War

by J. M. G. Le Clézio

  Surrounding it, along the pavements and in the air itself, were all the signs that provoke fear and forebode a hidden God. People had come thronging to the temple from the other end of town, from dark dismal suburbs. They joined the mainstream of the crowd, following in the footsteps of those who had preceded them, rubbing elbows. Descending from their cars and buses, they walked submissively towards the immense façade.

  The girl did as they did. She crossed the street, plunged into the flood of men and women, swept onwards with them towards the four doors of polished glass with their S-shaped handles of glittering metal. In front of her, a man in a raincoat pushed the glass swing-door and held it for a grey-haired woman who held it for a woman in a check coat who held it for a woman in a fur coat who held it for a thin man who held it for a woman with a child who held it for Bea B.

  She took it by the golden, S-shaped handle and pushed it open a little. She went through. Then she held the door for the outstretched hand of a woman wearing glasses who took it without saying thank you.

  The girl advanced into the hall. She noticed that the ceiling was resting on cemented pillars. All around, display counters made of plastic shone whitely. The crowd meandered around these, wandered off, split up, and solidified again, their legs working busily. Bea B. walked straight ahead, between two rows of counters. Her mind was blank as her body manoeuvred itself between the bodies of hovering women. Others were moving in the opposite direction, and she just had time to glimpse their black eyes opening onto their white faces.

  Bea B. passed an area reeking with perfume. Women in pink blouses, standing behind illuminated show-cases, watched her. Their painted faces were identical. Their red nylon hair was arranged in complicated coils, their lips smiled impassively.

  Bea B. arrived in front of a large cardboard placard featuring two huge eyes that followed you as you walked past. Eyes like a pair of insects, rainbow-hued caterpillars of some kind, magical, great greenish-blue circles bordered by a fringe of black hairs, floating in the centre of the white cardboard.

  Underneath the eyes, Bea B. read:

  Bar the way to

  Those tell-tale

  Little wrinkles!

  Wage war on them with

  HELENA RUBINSTEIN’S

  Skin Dew

  No sooner had Bea B. escaped from the eyes’ dominion than something else happened: in the middle of the crowd, far behind the rows of counters, a woman was standing under a neon strip light. Bea B. saw her pallid, uncontoured face and hands, rather like a corpse’s, and her tight-fitting dress that was a violent, unreal purple-blue, and she had the feeling that it would be easy to vanish altogether. She gazed for several seconds at this petrified woman. Then the shifting crowd suddenly swallowed up the chalk-white woman in the violet dress, and the vision entered deep into her own being, an unforgettable absorption of something incomprehensible, a sharp anguish against which she was powerless.

  Bea B. went on wandering through the department store. Everything she saw was both very ancient and utterly new. There were wavelets skimming over the surface of the sea, and fissures in the chasm’s wall. There were signs to be discovered, and scar tissue, and bone fragments. Or else she was inside the belly at last, in the centre of the living pyramid. And the things she saw there were all tokens of what would some day appear outside, when one had finally emerged into real life.

  She saw the following things. Severed legs standing on a pedestal. Bottles full of amber-coloured liquids. Photos of smiling women showing their white incisors. Tubes of red, blue and pearly light that were more beautiful than flowing lava. Glass portholes set in the ground. Great stretches of plastics bare of grass or dust. Figures swaying in the sky. Ventilators. Radiators. And all the time, everywhere, hordes of blank, irresolute faces gliding along at the tops of bodies. All this happened here, inside the white hall of the great temple, far from time and death, in the frail bubble welded to the earth’s surface; while infinity pressed in from all sides.

