The Flood

by J. M. G. Le Clézio

  ‘It’s me who makes ’em and sells ’em, by golly,

  But it’s my wife who blows all the lolly …’

  Newspaper kiosks displayed their motley wares, klaxons sounded, petrol fumes rose in the air, trafficators winked on and off. This was the place of departure, the centre from which people fled the town. The routes to every different destination converged here in this dusty square, mile upon mile of baking or muddy asphalt winding its solitary way through the empty countryside. From here people took off for foreign towns, for unknown territories covered with sprouting jungles of olive and vine. They encountered deserts striped in red and green, great savannahs, hazy oases, gorges running through deep faults in the mountains. They were journeying towards hunger and thirst, and mystery, and fear. Each of them had dressed up for the occasion, and buckled the straps round his luggage, and packed a cold meal to take along—not forgetting a bottle of wine. Besson wandered among the groups at random, soaking himself in this atmosphere, this smell of departure. Little by little uneasiness began to creep up inside him, accompanied by something much resembling hope.

  Finally he picked a bus, and joined the queue of passengers waiting to board it. Nothing happened for a few moments; then the doors creaked open, and people began to file inside. It was a splendid white coach, almost brand-new, with anti-glare windows and strips of chromium-plated steel that glinted in the sunlight. The engine was already running, vibrating rhythmically, so that everything which could be made to judder did so. Besson was among the last passengers aboard; he walked down the aisle, head bent, looking for somewhere to sit down. There was a vacant seat near the back, and he dropped into it without looking any further. Then he put his beach-bag between his knees, and sat there, waiting. Beside him, pressed against the window, was a young girl, conversing in gestures with her fiancé, who had stayed outside on the sidewalk. She was so close to the glass that her breath made semi-circles of condensation on it, and her eyes never left the man below, whose head barely came level with the window. She kept waving to him. Once or twice she stood up and put her mouth to some aperture at the top of the window. ‘Mind you write to me,’she called out. ‘Lots and lots!’ She even tried to get her arm through the gap so as to touch the man’s hand, but merely succeeded in skinning her knuckles. Then she sat down again and exhibited the scratch through the window, waving her left hand. The man outside lit a cigarette to keep himself in countenance. He was a skinny boy with a crew-cut and a brand-new blue suit.

  A few seconds later the bus moved off, manoeuvring slowly out of the bus-station, sounding its horn to clear a path through the crowd. The passengers sank back in their pullman seats and clung to the metal hand-grips. Every jolt bounced their bodies up and down; the vibrations of the engine set their jaws and the fleshy parts of their arms quivering. They drove through the town with the main traffic stream. Up in front, on a higher seat than the rest, sat the driver, turning the wheel this way and that, thrusting his feet down on the pedals, shifting the gear-levers: you could hear the insulated growl of the engine responding to his directions. The cylinders fired smoothly in sequence, and every now and then there came the mysterious sound of compressed air escaping, rather like a sneeze. The lights at the crossroads changed to yellow, then to red. The bus braked to a standstill, and every head jerked backwards. These jolts and vibrations made the passengers look a little ridiculous. Bodies swayed slackly in their seats, passive victims now, manipulated in unison by each plunge or check of the wheels. A jay-walker crossed the road right in front of the bus, and everyone swayed, as though to underline the incident. All down the aisle conversation had broken out. Women wrapped up in thick woolly coats were talking about the weather—would it rain or clear up? One was discussing the ulcer on her leg. Men pointed out houses, or cars. A soldier was trying to make conversation with a plain young girl who said not a word back.

