Terra Amata

by J. M. G. Le Clézio

  He swam for a long time, every so often ducking his head under. The bay ended in a sort of steep headland, and Chancelade decided to swim out to it. He lowered his feet on to a flat rock, slippery with weed, that lay at the neck of the headland. He climbed out of the water cautiously because of the sea-urchins. The last time he’d gone bathing on the rocks, with Roussel, the other boy had got a sea-urchin’s spine in his right foot and had to be taken to the doctor for it to be cut out with a scalpel.

  Chancelade jumped from rock to rock till he reached a path running along the headland, and followed it away from the beach. Above him were private houses and gardens with lots of trees and plants; but there were no people to be seen. The heat was overpowering here because of the sun continuously reflected from the sea. Big canna and aloe leaves hung down everywhere over the path and had to be pushed aside. There was that smell again too—the smell of cinnamon, beer, urine and iodine that lay heavy on the lungs and made you pant. From the cracks of crumbling walls big grey lizards stared at you fearlessly out of motionless eyes. Wasps buzzed about, and thin flies alighted on your legs to drink the sweat and sea-water.

  For a moment Chancelade thought it would be best to go back and lie down on the beach. But he’d never been here before and wanted to find out what it was like.

  Suddenly, before you knew how it happened, the path emerged from the stifling undergrowth into an open creek. There was a slight breeze blowing, and Chancelade thought he might cool off for a bit before going on.

  The creek was absolutely deserted, and only half lit by the sun because of the tall trees that surrounded it. Between two grey rocks there lay a sort of beach of white pebbles. But this was no ordinary beach. It was strewn with mountains of rubbish. There were tons of old iron, bits of wood and petrol-cans, as if for months and months trucks had been coming to shoot a whole town’s refuse there. But there was no other approach except the little path Chancelade had taken, so all the débris must just have been gradually washed ashore in storms.

  Chancelade looked at the strange confusion for a moment, then climbed down on to the beach. He went and sat down on a huge trunk, all white with salt, that sprawled across the pebbles. When he felt restored by the breeze he started to walk up and down the beach examining the bits of rubbish one by one. He threw stones at petrol-cans black with rust. He broke dead branches on the rocks, smashing down with all his strength as though he was hitting an animal, or a man. He threw empty bottles as far as he could, listening each time for the pleasant sound of splintering glass. He tried to pull up a long rusty bar buried deep in the pebbles. He stove in rotten packing-cases on which the printed words were half weathered away. He picked up big rocks and dropped them on sheets of metal. He smashed stones and sniffed the smell of sulphur left by the flying fragments. He flung into the sea cork floats, life-belts, flasks, bits of old tyres. He piled empty tins on top of one another then knocked them all down again with stones. Everything he could find to throw he threw in all directions: rotten old shoes, bolts, saucepans, tins, mouldy planks, branches eaten away by sea-water, stones, broken chairs, castings, plastic containers, bits of brooms, bones, petrol-cans filled with gravel. He worked at it diligently, without respite, jumping over rocks, crunching over pebbles, striding across pools of oil and mounds of broken bottles. He was the adventurer fighting whole armies single-handed, one man alone against ten, a hundred, ten thousand. He rained down bombs. He sank ships with cannon-fire. He laid about him with his sabre. He had eyes everywhere and nothing could take him by surprise. From time to time he would utter some guttural order in an unknown language, harsh and barbaric:

  ‘Brox wanyahou wandorh!’

  ‘Pradjo!’

  ‘Afadanstar dboï!’

  ‘Hiarrh-to hiarrh-to!’

  He brought the war to an end by smashing in with an iron bar a broken metal barrel that gave off a trickle of oil This was the moment when in the ordinary course of events he ought to have set light to all the dead wood and climbed on a rock to watch it burn. But Chancelade hadn’t any matches and felt too tired to try to start a fire by rubbing two sticks together. So he sat down on the stones and looked at the sea and did nothing.

  When he started off again he picked up a bit of wood to keep as a souvenir. It was a little flat piece of worm-eaten pine, on which was written: ORSOVA.

