From time to time I look up at the Moon and think of all the desert, the cold and the void up there which weigh down on the other side of the scales and sustain this poor pomp of ours. If I jumped down just in time on this side, that was just chance. I know that I am in debt to the Moon for everything I have on Earth, indebted to what is not here for everything that is.
The Daughters of the Moon
Deprived as it is of a covering of air to act as a protective shield, the Moon found itself exposed right from the start to a continual bombardment of meteorites and to the corrosive action of the Sun’s rays. According to Tom Gold of Cornell University, the rocks on the Moon’s surface were reduced to powder through constant attrition from meteorite particles. According to Gerard Kuiper of the University of Chicago, the escape of gases from the Moon’s magma gave the planet a light, porous consistency, like that of a pumice stone.
The Moon is old—Qfwfq agreed—pitted with holes, worn out. Rolling around naked through the skies, it gets worn down and loses its flesh like a bone that’s been gnawed. This is not the first time that such a thing has happened; I remember Moons that were even older and more battered than this one; I’ve seen loads of these Moons, seen them being born and running across the sky and dying out, one punctured by hail from shooting stars, another exploding from all its craters, and yet another oozing drops of topaz-coloured sweat that evaporated immediately, then being covered by greenish clouds before being reduced to a dried-up, spongy shell.
What happens on the Earth when a Moon dies is not easy to describe; I’ll try to do it by referring to the last instance I can remember. Following a lengthy period of evolution, one could say that the Earth had by then reached the point where we are now; in other words, it had entered that phase when cars wear out more quickly than the soles of your shoes; beings that were more or less human manufactured and bought and sold things; the cities covered the continents with luminous colour. These cities grew more or less in the same places as now, however different the shape of the continents might have been. There was even a New York which in some way resembled the New York that is familiar to all of you, but much newer, or rather more awash with new products, new toothbrushes, a New York with its own Manhattan that stretched out dense with skyscrapers gleaming like the nylon bristles of a brand new toothbrush.
In this world where every object was instantly thrown away and substituted with another new and perfect replacement, at the slightest sign of breakage or ageing, at the first dent or stain, there was just one false note, one shadow: the Moon. It wandered through the sky, naked, corroded and grey, more and more alien to the world down here, a hangover from a way of being that was now incongruous.
Ancient expressions like ‘full moon’, ‘half moon’, ‘last-quarter moon’, continued to be used but were just figures of speech: how could you call ‘full’ that shape that was all cracks and holes and that always seemed on the point of crashing down on our heads in a shower of rubble? Not to mention when it was a waning moon! It was reduced to a kind of cheese crust that had been nibbled away, and always disappeared before we expected it to. At the new moon, we wondered each time whether it would ever appear again (did we hope it would just disappear like that?) and when it did reappear again, looking more and more like a comb losing its teeth, we averted our eyes with a shudder.
It was a depressing sight. We went around in the crowds, our arms laden with parcels, going in and out of the big department stores that were open day and night—with our eyes we scanned the neon signs which climbed higher and higher up the skyscrapers, notifying us constantly of the new products that had been launched on the market—and there suddenly we would see it advancing, pale in the midst of those dazzling lights, slow and sick, and we could not get it out of our heads that every new thing, each product we had just bought, could become worn out, fade away, deteriorate, and we would lose our enthusiasm for running around buying things and working like mad, something not without consequences for the success of industry and commerce.
That was how we began to consider the problem of what to do with it, this counterproductive satellite: it did not serve any purpose; it was a wreck, no good to anyone any more. As it lost weight, it started to incline its orbit towards the Earth: it was dangerous, apart from anything else. And the nearer it got, the more it slowed down its course: we could no longer calculate its quarters; even the calendar, the rhythm of the months had become a mere convention; the Moon went forward in fits and starts as though it were about to collapse.
