The Flood Read online

  It was through all this that Besson set out to walk. He passed down two or three avenues lined with bare, leafless trees. He negotiated squares and crossings, streets and alleys. He waited when the lights were red. He skirted roundabouts, back-tracked out of blind alleys, and avoided stretches of dug-up pavement where men were toiling with picks and pneumatic drills. He slapped the flat of his hand against two or three No Entry signs. He bumped into obstacles, right in the middle of the street. From time to time, when he was crossing the street, he would deliberately slow down in order to make cars brake.

  When he reached the town centre, he put his hands in his pockets and gazed around him. The air was very fresh, the fine mist was still mizzling down, but taken all in all it was pleasant not to be able to see the sun. All that was visible of it was a pale disc, behind banks of grey moving clouds, no brighter than the moon.

  The place gave the impression of being a strategic focal point: buses and cars came streaming in from every direction, and the pavements were crowded. People passed to and fro ceaselessly, as though it had always been like this since the beginning of time. There was not so much as a pocket of silence anywhere.

  The dustbins were still standing there in the gutter, crammed to overflowing with tin cans, potato peelings, and apple cores, awaiting the arrival of the big, clattering garbage truck responsible for emptying them. A whole day’s life had accumulated in these heaps of refuse: people had bought, eaten, sucked, chewed, and, finally, thrown out.

  Already there were men and women walking along loaded down with bags of vegetables and parcels of meat. These were making ready for the following day’s garbage—crumpled-up balls of grey paper, the leafy part of leeks, date-stones, stale and blood-patched bones. The dustbins would always be there. At about the same time every evening, people would furtively carry down their stinking bucketfuls, and empty them in one quick, unregretful movement. In this way life was consumed, day after day, without any fuss or difficulty. Fragments of fatty edible matter would flow through the pipes, and tons, mountains of excrement would return to the earth once more.

  Outside the shops women in aprons were sluicing down the sidewalk with buckets of soapy water, and sweeping it off with brooms. In one butcher’s shop whole young calves were hanging from hooks, all the blood drained out of them, split clean down from chine to rump. The sawdust beneath them was slightly spotted with red, but hardly enough to matter. In box-like refrigerated display-cases dead chickens and rabbits lay lined up, side by side. As he passed by Besson noticed their strangely protruding eyes, and the ridiculous way the stumps of their severed paws stuck up into the air. Inside the shop, with its white tiles, and the legend FAMILY BUTCHER prominently displayed, women were jostling one another to get a better view. Plump hands lifted up hunks of meat, prodding and pinching. Greedy eyes, voracious mouths, dilated nostrils, all hung calculatingly over raw flesh. Behind the counter stood a ruddy-faced man armed with a cleaver, engaged in an unending process of chopping, slicing, and general mutilation. His movements were quick and precise, and he took no notice of the bone-splinters that flew up into his face.

  Farther on, there was the smell of hot bread, wafting in waves from an open doorway: that heavy, doughy odour that went straight to one’s head, evoking long-forgotten memories. Yellowish smell, rounded smell, faintly burnt, fresh and warm towards the centre, soft, pliable, full of richness: crackling and crisp outside, yet something that melted on the tongue, and gently spread through every tactile fibre in the body. Bread. Hot bread, feathery-light, still coated all over with a fine layer of dust that tasted like uncooked flour.

  On the edge of the pavement, outside an empty shop, there stood a group of large brick-red flower-pots with geraniums growing in them. Besson stopped to look at them for a moment. He studied every detail of these unremarkable plants, standing up so straight and stiff in the pebbly earth with which their pots were filled. He observed their flat, somewhat star-shaped leaves, and the rain-drops that lay lightly on them. A faint breath of wind stirred, and the stems quivered, almost imperceptibly. Each geranium stood bolt upright in its pot, held fast by the tenacious soil packed round it.

