The Book of Flights Read online

  Contents

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by J.M.G. Le Clézio

  Title Page

  Epigraph

  Can you imagine . . .

  One day, the . . .

  I invite you . . .

  Men and women, . . .

  Everything begins on . . .

  Self-criticism

  This is how . . .

  Self-criticism

  Meanwhile . . . they had . . .

  Town of iron . . .

  There was another . . .

  Diary of imponderables . . .

  And now, a . . .

  Savagery of the . . .

  Farther still, later . . .

  On the following . . .

  I want to . . .

  This is what . . .

  Self-criticism

  Farther still, later . . .

  Perhaps the answer . . .

  Travelling, always urged . . .

  The flute player at Angkor

  Those who follow . . .

  The question now . . .

  Young Man Hogan . . .

  Self-criticism

  Waiting

  Itinerary

  Self-criticism

  A little later . . .

  My town is . . .

  Animals possess something . . .

  The Earth is . . .

  Meanwhile . . . Hogan reached . . .

  A few days . . .

  Self-criticism

  But the journey . . .

  The flight leads . . .

  During that time, . . .

  The flute player at Cuzco

  The world is . . .

  Self-criticism

  And one day, . . .

  The History of Vintage

  Copyright

  About the Book

  Young Man Hogan’s journey begins in the dazzling streets of a nameless necropolis, and leads across fleeting landscapes – deserts, seas, mountains, islands, cities and great plains – to countless entertainments and adventures in four continents. It is an exploration and a celebration, glittering and exuberant, of the writer’s art and of life itself.

  About the Author

  J.M.G. Le Clézio was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2008. He was born in Nice, France, in 1940 to a French mother and her first-cousin, a Mauritian doctor of French origin who, being born in Mauritius when the island was under British rule, held a British passport. However, the family was completely Francophone. Jean-Marie Le Clézio has travelled extensively and is articulate in English and Spanish, but his true homeland is very much the French language. He spends his time between France (Nice, Paris and Brittany), and Albuquerque New Mexico. He has published more than 40 books since he won the Renaudot Prize in 1963, age 23, with Le Procès-verbal (The Interrogation), and his works have been translated around the world into 36 languages.

  OTHER WORKS BY J.M.G. LE CLÉZIO AVAILABLE IN ENGLISH

  The Interrogation

  Fever

  The Flood

  Terra Amata

  War

  The Giants

  The Mexican Dream, or, The Interrupted Thought of Amerindian Civilizations

  The Prospector

  Onitsha

  The Round & Other Cold Hard Facts

  Wandering Star

  The Book of Flights

  J.M.G. Le Clézio

  An Adventure Story

  Translated from the French by

  Simon Watson Taylor

  But let us leave this city & press on.

  (Marco Polo)

  CAN YOU IMAGINE that? A great airport building in the middle of nowhere, its roof stretched flat under the sky, and on this roof a small boy sitting in an easy chair is staring straight ahead. The air is white, buoyant, there is nothing to see. Then, hours later, comes the rending noise of a jet plane taking off. The piercing screech grows louder and louder, as though a siren is revolving faster and faster at the other end of the roof. Now the noise’s shrillness changes pitch, becomes a roar that bounces off the roof’s square surfaces, reaches the depths of the sky and transforms it suddenly into a vast sheet of splintered glass. When the noise is so loud that nothing else can possibly exist, this long silver metal cylinder appears, gliding over the ground and lifting slowly into the air. The small boy sitting in his easy chair has not budged. He has been watching intently, with eyes that the unbearable noise has filled with tears. The metallic tube has torn itself away from the ground, is climbing, climbing. The small boy watches it calmly, he has all the time in the world. He sees the long silver fuselage charge down the concrete runway, its tyres barely skimming the surface. He sees the sky reflected in the round cabin windows. And he sees the great swept-back wings carrying the four jet pods. Blackened exhaust nozzles spout flames, wind, thunder. The small boy sitting in his easy chair is thinking of something. He is thinking that one day, suddenly, for no reason, at some particular moment this long pale cylinder is going to burst apart in a single explosion, igniting a patch of gold and red on the surface of the sky, a vulgar, silent blossom of fire which remains suspended there for a few seconds before fading, sucked into the centre of thousands of black dots. While the wave of a terrible sound spreads out and reverberates in the ears.