On these nights of low moon, people of a more unstable temperament began to do weird things. There was always a sleepwalker teetering along the edges of a skyscraper with his arms outstretched towards the Moon, or a werewolf starting to howl in the middle of Times Square, or a pyromaniac setting fire to the dock warehouses. By now these were common occurrences which no longer attracted the usual crowd of rubbernecks. But when I saw a girl sitting, completely naked, on a bench in Central Park, I had to stop.
Even before I saw her, I had had the feeling that something mysterious was about to happen. As I crossed Central Park at the wheel of my open-top car, I felt myself bathed in a flickering light, like that of a fluorescent tube emitting a series of livid, blinking flashes before it comes on fully. The view all around me was like that of a garden that had sunk into a lunar crater. Beside a pond reflecting a slice of Moon sat the naked girl. I braked. For a second I thought I recognized her. I ran out of the car towards her, then stopped as if stunned. I did not know who she was; I just felt that I had to do something for her urgently.
Everything was scattered on the grass all round the bench: her clothes, one stocking and shoe here and the others there, her earrings, necklace and bracelets, handbag and shopping bag, with the contents emptied out in a wide arc, and countless packets and goods, almost as if on her way back from a lavish shopping spree in the city’s shops, that creature had felt herself called and had instantly dropped everything to the ground, had realized that she had to free herself of every object or sign that held her bound to the Earth, and was now waiting there to be assumed into the lunar sphere.
‘What’s happening?’ I stammered. ‘Can I help you?’
‘Help?’ she asked, with her eyes still staring upwards. ‘Nobody can help. Nobody can do anything,’ and it was clear that she was not talking about herself but about the Moon.
We had the Moon above us, a convex shape almost crushing us, like a ruined roof, studded with holes like a cheese-grater. Just at that moment the animals in the zoo began to growl.
‘Is this the end?’ I asked mechanically, with no idea what I meant.
She replied, ‘It’s the beginning,’ or something like that (she spoke almost without opening her lips).
‘What do you mean? It’s the beginning of the end, or something else is beginning?’
She got up, walked across the grass. She had long copper-coloured hair that came down over her shoulders. She was so vulnerable that I felt the need to protect her in some way, to shield her, and I moved my hands towards her as though to be ready to stop her from falling or to fend off anything that might harm her. But my hands did not dare even graze her, and always stopped a few centimetres from her skin. And as I followed her like this past the flower gardens, I realized that her movements were similar to mine, that she too was trying to protect something fragile, something that might fall and shatter into pieces, and that needed consequently to be led towards places where it could settle gently, something that she could not touch but could only guide with her gestures: the Moon.
The Moon seemed lost: having abandoned the course of its orbit, it no longer knew where to go; it let itself be transported like a dried leaf. Sometimes it appeared to be plummeting towards the Earth, at others corkscrewing in a spiral movement, at others still it just seemed to be drifting. It was losing height, that was certain: for a second it seemed as if it would crash into the Plaza Hotel; instead it slid into a corridor between two skyscrapers, and disapp
eared from view towards the Hudson. It reappeared shortly afterwards, on the opposite side, popping out from behind a cloud, bathing Harlem and the East River in a chalky light, and as though caught by a gust of wind it rolled towards the Bronx.
‘There it is!’ I shouted. ‘There, it’s stopped!’
‘It can’t stop!’ exclaimed the girl, and she ran naked and barefoot over the grass.
‘Where are you going? You can’t wander around like that! Stop! Hey, I’m talking to you! What’s your name?’
She shouted out a name like Daiana or Deanna, something that could also have been an invocation. And she disappeared. In order to follow her, I jumped back into my car and began to search the avenues of Central Park.
The beams of my headlights lit up hedges, little hills, obelisks, but the girl, Diana, was nowhere to be seen. By now I had gone too far: I must have gone past her; I turned round to go back the way I came. A voice behind me said: ‘No, it’s there, keep going!’
Sitting behind me on the folded-back hood of my car was the naked girl, pointing towards the Moon.
I wanted to tell her to get down, that I could not travel across the city with her so prominently on view in that state, but I did not dare distract her, all intent as she was on not losing sight of the luminous glow that disappeared and reappeared at the end of the Avenue. And in any case—and this was even stranger—no passer-by seemed to notice this female apparition sitting up on my open-top car.