  On one or two of the leaves, that seemed older than the rest, there were marks resembling old healed-over scars, hinting at damage in the past. Despite the drops of water that trickled continuously over the leaves, gathering round the flowers, dropping one by one down the steps to the black humus below, the geraniums nevertheless retained a dry, almost dusty appearance. There was no insect life in the pots, not a single snail nibbling away at a stalk. In each of these tiny potted deserts there was nothing but the geranium itself, nothing but this pale green skeletal shape, with stiff, spiky branches, fixed in its vertical position, expecting nothing: alive but motionless, the grimy surface of each tiny warped leaf turned up towards the light and air and water. It occurred to Besson that he, too, could have very well lived in a flower-pot, feet deep-rooted in the soil, its grainy texture close around him, his body reaching up, still and silent, into the air. Well, perhaps not, after all, it might not be all that enjoyable: really he was lucky to possess two legs and the ability to use them whenever he felt like it.

  Away on the horizon, through a gap between two window-studded blocks, stretched the equally immobile mass of the mountains. Suddenly it struck him how lucky he was not to be a mountain, either. Curious. Clouds passing slowly overhead. Arching one’s huge rough back, all covered with thickets and ravines, encircling the town. Even a house, when you began to think about it, offered some sort of existence, lapped in peace, the majestic peace of reinforced concrete, calmly watching the ebb and flow of life around one, with an occasional odd tickling sensation as the lift ascended its shaft.

  All this was curious, amusing. The thought made him uneasy.

  A bald man wrapped up in a black overcoat was coming towards Besson. As he advanced, he turned his head a little to one side and spat in the gutter. It was as though he had spat in Besson’s face.

  By now the pavement was a mass of violent activity. Besson felt himself caught in a vortex of legs and faces, chaotic movements, bent backs, hands clasping objects. Bodies continually brushed against him, touching his clothes and stirring up tiny little puffs of air. Pallid faces, eyes staring, loomed up over him, then swerved aside at the last moment. There were men standing outside shop doorways, staring into space. Others, esconed in their cars, let their gaze wander through the closed windows. Children threaded their way between the groups of passers-by, screaming and shouting. Horsy women with large busts standing awkwardly outside greengrocers’ shops. A nasal sing-song of voices from the counters of the chain-stores. Even as high as the sixth floor, a number of shadowy figures could be seen hanging over balconies in a menacing way, as though to keep watch on the streets below.

  Besson let himself go with the movement of the crowd, empty of all desire, conscious of nothing in himself save the mysterious pattern imposed by all these faces and bodies: walking, walking, sometimes close to the walls, sometimes on the edge of the pavement, dodging landaus, skirting round groups of people, walking, walking, ascending a kind of stark spiral staircase that almost certainly led nowhere.

  Time passed: nothing changed. One could go on for years in this way, without doing anything. Without ever having anything to do. Without talking or thinking, just walking on, eyes taking it all in, ears cocked, nose alert, skin exposed to every fluctuation of heat and cold, while a sequence of insignificant events announced themselves by means of small discomforts, fleeting sensations, anonymous sounds. There was no limit on the time one could spend thus, an entire lifetime, perhaps, swallowed up amid this debris, wandering through the jungle for an eternity stretching from birth to death. It was easy: one just had to let oneself drift with it.

  Besson observed these men and women: and suddenly the truth of what he saw came home to him. These people had no jobs, no family problems, no professions, no names even. They never talked or made love or felt afraid. No, all th
ey did was walk, wandering at random, not knowing where they were going, expressionless, eyes glazed. The entire town was populated by full-time walkers, every day of their lives idled away on these long, complicated, indecisive and utterly futile excursions.

  At one street-corner a stern-faced man came out of a tobacconist’s shop with a newspaper in his hand. He began to read it as he walked, frowning, occasionally pausing to decipher some phrase more easily. It was a clever performance, but Besson was no longer to be taken in by such tricks. A careful scrutiny revealed what a put-up job the whole thing was. The man did not know how to read; he kept his eyes glued to the same spot in the middle of the page, all the time.