  Then the small boy gets up, and with a slow mechanical movement of arms and legs walks across the flat roof of the airport building, in the direction of a door above which is written in red letters

  EXIT

  and he goes down the rubber steps of the steel staircase, all the way down to the centre of the concourse. Inside the walls the elevator hums as it moves up and down; and everything is visible, as though the walls were made of glass. There are strange silent outlines to be seen: children with tired eyes, women wrapped in red overcoats, dogs, men carrying umbrellas.

  In the concourse, the light is perfectly white, reflected from hundreds of mirrors. Near the main entrance there is an electric clock. Little shutters revolve in quick jerks on its square face, their numbers superseding each other at regular intervals:

  15 05

  15 06

  15 07

  15 08

  15 09

  15 10

  15 11

  Women’s voices speaking close to microphones say trivial things. People sit in rows on leather settees, waiting. When anyone passes through the invisible ray the great glass doors slide back in a single motion, once, twice, ten times. Can you, can you imagine that?

  Can you think about everything that happens on earth, about all these speedy secrets, these adventures, these routs and confusions, these signs, these patterns painted on the sidewalk? Have you run through these grassy fields, or along these beaches? Have you bought oranges with money, have you watched oil slicks moving around on the surface of the water in the docks? Have you read the time on sundials? Have you sung the words of stupid songs? Have you gone to the movies any evening, and watched for hours that seemed like minutes the images of a picture called Nazarin or else Red River? Have you eaten iguana in Guiana or tiger in Siberia?

  Robt BURNS

  Cigarillos

  If it’s not a Robt BURNS it’s not THE cigarillo

  Or else:

  (Wilfred Owen) It seemed that out of battle I escaped Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped

  Through granites which titanic wars had groined.

  Or again:

  (Parmenides)

  All words are possible, then, all names. They rain down, all these words, they disintegrate into a powdery avalanche. Belched from the volcano’s mouth, they spurt into the sky, then fall again. In the quivering air, like gelatine, the sounds trace their bubble paths. Can you imagine that? The black night thr
ough which the rockets streak, and then the slabs of explosive mud, women’s faces, eyes, desires that cut the flesh like gentle razor blades. Noise, noise everywhere! Where to go? Where to dive, into what void, where to bury one’s head among these stone pillows? What to write on the blank sheet of paper, already blackened with every conceivable handwriting? Choose, why choose? Let all rumours run their noisy course, let impulses hustle crazily towards unknown destinations. Innumerable places, seconds beyond measure, names that string out for ever:

  men!

  jellyfishes!

  eucalyptus!

  green-eyed women!

  Bengali cats!

  pylons!

  cities!

  springs!

  green plants, yellow plants!

  Does all that really mean anything? I add my words, I increase the enormous hubbub by a few murmurs. I blacken a few more lines, there, to no purpose, to destroy, to say I am alive, to trace more new dots, more new strokes on the old ravaged surface. I jettison my useless ciphers, choking the insatiable holes, the wells without memory. I add a few more knots to the tangled skein, a few excrements to the pipe of the great sewer. Wherever a blank space still survives, making pure emptiness visible, quick, I write, terror, anchylosis, mad dog. These are eyes that I am putting out, clear innocent eyes that my etching needle suddenly punctures bloodily. Noise, noise, I hate you, but I am bound to you. Captured in the silo, a grain that cracks and lets it powder sift down in the middle of the motionless sea of the other grains. Letters that cover everything! Laughs, cries, groans that cover everything! Colours with lead copings! Matter with boulder limbs! Living tomb, weight which comes crashing down upon all of us, and I too am a weight, I too press heavily on the head and force it into the earth. I have everything to say, everything to say! I hear, I repeat! Echo of an echo, channel of my throat in which words stumble, channels of air, endless corridors of the world. The blind doors slam, the windows open on to other windows. Farewell was what I wanted to say. Farewell. I am speaking to the living, I am speaking to the millions of eyes, ears and mouths hidden behind the walls. They watch and wait. They come and go, they remain, they do nothing but sleep. But they are there. No one can forget them. The world has incised its war tattoos, it has painted its body and face, and now here it is, muscles taut, hands clutching weapons, eyes burning with a fever to conquer. Who is going to shoot the first arrow?

  How to escape fiction?

  How to escape language?

  How to escape, if only a single time, if only from the word KNIFE?

