The Flood

by J. M. G. Le Clézio

  ‘What else?’

  ‘I have blasphemed on many occasions. I have said that God is dead.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘I—I have cheated in my work. I have cheated during examinations. I have been unjust. I have refused to work. I have taken pleasure in hurting other people’s feelings. I have worshipped money and beauty. I have worshipped violence. I have uttered slanders. I have transgressed against God. I have loved sinfulness.’

  For a few seconds there was silence in the confessional. Besson could hear the sound of regular breathing. As he stared into darkness, his nose picked up the faint odour of box-wood. Then he bent forward to the grille once more and whispered: ‘I have tried to find out too much. I believed—’ He hesitated. ‘I have forgotten what truth is. I have forgotten—’

  ‘Forgetfulness is not a sin,’ the voice said.

  ‘I forgot through mere sloth. Because it suited me to forget.’

  ‘Is that all, my son?’ murmured the voice.

  ‘I have insulted Our Lady. I have said that Jesus was a man like other men.’ Besson paused a moment, thinking. ‘I have failed to perform my religious duties. And this I have done deliberately, as an insult. I have not said my prayers. I have disbelieved in the life everlasting.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘I can’t remember anything more now. But there’s plenty. I have been indifferent. And I’ve committed all my sins not once, but a hundred times, a thousand times, as often as possible. When temptation came, instead of thrusting it aside, I would plunge into sin, and snap my fingers at my conscience. I have ceased to be a believer. I have said—’ He paused again. ‘I have forgotten everything, even the sins themselves. I have been cynical and indifferent. I have thought of nothing but pleasure, my own physical pleasure.’

  ‘Have you been happy?’ the voice asked.

  Besson’s reply was embarrassed, almost inaudible. ‘No,’ he whispered.

  There was a cough from the other side of the grille; and Besson suddenly realized that it was an old man’s voice. Its blend of firmness and gentleness bore the weight of the years: it was a voice that had to be heard and reckoned with. It had, surely, already embarked on the road that led to death, and its murmured utterances were all darkened by this shadow, this sense of decline. It belonged to a physically frail man, with rounded shoulders and pale grey eyes, faded now after much use. Besson longed to catch a glimpse of him, however fleeting. He pressed his face right against the holes in the grille, and tried to make out his features. But it was so dim that all he could see was a vague shadowy silhouette, and the sharp glint of gold-rimmed spectacles.

  When the voice reached him again it was tremulous, as though a breath of wind had blown on it.

  ‘Are you sorry you committed these sins?’ it asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Besson said.

  ‘Are you sorry, now, that you committed these sins?’ the voice repeated patiently.

  ‘Sometimes, yes,’ Besson said. ‘Some of them.’

  ‘Which ones?’

  ‘Pride. And the lies, and the blasphemies—’

  ‘Repeat after me: Eternal God, Thou art all good, and deserving of all my love—’

  Hesitantly Besson whispered: ‘Eternal God—Thou art all good—and deserving of all my love—’

  ‘May you find peace,’ said the voice.

  Besson was touched by the simplicity of these words. He said: ‘You are good—’

  But the voice began to whisper, in a kind of fury: ‘No, no, I am not good—never say that. God alone is good. God alone can judge. I am not here to judge you or to understand you, but to give you help. Only to give you help.’

  He paused for a moment, then in a calmer voice murmured: ‘You will find peace, my son.’

  ‘What must I do?’ Besson asked.

  ‘Turn towards God,’ the voice said. ‘Learn to see Him. Love His works. His beauty is everywhere; it is that you must admire. It is that which will give you rest and peace.’ He broke off for a moment. ‘God’s creatures speak for themselves,’ he went on. ‘They will show you that life is an eternal principle. Death is no more than a change in the appearances.’

  ‘And what about animals?’ Besson asked.

  ‘God has chosen men,’ the voice said slowly. ‘Men have not chosen God.’

  ‘Why do I not have faith?’

  ‘You have faith,’ the voice whispered. ‘But you do not know it.’

