Fever

by J. M. G. Le Clézio

I wait.

  I lose heaps of pictures. They shoot up with extreme rapidity, and naturally they get away from me. Or else they’re born simultaneously, a thousand sensations all hatching out at the same time, yes, exactly at the same second. A thousand languages, which have all told me something, I know—but what? What did they tell me, those languages, which enthralled me and which I forgot at once? And the pages of writing: I’ve seen pages of writing, I’ve read them, I’ve found them so beautiful. What was on those pages? What profound, wide-ranging story, what noble chant with sonorous verbs? What was there? Was there really anything written? Or were there only successions of meaningless signs which awakened the memory of beauty in my mind?

  The illusion is diabolical. I’m suffering. I’m aching, deep down inside me.

  Sometimes, a miracle! A picture, a sound, a phrase emerges from this jumble and resuscitates what was already dead and forgotten. I had lived through all this, these cubes of colour, these processions of circles, these fires, these women’s bodies rolling on the ground, but I hadn’t known it. And consciousness, awakened by a chance form, suddenly brings time back to me in reverse. The pictures come crowding back, they thunder out briefly, in a certain order, and I see them: but they belong to the past. For here, in this enclosed space, the sense of life is reversible. There is no truth, there is no direction; time and space are mere echoes, eternal echoes, always available, torn from the chaos of the simultaneous, never to be touched by decay. I am as it were plunged in an insulated sphere, swimming among the elements of thought and imagination. They always return, they perforate me untiringly, they are a circle, with no beginning and no end, motionless, yet moving; they are the intoxication of a wheel, the unintelligible movement of an endless screw which acquaints me with eternity.

  And I, in my bed, my eyes closed, waiting for sleep, I am living in a similar world. On the papers that cover my table, dates are lying about: 1864–1964, April 13, 1940, 5687; Ivan the Terrible, Parts 1 and 2 (1943–1945), film by S. M. Eisenstein. The names are written, the drawings are outlined. Places are located on maps, Viareggio, Capo Promontore, Tárgul-Jiu, Gora Dshumaya, Xante, Sinop, Peterborough, Charolles, Vyazma, Alatyr. Names that exist, eternal, melodious syllables marking these places of earth and rock, these trees, those piles of steadfast materials. Nothing, nothing of all this will pass away. Men’s lives will constantly return to haunt us like ghosts, and things will continue to create themselves, to add themselves together. Noises and silences will be the same. The flowers and insects will endure. For here, everything is caught in a liquid vortex whose movement is full of madness. We shall not forget. And even if we do, all these things will remain present for ever, because they have existed, because they had existed even before they came into being. That is the perpetual strength that no language will ever possess. That which no man has been able to invent. The everlastingness, the sweet, the virtuous everlastingness of existence.

  In front of me, now, is a horizontal bar with dozens of propellers rotating on it. They stop when I want them to. But there is always one that goes on turning, in defiance of my will. When I manage to stop them all, without exception, then I shall be able to find peace and slumber.

  9. A day of old age

  IN the cold morning, with the sun not giving a great deal of light, the country was very quiet. It was a kind of suburb, full of low houses, with poor streets where there were no shops, and the tarred surface had been ripped off in patches. If there had been a hill round there, from which one could have had a general view, one would have seen a grey, drab, insignificant place, scattered with dusty trees, gardens where the lawns had bare patches, and dirty houses. Brooks that might have been gutters ran in all directions across the plots of land. To the south, the town began, no doubt, with tall white buildings and straight streets like avenues. To the north was the open country. Between the two was here, this weeded, battered park, inhabited by people who were not to be seen.

  Lanes ran between the properties, past the old stone walls, and met to form melancholy crossroads where one or two children played, or sometimes a dog. Species of mimosa with no flowers, pepper-trees and unrecognizable shrubs grew here and there in the gardens. One heard, coming from goodness knows where, a piercing, inhuman shriek, no doubt uttered by a chained-up parrot. Tiny creatures were making their difficult way over the dusty ground, where the cold of the night still held its place with little crystals. In hollows in the rocks and above garage doors, lizards were asleep. There were cocoons everywhere, and even the tiniest holes were occupied by snowy, opaque balls to which dewdrops still clung. The noise of a train was heard from some distance, on the far side of the suburb; it came slowly on, receded, came closer again, disappeared completely, and then re-emerged from the far end of the gaps between the houses. From time to time men went off to work, riding motorized bicycles.