  Gradually the bus worked its way out of town, taking a very, straight road that ran along the coast beside the sea. The wind blew strongly here: grass began to appear between houses, and trees became more frequent. The sun shone over the horizon, and the road was hard. Through the window Besson watched the landscape slip past, very fast in the foreground, then more slowly, till the distant scene appeared motionless, even perhaps shifting in the opposite direction. There were waste lots enclosed by wooden fences, with four or five wrecked cars inside them. There were mounds and hillocks and rows of bungalows, each with its watch-dog. There were brand-new white-painted apartment blocks, with endless empty balconies patterning their façades. There were gypsy caravans, and roofs bristling with television aerials, and telegraph poles, and washing-lines hung with women’s underwear. There were kitchen-gardens and clumps of rose-bushes or rhododendrons and sheds and rusty abandoned bicycles and parked trucks and cemeteries and blue-and-white filling stations. There was a high brick wall with the words U.S. GO HOME painted on it in white, and a grocer’s shop, and a café with several indistinct characters just emerging from it. There were more villas with shutters closed or open as the case might be, and children playing at cops and robbers. There was a church with a pointed steeple and a clock that had gone wrong and showed the time as twelve noon, or midnight. There was a naval dockyard and a general repair shop and a half-built apartment block beside the road, rising amid a curious scaffolding of planks and sticks. Two policemen who had parked their motorcycles and were taking somebody’s name and address. A woman with a goitre, looking on at them. An airfield, a hairdresser’s shop, and a restaurant with candles on the tables and its name written up in big red letters: LA FOURCHETTE. A group of five palm trees. More waste lots, fields lying fallow, patches of earth and rubble in which the flint sparkled like ground glass. And all these things were in continual motion, streaming back horizontally past the windows of the bus, merging and blurring, receding in a growing complexity of lines and angles. A long way off, behind the moving foreground of houses and tree-trunks, the hills floated, blue and magnified. On the other side of the road the sea’s surface revolved round its own axis, like a record. And somewhere ahead of them their destination was vaguely taking shape. Mountains rose up, headlands stretched out into the water, and one small light cloud hung motionless in the sky.

  François Besson watched the landscape with eager curiosity. Through every window in the bus he could see it unrolling past them at a great rate, producing the oddest inverted reflections in the polished metal framework of each seat. The vehicle drove straight ahead, very smoothly on the whole, cleaving a path through the transparent air. They were caught in the still centre of movement, of advance without self-propulsion. What they had here was a small section of earth gliding across the earth, not in order to conquer anything at all, but simply floating on the level asphalt with four whirring tyres, cruising, drawn into the void, climbing hills, coming down faster the other side, skimming along on a straight flat road.

  Sometimes the bus would stop by the roadside, generally beside a clump of houses; people would get up and leave the vehicle, and others would take their places. People stared at the newcomers for a moment or two, made fun of them in whispers, and then forgot them.

  The conductor had by now worked his way down to Besson.

  ‘Terminus, please,’ Besson said, holding out a note.

  The man counted out several coins, gave them to Besson, and turned the handle on his ticket-machine. With a ping! a little piece of paper emerged from the slot, and the conductor put it in Besson’s hand. ‘Next, please,’ he called.

  ‘Les Mimosas’, said the girl in the next seat, and the same process was repeated.

  On his scrap of yellowish paper Besson read:

  108576329

  Route: A

  F 00 325

  1012

  3

  Thank you

  He put the ticket in his raincoat pocket, and watched the conductor making his way along the central aisle. He was a man of about forty, with a heavy lined face and rounded shoulders. From time to time
he would stoop down and peer through the window, and then whistle to the driver, who stopped the bus. When he whistled again, the bus would move off again, engine labouring.

  It occurred to Besson that being the driver or conductor of a bus was by no means a bad job. You walked up and down inside this long metal tube, and turned the little handle which cut off so much paper a time. When you had collected all the fares you went up front and sat by the driver and kept a vague eye on the grey ribbon of road endlessly unwinding in front of you. Or else you were the driver, esconced in that little cabin-like enclosure of anti-glare glass, turning the steering-wheel, following the contours of the landscape. You pulled up at the halts, then let in your clutch and moved off again. You changed gear, first, second, third, fourth, down to third, up to fourth again. You braked violently to annoy the passengers. You could keep up a grumbling commentary the whole time on drivers who overtook you or pedestrians crossing the road, this sort of thing: ‘Well, get on with it, then—Jesus, will you just look at that! What the hell d’you think I was signalling for? Yes, you, want your face bashed in, then? Move yourself, you half-wit! And what about that clod on the island, is he going to cross or isn’t he? Come on, you stupid bugger, you clapped-out thing you—’ And so on. You could sound the horn, too, that clarion note which really made people’s hearts miss a beat if they weren’t expecting it. And you could look out for the pretty women all along your route, and whistle at them as you went by. There were the girls who hitched up their skirts as they clambered aboard at a stop, and those who just missed tipping over when you jammed the brakes on, and those who travelled standing, close to the door, and chatted you up, and were good for a laugh. In the evening you’d have a drink, and go to bed tired out, and dream all night of that never-ending road. You’d know the route by heart, of course, you could drive it without tiring yourself, and the days passed quickly. You made your own private map of this small section of the world. You learnt all the important things about it—the bits where you had to keep a sharp look-out, the bits where there were always lots of people around, the deserted stretches where you could relax. You knew every fountain and signpost and built-up corner and crossroads and bridge and level-crossing. You had your own landmarks. You knew exactly where you were going. Several dozen miles of wealthy and thickly-populated countryside, where something—the same sort of thing—was always happening.

