The Flood

Chapter Four

François Besson watches the sleeping woman — He sketches the map of her body — The noise — A chained mongrel in a garden prowls round in the rain — Conversation with the blind paper-seller — In which we are concerned with a person who lived in a barrel

ON the fourth day François Besson awoke fairly early. He found himself lying in a double bed, with a comfortable box-mattress and brand-new sheets. The pillow, where his head was not actually resting on it, felt cold, and the whole place gave off a damp and disagreeable atmosphere, heavy with the smell of stale breathing. Through the slats of the shutters a pale half-light filtered into the room. The ceiling above the bed was flat, almost colourless, and there was no electric light cord. It looked as though there was no one else apart from himself in this room: nothing but a pale ceiling suspended in space, a vast and plain-like expanse stretching further than the eye could reach.

Then, suddenly, in the cold grey depths of the room, Besson heard a noise approaching: a slow, soft, powerful sound, that sprang from nowhere, travelling from the furthest bounds of silence beyond sleep, a rasping, saw-like note, light, regular, unemphatic, seemingly produced by some mechanical task that called for great persistence and effort. Besson listened carefully, and almost at once identified it as the breathing of a woman — Josette — who was stretched out in bed beside him. The deep, even note rose and faded peacefully in the still air: Besson lay and listened to it without turning his head.

It began with a tiny, almost inaudible whistling sound, which gradually swelled to a crescendo, growing rougher as it did so, then dwindled away once more: there followed a kind of raucous gasp, and the sound repeated itself (no doubt in the opposite direction), tenuous at first, then rising, a solemn droning descant, to dwindle and sink once more, this time into complete silence. For a fraction of a second silence would reign in the room, and reach up to blanket the greenish surface of the ceiling. Then the sound would repeat itself as before, powerful and inescapable, with a hoarse, musical edge to it that penetrated every last square inch of air in the dimly-lit apartment.

For some time Besson simply listened to the sound without doing anything. Then he set himself to breathe in the same cadence rhythm, imitating every detail with perfect accuracy. It was not an easy task. Sometimes the noise stopped abruptly, for no apparent reason. When the rhythmic sequence began again, it was prefaced by a long, unhappy sigh. There were occasions, too, when the noise mysteriously quickened its tempo, so that it turned into a kind of panting. It interspersed with shrill and broken little cries that emerged all blurred and unrecognizable, and were quite impossible to imitate.

Other sounds likewise reached the room, a slow, monotonous procession that drifted in through the slatted shutters and rose up until they plastered themselves against the wide and dismal surface of the ceiling. Hooting of car-horns, vehicles back-firing, the clatter of iron shutters being raised somewhere along the street. A faint, mournful, sibilance, impossible to pin down, compounded of tyres on wet asphalt, water pouring from gutters, the hiss of air-brakes. All this went on more or less non-stop, without a break, merging with the repetitive rhythm of Josette’s breathing, the fresh damp air, the grey light outside. Easy enough to stay like this for a long while, ears and senses alert, without moving or thinking. So François Besson continued to lie in bed, eyes wide open and fixed on the ceiling above him.

At length he turned on his side and scrutinized the horizontal outline of the sleeping girl. She was entirely hidden under the bed-clothes, and nothing could be seen of her apart from a tangle of black hair on the pillow. Strands of it had straggled loose, and lay there quite motionless, like so much sodden seaweed.

Besson sat up in bed. The alarm-clock on the bedside table beside Josette told him it was a quarter to eight. The noises outside in the street suddenly intensified. Cars began to tear past in a kind of frenzy, and there came the unmistakable sound of someone sweeping the sidewalk. Besson reached over Josette’s recumbent body and took a packet of cigarettes from the bedside table. He found a box of matches in the drawer. With tidy, careful movements he lit a cigarette and began to smoke. Then he realized he had no ashtray. He leaned across to the bedside table again, but this time drew a blank: after which he settled back where he had previously been, and made no further attempt to move. Smoke and cold air plumed out of his nostrils simultaneously. The smoke drifted gently ceilingwards, forming two thin columns, each of a different colour. That which came directly from the cigarette spiralled up in fluctuating bluish rings: that which emerged from his mouth or nostrils spread like a patch of dull grey fog. Besson watched the two columns of smoke for a moment. About a yard short of the ceiling they dissolved in the air of their own accord, without it being possible to determine exactly how this vanishing trick was brought about.