  Shoved along by other arms and hips, the girl eventually reached the centre of the hall. There, the staircases of twin escalators climbed upwards, unaided, and a large glass panel displayed columns of small words:

  Adjustments, Claims

  Baby Garments

  Bathing and Beach Apparel

  Bathroom Fittings

  Beauty Salon

  Bedroom Furnishings

  Bedspreads

  Bicycles

  Blouses

  Bookshop

  Carpet Centre

  Children’s Departments

  Chinaware, Pottery

  Clocks and Watches

  Coats, Men’s

  Women’s

  Corsets and Brassières

  Cosmetics and Compacts

  Curtains and Draperies

  Dresses

  Dressing Gowns and Housecoats

  Dressmaking Patterns

  Drugs, Prescriptions

  Electrical Appliances and Accessories

  Foodstuffs

  Furnishing Fabrics

  Furniture, Suites

  Fur Salon

  Games and Toys

  Garden Furniture and Supplies

  Glassware, Crystal

  Haberdashery

  Handbags

  Hardware

  Hat Fashion Boutique

  Heating Units

  Hosiery

  Housewares and Gadgets

  Jewellery

  Kitchen Centre

  Kitchenware

  Knitting-Wool

  Knitwear

  Lamps

  Leather Goods

  Linens

  Lingerie

  Men’s Clothing

  Men’s Furnishings

  Perfumes

  Photography Equipment

  Radios and Television Sets

  Rainwear

  Records and Record Players

  Refrigerators and Washing Machines

  Restaurant and Snack Bar

  Rest Rooms

  Shoes, Men’s and Children’s

  Ladies’

  Silks, Synthetic Fabrics

  Silverware

  Skirts

  Souvenirs of Paris

  Sporting Goods

  Stationery

  Teenage Fashions

  Toiletries

  Tools, Power and Hand

  Trunks and Travelling Cases

  Typewriters

  Umbrellas

  Wallpapers

  Whitewood Furniture

  Woollens

  That was the programme. Now one could start wandering around. One would follow the movements of the throng, and explore the world. One would let oneself be swept along between rows of clothes-racks, one would steady one’s feet on the steps of the escalator, one would clasp the rubber handrail with one’s right hand, sometimes one would stand in front of an iron door waiting for the queer box-shaped machine, crammed with buttons and lights, to hoist you from floor to floor.

  Bea B. decided that she would stay in the shop for a long time. She could pass whole days there, months even, years perhaps, without ever leaving. She visited the first floor, which was filled with clothing: pink woollen dresses, check overcoats, black raincoats. Here and there, giant mannequins reared up from their plinths, arms outstretched. Men sprawled on leather couches, reading newspapers. The women’s heels trampled the pile carpeting, raising little clouds of dust. From the ceiling, clusters of electric lamps ceaselessly manufactured dazzling light. Concealed in the angles of walls, loudspeakers broadcast a continuous, remote music.

  Bea B. felt a strange tiredness sweep over her. She sank into a leather armchair near a pillar. She lit a cigarette and flicked the ash into a vast ashtray, a sort of column supporting a copper bowl that was furnished with a spring mechanism. The girl pressed down on the button with the forefinger of her left hand, and watched the metal disc spin its way down towards the bottom of the bowl.

  She might have thought that it was exactly like th
e circles of the infinite which comprise the intellect’s only real movement. But she was not thinking about that, or about anything of the sort.

  From her red travel bag, upon which was written TWA, she produced the little blue rexine notebook, upon which was written in letters of gold

  ‘EZEJOT’ DIARY

  and she wrote on a fresh page:

  ‘I feel so depressed today! I’ve been wandering the streets. I went to the café. I didn’t have a sou, and it was cold, so since I couldn’t go to the cinema I came into this big store. I am very tired. There are so many things here, such beautiful things, and so much money and so on that it makes me feel quite ill. It’s a long time since I caught sight of Monsieur X. What a life! The very idea of existing for eighty years seems incredible!’

  She paused for a long moment, trembling slightly, while the tip of her ballpoint pen hovered above the paper. Then she added very rapidly:

  ‘Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.’

  After that, she put on her dark glasses, rested her head on her right hand, and went to sleep.

  No-one took any notice of her. Assistants scurried silently by, on either side, carrying costumes hanging from long rods. Women with varicose veins lurched about in front of revolving hangers laden with costumes. Long-haired girls turned the sleeves of the raincoats inside out, to see the price hidden inside.

  In plywood cubicles, women got undressed and then got dressed again in front of mirrors. They inspected themselves in red, in blue, in yellow, in green. They combed their hair.

