Yet this Besson, Besson I as it were, is still alive behind all his sufferings. Once in the past he was alone, caught in the ant-heap, shoved and jostled by the surging crowds. In the evening, he used to walk up and down the street near the gates of a factory, or outside cinemas, unknown and unnoticed, hands thrust into the pockets of his Bedford cord trousers, wearing an old out-at-elbow jacket. Neon signs flooded him with their dull yet intense glare; raindrops, descending magnificently from the furthest reaches of a black and hole-like sky, beat down on his head and hands and the glass of his wrist-watch, spotting the toe-caps of his suede shoes, zig-zagging invisibly before his eyes. He was well and truly planted, yes indeed he was, in the centre of this town, he really belonged to this century, this year, day, and hour, recoverable in perpetuity; a Lartigue, a Benoît, a Schultz, a Rivière. Cars swept silently past him as he walked the pavements. A bus, every light ablaze, stood waiting by its metal stop-sign, shuddering in triple-time rhythm, rak-a-dak, dak, dak, rak-a-dak, dak, dak. A man in ragged brown clothing lurched along past the shop-windows. Dim figures were making love unconcernedly in doorways. And there were voices that kept calling out, hoarse voices, and these hoarse, human voices mingled with one another, perhaps they rose out of the ground, something else to add to the smells of tar and petrol, and the voices rose and the stink of sulphur grew and spread, in a general atmosphere of power and intoxication and chaos, suggesting confusion and death indeed, but also hinting at resurrection: ‘Now then, now then! … Sorry … Henri’s going to … You just look out or I’ll wring your bloody neck … What did I tell you [slash] … Bit of friction there….’
Most of the men are wearing glasses. Their features look quite monstrous, distended by sudden appetites which only puff out their lips and cheeks. The way they walk is sheer torture, each movement harsh and abrupt. In the half-light one can see the swarm to which they belong grouping itself in accordance with some unknown structure: to the left, to the left, left yet again, one more to the left. Right. Left. Right; right; right. Right; left; right. Sounds stab the atmosphere like buzzing flies; then, caught between those pitiless jaws, they imprint themselves on the surface of vapours and clouds, incised reminders of the objects they have left behind. On the roofs of houses we find outlined, in reverse, the confused mythological figures that watch over men’s lives: the dangerous bestiary, those maleficent points in space that one links together almost without intending it, greedy suckers, sharpened claws, vertebrae eaten away with tetanus, teeth hollowed out by necrobioses, chapped and wrinkled lips, blood dripping from the secret folds of the belly, and eyes, eyes, eyes—huge, glowing, full of fragmentated gallows-imagery, eyes with seized-up muscles, eyes with glaucous humours, eyes with constantly weeping tear ducts, a flood, a rain, water streaming over the flat roofs of the apartment buildings, water striping the air, a grim and deadly liquid that in all likelihood, one day soon, will disintegrate the unique existence of mankind, and leave them sinking in the mud, half dressed and half asleep still, like so many iron crosses, still protesting their eternal fidelity to that hellish oath—ignoble mindlessness, after the deluge, abomination and suffering, suffering, fear.
Silence is creeping over the town, and the street-lamps are humming again. It is nearly dark now. Here, on the smooth level surface of this concrete bridge, is this person, this individual, turning hesitantly, like a metal top dropped spinning into an ashtray. The rotations of his body are accelerating ad infinitum, his fury is caught and held in a series of metallic reflections, vibrates on his spinning centre, drills through glass, mingles with the blurred strata of the air. A tiny breeze blows over the ground, scattering the dust before it can come to rest. This is the song—hard and chill as a blade-edge—that has taken root here. Its words are barely audible, they are mere inarticulate sounds, the words make and unmake themselves in vertiginous sequence, in impotence and hatred. Bright flashes of light, exploding at irregular intervals, black lightning, powdery branches.
