The Flood

Chapter Five

Besson at work — The games — What one sees from a window — The story of Black Oradi — How François Besson triumphed over gravity

ON the fifth day, Besson remained in his room. He sat at his table, not thinking of anything, having previously hung a placard from the outer doorhandle on which he had written, with a red ball-point pen: WORKING PLEASE DO NOT DISTURB. Then he began to examine his surroundings, in front of him and on either side. It was about three in the afternoon. Through the curtainless windows he could see the house opposite, a dirty grey building with its own lace-curtained windows, and a segment of dull, neutral-coloured sky, in which not a single bird could be seen.

The light came straight into the room, without making any shadows. Besides the drumming of the rain, various other odd noises were audible: whimperings, dull thuds, creaks, whirrs, whistles. Men’s voices, the screams of children. Bottles rattling in crates. Heavy bangs above the ceiling or under the floor. Scraping and shuddering noises of unidentifiable origin, a pebble rattling down noisily in some area, windows vibrating as a truck passed by. Susurrus of tyres. Water gurgling down the gutter, the pistol-shot banging of front doors, a self-starter coughing into life. All this was normal, absolutely normal, a rich and confused medley of sound ebbing and flowing like a pendulum. Time passed softly and easily with these noises to help it. It was rather like being asleep.

Nothing in particular happened. Out of the street or secluded behind closed doors the little sounds continued, never suggesting anything but the existence of life — life in miniature, tittuping along, nibbling at the edges of things, consumed by a vague itch yet unable to let go properly.

Above Besson’s head the ceiling stretched motionless, a sure fixed point, and in the cube of bright air below it an unlit electric light bulb hung on its cord. The walls of the room were just there, they took no action. They were quite content to be walls, good solid walls and nothing more. Yet there could be little doubt that a constant process of attrition was at work on them, crumbling away their substance, sending out clouds of white dust from them. Damp got under the yellow wallpaper and quietly worked it loose from its paste, millimetre by millimetre. Everything looked so strong and permanent, yet it was a virtual certainty that in two or three hundred years there would be no surviving trace of this room. There would just be an old hollow ruin, looking as though it had been eaten away by cancer, in the middle of a thorny, overgrown waste lot.

But for the present the room was peaceful enough, with hardly anything happening in it. Besson sat there for a while, elbows resting on the table. He carefully scrutinized each separate object, down to the last sheet of scribbled manuscript. He took in the penknife, its blade still open, and the box containing 50 drawing-pins, and the bottoms of paper cups, and the keys, and the empty inkwell. Periodicals lay about everywhere, with crumpled pages and minus their covers. A schematic swan swimming on a matchbox. Besson read everything, in an unhurried, almost hypnotic manner. Everything he looked at was strange, all the words printed on the white pages seemed full of trickery and illusion. On the left-hand corner of the table, beside a stub-crowded ashtray, a dictionary lay open at page 383. Besson began to read the catch-words, softly at first, then progressively louder and louder:

Helium

Helix

Hellene

Hellenic

Helleniser

Hellenism

Hellenist

Helminth

Helvetian (m. or f.)

Helvetian (adj.)

Hem!

Hemacyte

Hematite

Hematocele

Hematopoeisis

Hematosis

After this he leant forward and picked up a paper. He unfolded it slowly, found the Amusement Page, and then spread it out on the table. The big sheet of newsprint left smudges on his fingers. It was covered with a number of strange drawings, with captions written underneath them. Here, enclosed in their black frames, were men wearing white tunics, armed with spears and shields, or inscrutable women, draped in décolleté robes, their faces heavily made-up and their long tresses studded with outsize jewels. At the top of the page, above the drawings, was written:

The Empress of the Desert: Zenobia of Palmyra

There were other strip-cartoons running across the same page, showing bald men in space-suits shooting other men with death-ray guns. Underneath these, again, was a group of men and women standing in a sun-lounge, with lots of big windows. Two of them had white clouds billowing from their mouths, with the following legends written on them:

‘That’s great, Steve. You take Thompson in the Bentley. Sir Bernard and I will stay here and wait for instructions from the boss.’