  The uproar inside the store was deafening. Uninterrupted music flowed from loudspeakers, mingled with the snatches of words, always the same ones, that came from mouths.

  ‘Organdie, but bigger, but more’

  ‘Which? Which did you say?’

  ‘There, there, the, lower down, the less tight-waisted one, I’

  ‘Red and blue, red and blue’

  Inside the temple, everything was powerful and gentle; movements glided along smoothly between rubber handrails. Lifts hummed as they went up and down, escalators hoisted their loads with tireless motors. There was nothing to fear, here. It was at the heart of the war, the mysterious ark that floated above the terrible waves. At last the girl could get some sleep, shielded by her dark glasses and her hair. No-one would come to kill her. She could dream about translucent landscapes, in colour, about the faces of lovers, about caresses in the warm hollows of her flesh. This tower, this refuge, had been set here for her, and for all men and women. Thought had been made concrete, here, a block of cement with broad white bays and beautiful lighting. All that is hard and mortal – sun, rain, wind, sea, forests and deserts – had been hidden away. What had been created was step-by-step thought, leading from first floor to second floor to third floor to fourth floor to fifth floor to sixth floor. Basement.

  The soft-drink stands gushed forth fountains of soda and orange juice. Ripe fruit from every corner of the globe filled the display counters. Cellophane-wrapped meats waited in open-topped freezers. The yielding carpets, the rich colours of the wools. The snow-white stationery. The heady perfumes. All the flasks of alcohol, all the cigarettes.

  The girl slept there, in her first-floor leather armchair. She was not expecting anything. She was like the others, with them at last. She breathed slowly, her drooping head resting on the palm of her right hand. Behind her dark glasses the eyelids were closed. Behind the eyelids the eyes shifted upwards a fraction.

  The non-stop music wrapped a warm cocoon around her body. People’s thoughts, rapid words flowed around her, without doing her any harm. She was part and parcel of the shop, a commodity like any other, an article in the first-floor department. That was perhaps the resting place, found at last in the midst of the chaos of centuries and territories. A stage marked in the immense labour, a dot, a cipher, a number.

  One day, catastrophe is bound to strike. Everybody knows. Everybody expects it. It is brewing in the very depths of the universe. Finally its blood-flecked slaver will cover the whole earth. Things will vanish as easily as they had hitherto existed, a complete and evident annihilation. Things: mankind’s tender creations, the jewels, clothes, paper flowers, hubcaps and photographs.

  Catastrophe rumbles around the great white temple. Strange premonitory tremors come from outer space. Sometimes something appears on the wing of a Pontiac or perhaps on the smoked lenses of a pair of green-framed sunglasses, something terrible, an evil sign, a dazzling reflection, and that means that the day is a little nearer. There is a girl who, from time to time, starts thinking about this fissure, this empty space; the two edges of the soul try vainly to knit together. If one only knew how to see, one would see something terrible through the gaping cleft: the end of the world, the end of cities.

  So the temple is also the temple of oblivion. Those who enter, pushing one of the four glass doors in which S-shaped handles of golden metal gleam, do not really know it but they have come to seek refuge. They are fleeing a war that is more terrible than man’s wars. Their aim is to seek, in the depths of triple mirrors, for example, infinite objects that resemble them.

  No-one will be spared. Those who are fighting, and those who are lying down; the gorged, the drunken, the sclerotic, the crazed, the doped, the somnolent. The war is coming closer, is already here. The enemy is already in the citadel. In the great temple, greedy hands grasp objects. But who can say whence the evil comes? Is it not already gushing from the loudspeakers’ little holes? Is it not descending with the light from the neon tubes? Each time a woman hides herself away in the trying-on cubicle, and slips a violet dress over her skin-clad body, is she not unwittingly putting on THE ACCURSED DRESS that is fated to cling to her in the same way that nylon burns and encrusts itself, boiling, in the flesh?

  Meanwhile, the girl, Bea B., was asleep, with her hair and her dark glasses, and with her chin resting in the palm of her hand.

