Birth of a Bridge

WALKING IN THE VIOLET NIGHT

ON AUGUST 15, 2007,THE NEW YORK TIMES announced in its business section the construction of a bridge in Coca, a three-line newsflash in twelve-point lower case that slid by without attracting anything more than a few raised eyebrows — people thought: finally there will be some jobs; or: here we go, they’re off again with a policy of major construction projects, nothing more. But the engineering firms that had taken a blow during the economic crisis began to ramp up: their teams set to work researching, securing contacts within the companies that had sealed the deal, planting moles within them, all so they might place themselves in the ranking, in a good position — to provide workers, machines, raw materials, services of all kinds. But it was already too late — the die had been cast and the agreements sealed. These agreements were the result of a complicated and delicate selection process that, although expedited, still took two years to materialize in the form of official signatures at the bottom of contracts at least a hundred and fifty pages long. A series of phases that resembled a hurdles race: September 2005, Coca’s city council launches an international call for applications; February 2006, five companies make the shortlist and the call for bids is sent out; December 20, 2006, the bids are submitted; April 15, 2007, two companies are chosen as finalists; June 1, 2007, the name of the winner is announced by the president of the CNCB (Commission for the New Coca Bridge): Pontoverde — a consortium of companies from France (Héraclès Group), the United States (Blackoak Inc.), and India (Green Shiva Co.) — is the lucky winner.

The competition had involved an infernal number of hours and had placed hundreds of people around the world under immense pressure. There was excitement and there was damage. The engineers worked fifteen hours a day and the rest of the time had their BlackBerries or iPhones glued to their ears, shoved under the pillow at night, sound turned up when they were in the shower or sweating it out at squash or tennis, vibrate setting on high when they went to the movies, though very few of them went to the movies ’cause they couldn’t think about anything but that fucking bridge, that fucking proposal, they grew obsessed, excepted themselves from daily life. The weeks slid past, the children grew distant, the houses got filthy, and soon they weren’t touching any other bodies besides their own. There was overtime, depression, there were miscarriages and divorces, sexual encounters in workplace cubicles, but it wasn’t fun, it wasn’t playful, just opportunity making the thief, and the inability to resist the promise of pleasure when your neck seizes and your eyes are scorched after twelve hours in front of Excel spreadsheets, sudden fever transmuted into quick coitus, a little haphazard, and finally, even though they were excruciatingly disappointed by the announcement of the winner, the ones who lost were somewhat relieved: they had aged, they were exhausted, broken down, dead tired, not a drop of juice left except the tears of fatigue they let spill once alone in the car on the way home from work, when the radio played a rock song, something saturated with youth and the desire to let loose, “Go Your Own Way” by Fleetwood Mac or anything by the Beach Boys, and after nightfall when they were pulling into the garage, they didn’t get out right away but stayed instead in the darkness, headlights off, hands on the wheel, and suddenly imagined letting everything go, selling the house, paying off the credit cards hup, let’s go, everyone barefoot into the car, we’re heading to California.