‘O.K. We’ll go as far as Stevenage on the main road. That’s forty miles from here. By the way, what about the man watching the house?’

At the bottom of the page there were also various games and riddles and one or two jokes, this kind of thing:

‘I’m a real paragon,’ a man wrote in his private diary. ‘I don’t drink. I don’t smoke. I don’t go to the theatre or the cinema, and I’m unswervingly faithful to my wife. I never so much as look at another woman. I go to bed every evening at eight o’clock, and get up and go to work at dawn. Every Sunday I attend church. But it’s all going to be very different once I get out of jail….’

When Besson had finished looking at all the pictures, and had read every caption, he took out his ball-point pen and did the crossword. He studied the clues for a moment, then began filling in the empty squares. Three across was ‘Signifies proximity’; Besson wrote ‘Here’. ‘Close pair’ produced ‘Tights’. ‘All the clues there if you follow them’ suggested ‘Thriller’. Ten across was ‘Spy with the field variety?’: Besson filled in ‘Glasses’. ‘Mutual absorption’ turned out to be ‘Osmosis’. Thirteen across, ‘Roussel had them all dancing right through his party’, defeated him.¹ ‘La Fontaine made one for the nymphs of Vaux’—‘Elegy’. He turned from Across to Down. ‘Completely effaced’ must be ‘Erased’, while ‘Accustomed to a new way of life’ was ‘Acclimatized’. Four down, ‘bare horror’, produced ‘Stark’, but ‘Scarcely more than skin and bone’ he left blank. ‘Saurians from tropical America’ were ‘Iguanas’. Thirteen down, ‘Arab water-hole’, was ‘Oasis’. ‘A hundred down here in Paris produces Roman dual’: Besson wrote ‘ii’. Nine down, ‘Money’s the surest one’, turned out to be ‘Investment’. ‘Sometimes broken in conversation’ was ‘Thread’.

Besson passed a good half-hour in this way. Then he got up and walked across to the right-hand window. It was a large window, taller than it was wide, with eight panes of glass mounted in a brown wooden framework. The fourth pane up was cracked from top to bottom. The sixth vibrated very faintly. Besson looked out through the third at the houses and street, the passing scene before him. Through the fine drizzle tiny figures, old and young, men and women, were hurrying to and fro. Cars slid to a stop at the cross-roads, changed gear, moved off again. From time to time someone would sound his horn, a sharp and generally brief blaring note which produced no echo. It was a familiar and superficially peaceful scene. Yet all the same there was something disturbing about it. To be high up in this apartment block offered security of a kind, but not for ever. The tide of activity gradually surrounded you, cut you off without your noticing it. Its clamorous, eddying flow constantly wore away the walls of the building, rubbing off fragments of plaster, tiny bits of stone, loose flakes of ochre-coloured paint. These men skulking along the sidewalks were not as inoffensive as they looked. Their lowered heads concealed murderous thoughts, and it would take very little — a revolution, for instance, a simple upsurge of mob fury — to bring them out. They would advance like a horde of voracious ants, and gather in crowds under the windows, shouting and waving their fists, screaming for blood. They would surge up every stairway, break down all the doors, and strike without mercy, again and again, great razorish slashes, till finally each head fell free from its body, the neck one red and gaping wound, the life-blood ebbing away.