  ONE DAY, THE person called Hogan was walking on his shadow, in the streets of the town where the harsh sun’s light held sway. The town was spread over the ground, a sort of vast necropolis with its dazzling flagstones and walls, and its grillwork of streets, avenues and boulevards. It really seemed as though everything was ready, was fixed up for things to happen in this way. The layout was methodical and left nothing out of account, almost nothing. There were the concrete sidewalks with regularly repeated little patterns along the surface, the asphalt highways scorched by tyre marks, the trees standing up stiffly, the lamp-posts, the vertical buildings rising to dizzy heights, the windows, the shops full of papers and records, the noises, the fumes. A little higher up there was this swollen ceiling, neither blue nor white, the colour of absence, in which the sun’s disc hung. An abstracted, anonymous expanse, an undulating desert, a sea in which the waves advanced, one behind the other, without ever changing anything.

  This is what the person called Hogan was walking on: he was walking on the white sidewalk, alongside the white road, through the air brimming over with white light. Everything had been enveloped in this powder, this snow, or this salt, and the tons of grain sparkled in unison. Not a patch of colour left anywhere, nothing but this unbearable whiteness that had penetrated each corner of the town. The giant searchlight held this circle of earth in its beam, and the light particles bombarded the matter unceasingly. Each shape and object had been transformed into a tiny lamp whose incandescent filament glowed brightly in the centre of its crystal bubble. The whiteness was everywhere. Vision was blanked out. Faint lines appeared and disappeared at the angle of the walls, under the women’s made-up eyes, along the scorching roofs. But the lines no sooner merged than they broke up, spread like fissures, and nothing was certain any longer. There was the line of houses squatting under the sky, the perspective of the avenues converging in the distant haze, the clouds stretched thin between the two horizons, the jet planes’ vapour trails, the exhaust from the vehicles that whizzed past. Surrounded by these things, Hogan advanced, a silhouette wearing white trousers, a white shirt and espadrilles, ready to disappear at any moment, or perhaps in the process of melting gently in the surrounding heat. He advanced without a thought in his mind, his eyes fixed on the millions of sparkles in the ground, the nape of his neck bare to the sun, and under his feet there was a black shadow.

  It was odd, walking on one’s shadow like this, in the planet’s closed atmosphere. It was odd and moving to walk on just one side of the earth, standing upright on the hard shell, looking up in the direction of the infinite. It was like arriving from the far end of the Milky Way, from Betelgeuse or Cassiopeia, encased in a platinum-coloured space suit, and beginning an exploration. From time to time one would have pressed a button and said in a slightly catarrhal voice:

  ‘Space explorer AUGH 212 to Relay station. Space explorer AUGH 212 to Relay station.’

  ‘Relay station to space explorer AUGH 212. Relay station to space explorer AUGH 212. Come in.’

  ‘Space explorer AUGH 212 to Relay station. Have left point 91 and am at present walking toward point 92. Everything under control. Over.’

  ‘Relay station to space explorer AUGH 212. Receiving you loud and clear. What do you see? Over.’

  ‘Space explorer AUGH 212 to Relay station. Everything here is white. I am walking in a symmetrical maze. There are many objects in motion. It is very hot here. I am now approaching point 92. Over.’

  ‘Relay station to space explorer AUGH 212. Do you notice any signs of organic life? Over.’

  ‘Space explorer AUGH 212 to Relay station. No, none. Over and out.’

  It was like walking along the bed of an ocean, too, with the thick silence of heavy bubbles rising from concealed sulphur vents, clouds of mud sliding away, fish crying out, sea urchins screeching, whale sharks grunting. And especially the invisible mass of water bearing down with its countless thousands of tons.

  That’s exactly how it was. Hogan was making his way through the streets of a submerged town, surrounded by the ruins of porticoes and cathedrals. He passed men and women, occasionally children, and they were strange marine creatures with flapping fins and retractile mouths. The shops and garages were gaping caverns where greedy octopuses lurked. The light circulated slowly, like a fine rain of mica dust. One could float for a long time among this debris. One could glide along currents that were alternatively warm, cold, warm. The water penetrated everywhere, sticky, acrid, it entered through the nostrils and flowed down the throat to fill the lungs, then swirled over the eyeballs, mingled with the blood and urine, and took leisurely possession of the whole body, impregnating it with its dream substance. It entered the ears, pressing against the tympana two little air bubbles that excluded the world for ever. There were no cries, no words, and thoughts became like coral, immobile living lumps lifting superfluous fingers.

