War Read online

  There was nothing left to kill. The pack had surrounded her and was prancing up and down in one spot, making enormous efforts. But it was a futile activity, a need to be in motion in the midst of general immobility, a need to speak with gestures.

  As she danced, the girl spoke with Monsieur X. She threw out her chest, turning her head slightly to the left, and that meant:

  ‘Am I alone? Am I quite alone?’

  And at the other end of the room she saw the man who was flexing his long legs, and that meant:

  ‘If you move like that, you will never be alone, if you move like that.’

  She twisted her hips and crossed her hands in front of her belly, while the light turned from red to blue. And that meant:

  ‘I want to be she who moves, not she who sees.’

  There was a man who made a leap forwards, and a young woman with golden hair who made a leap backwards, and the blue light trembled, and the neon eye opened its lid, and the music let out a shrill cry mingled with a deep snarl, and that meant:

  ‘You are beautiful.’

  She closed her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them again the light had turned orange, and the walls of the room were covered with vertical shadows:

  ‘I am with you, yes I am with you.’

  On the moist ground the knot tightened, then unravelled again. Legs glided and walked. Shoulders shook, heads floated like buoys, breaths exhaled in unison. The cigarette smoke formed strange tiers and clouds, a bearded man was kissing a red-haired girl, the wrist-watches and dark glasses glinted. The roofs of the houses were covered with dust, the cars were screeching around curves, and the sea’s grey waves were breaking along the sunny beach. That all meant:

  ‘Go on! Go on!’

  And she replied to Monsieur X, leaning her body slightly forwards, with the sweat plastering her hair to her neck:

  ‘I’m coming!’

  This was how she spoke, wordlessly. She made a drawing with her body, then erased it immediately. She knew that there was nothing here, nothing there, but empty space, so she stretched out an arm, and put forward a leg. No-one could see her, any longer, in the middle of the throng. No-one tried, any longer, to trip her over, or to talk to her.

  When the music stopped, Bea B. went to sit down again. She threaded her way through the tables without noticing anyone. She sat down in her chair and drank what was left in her glass. She felt very tired, and slept for a few moments.

  When she woke up, she saw that there was someone sitting next to her. It was a young woman aged about thirty, with a very pale face. She was dressed in black. The young woman leaned over towards Bea B. and, speaking right against her ear because of the noise, said:

  ‘Are you by any chance . . .?’

  Bea B. could not hear the name that was mentioned. She yelled in reply:

  ‘No!’

  ‘You look like her.’

  For an instant, Bea B. thought of leaving. But she was too tired.

  ‘Do you come here often?’ said the young woman in black.

  ‘No,’ said Bea B.

  ‘I saw you dancing, just now,’ said the young woman in black; ‘at the beginning you were all by yourself on the dance floor, it was great, it was really great.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Bea B.

  ‘You dance far better than the other girls here.’

  Bea B. noticed that the young woman in black was wearing a ring on her left hand. It was a cheap tin ring with a stone of blue glass. She wondered why this woman wore such an ugly ring. The other leaned over again and spoke in a deep voice that murmured strangely amid the bursts of music:

  ‘What is your name?’

  And since Bea B. said nothing:

  ‘Why were you dancing by yourself, like that, just now?’

  ‘Because I felt like it,’ said Bea B.

  The young woman in black had two creases around her mouth, and heavily made-up eyes.

  ‘Weren’t you afraid, doing that?’ she asked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That, dancing by yourself, like that?’

  ‘No, why?’ said Bea B.

  The young woman in black smiled, and leaned over towards Bea B. She studied her with black eyes that shone in her pale face.

  ‘You looked as though you were afraid,’ she murmured.

  ‘Everybody is afraid,’ said Bea B.

  She was wrong to have said that. Because immediately the room became black, and red, and stifling, with walls so thick that it grew impossible to breathe. At the same time, the music began to growl from deep in its throat, and the sounds that came out were like sneering laughs, and mewings, and sighs. Silence and immobility rushed back, glided up people’s legs, and emerged from the little cylinders of cigarettes like a deadly gas. The lamps revolved, the neon eye opened and closed.