Best not to think about such things, best to see no further than the surface appearance of reality, to play with it continually like a set of knuckle-bones. Obstinately Besson set himself to count the cars passing by outside. He took a sheet of paper and a ball-point pen. A few minutes later he had produced the following list:

Citroën

14

Fiat

9

Renault

51

Alfa-Romeo

1

Dauphine

29

Volkswagen

1

4 CV

12

Ford

1

R4, R8

10

Porsche

1

Peugeot (403, 404)

25

Dodge Dart

I

Panhard

5

Volvo

1

Simca

6

Unidentified makes

3

People still crowded along the sidewalks behind one another. From his high eyrie François Besson watched them attentively, forehead pressed to the window. He saw young women dressed in red and black macintoshes, some bare-headed, others wearing scarves or hats. There were men in their forties, smoking as they walked. There were old men, and soldiers in uniform, and middle-aged women with children, or dogs, who dithered a long time on the edge of the pavement before crossing the road. Besson saw groups of little girls on their way to or from school, satchels slung over their shoulders, always jostling each other and squealing. He saw a man in a dark grey overcoat who stared at all the women passing by. He saw dawdlers and hurriers, cripples, polio cases, one-legged men on crutches. Some walked with a brisk, decisive step, others slouched; one or two turned their toes in. He saw them all, tiny manikins stretched out in insect-like columns, tight-packed, wedged against one another, timid, ridiculous, anonymous creatures — it made one feel sick to look at them. These were the people who owned the town, who had jobs and professions, who thought a little, who spent all their time swarming through this labyrinthine gallery-ridden termite-hill of theirs. Life here belonged to them. They had taken possession of this territory and become its exclusive occupants. None of them ever gave up. None of them ever renounced his shadowy status as a living creature, none of them ever simply stepped out of his clothes and his skin, and quietly melted away on the tarred asphalt. Such an idea never occurred to them. They were strong, incorruptible. Amazingly strong.

With a twinge of regret Besson sensed that from now on he would not be able to look at them all that often. He opened the window, and took a deep breath of cold, rain-damp air. For a little longer he continued to watch the wet street below, with its endless stream of mauve and green cars (more figures for his list) and all the women in loud raincoats, heels tapping a frenzied tattoo along the pavement. Then he drew the shutters to, and carefully closed them. He walked back to the middle of the darkened room, hesitated a moment, then went over to the door, pressed the light-switch, and watched brightness instantly spring out from the bulb.

The light hung directly above the table. Besson stood facing it for a moment; then he sat down in the chair and stared at the litter of papers spread out in front of him. The sheet of newspaper he had been looking at now lay close to one corner of the table: Besson gently dropped it on the floor. The entire working surface was cluttered up with scribbled sheets of manuscript, letters half-sticking out of their envelopes. Everything was in a chaotic muddle, but the muddle possessed a small confused life of its own, that kept whispering endless confidences in one’s ear. It made one want to send messages everywhere, all over the world, postcards with ‘kind regards’ written in the space reserved for correspondence — just ‘kind regards’, nothing more. It made one want to write stories, odd and trivial stories with the names of places or people, and dialogue, and inverted commas and exclamation-marks and question-marks and dashes. It made one want to doodle little patterns on a scratch-pad, crosses and spirals and circles. Or to play soldiers, sketching a mountain range at the bottom of the page, and putting in rows of little men with guns — white heads on the left, black on the right. A flag and a colour-bearer in each camp, too, that was essential. Then you made them shoot at each other, by tracing a long black line from the muzzle of the gun, which would curve over and down into the enemy’s camp. One for the whites and one for the blacks. After that you counted up the corpses to decide which side had won.

Besson took a sheet of paper and began to write. Slowly and hesitantly at first he traced each letter, one after the other, watching his pothooks marching forward all by themselves (well, almost by themselves) across the paper, navy blue on white. He took great care over capitals; he dotted every i and crossed every t. After a moment or so he began to go faster. He forgot the jerky motions of his hurrying hand, he no longer noticed each loop and flourish in the words he set down. He plunged into the act of writing like a landscape, without any conscious goal, never slackening speed. He saw whole phrases pour out of his pen, filing swiftly to the right like tiny animals. He heard the soft abrasive squeak of the hurrying nib, and the regular rub of his hand against the paper, What a strange phenomenon it was, this meticulous scribbling which — little by little, line by line — filled the entire sheet, besmirching it with a whole private system of strokes and and loops, this strange object marching on of its own volition, how, no one could tell, forward, always forward, describing, erasing, pointing the flow of time. There was something alarming about it, it was quite capable of pulling a fast one on you, saying things off its own bat, things you had no idea of. It was language in isolation, a kind of Braille alphabet in which each sign or group of points had stolen something from the substance of life and was preserving it in minuscule form. Like an obscene wall-inscription, a thumbing of the nose against the ineffable weight of eternity. Or perhaps more like some magical formula, some highly complex and specific spell which, if pronounced correctly, can bring about ignoble metamorphoses, trigger off strange chemical reactions, turn children into toads, moonbeams into emeralds, sunlight into rubies.

