Terra Amata

I RAN AWAY

The eternal flight began. It began one day by chance, in a room with fawn paper on the walls and no curtains, wooden furniture and a bare electric light bulb hanging from a black flex. And since then no one has stopped. Perhaps it’s liberation, or perhaps it’s fate. Things with their million aspects fly towards their unique image, worlds enter into each other one by one, sentences grow mute, and as material truth, which is but itself, defines itself, the sphere of time grows full. Unless all flies towards man alone.

Chancelade flees along infernal streets, or magic avenues. He ceaselessly descends staircases, dashes right into concrete caves, opens and shuts doors with glass doorknobs. Every so often, at the end of a corridor, there’s the face of a woman shining softly. But it’s only a reflection, and the flight continues. When day breaks he flees the dazzling light and its killing rays. When night falls he flees the dense darkness that insinuates its slime everywhere. No question of resting. No question of stopping and groaning. Everywhere the ways are open and the roads stretch out for you to rush along them. Chancelade can breathe: he’s running away. He looks down from a window: soon he’ll have to change and find another window, and then another. He’s lying by the soft body of a woman, but it’s always another time. Space demands something new, time consumes itself. Mustn’t stop. Mustn’t turn round to see what’s coming: it’s dangerous. As soon as you turned you’d be enveloped in the icy wind that turns you into a statue.

There are no more countries. Canton, Callao, Penang — how far away all that seems. Now there are only more and more streets. Chancelade walks more slowly and reads the names as he passes: rue Gallieni, rue Papon, rue Lascaris, rue Cassini, rue Rude. And then the avenues, boulevards, passages, alleys, and cul-de-sacs: avenue des Fleurs, boulevard Carnot, passage Ségurane, chemin de l’Abbaye. By the gardens there are overhanging branches of mimosa and brambles. Dogs bark. Uphill, down, and up again. It will never end, it can never end.

The terrible ways of flight have been traced on the crust of the earth. It is the ancient malediction surviving still, the sort of universal order vibrating inside life itself. It is inscribed in the centre of every object, like a long crack that grows and divides. In the beginning, right at the start, there was this explosion, or fear, and ever since the world has never stopped rushing vainly across the immensities of the unknown. The whole of space has become this charge. Time has become this flight. Every second, every day, every year that passes is an animal leap towards the horizon. The very movement itself is a flight annihilating all reason and all hope.

But nothing threatens Chancelade from behind. In fact it looks rather as if the dangers are in front of him. But that’s because the flight is vain, and because each gulf left behind only deepens the void that will ultimately be victorious. Death is already in the flight, its claws already driven into the flesh of its prey, and will never let go. The maddened animal can shake its head and rush all over the plain, but the jaw that has closed on it will still sink slowly farther and farther in, through fold after fold of flesh until it crushes the cervical vertebrae.

Chancelade knows he can’t escape. He has always known it. He also knows that his executioners have charming gentle names, the names of flowers and trees and drops of water. They are called Sun, Pigeon, Daddylonglegs, Mat, Cigarette, Geranium. They are called Mina too, and perhaps the weapon is hidden in the touching face surrounded by fair hair, in the dimple on the right of the mouth, inside the gold-sprinkled blue iris. Perhaps the murder is there, hidden in the calm breath that gently lifts the breasts, or in the pink-painted toenails. But he goes on running away, escaping as best he can, running along the infinite roads of language. He talks, thinks, tries to understand. But it’s only in order to escape. He says life interests him, that he’s fond of the stars, insects, and the secrets of the human body; but it isn’t true. What he really likes is to run away, scamper away like a rat, get away as quickly as possible from the place of unspeakable menace.

In the darkness the crickets cry furiously, and their tense cry is that of flight. The sea is flat, and brassy, wrinkled with thousands of identical waves. I’m like that. Clouds pass over the white sky as if you were looking at them through a window. I, Chancelade, am in each one of them. Rivers cross the walls of mountains, the fields are infinite, the horizon ever recedes. All the time I’m with them, farther, farther, keep going. Thought is a void driving into the void, you look straight in front of you and never find anything fixed to rest on. In short, I’m in among the hurtling planets, the balls of hot lava, fifty million degrees Centigrade, that rush away from one another in no matter what direction.

The lizard runs away over the old sunbaked wall. When he goes by a dark stone he turns brown, and when he goes by a leaf he turns green. Isn’t that a truth in its way? Everything hides when danger comes. They sham dead, and the type of the secret of the void is already in their shells. The stick insect pretends to be a twig. The leaf insect acts a leaf. The moth pretends to be only a dark patch, and the butterfly pretends to be a flower. The aloe opens its sharp-toothed jaws, the corn makes its ears bristle. The tiger wears the stripes of his fear, the bison crouches like a rock. And the crocodile is like a floating log, unless it’s that a floating log is like a crocodile. All fears work towards their mysterious design, the enigma painted on skin or scale that means there is always a prey and always a hunter. It’s as if at the moment of the Creation there was a sly old man whose cruel laugh echoes still.

So with Chancelade or anyone else you could play the final game of metamorphoses:

Chancelade turned into a mouse; death turned into a cat.

Chancelade turned into a fish; death turned into a net.

He turned into an apple; death turned into a knife.

He turned into a microbe; it turned into a sulphonamide.

He turned into fire; it turned into water.

He turned into a cigarette; it turned into a lighter.

He turned into a window; it turned into a stone.

He turned into a mountain; it turned into wind and rain.

He turned into dust; it turned into a vacuum-cleaner.

He turned into a hair; it turned into a razor.

He turned into a bird; it turned into a gun.

He turned into a tree; it turned into an axe.

He turned into a king; it turned into a revolution.

He turned into a snail; it turned into a boot.

He turned into a town; it turned into a volcano.

He turned into a corpse; it turned into a worm.

He turned into matter; it turned into anti-matter.

He turned into writing; it turned into crossing-out.