Terra Amata

by J. M. G. Le Clézio

  The sky is shrouded, lightning suddenly tears the dark clouds, big drops of rain begin to fall: it is she. In the blackberry thicket a thorn suddenly pierces a finger, adding to the pearl of blood a whitlow germ: it is she, it is still she. On the grey trees the fruit swells and hangs heavily from the branches: it is she in each orange, each lemon, each medlar. On the motor-way the tar melts in the sun and the cars stop, their radiators boiling. It is she. Beauty.

  So that was what that landscape was like—there on that piece of earth facing the sea, beneath the naked sky, with at night the moon and stars, and in the day the solitary stare of Kax, the sun.

  Bare as a drawing by a four-year-old, reduced to the essentials: a horizontal line, a tree as tall as a tower, a house with a pointed roof, and, in a sky divided into squares, on the right a kind of shining grasshopper and all over the rest, scribbled huggermugger and indistinct, the spirals of the stars, the zigzags of the birds, the patches of cloud and the discs of jet-planes and flying saucers. It was the simplest of places. There was no country in the world but it. It was as if you had been alive for ever, hidden somewhere, for centuries and centuries, drawn in one corner, scribbled down just like the others. Yes, you’d always been there, with all the rest of them, with Kax, with Maa the sea, with Manuel, Kalar, Azor, Gélo, Silicoe, Prixt, Gaur, Tony and Amadeus. With the tarantulas Brux and Géochs, with Nathan the crab and Fueco the salamander. With Bryant the cockroach and Alex the caterpillar. With the cockchafer Go.

  A few letters had been written higgledy-piggledy, spelling your own name: CHANCELADE.

  I WAS BORN

  The little boy whose name was Chancelade was sitting in the sun outside the old house. He wore a pair of cotton trousers and a red shirt, and his feet were bare. On his right wrist was a toy plastic watch with the hands pointing to half-past twelve. But no one could have said what the real time was. He was sitting on the second of the steps up to the door, picking his nose.

  It was the beginning of summer, or autumn. The sun shone motionless in the middle of a grey-blue sky. The trees stood peacefully in the earth, and the wind blew through their leaves with the sound of falling rain. In front of the red-brick house was a sort of fallow garden bounded left and right by a bamboo hedge and at the end by a stream that served as a drain. It wasn’t a very big garden, but it had lots of plants and grasses. A few trees too here and there. Two very tall palm-trees with ivy round their trunks. An orange and a lemon, both stunted. A cherry-tree with a big white gash full of ants. A medlar, a laurel, and a mandarin. In the middle of the garden, surrounded by a border of pebbles, an olive spread its ample branches in every direction. All around it little bushes sprang up out of the grass where the olives had fallen, rotted, then sprouted. And right at the bottom of the garden, by the evil-smelling stream, was the eucalyptus. It was very tall, with smooth trunk and sickle-shaped leaves, and it gave off a slow stale smell and rustled in the wind. It must have been between seventy and a hundred and twenty years old.

  The boy walked about in the grass for a few minutes, careful where he put his feet because of the scorpions. Then he went back and sat on the same step again and began as usual to play with the potato-bugs.

  Potato-bugs were running about all over the grass and on the concrete path below the steps. There were dozens, perhaps hundreds of them, coming and going in all directions, stopping, starting again, trying to climb the walls and falling back defeated. They were all the same, with a black head, finely curved black legs, black feelers, and a body covered in red and black stripes that shone in the sun. They didn’t go about in ordered caravans like ants, but helter-skelter, each searching separately for something he could never find, going over the same ground ten times, bumping into one another, groping at one another, never weary. Chancelade watched them for a long while from his step, not thinking. Every now and then one of them would climb on to the ankles of his trousers or on to his toes, and then he would lift them off gently and toss them back on to the grass.