On the sheet of paper Besson wrote:

‘Cavalcade.

Venenom.

Leaf

Selor — Bergue — Wiggins Teape Papers.

I am writing. I am writing that I am writing. I am writing that I am writing that I am writing. I am writing that I am writing that I am writing that I am writing.

I am looking at my watch. I am very fond of my watch. I would not like to lose it. I would not like anyone to steal it. I have already damaged it once: I forgot to take it off in the bath. I had to take it round to the watch-mender for cleaning and oiling. It has a beautiful white metal dial, with tiny strokes instead of figures. Right at the top, where the hands indicate noon or midnight, there are two strokes instead of one. Near the centre of the dial is written, in English: JUNGHANS. Shockproof. Anti-magnetic. Waterproof. Made in Germany. There are two hands, the shorter one pointing towards the stroke which represents 4, the larger one vertically aligned downwards, covering the stroke at 6. So this is the time my watch tells me it is: half past four. Oh, and there’s another indicator, a very long fine needle, which sweeps round the dial with a vibrating motion. It’s really a very fine watch. I would hate to break it. I am glad it belongs to me. It has a nice pigskin strap, and a bright metal buckle. The glass has been a bit scratched on the outside, ever since I banged my wrist against the school wall. It was a present from my mother, two years ago. For my birthday. When I put it close to my ear I can hear its tiny heart beating away, tick-tick-tick, never stopping. It’s nice to have a watch of your own. Wherever I go people can ask me the time, and I can look at my watch and say “A quarter to two”, or “Half past seven”, or “Three minutes to twelve”, or whatever it may happen to be.’

A little lower Besson wrote: ‘This ball-point dribbles.’ Then he pushed the sheet of paper aside, and taking up the ball-point again began to scribble words wherever he could, feverishly covering scraps of paper and cardboard, the bottoms of paper cups, match-boxes, all picked up at random, with such words as ‘Messenger’, ‘Vander Beke’, ‘Cruelty’, ‘Lang’, ‘Urhell’, ‘Matton’, ‘Zailer’, ‘Physics’, ‘Dallas’, ‘Nail’, ‘Jerrycan’. Finally pressing, as hard as he could, he inscribed a very long word on the wooden surface of the table: ‘Angersonysbonagugehlbouduyrouehavleffavyi’.

After this he ceased all practical activity. There were several photographs lying on the table, and he picked them up. The glossy, grey-tinted slips of pasteboard showed various carefully posed girls, and some dull, depressing landscape shots. One or two were of Besson himself, wearing dark glasses in summer, or posed against a wintry snowbound garden.

Then, at the very bottom of an open drawer, beside a tattered pornographic magazine, Besson came upon a little exercise book, its pages yellowed with age and covered with childish handwriting. On the cover there was a pencil drawing of an engine with five funnels being driven by a man wearing a tarboosh. Above this picture, in capital letters, was the legend: BLACK ORADI.

Besson opened the notebook and began to read. It was not an easy business, since the words had been written in pencil, and after twenty years were badly blurred. The speillng, too, left much to be desired, and many of the sentences needed to be read two or three times before their meaning became clear. But it was an interesting task, and Besson, poring over the faded manuscript, set about it with unhurried deliberation.

Chapter One.

