The Flood

Chapter Six

Meeting with the redheaded woman — Besson tells her fortune — Brief discussion with a child of four and a half called Lucas — A respectable man — How François Besson and the redheaded woman found themselves lying on the linoleum floor of the kitchen — Another night

ON the sixth day François Besson met the redheaded woman. She was a tall girl, five foot eight or thereabouts, pale-complexioned, and her great brown eyes had dark smudges under them. Her figure, and the absence of lines on her face, suggested an age somewhere between twenty-five and thirty, though she could have been younger — or, indeed, older. She was sitting in the bar where Besson had gone to have a beer, staring into space, doing nothing. When Besson sat down next to her she gave him one quick glance and looked away again. Besson lit a cigarette and began to talk to her. She answered him easily and calmly, just as though they had been sharing a compartment on a train journey. Besson offered her a cigarette: she took it with her left hand, and two silver bracelets jangled together on her arm as she did so. She smoked in an unhurried fashion, occasionally flicking her ash over the edge of the table, since the ashtray (an advertising handout) was stuffed with sugar-lump wrapping-papers. It also contained a long drinking-straw made out of pink plastic, bent into three and bearing traces of lipstick at one end. There was an endless stream of people in and out of the bar, all talking, laughing, downing their drinks. The waiters shouted their orders right across the room—‘One pint of draught beer!’ ‘Two espressos and a plate of ham!’

The chair opposite Besson and the redheaded woman was occupied by an old lady wrapped up in a woollen shawl, who sat there knitting busily. Besson felt pleased at having found someone like the redheaded woman to talk to in this bar. It filled him with confidence, he was the equal of all these other people around him. He was no longer on his own, he had become the hero of an adventure. At last something was going to happen, though exactly what he had no idea. But just how this encounter would turn out did not matter: the point was that it had a future, of one sort or another. One might endeavour to predict it, sitting there over one’s beer, playing with the underside of the paper cup, casting a curious eye over one’s fellow-customers — but an hour later the whole thing was quite liable to be over. The redheaded woman would get up, smile, shake hands, and say: ‘That was nice. Goodbye for now. See you some time.’ Or maybe they would leave the bar together, and he would walk her as far as her bus-stop. One could even try to guess her name. Maybe it was Catherine. Catherine Roussel. Or Irene Kendall. Or Vera Inson. Age: twenty-eight. Occupation: laboratory assistant. Born in Casablanca, Morocco. Mother’s first name: Eléonore.

Besson said: ‘What’s your name?’

‘Marthe,’ said the redheaded woman.

‘Marthe what?’

‘Marthe Janin.’

‘How old are you?’

‘Twenty-five,’ she told him.

Besson watched a man and woman pass by their table. Then he went on with his interrogation.

‘Profession?’

‘Come again?’ Martha said.

‘I mean, do you have a job?’

‘Oh, I see. No, I don’t have a job. Why are you asking me all these questions?’

‘No particular reason. Where were you born?’

‘Here,’ the woman said. ‘What are you up to? Want to tell my fortune?’

‘Maybe,’ Besson said. The hardest question still remained to be asked. He preferred to prepare the ground for it in advance.

‘Do you live with your parents?’

‘No,’ said Marthe, and quickly added: ‘Just with my son.’

Instantly Besson backed his hunch on the boy’s first name: it would be Patrick.

‘What’s he called?’ he asked.

‘Who, my son?’

‘Yes.’

‘Lucas.’

Besson stubbed out his cigarette in the overflowing ashtray. Finally he said: ‘And what about your mother?’

She stared at him in surprise.

‘What?’

‘I mean, what’s she called?’

‘Do you really need to know that?’ she said.

‘It’s essential if I’m going to tell your fortune,’ Besson said.

She grinned. ‘My mother’s dead,’ she told him. ‘But she had the same name as me, Marthe. There.’

Besson relaxed for a moment. He sat staring into his glass of beer without saying anything. The woman touched his arm.

