The Flood

Chapter Two

In the street — The eyes — François Besson visits the first café and reads the paper — The broken glass — François Besson visits the second café and plays the pin-ball machine — Meeting with his brother

THE second day, as soon as the sun was up, François Besson dressed and went out. He walked quickly through the streets, observing the scene around him. The sky was grey, with a faint flush of pink towards the east. On waste lots, and around the buildings, patches of undried mud glistened in the morning light. Crowds of men were on their way to work. They stood queueing for buses on street corners, or hurried along on foot, with bicycles, in cars. Unaccompanied women walked very fast, wearing black or red macintoshes, or, very occasionally, tartan. The mist from the thickest clouds still floated down almost to ground level: drops finer than dust-particles hung suspended between earth and sky, rising and falling, till they finally dissolved on some flat surface, noiselessly, leaving not so much as a small damp halo behind. They melted before they reached the ground, and mingled with the substance of the air. A blanket of mist hung over the town, filled the trees, clung to the skin of those abroad in the streets. Nothing was distinct or clear-cut any longer: outlines blurred and ran into one another, or even vanished altogether, as though wiped out with an eraser.

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 they 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 waterfalls 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.

Besson strolled round the kiosk. Behind the second window there were foreign newspapers and one or two pornographic magazines. The third was devoted to children’s comics, mostly of the strip-cartoon variety. Besson stared at these little mannekins dressed up as cowboys. One of them, a great hulking fellow with a black scarf tied round his neck, had a white balloon issuing from his mouth which proclaimed: ‘Hey, kids, look — Apache tracks, still fresh! I’ll bet it’s Walking Stick and his band again! Let’s make tracks for Fort Elmer!’ The fourth window was crammed with a collection of miscellaneous periodicals, and had a hole in it. Through the hole Besson could just see the head of an old woman. She looked at him and said: ‘Yes? What d’you want?’

‘I — er—’ Besson stammered.

And bought a paper.

It was with a certain sense of regret that he left the kiosk, and walked on down the street, the paper under his arm. He passed a long row of shops, and saw that the crowd was still pressing close up against the display windows, just as before. Besson felt a kind of numb fatigue stealingover him. It was important not to meet other people’s eyes, and to ensure this meant walking either with one’s back bent, looking at the ground, or else very upright, eyes on the far horizon. But this couldn’t go on for ever.

The rain began to come down a little harder: it was getting cold. Traffic continued unabated. Walking like this, Besson was afraid he might reach the outskirts: after all, it was not all that big a town. If he just walked straight on for long enough the houses would begin to thin out, gardens would give way to waste lots, and the pavement would vanish altogether. Suddenly, without realizing it, one would be in the countryside, brushing through grass, losing one’s way on sharp, stony paths. To avoid the risk of reaching the town-limits, Besson decided to walk round and round the same block.

During each of his first three circuits he took shelter for a little under the awning of a radio repair shop to get himself warm. Occasionally he lit a cigarette and stopped to smoke it in some doorway or garage entrance. On his fifth time round he began to worry in case people recognized him. At this point he crossed the street and went into a café.

It was a large café, lined with mirrors. Customers, both men and women, filled nearly every table in the place. The air was loud with canned background music. Besson settled himself in a corner, near the door to the lavatories. Then he opened out his paper at the page which contained most printed matter, in order to avoid having to move more than was necessary. It was the small-ad page. He read:

WANTED: Young girl as family help. Maret, 34 Boulevard Lamartine.

ENGLISH FAMILY seeks maid general duties, knowledge cooking. Ring 381.541.

WANTED: Part-time pastrycook, apprentice pastrycook. Blés d’Or, Rue du Pontin.

WANTED: Mechanic qualified panel-beater/sprayer. Canavèse, Rochefort.

HOSPITAL CENTRE seeks laboratory assistants (male or female) to undertake night duty on roster system. Box 2126.

WANTED: Jobbing workers ferro-concrete erection. Box 800.

YOLANDE’S DOLLS LTD seeks needlewomen dressmakers dolls’ clothes. 4 Rue Gauthier.

The next ad was in English:

STENOGRAPHER WANTED 1–2 days week, knowledge English-French, for U.S. sales organization’s Monte Carlo office. Reply with photo, salary requirements, past positions held, date available for interviews and commencing work. Write Box 2581.

WANTED: General maid, fond of children, non-resident, meals found. Mme Tomasi, 1 Rue du Ray.

ROOM AND KITCHEN offered in villa, plus wages, to childless couple in return normal hours housework, husband req’d spend hour or two weekly gardening. Bourgoin, 20 Avenue des Bosquets. Tel. 88.65.42.