  He began walking along the path again. Just before he reached a level stretch that ended in a wall he saw the corpse of a seagull flattened against a sharp rock.

  The wall was very high, about ten or twelve feet, but there was a gap to one side of it and Chancelade sneaked through on all fours.

  On the other side the landscape was quite different. It was a sort of enormous garden stretching down to the sea, with lots of flowers and leaves and brambles and trees. Chancelade walked through the undergrowth towards the tip of the headland. The sea wasn’t so grey here and you could see queer green patches near the shore. He thought it would be a nice place to bathe: it was cool and there were no people. He climbed down across the rocks to find a good spot. He decided on a flat rock like a paving-stone that sloped down into the water. But when he got down there he saw that there was another rock just like it a little further off, with someone on it. It was a little girl in a red swimsuit sitting with her feet in the water. Chancelade made his way along to where she sat. When she saw him coming she turned her head right round and he saw that she was wearing dark glasses. He climbed down on to the stone, looked at her for a moment, and said:

  ‘Do you live here?’

  The girl looked surprised.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Do you?’

  ‘No, I don’t either,’ said Chancelade.

  He sat down beside her and put his feet in the water too.

  ‘Did you get in through the hole in the wall?’ said the girl.

  ‘Yes,’ said Chancelade.

  He looked at the girl again and saw she had quite long hair with a parting on the left.

  ‘My name’s Chancelade,’ said Chancelade. ‘I’m twelve and a half.’

  The girl splashed her feet about in the water to make bubbles.

  ‘My name’s Sonia,’ she said. Then she added with satisfaction, ‘And I’m thirteen.’

  ‘People aren’t allowed here,’ said Chancelade.

  ‘I came with my father,’ said Sonia. ‘He’s down there fishing a bit further along.’

  ‘I came on my own. I swam,’ said Chancelade, pointing at the sea.

  ‘I couldn’t,’ said Sonia.

  ‘Yes, it takes some doing. I’m tired.’

  Chancelade leaned back and lay on the stones.

  ‘But I’m sure people aren’t really allowed in here,’ he said. ‘I saw a. notice just now in the garden that said “No Entry”.’

  ‘Who does it belong to?’

  ‘I don’t know. But if they send a keeper or a dog I’ll swim away.’

  ‘So shall I.’

  ‘Yes, but you have to be a good swimmer because of the currents. If you’re not a good swimmer you get swept away and drowned.’

  ‘Yes. Down, down, down and that’s that!’

  Chancelade and the girl both laughed.

  ‘Can you do the crawl?’ he asked.

  ‘No, it’s too difficult, I—’

  ‘I’ll teach you, later on,’ said Chancelade.

  He pointed to the girl’s dark glasses.

  ‘Can I try your glasses on?’

  The girl took them off and passed them to him.

  ‘They’re very good,’ said Chancelade. ‘Not too tight.’

  ‘Yes, and they were expensive–they’re filtered lenses.’

  ‘Yes, they’re very good.’

  He looked through the smoked lenses at the sea and the sky and the girl, then held out his hand and looked at that.

  ‘They make everything look green.’

  ‘I’ve got some pink ones too but my father says they’re bad for my eyes.’

  ‘And do they make everything look
rose-coloured?’

  ‘Yes. Funny, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, it must be,’ said Chancelade.

  He took the glasses off and put them down on the rock, but the girl didn’t put them on again.

  ‘What’s your other name—Sonia what?’ Chancelade asked.

  ‘Sonia Iwaskiewicz.’

  ‘Sonia what?’

  ‘Iwaskiewicz.’

  ‘How do you spell it?’

  ‘I-w-a-s-k-i-e-w-i-c-z. It’s a Polish name. My father’s a Pole.’

  ‘Really?’ said Chancelade. ‘Is he Russian?’

  ‘No, Polish,’ said the girl.

  ‘Because I’ve got a friend who’s Russian. His name’s Dmitri Filatiev.’

  ‘My father doen’s like the Russians,’ said the girl. ‘He says they ruined his country.’