  The bus drove on through the countryside. There were large numbers following the same route, bowling along in the sunshine, glossy as cockchafers, leaving a small trail of whitish exhaust-smoke behind them. They came in all shapes and sizes—long automobiles with high tail-fins, in various pastel colours; squat rounded mini-cars with rear-lights like small portholes, and engines that roared loudly going uphill; light vans and heavy haulage trucks, vehicles old and new, some all chromium plating and shiny enamel that you could see your face in, others with smashed headlights and dented bonnets and patches of red-lead undercoat everywhere. The men inside these steel carapaces were more or less invisible. You might just catch a glimpse of them—pale ghosts lolling back on the seat-cushions, half-hidden behind dirty windows. Every make of car was represented. Volkswagens, stuffy and claustrophobic, like tiny armoured vehicles. High-riding Chevrolets, low-slung Panhards. Mole-like Citroëns, Jaguars built to resemble smart slippers. Narrow Austins, foreshortened Renaults; the Alfa-Romeo for women, the Mercedes Benz for men. Simcas looking like Prisunic toys, Skodas, NSU’s, BMW’s, Lancias. Fords straight from the hardware shop, funeral parlour Cadillacs. All were exactly the same in the last resort, fast, noisy, each with its load of feet and hands and heads, each like a railway carriage transporting its humble crowd of women in shawls and men with dark glasses, children, grandmothers, sleepy dogs. Life gleamed from their polished metal, diffused the smell of hot rubber. One day their journey would end in some vast scrap-iron dump, an old cars’ cemetery outside the nearest town, where the rust, season by season, would slowly bind their immobilized bodywork into one solid mass.

  The road was straight as a ruler now, running beside the sea to the right of the railway track, and the houses were thinning out. Fields stretched away to the hills beyond. There were fruit orchards, rock-gardens, ruined buildings, clumps of cacti. The sun was high over the sea, and the sea was a dazzling blue, with small crisp ripples ruffling its surface.

  Besson decided this would be a good point to get off. He rang the bell, waited till the bus stopped, and found himself out on the road. When the bus started off again without him, he watched it pass; but the windows were opaque, and he could not recognize anyone. He began to walk along the shoulder of the road, in the same direction.

  In this manner he covered several miles. The ground was soft and covered with a kind of short springy grass that crackled underfoot. The sea was now completely out of sight, and the earth was beginning to crack and split under the effect of the heat. Everywhere insects were buzzing in the undergrowth, and the air was loud with the dry chirp of locusts. The landscape was completely deserted. Across this rough stretch of open countryside the road carved a furrow of noise and movement. The houses, set between sloping fields and surrounded by clumps of umbrella pine wore an abandoned air. There was nothing to do here except go on walking and survey the scene around you.

  The sun was beating down fiercely, and Besson had to take off his raincoat. For a moment or two he carried it over one arm, but this hampered his movements, so instead he left it on a sheltered spot close to the roadside. A little further on he abandoned his beach-bag too, hiding it behind a bush so that he could pick it up again later if he ever had need of it.

  When he was tired of walking he stopped and sat down on a milestone to watch the cars go by. He could see them coming a long way off, wavering in the air when they hit a patch of heat-mirage. Then they came tearing past Besson at a tremendous lick, some of them sounding their horns as they came, and dwindled away to the horizon again, with a glitter of metal before they finally vanished for good.

