The Flood Read online

  The phantom aircraft seemed to remain over the square for an interminable period, shifting on from cloud to cloud with sluggish reluctance. Its thunderous racket blasted the whole district, formed an invisible cone which pressed down on every exposed surface, kept the whole maelstrom of sound shut in, as though a lid had been clapped over it. In the space of a few seconds the scene had changed from normality to nightmare, had become a vast, congested, frozen expanse, an area littered with steel or stone objects and quiveringly racked by this all-pervasive, agonizing din. Individual noises no longer existed, there was only a kind of solid vortex pressed continually against one’s ear-drums, forcing them inwards. People themselves seemed temporarily bereft of movement; they stood there in the street staring blindly at nothing, held captive by the blast of sound passing over them. The uproar was anchored to the earth’s central core, whirled round and round with its motion through space. It had permeated every reflection, each source of light. It had its own individual smell, you could touch it. It was a stony matrix that lay like a dead weight on your chest, made your heart palpitate. It hurt your eyes to watch the way it beat down in the light, a grey and white sound that exploded on the pavements and in the sky like some vast snowfield. Outlines and colours abruptly melted, ran, realigned themselves. Cars floated airborne above the asphalt, and the windows of every building were ablaze together. When the intensity of the noise rose to 135 decibels, or thereabouts, Besson felt as though he were about to vanish down some deep hole.

  Slowly, with a vast effort, he managed to raise his hands as far as his ears, and held them there for a moment. The din tried to penetrate his very skin, humming and vibrating like a swarm of wasps. But when Besson at last removed his hands, the awful din had vanished, leaving only the normal abundance of sharp-edged, delicate, individual sounds. Colours had gone back to something very like normal, and people were beginning to move along the sidewalks once more. Cars moved off one behind the other, haloed with hot, shimmering exhaust fumes. The jet aircraft was no longer audible.

  François Besson moved away from the vicinity of the square with one or two unimportant lesions in the cells of his nervous system. He was on the look-out for some narrow, shabby backstreet, and found himself hugging the wall as close as he could while he walked. He was a little jumpy at the moment, and the slightest unexpected noise—a motor-cycle back-firing round the corner, for instance—was liable to make his heart beat faster. Without making it obvious, he began to concentrate minutely on avoiding contact, keeping objects at arm’s length.

  In this manner he walked back up towards the town centre, not paying overmuch attention to where he was going. Men hurried past him, wrapped up to the chin in damp overcoats. He met young women, old women, the occasional beauty, all their faces cruel and expressionless under the make-up they wore. He walked by electrical repair shops, bookshops, furniture stores, chemists and florists. He saw what looked like shell-holes in the pavement, and machines pumping out the drains. He passed stretches of wall with vast posters plastered all over them. One of these showed an orange the size of a car, cut in two, with a drop of juice forming on its yellow pulp, and a monstrously vast baby’s head, that must have covered several square yards, with its fat pink cheeks and bald skull and bubble nose, and two big black eyes shiny as metal balls, with the juicy inside of the orange reflected in them. Lower down, under the picture, there was written, in bold lettering: AN ORANGE IS WORTH ITS WEIGHT IN GOLD FOR GOOD HEALTH. The houses across the way were flanked by rows of tall wooden fences, now much dilapidated, and small gardens chock-a-block with mud and rubbish. Clumps of irises sprouted amid a litter of grey stones: water dripped down on leaves and old piled-up packing-cases.

  Life had strictly limited horizons here: the rest of the world remained an unknown quantity. In one of these abandoned gardens, beneath blank, empty windows, a mongrel was going round and round on his chain, while the rain drizzled down on him. He no longer even bothered to bark. It occurred to Besson that he too might have shut himself up in the middle of some waste lot, beside an old wooden shack, and gone prowling round the same ancient slate-coloured prison, occasionally glancing at the pitch-black sky, with neither hopes nor expectations.

  As he passed by a recessed doorway Besson noticed an old man sheltering under it, with a pile of newspapers beside him, and sitting very still. He was not all that old, in fact: perhaps sixty at the outside. But there was a broken, defeated look about his face and posture. He sat on a folding camp-stool, with the pile of papers close to him, waiting, waiting, his head leaning back against the door-jamb. People came and went on the pavement in front of him, but he never called out to them. He might have been deaf and dumb; he just sat there, huddled in a lumber-jacket, its collar turned up over his ears. He wore a sou’wester, and his eyes were hidden behind thick tinted glasses.

  Besson paused to look closer at him, and realized that he was blind. Then he went across into the doorway and bought a paper. The blind man counted out his change competently enough, feeling the coins with his fingertips.

  ‘You can’t be very warm there,’ Besson said.

  Without so much as a nod by way of greeting the man said: ‘It’s all right.’ He had a strong, somewhat nasal voice.

  Besson said: ‘Filthy weather, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s raining, all right,’ the man said. ‘We’ll have floods before it’s through.’

  ‘Think so?’

