Terra Amata

by J. M. G. Le Clézio

  Chancelade gazed at the surface of the black sky. But there was nothing new, not even an aeroplane or a falling star, and the cold wind still howled inside the ventilation shafts. But Chancelade didn’t shut his eyes. He went on:

  ‘Who are you? Who are you, eh, what’s your name? Have you even got a name? I have, all men have, so has this house, I saw it as I came in, Residence of the Sun, Vistaréo, something like that, and all these stars have names. So why haven’t you got one? I’ve got an idea, I’m going to call you something, anything, and then you can’t disappear into the void of things that haven’t got a name. I’ll give you a very ordinary name, slightly ridiculous, the name of a baker or a jeweller. Loubet. Jacques Loubet. What do you say about that, eh? Jacques Loubet, profession: infinite and eternal … There, that means something. Before, I didn’t know how to address those what-do-you-call-thems, you know, prayers. I used to think it was daft just talking into thin air, just pretending to talk to someone. God—that doesn’t mean anything. Nobody here’s called that. Jacques Loubet, now, that’s a very good-sounding name. It could belong to a general, or the chairman and managing director of a big firm that makes soap, or vegetable oil. Vote for Jacques Loubet. Monsieur Jacques Loubet, chairman and managing director of the Loubet Salad Oil Company, limited capital twelve million francs. You could put photographs in the papers showing a woman pouring oil into a salad and grinning from ear to ear. Why did you hide yourself all this time? Now I know where you are. In the advertisements for toothpaste, menthol cigarettes, grape juice, typewriters. That’s it. You dictate orders to your secretaries, smoking a cigar, and everyone listens with his head respectfully bent. You buy. You sell, speculate, buy theatres that are named after you and hotels with your initials, J.L. No one knew you were still living on in the world like that. People thought you’d abandoned them. But it wasn’t so, was it, it wasn’t so. You were called Loubet, or Coca-Cola, or Hilton. And you lived amongst men though they didn’t suspect it. Everywhere anyone went they saw your name up on posters, ashtrays, along the sides of the roads, on moth-eaten old houses, or on the backs of air-tickets. And that meant you were there, looking at what the world was doing. Hi! Jacques Loubet! Can you hear me? I’m talking to you, lying on the roof on the top of this house, which certainly must belong to you. Was all that leading to this? I mean, was it really worth it, all those—all those exoduses and crimes and wars and temples and tablets of the Law and angers and exterminations? Was it worth it? Look at where I am now, if you like, if you can. Just look once on this roof. You’ll see a sort of insect grimacing and talking to itself. Look everywhere in this town, look at all these men and women doing nothing special, nothing extraordinary. Was it worth it? Personally I think the play is over and the curtain’s about to fall. It wasn’t much of a play, was it, and the last act was very weak. We’ve seen a bit of everything on the stage, the first moments of chaos, the childishness, the sacrifices, the great pretentious declamations; the adult tricks, the wars, deceit, lies, vanity; then doting old age, the last twitches of muscles trying to cling to life, and despair and anguish because truth is approaching like a runaway horse. And now here at last is the moment when everything has to end. It’s time, everyone wasn’t beginning to get a bit tired. But just the same it’s not easy; no, it hurts. The throat has to be slit, the trap-door opened. It’s going to be painful, Jacques Loubet, very painful. But it’s all over, isn’t it? There’s nothing more to do now. So I’

  It was the moment, just the moment to do it. On this hard concrete surface, with its little bits of gravel that penetrated through your clothes into the skin of your back, and the bare sky with its frozen stars, and the cold, and the solitude, the invisible gulf hollowed out before your eyes, the glass that was at once near and far, and the sort of silence. It was the moment to yell as loud as you could anything that came out through your mouth.

  ‘Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani’ or

  ‘There’s nothing, nothing! There’s nothing, you’re alone, there never has been anything and there never will be!’