‘Well? I’m waiting.’

‘What for?’

‘My fortune, of course. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten already?’

‘Ah yes, your fortune,’ Besson said. ‘I’ll tell you it now. You’re a very delicate person. You suffer from rheumatism and asthma. But this also implies great sensitivity. You’re afraid of hurting people, and you hate tactlessness in others. You prefer summer to winter, and your favourite landscape has a lot of water and woodland in it. You’re very nervy. When you were a child you must have had a bad fall from the top of a staircase. Your favourite colour is burnt topaz. You often have dreams about horses, and you write up a private diary every night. Be on your guard — you run quite a risk of dying by the hand of a murderer.’

‘Very funny,’ said Marthe. ‘You’ve certainly got a vivid imagination. But you’re wrong about one thing: my favourite colour’s verdigris.’

‘Anyone can make a mistake,’ Besson said, and took a good pull at his beer. The young woman’s cigarette joined Besson’s in the brimming ashtray. Paper began to smoulder, giving off an acrid smell. She coughed, and poured a few drops of coffee into the ashtray to douse the fire before it got going.

‘My turn now,’ she said. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Paul,’ said Besson. ‘Paul Thisse.’

‘How old are you?’

‘Twenty-seven.’

‘Do you have a job?’

‘Not at present, no. I’m a student.’

‘Do you live by yourself?’

‘That depends,’ Besson said. ‘At the moment I’m living with my parents.’

‘What are their names?’

‘My father’s called Georges, and my mother Gioia. She’s Italian.’

‘Have you any brothers or sisters?’

‘No.’

She reflected for a moment.

‘All right, then,’ she said finally. ‘You’re intelligent, and rather timid. You’re inclined to be nervy too, I should say. You find it hard to make up your mind, and you don’t like people laughing at you. You had a very happy childhood, but now you’re scared of turning out a failure. You’re afraid of death, too. No, wait, I haven’t finished. The woman in your life will be called Thérèse. You’ll marry her and have lots of children. But before that happens you’ll pass through some great ordeal which will cause you much suffering. You will have an accident. You’ll be very ill. But fortunately everything will turn out all right in the end. There. Will that do you?’

‘Fine,’ Besson said. ‘But you haven’t told me my favourite colour.’

‘The colour of the sun,’ said the redheaded woman.

They went on talking like this for over an hour. All the time people kept entering and leaving the café, and the old lady in her woollen shawl never once stopped knitting. From time to time someone would put a coin in the jukebox, and the room would be flooded with music — loud, monotonous, coarse-rhythmed.

Besson asked the redheaded woman endless questions about herself and her family. He found out that she was not married. Her son was four and a half. She had been ill a few months ago. She wrote poetry. She had taken the examination for a librarian’s diploma, and was waiting for the results. When she had saved enough money, she was going to buy a small car, probably a Fiat. Her father was in business in Paris. She had few friends, and very seldom came out to the café. Besson told her things about himself, too. He said he had nearly got married several months before, but that in the end it just hadn’t worked out. He was in the process of breaking off with his fiancée. One day soon he would write her a letter, or maybe call her up on the phone, and tell her what he really felt about her. He had taught history and geography in a private school, but had given this job up some while back. He had no real idea what he was going to do now.

The young woman listened to all this with great composure, her eyes fixed on the polished nails of her right hand. Besson noticed that she wore a heavy gold ring on her ring-finger, with the initials J.S. engraved on it. This was probably the name of her son’s father, Besson thought. Jacques Salles. Or Jean Servat. Unless it happened to be Jerome Sanguinetti.

They smoked another cigarette together. Then the girl got up and went across to the toilet. Besson watched her move over the floor of the bar, holding herself very erect, hips swivelling a little under her beige jersey dress. By the time she got back Besson had paid both bills. They left the café and walked off together through the fine drizzle. After they had gone a few yards the young woman turned to Besson and began to say goodbye.