  Inside their houses, people were bustling about; wireless sets were bawling in front of the open windows. The steady wail of a vacuum cleaner dispersed into the air. Slipping behind the clouds, the sun was climbing higher in the sky. When it reached its zenith the midday siren would be heard; dishes of food would be laid on the kitchen tables, and the men would come back from their work, to eat. The tree-trunks would crackle with gentle heat, the spiders would walk about in their lairs. Lean cats would come and slink round the gardens, searching for a bone or a cabbage stump. Life was simple in those days. Very quiet and discreet. There were no warlike cries, no tumult or murder. One could stay motionless for hours, among the streets and houses, watching a blade of grass grow. The earth looked quite like a park, and the weather was a miniature. Squares of dust and pale warmth, the imperceptible forward motion of a snail. Sweetish smells, fires everywhere, and the marvellously distant expanse of layers of mauve colour.

  Nothing to be afraid of, the earth didn’t belong to the tigers or the wolves; it belonged to the mice, to the mosquitoes, to the lizards; they were walking about on it all the time, leaping from one hiding-place to another; at night, they nibbled. The little race of rodents; sand-coloured, with rapid gestures, their tiny hearts beating fit to burst.

  In a kitchen with plastic curtains, a boy was stitting on the edge of a stool. Opposite him, at the other end of the white wooden table, an old woman was sitting likewise, in a big wicker armchair. She was not moving, and under her faded pinafore-dress her breast rose and fell slowly, painfully. The skin of her face was white, framed in locks of grey hair, and a little blood had trickled down a deep wrinkle at the corner of her mouth. Her dim eyes, motionless between half-open lids, were looking at nothing. On her long, dry hands, warped by the years, the veins stood out, winding between the bones like roots. No one who saw her like this could have had any doubt that the old woman was dying. Gently, for hours already, life had been ebbing from her; it was moving out of one cell after another, leaving only emptiness in its place.

  When Joseph, the boy, had come into the house an hour before, bringing her a bag of provisions, he had found her lying on the kitchen floor, half-unconscious. With difficulty, he had hoisted the heavy, inert weight into the armchair, and had spoken to her. She had recovered consciousness; and it was a strange thing, but fear had assailed her at once. She had begun to talk, trembling all the time, believing in her bewilderment that it was Joseph who had hit her, so as to steal her money. She had threatened to call for help if he didn’t go away at once. Then she had implored him to go and fetch a doctor, a nurse, a priest, a neighbour, anybody, because she thought she had fractured her skull. She had talked and trembled like that for a good half-hour and then, tired, she had fallen silent. Her movements had grown rarer, her eyes had been drowned in a sort of mist of tears, and her slightly open mouth, from which a little blood was trickling, uttered only incoherent words.

  Joseph had stood motionless for a long time, looking at the old woman. He had fixed his eyes on the frightened, suffering face as though he were trying to capture it in an imperishable, photographic pose beneath which he could one
day have written a fine surname, fitting, majestic, the living soul of this vanished body.

  Mademoiselle Maria VANONI

  Then he had sat down facing her, on this kitchen stool; he had put questions to her, in a halting voice. He had spoken gently to her, asking where it hurt, if she were thirsty, if she would like a glass of water, or something. She had nodded, and Joseph had brought her a big glass of water, holding it carefully to her mouth while she drank. After that he had taken the provisions out of the bag and laid them out on the table in front of her. There were: a tin of medium-large peas; three eggs; half a litre of milk; a stick of fine white bread; 200 grammes of gruyère; three tomatoes and some other vegetables; a box of matches; a roll of toilet paper; a cardboard packet of clothes-pegs.

