The Flood

by J. M. G. Le Clézio

  He sat like this for a moment; then his head turned towards Besson, and his crazy, deep-sunk eyes gleamed strangely. Besson stared uncomprehendingly at the hideous, grimacing face opposite him; but very soon fear began to stir in him, an ignoble fear, set up by those pin-hard, accusatory eyes. And then recollection dawned in his mind: as though brought back from a forgotten time hundreds of centuries ago, that flat and imbecile mask glued itself to his own features, took the mould and impression of them with the viscous fidelity of a latex squeeze. Through the eyesockets pierced in this crazy face Besson himself now looked out at the world. Through those wide nostrils, enlarged by constant nose-picking, he began to draw his own breath. Through that mouth, through the skin that was encrusted with sweat and filth so that garments clung to it like mummy-bands; through that fuzzy, nit-infested hair, that bowed and broken skeleton of a body, those senile, trembling limbs, those thighs stained with patches of dried urine—through all these things Besson began to live again. He had found him at last. This doltish, repugnant caricature was his brother. Aboard this stifling, smooth-running trolley-bus, here on these worn imitation leather seats, he had met the person he had tried in vain to forget. His brother, his beloved brother, born of the same mother as himself, now sitting in front of him looking like some crazy ape, haloed with stinking squalor, the prisoner of his own stupid, shrunken body, racked by tics and miserable pains. In a burst of tender compassion Besson leaned forward to say something to the young man. But at this the creature turned pale, his eyes bulged, his whole face—apart from the rictus round the mouth, which nothing could efface—became distorted with terror. Then, uttering a strange shrill cry, he leapt to his feet and ran clumsily down the aisle to the rear of the bus. Besson had to get out at the next stop. As he walked through the chilly streets he had plenty of leisure to think up the excuses he would make for the people who had been expecting him all day.

  Chapter Three

  François Besson has a date with Josette—The accident—Josette does her best to explain—In the post office—They drive up to the top of the hill—The voyeur

  ON the third day, François Besson had a date with this woman called Josette, at six o’clock, on the corner by the Prisunic. He got there a little early, and waited standing by the kerbside, smoking a cigarette. It was just dark, and the street-lamps were shining out, sharp and clear-cut points of light. The crowd were still swarming inexhaustibly down the street: not one day’s respite, not an hour’s rest. Even on Sundays and public holidays, they were still there, out in the street, moving to and fro, idling, ogling, picking up and purchasing goods. In the evening they went to the cinema, came out of cafés, banged car doors. In the morning they went to work, queued in pork-butchers’ shops, or stood gossiping on doorsteps. No, they never rested, never stopped moving.

  But only a few yards above the ground it was utterly deserted. The houses reared their tall silent façades, and there was nothing in the air save empty solitude. The trolley-bus wires crossed and recrossed continually, but nothing happened. The walls, the branches of the trees, the cowls of the street-lamps, roof-tops interspersed with garrets—it was all so still and quiet that no one could have deduced what a crawling ant-hill existed down below. The same thing applied underground. Beneath that carapace of tarred asphalt, hammered by marching feet, worn away by tyres, the desert began again: an immense, pitch-black, softly opaque desert, with every ten years or so a gravelly rattle—stopped almost before it had begun—as a mass of fine, close-packed scree shifted its position, after which things returned to that state of boundless mineral inactivity which represented the world’s true dominion.

  The rain slanted down evenly, on him and in front of him, descending from the sky at a dizzy speed. Besson looked up and tried to make out the point at which it formed into drops. But in that great blanked-out hollow there was nothing, not a star, not so much as the winking navigation lights of an aircraft, no fixed or moving point on which his eye could fasten and use as a marker. Nothing but the void, opaque and unfathomable, glowing with faint reflections from the lights of the town, suspended like some delicate rose-pink dome over the darkness.

  There was something frightening about these endless drops that descended from nowhere, pattering on the ground and on one’s upturned face. Only a very little change in these tiny tear-like drops, and they would become a lethal weapon. Supposing, for instance, that they all joined together before they reached the earth: then this solid wall of water would thunder down in a single solid mass and engulf the world in a flash.