We crossed one of the bridges that link Manhattan to the mainland. Now we were going along a multi-lane highway, with other cars alongside us, and I kept my eyes fixed on the road ahead, fearing the laughter and crude comments that the sight of the two of us was no doubt prompting in the cars on either side. But when a saloon car overtook us, I nearly went off the road in surprise: crouched on its roof was a naked girl with her hair spread out in the wind. For a second I thought my passenger was leaping from one fast-moving car to another, but all I had to do was turn my eyes round ever so slightly to see that Diana’s knees were still there at the same height as my nose. And it was not just her body that glowed before my eyes: I saw girls everywhere, stretched out in the strangest of poses, clinging to the radiators, doors, mudguards of the speeding cars—their golden or dark hair was the only thing that contrasted with the pale or dark gleam of their naked skin. One of these mysterious female passengers was positioned on every car, all stretching forwards, urging the drivers to follow the Moon.
They had been summoned by the endangered Moon: I was certain of that. How many of them were there? More cars carrying lunar girls gathered at every crossroads and junction, converging from all quarters of the city on the place above which the Moon seemed to have stopped. Reaching the outskirts we found ourselves opposite an automobile scrapyard.
The road petered out in a hilly area with little valleys, ridges, hills and peaks; it was not the contours of the land that created the bumpiness, but rather the layers of things that had been thrown away: everything that the consumerist city expelled once it had quickly used it up so it could immediately enjoy the pleasure of handling new things, ended up in that unprepossessing neighbourhood.
Over the course of many years, piles of battered fridges, yellowing issues of Life magazine, fused light-bulbs had accumulated around an enormous junkyard for cars. It was over this jagged, rusty territory that the Moon now loomed, and the swathes of beat-up metal swelled up as if lifted by a high tide. They resembled each other: the decrepit Moon and that crust of the Earth that had been soldered into an amalgam of wreckage; the mountains of scrap metal formed a chain that closed in on itself like an amphitheatre, whose shape was precisely that of a volcanic crater or a lunar sea. The Moon hung over this space and it was as if the planet and its satellite were acting as mirror images of each other.
Our car engines had all stopped: there is nothing that intimidates cars so much as their own cemeteries. Diana got down and all the other Dianas followed suit. But their energy now seemed to fade: they moved with uncertain steps, as though on finding themselves amidst those ruins of sharp scrap-iron they were suddenly seized by an awareness of being naked; many of them folded their arms to cover their breasts, as if shivering with cold. Meanwhile they scattered, climbing over the mountains of useless scrap: they went over the top, and down into the amphitheatre, and found themselves forming as it were a huge circle there in the middle. Then they all raised their arms up together.
The Moon gave a start as though that gesture of theirs had affected it, and it seemed for an instant to recover its energy and to climb again. The circle of girls stood with their arms raised, and their faces and breasts turned towards the Moon. Was that what the Moon had asked of them? Did it need them to support itself in the sky? I did not have time to ask myself this question. At that very moment the crane entered the scene.
The crane had been designed and built by the authorities, who had decided to cleanse the sky of such an inelegant encumbrance. It was a bulldozer from which a kind of crab’s claw rose up; it came forward on its caterpillar-treads, squat and stocky, just like a crab; and when it arrived at the place that had been prepared for the operation, it seemed to become even more squat, in order to cling to the Earth with every part of itself. The winch spun quickly; the bulldozer raised its arm into the sky; nobody had ever thought that a crane with such a long arm could be built. Its bucket opened, showing all its teeth; now, more than a crab’s claw, it resembled a shark’s mouth. The Moon was just there; it wavered as though it wanted to escape, but the crane seemed to be magnetized: we saw the Moon being hoovered up, as it were, and landing in its jaws. Its mandibles closed round it with a dry sound: crack! For a second it seemed that the Moon had turned into crumbs like a squashed meringue, but instead it stayed inside the jaws of the bucket, half inside and half out. It had turned into an oblong shape, a kind of thick cigar held between the bucket’s teeth. Down came a shower the colour of ashes.