When Besson had finished his cigarette, he stubbed it out on the floor, beneath the bed, tucked the tab-end away out of sight, and blew on the tiny pile of ash to disperse it. An odd scorching smell hung in air for a moment, then everything returned to normal.

Slowly Besson turned towards the girl’s body, lying there so still under the bed-clothes, and studied this mountain range, with its folds and patches of shadow, its harsh hollows and spurs, its ridges and traverses. He watched the white sheet rise and fall with a regular, peaceful motion, disturbing one or two folds as it did so. Indefatigably, exuding a sort of confident energy that nothing could upset, the silhouetted figure continued to swell and sink, never jerking, very gently, like the sea rising and falling in a narrow inlet, with that dull booming sound compounded of wind and water, simultaneously alive and dead. It was indeed an extraordinary spectacle, and anyone might have stayed there, like François Besson, resting on one elbow, simply in order to enjoy it: to stare in fascination at the rising and falling of this white sheet in the chill prison that was a bedroom half lit by morning light.

The black hair visible above the sheet was spread out in a star-shaped mass, rather like an ink-blot on absorbent blotting-paper.

With infinite precaution Besson grasped the edge of the sheet and gave it a tug. Little by little more hair appeared, some of it lying in curls. The sheet edged down a little further. A warm and sickening smell rose from under the clothes. Then the forehead came into view, followed by the entire face and neck. The head was asleep, upturned towards the ceiling, resting on the white bulk of the pillow. On that pale brow, where the hair had been flattened down, there was no trace of any wrinkles. Her skin was taut, almost transparent, so much did sleep rob it of life. The double arch of her eyebrows lay peacefully above closed eyes, and a bluish-grey shadow marked the line of the orbital sockets. Her nose, straight and fine, barely quivered at the very edge of the nostrils. There was no flush on her cheeks, and through her half-open mouth, above the slightly receding chin, the upper incisors were visible, gleaming white against lips that were nearly as white themselves. The head lay there, quite motionless, as though weighing like a stone on the stuff of the pillow. Small, neat, rounded, it looked like the head of a casualty on a stretcher: a head, so to speak, that had been surgically separated from the rest the body, and through which the respiratory process operated as though it began somewhere quite different: a mask, perhaps, a plaster mask without any life of its own, not formed from bone and flesh, that neither slept nor dreamed, and was incapable of smiling. A sad, impenetrable death’s-head, all apertures closed, with some vague and woolly matter gradually crumbling away inside it; embalmed, wreathed in orange-blossom, the face of a saint, all the blood drained out of it, a smooth ivory ball lying balanced on the rough, crumpled sheets.

François Besson stared at this woman’s unknown face, and a feeling of doubt and uneasiness crept over him. He wanted to find out more about this calm, nostalgia-ridden case-history, this body now presented for his inspection in a deep-freeze compartment at the morgue. He wanted to learn this woman’s true nature and identity, to see how this alabastrine head fitted on to its body — always supposing there was a body. Gently, without making a sound, he drew the sheet right down. There on the bed, all covering now gone, head and naked body lay stretched out, still breathing.

The upper part of the torso, against which the breasts showed even whiter than the rest, rose and fell deeply, in a long, slow movement. When the rib-cage sank back, for about a second the heart-beat was visible on the skin covering the midriff. So the body was alive, beyond any doubt, preserved its internal heat, had air and gases passing through it, secreted smells, breathed through minuscule pores. These legs with their heavy thighs, these full hips, the sexual cleft, the long, rounded arms, the worn hands, clenched into fists — surely all these possessed life? Yet this pale, naked flesh, this woman, was nevertheless acting out a comedy of death, with Besson as spectator. The whole thing had been laid on for his benefit — the inert limbs, the bony vertebrae that seemed about to break through the skin; all for him, this slack and flaccid body, its head — a wretched ball too heavy for the neck to sustain it — lolling back as though on the point of breaking off completely. He had to look at her for a long time, with every ounce of concentration he could muster. Half gagging, tears of shame in his eyes, he knew he must scrutinize this embodiment of abomination and indulgence down to the smallest detail. He had to pay, yes, pay for his life: and the woman, rejected and miserable, must exact her own retribution. He had to bend down over her, listen to her powerful, mysterious breathing, hear the air rasp hoarse as a bellows beneath those white breasts, feel the warm odorous exhalations gather above her dilated nostrils, there, inside this room, while outside, beyond the barrier of the shutters, people trudged down the damp street, to and fro.