  A little farther on, in a glass-walled telephone booth, another man was pretending to make a call. His face was flushed, he looked as though he were choking. His mouth opened and shut as though he were shouting insults at someone. He waved his fist. But as far as Besson was concerned, the man was wasting his time. Quite obviously he had put no money in the box—either that, or else he had dialled a non-existent number.

  In one doorway a man with a moustache stood talking to a girl. He was very close to her, and as Besson passed, he took the girl’s hand and began to hold it as though it were a detached object. Besson perceived that they were talking, but the murmur of their voices merged into the general clamour, and he could not hear a word. In any case this did not matter, since they had nothing intelligible or necessary to say. They were there by pure chance, speaking words without hearing them, incapable of altering their lives. The days and nights would pass them by in a flash, without their noticing, without their having achieved anything. At a certain moment they would find themselves old. At another, they would be dead.

  Besides, everything in sight was just as they were: the walls, the trees, the lined pavement stretching down the street; these houses and their occupants, these apartments with large white stifling rooms and tablefuls of food; the beds smelling of sweat, with their grubby pillows and greying sheets, countless hidden lairs that gave off the odour of humanity. Everything was permeated by a cumulative sense of exhaustion. Movements were reduced to a minimum. In the open spaces life crouched coiled back on itself, nursing its sickness and shame, the wearisome, implacable emptiness within it.

  A group of pigeons scattered at Besson’s approach. Some fluttered into the roadway, others made as though to take wing, others again really did so. Their small yellow beady eyes turned briefly to observe the silhouette of the man advancing on them.

  The sky was now a curious rusty colour. Rain continued to fall patchily, first in one place, then in another. The plane-trees in the squares stood encircled by their own fallen leaves. A few more days, one could easily suppose, and the smell of decay would be everywhere.

  As time passed, and Besson walked on, the crowd in the streets became steadily denser. Now, wherever he looked, he could see nothing but legs, bosoms, faces, backsides. There were street-barrows everywhere, piled high with merchandise, and gimlet-eyed women lurking behind them. A constant flow of idlers streamed in and out of the shops. There were unending waves of fat faces, thin faces, long and snub noses, mouths gaping blubber-lipped or shut in a thin tight line; small glinting eyes, sunk in the slack flesh round the eyesockets like black nails. Bodies jostled, arms swung to and fro, hands dangled. Rib-cages rose and fell with an even, regular motion. Throats irritated by cigarette-smoke emitted every kind of grunt, rattle, and cough. The soles of countless shoes beat at the ground with angry persistence, as though bent on exterminating an army of insects. Hips collided tangentially, material rucked and creased across bellies, buttons laboured under a constant strain. The rain drizzled down unendingly on people’s faces, mingling with perspiration, thirstily settling in forehead wrinkles or the creases at the corner of the jaw. It soaked into women’s perms, trickling through a mass of scented curls, down the back of the neck, finally reaching the bottom of their dresses. It drummed delicately on open umbrellas and the hoods of macintoshes. It made crêpe soles stick to the tar in the road. Nothing escaped it. Everything was moving out and away, yet remained there, producing a sense of vertigo.

  Men and women swarmed and struggled, never moving from the same spot, attacking, possessing. To be handed over to their mercies in this town was a thankless adventure.

  But inside each skull, each little box with its casing of flesh and hair, life could not be denied. They were prisoners, everyone of them, a whole race of tiny invisible imps beginning to stir in their bonds.

  It was the eyes that were responsible. They were all the same, damp glazed marbles, horribly mobile in their anchorage of skin and muscle. Black hard points, glinting two by two from all these faces, fixing on you like a polyp’s suckers, determined to penetrate, digest, expose. Even objects abandoned against walls—dustbins, bicycles, bits of packing-cases—possessed eyes, all turned permanently and insatiably on the passing show. The houses, each tall grey apartment block, acted as pitiless mirrors. In every direction, from every angle, it was the same silhouette they reflected: a feeble, clumsy figure, walking on purposelessly, unable to get away. Ah, let the day of the blind beasts come, let it come soon, the empire of the ants and moles and larvae! How restful, then, to burrow peacefully in the mire, knowing nothing, expecting to know nothing, through the sweet opaque darkness, calm, blissful, never-ending!