I no longer believe in god
I no longer believe in god
I no longer believe in god
I no longer believe in god
A giant hand presses down on Besson, bending him double, forcing him to embrace the earth. Slowly he crawls beneath it. The top still revolves on its glass plate. All round him—it—the indispensable crowd of people wearing glasses. The sound of footsteps approaches, dwindles, returns. No more portraits. What is this enormous Café that’s suddenly sprung up on the right? No more books. The sum and totality of every flash of light is there, a blurred spectrum in which every element has to be absorbed simultaneously, blood-red, blue, ultramarine, black, white, the pure and terrible whiteness of snow. A workman with a negroid face trudges through the streets carrying a beam on his shoulder. It jogs as he moves. Suddenly the windows are counted, just like that—854, there are 854 of them. Tiny flames rise trembling from match-heads. Look, the world is breaking up. Look, I am going to die. That’s the alarm going off. Or clockwork toys, that some hidden hand wound up while I slept, underneath my worn and rumpled pillow. In the scars left by biting teeth, in yellow patches of mucus. Besson turns on himself, without turning.
Today,
22nd March 1963
he alone remains; his features have shrunk all round, symmetrically, his cheeks have sunk below the inner angle of the eye. His drowned hair lies at rest now, rain and air rest sprawling over him. He has given up. Two things have happened. The barrier of his will no longer exists. He wanted dissolution, and now this dissolution is coming about without him. Houses collapse in the roadway with the most grotesque sound—the noise you hear in a hollow rock cavern when the tide, surging forward with that to-and-fro motion, pours through for a moment, swells, rises, is cut hollow rock cavern when the tide, surging forward with that to-off, fills with internal eddies, becomes rock, then—in another brief moment—streams back out of the dark abyss, hard, glassy, utterly different now, sucked out by the ebbing current, flowing down below the surface in foam-streaked tumult, leaving trails of bubbles behind.
As though a moon had suddenly appeared, a parasitical heavenly body within the vault of the firmament, as though another planet were in existence, rounded, spherical, a pale refulgent globe, charged with the magnetic powers of iron, of the mineral world frost reflecting naked sunlight, the motion of the sea has communicated itself to the world ashore. In the part of the town immediately around Besson, say a square mile or so, the tide ebbs and flows continually; magnetic fusion has thrown gravity askew. The mass, the volume of objects becomes elongated, things possess skin-like surfaces. Ramparts erect themselves, stratifications appear. One layer, then another. Men merge and mingle, the undertow sucks them in, spews them out, sucks them in once more. The misty air is alive with waving hands and a thrash of limbs. The sounds of voices meet, cross, low-level sound-waves interweaving. They leave a warm yet impalpable ball in the hollow of the ear, a liquid globule quivering a hair’s breadth from the tympanum. The head grows heavier moment by moment, balanced painfully on its supporting neck, the cervical vertebrae cracking in protest, preparing, no doubt, for the moment of final crushing annihilation, the tiny spark-cluster of the death-agony. Into this head the square mile of the town now passes—not direct, but obliquely, as though by way of a mirror. Pat on its cue the void moves into action, drilling its bottomless well through the brain. The gulf that was his skull and the gulf opening beneath his feet are isolated from each other, cut off. Little by little objects leave the earth and enter his body, one after the other, with cries of pain, mute vibration of vocal cords. Like a fish with dilated gills, he embarks on this process of deglutition, swallowing, devouring. Houses pass into him, slowly, like huge mouthfuls of stale bread. Railroad tracks twist up their hideous rails into his mouth, two by two, roads hump themselves towards him. Then come waves of colour, special colours. Orange orange. Violet. Grey. Green green green green. Grey. Pink. Pink. Black. Pink. Emerald emerald. Black black black black black black black. Yello
wish. Locomotives, boiling hot engines sweating oil drop by drop. Blocks of ferro-concrete, still humming with sound, lift-shafts with closed lifts going up in them. Grey, grey, grey. Black pink green blue black white WHITE. Floors of rooms covered with a thin film of dust. Cigarettes, lit or stubbed out. The sound of a peal of bells, a drunk cursing, the flatulent bumbling of a television station. These vast sloping roofs, where birds cluster to watch the sun go down. The East Side pylon with a few insulators missing. Electrocution. Danger, no entry, high voltage, death. A small hut into which one could slip without a qualm, teetering as though half-anaesthetized, both hands turning cold already, already encased in a strange blackish skin, feeling their way towards that complex centre where thousands of blue-steel wires hum on their red bobbins; then a soft, furtive scraping sound, and the blinding shock, like a door being flung open to let in pure fresh air.