  And the words went on coming out of his mouth, and his nose, and his eyes, spreading out into the darkness. It was as if no one was really talking any more, or as if a countless crowd all huddled together were mumbling indistinguishable phrases. Chancelade was still there, lying on his back on the top of the skyscraper staring at a scrap of the dark metal vault. But what he was saying was no longer audible. What he was saying came from everywhere at once, from hotel bedrooms with creaking springs, shining streets, bars, cinemas, garages. From stationary or moving cars, boats, planes, trains. From cupboards where junkies hide their drugs, from the handbags of prostitutes crammed with greasy notes, or the rusty roofs of shanty-towns. It was in the rasping breath of the horse being dragged towards the knacker’s hammer. It was said with the voice of the man on the hospital bed, shivering with fever and exhaustion; in the voice of Georges Doulens or Philippe Cordier. With the voice of that young woman in red with the tired face and eyes hidden behind dark glasses that reflected the passing headlights. Help! Help! cried the hoarse voice, the voice of fear. Fire, murder, help, help! I’m falling, help me! I’m slipping, help me! I’m burning, give me some water, telephone the police, quick, no, open the windows, throw me a rope, a lifebelt, hold out a stick! Isn’t there anyone there? Where have they gone, where has everyone gone? Why are there only mirrors all round me? Break them, smash them! What am I doing here on this lighthouse in the middle of the sea? A little while ago there was a town, and noises, women, and children, you could see their hands and shoulders. Why is everyone wearing a mask? Tear them off! Let me see your faces, take off your glasses, your false noses, your false teeth, your artificial kidneys, your wooden legs! I want to see someone like myself! I want to see someone who isn’t me! All I can see are roads disappearing in the distance, horrible streets, and houses like clouds. Everyone mocks and grimaces. Mirrors, echoes. I don’t want to see this book any more; close it. Hide the pages. Take away the quotation marks. My thought is written down in the world, my thought is a knife. Tear all these pages up and burn them. Burn all those exoduses and kings and geneses. Make a heap of all the trigonometry books and travel books and history books and Greek grammars. Give me a chance to breathe. Throw all those poems down the lavatory, stop doing those tragedies over and over again, I want to hear real words. Fools! You, there, swine, with all your illnesses! Hunchbacks, drunks, air-swallowers! I’m going to catch all of them, all the illnesses that eat you away and kill you! Basedow’s disease, Albers-Schönberg’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease, anal pruritus, narcolepsy, abortive fever! California and Chagas and Filatow-Dukes’ and Katayama disease! Austin-Flint’s murmur. Cushing’s syndrome, craw-craw, and parenchymatous goitre. Koraskoff’s psychosis, Ludwig’s angina, Woillez’ and Morvan’s and Nayukayami’s diseases. Shingles and xerophthalmia. Bell’s paralysis, Pel-Ebstein’s pyrexia, Pautrier’s micro-abscess, Reiter’s syndrome, St. Vitus’ dance, the Rumpel-Leede symptom, Friedrich’s ataxia, and Sheehan-Simmonds’ disease. Von Jaksch’s disease. Skoda’s rattle, the Levi-Loraine syndrome, and the Da Costa, Gradenigo and Weber syndromes. Bockhardt’s impetigo. Oh yes, and I know what I’m going to have: the Gilles de la Tourette syndrome, and I’m going to walk along the streets kicking my legs about and shrieking out volleys of curses every ten seconds. And yes, I’ll repeat everything I hear. I’ll hear people say, ‘Hallo, nice day,’ and I’ll go on yelling for hours, ‘Hallo, nice day, hallo, nice day, hallo, nice d—’