Black Oradi lef the monf 1940 the day of his birfday. He wated seven days, the bote was called the Condé. He stade at sea 31 days then he saw he had gon too far on the sea. He told the captin he wanted to go back but he woudnt, finaly he arived in America. The captin thort he was in Africa or azia 1947. He spent three days in azia, the next day he lef for Corsica, the captin still thort he was in Africa, but Oradi said it wasn’t true, first because in Africa there were black peple like him and also because there was the Bush which went on and on for ever. Then the captin began to stamer when he tarked, he said er ah um, Oradi said you shood tark mor clearly or else wate and think what to say before you say it and not swollo yore words. So just you stop it mister captin, and stop splutering like that. — How dare you tark to me like that when Im the captin. — You just had to say what you wanted to say, without that I cant understand anything — Pooey on you said the captin be off with you to yore cabin if youve got one. — But look I know joly well this is Corsica. — You dont know anything, youll never be realy brany. — What do you mean Im a police officer myself. — Ah well policemen arnt brany.

Chapter Two The Sinking

Three days later Oradi was on the hi seas. For four days he saw an enormus moving mass. He didnt know what it was, he never said anything to anyone because he was afraid they woud be cross with him. But all the same he was dying to tark about it. One day he said he had seen an enormus moving mass. I believe it is a wale sir. But plese dont tell anyone or theyll kill it. Sudenly the enormus mass hurld itself at the ship. The ship put on full speed. But the wale gave the ship a big wack with its tale at the stern. The ship began to dance about up front then it went down at thr stern and all the water came in. The captin and Oradi were furius. They got out the harpoon. But as the harpoon was heavy it almost got dragd away, luckily the captin manneged to hold onto it otherwise he would have been pulld down in the sea and eten by the wale. The wale thort it was a fly or a bird, it thrashd the water with its tale and upset the bote altogether. Then the captain became quite mad with rage, since the bote was loded with stores and catl, and the casks were bobing about all over the sea. Each animal climed on a cask (a barrel for putting oil in) and made a little jump and got rite inside the barel. As for the captin, the captin had got into the enormus barel usd to fil the others. But no mater the mane thing was that it was emty with nothing inside, and Oradi swam holding on to the captin’s barel from behind. The captin kept shouting in a stern (curt) voise Come on now find somthing hollo to get in.

Chapter Three The Swop

They arrivd the monf July 1947. They stade at sea six days then they took another bote a saling bote this time. The bote could not put out it was bloing grate guns and they coud not leve harbor. There was in the crew (1) the first mate Jean Bestieau age 45 (2) the new hand Yves Randort age 37 (3) the captin Jean Brideau age 83 (4) the wet cooper Bastien-Grade age 94 (5) the cook Jean luc Troncor age 39 (6) the doctor François Cablot age 33. You are too old mister Grade you will have to retire! I am going to give you this little note this will show you you are retiring. — Oh thank you very much mister Brideau! — Just a minit mister, ah the way these drores stick, got it now, heres a safty pin, kindly do it up for me will you. — How can I, this safty pin of yors is very hard. — If you like I will try to find another, but Im not shore if I have one. — No please dont do that. — There we are its in now. — Thank you! — Hey cabin boy dont go down in the hold thats where the cooper is. No hes not hes here you can see him. Dont ask him anything hes retird. Go and find a replasement. The cabin-boy took the lader and let it down on the key and he saw two men saying to each other We’ll get a job as cooper on a bote Ill go and catch them said the cabin-boy. Dont just tark and get nowhere he told them come on folio me up the lader, come and see the captin. The captin said I cant do with two of you, one will have to be cooper and the other do watch duty. No! they said Yes! he said No! they said. Come on you, he said, youll be cooper. What about me then! You’ll do watch duty! Why said the man but mister Brideau went off without saying anything.