With some embarrassment Besson said: ‘I haven’t anything much to do right now — maybe I could walk a bit further with you?’

She hesitated. ‘The thing is, I have to go and fetch my son from his nursery school.’

‘That’s all right,’ Besson said. ‘I’d like to meet your son.’

They moved off again together, side by side, one couple in a multitude of men and women threading their way through the streets of the town, past endless rows of shops. Fine rain drizzled down on to their faces out of a black sky, and the drops were instantly absorbed by their skin, without trickling. They fell on their hair and foreheads and noses, sometimes even dropping through their parted lips. This rain was soft and cold, all of a piece with the wind and air and odours all around them. Cars swished by in the roadway, spattering their legs as they passed. Besson suddenly felt as though he were on a boat, or walking along a beach. With quiet persistence the falling water went about its tack of dissolution. Everything gleamed damply. Even the lights were misty and humid: the naked bulbs that contained each spark of electricity looked like grotesque globes of moisture.

The redheaded woman walked on beside Besson, wrapped in her blue raincoat, legs and hips moving briskly. Her leather handbag swung from curled fingers; she advanced as though she had a motor hidden somewhere inside her body. Her face looked straight ahead down the pavement, eyes very much alert, though half-hidden by drooping eyelids and lashes, mouth open to breathe, a regular palpitation fluttering her throat. Lower down the movement became clearly visible: her shoulders followed the rhythmic swing of her arms, her backbone oscillated to and fro, while from time to time her torso would bend either forwards, or — with an abrupt, twisting gesture — to the left or the right. The overall impression was of a powerful, smooth-running machine, working at full pressure. From its birth onwards this body had been taught the gestures and rhythms of life. These clumsy arms and crazy legs, these heavy hips — all had been permeated by some mysterious and subtle substance which now controlled them. From a mere mass of flesh and bone there had been created a woman.

Besson walked beside her, not saying a word; yet already it was as though he had been caught in the wash of some big steamer. Without even knowing it, she had taken him in tow. It was she who elbowed through the crowd, and followed a safe course down the middle of the pavement. Yet perhaps, at the deepest level, she was aware of it. It must be stamped all over her body, on every square inch of bare skin, on the moon of each separate fingernail. She was the dividing-line between life and death, a kind of figurehead that bore the distinguishing mark of humankind blazoned plainly across it. Her impassive and wellnigh immobile features, set like a mask above those thrusting shoulders, proclaimed to the anonymous, obscure and hostile mass of townsfolk that she was blazing a trail for humanity. Without either fear or hatred, simply in the awareness of her own unquestioned rights, she asserted her claim to a place among the rest; and they understood this instantly, making way for her as she approached, opening a small postern gate in their defensive ramparts to let this one small congeneric atom slip through. Sheltered by the mere proximity of the redheaded woman, François Besson advanced without fear. Eyes might stare at him now if they chose: they would not penetrate beyond the surface. The human territory he was traversing had become his domain also. He could take shelter and sleep in the houses, or drink with easy nonchalance in the cafés. He could book himself a room in any hotel. He could walk through the public squares or stare at the goods in shop windows, just as he pleased. It was a wonderful feeling not to be alone any longer.

When they reached the door of the nursery school, Besson let the girl go in alone. At this point he was so buoyed up by her presence that he found himself able to stand there motionless on the kerb, smoking a cigarette and watching the passers-by.

After a few minutes the redheaded woman returned, leading a redheaded little boy by the hand. When the child saw Besson, he scowled. Marthe pushed him forward. ‘He’s a bit shy,’ she said. ‘Say hullo to the gentleman, Lucas.’

Besson bent solemnly down and shook hands with the little boy. His small hand felt cold and crinkly, like a monkey’s paw.