  That’s what the world is like. A sort of skin covered with tics, a face ceaselessly grimacing and twitching. Nerves, nerves everywhere. It tries to pull itself together. It cries, but the tears fall with indifference, like sweat. It smiles, and its teeth shine in its mouth without any joy. That’s where we’ve got to. That’s what I am. A caricature. A drawing. A photograph. A tapestry that I shall never see the end of. That’s enough! Let’s stop! Leave me alone! I can’t bear the sight of these wreaths any more, these circlets, and
hearts and curls and zigzags, all these magnificent and hideous things they’ve made out of my skin. I don’t want them to sew with my hair any more, or patch with my skin, or use my bones as whalebone and my eyes as pearls! But what’s the good? The game still goes on, in front, behind, above, below. There are shouts. Colours are painted on, shadows are made across them, electric light bulbs send out rays. Everyone everywhere is talking at once. There’s the slightly damp voice of a woman talking to her Siamese cat. There’s the voice of a woman talking to her child in a room. There are orders, supplications, words of love, of jealousy, swear words, last words. But nobody hears anything any more. Out there in the sky, in the darkness, on the earth and on the sea, and on the windswept roof of the skyscraper with the chimneys howling, there’s nothing else but that. All the cries and all that hymn, for no one. Trees full of twittering birds, plains with barking dogs, airports full of loudspeakers! No one listens and quietly takes it to heart. What a marvellous solitude. A black desert, a white desert. A deep and immense desert of glass, that’s what I live in. There I am, and my life is my real revenge. I’ll never forget what’s been done to me. All these mirrors—I made them myself, to remind me always, so that nothing escapes me. I’ve set traps everywhere like that, and what I catch I keep. Is it I who think the world, or the world that thinks me? I don’t care which it is, now. I’m here, they’re there, to infinity if you like. And what I’ve written I’ve scored with a knife, and inscribed in matter with an axe. I’ve left my signs everywhere, scratches, graffiti, excrement, dandruff, bits of match and cigarette ends. If anyone follows the trail he’ll certainly come to me, on this roof. And if nobody comes, it doesn’t matter, I’ll wait. And if, one day, or in a minute from now, I jump off the roof, it won’t really be to die, nor even to squash myself on the pavement like a fig. It will be to go on talking, to say once for all that the difference between the roof and the ground is nothing extraordinary, nothing miraculous, just the cold air rushing into my nostrils, and the sound of the interminable seconds inside my heart. There. What I really ought to have done instead of talking was make a life-size model of the earth and launch it into space. Or have children by a female hyena. Or write a very long sentence adding one word every day. Then people would be able to read the sentence and know what it was like to be me. What do you think about that? Eh?

  I RAN AWAY

  The eternal flight began. It began one day by chance, in a room with fawn paper on the walls and no curtains, wooden furniture and a bare electric light bulb hanging from a black flex. And since then no one has stopped. Perhaps it’s liberation, or perhaps it’s fate. Things with their million aspects fly towards their unique image, worlds enter into each other one by one, sentences grow mute, and as material truth, which is but itself, defines itself, the sphere of time grows full. Unless all flies towards man alone.

  Chancelade flees along infernal streets, or magic avenues. He ceaselessly descends staircases, dashes right into concrete caves, opens and shuts doors with glass doorknobs. Every so often, at the end of a corridor, there’s the face of a woman shining softly. But it’s only a reflection, and the flight continues. When day breaks he flees the dazzling light and its killing rays. When night falls he flees the dense darkness that insinuates its slime everywhere. No question of resting. No question of stopping and groaning. Everywhere the ways are open and the roads stretch out for you to rush along them. Chancelade can breathe: he’s running away. He looks down from a window: soon he’ll have to change and find another window, and then another. He’s lying by the soft body of a woman, but it’s always another time. Space demands something new, time consumes itself. Mustn’t stop. Mustn’t turn round to see what’s coming: it’s dangerous. As soon as you turned you’d be enveloped in the icy wind that turns you into a statue.

  There are no more countries. Canton, Callao, Penang—how far away all that seems. Now there are only more and more streets. Chancelade walks more slowly and reads the names as he passes: rue Gallieni, rue Papon, rue Lascaris, rue Cassini, rue Rude. And then the avenues, boulevards, passages, alleys, and cul-de-sacs: avenue des Fleurs, boulevard Carnot, passage Ségurane, chemin de l’Abbaye. By the gardens there are overhanging branches of mimosa and brambles. Dogs bark. Uphill, down, and up again. It will never end, it can never end.