  It could have gone on like that for hours. You could have stayed there for hours watching them teem over the concrete path. Or if you liked you could have tried to follow just one, that one for example, the one that’s just emerged from a tuft of grass and begun to walk over the concrete. He hurries along two bandy legs at a time. He passes another bug going in the opposite direction, then another. He doesn’t even see them. He overtakes a potato-bug standing still, then turns round and goes back past it again. He turns to the right and goes towards a little heap of sand that someone must have emptied out of their beach-shoes. He goes round it to the left. Stops. Comes back. Meets three other potato-bugs walking round the heap of sand. Stops. Feels the antennae of the first potato-bug. Feels the antennae of the second potato-bug. Feels the back of the third potato-bug. The path’s clear: off he goes again. He turns about and starts going round the heap of sand again to the left. Another potato-bug. Two. Three. Four. He goes over a twig that moves slightly as he does so. He stops. Starts again. Goes very fast. Turns to the right and heads for the wall. Meets one potato-bug. Overtakes another. Walks without noticing over a group of Argentine ants and scatters them. Comes to a scrap of rotten cardboard. Stops. Feels it with his antennae. Tries to stand on his hind legs and climb over it. But the cardboard moves and he gives up. Then he goes off the way he came, but more slowly now. Goes past a group of three potato-bugs standing facing one another. Turns left, right, left, right again then left again. He crosses the groove in the path. Stops. Stays still for four or five seconds, then goes off again as fast as he can, fleeing some incomprehensible danger. He clambers over another twig, passes another potato-bug. He makes straight for a fly but just as he’s about to hit it it takes off. He overtakes one potato-bug on the right and another on the left. He changes direction and goes back towards the wall. When he reaches the foot of it he runs along towards the steps. Every so often he stops, turns towards the wall and tries to climb it. But he hasn’t got the strength. Then he holds his feelers out towards the garden, trying to see what’s happening in those layers of air where the misty unknown peacefully pulsates.

  You could amuse yourself watching him for hours, inch by inch, every moment of his vain excursion. Or you could take another potato-bug, for instance the one pacing along the edge of the path next to the garden. Or the one that’s climbed right up the geranium stalk, or again the one that’s just standing still in the middle of the patch of concrete waiting for heaven knows what.

  You could follow every one of them, each with its life, its microscopic adventures, its heart, eyes, feelers, intestines, sex-organs, and its red-and-black-striped back. And you too had your life, closed in and warm, as if somewhere there were someone sitting on some huge steps, looking down and watching you without thinking.

  When the boy realized that he was the potato-bugs’ god, with absolute power of life and death over them, he decided to act.

  He slid down and sat on the bottom step. Then with his right foot he pulled the iron footscraper towards him. He picked up the metal grille then put it down again to mark out the limits of his kingdom. The interstices of the bars formed thirty little separate cells. Chancelade bent down beside it, collected thirty potato-bugs, and arranged them one in each cell. When all the holes were occupied he knelt on the ground and saw what he had made; and behold, it was very good. Inside the metal enclosures the potato-bugs were all struggling to escape, putting their front feet on the iron and trying to hoist themselves up. But after a few seconds they all dropped back: they were too heavy and their feet slipped on the metal. Some even fell on their backs and made desperate efforts to right themselves, waving all their legs, their brown bellies exposed. The boy helped them up with the tip of his finger, but no sooner were they on their feet than they started trying to climb the walls of their cells again.

  Chancelade looked at the prison he’d made. In every square of the grille you could see the red-and-black-striped backs and tiny feet of the potato-bugs moving and waving about. It w
as like looking down on a town, a real town of steel and concrete with rows of windows opening into the little sealed boxes of apartments. It was a town that you could bomb or destroy or set fire to or raze to the ground. You could annihilate the inhabitants one by one, at random, without their being able to do anything to defend themselves. Chancelade looked down on the town from his own height and began to reign over it. He spoke to it, though he knew that none of his words would be understood. Every so often he would utter sharp orders. He’d say:

  ‘You, there.’

  ‘Yes, you. You think I haven’t seen you, do you? You just wait a bit.’