Then all three of them set off the way they had come, Marthe holding Lucas’s hand and Besson walking beside them. They made their way through a good many streets, at an easy, unhurried pace. The girl talked to her son and Besson in turn. At one point the little redheaded boy said he wanted a chocolate ice, and Besson bought ices for all of them. They walked on, licking their ices as they went, making occasional little jokes. It was all very peaceful and harmless; it could have gone on like this for days, even weeks. It was like strolling down a long warm beach towards the sea, with a fresh breeze blowing in your face; or, again, like wandering round a fair, without a thought in one’s head, gazing at the shooting galleries and the merry-go-rounds, inhaling the resinous odour of pralines and toffee-apples. A little further on they met a group of little girls and boys, and Lucas stopped to stare at them. Besson heard what the children were saying: it was an argument to decide, yes or no, whether there were any Indians in this part of the world. At another point the girl decided to go into a shop and buy herself a girdle. She left the little boy with Besson and vanished, saying: ‘Won’t be a second—’

After a moment Besson followed her into the shop, bringing the child with him, and watched her look through an assortment of elastic girdles. He released the little boy’s hand to light a cigarette: when he finished, the child’s hand crept back into his, quite naturally, as a matter of course.

Besson looked at him and said: ‘What’s your name?’

‘Lucas’, said the little boy.

‘How old are you?’

‘Four and a half.’

‘And where do you live?’

Silence.

‘Come on, tell me where you live—’

‘Don’t know.’

‘You mean you don’t know where your house is?’

‘Over there….’

‘Or that one there, maybe?’

But the child turned his gaze somewhere else, and that was the end of the conversation.

When the girl had bought her girdle, they set off along the sidewalk again: but this time the little redhaired boy held Besson’s hand.

Later, about nine or ten o’clock, after dinner, when Lucas was asleep in his own room, Besson and Marthe still sat talking in the kitchen. Here, more or less, is what they said to one another.

‘He takes after you,’ Besson said.

‘Lucas? He’s got my hair, yes. But in every other way he’s the image of his father.’

‘Doesn’t he ever ask where he is?’

‘Where who is? His father?’

‘Yes.’

‘No, I told him his father was dead. That way he doesn’t ask any questions.’

‘What does he do?’

‘Him? Oh, he’s a lawyer. Pretty well-known locally, too.’ She began to shred the cigarette she was holding, rolling it between the thumb and index finger of her left hand.

‘I’m not sorry I broke up,’ she said. ‘Not even for Lucas’s sake.’

‘Why?’

‘Oh — he was a really seductive type, you know, everything a woman could want. All the same, he was just a plain stinker. I never had the guts to cut loose from him, though. In the end he ditched me. Bit of luck, I suppose.’

‘He — he ditched you when you became — when you had your child?’

She shook her head. ‘No, not then. It happened about a year ago. Oh, he used to go out with every woman he met. He’d set me up in a bedsitter with — with Lucas. He used to come and visit me every evening. But I never saw him during the day. And yet he was really fond of his son. Used to play with him, all that sort of thing. Brought him toys. Which didn’t stop him being a plain bastard. Money, that was the only thing that mattered as far as he was concerned, money, money. He wanted to make more and more, all the time. He lashed it all out, too. To make people admire him. He liked being admired, it gave him a kick. Trouble was, I didn’t admire him enough, to his way of thinking. I didn’t flatter him. That’s what he couldn’t take about me, I reckon.’

‘Why didn’t you get married?’

She shrugged.

‘Was it he who didn’t want to?’

‘Oh, at the beginning he was all for it. But that didn’t tell me anything. He wanted to marry me because of the kid. There mustn’t be any scandal. Besides, he’d have liked to get Lucas to himself — his son, you know, to do what he liked with. Then after a while we got used to not being married. It wouldn’t have made any difference as far as I was concerned.’

Besson said: ‘Basically, he sounds the jealous sort to me.’

‘Yes, maybe. But I’m still not sorry it ended.’

‘Are you so sure?’

She did not answer. Besson began to fiddle with his coffee-spoon, twisting it round on the green oilcloth.