  It was odd, but it was terrible too, because there was no possible end to it all. He who walks in the permanent illumination of the sun, unafraid of falling one day when the harsh rays have entered through the windows of the eyes and reached the secret chamber of the skull. He who inhabits a city of invincible whiteness. He who sees, understands and thinks the light, he who hears the light with its sounds of ceaseless rain. He who seeks, as though in the depths of a misty mirror, the fixed point of an incandescent face, the face, his face. He who is only an eye. He whose life is attached to the sun, whose soul is a
slave of the heavenly body, whose desires are all forging their way toward this sole meeting place, gulf of fusion, in which everything vanishes by creating its imperceptible drop of sweat, sweat of melted granite that gleams on the forehead, sweat weighing a ton. He who . . . Hogan walked in the dazzling street, in the whirlwind of bright light. He had already forgotten what colours were. Since the beginning of time the world had been thus: white. WHITE. The one thing that remained in all this snow, in all this salt, was this shadow gathered around his feet, a leaf-shaped black blob that glided silently forward.

  Hogan took a step to the right; the shadow glided to the right. He took a step to the left; the shadow immediately glided to the left. He started walking faster, then slower; the shadow followed. He jumped, staggered, waved his arms; the shadow did the same. It was the only form still visible in all this light, the only creature still living, perhaps. All his intelligence, thought and strength had flowed into this blob. He had become transparent, impalpable, easy to lose, while the shadow had assumed his whole weight, his whole indefectible presence. It was the shadow that led the way, now, guiding the man’s steps, it was the shadow that secured the body to the earth and prevented it from volatilizing in space.

  At one moment Hogan stopped in his tracks. He stood motionless on the sidewalk, in the brightly lit street. The sun was very high in the sky, blazing fiercely. Hogan looked down toward the ground and plunged into his dense shadow. He entered the well thus opened up, as though he were closing his eyes, as though night were falling. He lowered himself into the black blob, impregnating himself with its form and power. Stretched out on the ground he sought to drink this shadow, to pump its alien life into himself. But it always broke loose without budging from the spot, rebuffing his gaze, extending the boundaries of its domain. Diligently, while the sweat trickled down his neck, his back, his loins, his legs, Hogan attempted to flee the light. He would have to go lower, still lower down. He would have to switch off fresh lamps, break fresh mirrors, in a never-ending process. The burning bodywork of passing vehicles threw off stars and sparks. He would have to crush these stars, one after the other. The light falling from the sky fragmented into millions of droplets of mercury. This dust continued to accumulate, and he would have to sweep it away as fast as it formed. Silhouettes of men and women, heavy necklaces, gold pendants, glass earrings, cut-glass chandeliers, glided around him. Each second, Hogan would have to smash all this trumpery into smithereens. But it could never be exterminated. The eyes shone white and fierce from the depths of their sockets. The teeth. The nails. The lamé dresses. The rings. The walls of the houses were heavy with the whole weight of their chalk cliffs, the flat roofs sparkled outside the field of vision. The street, the one street, always taking up where it left off, traced its phosphorescent line as far as the horizon. The plane trees rustled their leaves like rows of flames, and the windowpanes were as hermetically sealed as mirrors, simultaneously icy and boiling hot. The air crumbled into powder as it arrived, breaking like a wave, skidding along, spreading its branches of living grains. All around was a mineral hardness. Water, clouds, blue sky had ceased to exist. There was nothing but this refractory surface where lines broke up and electricity flowed in a constant stream. The noises themselves had become luminous. They described their brutal arabesques, their spirals, their circles, their ellipses. They went through the air tracing whitish scars, they wrote signs, zigzags, incomprehensible letters. The horn of a steel-clad motor coach gave a bellow, and it was a broad trail of light advancing like a crevasse. A woman, her open mouth displaying two rows of enamelled teeth, yelled: ‘HI!’ and immediately one could see a large star scratched roughly into the concrete of the sidewalk. A dog barked, and its call slid rapidly along the walls like a burst of tracer bullets. From the back of a shop glaring with neon and plastics an electric apparatus blared a barbarous music, and it was the tongues of fire of the drums, the burning gas of the organ, the vertical bars of the double bass, the horizontal bars of the guitar, plus, from time to time, the extraordinary confusion of magnetic particles when the human voice chimed in to yell its words.