  Further on still, Besson passed a filling station. At the top of a sort of cement tower was a large sign on which was written the one word: AZUR. The garage itself, below the tower, was a sprawling, all-white edifice, as beautiful as a church. There were lots of signboards swinging in the wind, with red and blue stars on them. Pot-geraniums were much in evidence, and at the entrance to the workshop a wolf-hound lay asleep. Beneath a concrete roof four petrol pumps stood enthroned: square-cut, blue and red, each with its rubber hose neatly folded away, and a glass-fronted panel at the top for reading the figures on the dials, but not in use now, unattended. Not a soul was to be seen anywhere—man, woman, or child. The ground had been sluiced down with water, but the smell of petrol and oil still clung to it. The sun beat down fiercely on all exposed areas, white light striking white stucco.

  Besson walked right through the service station. When he passed near the garage workshop, the wolf-hound pricked up its ears, still with its eyes closed, and growled. Besson retreated to the road.

  A few yards further on, close to a stream which much resembled a blocked sewer, Besson found a beaten earth track, and turned off on it. He proceeded across country in this way, stumbling as he negotiated the old path, struggling up steep rises, catching his clothes on thorn-bushes, lizards scattering at his approach. The track led heaven knows where, between high thorn hedges, twisting, turning, meandering, sometimes even doubling back the way it had come. He had his back to the sea now. In front of him were the hills with their rough, arching backs. A few houses were scattered here and there among the trees, surrounded by vineyards and olive-groves and terraced slopes. Spirals of smoke curled up into the sky, and animals crowded into the shade behind half-demolished walls. Behind, the sun continued to climb towards its zenith, reaching a maximum intensity of heat and brightness. Light and shade were sharp and clear-cut, as though sliced out with a razor, and there were thorn-bushes everywhere. Grass covered the earth like a furry pelt, letting the heat smoulder damply beneath it. A
ll odours were strong and acrid, clinging to the ground like a second atmosphere. Little by little, as he strode along the track, feet crunching over prehistoric pebbles, Besson made a surprising discovery: there were no men on earth. The landscape was vast, indisputably there, its whole weight pressing down on the outer surface of the soil. It was a mask, a curious celluloid skin which had melted over the countryside’s contours and could no longer be unstuck. He could see it quite clearly now. He examined it as though from the vantage-point of a dirigible balloon, observed mile upon square mile of solitude and brutishness spreading out to all four points of the compass. Towns, squared-off apartment blocks, streets, stations, cars, highways, airports, stadia—all these had suddenly vanished, absorbed by the soft-textured skin of the landscape, lost in those shades of brown, those reddish striations, that fine still graining. And the inhabitants had disappeared with them, had been swallowed up by the sand, reduced to dust once more, not wiped out of existence, simply turned into microscopic entities like any other. Trees, mushrooms, mosses, lichens; grasshoppers and millipedes; crocodiles, oxen, horses, even elephants—all were dissolved now, their substance thinned out in mud and alluvial deposits, written in the soil, brought low by this tyrannous and ghostly hand, tiny spiders in their grey webs, ridiculous parasites burrowing into the pink and bristly skin, and drinking, with their small repulsive mouths, two or three drops of all those millions of pints of blood!

  Besson sat down on a large stone by the roadside. He was no longer so occupied by the scene around him. In the bright sunlight swarms of tiny insects began to dance on the spot, like mayflies: he could distinctly hear the beating of their wings, and see the bluish gleam from their backs. The air was still fresh, especially when the wind got up, but here and there the sun’s rays struck home with burning intensity. It occurred to Besson that he would have enjoyed sitting here and smoking a cigarette. He would have smoked it unhurriedly, legs stretched out over the sandy soil, from time to time dropping a little ash on the ground. Then, when he had finished the cigarette, he would have stubbed it out with his heel, right beside the big stone he was now sitting on. In this way some record of his passing would have been left there, a tiny, scarcely visible black smear, topped by the eviscerated dog-end, with strands of yellow tobacco still escaping from it.