  Now Joseph was sitting on the stool again, facing the old woman; he was watching her with all his strength, as time went by. He was staring hungrily at the pale eyes lost in the distance, the half-smiling mouth, the cheeks, criss-crossed with wrinkles so fine that it would certainly have taken months to count them. The heavy, motionless body, almost like a piece of furniture beneath the blackened stuff of the overall. The legs like pillars, the feet buried in incomprehensible masses of elastic stockings, socks and woollen slippers. The face, perhaps beautiful perhaps ugly, with the head leaning back in the armchair, as though offered to the impavid surface of the ceiling. An insinuating smell of phosphorus came softly out of the woman’s body, enfolding it like a protection, settling into the atmosphere. Through the kitchen window, other smells came in from the garden, drifted into the room and fought against the old woman’s smell: the smell of earth and grass, the smell of burnt leaves, of wind, of trees. They tried to get under the skin, they were seeking the weak point, unhurriedly. If they found it, everything would be finished, once and for all; they would settle into the body, they would fill it, crush it; when they emerged from the woman again she would no longer be a woman, but a sort of abandoned heap of earth and dry branches.

  Joseph bent forward on his stool. In a low, almost inaudible voice, he said:

  ‘Are you—Are you afraid of dying, Mademoiselle Marie?’

  The glaucous eyes moved in the slit between the eyelids. Joseph said again:

  ‘Are you afraid of dying?’

  The old woman uttered a groan.

  ‘Yes, yes—I’m dying—I—’

  She began to tremble again. Joseph went on very fast, to reassure her.

  ‘No, you’ll see, you’re going to get better. I’ll fetch the doctor. You’ll get better, you’ll see. I’ll nurse you. Does it hurt? Would you like another drink?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘I expect you must have a lot of memories?’ said Joseph.

  Her eyes brightened a little.

  ‘What’s your oldest memory?’ asked Joseph. ‘If you try to remember as far back as you can, what do you see?’

  Maria raised her head slightly.

  ‘I remember everything,’ she whispered; ‘everything. And it’s not so long ago as all that.’

  ‘How old were you?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Maria, ‘four or five, perhaps. Perhaps less than that. I was with my sister … in our garden … There was a terrible thunderstorm, with lightning everywhere. Father came, he said to us, come indoors—Come indoors, or the lightning will hit you … And the lightning did hit the garden … It struck a big eucalyptus at the far end. I saw a white light. And I was knocked down on the ground. A cannon shot, there was a cannon shot … I was frightened …’

  She moved her hand.

  ‘It was raining so hard …’ she whispered.

  ‘That must have been terrifying,’ said Joseph.

  For a moment neither of them said anything. Then she began talking again.

  ‘My sister’s dead too … Ten years ago … Already …’

  ‘She was older than you?’

  ‘No … I was the elder …’

  ‘What was her name?’

  ‘My sister’s? Ida … Her name was Ida … She went to live in Italy, later on … At Verona …’

  She sighed.

  ‘And now, it’s my turn.’

  Joseph again tried to reassure her.

  ‘No, no, you’ll get better, you’ll see, you—’

  But she interrupted him with a sort of violence.

  ‘No, that’s not true—It’s not true, I know I’m going to die now. It can’t be helped, my time’s come, I know it has.’

  She raised her head a little further, dirty grey locks fell over her forehead and the blood ran out of her mouth.

  ‘I’m frightened,’ she said; ‘I’m frightened … And I’m cold …

  ‘What are you thinking about?’ asked Joseph.

  ‘Nothing … It’s there … In front of me … I know it has to come …’

  ‘Does it hurt you?’

  ‘Yes, yes, it hurts. Here, in my head … Like an animal biting me … And in—in my back—In my legs—Ah.’

  ‘Try to remember some more. Something about when you were little …’

  ‘No—No, I can’t …’

  ‘Your first picture-book, your toys. Try to remember.’

  ‘My toys—Yes …’

  ‘What were they like?’

  ‘What …’

  ‘Yes, your toys. What kind of toys did you have? Dolls?’

  ‘Yes … Dolls.’

  ‘What were they like? Try to remember.’

  ‘There was—A fair-haired one—I called her Nani—And a dark-haired one, too—I called her Sarah …’

  ‘And then? What else?’

