’t there. He stayed like that for a moment, not doing anything, and then suddenly he went into one of his routines. This time it was shadowboxing. He pranced all round the room, weaving and feinting, jabbing away at the curtains and the pillows on my bed. Then he squared up to me and threw phoney punches at my face and stomach. He fell down for an imaginary count and got up again, he groaned and panted, he made kh! kh! noises through his nose to represent the sound of fists hitting flesh. After a moment I’d had more than enough of this, and I told him to knock it off and leave me to work in peace. He took no notice, just went on worse than ever. I went out to the kitchen and drank a glass of milk. When I came back I found him sitting on the bed and smoking one of my cigarettes. I said to him: ‘Are those cigarettes mine?’ and he replied: ‘I don’t know, probably.’ I went back to the table and started typing again. He just went on smoking, and that irritated me, because I couldn’t write with him sitting there on the bed. So I stopped again, and asked him (more for something to say than anything else) if he’d go and get me some more cigarettes when those ran out. At this he smirked rather unpleasantly, and got up to leave, glancing at me in that ironic way of his as he did so. His eyes held mine for about three or four seconds. Then he stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray beside the typewriter. I pretended I didn’t give a damn, but the truth is it gave me quite a turn, seeing his arm and hand pass under my nose like that to stub out his cigarette in my ashtray. You—well, you know, it wasn’t just his arm as such, or whatever, it was, it was just the heap of odd thoughts that flashed through my mind as he did it, the notion that he could have been my brother, for instance, and only being able to see this detached bit of him, just his arm and the beginning of his pullover sleeve, a few inches from my nose. It made me feel queer to think that it could have been my arm, that in the beginning—him and me, I mean—it was like being one person.

  What I want to say is, I get these weird ideas going through my head the whole time, about me, and Paul, or my father and mother. I can’t shake off the feeling that somehow I don’t exist in the way other people do. Or else I find myself wondering why I’m not Paul, why Paul is the one who’s stretching out his arm towards the ashtray. It’s just the same with my mother and father. I know it’s silly of me, but I can never isolate them as individuals, define them in relationship to myself. What I’m trying to say is, all I manage is the act, the external act, do you see what I mean? And that doesn’t, can’t, isolate anything, it just reflects back at me like a mirror. Paul was—Look, François, please, I’m not telling you all this just for the fun of it. I want you to understand why—why Paul going made such a difference to me. I think one of these days I really will take that overdose of Gardenal. And I wouldn’t want you to think I’d just done it for nothing but messy sentimental reasons. I—look, I think I must be having a kind of nervous breakdown. But there are always thousands of things like that, little hints and details that go over my head. It’s true, though, I’d hate you to think it was just maudlin self-pity. It’s a matter of general understanding, awareness, do you see? Well, anyway, I’d better finish my story. Paul stood over me like that for a moment, and then he began to leaf through my typescript. I can’t stand people going over my stuff when I’m there—I mean, reading a word or two at random on each page. Oh, now, obviously, I couldn’t care less, people can do what they like with my manuscripts, it’s all the same to me. They don’t mean anything to me any longer, they might as well be today’s newspaper. But at that particular moment it still really drove me crazy. I just sat there waiting till he was through. After a bit he must have got bored with turning pages over, because do you know what he did, he picked one out of all the pile at random, and began to read it aloud. When he did that—oh, you won’t understand, but it was at that moment I really saw what a bastard he was. I mean, he—it wasn’t just that he read it as though he didn’t give a damn about it, but on top of that, and this is what I found really awful, he read it so well, as though he understood every word, in a fine, serious voice, the works. Paul’s always had a beautiful speaking voice. He used to talk very loud, to make sure people noticed what a beautiful voice he had. The nerve of it, playing a dirty little trick like that on me—and with one of my own manuscripts! You know, he read so wonderfully, that was what got me. He didn’t give tuppence for the words, and still it was superb. It was, oh I can’t explain, like an apple with maggots inside it, do you see what I mean?

  So there was Paul reading, and I wanted—oh, I don’t know what I wanted, not to cry, but to go really cold, suddenly, as though someone had removed an important, an essential part of my body. I watched his big heavy hands gripping the paper, heard that serious voice as it intoned my words, very relaxed, but with great power and life and individuality, while I—Oh hell, what does it matter, when he’d finished reading he walked out of the door and I haven’t seen him since. That isn’t quite the whole story, though. You remember he was alone in my room for a moment while I went out to get a glass of milk? Well, in the time it took me to open the fridge, get out a bottle, and have my drink, he managed to search the room and pocket the money I’d hidden in the wardrobe, under a pile of pullovers. There must have been about sixty notes there, and he took the lot. That’s why he put on such a performance when I came back—to distract my attention. That was really pretty steep, I thought. I suppose it’s how he paid his fare to England or wherever he went.

  Afterwards I felt pretty mad because I had no idea what to do. I tried writing to him, sent him a letter for Christmas. He’d written me once, a postcard from Coventry, without his name on it or anything. He’d even disguised his handwriting. That was silly of him, he knew very well it couldn’t be from anyone else. Even supposing, even supposing he didn’t think of that on the spur of the moment, when he printed the letters in capitals and the rest of it, all the same he can’t have helped realizing the truth when it came to signing the thing. It was a view of Coventry Cathedral, you know, something like that anyhow, and he’d sketched in a cowboy on top of the photograph, taking pot-shots at the passers-by with a revolver, and on the other side of the card he’d written, in English, Wish you were here. And he’d signed it with an imaginary name—scratched it out afterwards, but you could still read it, he couldn’t even be bothered to make a proper job of an erasure, and anyway he did it on purpose so that I’d try to decipher it. I looked through a magnifying-glass, and there under the ink-scratches was written John Wallon, or John Warren, something like that. It was so silly. If I could ever—But it’s too late now.

  There. I’ve told you. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. When I’m gone, try not to condemn me. I suppose everything I’ve said still comes under the heading of literature, really: a monologue doesn’t qualify as non-fiction, does it? But I’d like you, at least, to believe me, because of the rest of them, my father and mother, my friends, even Paul if somebody tells him about it one day, believe that I didn
’t do it out of despair, or just for sloppy sentimental reasons, you know what I mean, but simply because there was nothing much else left for me to do. Tomorrow, if I have the courage, I shall take a glass and a carafe of water, and swallow all my mother’s little pink tablets. I’m stopping now because the tape’s just about finished. Au revoir, Anna Mathilde Passeron.