Terra Amata

by J. M. G. Le Clézio

  And underneath you’d add another drawing, with little men and women, and birds, and butterflies, and flowers, and cats,

  and dogs, and crocodiles, two or three houses floating about here and there, a sun, a moon, a star, and two trees, one a palm and the other a plane.

  And it would be amusing, too, to tell a story with yourself as the hero: how one day you climbed out of the house through the window and walked through lots of streets and gardens. You walked through a huge thick forest full of wolves and snakes. To frighten them you took off your shoes and banged them together. After you’d walked a long way you were tired. So you chose a clearing near a stream and built a little hut out of tree-trunks. For the roof you used branches with thick foliage. Then you made a bow and arrows and went hunting. You killed a pheasant or a guinea-fowl and roasted it over a fire. Then you went swimming in the river, keeping an eye open for snakes and crocodiles. After that you tamed an owl and it came and perched on your head. You also built a high palisade round the hut, with a ladder for climbing in and out. And every night the wolves hurled themselves against the palisade to try to get at you and eat you. And you threw stones and lighted branches down on them. You made all the furniture yourself; and windows by burning sand; and water-pipes out of bamboo. And you planted potatoes, corn, beetroots and beans. And you lived there for a long time without anyone knowing. You dressed in wolf-skins and you weren’t called Chancelade any more. You had a new name, beautiful and terrifying, like Thor, or Timor, or Ned Maloney.

  THE DAYS WENT BY

  Attending his father’s funeral, for example. But before that, Chancelade had gone into the big dark room with the candles burning. He’d smelt the bitter-sweet smell of smoke and lavender. Then someone had put a hand on his shoulder and pushed him forward—his mother, or perhaps his aunt. Then he went towards the white bed where the man lay in the attitude of someone sleeping. But you could see at a glance that he wasn’t asleep: it had all been faked. They’d put the body on unnaturally clean sheets and folded the hands together on the breast, each finger exactly in place. Under the head they’d put a new pillow, and they’d carefully combed the black hair, keeping the parting on the left. At the foot of the bed there were some mauve flowers in a vase, and on the bedside table a Bible bound in red leather with a big gold cross.

  Chancelade went a few steps forward to free himself of the hand on his shoulder, and looked at the bed and his father’s body. He’d never seen such a body: white, light, so light it seemed to float over the bed, several inches above the sheets. The hands were white, and so was the face—almost transparent, fragile, on the point of dissolving in the hazy atmosphere. It was like a child’s balloon, or a bubble, that might be blown right across the room by the slightest draught. There was also that pale, delicate light that seemed to emanate from the skin and envelop the body, the clothes, and even the bed of the dead man. However tightly his eyes, his mouth, his nostrils and his ears were closed, the man was still there, shut up inside his skin, and he knew everything that was going on. He was hiding, that was all. He’d hidden in a corner of his skull, or under his left eye perhaps, or else taken refuge, the whole of him, in the forefinger of his right hand; and he was listening to everything that was said and watching everything that was done all around him. Perhaps he wouldn’t be able to restrain himself and would suddenly make a face and burst out laughing. Everyone else would be frightened, but he, Chancelade, wouldn’t move a muscle, only smile faintly like one who knows.

  When the boy had been beside the bed for a quarter of an hour or more, the same hand as before got hold of him again, only this time by the arm, and took him to the other side of the room. He sat down on a chair and watched what went on. The shapes of men and women moved about in the half-light. People came in through the door, bent over the bed, sometimes holding a handkerchief under their nose as if there were an epidemic, then went away whispering. Some came over to the chair where the boy was sitting and looked at him strangely as they patted his cheek. Chancelade watched and listened to them without saying anything, but he felt like laughing when he thought that he was the only one who knew the truth. Every time someone came and whispered in his ear he strained towards the bed to see whether the man hadn’t flickered his eye-lid in a conspiratorial wink. But he was very good at it; his eyes were always shut and you could never catch him..