‘Everything he did, he did for his son,’ Marthe said. ‘He wouldn’t lift his little finger to help me. But his son was another matter. Besides — It’s a bit embarrassing to admit it, but — well, he’s still supporting me. Every month, ever since we broke up, he’s sent me a money-order. So I can bring up his son. Funny, isn’t it?’

‘Decent of him.’

‘Decent?’ She gave a bitter laugh. ‘Why d’you suppose he’s doing it? He’s scared. He’s afraid of gossip. Don’t you see it? He’s — well, he’s a very respectable citizen. He’s afraid of what people might say. He feels a certain responsibility for his son. He’s fallen out with his wife — mistress, if you like. All right. But he still sees to his son’s upbringing. He’s a good father, I’ll admit it. And he doesn’t act that way purely out of self-interest. It comes naturally. That’s the way he is. He’s respectable. He has responsibilities. It really is funny. All right by me, though — the cash certainly comes in handy.’

‘You should have refused to accept it.’

‘Yes, I know. I ought to have sent his money-orders straight back to him. I did, the first time. But I wasn’t having any luck finding a job. It’s tough getting work when you really need it. Then, the next month, he sent more money. After all, I thought, what odds does it make? He can’t buy me back this way.’

‘You ease his conscience for him.’

‘Well, fine. But that one’d have a good conscience anyhow. Besides, I’m no heroine, I’m telling you.’

Besson was silent for a moment or two. He sat there, hands resting on the oilcloth, rounded back hunched into the tubular metal chair, staring at the dirty plates and half-filled glasses of water that still littered the left-hand side of the table. The electric light beat harshly down on them, and the brightness reflected from each object pierced through his eyes to the inmost recesses of his mind, or body. A sense of fatigue, a drowsy stupor began to steal over him. He felt himself drifting far away from the immediate situation — the remains of supper, this bright-walled kitchen, this table, the harsh gleam of unwashed dishes. Yet the redheaded girl sitting opposite him was so close that he could almost fancy he had her in his arms, was clasping her roughly to him, a mere object.

He said: ‘I want to hear about your father. Tell me what he does, what kind of man he is.’

She smiled. ‘He’s just an ordinary sort of man, like anyone else.’

‘What’s his name?’

‘Louis.’

‘How old is he?’

‘I’ve no idea. He must be a bit over sixty. Sixty-two, I think.’

‘What does he look like? Describe him to me.’

This time she laughed quite openly. ‘What does he look like? Wait a moment, let’s think. He’s tall, and grey-haired. He’s got very pale eyes, but that’s a symptom of old age — every time I see him I’m astonished by the colour of his eyes. They’re translucent, grey-blue, touches of green as well. Oh, and he’s got lines there, on each cheek. And another vertical one between his eyebrows. Maybe he’s got rather too strong a nose, but I think he’s very handsome. No, really, it’s true, for his age he looks pretty good.’

‘What’s his character like? All right?’

‘Some people would say No. Some people would call him very bad-tempered. But he’s always been terribly gentle with me. He let me do just as I liked.’

‘Then why don’t you live with him?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. I couldn’t before, because — well, because of him. And now I’ve got used to living here. But maybe I’ll go back to him one of these days. I just don’t know.’ She eyed him with some curiosity, and added: ‘Now what about you? Tell me about your father.’

‘He’s a very reasonable sort of man,’ Besson said, simply. ‘I suppose you’d call him a disciplinarian, but I’m very fond of him. He’s got his fads, but then so has every—’

‘And your mother?’

Besson hesitated. ‘My mother? She’s my mother, that’s all. What else is there to say about her?’

‘Don’t you like her?’

‘I love her to distraction, I loathe her guts, I despise her, I believe in her. She’s — well, she’s my mother, don’t you understand?’

‘You live with your parents, and you—’

‘Yes, I know. You’re right. But it’s only a temporary arrangement. As soon as I get a new job I’ll rent a bedsitter somewhere in town. Unless you felt like offering me bed and board.’