Then a sudden flood of men sweeps him from his vertical position, a maelstrom that seems as though it was never born, and can never die, from everlasting to everlasting: a stream of black ants, gently bearing away the empty husk of a huge grasshopper.
Not at another time, for there was only the one time, day and night mingled together, vast and indifferent: with rain still falling from the sky and cascading down the steps of the town, the noise and the terror reached their climax. Letters and words began to play general post; thoughts, as replaceable elements, underwent various permutations. The messages no longer reached anyone. Strange passwords made a road for themselves through the tumult, cries to which no individual could have laid claim: CHRIST, SALUT, OLLA, LE GA. Letters were dispatched in white enevlopes with the flaps stuck down. In the top right-hand corner of each was a stamp carrying within its serrated edges some little picture—a woman’s head, a cook, or a landscape drawn in fine minuscule outline. Wherever you looked there were millions of written messages; their power still survived when they lay abandoned in garbage-cans or at the bottom of drawers, exposed to every insult. Pages of unknown bibles retracing people’s private, insignificant histories:
My dear Jean:
Thanks for your letter. I’ve fixed up the insurance and all that jazz, though because of the fine they made me cough up an extra £4.10.od. The worst thing of the lot is that I lent the motor-bike to John James, who took off with Anna on the pillion. All of which means that we’re still not in the clear; this infernal bike is beginning to cost me a pretty penny.
I’ve paid ₤20 for it—hope that’s the price you had in mind. I’ve handed the money over to Libby, and you ought to get it fairly soon.
France and Eric agreed to take the guitar back to Paris for me—I expect you’ll know who they are? Anyway they’ve left it with some friends of theirs, and Libby’s given your brother the address, so I suppose he’ll have picked it up by now.
See you one of these days.
Yours ever,
Nick.
‘You are young, you want to study, and have fun, and live.
BUT
Do you realize that every year the world spends 60 billion francs (old currency) on weapons of destruction?
Do you realize that 100 million men and 70 per cent of the world’s scientists are employed on war production?
Do you realize that 60 tons of T.N.T. per human being could at any time reduce the entire globe to a cinder?
Do you realize, lastly, that if nuclear war broke out it would kill 300 million people in a matter of minutes?
THREE HUNDRED MILLION CORPSES: THAT IS YOUR FUTURE
But it is not inevitable. You can and must exorcize this bogey. Of course you are against war. But that is not enough: you must SAY SO. You think it’s pointless, that it’s none of your business—
YOU’RE WRONG, IT IS NOT POINTLESS, AND IT IS VERY MUCH YOUR BUSINESS
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO LIVE
If you are on your own, no one will hear you. BUT YOU ARE NOT ON YOUR OWN.’
‘Jessie James: Hopeless Blues’
There are other words, more secret and terrible still. What hand—adult’s or teen-ager’s—carved them with a penknife in the wood of the table? They’re nothing much in themselves, it’s true, and ever since the moment when hand and knife came together in this Café, they have been overlaid by a constant stream of bottles, glasses, cups, other hands, other words; an endless battering assault, a silent act of restraint made endemic by events, a paralyser of time, skewering the hours like a long steel engraver’s point. And yet they continue to proclaim, for all time, this message of happiness and torment; they still eternally relate, in time’s unmoving sphere, that exodus of God’s people through war-torn lands and the swamps of good fortune.