  ‘You look so like this girl I used to know,’ said the young woman in black. She was – she was like you, she had eyes like yours, she was afraid all the time, she wanted me to protect her, she was afraid of everything, just like you.’

  The woman drew a silver cigarette-case from her bag, and lit a long white cigarette. Bea B. noticed that her hand was trembling a little as she lit the cigarette with a lighter.

  Then the young woman leaned over towards Bea B. once more. She whispered in her deep voice:

  ‘Look at them. Look at them.’

  The lights suspended from the ceiling were like propellers, they turned so fast that it was impossible to see them clearly.

  ‘They – they are so active. They are not afraid of anything. Look at that girl over there, the one in the black dress. She’s not afraid. And that one over there, with the peroxided hair. She’s not afraid. No-one’s afraid. They move in the way they’ve been told to, they are all alike. No-one could ever recognize them. They are stuck together. And look at her, the one with the freckles on her arms, she’s not afraid of anything. She would never dance all by herself. Her eyes are not panic-stricken. One doesn’t feel her heart beating madly in her chest. Look at them and tell me if you can see anyone who’s afraid, any girl who’s afraid like you are.’

  Bea B. did not reply. She stared at the dark little room with the bodies swarming over each other. She saw the taut masks, the glowing brutish faces with their white teeth. The eyes shining like steel screws, the blonde hair suffused with light, the naked shoulders glistening with sweat. She saw the gyrating hips, the stamping feet. It was too late. The pack had closed its circle, she could no longer get inside. The music had become incomprehensible, a succession of gurgles and hiccups, a peculiar din that sucked its sounds down towards the centre of the room, leaving pockets of empty space behind it. She could no longer understand anything. The young woman in black leaned right over her, murmured gently into her ear while holding her hand, and Bea B. no longer understood what the other was saying. Time, the future, were far ahead of her, they had fled as fast as they could, they had abandoned her. Over there, at the other end of the room, people were laughing, shouting, dancing. They were hot. They went on talking with their bodies, with their eyes, with their bellies. They were talking, and the whole room was answering, like bats do when they cross flights in a cave.

  ‘Come on!’

  ‘You’re beautiful!’

  ‘Agnès! Myriam! Elisa!’

  ‘André!’

  ‘It’s marvellous to feel as happy as I do!’

  ‘I’m roasting!’

  ‘Come on! Snap your fingers! Snap! Snap!’

  ‘I love you!’

  ‘I love you!’

  ‘I’m there! Here! There!’

  She had to go, right away. Bea B. got up abruptly and walked towards the door. She heard the young woman in black call something out, behind her. Without once looking back, she passed through several layers of smoke and light, walls of men and women. Her heart pounding, she ran along the corridor and through the door. Already, the room was far behind, buried in the centre of the earth, gradually smouldering into nothing. Outside, Bea B. felt
the cold air, and above her, between the roofs of the houses, she saw the black sky. Cars were still moving along on their rubber tyres. Groups of humans were still walking on the cement pavement. Everything was calm. No-one seemed to be preoccupied with any malediction, but who knew what they were hiding deep inside their skulls? Nothing had changed, as though the centuries had never passed. Perhaps, somewhere, there was still a great red wall with two words written across its top in letters of fire, two magic VOOM VOOM words blinking on and off. Perhaps there was some deserted avenue down which Monsieur X was, even now, hurtling at a breakneck speed on his 500 cc BMW.

  Numerous fires are burning deep beneath the earth’s crust.

  Empedocles.