  And perhaps, after all, that would have been a preferable alternative. The present danger was more frightening, because nothing could stop it. One by one these small drops fell, pitting the earth’s surface, without violence and without pity. Their minuscule darts struck home everywhere, drilling, sapping, boring, rotting away the substance of things. Granules of stone were rubbed loose, wooden surfaces lost their rough texture, iron plates were hollowed out, imperceptibly but inexorably, by the needling tattoo of countless million raindrops. Not even men’s head or faces were exempt. The tiny painless blows beat on their skin, the minuscule bruises increased and spread, turned into open suppurating wounds, edged with gangrenous mould. And still the rain fell, as though it would never stop—cold, diamond-hard, with a muffled hammering note that was somehow highly disturbing. It was horrible to be made the victim of erosion in this way. You couldn’t escape the rain, sooner or later it would find you out, its fine slanting needles would brush your skin like a file, reduce it to minute fragments, devour it, dissolve it utterly, without rhyme or reason; it would never let up until you became mere impalpable dust in its own watery domain. The only solution would have been to live in some cut-and-dried region where the sun blazed down continually, bury oneself deep in baking pebbles, and dry out one’s whole body, like damp brushwood.

  About ten minutes past six a bus ran into the back of a car. Within seconds a crowd had gathered in the road. Shadowy figures gesticulated, and cars began to sound their horns. Besson observed the incident with detached curiosity. He left the pavement and went over to the stationary vehicles. The back of the car was in a bad way: the metal surface had ripped and crumpled like paper. The bus-driver had his face a few inches from that of the car’s owner, and was shouting at him, but there was such a loud hubbub going on all around that his insults remained inaudible. The other man, wrapped up in his raincoat, was shouting too, though not so energetically. Presently he made as though to go. He walked to the door of his car, but just as he was getting into the driver’s seat he changed his mind, came back to the bus-driver, and began shouting at him again. From time to time he would fumble in his raincoat pockets, as though about to produce some documents, or a handkerchief, but he never took anything out.

  A tight ring of spectators had gathered round them: fat women wearing head-scarves, dogs on leads, men with cigarettes dangling from their mouths. Besson mingled discreetly with the crowd, listening to their random remarks.

  ‘Just look at that—proper mess, eh?’

  ‘It’s the bus’s fault. They never look where they’re going—’

  ‘Too true, they just press on regardless. They don’t care, it’s not them who have to foot the bill—’

  ‘All the same, the other fellow did brake a bit sharply—’

  ‘Seen what’s left of the boot?’

  ‘My, doesn’t he look cross, eh?’

  ‘Look, seems to me he’s punctured one back tyre, too.’

  ‘It’s always the same at this crossing. Some sort of accident every day. Yesterday there was a cyclist knocked down by a truck here. Every day something happens here. Every bloody day.’

  ‘Well, if that bus-driver was in a hurry, he certainly got his come-uppance.’

  ‘They all drive like madmen—’

  ‘And they all just bash through regardless, and devil take the hindmost.’

  ‘Did you see how many deaths there were on the motorway last Thursday? Twent
y-seven. Twenty-seven.’

  ‘Buses ought to have a special road all to themselves, don’t you think?’

  ‘They ought to have one-way streets everywhere, that’s what they ought to do.’

  ‘They always rely on the insurance companies to cough up when they have an accident. It’s true, I’m telling you. Why should they care?’

  ‘Hey, Momma, come and see the accident!’

  ‘Stupid pinheads—’

  ‘I agree, madam; I absolutely agree—’

  ‘Henri! Did you see the fellow’s face? Just like a chimpanzee—’

  A quarter of an hour later the whole incident might never have happened. The crowd had dispersed, together with the traffic-jam. There were no more blowings of horns, no more gesticulations or insults. The only sign that something had really happened was a scatter of broken glass in the roadway. Besson stood there by the kerb, staring at this glittering relic, now being methodically washed down by the rain.