  Chancelade didn’t think he’d ever be so good at pretending, himself. He’d tried shamming dead once or twice with his friends or with his cousin Odile. But he could never keep a straight face for more than a few seconds, and after that he started to blink and bubble with laughter. And if anyone tickled him that finished it.

  That was an idea. When the time came to go and the hand took him by the shoulder to lead him out of the room, he pulled himself free and went over to the bed all by himself. Then he leaned forward and touched his father’s arm. So that the others shouldn’t realize what he was doing he acted as though he were very very sad and wanted to be by himself for a moment. But what he really did was pinch his father’s arm as hard as he could. Through the stuff of his jacket he felt the arm, hard and cold, and his nails sank into the flesh. But surprising as it might seem the man didn’t utter a sound. His white face remained impassive and the brown-stained eye-lids did not stir. Chancelade was astonished and went on pinching the arm for several seconds, until his mother came and pulled him away. Then Chancelade was ashamed. He pushed aside the hand that held him and hurried out of the room. Then he went and hid in the kitchen and wetted his eyes with water from the tap to make it look as if he’d been crying. At least that seemed to please everyone who came to look for him, and lots of women bent down and kissed and whispered over him.

  A few days later there was the funeral.

  Chancelade didn’t know that every so often there was a dead man’s day like this. You know—they get the house ready, paint it black, put hangings all over the place, pedestals, vases with orchids and violets, candles, and tables with saucers full of visiting cards. For a few days everything is different. Some things are hidden away, others are brought out. Clothes, to start with: there are veils, black dresses, black stockings, black aprons, black hats, black scarves, purple socks, black shoes, black suits, bands, ties, sashes. Then there are bits of cardboard with black edges that you put in matching envelopes, and that have written on them:

  Madame Claude Chancelade

  Monsieur Adrien Chancelade

  Monsieur and Madame Philippe Mendes

  Monsieur Sébastien Magnan

  announce with regret the death of

  Jean-Antoine Chancelade

  The burial will take place on August 3, 1952.

  The funeral will start from the house at 4 p.m.

  De Profundis!

  There are also the people nobody knows who suddenly invade all the rooms and keep whispering and shaking hands and kissing, dabbing at their eyes with handkerchiefs. When they speak they say strange and rather disturbing things, like:

  ‘My goodness, what a terrible thing, what a blow …’

  ‘Yes, awful.’

  ‘The worst was getting him dressed. The skin gave, you know.’

  ‘Oh my goodness.’

  ‘Yes, we’d put his black suit on and the skin on his back went and we had to clean everything up and start all over again. And then we put on another suit.’

  ‘You’d never have thought it, he looked so calm, so ha—’

  ‘Yes, that’s true, but we had to bind the chin too …’

  ‘And did you powder him?’

  ‘Of course, what do you expect, he …’

  ‘Oh how awful, what a trial for his wife.’

  ‘She couldn’t do anything, poor thing, she was too upset.’

  ‘What a good thing you were there.’

  ‘Yes, but it’s dreadful. He soiled the sheets even two days after, you know.’

  ‘You don’t say!’

  ‘Ah, it’s all very sad!’

  ‘Yes, dreadful
.’

  ‘But he didn’t smell.’

  ‘That’s because the doctor gave him a camphor injection right away.’

  ‘Yes, it was the only way, otherwise in this heat …’

  Or else things like:

  ‘Did he suffer much?’

  ‘No, not much, it just carried him off in a few days.’

  ‘Yes, it was a good thing he didn’t linger.’

  ‘It was difficult towards the end, but fortunately, no, he didn’t linger.’

  ‘Did it happen during the night?’

  ‘Yes, about four in the morning. He was a bit delirious during the night and kept being sick and so on, and then he gave a cry at about four in the morning, and I came running, but it was all over.’

  ‘I’d never have believed it, he was so young, so—’

  ‘Yes, but the doctor was always here. It was only to be expected.’

  ‘But it’s a comfort he didn’t suffer. Some of them drag on like that for years’.