  Besson shrank into himself at this. Then the voice broke silence once more. ‘You must humble yourself, my son,’ it said, ‘Humble yourself both in body and spirit. Renounce idle things. Kill your pride.’

  The words came in groups, punctuated by that somewhat sibilant breathing. Besson let them enter him like so many tiny darts aimed at the nervous centres.

  ‘Do you not realize that intelligence is of no use to you? You judge people and events, and think you have understood them. But you have not understood them at all, because you do not love them. Learn to question your own achievements. Feel a little self-doubt. As you did today, or else you wouldn’t be here. Realize that you’re not alone. Your sufferings are shared by the rest of mankind, and God is well aware of them. You are going to change your way of life. You will renounce your pursuit of self and prostrate yourself before Our Lord. It is a hard decision; but this is the price you must pay for peace of mind.’

  ‘It is a hard decision,’ Besson said.

  ‘Humble yourself. Humble yourself, and be contrite.’

  ‘What if I have no faith?’

  ‘What do you know about it?’ the voice said. ‘Do not be presumptuous. Perhaps God had chosen you.’

  ‘Then why—why does He not manifest Himself?’

  ‘He manifests Himself. But you do not know how to see Him.’

  ‘Yet He knows—’

  ‘You are free within His will. Your life belongs to you. But you are free within the will of God.’

  ‘You mean it’s an illusion, then?’

  ‘No. This is no illusion, but truth. Beyond you there exists a plane of reality which no one will ever be able to comprehend, but in which you nevertheless have your place. You are inside the circle, yes: but you are free there. If you bow to His will, if you submit yourself, then you will be free. Otherwise you will remain a slave to yourself. Root out pride from you, since pride is the prisonhouse of evil. Become as a child again. Learn anew that you are only one of God’s creatures.’

  There was a last period of silence, broken only by tiny creaking sounds in the wooden structure of the confessional. Besson listened to the breathing from beyond the grille: it wheezed a little, probably because of a blocked nasal passage. Then the voice continued, in a more solemn tone: ‘I am going to give you absolution. While I pray I want you to repeat, several times: O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all my sins, because they offend Thee, my God, who art all good and deserving of all my love.’

  The voice began to murmur behind the grille, and Besson, kneeling alone before the wooden partition, repeated in a low gabble: ‘O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all my sins, because they offend Thee, my God, who art all good and deserving of all my love. O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all my sins, because they offend Thee, my God, who art all good and deserving of all my love. O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all my sins, because they offend Thee, my God, who art all good and deserving of all my love. O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all my sins, because they offend Thee, my God, who art all good and deserving of all my love. O my God … heartily sorry … having offended Thee … who art all good … all my love … detest all my sins because they offend thee … O my God … O my God … sorry … all good … all my love … sins … sins … offend Thee … my God … all good … deserving of all … sin … good … my love … good … O my God … O my God … all good … all my love …
all my love …’

  ‘Go in peace,’ said the voice.

  As Besson was walking back down the church towards the exit a sudden burst of organ music crashed out, and began to echo round the marbled walls. Besson stopped for a moment to listen to the crystal clear flow of notes from far above him, notes that rippled down into the very depths of one’s soul, flooding eyes and throat with their clear, pure water, each individual drop hanging fixed and motionless like a minuscule diamond. Then the notes descended from the heights, became a ’cello, a woman’s voice, stirring words that yet said nothing, that wove in and out, unbroken by any interrution till at last inexorably the music plunged down and was lost in some deep subterranean abyss, and the thunderous climax sounded so deep and solemn, so slow, so full of terrifying cavernous echoes, that it seemed on the brink of fading into total silence. Overwhelmed by this great chord—so agonizingly held at the lowest limit of the human ear’s capacity to receive it—and bowed down beneath the organ’s vast and unleashed power, Besson once more, for the last time, muttered those magic words of repentance and oblivion: ‘… O my God … who art all good and deserving of all my love … all my love … because they offend Thee … all my sins …’

  Then he pushed open the leather-bound wooden door, and went out into the street.