THE OTHERS — the ones who worked for Pontoverde — went home victorious that night, re-energized, they had a bridge to build, their healthy bodies personified progress, their own hands would place a stone, they relished this coup shaped like fate, sure of themselves now as main characters in the world play. They too lingered in their vehicles, engines off, eyes riveted to a dried laurel leaf on the windshield and arms crossed over their chests, seat leaned back, and they too sat silently thinking about their coming expatriation; weighing their careers that were suddenly accelerated because they knew how to nod at an opportunity; counting the points they would rack up before going back to head office to occupy a superior position, which would include overseeing the reorganization of whatever department they would now be in charge of; and also reflecting on a potential move with the family, or imagining themselves relocated and single, commuting during school vacations — they too were suddenly ready to go, but this wasn’t a joyride, wasn’t dropping out, not really a vacation; now they had to gear themselves up to talk to their wives, to tell them the news; and some wives would puff up their chests with happiness and pride, they were good companions, their husbands were successful, had stature, and they would daydream themselves into a near future where they were spoiled by the company, served by local maids, a villa with a pool, yes, at the very least, two cars, a gardener, and a full-time nanny who was also a devoted cook, brilliant! Already they were laughing and going to wake up the kids, ready for the sweet leap up the social ladder; others, dismayed, would tidy the kitchen nervously in silence, and finally turn an anguished face towards their husbands because, dear, what are we going to do about school for the older ones, about my sick parents, about the little one’s speech therapist? These wives would need to be reassured, promised that they would have their say in all this, the whole thing had to be toned down, they had to be made to understand that their husbands were counting on them; while finally there was a handful of others, these ones the toughest by far, who would light up a smoke once the washing machine was on, and then, whoosh, they’d spin around to face their husband, butts pressed against the sink and faces lit strangely by the overhead light, unreal and yet marmoreal, like Marlene Dietrich, an ambiguous shading that made them enigmatic, abominably distant, and these ones would smile and conclude in a sardonic voice, I’m very happy for you, dear, but what’s my place in all this? These ones would hold tight to their jobs, they would need to be convinced, pressured, until finally one night their foot consents once again to creep beneath the sheets and caress the foot of the man stretched out next to them; their husbands would have to use cunning until they made this little gesture, this caress of the skin, a subtle sign of agreement that would grant their husbands the world — and these latter could then silently triumph, lying on their backs perfectly still. Then, once the family’s departure date was set, restlessness would set in. They would still need to cancel the lease, the phone, and the electricity, find storage — and then sort out this mess, the kids’ messes and their own, broken toys, outgrown clothes, piles of old magazines, chipped vases, faded photographs, everything in the dross; go to the doctor, say goodbye to friends and family, and finally pack their bags and head to Coca. And this is exactly what they did late August, early September.

THEY WEREN’T the only ones to leave. All kinds of people set out in the violet night and converged in the city whose soda pop name jangled like thousands of corrosive little pins in their dry mouths. The want ads that popped up on the web called for cable riggers, ironworkers, welders, concrete form setters, asphalt paving crews, crane operators, scaffolding builders, heavy-lifting contractors, excavators — these skilled workers packed their bags in a single movement, synchronized, a tight manoeuvre, and set off by any means they could. A first wave stuffed themselves into cargo planes chartered by subcontractors who specialized in recruiting skilled labourers — these companies worked fast and with clichéd racism: preferring the strong Turk, the industrious Korean, the aesthetic Tunisian, the Finnish carpenter, the Austrian cabinet maker, and the Kenyan geometrician; avoiding the dancing Greek and the stormy Spaniard, the Japanese hypocrite and the impulsive Slav. The chosen ones, poor terrified guys dealing with their baptism by air, barfed up their guts at the back of the cabin. Others jumped on the backs of freight trains where they were immediately jounced about, asses bouncing on the floor as though on a tatami, and propped themselves up against their bags that knocked together, soon dizzy with noise and dust, heads between their knees because their eyes were tearing. And there were others still who boarded the buses that fill the night highway, those public dangers handled by drivers with bugged-out eyes — lack of sleep, coke — transport for the poor who don’t have three hundred dollars to put down on a used car and so are picked up like stragglers by the street sweeper, that’s why it stinks in here, the velour of the seats soaked with fatigue and cold sweat, a smell of tired feet — we all know that’s the real smell of humanity; these ones wait in miserable little parking lots at the city limits and lift a gloomy arm so the driver will stop, the news of the site had spread like wildfire, and the city already shimmered in a corner of their brains; finally, there were some who arrived on foot, and it seemed that nothing could make them deviate from their path — they headed straight there, like dogs, as though they had followed the scent of a magic rag rubbed against their noses, while still others were simply vagrants, people for whom here or there was the same thing, who had a certain idea of their life and proudly believed that they had a right to adventure.