Chapter Fore the Pirat

The other man said ah I’ve a good idea what about becoming a pirat. Ill kill the steersman and steer the bote onto a reef and make it sink its a new bote. He huried downstares. Then he bort a super sord and sheeld and came up agane, he went over to the steersman and cut of his hed. Oradi was angry. He said Why did you kill that man? Shut up you mad fool because hes a pirat thats why. Oradi saw the bote was beginning to fill with water. Then he ran of. The bandit larfd. Oradi told the captin that water was poring into the bote the captin was astonishd and arsd him why. Sudenly the captin and Oradi were throne against the servants dore the dore burst open and they saw the servant drowning in the water.

The bote began to sink under the water very sloly.

Help shouted the captin, rescue, Oradi, my first mate my cook my doctor my cooper, help! The negroes this being south Africa got into there canoes and rescued them. The bandit made for the shore and hid in a hole. The captin got out of his canoe and went to the beach for a swim. He saw the bandit pulling a rock down on top of him so no one shoud see him. The captin lookd at him and left him to get on with it. He took off his clothes and put them down beside him. He had to go a long way to swim because the tide was rite out. While he was gon the bandit took his clothes. He undresd and lef his own clothes ther insted. Then he dresd in those belonging to the captin.

When the captin came back he coud see neither his clothes nor Oradi. His eyes bugd out of his hed when insted of his own fine clothes he saw a pile of red and green stripd rags, zounds said the captin he has taken my clothes! Luckily he cort site of Oradi holding the bandit and shouting Help Help! Then the captin ran as fast as he coud and cort the pirat and demanded his clothes back, Here they are then the pirat sed. — And what have you don with the steersman? — I kild him. — Your going to com along with me, then. — What for, sed the pirat. — Youll see … He laffed and laffed. He was sure theyd kill him. Im going to put you in prisn! To prisn with the fellow! Keep a tite hold on him Oradi! — But why? — You never ask why. Go on, hold him tite, if you dont hold him hell get away. Im going to tie him up, put your hand there. — Here? — No not there, on the not Im tying, there, now dont move. Oh, youve made me let the not slip loose. Now Im going to get into this handcart with the bandit and youre going to push it.

Oradi took to his heels because the bandit was running after him. The bandit threw a stone at him wich landed in the mud and stuck ther, he cort his foot on it and stumbeld and overturnd the cart and Oradi straind both his legs. The captin cort the pirat agen, he came back and saw Oradi lying on the ground. He said to the bandit Im going to take you to north Africa and drown you. He tide him up firmly to a tree and went off to find his fore black frends like Oradi. He said to them, cut me some long bamboos and make too holes in them. Then you must thred twisted stror thro the holes so we can put Oradi on it. — B-but, but, said all the negroes at once, straw, straw, thats going to brake! — If you plat it strong it wont. The fore set to work. They took fore nales, stuck them in the bamboo and threded the stror. They put Oradi on it and lifted him up saying oop-ah, oop-ah. They carid him as far as a rest house and here they put him down on a bed made of iron and wood. He had to stay in bed six days.

Chapter Five Rescue and Sinking

Three days later they ran into the Clafte which was a bote very like the Gland Duke which was there bote, the too botes met near America, the Clafte rose up and fell back so hevily this time that the wave past over her. But not only had the Gland Duke sunk too and the litle rescue botes were bobing about but the Grelon which was a German submarine was sinking the canoes one by one, there were at least twenty of them. This took place at 150. The submarine missd first time and dived back to the bottom to recharge. Then Oradi grabd his chance and tride to jump into the comander’s bote. He misd his footing and fell in the water, luckily he mannagd to hang on to the side of the canoe. The captin pulld him out and brort him back, he took a nale and hamered it thro too compresd air tanks. The Grelon’s bows came at them. Oradi and the captin rode as hard as they coud. He shouted to the comander ahoy there ahoy were going to be sunk by the Grelot! Quick! He ran out the rope lader and said clime up quick! — Yes but get the lader a bit closer, thats right. — The Grelot’s rite into your canoe! — So what let it sink, Oradi and I are out of it. — But dont you think — Dont we think what? — Well um ah — The hell with you were coming up. The comander went away and let go the windlas. — Come back quick the windlas is running out well be drownd in the bottom of the sea. Before the comander coud get back to the side all the rope lader had run out of the windlas. He called the cabin-boy and lots more of the crew to wind it up again, there were at lest eiteen of them counting the captin but seventeen without him.