  THE TERRIBLE NOISES of war: in the street, in front of a sort of crossroads, the men have arrived with their machines. They have parked themselves at the bend of the pavement, in the sun, and they are digging. Under the iron points of the pneumatic drills the ground is splitting, bursting apart, scattering in dust. The machines with their scorching engines are working at full speed, chattering explosively. Compressed air is circulating in the rubber tubes, bursting out of the valves with shrill whistles. The men are hunched over the ground. They have brown faces, and broad, scarred hands. They say nothing. They lean on their pneumatic drills, and before their eyes, holes open in the ground. The noise is so powerful that it covers the face of the earth. There is no way of escaping it. Machines full of hot grease shudder on the roadway. They are beautiful yellow-painted machines with engines that growl at the air around them. The blows of the metal spears reverberate in the ground, then echo in the air. The sky is a blue-painted lid pressing down on the city’s walls. Cars glide peacefully along the street’s lanes, and the noise of their engines mingles with the noise of the machines. The men’s shapes are almost lost to view, by now. The noise hovers in the air like a cloud of gnats, swaying from left to right, and up and down. Perhaps the planet is the skin of a drum, vibrating under the endless blows. Or again, perhaps the universe is only an immense ear endlessly stripping away the linings of its auricle and devouring the noises with its ear-drum.

  The ripples send their rings spreading very fast through the atmosphere. Deep beneath the surface of the water, the noise sweeps forward even more quickly, hurling its waves down to the very bottom, then flashing to the surface again.

  Somewhere or other, a hidden loudspeaker is pouring forth a continual uproar. Everything issues from this mouth, the noises of engines, the roars of jet planes, bomb explosions, Italian hooters, fog-horns, the screeching of cranes, the rasping of cement-mixers, trains crossing iron bridges at sixty-five miles an hour, women’s heel-taps, the cries of birds.

  The work site is huge, hollowed out of the centre of the town, and surrounded by a wooden fence. At the bottom of a crater, motor-pumps suck in lakes of mud and spew them out again with enormous belches. The blows of a steam-piston send a block of metal, an anvil, rising slowly up an iron tower; then, when it has reached the top of the tower, the machine trips its cables, and the block of metal crashes back onto the ground. And a terrible thud makes the houses shudder on their foundations, a deep heavy blow that echoes through far-off valleys.

  Lorries move off in procession. As they pass, windows rattle. The lorries have great snouts painted red or yellow, roaring engines, crushing tyres. They thunder down the highways in a cloud of dust, their four headlamps blazing. Their metal doors carry names written in white letters, noms de guerre like CADENA, INOX, MAGNE; and there are other aliases on their bonnets, FORD, CHEVROLET, CHAUSSON, DATSUN. They drive through the unknown town, on their high wheels, changing speed all the time. Sometimes they brake heavily, blowing out compressed air. Their sheet-metal shells sparkle in the sun. They transport long steel rods that dangle and sway at the rear, mountains of gravel, sometimes huge blocks of rock that weigh many tons.

  The noise of war spreads out, surges forward. In a single stroke it reaches the depths of the blue sky, reverberating against the cloud layer. The noise of the pneumatic drills fills the crossroads so loudly that the cars seem to be moving in silence. The noise yells with all its might, it rumbles inside the earth’s caverns. The noise of the ocean’s waves shattering against the sheer cliffs, the noise of the sea’s breathing as it storms the dykes and estuaries with its millions of cubic feet.

  The noise detonates with such violence that suddenly nothing is safe any longer. What has become of the beaches, rivers, forests, mountain peaks? The tarred road has opened up, and spread out like an airport runway. The outlines of the buildings have fled to the distant horizon, and now all that is left is this great grey desert sparkling in the sun. Great metal aeroplanes, their jet pods spouting flames, are gliding along this esplanade, then tearing themselves away from the ground and climbing skywards with piercing shrieks.

  All the noises, all the noises: there was no end to the number of them that could be identified as they arose. The whirring of scooters, the rattling of mopeds, the grating of trams, the growling of cars. The blasts from hooters, shrill, pip pip, tüüüüüt, or deep, honk honk, beep, rrreuh. The crash of sledge-hammers against the ground, the screeching of brakes, the tattoo beaten by goods-waggons at railway junctions. The air is knocked off balance. The ground skids away. There are harsh changes of colour: reds turn purple, then purplish-blue, then brown, then black. Shapes, too, are undergoing transformations, as they get carried away by whirlwinds, sucked in by waterspouts, their shattered fragments hurled for miles. Window-panes have become opaque, true mirrors of polished metal from which the light rebounds and melts away.