  ‘I don’t think, I know,’ the man told him. Then, gesturing with his hand, he added: ‘Besides, just listen. Hear that noise? It’s the flood building up.’

  Besson strained both ears, without success.

  ‘I can’t hear anything,’ he said.

  ‘Try again. Listen carefully. There’s a sort of dull rumbling, down there, underground.’

  ‘With all these cars passing I can’t hear a thing.’

  ‘That’s because you aren’t used to it. But it does make a noise. It’s all the small water-channels in town rising. If they go on like that for another week, we’ll be flooded out.’

  ‘You really think so?’

  ‘I’m telling you. Here, shove your ear down against the pavement, you’ll hear it then.’

  Besson knelt down and rested his head on the concrete surface. At once he caught the muffled, vibrating roar of the swollen water-channels. It was a most disturbing sound.

  ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘There is a noise down there.’

  ‘It’s the beginning of the flood.’

  For a moment neither of them said anything. Besson watched the man’s face. He had heavy, sanguine features, and an absolutely impassive expression. Not even his wrinkles stirred. Round his dark glasses, close to the eye-sockets, were several curious scars. They had a whitish, puffy appearance.

  ‘Have you—have you been doing this for long?’ Besson asked.

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘Well I mean, selling papers.’

  ‘Oh, the papers. Four years and more now, yes.’

  ‘What did you do before that?’

  ‘Oh, I’ve had a go at everything. I’ve sold National Lottery tickets, and done odd jobs. But I prefer papers. They pay better, and you don’t need to keep shouting.’

  ‘Do a lot of people buy papers?’

  ‘Heavens, yes, indeed they do. But the Lottery, now, that’s something else again. There were days when it was all right, and others when I didn’t sell a single ticket.’

  ‘Just a matter of luck, h’m?’

  ‘Well, sure. What d’you expect with the Lottery?’

  ‘But—but what do you think about, sitting there like that all day?’

  The man coughed.

  ‘Oh, I’ve got plenty to occupy me. You’d be surprised how quickly the time passes. I think about whatever I please, or sometimes I’ll listen to the radio. I’ve got a little transistor set in my pocket. Here, have a look.’

  The man brought out a small black and red object. He turned a knob, and music blared out of
it. He held the set against his ear for two or three seconds, then switched it off and shoved it back in the pocket of his lumber-jacket.

  ‘I’m very fond of music,’ he said. ‘And there are always people who enjoy a bit of a chat when they buy their paper. Sometimes my wife comes and keeps me company. I count my takings, too. It all helps.’

  ‘All the same, there must be days when you get fed up with the whole business.’

  ‘Well, yes, when it gets really cold I’d rather be at home. But if I stayed away too often, someone’d pinch my beat.’

  ‘Is it hard to get one?’

  ‘Too true it’s hard. First you have to get a permit. They don’t go handing them out to just anyone. And that’s not all, either. After you’ve wangled your permit you have to buy yourself a beat. Costs the earth, I don’t mind telling you. When I’ve had enough of the game I’ll sell my beat to someone else. The only trouble is, if you’re away, some other bastard always moves in.’

  ‘Suppose you’re sick?’

  ‘That’s just a risk you have to take. But most times it’s another regular, see? They’re not the sort to set themselves up in a corner without knowing who it belongs to.’

  ‘Doesn’t it ever happen?’

  ‘Sure, it happens, but not often. Besides, it’s nearly always a tramp or a beggar. They go looking for trouble. Luckily for us, we’ve all got permits, so we just whistle up a cop and get our beat back.’

  ‘And you say you’ve been here four years?’

  ‘You mean on this beat?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘No, no, only a year here so far. It’s a good beat, this one. People pass by on their way to the station, so trade’s pretty brisk. No, before this I was further down-town. I sold up there and took over this place. But I had to fight for it. At the beginning we had those wide Paris newsboys here, a regular gang of them. You know the ones, they all wear blue blouses and peaked caps. Get in everywhere nowadays, they do. They’ve got those sort of small mobile kiosks, and just sit by them all day long. Well, they soon saw I’d got myself a good beat, and they tried to intimidate me. But I wasn’t having any, I stood firm. I may be blind but I’ve got my head screwed on the right way. Got the best of them in the end, too, put the union boys on to them, and after that they left me alone. But it was pretty tough. They’re young, they can hold down jobs—why don’t they let the old folks be? If there was anything else I could do I shouldn’t stay here long, I promise you.’

  ‘And is it a long time since—I mean, that you’ve been, well, like that?’

  ‘Like that? Oh, my eyes, you mean.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh, it happened ten, fifteen years ago.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘At work. A petroleum explosion. But that’s all old history now. The doctors told me they’d try to save at least the one eye. Had three operations, but it didn’t come off.’

  ‘What did it do to you?’

  ‘How d’you mean, what did it do to me?’

  ‘I mean what effect did it have on you, not being able to see any more, and all that?’

  The man reflected for a moment.

