War

by J. M. G. Le Clézio

  Bea B. walked in the centre of the crowd. Among the frontages of bars and night-clubs, many hieroglyphs were written with neon tubing. These all flashed on and off again so quickly that there was no time to read them. But all the lights shone so fiercely that they created rays and eddies. In the night, all these thousands of suns shaped like Os and Ms and Zs radiated their waves. Under the electric lighting, it was about as hot as on the shores of the Dead Sea at two in the afternoon.

  Long cars with gleaming coachwork crawled along the roadway. Behind the closed windows, faces stared outwards. They, too, shone like light bulbs, or like cat’s-eye reflectors.

  The ground rumbled beneath the girl’s feet. A dull continuous vibration that entered the body and penetrated the organs. The noise of an engine, perhaps, in action beneath the tarry crust, or else the distant, fearful murmur of a stampede. That was one thing that could not be forgotten. There was no doubting that each second produced movement, car wheels, human feet, earthquake tremors.

  Bea B. walked along the pavement, brushing past the arms and legs of the crowd. Light struck her face, hollowing blue shadows under her eyes. Electric light. Sometimes, she passed so close to a lamp that she was instantly covered from head to foot with a mass of tiny drops of sweat, and her clothes and hair became dry and frizzy. Sometimes, she was swallowed up in such holes of darkness that her pupils dilated and she glided between the obstacles with blind gestures.

  The lines of cars swept onwards, headlamps blazing and engines roaring. The smell of petrol and oil floated along the walls. Suddenly there was a clamour of hooters. One of them started off, for no reason, and the others all joined in, bellowing, croaking, trumpeting in unison. Then the din stopped, just as abruptly, again for no reason.

  Once, a car slowed down near the kerb, and a man leaned his head out and said loudly:

  ‘Hop in!’

  But Bea B. stared at him uncomprehendingly, and he drove away again in his shimmering car.

  A little later, the girl noticed this place on the other side of the street, with a crowd outside jostling to get in. It was a wide door set in a red wall, and above the door two magic words winked on and off:

  VOOM VOOM

  There was nothing else but this red wall, and these two words lighting up and going out again. People were queueing up to go inside, by way of this wide dark door. They disappeared. Most of them were young folk, teenagers wearing canvas trousers and lumber-jackets. The girls’ hair was golden, the boys’ jet-black. Their silhouettes floated briefly against the red wall, then they passed through the door and were lost to sight.

  Bea B. crossed over, dodging the traffic, and went up to the red wall. She tried to overhear what the people were saying. She heard a few snatches of conversation, such as:

  ‘Paulo, did you see, Paulo?’

  ‘Hey! Jacques!’

  ‘Evelyne?’

  ‘I didn’t go, you know, I’

  ‘What?’

  She walked towards the door. Above her head the two magic words appeared, disappeared, and each time a little more of her energy seeped out. The blood-red door seemed to rear up as high as the sky, a rock-face, the hull of a giant steamboat, the façade of a forty-four-storey skyscraper. In place of the sun, or the moon, there were these two words written in neon, words which blazed forth and melted away unceasingly. No doubt they had replaced all the thoughts in the world. It was this, no doubt, that the world was thinking now:

  VOOM VOOM

  For a long, long time the girl sidled along the red wall. She already knew what awaited her on the other side of the door, she already knew what the two brutal words were saying. But she wanted to go in. They wanted her to go in. The door was bigger and then bigger still, an opening towards the inside of the secret tomb. On the other side, it was a new world; one had only to enter it to see that one had never ceased being there.

  The girl slipped into this kind of grotto with a group of young people. Her eyes absorbed the room with one glance, a deep hall-shaped room, carpeted in red, filled with hundreds of moving, insect-like bodies. Here, too, there were lights; great coloured beacons attached to the ceilings and walls, and revolving slowly. In the centre of the room, an eye outlined in neon tubing continually raised and lowered its eyelid, fringed with lashes, over its blue iris.