A thin-legged Chinese fellow with a profile like a cliff is among these last — his name is Mo Yun. Nine months earlier, a miner among millions of others — miner because his father and mother are miners, miner because he’s nothing else and ’cause to descend to the bottom of the hole is simply to follow the greater movement — he suddenly turns his back on Datong, world capital of slag heaps, violent proletarian hot pot — a real survival instinct, since scampering off from the rut of childhood meant giving his youth a chance; after that, even if it was miserable, wandering has the taste of the potato chosen from among all the rest for its shape and colour, and the smallest radish smells like freedom. Mo crosses Mongolia huddled in the back of a four-by-four with a couple of Russian botanists, and once they’re in the suburbs of Ulan Bator, hops to his feet and turns off to the right, heads straight to the sea, three months of travelling, who knows with what money and especially where he finds the strength, then boards a Dutch container ship and does Vladivostok — Vancouver in fifteen days, fifteen days of darkness at the end of which Mo emerges from his waterproof bulkhead compartment one icy night. The city looks deserted. He heads south at the back of a Greyhound bus, and once he reaches San Francisco, Chinatown, knocks on the door of a scuzzy joint on Grant Avenue, a greasy but profitable dive where one of his uncles exploits him sixteen to eighteen hours a day for four months. It’s there, in the back kitchen, that he first hears talk of the bridge, and he calmly puts down teapots and rice boxes, unties his apron, passes through the restaurant by the central aisle, and pushes open the front door — the customers’ door, the main door — he chooses this one and not another one, the inaugural door, see ya! His brown feet, at present, are thickened with corns, callused, and etched with the wrinkled trace of the world map, he’s seventeen years old and he can see the lights of Coca.

Among those who come to the site are Duane Fisher and Buddy Loo, nineteen and twenty years old, red skin, black skin, mixed blood. For the moment they’re squatting against the wall drinking cans of beer in the parking lot of the Coca bus station. They’re out of breath, dazzled, just emerged from the opposite bank, rolled out of the forest after three months bushwhacking in a clandestine gold-panning station that was held up too often by police and ordinary crooks, three months sifting rivulets of a gold-bearing alluvium, necks devoured by parasites, nothing to eat but boiled beans and yucca in all its forms. They split from there and followed the ravines, feet bare inside their sneakers, mud up to their ankles, and sticky clay full of worms squelching between their toes slurp slurp, mosquitoes caught inside their jeans, ticks beneath their waistbands, but they have gold, yeah, a few ounces, a pinch, enough to buy themselves some tequila and a pork chop to cook over twigs snatched from the sickly weeds growing along the sidewalk on Colfax Avenue outside the city limits. In front of them, sitting on the hood of a Mercedes four-by-four, two men in steel-grey suits talk in low voices, put their heads together, then move towards them. They have recruitment forms in hand: a year of work, boys, a salary, health insurance, a pension, and the pride of participating in the creation of a historic landmark, a golden opportunity, the chance of a lifetime. The two boys hold the paper, don’t read it ’cause they can’t even read anymore, exchange a look, sign at the bottom, and receive a summons to appear on September 1st, and there it is, it’s done — they’re in, bridge men.

WOMEN ARE there too who had to elbow their way in to get a job on the site. There are only a few, but they are there, polish corroded on black nails, mascara swaddling their lashes, the elastic of their panties worn out around blurry waists. They’ve done the calculations and come: the pay is good, especially if you include in advance overtime and compensation of all kinds. Most of these women cleared out of their homes overnight, telling their colleagues at the very last moment, with enough time to offload a plant or a cat into their affable hands, then a quick hug and whoosh, steering clear of beers between gals on the last night, steering clear of promises. Once in Coca, they lobbied Pontoverde’s local hiring office till they were hired, volunteered themselves for the hardest jobs, under-qualification requires it, and signed up for the shittiest hours — weekends, nights. Then they rented a room in one of the motels that abound on Colfax, their rival signs uncoiling thick fluorescent pink or golden-yellow ribbons into the night between the Kmarts, the Safeways, the Trader Joe’s, the Walgreens, the parking lots full of used cars, outlet stores, and all the discount clothing warehouses in the world.