  Sometimes, mysterious tremors sweep across the face of the earth. Or else, puzzling pains begin to grow along the pavements, tender spots that sprout their stars of nerves upon the walls. The landscape tries to breathe, but cannot. Seized by a sudden cramp, it chokes for whole minutes on end.

  The noise blows harder than the wind. First it is cold, then it scorches like the mouth of a furnace. It twists iron poles, it uproots pylons. When the wind dies down, everything resumes its place, but there is something in the position of the doors and windows that is different from before. Something is grimacing. Nothing is safe, any longer; the noise has made everything fragile. It has cracked glass and stone. It has loosened the metal girders inside the reinforced-concrete blocks, and it would need a mere flick of the finger for the whole lot to come crumbling down.

  It is a cone of annihilation that has settled over the town and made it so friable. The noise, the great sand-making machine. Everywhere, thundering engines gnaw away at partition-walls, demolish ramparts. They open breaches to the sea’s invasion. One day the outer walls will give way and the terrible flood will leap in with one bound, to submerge the entire world in a fraction of a second.

  Not many real actions still take place. Cars advance, men advance in the streets that are like gullies; but they move fitfully, with sudden lurches that betray sickness. It is true: everything is in motion, nothing remains stationary. But the movements enter into each other, cancel each other out. It is a drawing that is being simultaneously sketched in and erased. No-one ever changes. No-one is ever farther away, or elsewhere. The ponderous machines shake all over as they pound, smash, excavate. Wounds open up in the roadway. Tyres trace series of letters, rub them out, write them over again. The writing says

  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

  iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

  zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

  Waves of faces pass along the pavement, then vanish, and other waves appear. Eyes, mouths, nostrils swim through the fog. They come in their thousands, emerging from the unknown, moving towards the unknown funnel. Gleaming eyes, black and green globes in the centre of their gangue of eyelids, surrounded by lashes and wrinkles, eyes that roll, close, wink, fill with tears. The eyes see. But the noise drives them off into the infinite, and they recede swiftly, taking with them their cargo of fleeting images. The mouths advance, too,
some closed, some open. They breathe. They speak. What they are saying is hardly audible. Words that hover in space, and that are melted instantly by the surrounding uproar.

  ‘What I say is’

  ‘Ah how true that is, Monsieur Russo’

  ‘Chock’ ‘At Baden-Baden’

  Nostrils engaged in breathing, two by two. Sometimes they are blocked, and a peculiar valve-like wheeze comes out. They quiver. They draw avidly from the reservoir of the air, which penetrates noisily into the lungs.

  The faces advance steadily through the thick air. One does not know them. Doubtless, one will never know them. One is imprisoned in the plexiglass shell, unable to touch anything. Thousands of such faces, transmitting speech and thought. All these things and all these people that one comes across and passes, that one forgets. Impossible to halt. Impossible to hold back. These are the armies of the war of movement and noise. They arrive and disappear again. For a tenth of a second, they shine out, with two clear innocent eyes. Or else the worn face of an old woman, sucking her gums as she advances. Another face, brown and hard, with lines of sorrow around the mouth and lines of anger between the brows. Another one, and another, and yet another. A girl with still unformed features: the lightning of her glance flashes once and is extinguished. Still another face, chalk-white, a woman’s mask on which the eyelids are emphasized with a stroke of charcoal, the lips with a red line, and the hair curls back along the forehead in separate locks. There is so much hermetically sealed beauty passing in the street, while the noise erupts all around. The mechanisms are perfect, they have secret works: smoothly operating wires, coils, muscles. The bodies are metallic shells over which the uproar swirls. Everything is closed. To understand, tin-openers would be needed. The noise bursts against the polished skins and spreads in thousands of phosphorescent droplets. But perhaps it is the noise that drives all the men and women forward. The snarls of the engines push the silhouettes forward, on their waves, as though onto the crest of a roller, and these outlines will finally break into foam at the other end of the world.