With a kind of glum intensity he bent over the outstretched body and began to examine it. He studied every square inch of pale flesh, each separate hair, each brownish line scored across the skin, every mole and pimple. Then he made what might be called a mental map of it all, to ensure that he never forgot what he had seen. When he had taken in every visible detail, he got out of bed, leaving the girl’s body as it was, exposed to the cold air. When Besson left the apartment she was still lying there on the stripped bed, still breathing, utterly alone, ghastly in her pallor, deep in that heavy sleep, as though after some act of profanation.

Besson walked along the street just as he had done on the previous days, between groups of pedestrians and passing cars. It was Saturday, or Sunday perhaps, and a great deal of activity was going on. The rain had almost completely stopped, leaving large muddy puddles everywhere, so opaque they reflected nothing. People had rolled up their umbrellas, and the windscreen-wipers were enjoying a rest. Wind-blown clouds scudded across the sky, high above the roof-tops, and from time to time the pale disc of the sun glided into sight from behind them.

Besson passed a church where some kind of funeral procession was assembling. Then he walked down towards the sea, and came out on a square jam-packed with stationary vehicles. A removal van had broken down, and as a result all the traffic had ground to a halt in the adjacent streets. Besson found himself caught up in a dense crowd, and did not even attempt to extricate himself from it. He simply let himself go with the tide. When he had reached a point near the sidewalk someone asked him what was going on.

‘I have no idea,’ Besson said.

‘An accident, most likely,’ the man remarked. He was a short person with a cloth cap and a cigarette stuck in the corner of his mouth. Then a movement of the crowd separated them.

It was at this point that the noise made itself heard over the square. It began in the far distance, with one or two warning signals. The roar of engines seemed to increase in volume, and from somewhere only a few hundred yards away there came an incomprehensible explosion. Besson shrank back against the wall, mustering all his strength in preparation for the approaching din. He felt it steadily mounting as it got nearer, like a hurricane. The shining cars that blocked every corner of the square had all begun to sound their horns by now: the separate notes merged in a single ear-shattering cacophony. Deep and shrill simultaneously, vibrating in the bass register at ground-level while drilling shrilly through the upper air, like a jet engine, the sound-waves surged outwards, bouncing off the surrounding buildings, until they filled every last cubic inch of empty space. Beneath their metal coverings rows of engines were revving up, and the sound of their exhausts swelled and intensified, echoing all around. Human voices were drowned by this collective uproar, faces grimaced inaudibly: it was as though the entire world had become deaf, or dumb, or perhaps both at once.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Think so?’

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

Besson strained both ears, without success.

‘I can’t hear anything,’ he said.

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

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

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

‘You really think so?’

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

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

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

‘It’s the beginning of the flood.’

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

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

‘Doing what?’

‘Well I mean, selling papers.’

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

‘What did you do before that?’

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

‘Do a lot of people buy papers?’

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

‘Just a matter of luck, h’m?’

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

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

The man coughed.

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

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

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

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

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

‘Is it hard to get one?’

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

‘Suppose you’re sick?’

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

‘Doesn’t it ever happen?’

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

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

‘You mean on this beat?’

‘That’s right.’

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

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

‘Like that? Oh, my eyes, you mean.’

‘Yes.’

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

‘How?’

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

‘What did it do to you?’

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

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

The man reflected for a moment.

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

‘On the street, yes?’

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

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

‘See what?’

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

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

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

‘What’s your name?’ Besson asked.

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

‘Besson,’ said Besson.

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

‘Do you smoke?’ he asked.

‘Are they dark tobacco?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then I’d be very glad of one.’

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

‘I’ll light it for you,’ Besson said.

‘No, give me the matches.’

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

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

‘It must be difficult,’ Besson said.

‘What? Lighting a cigarette?’

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

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

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

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

‘How do you tell the time?’

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

‘Very much so.’

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

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

The man inhaled. ‘When it’s night?’

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

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

‘And you—’

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

‘Do you have any children?’

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

‘Have you never tried learning Braille?’

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

‘That’s it.’

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

‘Yes. It must be complicated.’

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

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

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

‘Low-slung?’

‘Yes.’

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

‘Do you practise spotting them?’

‘All day long. I very seldom make a mistake.’

He flipped the ash off his cigarette on to the pavement.

‘I listen all day long,’ he said. ‘That’s how I find things out. Look, I bet I can tell you all about yourself, just from your voice.’

‘Really?’

‘That’s right, just by listening to you talk. I can tell you how old you are. Twenty-six, I’d say. Well?’