  ‘Stop! No trying to escape, do you hear?’

  ‘Go on, march, you over there—go round in circles!’

  ‘That’s right, keep it up!’

  ‘Watch what you’re doing, potato-bug No. 6!’

  ‘Up you get! And now what?’

  ‘Take it easy there, take it easy!’

  ‘Halt!’

  ‘And what about you? Do you think I can’t see you? I can see everything, let me tell you—everything!’

  ‘Hey you—leave the wall alone!’

  ‘Watch out or I’m going to get angry …’

  Chancelade began with the bug in cell No. 16. It was a strong little creature and when the boy got hold of it between his thumb and forefinger it struggled and tried to escape by clinging on with its feet. Chancelade brought it up close to his face, looked at it and rebuked it gently. Then with his left hand he pulled off its legs one by one. When the punishment was concluded he put the bug back in its cage. It lay there motionless for a few seconds, as if dead. Then it tried to crawl along the ground, its whole body quivering with helplessness. Only its feelers went on waving to and fro in the air, searching for something to feel. Then Chancelade picked it up in his fingers again and put it down beside the scraper. Quite quietly, without anger, he spoke to it again. He said:

  ‘You see. You oughtn’t to have done that. You ought to have done as I told you. Now you can’t move any more. You haven’t got any legs.’

  The boy got up, went and looked in the garden for a sharp stone, then came and knelt down again by the potato-bug. He saw that its wing-cases were partly open and it was trying to spread its brown wings.

  ‘Like to fly away, would you?’ said Chancelade. ‘But you can’t.’

  With a desperate effort the insect managed to unfold its right wing.

  ‘In any case you won’t get anywhere,’ said Chancelade, ‘because I’m going to kill you with this stone.’

  He gave it a little push with the stone and it rolled over on its back. Chancelade noticed that one of its back legs hadn’t been pulled off completely: the stump was moving back and forth as if the insect was trying to row with limbs that were no longer there. The feelers on its head opened and shut mechanically.

  ‘In any case you’ll be better off like this,’ said the boy. And he banged the sharp stone down as hard as he could. Then he looked, and saw the potato-bug squashed on the concrete, in the middle of a little pool the colour of tomato sauce.

  A sort of anger rose in him. He suddenly had the feeling that his people had betrayed and abandoned him. He looked at the town with hatred. Then he spoke again. But his words fell on the earth like thunder, and his breath burned like the blast from a volcano. He told them he was going to kill them all, all, as he’d just killed potato-bug No. 16. They hadn’t trusted him. They’d rebelled. They’d refused the kingdom he’d offered them and hadn’t wanted him as their only god. For that they would know his vengeance. He was going to kill them all without exception.

  To start with the boy banged with his stone at the inside of the cells. But the stone was too big—it had to be brought down four or five times before it would smash a potato-bug’s back. Some of them weren’t quite killed and dragged themselves round leaving patches of tomato-juice. Chancelade’s anger didn’t last. He threw away the red-stained stone and said:

  ‘Listen, all of you. I’ve found a way to punish you. I’m going to kill you with the scraper. I shall drop it on you and it’ll cut your heads off. I’ll be generous too—any that aren’t killed by the scraper, I shan’t do anything to them. They can live. Do you hear? All right then, move—see you’re not one of those that gets it in the neck!’

  The boy crouched down, got hold of the scraper with both hands, lifted it up and held it in the air for two or three seconds. Below, the population of potato-bugs began to swarm in all directions. Some tried to escape, running as fast as their legs would carry them. Some shammed dead, crouching curled up with their legs and feelers drawn in under their bellies. Some lay there crushed or half-crushed, stuck in their pools of blood-red liquid. Several others, trying to run away, got their feet stuck in these pools and stood there feeling the bodies with their antennae, their mouths perhaps sampling the fluid that issued from their brothers’ entrails. Chancelade held the scraper poised above the insects a little while longer, without speaking, without thinking. All menace had entered into him, and hatred, and pity, and something that resembled fate. Then he opened his fingers and let the heavy grille fall on the town. The clatter of the metal on the concrete was followed by a dull silence.