  ‘Dmitri’s a good chap though,’ said Chancelade.

  ‘It’s all the same to me, it’s just my father. When he talks about Poland he’s sad, and he says it was because of the Russians he had to go away.’

  ‘It was because of the war,’ said Chancelade.

  ‘Yes, it was because of the war,’ said Sonia Iwaskiewicz.

  ‘I can remember the war,’ said Chancelade. ‘I saw the Germans when they came back from Africa. They went by our house and my mother showed them to me. Sometimes they used to fire at the windows because they were frightened.’

  ‘I was in Switzerland with my father and mother, but I don’t remember anything about it.’

  ‘I’d have liked to fight,’ said Chancelade. ‘I often hit the target at the fair.’

  ‘My father keeps a revolver in the drawer of his desk,’ said Sonia. ‘He showed it to me one day and said I mustn’t tell anybody or he’d be sent to prison.’

  ‘It must be nice to have a revolver,’ said Chancelade.

  ‘Yes, but you’re not supposed to.’

  ‘If I had a revolver I wouldn’t be afraid of anybody any more.’

  He took his legs out of the water and sat with his feet on the rock.

  ‘A friend of mine tried to be clever once at the fair. He wanted to shoot the way they do in Westerns. He put the pistol in his pocket and it went off and the bullet went into his leg, just here.’ He showed the place on his thigh.

  ‘It must have hurt.’

  ‘Yes, it bled a lot and they took him to hospital.’

  ‘I went to hospital to have my appendix out when I was ten. You can still see the scar.’

  The little girl showed the scar on her belly. Chancelade leaned forward and touched it.

  ‘It’s hard,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, but it doesn’t hurt any more,’ said Sonia. ‘I had a friend called Cerise, and she died because they didn’t operate in time.’

  ‘Did you say she was called Cerise?’ said Chancelade.

  The little girl started to laugh.

  ‘Yes, Cerise.’ She toyed with the frame of her dark glasses. ‘At first everyone made fun of her because of her name. Then they got used to it. She died last year, because they didn’t operate in time.’

  ‘I know a chap called Clovis,’ said Chancelade. ‘That’s a funny name too, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, but not so funny as Cerise.’

  ‘No.’

  They went on talking like this for more than half an hour, sometimes with their feet in the water, sometimes with them resting on the rock. The sun had by this time descended almost to the top of the trees, and the sea had grown dark. Then Chancelade and the girl went into the water. They swam along by the rocks for a little way and Chancelade taught her to do the crawl, throwing her elbows well back. Then they clambered out on to the stone again. The water was cold and they were shivering. Then the girl took Chancelade’s hand and they walked together through the shrubs and low trees. After that the girl said let’s play hide-and-seek, and Chancelade put his hands over his eyes and counted aloud: ‘One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty!’ He saw at once that she’d gone along a sort of track that led to a clump of pines. He crept towards the trees quietly, making a détour so as to creep up from behind. And there sure enough he saw the girl pressed against a pine-trunk; she hadn’t seen him. Chancelade tiptoed a little nearer, and when he was only a couple of yards away sprang forward and got hold of her round the waist. She gave a cry, and they both fell down. It was strange to feel her skin and hair and the damp red swimsuit. They played a lot of other games too—tag, catch, blindman’s buff, cops and robbers, cars, duelling. Chancelade wanted to play Chinese wrestling, and won easily. Then they lay down to rest, and played at tickling one another. It wasn’t long until the boy started to stroke the girl’s skin, first her arms, then round the neck and shoulders, then under the damp material of the red swimsuit. She didn’t say anything, but clung tight to Chancelade’s body and put her arms round him. Right before his eyes Chancelade saw her face with its two green eyes and wet lashes and locks of dark hair. He felt warm disturbing breath coming from her open mouth. And she on her side looked at the two dark blue eyes that blended into one, and the freckles, and the two white incisors gleaming between his lips. She put her head forward and kissed him as she’d seen people kiss on the films, her eyes shut. And she thought she’d write all this down in her diary this evening, locked in her room, and that silly idiot of a Monique, with her lipstick and her brassière stuffed with cotton-wool, wouldn’t be able to make fun of her any more. She guided the boy’s hand on to her chest, under the damp swimsuit; but it lay there cold and still as a lizard. When she tried to kiss him for the fifth time he drew his head back a little. He started to sit up, and as he did so he saw on the girl’s white belly, just above the swimsuit, a big black insect with curly legs and waving feelers. He jumped back, staring at it. The girl looked silently down at it for a moment, then let out a yell and leapt up, shaking herself frantically. She jumped up and down in a panic, panting loudly, then ran off through the bushes, even forgetting her beautiful dark glasses with filtered lenses. Chancelade watched her go. He wanted to call after her but no sound would come. So he got up and carefully took off the twigs that had stuck to his arms and legs, then picked up the glasses and went. He felt a bit dizzy and very thirsty. The sun was just disappearing behind the trees and the wind was chill. When he got to the beach he saw that everyone had gone home, and that somebody had stolen his beautiful new green towel.