  A moment later Josette pulled up in her car and hooted at him. Besson walked round to the other side of the vehicle and got in beside her. She let in the clutch and the car moved off.

  ‘You’re late,’ Besson said.

  She did not so much as glance at her watch. ‘Not all that much. Were you waiting in the rain?’

  ‘Yes’

  ‘Why didn’t you take shelter?’

  ‘I was afraid you might miss me.’

  She trod on the brake sharply. ‘Did you see that? He ran across right under my wheels—’

  Besson lit a cigarette and looked around for the ashtray. She pressed a button.

  ‘There you are. What filthy weather.’

  ‘It certainly could be warmer,’ Besson said.

  ‘Did you get my letter?’

  ‘Yes, this morning.’

  ‘I very nearly didn’t come. I’m supposed to work till seven, normally.’

  ‘It was you who wanted to see me, though.’

  ‘I know, but I was wondering, after—after the other day—’

  Besson stared at a group of pedestrians standing on the edge of the pavement. The man had a black umbrella and was wearing a very long overcoat. The two women were watching the approaching car.

  ‘It was more than a week since we’d seen each other,’ said Josette. ‘I thought you’d come round. When I realized you weren’t coming, I made up my mind, and sent you that letter. I—it just can’t go on like this.’

  Besson made no reply. He looked at the girl beside him, a rapid glance first of all, just long enough to see her profile, with its sharply outlined nose, overlaid now by shadows and reflections; then a lingering, detailed scrutiny, that took in every square inch of flesh, each curve and angle of face and body, the black hair drawn back in a chignon, the pony-tail hanging down in two pluming curves.

  She stiffened. ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ Besson said. ‘I was just looking at you—’

  ‘Oh stop playing the fool. I was hoping—I was hoping we’d be able to have a serious discussion. Once and for all. I’ll park the car somewhere—’

  She turned off into a side-street. Both hands gripping the black plastic-sheathed steering-wheel, the upper part of her body leaning to the left, eyes alert, mouth firmly shut, feet pressed on the pedals, she threw all her strength into controlling the moving weight of the car.

  ‘If you see a place, tell me,’ she said.

  ‘Look, there—’

  She braked, then drove on.

  ‘That won’t do, it’s the entrance to a garage.’

  Besson relaxed against the upholstery. The engine purred steadily, now and then increasing in volume. The windscreen-wipers moved to and fro together, and at every jolt the seats creaked under them.

  ‘How’s the car going?’ Besson asked. ‘All right?’

  ‘Not too badly,’ said Josette. ‘Not now I’ve had the valves reground.’

  ‘What sort of speed can you get out of it?’

  ‘Well, you know me, I’m a bit scared of driving fast. But when I’m on a good straight road I step it up.’

  ‘How much do you do?’

  ‘Oh, it depends—’

  ‘No, I mean, what’s the most you’ve ever done?’

  ‘I don’t know—eighty, eighty-five, something like that.’ She turned and looked at Besson. ‘You’re pale, you know,’ she said. ‘You—well, frankly, you look tired out. You haven’t a job now, though, have you?’

  ‘No,’ Besson said. ‘I’m doing nothing just now.’

  A traffic-light shone red ahead of them. The car drew to a halt at the crossing, and a crowd of shadowy figures hurried across. The seconds passed insistently. It was as though the cessation of movement had suddenly revealed their existence, concentrated now on the circular red light, unwinking, like an eye. The girl sat beside him, hands resting on the wheel, not saying a word. Besson watched her, saw her face react, become gently drawn into the scene outside. With her contained, withdrawn body, her made-up eyelids, the pins and ribbons supporting her hair, she was palpably present, there, prepared to fight and to win. Besson made an effort to shake off the torpor that was stealing over him, to make conversation.

  He said: ‘I saw an accident just now, while I was waiting for you outside the Prisunic. A bus ran into the back of a car.’

  ‘Was it serious?’