  At the bottom of the street there stood a newspaper kiosk, its coloured shape rising bright amid the grey slabs of paving-stone and the moving tide of humanity. For Besson it appeared some sort of refuge. Feverishly he began to tack towards it through the busy crowd, taking care not to incur angry looks or get himself jostled as he proceeded. He could see the kiosk from some way off, with its conical roof and countless gaily-coloured notices in blue or yellow or red. These bright patches shone out above the heads of the crowd, yet there was nothing aggressive about them: they caught the eye like headlights, each sending out its appeal. Around them it was cold, with dampness in the air. They alone remained pure and dazzling, they irradiated the heat of the vanished sun, they were stars. To reach them was a lengthy business. Besson had to push his way past helpless old women, children, dogs. But this did not bother him. His eyes, raised a little above the heads of the crowd, saw nothing but this polychrome peak, this glowing tower with its ever-larger writings and medley of colours.

  At last Besson got to the kiosk. He came close, put out a hand, touched it. In front of him, behind a window, large numbers of papers were pinned up on display: illustrated periodicals, magazines, photographic journals, weekly reviews. Look where he would, everything was written, painted, set down in print. Besson drank it all in, intoxicated, unable to take his eyes away, listening to the steady tramp of footsteps behind his back.

  On the cover of one magazine there was a blonde woman, her smile revealing dazzlingly white teeth. Her lips were red, her eyes pale blue, the skin on her neck and shoulders as smooth as silk. She went on smiling like this, without seeing anyone, as though enclosed in some tiny cabin where the weather was always perfect. Beside her, similarly framed in a periodical, was another woman who wore an identical smile. Her hair was black this time, but her huge deep eyes had been tinted a most odd colour, green and violet together, and so transparent that it looked as though one could pass through her physically, like penetrating a smoke-screen and remain on the far side of her enclave, in a kind of paradise.

  All the rest of the display-window was the same. Left and right, top and bottom, there was nothing to be seen but women’s faces, women’s bodies, bright and supple figures—sometimes naked, clad only in their own pink and satiny skins, sometimes wearing exotic dresses full of gold and purple, their folds merging and overlapping, forming great blocks of shading that threw the rest into high relief. And everywhere the same kind of face staring out from the paper, ablaze with freshness and youth: rich deep hair, a tawny mane cascading down over the neck, a blonde fringe concealing the eyes, jet-black curls and tresses, luxuriantly alive, blue-tinted w
aterfalls in which countless captive points of light glittered. Smooth foreheads, arching eyebrows, fine retroussé noses, full lips parted to reveal a row of seven pearly white teeth—or sometimes set in a smile which produced two oval dimples at each corner of the mouth. Ripe breasts, fixed in a pose of tranquil uplift, sweetly curving necks and shoulders, arms and legs, dimple-soft navels, cheeks almost invisible against the light, or hidden altogether behind faint shadowy graining. And the eyes: so enormous, tranquilly displaying the classic almond-shaped outline, edged by feather-thick lashes: unfathomable eyes, with changing colours, liquid precious stones that brought to life endless minuscule universes, shut in and self-contained, full of echoes, changing facets where one could lose oneself completely in the magical fluctuations of hope and despair.

  There was nothing ephemeral about these faces; these bodies held no illusion. Their printed substance would hold the same pose for ever, or very nearly. Some might moulder at the bottom of a drawer, or be used to line a dustbin; but at least one of them would survive, in all her vivid, flashy beauty, to testify how enjoyable life on earth had been at the time. These women would never grow old. Despite the passing years, their skulls would retain the mask of flesh that covered them; their parted lips would continue to smile, hopeful for kisses, revealing the same row of seven pearly, undecaying teeth; their multicoloured eyes would gaze through the glass for ever, without pity or irony or malice, at the world of those who deluded themselves they were alive. Love unbounded shone in their expression, an abundance of love for the entire world.