The crane now tried to yank the Moon out of its orbit and drag it downwards. The winch had started to wind backwards: by this stage it needed to make a huge effort. Diana and her friends had stayed motionless with their arms raised, as though hoping to beat the enemy’s aggression with the strength of their circle. It was only when the ash from the disintegrating Moon rained down on their faces and breasts that we saw them disperse. Diana let out a sharp cry of lament.
At that point the imprisoned Moon lost what little light it had left: it became a black, shapeless rock. It would have crashed down on to the Earth had it not been held fast by the bucket’s teeth. Down below, the contractor’s men had prepared a metal net, fixing it to the ground with long nails, all around the area where the crane was slowly lowering its load.
Once it was on the ground, the Moon was a pockmarked, sandy boulder, so dull and opaque that it was incredible that previously it had illuminated the sky with its shining reflection. The crane opened the jaws of its bucket, went back on its caterpillar treads, and almost flipped over as it was suddenly lightened of its load. The contractor’s men were ready with the net: they wrapped it round the Moon, trapping it between the net and the ground. The Moon tried to struggle in its straitjacket: a tremor like that of an earthquake caused avalanches of empty cans to slide down from the mountain of refuse. Then all was peaceful again. The now moonless sky was being drenched by bursts of light from the big lamps. But the darkness was already fading.
Dawn found the car cemetery contained an extra wreck: the Moon that had been shipwrecked there in the middle was almost indistinguishable from the other discarded objects; it was the same colour, had the same condemned look, the same appearance as something you couldn’t imagine ever being new. All around, a low murmuring resounded throughout the crater of terrestrial rubbish: the light of dawn revealed a swarm of living things slowly waking up. Bearded creatures were advancing amidst disembowelled lorry carcasses, the shattered wheels, the crumpled metal.
In the midst of the things that had been thrown away lived a commun
ity of people who had also been thrown away, or marginalized, or had thrown themselves away of their own volition, or who had got tired of running all over the city to sell and buy new things that were destined to go out of date immediately: people who had decided that only things that had been thrown away were the real riches of the world. Encircling the Moon, throughout the whole amphitheatre, these lanky figures were standing upright or were seated, their faces framed by beards or unkempt hair. It was a tatterdemalion, bizarrely dressed crowd and in their midst was the naked Diana and all the girls from the night before. They came forward, and began to release the steel wires of the net from the nails that had been driven into the ground.
Immediately, like an air balloon released from its moorings, the Moon rose, hovering above the girls’ heads, above the grandstand full of tramps, and stayed suspended, held back by the steel net whose wires Diana and her friends were operating, sometimes pulling them, sometimes letting go, and when they all started to run, still holding the ends of the wires, the Moon followed.
As soon as the Moon moved, a kind of wave began to rise from the valleys of wreckage: the old car carcasses crushed like accordions started to march, creakily arranging themselves in a procession, and a stream of battered cans rolled along, making a noise like thunder, though you couldn’t tell whether they were dragging or being dragged along by everything else. Following this Moon that had been saved from the scrap-heap, all the things and all the people that had been resigned to being chucked into a corner, started on the road again, and swarmed towards the richest neighbourhoods of the city.
That morning the city was celebrating Consumer Thanksgiving Day. This feast came round every year, one day in November, and had been set up to allow the shops’ customers to display their gratitude towards the god Production who tirelessly satisfied their every desire. The biggest department store in town organized a parade each year: an enormous balloon, in the shape of a garishly coloured doll, was paraded through the main street, held by ribbons which sequin-clad girls pulled as they marched behind a musical band. So that morning the procession was coming down Fifth Avenue: the majorette twirled her baton in the air, the big drums banged, and the giant made of balloons representing ‘The Satisfied Customer’ flew amidst the skyscrapers, obediently following a leash held by girls in kepis, tassles and fringed epaulettes, riding on spangly motorbikes.
The Complete Cosmicomics Page 29