  ‘There was—A cat … He was my cat, I remember … I was very fond of him … And then, when he died—They buried him—I remember, it’s remained there, carved in my head. I’ve never been able to forget it … It’s stayed in my head … Carved for ever …’

  STORY OF THE BLACK-AND-WHITE CAT

  When the black-and-white cat began to die, the little girl picked him up in her arms and carried him away to the bottom of the garden. He had been a fine cat in his day, big and fat, with a glossy coat, soft paws, a broad head with shining green eyes, long, stiff whiskers, and a black spot just above his nose. When he walked through the tall grass in the garden he seemed like a lion or something of the kind—powerful, muscular, lithe, really formidable. He would creep silently up to a lizard, and suddenly his paw would dart like greased lightning, claws widespread, and the little creature would roll over, its spine broken. Or he would lie asleep on the terrace, in the sunshine, both arms outstretched in front of him and his head high, stately and handsome as a sphinx. In rutting periods he would go long distances to hunt out other cats and fight them. Sometimes he came home with deep wounds over his ears, and the little girl would bandage him. He spent most of the day lying on the stones, not moving. Except, perhaps, from time to time, the tip of his black and white tail would wriggle nervously on the ground. He had funny pads under his feet, and his eye-teeth were so long they pushed up the corners of his mouth like a fixed grin. Sometimes he was angry, and then his fur would slowly bristle up all over, hair by hair. His green eyes would flash lightning, he would keep sheathing and unsheathing his claws, and he would prowl round, breathing hoarsely, his tail lashing against his flanks. At night he used to go out of the house and roam about the garden, aimlessly, for hours on end. Then his eyes would shine in the shadows with a strange, uneasy glint, as though things rose up in him during the darkness, feverish instincts, millions of years old, all the fear and all the cruelty of the wild beasts alone amid nature, their proffered victim. On that particular night, before he died, he had uttered two piercing cries. The little girl carried him away in her arms to the bottom of the garden; she hid in the old, unused hen-house and watched the cat. She listened to his gasps, she felt the long, painful shudders running up through his fur. The cat’s mouth was open, he was trying to bite the child’s hands. But it was too late already; the great green, phosphorescent eyes could see nothing any more, the nose
was no longer sniffing up smells. A sticky, dirty emptiness had come in everywhere. It had blurred the pupils of the eyes, and the animal’s defeated gaze was turned to pulp. Inside the loose sack of the body the organs—muscles, heart, lungs—were all mixed up as well. The little girl watched the cat without crying, then she stroked him where he liked to be stroked, behind his head, at the back of his neck, in the small of his back. She blew into his ears. Then she laid him on a silk scarf in a big wooden box. To one side of the box, touching the tiny head, she placed an ivory crucifix which must have been a present from one of her godmothers. She didn’t put the lid on at once, but stayed gazing at the heap of shabby fur, with its dirty white and dirty black patches. She looked at it hard, so as not to forget it. Then she went back to the house and said nothing about it. And every day, in secret, she returned to the hen-house and took the lid off the box. It was the frightful smell that warned her parents, after a fortnight. They said nothing, but they poured petrol over the box and threw a match on it.

  ‘How old was he?’

  ‘Fifteen—That’s old for a cat.’

  ‘He must have been a fine cat.’

  ‘Yes—Oh yes. He was a fine cat …’

  The old woman rested her head on the back of the chair.

  ‘I’ve been thinking for a long time that I should have to die, you know …’ she said.

  ‘Me too …’ said Joseph.

  ‘Oh no, it’s not the same with you … You’re too young … You don’t really think about it.’

  ‘I—’

  ‘It surely doesn’t frighten you … Whereas I …’

  ‘Why be afraid?’

  ‘Because it’s there, so close … There’s nothing to be done, you understand? Nothing—Because it’s inside me, and I can feel it coming softly, softly, without seeming to.’

  She closed her eyes.

  ‘Because I see it everywhere, everywhere, everywhere. Everything I see is old, worn out … Old like me.’

  ‘Try to forget.’