  Chancelade bent down and looked. He saw that nearly all the potato-bugs had been killed. Most had been sliced in two by the bars of the scraper: tomato sauce had spurted all over the grey metal. Some of them still crawled about, horribly mutilated, with half of their abdomen gone or their back torn away. Others had had their legs severed, and limped about in circles. Everywhere were gashed heads, slashed bellies, crushed thoraxes, broken limbs, wings torn to pieces. One had even been hit on the hindquarters by the corner of the scraper just as it was trying to escape. The heavy metal had pinned it to the ground, but all the free part of its body was still alive, and strained with all its legs to get away. At last it did succeed in freeing itself, but it left half its belly behind under the scraper. It managed to crawl along for a few centimetres, leaving a trail of innards. Then, at the end of the red streak, it died.

  No groan, no cry of pain arose from the ravaged town. On the contrary, a strange silence reigned, as if everything were quite normal. But that silence was much more terrible than lamentation : it was an intense, tragic silence that entered into the boy’s ears and slowly chilled him. It was a distant silence, like some extra-terrestrial disaster, when a star explodes suddenly millions of light-years away and disappears into the darkness of space as if it were no more than a lamp switched off.

  What had just taken place, though Chancelade did not fully realize it, was something terrible. It was more important than the place or the moment, more important than himself. It was something unbearable to anyone who could free himself from this piece of earth and judge the truth of the event as a whole. Here once again fate had acted alone. Fate, ignoble fate that prepares events, had chosen the path to this murder, for nothing, merely so that the act should be accomplished. This patch of concrete had been made for it. This house, this garden, this grass and these trees had gradually been put there, year after year, just for this. This sky had been filled with clouds, this sun had risen and climbed to the zenith, this wind had blown, this water had flowed in the streams, these planes had droned above the horizon, only for this : so that this boy, born one day, should come and sit on the second step outside the red-brick house and kill this town of insects without thinking.

  All cataclysms and all wars were there in the squashed bodies of the potato-bugs, in their scattered entrails, in the thick red liquid spattered over the sharp bars of the grille.

  The avalanche had fallen silently, engulfing the tiny bodies in its tons of white powder. In the quiet night, for no reason, the dam had burst and the slimy flood of mud and water hurled itself on the village, knocking down houses, uprooting trees, filling the mouths and nostrils of sleeping men, women and children.

  Or else war had burst over the captive town. There’d been one enormous flash and in a second the blinding wave had
blown millions of living creatures to atoms. And now there was this sort of wound or cancer on the earth that would leave a scar for ever. A few things still stood upright around the churned-up crater: walls a thousand years old, half-burned telegraph-poles, old scraps of metal, bits of brick inscribed with the shadow of a man now vanished into thin air.

  It was all these things at once that had just taken place here on this concrete path, with these steps, and this boy, and this scraper, and these potato-bugs. One more murder, just one more murder. And already it was forgotten.

  The boy collected up all the potato-bugs that were still alive and put them in an empty match-box he’d fetched from the kitchen. Then he swept up the corpses and threw them on the grass.

  In the match-box there were six potato-bugs: Antis, Goliath, Vélo, Ajax, Potato and Bug. Chancelade went and sat on the top step with his back against the kitchen door and played with them. He tried to teach them tricks. He tried to teach them to fight. He tried to make them walk along two by two and play football with a paper pellet. He tried to feed them. But it was no use. They wouldn’t see. Every now and again Chancelade would hold one of them in his hand and feel the little feet walking over his skin and the jaws nibbling at his fingers.

  When, when he’d had enough, he went and got a match from the kitchen and set light to the box. And so died Antis, Goliath, Vélo, Ajax, Potato and Bug, sole survivors of the great massacre that took place that day among the potato-bugs.