Drum
Molotov
Lollypop
Shrimp
Elite
Key
Foot
Sékou Touré
Passion Flowers
Bourbon
Honey-bee
In this rough sketch, so sharply outlined that it is as though one saw it from a third-floor window, the distant houses repeat their pattern of solid cubes, and a layer of pink gently spreads over the walls, frittering out towards the roof-tops like a shock of hair. At the centre of the sky are deployed all these signs and traces of superhuman life: each knot, each concentric circle to be found below is traced on its wide and ashen surface. The black broken lines and anthracite gleam of cars’ bodywork flicker aloft there, with an imperceptible and tireless motion. From the human city there goes up a multitude of voices, a hubbub of activity, and this monotonous clamour reconstitutes itself among the clouds. Twentieth-century awareness. And speed overtakes innumerable objects, projects itself in a near-scientific illusion, as here with slate tiles, for instance, or the flesh of women and children, or some dark-coloured metal of unknown composition. The eye must penetrate to the very heart of matter, cutting a path with agony and fever and palpitations of the heart—through millions of molecules. Deeper still then, at the core of cloud and vapour, the eye must become number, must pierce further, while molecules separate and matter divides, till it reaches the unchartable point of mathematical bewilderment, that point x of anguish and despair where all physical matter ends and nothing remains beyond it but the empty void.
The landscape has suddenly become, at one and the same time, so vast and yet so restricted: a cone, a genuine cone, its apex non-existent, its base always stretching further than one can see. Cohesion has not totally vanished: some element of being still remains, a vague blurred light, as still as a letter of the alphabet, amid this vast void which is illuminated by its presence. And yet an order has been broken: some process of acceleration, some electrical charge, perhaps—who knows?—has split the atoms apart at a point near the surface, breaking away small masses of energy which are liable to shoot off on a dangerous course of their own. Gamma rays. But this process of dissociation is not unlimited as far as the eye qua number can see, objective existence still survives, its presence theoretical but certain, like that of a nebula. Sources of energy have their own appointed place: behold them now, like stars, gleaming alone in the night’s immensity. They are words, they are symbols, they stand inscribed in the turn of a formula on the blackboard, and from them spring truth and abundance. Each fragment of granite mingled with tar that makes up the pavement, every gleaming piece of enamel, each square yard of the sea’s surface, each plane-tree, every patch of living skin—all have been destroyed utterly, yet still remain alive. The world has an infinite capacity for breaking down and rebuilding its elements: everything is subsumed in that apotheosis of letters and numbers, Xi Zero—Anti Xi Zero. And then, by way of counter-current, and springing from the hard central core of this certainty, there rises a kind of damnable hope, a kind of hope like the onset of a cyclone. The will projected by these centuries of energy. Little by little tables and chairs assume solid form, gradually harden into existence beneath these blind fingers, arrange themselves architecturally within the four walls of a room. Corpuscles agglomerate, wood
en feet thrust out, colours vibrate like sounds. Red, red. Black, red. Ochre, red. White, white, red, Red, black, red. Cohesion begins again, the slack assembly of nails and dadoes. The floor shakes back into its pattern of squared lines and purplish tiles. Dust lays its film over the cracks again, time puts on its make-up. A second. Dust. A second. Dust. A second. Dust A second. Dust. Everywhere homes become ready, one after the other, solid and durable; everywhere, without one realizing it, flesh quivers into life, veins distend as the rhythmic flow passes through them. Here is a woman. Here is a man. There is a child. A dog. A winged ant. Here is another woman. In one corner of the kitchen, near the cubic yard or so of air impregnated by the odours from two overflowing garbage-cans, a cockroach rustles as it moves under the sole of a slipper. Against a wall down near the beach a tree (impossible to describe it) stands stifling in its own washed-out halo. Rain trickles over its outspread branches a deep drain eats it away at root-level.
The Flood Page 31