In one of these motels, the Black Rose, in one of these rooms with succinct furnishings and minimum comfort, one of these women, Katherine Thoreau, uncaps a Coors and smiles. She still has her parka on and a contract swells her breast pocket. None of the people watching TV — a man, two teenagers — looked up when she came in; we might even wonder if they heard her — well, I can confirm it: they heard her plain as day when she pushed open the door and then took a bottle from the fridge. She leans a shoulder against the wall, takes a mouthful straight from the bottle, and then, still smiling, says: I got it! The two boys leap up, yes! The younger one runs over to her, presses his cheek against her belly, and puts his arms around her waist. Katherine buries a hand in his mane, strokes him softly, thoughtful, then lifts her head — don’t you think the TV’s a bit loud? She meets the eyes, serious eyes, of the older one, and repeats, I got it, we’re gonna get through this; the teen nods his head and turns back to the screen. You can’t hear anything besides Larry King’s swinging and brutal, professional voice, and Sarah Jessica Parker’s laugh that displays her big teeth and pointed chin between golden curls, laughter and applause, the program’s credits. Katherine says again, turn it down a little, it’s too loud, it’s gonna give you a headache. She slowly finishes the bottle, then lifts the younger one’s head, still pressed against her, smooths her hand across his forehead and whispers, did you guys put Billie to bed? He gives a solemn nod. The man, disabled, immobile in his wheelchair, hasn’t lifted his gaze from the set, hasn’t once looked at his wife.

ANOTHER WORKER joins the group without being noticed — not a single one among us would have cast an eye on his angular, shifty form, tattooed with a safety pin, a mistreated cat that would take a beating and dream of giving one in return. Soren Cry arrived after six days hitching from Kentucky and the Eastern Coalfields — a ghostly rural zone, scrappy, dismal little hamlets scattered over an area hammered with misery; drugs and alcohol to eradicate the threatening spectres of Cheyenne warriors hidden in the Appalachians; youth who bury their noses in rags soaked with white-spirit or turpentine, hunt squirrels with rifles, organize car rodeos in the mud, empty out cartridges into bottles of beer downed one after the other, light fires in the carcasses of rusty pickups, all this just to get their rocks off a little once night falls; they listen to heavy metal loud enough to burst their eardrums, music like decibels spewed, like death rattles. A quagmire. Kicked out of the army six months earlier for acts of violence against a superior — the colonel was a thirty-three-year-old woman, a technocrat hayseed who had humiliated him in public, treated him like a hillbilly, and spluttered in his face, no doubt because she’d seen too many movies, and something in him had given way. He broke her teeth. Since then he’s been living with his mother, taking one-off jobs, seasonal work, and the rest of the time, nothing, time off fiddling around, playing GameBoy in front of the TV in the condo he shares with this pious, poor, and depressive woman — who he has imagined stabbing to death or strangling countless times, but who he kisses tenderly each night on the temple — and probably he left so he wouldn’t have to kill her.

SO IT’S a multitude that moves towards Coca, while another multitude escorts it, a thick and sonorous stream mixing chicken roasters, dentists, psychologists, hairdressers, pizzaiolos, pawnbrokers, prostitutes, laminators of official documents, television and multimedia device repairmen, public letter writers, T-shirt vendors, makers of laurel lotion to treat calluses and cream to kill lice, priests, and cellphone agents — all of these infiltrate the place, siphoned from the flood that such a site causes, betting on the economic spinoff of the thing and getting ready to collect this collateral manna like the first rain after a dry season, in stainless steel bowls.

AUGUST 30TH, NEARLY NOON. HEADING TOWARDS the Coca airport is a young man at the wheel of a deep-blue Chevrolet Impala — heavy, slow, a clunker. Sanche Alphonse Cameron had rolled down the window to smell the asphalt burning, the freeway is new, fluid, he’s got a full tank of gas and seizes the day, knows that soon he’ll be spending his hours a hundred and fifty feet in the air at the controls of an amazing cab crane and that all this horizontal propulsion will be over.