She looked at him quite seriously. ‘Why not?’ she said. She began to trace a pattern on the oilcloth with her nail, in a mechanical fashion. Besson saw that she drew a series of parallel lines, and then filled the spaces between with them crosses.

‘Maybe it would teach him a lesson,’ she added, as an afterthought.

Besson said: ‘He wouldn’t send you any more money-orders.’

‘Don’t be so sure. He’d be rather proud of a situation like that. He’d look as though he was thinking: Well, there you are you see, what a woman — but my son’s my son, regardless. Let her do what she likes, it won’t make any difference.’

‘Anyway, you can’t stop yourself thinking about him, can you?’

She looked at him, her eyes still serious: but this time there was something almost tragic about her expression. ‘No,’ she said, ‘it’s true. I can’t. Let’s talk about something else.’

They went on chatting, with intervals of silence, still sitting at the kitchen table, arms on the green oilcloth. At one point she got up to go to the toilet, and Besson heard the solemn sound of flushing water. Then she came back and made some more coffee. Besson watched her moving close beside him. Her tawny hair was tousled; there were dark smudges under her eyes, and a strange light gleamed in the pupils, something akin to impatience. Her fine, slender hands moved nervously, with glints of yellow reflected light flashing off the ring marked J.S. From one unidentifiable source — perhaps the neon strip-lighting that flickered in the middle of the ceiling — a halo of quivering, palpable radiance had descended on her, permeating every last inch of her body, electrifying her hair and nails, the outline of her face, each movement of her fingers. Harsh light sparked continually from the fuzzed woollen surface of her beige dress, as though it were a second skin. Every element in her was dry and clearcut. Neither hot nor cold: electric. Faintly, as in a dream, Besson heard her voice speaking. It was different now, it had become fierce and raucous. Without rising from his chair he took the hand with the golden ring gleaming on it, and drew it towards him. The rest of her body followed easily, it was like pulling a go-cart. It hung poised and motionless for a moment, at the point of balance: then, suddenly, they slid down together, dropping softly and easily on to the linoleum flooring, where the harsh light was reflected like the sky in a pool of water. Before he plunged into the abyss Besson heard the voice whispering, close to his ear yet at the same time immeasurably distant: ‘We mustn’t … No, don’t … Mustn’t …’

‘My name isn’t Paul Thisse,’ Besson said. ‘My name is François — François Besson—’

But it was already too late. She did not hear him. So Besson entered the sphere of action, alone amid a gigantic rosette of expanding hieroglyphs, all of which bore the same identical message.

During this time night had fallen over the town. Darkness had covered the high relief of the buildings and the deep crevasse-like streets. Wrapped in silence, the ruins rose straight into a sky where clouds scudded invisibly past. The sea had become opaque, impenetrable, with the hardness of a vast polished steel ball, so that the earth could no longer slip softly by along the strand which divided them. Street-lamps glowed steadily amid a halo of mosquitoes and butterflies. Far away, over the roof-tops, the beam from a lighthouse intermittently slashed through the curtain of rain and darkness. The night was teeming, black, rich with the smell of smoke and momentary glimmers of light. Nothing could break down its barriers. Occasionally something would happen — a car travelling slowly through the streets, a bat flitting after a swarm of insects. But such moments did not last. The blind, heavy mass, like a tide of jam or molasses, would close over these brief points of action and at once obliterate them. One was caught in the trap, and nothing one could do would get one out of it. This whole sector of the earth was wrapped in the same vertiginous and glacial abyss, was held captive by its static immensity. No landmarks, no lights, no scintillating warmth: nothing but the dryness and barren expanse of the desert, crystalline hardness, opaque transparency, the diamond quality of utter nothingness, the void.