  ‘Well, it shook me all right, that’s true enough, But you soon get used to it, you know. It’s pretty good hell at first, I don’t mind admitting—you bump into everything, and hurt yourself, and you’re always scared of falling. But you get acclimatized soon enough. You know, when you get down to it, being blind isn’t so very different from waking up during a power cut. You sort yourself out fast enough, it doesn’t take long to get organized. It’s all right in your own home. But outside on the street—’ He broke off.

  ‘On the street, yes?’

  ‘Yes, well, on the street it’s quite a different matter. I don’t mind admitting, I’m not too fond of having to get back home by myself, even now. I’m always scared that there’ll be some manhole left open on the pavement, and I’ll tumble down it. But if I’m with my wife, then it’s all right, I’m not frightened.’

  ‘And you—you don’t regret not being able to see—’

  ‘See what?’

  ‘No, I meant, do you ever regret not being able to see any more, period?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know, there’s got to be a good reason for wanting to, hasn’t there? Of course, when I hear a pretty young girl go by, there are times when it gets me down a bit—but there aren’t all that many things that are worth the trouble, indeed there aren’t.’

  A middle-aged woman came up and bought a paper. The man felt the coin and dropped it, with a clink of metal, into an old tin can beside him. Then he resumed his motionless vigil, head held very straight, hands thrust into the pockets of his lumberjacket.

  ‘What’s your name?’ Besson asked.

  ‘Bayard,’ the man said, and then, after a momentary hesitation: ‘What’s yours?’

  ‘Besson,’ said Besson.

  There was another silence. Besson fished a packet of cigarettes out of his jacket pocket.

  ‘Do you smoke?’ he asked.

  ‘Are they dark tobacco?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then I’d be very glad of one.’

  Besson held out the packet: the man’s hand reached up, groped, found the cigarette-packet and clutched hold of it. The fingers of his other hand fumbled in the aperture and extracted a cigarette.

  ‘I’ll light it for you,’ Besson said.

  ‘No, give me the matches.’

  The man struck a match, and held the flame under the tip of the cigarette.

  ‘I prefer to do that for myself,’ he said. He blew out a cloud of smoke, and returned cigarettes and matches to Besson.

  ‘It must be difficult,’ Besson said.

  ‘What? Lighting a cigarette?’

  ‘Not just that—everything. The slightest action. Even the slightest action must be difficult when you can’t see what you’re doing.’ Besson lit his own cigarette.

  ‘All right,’ the man went on, ‘eyes are useful things, I’ll give you that. But you can get along without them. There’s a whole heap of things people should be able to do blindfold. I find out where objects are by touching them. I only need to come up against any obstacle twice, and after that I’ve got it taped. I know where it is, and what sort of thing it is. I don’t forget it. Living in darkness sharpens your memory, and that’s the truth.’

  ‘Don’t you have a stick, for walking?’

  ‘Yes, in the street. But today I know my wife’s coming for me in an hour’s time, so—no need of the stick.’

  ‘How do you tell the time?’

  ‘Oh, that’s easy. Look.’ He held out his wrist. ‘You see? I had a watch specially fitted up. My own idea. They’ve removed the glass and replaced it with a hinged lid. When I want to know the time, I just lift the lid and touch the hands. Good idea, don’t you think?’

  ‘Very much so.’

  ‘I used not to have a watch at first. It was so annoying. I had to ask people the time when they bought a paper. Or else I turned on the radio, and made a guess at it from the programme that was on at the time. But the watch is far more reliable.’

  ‘And it—it doesn’t worry you not being able to tell when it’s night?’

  The man inhaled. ‘When it’s night?’

  ‘Yes. It’s all the same to you. You never know whether it’s night or day.’

  ‘That’s true enough, I’ve no way of telling. But I don’t bother about it. To begin with, my wife knows even if I don’t. She always tells me what the weather’s like, if it’s sunny or overcast. But I don’t really care all that much, come to think of it. When I get home in the evening I’m tired. I go to bed and sleep. I wake up when it’s morning. So in the last resort it makes no difference to me whether it’s day or night.’

  ‘And you—’

  ‘Actually, the thing I honestly miss most is not being able to watch the telly. My wife watches in the evening, and I listen. But there are times when I’d really like to see what’s going on.’


  ‘Do you have any children?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve got two children, both boys. They’re married now, so I don’t see them all that often. They’re working. I miss reading the paper rather, too—funny thing, me selling them, isn’t it? My wife reads me all the news after lunch, but it’s not the same thing.’

  ‘Have you never tried learning Braille?’

  ‘You mean the set-up with all those raised dots?’

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘No. They tried to teach me in hospital. Too damned complicated.’

  ‘Yes. It must be complicated.’

  ‘Besides, the papers they do that way aren’t the interesting ones.’

  A car went by, very fast, its engine roaring. The blind man jerked a thumb after it and said: ‘Hey, that was a Lancia. I know the sound of its engine. Right?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Besson said. ‘It was a red car—’

  ‘Low-slung?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It was a Lancia, I know it was. I can recognize them all now. Just from the sound of their engines.’

  ‘Do you practise spotting them?’