HE KNOWS the way: ten days earlier it was him landing at this airport where he was welcomed by his own name on a sign held by a large hand, a disproportionate hand, it had seemed to him at the time, with thick and slightly reddened digits, with manicured nails painted magenta, a hand extended from the robust body of Shakira Ourga — her husky voice rolled the R of her surname. Discovering her in entirety once she had extracted herself from the small waiting crowd, Sanche had to be careful not to let his gaze lose its head like an excited kid at the gates of the fairground, because the girl was tall, taller than him by a head, a bizarre body, thin and burly at once, a wide back and slender arms, prominent joints, narrow hips and round breasts held high without a bra beneath a thin camisole with spaghetti straps, long thighs moulded into a pair of jeans, tanned feet in heeled mules. She had picked up his suitcase while smiling at him, a smile as copious as the rest, and a stunned Sanche had followed her back pockets, flecked with glitter, to the metallic sedan that sparkled in the parking lot — the Russian’s beefeater step required him to synchronize his own and he trotted along behind. Cellphone meowing in her bag, she had walked away slowly from the car to raise her voice, furious, rapid delivery, coming back with a red ear and forced smile, and finally, looking over the roof of the car at Sanche, she’d put on a pair of black, monogrammed sunglasses and shouted in a thundering voice, welcome to Coca, the brand new Coca, the most fabulous town of the moment!

SANCHE HEADS for the access ramps, double helixes of concrete that hover around the airport terminal, looks at his watch, he’s perfectly on time, drives the Chevrolet to the parking lot — seventh level underground, the walls seep — and when he returns to the light of day lifts his eyes towards the sky, cobalt-blue surface at this hour, hard, absolutely clean, an immense doorway: he’s come to pick up the man who, at this very moment, is flying above the territory of Coca in business class: Georges Diderot.

THE PLANE begins its descent, fifty miles away. Passengers roll their necks and look at their watches, they’re hungry, the flight attendant walks slowly up the aisle, impeccable, banana chignon and flesh-coloured hose, casts quick lateral glances to verify seatbelts and the angle of seat backs, and sways her hips so gently that she calms the most aerophobic passengers, who always grow more tense during the landing. Georges Diderot crushes his profile against the double focal of the window, salivating, trembling: the theatre of operations. Here we are! he whispers into his burning hands cupped around his mouth. Two immense and Siamese regions are welded to each other via a serpentine seam below, and from this height it’s a wildly powerful blueprint. Diderot squints his eyes, his heart beats stronger, he’s touched to the core.

TWELVE THOUSAND feet. The earth’s surface sharpens its binary partition: to the east, a clear stretch, chalky ceruse pulling at the pale yellow, dry stubble strewn with needles that converge in a metallic cluster; to the west, a dark mountain range, black moss with emerald highlights, dense, irregular. Ten thousand feet: the white zone vibrates, crackles, thousands of scattered splints sparkle while the black zone remains impenetrable, perfectly closed. Eight thousand feet. A frontline comes into view, organizing the two sides, against which they rub or slide like two tectonic plates along a fault line: the river. Diderot’s smile is a smile of complicity. Five thousand feet. Track the course of the river now as it vertebrates space, articulates it, breathes into it, a movement that gives it life. Three thousand feet. Watch from this sovereign height the river’s chromatic variations — red clayish brick all along the banks, dark and brown and then purplish blue at the midpoint of the bed, turquoise shadows at the edge of mangroves and white tongues in the hollows of the bends — an incision of colour in the middle of this space cleaved into black and white. Two thousand feet. Rapidly scan the ground that complexifies, there’s a tug-of-war below, a battle, disjuncture: a topography of confrontation and tension in relief, you’ll have to be careful. One thousand feet. Lean your head back and breathe widely, close your eyes, what is the job of the site? Bringing these two landscapes together — there, that’s the site, that’s the story: electric sintering, reconciliation, fluidizing of powers, elaboration of a relationship, this is what there is to do, this is the job, this is what’s waiting for me. Oh Lord!