What difference did it make if there were a few patches of moisture here and there, one or two small warm humid droplets? They would not last long. Soon, too soon, they would be absorbed by that gigantic ever-thirsty mouth, always sucking, consuming. Minuscule sparks were born in the darkness, and floated swiftly away into space, so swiftly that they might have been mere illusions. What mattered, the only reality, was this eternal blackness, this silence, this unfathomable and all-engulfing infinity. Blackness. Blackness. An ocean of boundless shadows, where invisible waves surged to and fro from one edge of eternity to the other; an ocean activated by a slow, constant ground-swell; the great black flag ceaselessly covering all moving objects with its folds, gathering in and appropriating everything. An indescribable flux, the breathing of some never-to be-recognized giant. In the space of one-tenth of a second he could consume everything, so greedy was he for living sustenance. Water, fire, rocks, pale stars and red stars, disintegrating suns, delayed explosions and torrents of lava — all this he would devour without ever being satisfied. Time, the dimension of attrition, was made out of these elements. Seconds, seconds — grains of salt falling gently on top of one another. Whole years of honey, fat centuries dissolved magically in floods of acid. Nothing remained. Nothing here was left in peace any longer. Meals chased one another interminably, the process of digestion never reached an end. And in this expanse of darkness there was no more measure or proportion. Continents, whole galaxies were as grains of dust. High and low merged indistinguishably into one another: circles and angles, parallel straight lines and spirals, colours, distances, weights — all these, even when you examined them closely, were reduced to tiny identical points. Things that had been really hard-textured, like concrete or marble floors, opened up under the pressure of foreign bodies and engulfed them gently, like a quicksand. Everything had been reduced to a common, formalized identity, and the world might just as well have been nothing but a page of writing.

The blackness of the night, blackness fallen from the uttermost depths of the empty heavens, had descended on earth, and was implementing the true reign of matter: sleep, chill non-being, mastery over death. Under its sway days and months had fallen silent, had increased their numbers in darkness, and now there was nothing left to cover the minuscule activities of life but this profound eternity, its dull and constant sound-waves expanding all around, ecstatically unfolding its sumptuous petals of dying light and mingled colours, to reveal, at last, the face of darkness.

Night had spread its substance evenly over the town. Out in the streets the cold air stirred from time to time, and blew along the rows of closed shutters. Bright white or red holes in the darkness, near the bottom of buildings, formed words such as: CAFE CINEMA BAR PIZZA MOTEL. Pigeons slept in corners of ledges, each with its head tucked under its left wing. There was also, running through the middle of the town, a river, its wide bed choked with stones and thorns. The night had poured into this

channel, and now it was a mere carbonaceous crevasse that looked as though it went right through to the centre of the earth. The sound of its waters rose up with the mist, and it was a noise of blackness and terror. Not far from the sea a bridge, with three still arches, spanned the river. Cars sped over the damp macadam, each with two red, mistily shimmering stars of light behind it. Far away to the north the mountains blended with the vast yawning gap of the sky. And in the country, not to mention along the boulevards, countless trees were sleeping where they stood.

They were not the only sleepers. Men and women slept too, inside their little private castles, lying on their flat beds, in numbers past counting — many millions, probably, stretched out stiff and chill, eyes turned up, breathing lightly. Jacques Vargoz, for instance. Or Sophie Murnau. Noëlle Haudiquet. Hott Ben Amar. Infinity had descended upon them, and they were gently breathing it in without knowing it. They were savouring the calm of eternal being, and their bodies were sliding perilously on the slippery slope of peace. Tomorrow, perhaps, when the feverish day began its course once more, some of them would remain prisoners of the night, and never wake again. Children, curled up in their cots, would begin to dream of monsters. One of them, torn abruptly awake for no particular reason, open eyes trying vainly to brush away the veils of darkness, began to scream, all by himself, drilling his red point of life in the heart of the void, making an act of creation, standing up against the flatness and emptiness, taking chisel and hammer and carving into that vast indifferent wall the words that liberated him: I AM ALIVE I AM ALIVE I AM ALIVE.