  All this was very strange and very mysterious, and at the same time very close and very comprehensible. It was something like a temple, when the high priest turns towards the faithful and says something in a sing-song voice in a language that no-one understands. When the god with the grinning face starts speaking behind the emerald-encrusted gold statues, and the great hall is suffused with a red glow.

  The girl did not seek to understand. No-one sought to understand. Something terribly urgent was taking place in the world outside. These people had come to take shelter in this red bastion, and they wanted to forget, to pray, and to shout out loud.

  In the centre of the room was a sort of arena. The neon eye opened and closed its lid, the red and green lanterns swept the ground with their rays. On the plastic floor, the legs of men and women moved rhythmically. Between the thudding feet, rainbow-hued reflections advanced, elongated themselves.

  Bea B. wove her way around chairs and tables, hugging the walls. She watched the big blob of light where the dancers were stamping up and down. She watched the fluid body stretched out on the ground, there in the centre of the room, with black shadows dancing over it. The heat was stifling; she swayed with the clouds of cigarette smoke and the noise. The long, snake’s body set its scales glinting as it writhed in agony. In the four corners of the room, the mouths of loudspeakers vomited the noise of endless music. But it was as though nothing could be heard. Bea B. continued to advance between the tables, skirting the various groups. In the corners, couples were glued together in a single body with four arms, and two heads joined at the mouth. As she passed by, people got up and spoke softly into her ear, but she did not hear what they were asking her. She made her way slowly around the arena, tripping over feet, bumping against tables. Under the blue eye with the flapping eyelid, men and women were jumping up and down. Their expressions were serious under their dark glasses, and smoke came from their open mouths. Under their feet, the great luminous body undulated and shimmered. It was an animal, half woman half fish, a manatee, perhaps, slowly displacing its tons of oily flesh. At moments its white belly became visible as it thrust up out of the water, tense with effort. The women’s stiletto heels pierced its skin, making little stars of blood spurt out. Then it plunged, and the sheets of greenish water closed over it. At the other end of the arena, it stuck out its black snout, a formless mask containing two holes for the eyes and two more for the nostrils. Its groin split open beneath the lacerating feet, and a shrill cry could be heard, a cry that stabbed the air in the room: waaaahoo! Or else its blue back floated between two waters that lapped it like an island. It was the source of all the music: the dull thuds that shook the walls were its heart-beats, hoarse snarls were torn from its lungs each time it breathed. Everyone wanted to kill it, but it had no wish to die and resisted fiercely. Sometimes it was even possible to see its heavy breasts heaving among the dancers’ legs.

  Bea B.’s mind grew dizzy, and she felt the need to sit down. She went on skirting the walls until she reached the far end of the room. There, in an angle of purple shadow, she came across an empty chair. She dropped into it heavily, and closed her eyes.

  From the spot where she was sitting, Bea B. could no longer make out the shape of the manatee. All she could see was the globe of the neon eye and, just below it, the heads of the men and women who were busily marking time.

  How far away one was. How much one had forgotten. There was no more free space outside, there were no more plains or mountains. There was no more blue sky with clouds floating in it, no more sun, no more wind or rain. All that was lost. There was no more beach stretching its white-pebbled length, sloping gently down into the sea, with lines of waves break
ing diagonally across. Since early childhood the girl had been in flight, without knowing it. They were all pursuing her. They had set their packs of savage dogs upon her, they had forced her to run on and on . . . But there is no escaping the war. It snuffles you out, in the darkest recess of your hiding-place, and drives you from your hole. Then there is no choice but to be off again, to go a little farther still.