  The terrible ways of flight have been traced on the crust of the earth. It is the ancient malediction surviving still, the sort of universal order vibrating inside life itself. It is inscribed in the centre of every object, like a long crack that grows and divides. In the beginning, right at the start, there was this explosion, or fear, and ever since the world has never stopped rushing vainly across the immensities of the unknown. The whole of space has become this charge. Time has become this flight. Every second, every day, every year that passes is an animal leap towards the horizon. The very movement itself is a flight annihilating all reason and all hope.

  But nothing threatens Chancelade from behind. In fact it looks rather as if the dangers are in front of him. But that’s because the flight is vain, and because each gulf left behind only deepens the void that will ultimately be victorious. Death is already in the flight, its claws already driven into the flesh of its prey, and will never let go. The maddened animal can shake its head and rush all over the plain, but the jaw that has closed on it will still sink slowly farther and farther in, through fold after fold of flesh until it crushes the cervical vertebrae.

  Chancelade knows he can’t escape. He has always known it. He also knows that his executioners have charming gentle names, the names of flowers and trees and drops of water. They are called Sun, Pigeon, Daddylonglegs, Mat, Cigarette, Geranium. They are called Mina too, and perhaps the weapon is hidden in the touching face surrounded by fair hair, in the dimple on the right of the mouth, inside the gold-sprinkled blue iris. Perhaps the murder is there, hidden in the calm breath that gently lifts the breasts, or in the pink-painted toenails. But he goes on running away, escaping as best he can, running along the infinite roads of language. He talks, thinks, tries to understand. But it’s only in order to escape. He says life interests him, that he’s fond of the stars, insects, and the secrets of the human body; but it isn’t true. What he really likes is to run away, scamper away like a rat, get away as quickly as possible from the place of unspeakable menace.

  In the darkness the crickets cry furiously, and their tense cry is that of flight. The sea is flat, and brassy, wrinkled with thousands of identical waves. I’m like that. Clouds pass over the white sky as if you were looking at them through a window. I, Chancelade, am in each one of them. Rivers cross the walls of mountains, the fields are infinite, the horizon ever recedes. All the time I’m with them, farther, farther, keep going. Thought is a void driving into the void, you look straight in front of you and never find anything fixed to rest on. In short, I’m in among the hurtling planets, the balls of hot lava, fifty million degrees Centigrade, that rush away from one another in no matter what direction.

  The lizard runs away over the old sunbaked wall. When he goes by a dark stone he turns brown, and when he goes by a leaf he turns green. Isn’t that a truth in its way? Everything hides when danger comes. They sham dead, and the type of the secret of the void is already in their shells. The stick insect pretends to be a twig. The leaf insect acts a leaf. The moth pretends to be only a dark patch, and the butterfly pretends to be a flower. The aloe opens its sharp-toothed jaws, the corn makes its ears bristle. The tiger wears the stripes of his fear, the bison crouches like a rock. And the crocodile is like a floating log, unless it’s that a floating log is like a crocodile. All fears work towards their mysterious design, the enigma painted on skin or scale that means there is always a prey and always a hunter. It’s as if at the moment of the Creation there was a sly old man whose cruel laugh echoes still.

  So with Chancelade or anyone else you could play the final game of metamorphoses:

  Chancelade turned into a mouse; death turned into a cat.

  Chancela
de turned into a fish; death turned into a net.

  He turned into an apple; death turned into a knife.

  He turned into a microbe; it turned into a sulphonamide.

  He turned into fire; it turned into water.

  He turned into a cigarette; it turned into a lighter.

  He turned into a window; it turned into a stone.

  He turned into a mountain; it turned into wind and rain.

  He turned into dust; it turned into a vacuum-cleaner.

  He turned into a hair; it turned into a razor.

  He turned into a bird; it turned into a gun.

  He turned into a tree; it turned into an axe.

  He turned into a king; it turned into a revolution.

  He turned into a snail; it turned into a boot.

  He turned into a town; it turned into a volcano.

  He turned into a corpse; it turned into a worm.

  He turned into matter; it turned into anti-matter.

  He turned into writing; it turned into crossing-out.