And so on. When Besson had finished reading both pages of ads he raised his head and looked about him. The waiters were hurrying to and fro between the tables: it was a long room, and by some accident they had failed to notice Besson sitting there behind his paper. But at any moment now they might look and see that he had not ordered anything. They would march up to him with that inquisitorial air, and demand, loudly: ‘What’s yours, sir?’

In order to forestall such an occurrence, Besson got up, collected an empty glass from a neighbouring table, and put it in front of him. But he did not go on reading his paper. Instead he let it slide gently to the floor, and put his feet on it.

The glass was a tall one, and still streaked with the remains of some foaming, yellowish liquid: beer, probably. A little ash had stuck to the rim. The man who had been drinking from it had probably gesticulated excitedly while still holding a cigarette. There the glass sat, on an expanse of canary-coloured formica, enthroned in solitary splendour, patched with its delicate lacing of foam. Besson stared intently at this transparent cylindrical object, and the patterns on it, lit by unwinking reflections from the neon strip-lighting. It was a glass like any other glass, no doubt, the hasty product of some factory which turned them out by the million, all identical. Yet to look at it was an intolerably moving experience. It was an object, a thing, nothing more, a superb and basic object which stood there on the table like a tower, unseeing, never grating on the senses, with no desire to find utterance in speech. It was so lovely and so tranquil that one would have liked it to stand there for all eternity, without anyone touching it, dirtying it, or breaking it. Men had no idea of what they were doing when they placed such objects on a bare table. It never occurred to them that they were setting beautiful deadly traps, ready to close on anyone who beheld them in all their dazzling presumption. They had no idea that for people such as François Besson, so desperately in need of immobility and silence, they and their transparent objects were, quite simply, flinging wide the gates of hell. But how could they have known it? People like them, with their nervous hands and voluble tongues and impatient twitching limbs, could never have let themselves become so hypnotized by the sight — at once soothing and terrible — of one empty glass standing in the middle of a yellow table.

More time passed. Besson continued to stare at the glass, without moving a muscle. At first he had decided to make a complete study of it, until he knew it by heart. Then he saw that the glass continually changed its shape. It became more elongated. It swelled out like a soap bubble, then shrank back to its former size. It sharpened to a point, it turned upside-down, or assumed the shape of a square. Besson realized that he would never be able to know it; he had to content himself with looking at it, seeing it afresh every moment, in a never-wearying progression. The yellow texture of the table. The yellow. The glass. The foam. Tiny bursting bubbles. Its shape at the top, and at the bottom. The reflection of the light on its right-hand side. A tiny mirror-image of the street on the left. Its vertical line. The polished, rounded rim. An endlessly turning circle — now, and now, over and over again. Top, bottom, middle. Right, left, up, down. The yellow surface of the table.

This was true reality: something inexhaustible, never-failing. No words or ideas, no sensation even, could fully express it. For the glass was there, it had escaped time and memory. It was action, action that caught the spectator’s eye, multiple and simultaneous action which passed endlessly into itself without ever emerging. Triumph. Triumph.

But to see it was not enough; one had to touch it as well. It was essential to run one’s fingers over that cold, slippery, cylindrical surface, to grasp it, touch it to every exposed part of oneself, if one really intended to know it. Besson’s hand inched forward hesitantly across the table. His fingers touched the transparent surface, but too late; the glass tilted, rolled, and then — for no very comprehensible reason — disappeared into space. There came a terrible crash. Besson did not look, but he knew the glass was broken. The knowledge caused him distress, but perhaps it was better this way: such beauty, such immensity had nearly turned his wits.

A man in a white jacket came across, looked on the ground, and said: ‘De profundis, eh?’

‘I didn’t do it on purpose,’ Besson said, in a hoarsely protesting voice.

The man began to laugh. ‘Here, don’t look so cut up — these things will happen—’

Besson said: ‘How much do I owe you?’

‘Nothing,’ the waiter said cheerfully. ‘Have this one on the house. I’ll just get a brush and dustpan and sweep the bits up. Broken glass can be dangerous.’

But Besson persisted, almost angrily: ‘Look, please, I want to pay for it. I really insist on paying for it—’

He put a few coins on the table, then went out without looking back. A little farther on, across the road, there was another café, with big open doors. Besson walked through them into the bar. It was a sort of white-walled corridor, fitted with strip-lighting. At the far end of it, lined up against the wall, were half a dozen illuminated pin-tables. Besson made towards them.

With some curiosity he studied these boxes, perched there on their tall legs, and the various signs written under each glass top. All the pin-tables were free except the end one, where a young boy, not more than ten or eleven, was busy playing. Beside him stood a man in his thirties, quite obviously his father, watching every move.