  By way of penance, François Besson decided to do a stint as a beggar. He strolled through the town at random for a while, to find himself a suitable corner. He examined several different sites, but none of them really satisfied him. If they were not too dry, they were too rain-sodden. Either they had not enough light, or else far too much. Here the pavement was on the slope, and would be uncomfortable to sit on; there the potential pitch was right by a bus-stop. Another was too near a police-station. In one place there was somebody already installed, an old upturned hat in front of him, displaying his empty eye-socket.

  Finally Besson found a corner that he liked. It was on a very busy street, with wide sidewalks, and rows of smart shops and expensive cafés. At widely-spaced intervals, on either side of the street, leafless chestnut trees rose from their protective metal cages, the mouths of which resembled radiant suns. Cars drove by, or stood parked at the kerbside. Everything shone and glittered, and the gleam of the neon signs and the streets-lamp was reflected on the tarred asphalt, with clear-cut, clean patterns of light, as though they had been washed down.

  Besson settled himself on the pavement and leaned back against the wall. He put the beach-bag down beside him. Then he sat watching the crowds go by. It got dark very quickly. People became dim shadows, suddenly illuminated by the white light streaming out of cinemas and bars. Women walked along swivelling their hips, tripping on high-heeled shoes. The eyes up there in those white, mask-like faces were dull and vacant: they gave a quick glance at Besson, then moved away with indifference. The incessant flurry of footsteps made the ground vibrate, a sound both witless and somehow menacing, like a mass exodus of rats. Besson curled his legs up under him and tried to ignore it. But this proved impossible: the vibration passed right through him, like an electric current, and set him shivering. He found himself wishing he could melt into the roughcast wall behind him, shrink back into the core of all the plaster and rubble, flatten himself, become a mere membrane, a pale splash on the reddish distemper.

  The crowd swam past, swag-bellied, a crazy fish opening and shutting its mouth. Faces, faces, faces—weakness and cruelty, glances from under heavy half-closed lids, thick lips opening to reveal decayed teeth, greasy hair slicked down with sour sweat, the smell of tallow, the smell of wet feet, dirt under the fingernails, more faces, degenerate faces, swollen and murderous, the sort that might have come out of hell to gibber round your skylight, yes, there, pale grey shadows, all in step, men, women, children, fat and thin, young and old, bald, bearded, lame, short-sighted, sexless—oh, what slugs they are, what jellyfish, what wretched uncivilized clowns! Here they come, waves of them, rolling and dribbling up to my window, their cheeks all a-bounce and aquiver, materializing out of the darkness, crouching there in great heaped-up masses, then suddenly, frighteningly, springing up like so many huge elongated black rags, gliding through the air to usurp my domain: the terror of the Tongs, moaning sirens, like some black and muted nightmare of life after death these ranks of human jelly come pressing and fluttering at the glass. They keep peering at me, besmirching me with their eyes, endlessly, pale ghastly creatures, cruel glances, snickers of laughter. My body is emptied like a trussed chicken’s, the looks and the laughter run through it, draw blood.

  Now Besson leaned forward a little, and with hand outstretched towards the shadows flitting by, began to intone, in a whining monotonous voice: ‘Kind sir, kind lady…. Not a bite of food for two days…. Kind sir, kind lady … please spare a copper.… Not a bite of food for two days….’

  To his great surprise, several figures detached themselves from the crowd, one after another, and put a coin in the palm of his upturned hand. He kept the money there, and thanked each donor; but the shadows flitted away without saying saying a word, and vanished in the distance.