  The war closes its traps upon the girl, once more. In one of the town’s districts it has raised a red wall with two crazy words that flash on and off. No question of going anywhere else. The door is wide open, the corridor slopes ineluctably downwards. Then she finds herself sitting in a chair, in this kind of grotto where men and women are dancing. She is drinking beer, watching heads bobbing in the red shadow. She can hear all the cries emitted by the manatee as people dig their heels into its body. She has stopped thinking. She no longer wants anything. She is almost no longer there, the eyes and mouths have drained her. Soon she will be of no further importance. Under the light-cluster, Bea B. watches Monsieur X dance. He is very tall and very strong, and pumps his arms forwards, then backwards. From time to time, he turns his head in her direction and smiles a grim smile. She can see his eyes moving in their sockets, and the drops of sweat that plaster his hair to his forehead. He says nothing. It is a long time since anyone has said anything.

  A little later, Bea B. closed her eyes again. She leaned back in her chair. Cigarette smoke swam behind her eyelids, rose and fell in her throat. She listened to all the sounds the music made. It was the sea, no doubt, hurling wave after wave against a huge rock. Dull reports echoed from the base of the rock, then the water withdrew with a sucking noise. An avalanche of pebbles thundered down, pools cascaded, millions of bubbles streaked the liquid mass, hissing shrilly.

  Perhaps that was why the people were dancing: to do as the sea does. But it was impossible to tell, because it was all happening there at once, very quickly, without any time being wasted. Bea B. watched all the heads moving in the semi-darkness, and the air was moving too, and the blood-red lights, and the eye with the flapping lid. Her will-power was gone. The great sealed room with red walls was like a compression chamber, and the invisible piston was thrusting hard. There was also this emptiness hollowing itself out like a syringe in which the bubbling liquid is rising. Because it was here, it was nowhere else. But it was difficult to say where one was. It was difficult to say who one was. One’s name was Bea B., perhaps, and a little farther away there was Laure and Agnes and Dorothy. How to tell? There were so many things. Everything was so squeezed and mangled by the light, everything was exploding so quickly with roars, with rumbles of thunder. So many heads and arms, so much sweat and breath, so much vocal resonance. The great machine for extracting souls was in operation. It moved its driving-rods, it detonated, it threw out sparks. Finally, there was a common enemy that they had invented. They had given it the body of a manatee, and now all they had to do was kill it with their feet.

  On the pebble beach, in the scorching sun the two little boys whose names were David and Curti had sent the body of the octopus flying aloft. Remember how it happened? It happened on a big pebble beach, in the autumn. They had yelled something. The little girl had come nearer to see, and she had seen the two little boys dragging something out of the water with their sticks. They were pulling with all their might, yelling:

  ‘Easy does it!’

  ‘It’s clinging hard, the bastard!’

  ‘Brain it!’

  ‘Hold on, it’s coming!’

  ‘Arrh! Arrh!’

  Then they had lifted it up on the ends of their sticks and had hurled it as far as they could, towards the back of the beach. The octopus had flapped through the air and had come down again at the feet of the little girl who had hastily jumped back. Now it was thrashing around on the scorching pebbles. It was black, gleaming with water and frothy slime, and its tentacles were curled round the little stones. Then it had raised itself and started walking. It slid over its own substance, so rapidly that it seemed to be still there when it was already a long way away; it was running towards the sea. The two little boys were running alongside it, hitting at it with their sticks. The blows resounded dully on its soft body, as when one hits a pillow.

  ‘Stop it!’

  ‘Impossible, there’s no way to stop it!’

  ‘Bash it in, otherwise it will get back to the sea!’

  ‘Smash it with a stone!’ But the stone rebounded from the black body, and it continued gliding down the slope that led to the sea. The little girl walked behind, her heart thumping.

  ‘Hold it with your stick while I turn it over.’ Then the little boy called David had knelt down on the pebbles and had turned the octopus over with his hands. It had gashed the skin of its belly, and had pushed its gluey body through the wound. It was that that proved the octopus’s undoing. All this slime that it had put on its skin to make it slippery now sealed its fate. Its body glanced off itself very easily, turning inside out like a glove. First the internal organs passed through the gaping wound, then the head, and then the tentacles. When the whole process was over, the little boy tore his hands away from the suckers. The little girl saw that both his forearms were smeared with black liquid. On the scorching beach, the octopus died slowly, trapped in the sac of its own body. Its pearly organs palpitated in the air.