‘Twenty-seven,’ said Besson.

‘Fair enough, twenty-seven. You’re tall and thin, and you’ve got black hair.’

‘Absolutely right.’

‘You don’t do any kind of manual labour, that’s for sure. Yet you have a loud voice. You must be a lawyer or a teacher, something like that. Am I wrong?’

‘I’m a student,’ Besson said. ‘But you’re right, I have been a teacher.’

‘You see? It’s easy. I listen to people talking, and work out what they’re like just for the fun of it.’

Besson glanced at a group of people approaching them on the pavement.

‘I can go a bit further, too,’ the blind man said. ‘You’re not married, are you? If you were, you wouldn’t waste your time chatting me up like this.’

‘Quite true,’ Besson said.

The man began to laugh. ‘I enjoy trying to work out what people are like,’ he said. ‘It’s all there in the voice. They don’t know how much their voices give them away.’

‘You’re a philosopher,’ Besson said.

At this the blind man gave another laugh. ‘Me? Well, I don’t know, maybe you’re right. I haven’t read any of those old books, though—’

‘It isn’t worth while reading them, you know,’ Besson said.

‘I’d have liked to have an education. But my parents couldn’t afford it. I had to go out to work as soon as I could.’

‘Education isn’t worth all that much.’

The man pondered this for a moment. ‘You shouldn’t say that. It’s not true, you know — education is worth something. It’s good to acquire knowledge. I wish I could have done it.’

‘What would you like to have known?’

‘Oh, everything. The lot. How to write well, and figure, and think properly. That’s what I’d have liked. But the thing I really wanted was to be a doctor. Understand how to heal people, find out all about drugs, know all the diseases. That’s what I’d have found really interesting. Doctors are good people. Well, not all of them, I know that, but some of them are really decent. When I had my operations, the doctor who looked after me explained the whole business. Of course, I didn’t understand some bits of it. But it interested me just the same. And the doctor saw I was interested, that’s why he told me all about it.’

‘You remind me of someone,’ Besson said.

‘Oh yes?’ said the blind man, ‘and who might that be?’

‘A man who lived a long time ago. He was rather like you.’

‘What did he do?’

‘Nothing, really. He was a philosopher. He lived in a barrel and listened to what was going on around him.’

‘Was he a writer?’

‘No, not even that. He just sat there all day in his barrel, and learnt a whole heap of things. He lived at Corinth, in Greece, a long time ago. He spent his time observing life, and he didn’t give a damn for anything or anybody. He went around barefoot, and slept where he felt like it, in doorways, or even in his barrel. One day he saw a child drinking from cupped hands at a fountain. He said to himself: “The child’s right. He’s taught me I’ve still got something which serves no useful purpose.” So then he broke his bowl.’

‘He must have been a queer sort of fellow,’ said the blind man. ‘Surely he was a bit cracked, though?’

‘Yes, and another time he heard a philosopher saying that man was an animal with two feet and no feathers. So he took a chicken, and plucked all its feathers, and threw it down in front of the philosopher, saying: “Look, there’s your man for you!” ’

‘Bravo,’ said the blind man. ‘That’s the sort of stuff to give ’em. But I bet the other man didn’t appreciate the joke.’

‘I must say I’d be surprised if he had.’ Besson stubbed out his cigarette on the sole of his shoe. ‘I have to be going now,’ he added.

The blind man flicked his butt-end into the road. ‘Come back one of these days,’ he said. ‘You can tell me more about this character who lived in a barrel. It sounds as though it might be amusing.’

‘I’ll be back,’ Besson promised. ‘See you.’

‘Goodbye, then,’ the man said.

‘Goodbye,’ said Besson.

Besson emerged from the doorway and took a few steps down the pavement. Then he turned back for a moment and gazed at the hunched-up figure sitting there in the shadows, with the pile of newspapers and the tin can full of coins beside him. He sat quite motionless, hands thrust in the pockets of his lumberjacket. Beneath the blue rainproof cap the face with its pointless lines was in repose, and reflections glinted from those large, opaque, impenetrable glasses. It was true, of course: this was the way he had to live, squatting on a section of pavement that was his unquestioned property, a section of property that he had bought. People might pass to and fro all day long, but he remained at home, in his own place. He had nothing to fear from the hubbub around him, or from people staring at him. His quest was over. He could settle down in his little retreat, his private, well-protected hiding-place; and there, quite unhurriedly, he would begin to play that lengthy game which can only be observed inside one’s own head.