Later, at the very instant that the belly of the plane caressed the surface of the water before the asphalt of the runway, Diderot trembled violently, rapid spasms running under his skin, he shook his head. People cast worried or irritated glances his way. It was like seeing a large horse snorting at the back of its stall, digging in the straw with a hoof and demanding the outside, light and the prairie — but the truth is, it was just a shiver of joy and terror.

HERE HE is now crossing the concourse of the airport, Diderot, you can’t miss him: he’s not that tall but he’s strong, dolichocephalic head and chest like a coffer, square wrists, long calm legs, tanned close-shaven face, rotted teeth, white hair swept back and crowned with tinted Ray-Bans, and always this air of having just arrived from very far away, from the confines of space with the wind of the plains at his back — Astana, Kazakhstan: the presidential palace unveiled three days earlier was a replica of the White House — Diderot had delivered the work on time to the local dictator and had gotten violently drunk the same evening with a young chess master just returned from Berlin. Sanche parts the crowd, heading to meet him, extended hand exaggeratedly firm, and takes it all in: the aviator jacket, the diver’s watch, the white shirt with the collar turned up, the soft loafers, the clean jeans belted at the waist, and the folded newspaper under his arm, the red leather sports bag inside which a number of objects jostle in rhythm: laptop, high-power Maglite, tape measure, change of white shirt, underwear, a few packs of Lusitanias, thick wad of cash, and, protected inside a thick three-ringed binder, a half-size set of plans for the bridge to be built. Greetings, handshakes in the middle of the wave of travellers. Diderot, says Diderot, and Sanche responds, Sanche Alphonse Cameron — his full name, since Sanche Cameron smells too much of that little Spanish follower and Sanche is only five foot three — whereas Alphonse, standing right in the middle with the A in the shape of a mountain, this gives him a few more inches: Alphonse, a royal name in Spain, is his symbolic high heel.

RIGID SKY, stiffly shellacked, temperature so hot they can’t bear to have the windows open; the Chevrolet limps along. Far off, the buildings of Coca rise up from the ground, Lego shapes of disparate heights. No radio in your ride, Sanche Alphonse? Diderot says Sanchalphonse with a click of his tongue and Sanche hears sarcasm, he kicks himself, he shouldn’t have said his full name, shit, shit. No radio, sir, Sanche answers with his eyes glued to the Dodge pickup coming up alongside them on the left, no A/C, no suspension, no radio. Well then, no special treatment, eh. Diderot takes off his jacket and tosses it in the back seat, undoes the buttons of his cuffs carefully, lifting his wrists to vertical one after the other, pushes up his sleeves; he seems slimmer, more elegant, lights a Lusitania: are all the guys here? Sanche casts a quick glance in the rear-view mirror, all of them, now we’re just waiting for the girl. The pickup pulls in front of them at that exact moment, then speeds ahead — it’s the latest Viper V-10, five hundred horsepower, mounted on twenty-two-inch rims, a beast worth forty-five thousand dollars, Sanche knows it well. Diderot taps his cigar in the ashtray that rattles around above the gearshift. Ah. What’s up with her? Sanche steps on the gas, nothing, she had some problem, personal troubles.

Silence. The plain is a broiled straw mattress with livestock and industrial warehouses clumped together here and there. Diderot watches Sanche’s slim fingers tap the wheel, nervous, taptaptap, leans his head back, contemplates through his tinted glasses the quilted headliner of the Chevrolet and the crusty marks and oozing cracks in the vinyl. He knows what’s going on beneath the surface of their conversation. The little guy said personal troubles and with that he just dealt a first dirty blow to this girl who he’s never met — personal troubles — the words seep psychology, inner torment, they stink of women, personal troubles, what does that even mean? She has her period? — because he knows very well, the little worm, that on a three-billion dollar site (as they say at head office, chests puffed up and smiles to match as they crack open magnums of champagne) — yes, that on a three-billion dollar site, there’s no room for personal troubles, ever.