The boy played with a kind of obsessional frenzy, hands gripping the sides of the table or pushing the button to bring down the balls. There he sat, squarely balanced on his chair, mouth tight shut, frowning in concentration, a small, nervous, absorbed child, pulling the metal striker back each time as hard as he possibly could, watching every move of the ball as it blipped off the bumpers, totting up the figures as they flashed on the illuminated screen. Besson had never seen a pin-table player like him before. The balls pursued their labyrinthine course, blipping against one rubber bumper after another, shooting out with explosive violence. From time to time they rolled back down to the bottom of the table, whereupon the boy, with one neat, precise movement, would send them straight back to the top again. The man, who stood leaning over him on his right, watched all this in silence. The figures went up and up, multiplied rapidly. After the first shot the scoreboard indicated 1,300. A kind of sharp report resounded from inside the machine. The boy took no notice of it. He continued to play non-stop, never tiring, a serious, almost tragic expression on his face: fierce, stubborn, the implacable determination of a grown man. The total increased steadily: 1,600, 1,800, 2,000. Further sharp bangs could be heard from the machine’s innards, accompanied by various metallic clankings and rattlings. The boy’s forehead was finely pearled with sweat, and nervous shudders flickered along his legs in time with the electric motor. He grasped the table with his thin arms and shook it in all directions, or banged it with the flat of his hand. Face bent over the glass, he stared, fascinated, into the heart of this minuscule labyrinth, eyes following the ball’s erratic progress, calculating, working out the best route for it to follow, then sticking to it with fierce possessiveness.

Besson went a little closer. It seemed to him that the pin-table and the boy perched on his chair were a single entity, a strange and barbaric mechanism, something full of violence and noise and flashing lights. Heart pounding, he followed the little metal ball’s progress, noting the way it blipped off obstacles, spinning and turning, clacking against the trap-gates, with tiny flashes of blue electricity that ran right through his body, touched every nerve-centre. He flinched back. He had been wounded. The idea left him exultant.

When the last ball vanished into its hole, with a machine-gun-like rattle, the entire table lit up in a splendid variety of colours. The scoreboard indicated a total of 9,999.

The boy pulled himself away from the machine. He was very pale; his face was worn, almost elderly, and agleam with unhealthy sweat. The man helped him down from his chair and said: ‘Well done. That’s thirty-two goes you had.’

The boy wiped his hands on his shorts.

‘But I still missed it twice, you know,’ he said. ‘I mean, that second ball, I wanted to shift it over to the right and get it on target, because at that moment the score was 400 up. Well, that was all right, but then I calculated wrong, and it banged the bumper and came back straight down out of play — you saw it, didn’t you? I just couldn’t get it back. You must have seen. Straight bang through, right in the middle. I wanted to bounce it back, but I was afraid I might tilt the table too much—’

‘Yes, I know,’ the man said. ‘But you did pretty well on the last ball.’

‘Not too bad, I’ll give you that. Three times on the 100, and once on the 500.’

‘Well, you got the highest possible score, didn’t you?’

‘Yes, but it took five balls to do it. What about the time I hit the jackpot in two?’

The boy walked off towards the door. The man caught him up and they left the café together. Besson glanced briefly at the doorway through which they had disappeared. He saw a narrow section of pale grey street, with fine rain needling down over it.

Then Besson turned his attention back to the machine. It still seemed to be quivering all over from the bangings and other movements it had endured. It was transparent, metallic, coloured like a jellyfish. On its upright panel various numbers were inscribed: 0–9 999–32. Between the figures was a woman in a bikini, her pink body lit up by the lights, dancing in the middle of a circus arena. To the right of her some uniformed men were cracking their whips at a group of lions. On her left there were two elephants in fancy-dress, a seal juggling a ball, and a trapeze artist swinging on his wire. Almost wherever one looked there was some sort of inscription in red letters — JOLLY BUMPER, CIRCUS GIRL, Score, BINGO, REPLAY, Archibald Swanson, Salem, Massachusetts, and GAME OVER (Tilt).

Beneath the flat glass surface stretched the pin-table’s tiny world: alleys with red light-bulbs under which was written, in English, ‘Score 10 when red light is on’; mushrooms of every variety and colour — yellow, red, red and pastel green; little spring-mounted white gates, made of metal, that opened and sprang back. Lower down, amid other yellow and green objects, there was a small enclosure with a white wheel, marked off in numbers, at its centre. Two blue lights glowed in front of the wheel, and between them ran a curious line of figures, something like this:

500

400

300

200

100

90

80

70

60

50

40

30

20

10

Lower still, the playing-surface of the table ran down to a funnel, with little articulated claws curving back from either side of its mouth. This was the point at which the ball dropped out of sight. After being hurled so fiercely into the midst of all these quivering obstacles, after blipping off the red bumpers, zigzagging from side to side, circling and bouncing downwards a dozen, perhaps a hundred times, then shooting all the way back to the top again, in a flash, when it closed the electric contact and set off all those spasmodic rattling and ringing noises, those machine-gun-like reports, while up on the indicator, beside the bikini-girl’s face, the crazy figures flashed on and off so fast you hardly had time to see them, 306, 307, 308, 309, 310, 311, 321, 331, 341, 342, 343, 344, 345, 355, 356, 357, 358, 458, 468, 469; after hurtling down against the revolving wheel like a bullet, and being tossed about for a moment or two in incoherent mechanical motion; after a desperate struggle against the fate that lay in wait for it in every trap-gate and knob, it finally had no option but to roll into this black hole, cross the threshold of death, sink into the belly of the machine, all aglint with points of reflected light, drop home to its rest, an echoing retreat permeated by a most curious smell, as though something had been scorched there.

When Besson had finished playing, he left the bar and walked on down the street for a little. People in cars were laughing and talking, very much absorbed in their own affairs. A woman and a young girl had stopped outside the window of a shoe-shop. They were standing arm in arm, and Besson could hear the sound of their high-pitched voices. Somewhere, hidden behind the clouds, an aircraft was droning over the town. The sound of its four engines seemed, disquietingly, to come from all sides at once. There were puddles of dirty water in the road, and the cars’ tyres left visible tracks after passing through them. Besson stopped at the edge of the pavement and waited for a trolley-bus.

When the vehicle appeared, he signalled it with his hand, then clambered up the iron steps and stood holding one of the leather straps. When he had bought his ticket he made his way to the front of the bus and found a seat beside a large fat woman. Either on account of the rain, or the time of day, the bus was crowded. Most of the passengers were elderly, unattractive women, with sagging faces and pouches under their eyes. Their bodies gave off a rank smell, garlicky and goatish, except for two or three men, who smelt more of stale tobacco. Besson let himself go with the jolting of the vehicle, listening to the smooth continuous roar of the motor, and the squeegeeing sound made by the double windscreen-wipers. He looked at the back of the driver, whose shoulders were pulling his coat out of shape. It was very warm. Almost enough to make one fall asleep. Besson thought how pleasant it would be to have a trolley-bus of one’s own and drive it around the streets of the town like this. From time to time, when he felt like it, he might pull up at the kerbside and let people get aboard. He wouldn’t have the time to get bored, he thought. He wouldn’t talk to anyone, but he’d be able to feel it when his human cargo was shaken up over the bumpy bits, and that would suffice him.

At a certain moment a young man made his way up the aisle and sat down facing Besson. He was a tallish person, extremely thin, with long hanging arms and a rounded back. As he moved he uttered little incoherent cries, and his monkey-like face, with its protruding ears and flat nose, was constantly twitching. His whole feeble frame seemed convulsed by a variety of tics, and a sickening smell exuded gently all around him.

He sat like this for a moment; then his head turned towards Besson, and his crazy, deep-sunk eyes gleamed strangely. Besson stared uncomprehendingly at the hideous, grimacing face opposite him; but very soon fear began to stir in him, an ignoble fear, set up by those pin-hard, accusatory eyes. And then recollection dawned in his mind: as though brought back from a forgotten time hundreds of centuries ago, that flat and imbecile mask glued itself to his own features, took the mould and impression of them with the viscous fidelity of a latex squeeze. Through the eyesockets pierced in this crazy face Besson himself now looked out at the world. Through those wide nostrils, enlarged by constant nose-picking, he began to draw his own breath. Through that mouth, through the skin that was encrusted with sweat and filth so that garments clung to it like mummy-bands; through that fuzzy, nit-infested hair, that bowed and broken skeleton of a body, those senile, trembling limbs, those thighs stained with patches of dried urine — through all these things Besson began to live again. He had found him at last. This doltish, repugnant caricature was his brother. Aboard this stifling, smooth-running trolley-bus, here on these worn imitation leather seats, he had met the person he had tried in vain to forget. His brother, his beloved brother, born of the same mother as himself, now sitting in front of him looking like some crazy ape, haloed with stinking squalor, the prisoner of his own stupid, shrunken body, racked by tics and miserable pains. In a burst of tender compassion Besson leaned forward to say something to the young man. But at this the creature turned pale, his eyes bulged, his whole face — apart from the rictus round the mouth, which nothing could efface — became distorted with terror. Then, uttering a strange shrill cry, he leapt to his feet and ran clumsily down the aisle to the rear of the bus. Besson had to get out at the next stop. As he walked through the chilly streets he had plenty of leisure to think up the excuses he would make for the people who had been expecting him all day.