  ‘Yes, indeed, take my mother-in-law. It was terrible. And the worst of it was she knew she was going. She kept calling out “Don’t leave me, don’t leave me!” And when she saw people round the bed—she was delirious, of course—she used to say, ‘What do all these people want? Send them away, tell them to go away.” Oh, with her it was very difficult for everybody.’

  ‘Yes, sometimes you wonder whether it wouldn’t be better just to drop down in the street—’

  ‘And she suffered so much she wanted someone to kill her. She used to say to me: “Please, give me a gun and let me finish myself off”.’

  ‘Yes, it’s dreadful.’

  ‘But we shouldn’t really talk about such things in front of the boy.’

  ‘Poor little thing, he doesn’t understand.’

  And so on.

  Also, somewhere in the shadows, there’s the veiled face of the woman in black. She sits with both hands in her lap and her back bowed, propped crookedly against the back of her chair. She doesn’t say anything. She just sits there quietly, her body slightly collapsed as if she were asleep. Through the veiling you can just make out a very white face; but you can’t see her mouth or nose or eyes. Only, on either side, the brown mass of her hair. And the middle of the veil rises and falls regularly, there where the warm breath issues from lips and nostrils. The shapes of others come and go about her. Now and then a woman leans over her, puts an arm round her shoulders, brings her face close to the veil and murmurs a few words. But she doesn’t answer; she doesn’t even move. The white expanse of her hidden face stays turned towards a certain spot on the floor, a few inches left of the leg of the table on which the coffin rests. No one can do anything at all for her, or for anyone else. All you can do is look at her, as the boy Chancelade does, thinking proudly that something very unusual is happening to him, and also feeling pity, and wondering how it will all end.

  Then everybody began to walk behind the black car that the coffin was in. Chancelade was among the first, holding the hand of a middle-aged woman in a hideous black dress. The cortège began to wind very slowly round the square. The sun was high in the sky, and a sort of dazzling white light was reflected back so strongly from the pavement and the walls of the houses that it made everyone’s eyes water.

  Directly behind the hearse the woman in black glided along as though the movement were quite natural to her. It was as if she weren’t moving her legs at all; as if she were a ghost. On her right was an old man in a black suit, and on her left a young woman in a black coat and skirt with a scarf over her head.

  At the head of the procession the black car gleamed in the sun. It was a splendid new car. The back part was fitted up as a hearse, and it had gilded metal columns and thick black velvet curtains with silver tears on. It drove along slowly, noiselessly, and the sun struck dazzling gleams from the hubcaps and chromium bumpers. Inside the hearse you could see the dark wood of the coffin with its brass handles, the crimson cushions, and bouquets and sheaves of flowers inscribed with the words:

  ‘Everlasting sorrow’

  or

  ‘To my beloved husband.’

  Before setting out they’d given Chancelade a wreath which he’d had to place solemnly on the coffin. It was a circlet of plastic violets with a silver ribbon across on which was written:

  ‘To my father.’

  As he walked along Chancelade tried to see if it was still there. But it must have slipped off on the way because it had disappeared.

  The heat was intense. Chancelade felt himself being gradually overcome with drowsiness. He thought how much he’d like to climb into the splendid black car and lie down on the red cushions and be carried slowly, like that, round the square. He would watch the procession following with measured tread, and wave to the idlers along the side of the road. Some men would raise their hats as a token of respect, and some women would lower their eyes and furtively cross themselves.