WE LEAVE the freeway and enter Coca. Sanche drives at the same speed in the left lane, the silence weighs on him, he adds, her grandmother died or something like that and Diderot responds quietly, I don’t give a shit about her grandmother, then rolls down the window with the manual handle, sticks an arm out, estimates the temperature of the air at thirty-seven or thirty-eight, dry heat, continental, nice. We approach the river south of the city and stop in front of a brown brick building in a quiet neighbourhood beside the water, Diderot grabs his bag and opens the door — before he gets out pivots his torso and plants his eyes in Sanche’s own, tomorrow, seven o’clock, site meeting.

THE GIRL’S NAME IS SUMMER DIAMANTIS AND SHE’S cavorting on the other side of the world, in the streets of Bécon-les-Bruyères, sidewalk sunny side pumps and bare legs, in a hurry to pack her bag, having just been informed via the very mouth of the head of the company — a large mouth, yet one of few words, the kind that only forms subject-verb-complement sentences and emphasizes them with a nod of the head — that she will be on the bridge team, so at the moment she’s an ecstatic girl, chosen, named, hired as the manager of concrete production for the construction of the piers. In a hurry to pack her bag because she leaves tomorrow, no joke, tomorrow I leave for Coca, this is what she says to herself as she rushes towards the RER station, I’ll be boarding the plane while my friends are sitting down in front of the TV to watch the finals of the Cup Winners’ Cup, sitting shoulder to shoulder, chests leaning back, feet spread wide and falling onto their outer edges, can of beer balanced on their crotches, held with two fingers, the other hand smoking or cheering, and the Tiger among them will have the knowing silence of one who’s been on the pitch. I’ll take off five hours before my father turns off the TV and crunches a sleeping pill, and just a little after the Blondes, leggy, decorated like reliquaries and made up like crimes, late as always, will emerge on the rooftop of their building to wave to the Boeing 777 as it carries me away. Oh Coca!

This morning, the phone. She’s not sleeping, has had her eyes open for a while now looking at the unfamiliar pair of sneakers near the bed. It’s a call from the director’s secretary: they want to see her, they have something for her. Naked and alert, Summer walks to the window. The dawn stirs, the acacias are turning brown. She answers tonelessly, yes, okay, I’m coming. Later, she pulls on a pair of panties, makes a coffee, and in her bed the Tiger stirs — one shoulder first — lifts an eyelid heavy with tobacco and images still spinning. He looks at her through his lashes, she whispers, the Coca thing, I think it’s gonna happen, and he smiles. It’s the first time he’s come over, the first time that — ’cause that’s how it is, everything always happens at once.

I’M LEAVING tomorrow. Summer Diamantis is standing in the train car, hanging on tight to the door handle, body swaying with the turns and heart compressed, I’m leaving for Coca, I’m going. The train ploughs under the Seine, the windows shake in a racket of underground rails, they’re black and liquid and the Tiger’s face is reflected there, blurred by speed; the profile of the Blondes like shadow puppets beneath the platinum of their manes of hair, the silhouette of her father. When they emerge from the tunnel, night has fallen. Port-Royal. Summer shivers. She pushes the strap of her bag up on her shoulder and gets ready to let go of the handle and step out onto the platform. Only a few people in the station, her heels resonate clack clack clack on the flagstones. A pharmacy that’s open, that’s what she needs. Stilnox for the plane, Dramamine for later, vaccines too, yes, she has to make sure she gets all this, and find a way to go and kiss the Tiger.