The captin and Oradi made noises like glug glug, shouting Hel glug slurp, glelp, glug. You coud here the tackle creking and hel glug helslurp noises. The captin said what a row there making, yes shouted all the others at once. Oradi climed up again, phew he said and took sevral deep breths, in out in out phew. The captin and Oradi went back to the Clafte. Whats this sir havnt I got a cabin? — Im sorry no III give you a tent its all Ive got, all the cabins are full including mine. — What about a table and chares? — Im sory there all taken. — In that case what can we do? — You can sleep on a mat and sit on cushons. — Will they be properly stuffd? — Yes with kapok. — But itll all come out! — Not if there properly sone up. — Come on then get this canvas redy and quick about it. — What for? — You mene you dont know? — No I havnt the fogiest. — To make the tent. — And the cushons. — Wate a moment wile I look for them. — Sir! — Yes what is it? — May I take one of these cushons? — Yes take as many as you like. — Eight then? — More if you want. — What I reckon is Ill take eight for them. — Go on then take them. — Here they are. Now if I look in this corner Ill find some more canvas. Too bad if theres scorpions lerking there. Whats this it feels like an armchare when I tuch it its cold, dont bother looking there it isnt anything interesting. Oh but look here whats this underneath when I lift it up, this wite contrap-shun, lets try a bit futher down, all right, why its a super icebox that shoud fix them. Oops, thats got it clere, keep it rite way up its got some bred and wine and a glas inside it. Bang, thud, now weve got it standing on its legs. — Lets sit down said the captin theres sure to be somthing good inside now Ill open it ooh ah its wine just look at this lovely wine.

At midday Oradi went to the ships cook and said in Inglish Im hungri. — Eh whats that? The captin hurrid in and said to the cook dont you understand. — No. — Well in that case you cant understand inglish. — No I dont. — He says hes hungri. — All rite said the cook if your hungri Ill give you a cat. — What, to eat? — Eh, no, just to show frendly. Oradi went off furius.

Saying Goodbye

Oradi said goodbye to his friends and went abord the Triglant. The siren blew and they left, Oradi lowerd a canoe into the sea with himself in it, he made a runing bowline and tied the canoe to the bote. He stade at sea 29 days. And when he got to north Africa he told them all his advenchers.

When he had finished reading, Besson dropped the small yellowing exercise-book back on the table, amid a muddle of papers and old pencil-stubs. Then his gaze lost itself in the soft shadows that filled the room, and he began to dream a whole series of minuscule adventures. Without stirring a muscle, in a mood close to tender compassion, he sat and watched every object rise and move in unison, miraculously freed from their ancient lethargy. The furniture acquired the texture of rubber, or marshmallow, and melted slowly across the floor. Grass sprouted, green and fresh, the walls silently contracted, sheets of paper covered themselves with signs and symbols. Fabrics blossomed in a flash with strange incongruous flowers, their tremulous petals spreading across the material like so many blots. An imperceptible breeze passed through the room, blowing the curtains out horizontally. Everything was floating, in suspension. At peace with himself now, all fear gone, having passed far beyond the roads that lead to life or death, François Besson similarly surrendered himself to the wind, let it bear him up and away. He felt the wings of the elements caress and sustain him. The earth in this moment was no longer viscous, no longer needed to engulf beasts and men. Its voracious belly was full to satiety. A few more hours, a few more years perhaps, and it might be possible to break loose from it like this, easily, without effort or suffering, one jump with feet together — So that day, having conquered the force of gravity, Besson spent a long time as he floated in air observing the reddish surface of the floor, seeing it swim up towards him, swollen and angry as an incoming tide.