  When the inevitable catastrophe does strike, I shall not be caught napping. My eyes will be wide open and I shall look. You know, Monsieur X, I have learned quite a lot since I was born. I won’t recite it all to you because it would take too long, and anyhow you wouldn’t believe me. Sometimes, when I have learned something during the day, I have an urge to ring someone up, it doesn’t matter whom, and say:

  ‘Hello? You know what I’ve just learned?’

  ‘No, what?’

  ‘That a cigarette left resting on the edge of a glass ashtray will become mottled with damp patches.’

  ‘Oh yes? Why is that?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘And what else did you learn?’

  ‘Yesterday I learned that one shouldn’t walk under a ladder because that would mean passing through the triangle formed by the ground, the ladder and the wall, and it is unlucky to pass through a triangle. And also, that the secret of staring steadily at people without falling into the abyss is to fix one’s gaze on something just above the eyes, the eyebrows, for instance, or just below, like the bags. And then I learned that cyclones don’t revolve in the same direction in the southern hemisphere as in the northern hemisphere. And that messianic civilizations arise during troubled periods. And that in Arabic there are solar consonants and lunar consonants.’

  It is good to learn things, even if one forgets them later on. When one learns things, one tames them. Otherwise, one grows afraid. I shouldn’t think that you are ever afraid. I have seen you walking in the street. You walk very straight, and never look at anybody. You always look as though you had just stepped out of a bandbox. That must be because you are a soldier.

  I’m afraid all the time. When I’m in my room I’m afraid that someone will come in. When I’m washing my face, and my eyes are full of soap, I’m afraid that someone might creep up behind me and stab me to death while I can’t see anything. I’m afraid of the mirror on the wardrobe door, and of the one above the washbasin. I’m afraid of rats. I’m afraid of clothes hanging from racks. I’m afraid of the dark. I sleep with the shutters o
pen, so that I can watch the street’s lights pass across the ceiling.

  And when I go outside I get so scared that I can’t even walk. My knees knock together, and I stumble all the time.

  The ground I walk on is a slimy mud. My feet sink into the pavement, and it needs a terrible effort to pull them out again. Behind me, gaping holes slowly close up again, and as I walk the sound my shoes make is not ‘tap! tap!’ but ‘plop! plop!’

  I’m afraid and yet I frequent all the spots where things are humming. I go into the glittering cafés that are filled with ogling eyes. I go into the cinemas where this great white light bursts upon the wall at the far end. I walk up the broad avenues where everyone is scurrying to and fro. At midday I am out of doors, and at seven in the evening, too, when the armies start marching, jostling me with their faces, their elbows and their feet. I do all that because it is impossible to get away. I want to see the war. I’m not one of those people who hide away in the depths of their burrows, convinced that the world no longer exists.

  I do all that, too, because I want to know where thought is to be found, and who fashions it. Thought sucks me in, draws me towards it from the depths of my hiding-place, and I go down into the street. I want to see the signs of madness, the colours, the dangerous movements. I want to understand why everyone is dancing. Perhaps that is another thing that I might learn, one day. Perhaps I might understand, then, how the war will end, and who will win it. Each time I am in the street and come across one of these extraordinary faces approaching me, on top of its body, through the crowd, I try to enter the eyes so that I can see what there is on the other side. I know that there is an unknown world, a labyrinthine path.

  I no longer want to be myself, nothing but myself. There are so many things drawn upside down, so many things written with dots and dashes. There are so many blueprints. All the people who have been shut into their shells are moving along the street, just like black cars with raised windows.

  Perhaps if I were a thunderbolt I could smash all that to pieces. If I were a motorbike, perhaps I could zoom straight through the mass of cars, levering open a whole lot of shells as I went.

  Or alternatively, there must be a word, a real word, capable of shattering all these matrices unaided. Not a clever word, or a word of love, but some commonplace word that would explode in the flesh like shrapnel in the skull of a rhinoceros. One word, one single word. But however hard I search for it I never find it. Some word like JAGUAR or OM or ZINC or TRUTH. There must surely be a word to stop the war. But what can it be?