  ‘It’s suffocating,’ said Curti.

  ‘Yes, that’s the only way to fix them,’ said David. Then, when it was completely dead, the two little boys had stuffed it into a bag and gone off with it.

  Now there were a whole lot of people on the pebble beach, under the light of the lamps. Or perhaps one was inside the octopus’s black and red body, and one was writhing in agony. However hard one looked, one could see nothing but one’s own lungs, intestines, heart, liver and kidneys. Death was going to come, yes, come right here, to this bloodstained room!

  Bea B. drank from her glass and let her head fall back. The music hammered its blows interminably. Sometimes it seemed as though one had been asleep for hours and had woken up just as things were starting up again. Sometimes one had a half-formed thought, such as:

  ‘Suffocation’

  ‘Loathing’

  ‘Monsieur X Dance Drink Smoke’

  But perhaps it was simply that these words were written up in luminous letters at the back of the room. Nobody was speaking to anybody. The men were dancing up and down in front of the women, were lying on top of them, were feeling at them with their hands and mouths. Bellies were quivering less than an inch from each other, uniting invisible sexes. The beacon lights flickered as they changed colour. From time to time, the centre of the room emptied, and all that remained was the red and blue and green pool rippling on the floor. Bea B. listened. She was listening for the moment when the record ended, the single second of terrible silence that reigned over the world before the next record started off. She tried to enter into the empty second, like a cat leaping between two cars, at night, on the road. At that moment, everything was white.

  But occasionally the new record began before the other had finished, and there was a still more terrible second when the two musics were intermingled, and then everything turned black.

  A moment came when the girl heard a record that she liked. It was Nina Simone’s I’ve got the life. She got up at once, walked over to the centre of the room and began to dance by herself. There was no-one else on the dance floor. The men and women had been pushed back against the walls, forming a closed circle of red darkness in which their eyes shone. The girl watched them as she gyrated. Then she forgot them immediately. Her legs moved fast, now, impelled by the music’s rhythm. Far away, beyond the heads, beyond the red walls, the voice of the unknown woman sang, uttered its series of little cries. Bea B. did not understand what she was saying. The sounds were deep harsh outbursts that filled the whole room. They were addressed only to her, though, to no-one else. Every part of the girl’s body was penetrated by the music, by the voice’s tr
emors, by the beat of the drum and the slurrings of the organ.

  She was frightened. She looked at the floor beneath her feet, the swift slippery floor that returned her jabs like a rubber membrane. The light beams frightened her. She felt the red and blue and green reflections flow over her skin, slowly or very quickly, like water. She danced. Time went slowly, the air was hushed, there was no wind, no earth, no sun. She swayed her hips and her shoulders, hugged her elbows against her sides. Her mind was a complete blank. It was all happening much lower down, somewhere in the region of the solar plexus, as though there were a new organ, a heavy heart, a living animal in her guts that dilated and contracted. She danced around her spine, and the invisible axis went from the ceiling to the earth’s centre. She span round very fast, her legs whirling on the fluorescent floor. It was a motion comparable to that of the stars and planets, a simple spiralling motion which descended the well of the music. There were other satellites around her now; she saw them pass, yellow-haired heads, black bodies, torsos, shoulders, legs, red hands. They advanced, swaying, in empty space, approached each other, drew away. Faces hovered close to the young woman, turning towards her to show white masks with eyes that were gems. Then, still in empty space, they retreated at full speed.

  The girl went on dancing on the same spot. She bent her knees and flung her arms forward, snapping her fingers. The heat was dense. Drops of sweat trickled down her cheeks, her back, her arms.

  With her two feet she struck the elastic floor. A moment ago, the manatee shape had disappeared. It was she, perhaps, who had become a manatee. So she dived in; she leaped and plunged in the water, again and again. Her hair floated around her, like the tentacles of the octopus, and her body gleamed with frothy slime.