BECAUSE SHE’S leaving tomorrow, going far, far away, to the other side of the world. Because in exactly seventeen hours, we’ll see her coming out of the Coca airport, getting into a lemon-yellow taxi, ponytail well elasticked, forehead and neck clear; she’ll give the address to the driver who’ll start the car without answering, heading into a labyrinth of express lanes that will suddenly propel them into the middle of a wide and empty plain where the sky will play an excessive part. Summer will grow dizzy when she sees the unbounded landscape, an immensity as uncontrollable as her breathing, she can’t keep it steady any longer, bit by bit she’ll suffocate, a faintness that will cause a bitter taste to rise up in her mouth, her head will ache, she’ll ask the driver to stop so she can get some air, he’ll park the vehicle on a shoulder without asking any questions, and once she’s outside she’ll breathe for a long time, bent over, hands on her knees, will spit on the ground a few times and then when she straightens up again will step over the guardrail to take a few steps into the pink, powdery plain, almost lunar in this razing light of dawn, a skin. She’ll stand stock still for a brief moment to listen to the silence, perforated by the rare cars that speed past behind her; a mineral silence where each sound rings out distinctly and pollinates space — a stone rolls, a branch cracks, a scorpion scratches the ground; a real silence, like that of a wildcat, while the lever of the night will cause the day to rise, stretching out space as far as it can go, like a screen, and the horizon will suddenly be so close that Summer will reach out her hand to touch it, she too, touched in that moment, and suddenly hearing the sound of human steps behind her will jump, the driver will be there, you okay, miss? They’ll head back to the car and Summer will roll down her window and lean back against the seat, shaken, they’ll drive till they reach the suburbs of Coca, fragrances will rush into the car, garbage, plastic cups deformed from the heat, rotting meat, newspapers smeared with gas, wilted flowers, mouldy vegetables, dirty laundry, and lots of sweat over everything — here it is, the smell of Coca, Summer will think, as though the odour of a city was first and foremost that of its trash. Once she has arrived, she’ll say goodbye to the driver and he’ll look her in the eye and nod, good luck miss, and then, following the directions given to her by the company and learned by heart, she’ll enter the code at the entrance to the building, a lobby, a hallway, an elevator, she’ll reach the second floor, and when she’s at the door will take out a little golden key, click, she’ll unlock the door, push it open, holding her breath — will feel around in the darkness, walk to the window, a curtain, it will be six o’clock in the morning. She’ll concentrate to remember what she has to do in the next few hours — first of all, plug in the laptop and wash her hair — then will take a quick inventory of the room where she’ll be living from now on; there will be a bed, an empty set of shelves, an ordinary table and two chairs, a television, a telephone, an armchair, a sink, a hotplate, a refrigerator, a square of carpet, and in a bathroom with pale-green tiles, a bathtub, a sink, a cabinet. She won’t stop to look at the papers tacked to the door — safety regulations, instruction manuals for the appliances, evacuation plan in case of fire — will open the window instead, a balcony, the street, and will see the building across the way, a young pregnant woman will be hanging laundry carefully and their eyes will meet, the young woman will smile over the line and Summer will give a brief wave without really knowing why, will go inside and sit on the edge of the bed, look at her watch, look around her, she should unpack, open the cupboards, fold her clothes, have a shower, and finally pull her laptop out of its case. She’ll leap up, string her movements together rapidly, as though each pause, each silence, would be something come to weaken her.

AN HOUR later, she’ll pass through the gates to the site, back straight, breathing shallow, and heart beating madly, hard hat in hand. The esplanade will be silent, parked vehicles, not a living soul, she’ll continue on her course, her step growing more and more sure, her silhouette cut sharply against the immense open space. At the end of her path, a building, and in front of the open door a few men who turn towards her and hold out a hand, welcome, Diamantis, we were waiting only for you, Diamantis, did you have a good trip, Diamantis? Diderot will suddenly appear and greet her in a similar fashion and Summer will immediately be wary of the guy, would have preferred a more clean-cut character, a whiz at equations, gold-plated communicant’s pen hooked in his breast pocket, brush cut, and a direct gaze — instead there’s this guy, Diderot, the legend, who resembles a colossal and outdated Steve McQueen and looks her up and down like she’s just a kid but also like she’s a woman — she’ll be disappointed. Sanche Cameron, for his part, will step back to get a better look at her while she introduces herself to the others, will scrutinize her without managing to form an opinion, will find her strange, a good-looking girl, but a heavy one who walks like a gorilla, short hands and square shoulders, wide hips, beautiful olive skin, thick blonde hair, but with a protruding chin, a nose like a dog, yes, that’s it, and she will be hyperconscious of being the strange animal — she’ll want to make a good impression and won’t crack a smile, a girl in charge of concrete is not common currency.