The road will be permanent torture, but rather abstract, if you can say that. The region is totally deserted; you penetrate deeper and deeper into the mountains. I suffer, I've dramatically over-estimated my physical reserves. And the final goal of the journey no longer seems so wonderful, it becomes more nebulous as I ascend these unavailing and endless gradients without even looking at the landscape.
Right in the middle of one difficult climb, as I'm gasping like an asphyxiated canary, I spot a sign: `Caution. Shot-firing'. Despite everything, I find it a little hard to believe. Who'd be after me here?
The explanation dawns on me a little while later. In fact the sign refers to quarrying; it's only rocks, then, that are to be destroyed. I like that better.
The going gets flatter; I raise my head. To the right of the road there is a hill of rubble, midway between dust and small pebbles. The sloping surface is grey, of a geometric and absolute flatness. Very enticing. I'm sure if you set foot there you'd sink straight down for several metres.
From time to time I stop beside the road, I smoke a cigarette, I shed a few tears and then I press on. I wish I were dead. But 'there is a road to travel, and it must be travelled.'
I arrive at Saint-Cirgues in a pathetic state of exhaustion and I make for the Parfum des Bois hotel. After a short rest I go and drink a beer in the hotel bar. The people of the village have a friendly and welcoming air; they bid me good day.
I hope no one is going to engage me in conversation of a more precise kind, ask me if I'm doing a spot of tourism, where I've come from by bike, if I find the region to my taste, etc. But happily none of this occurs.
My margin of manoeuvre in life has become singularly restricted. I still envisage a number of possibilities, but they vary only in points of detail.
The dinner will settle nothing. Still, I've taken three Tercians in the meantime. And here I am, alone at my table, I've asked for the gastronomic menu. It is absolutely delicious; even the wine is good. I cry while eating, emitting little sobs.
Later, in my room, I will try and sleep; once more in vain. The sad cerebral routine; the passing of a night that seems frozen in time; the images that are disbursed with increasing parsimony. Whole minutes to straighten the bedspread.
Around four in the morning, though, the night takes on a different cast. Something is stirring deep within, asking to be revealed. The very nature of this journey is undergoing a change: in my mind it becomes something decisive, almost heroic.
On 21 June, around seven, I get up, have my breakfast and leave by bike for the Forest of Mazan. Yesterday's hearty dinner has had the effect of giving me renewed strength; I ride supply, effortlessly, through the pines.
The weather is wonderfully fine, pleasant, springlike. The Forest of Mazan is very pretty and also profoundly reassuring. It is a real country forest. There are gently rising paths, clearings, a sun which penetrates everywhere. The meadows are covered in daffodils. One feels content, happy; there are no people. Something seems possible, here. One has the impression of being present at a new departure.
And of a sudden all this evaporates. A great mental shock restores me to the deepest part of myself. And I take stock, and I ironize, but at the same time I have respect for myself. What a capacity I have for grandiose mental images, and of seeing them through! How clear, once more, is the image I have of the world! The richness of what is dying inside me is absolutely prodigious; I needn't feel ashamed of myself; I shall have tried.
I stretch out in a meadow, in the sun. And now it hurts, lying down in this softest of meadows, in the midst of this most amiable and reassuring of landscapes. Everything which might have been a source of pleasure, of participation, of innocent sensual harmony, has become a source of suffering and unhappiness. At the same time I feel, and with impressive violence, the possibility of joy. For years I have been walking alongside a phantom who looks like me, and who lives in a theoretical paradise strictly related to the world. I've long believed that it was up to me to become one with this phantom. That's done with.
I cycle still further into the forest. On the other side of that hill is the source of the River Ardèche, the map says. The fact no longer interests me; I continue nevertheless. And I no longer even know where the source is; at present, everything looks the same. The landscape is more and more gentle, amiable, joyous; my skin hurts. I am at the heart of the abyss. I feel my skin again as a frontier, and the external world as a crushing weight. The impression of separation is total; from now on I am imprisoned within myself. It will not take place, the sublime fusion; the goal of life is missed. It is two in the afternoon.
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