  In this way he soon acquired his own special section of pavement, a kind of invisible circle with him at its centre, and a protective empty space around him. Groups of men or old women would approach, and then make a detour, giving him quick curious glances, then looking away again, attention wandering. Little by little, as time went on, Besson began to learn his new trade. It was simple enough, but required a certain amount of tact. You had to huddle up at the foot of the wall, letting your legs and the bottom part of your body sprawl like a heap of dirty rags. When a group of people passed by, you had to be careful not to scare them off: this meant keeping quite still, so that you were not mistaken for a drunk, or someone who had been taken ill. Watch the feet passing by, keep your eyes fixed on the ground. When people were just coming abreast of you, you lifted your head and looked at them with a mildly worried expression, that could not be interpreted as containing either hatred or cupidity; at which point, with a firm, decisive gesture, you stretched out your hand towards theirs, and softly—yet with as clear an articulation as possible—muttered the words ‘Nothing to eat’. Then you followed their movement with your hand, as though merely asking for someone to help you up. The most important thing was not to shout insults at those who went past without giving you anything, but just to let your arm drop very slowly, in a discouraged fashion. Often people would be stung by remorse and come back to make you some contribution. You also had to be careful when deciding who you were going to ask: women were the best bets, especially when on their way to a restaurant or the cinema, and escorted by a man. Children accompanied by their parents were also pretty good customers more often than not, though you had to take care not to scare them, or look them straight in the eye. They would come forward hesitantly, pushed on by their mothers, thrust their coin into Besson’s hand, and run off. But as they fled they would look back over their shoulder, with those proud, nervous, inquisitorial eyes they all had. Besson also had to keep glancing up and down the street the whole time, ready to take off if a policeman appeared.

  Two or three times people stopped to take a good look at him. The first of these was a man of about fifty, with a crew-cut, and wearing a navy-blue gabardine raincoat. He strolled past Besson a couple of times, then lingered on the kerbside, pretending to watch the cars go by. But his eyes kept glancing towards Besson: there was a very odd glint in them.

  Then there was the very old woman who came limping up the street on a cane, step by step, till she at last drew abreast of Bessson, her puffy face thrust forward with the laborious effect she was making. Besson heard her quick, shallow breathing, interspersed with the occasional groan; then he caught sight of her legs, dragging along over the black asphalt like two granite pillars, both of them covered with huge varicose veins and bandaged ulcers. The cane tapped along the pavement to the right of her legs: it had a rubber tip. She advanced slowly, shoulders and buttocks working, a heavy, massiv
e figure whose every step pressed into the ground and left the mark of her suffering there; heaving the solid burden of her body forward, on and on, panting, groaning, coughing, eyes fixed, eyelids snapping, mouth open, dirty strands of grey hair streaming down loose on either side of her forehead.

  When the old woman drew level with Besson, she stopped, turned her head very slowly, gave him a terrible look, and began to mutter incomprehensible noises: ‘Bé,’ she mumbled, ‘Hé … Mana … Bé….’ And it was as though no one on earth would ever, from now on, be able to die. It was a kind of boundless malediction, projected through the broken utterance of this creature standing beside him, a piteous cry of outrage that shattered the silence of the street with its longing for death, for peace at the last. She stood there in front of Besson like a statue sculpted in grease, heavy-faced, mouth open, eyelids snapping continuously. Without a word or gesture she still contrived to demand, to implore, using instead her bloated bosom and deformed legs, her aged hands, her sparse, straggling hair, her hunched and dirt-encrusted back. Like a sick rhinoceros, she was looking around her for the instrument of her own destruction. She wanted to see the darts, she was impatient to find some strong enemy lying in wait for her, ready to floor her with a single blow and then—ah, ecstasy—choke the life out of her. But no such saviour appeared. The sharpened weapons remained hidden behind the arras, and the air continued to flow into her lungs, without interruption. This was why she gave Besson that terrible look: it was, quite simply, an appeal for someone to kill her. But did death really exist? Was it not a mere legend, an abominable legend created specially for her, to give her hope, to make her bear her affliction with patience, and accept the agony she suffered? There was nothing, on the face of it, to stop someone chopping her to pieces. She would have collapsed on the ground, bleeding sparsely and with difficulty. Even if one were to carve her limb from limb, and decapitated her, there and then, in the gutter, life would still persist in her; no eternal repose would descend on her body.