  INSIDE THE DRAWING

  It was all like in the drawing. The page had been torn off the writing-pad one day, and some unknown child had drawn those figures with a blue ball-point and coloured pencils. They’d appeared quite naturally, almost as if they’d always been there and only needed to be copied. It was only a vision of the world, after all, one vision among so many others. But here everything was complete, perfect, finished down to the last detail. Fate was there somewhere, perhaps in the shape of the sun or in the black specks in the middle of the eyes. Death was present too, in the teeth of the man on the left or in the scribbles of hair. War, love and ignorance were there. Age that comes too fast, and self-wasting time, and spirit slowly dwindling. It was funny, grotesque, moving, sad, magical. It was an image of life. Yes, it was that and more than that—a witness to life here on earth, the human signature, simple and mysterious. It was the epic, the strange epic, reduced to its simplest form and just set down here, by chance, on this single sheet of paper torn from the block.

  Could one really try to understand what it meant? Was there anything there to understand? I mean, the drawing had just appeared, at this moment in this century, produced by the unskilful hand of a child, without any evident necessity. Try as you might you couldn’t find the clue to the enigma, you couldn’t point out the general drift or learn the secret meaning. If there was anything at all on the scribbled page it was the same thing as was in the world. The presence of life, perhaps; the evidence of life speaking for itself. In the face of the terrible void the thin p
aper surface resisted as if it were marble or tungsten. Nothing could tear it, nothing could break it. It was the soft rampart, the frail and tender shield that was the only reason of life. Not even a word; not even a sign; no, just the screen, the delicate screen that protects and absolves millions of lives and acts. All culture trembled in this square of paper—all cursed and impenetrable culture condensed into a few lines. What was the point in lying? Since the darkest night of time it had always been the same; no one had begun to understand. However many words and theories they heaped on top of one another it was always the same spectacle, strong and hermetic, that offered. All beauty. All ignominy. All passion, all joy, all mourning.

  Perhaps, after all, it was a sort of evidence: evidence that there was nothing to understand. There was nothing else to do but take that sheet of writing-paper and draw on it with a blue ball-point and coloured pencils. Just in order to fix history for a few seconds.

  Now, on the paper, two human shapes held hands and faced the void. From the middle of their faces their wide eyes looked fearfully into yours. The little boy, on the left, showed his teeth like a corpse. A rabbit looked at you too, from his overall. Above the two figures two roads like a couple of snakes, one blue one green, each joined two houses together. Between them was a tree with two enormous cherries on it, unless it was a street-lamp. Almost at the top of the page was the green and blue sun, like an insect, and above that the line of the mountains and the clouds ran right across the page like a row of teeth.

  So when you’d drawn this motionless story there was nothing more to add.

  At a pinch you could write something, as Chancelade did, holding the ball-point between his thumb and forefinger; and that too was a sort of human legend.

  ‘The sea is blue, it has waves. The lion is in the cage. The Panther is angry. The Leopard has claws. The elephant has a long trunk. The Monkey eats monkey-nuts. The wolf is very cruel. The bear can swim.’