  It took a very long time to go round the square the first time. Already some of the mourners were starting to feel tired. A big bald man behind Chancelade puffed and blew and mopped the back of his neck with his handkerchief, saying over and over again:

  ‘This heat! …’

  Only the woman in black behind the hearse kept gliding imperceptibly forward like a ghost, looking neither right nor left. The crowd followed her slight figure round the square; seen from above it must have looked like some strange snail or centipede. In the middle of the square, now, an immense emptiness stretched up towards the sky and touched the sun. It was an invisible marble column, like the hub of a roundabout, turning slowly on itself and drawing the long black caravan round in its circle. It was also an eye that judged men and sentenced them; an eye, yes, a sharp pitiless eye was fixed on the square and held it hypnotised. Bodies sweated, buildings rose up like insurmountable ramparts, and the ground melted underfoot. There was no way out, no opening through which to escape. Everywhere there was this inhuman gaze crushing you, turning you into a slave. Everyone was gathered together there, at that moment, to take part in that barbaric rite. And the unwearying engine of the black car drew the crowd along, noiselessly, smoothly, with all the dreadful power of its steel pistons. All the looks that had failed of their objects in the past were now directed on to the dark wooden coffin covered with gaudy wreaths, and avenged themselves for their sufferings. When Chancelade realized that he was in the centre of this hell and couldn’t escape, he felt a strange dizziness, and shivered. He had never seen so much emptiness, so much fated violence, so much fear and fatigue concentrated in such a small space. It was worse than climbing the stairs of an endless tower or walking across a room in the dark. Intelligence was suddenly overthrown, and you were swept by the current of tragedy through the icy regions of that which you do not understand, that which you never will understand, that of which you know you will always know nothing.

  You ought to have started to struggle right away—to shout, run, or burst out laughing. Something funny ought suddenly to have happened, like someone slipping on a banana-skin or being seized with a fit of hiccups. But the mechanical crowd went on advancing, one foot after the other, solemnly, black and white, along that terrible furrow. You ought to have been able to give an ear-splitting whistle, or eat an ice-cream cone: but it was impossible.

  In order to do something, Chancelade stared with hatred at the dark wooden coffin with brass handles and tried to imagine that it was empty. But that wasn’t amusing. It was more terrifying, even, because after all it was probably true. On the shiny wooden lid the ridiculous leaves and petals of the plastic wreaths and flowers bobbed lightly up and down.

  Then, when the procession had been round the square for the second time, Chancelade imagined that he was inside the coffin. His hands were folded in front of him; eyes, nostrils, ears and mouth were closed. Lots of sheaves of flowers had been laid on top of the coffin, and on one of them was written in gold letters:

  ‘For my lamented self.’

  Behind the woman in bla
ck, who moved forward as if on roller-skates, a man with black hair wore new shoes that squeaked as he walked solemnly along.

  Then a few yards further on the boy thought of something else: it wasn’t a man lying in the coffin, it was a big green and blue lizard. The cat had killed it behind the kitchen door and now they were going to bury it. They’d laid it down on its back in the box among the crimson satin cushions, and folded its little paws on its belly, tied together with pink ribbon. It was being borne along inside the dark chest, slightly jolted by the movement of the hearse, and everyone was walking slowly after it dabbing their eyes. On the lid of the coffin were sheaves of flies threaded on wire, and on the ribbons was written:

  ‘To my beloved lizard’

  ‘Sadly missed’

  ‘To my reptile’

  etc.

  The procession would go up through the hills to the miniature cemetery. The box would be put into the ground and over it would be placed a slab of marble with the words:

  LIZARD

  Born May 1, 1951

  Died August 21, 1952

  Rest in peace.

  There’d be graves everywhere for people who’d died and been changed into animals. There’d be the woman who turned into a cat, and on the tombstone would be written: ‘For darling Pussy.’ And the man who’d become a bulldog: ‘Paddy’. There’d be big graves for men who’d become horses or elephants, and women who’d become giraffes and lionesses. There’d be tiny little sarcophagi for beetle-men and white-mice-women. And everywhere pots of flowers, bones, feathers, medals, and slabs of black marble with names on: ‘Wanda who was a sinner’, ‘Mitsou’, ‘Chum’, ‘Tom Tit’, ‘Pierrot’, ‘Mirabelle’, ‘Bathsheba of the flashing eyes’. There would be no more cemeteries for people, only for broken-down horses, dead cats, squashed potato-bugs, and dogs, and parrots, and lizards.