  ‘Yes—well, not too bad, actually. The car had its boot smashed in, but the bus wasn’t damaged. I don’t quite know how it happened—I suppose the driver of the car braked a bit too sharply, and the other chap didn’t have time to react. Unless the car backed into the bus, of course. Anyway, they started slanging each other in the middle of the street, and a crowd gathered. But the police didn’t even bother to come and see what was going on.’

  The light changed to amber, then to green. The girl’s arms moved, her hands busied themselves with shifting gear, turning the black ring of the wheel, flipping down the indicator-lever. The idling engine roared into life, and the car moved forward, as though on rails. Far off in the night, above the roof-tops, came a flash of lightning, white tinged with pink, momentarily revealing heavy-piled clouds. While Josette talked, Besson kept his ear cocked for the inevitable sound of thunder. But whether because of the distance, or the rain, he heard nothing.

  ‘… or never. Do you understand, François? It’s true, you know you’ve been different for some time now. I can’t really understand why. I’d like to have a serious talk about the whole situation—don’t you think we should?’

  Besson stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray beside the dashboard.

  ‘If you like,’ he said. ‘But you’re wrong when you say I’ve changed. It’s not me that’s changed, it’s the things around me. I honestly think—’ He broke off, then said: ‘Look, we can’t have this kind of discussion while we’re driving round town.’

  ‘I know,’ Josette said. ‘I’m looking for somewhere to park. I’ve got to go to the post-office and send off a money-order first, anyway. After that, if you like, we can go and park somewhere quiet, out of town. Up on the hill, for instance.’

  ‘All right.’

  Finally she pulled up in a space reserved for taxis. As she was backing her bumper hit the front of another car.

  ‘I’m only going to leave it here a minute,’ she said. ‘Just long enough to send this money-order. You coming, or staying here?’

  ‘I might as well come,’ Besson said.

  ‘All right then, close the window your side.’

  They got out of the car. It was hard to tear oneself away from that imitation-leather seat, especially when it was so cold outside. Besson thrust his hands into his pockets, and the two of them walked off together.

  The post-office was warm, well-lit, and crowded. Besson sat on a bench and watched Josette while she queued. Behind the counters a number of girls in sky-blue uniform were writing or telephoning. In the main hall there was an interminable ebb and flow of feet over the flagged floor, men’
s, women’s, walking, standing, coming in, going out. The walls were painted a dirty white, and shone with the bright glow from the electric light bulbs. This was a temple dedicated to work, where time was, as it were, abolished through total mechanization, divided into infinite particles by the rattle of typewriters and dull thud of franking-stamps.

  Alone in one corner, an old woman, accompanied by her dog, stood facing the wall, searching through a directory for some name or other. The dog, a long-haired bitch, had its head down and was sniffing at a grey patch on the floor. Besson felt an impulse to follow their example. He moved slowly across to the wall-desk, and with back bent and nose deep in the pages of the massive volume, he spelt out these magical and fortuitously juxtaposed names:

  Sébestien

  Séchard

  Sechardi

  Ségur

  Senon

  Sepia

  Setton-Prince

  Shave

  Simon

  Simon

  Simon

  Simonetti

  There was certainly no lack of names: they packed every page from top to bottom, and behind them, behind these curt, spiky rows of letters, lurked human beings, full of movement and death, young or old faces, lives as self-contained as so many glass balls. They existed, they lived here on earth, they had names and surnames and addresses, jobs which they performed conscientiously or with indifference, wives, children, friends. No doubts, no self-correction. Hermetic and impenetrable, they remained the people who one cannot know and dare not laugh at. These thick, worn volumes, with their dog-eared pages, each blackened by the touch of innumerable sweaty fingers, served as a kind of bible for them the living. This was their stern and factual saga, the tale of their adventures reduced to one simple sign, a sort of small cross made with a ball-point pen that marked them out as something hard and inflexible amid the muddy flux of existence. If one were to read them all like that, name after name, without emotion or hatred, one would possess them all, incapsulated within oneself, possess the very core and essence of their lives, make them close neighbours. They would no longer be able to get away from you, perpetually escape to their unknown hide-outs.