Terra Amata
Page 9
HAPPY
How were you to say you were happy, at that moment, on that part of the earth, with that woman, with yourself, and with everything else? It wasn’t easy to say, and yet you had to say it. You had to forget the fatal issue, pain, decay, the minute but effective assaults of time. You had to forget the void, the being abandoned, the being alone, and live out your own adventure with joy. Nothing counted any more but this explosion of life, an explosion beautiful and unique. Out of the long night, opaque, insensible, there issued now this ball of fire more luminous than a million suns, shut up inside the body and blazing there. The glare is harsh, it hurts, it flays, but the pain is also the greatest of pleasures: it is the power of life. There were so many things to believe, so many things to love, hate, touch, drink, look at, feel, understand, listen to, judge, suffer, hope. There was so much fear, so much evil, gentleness, noise or cold. From farthest time or space this wealth had come to Chancelade, a man among men, an inhabitant of this planet, and had changed him into a bomb. Everything was there, present, palpable. It called for more than words, it called for shouting, for howling at other people at the top of your voice in the street. Maybe they wouldn’t have understood, but that’s what you ought to have done: open your mouth and yell as loud as you could at three o’clock in the afternoon with the veins standing out on your neck and temples bursting:
HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRH!
Then run like mad through the stone streets, leaping over cars, skipping up to the roofs and jumping from building to building, bashing your fist through shop windows, like that, without ever stopping. Run across the burning country, through fields of maize or beetroots, pull up grass and swim in icy streams. Those are the things you ought to have done, with anger and with joy, with all the strength of your muscles and with your will steeled like a weapon to break down the walls of silence. Seize a stonebreaker’s hammer, for instance, and smash the pieces of rock with terrible blows. The sharp fragments fly, the sparks burst forth, and a sort of bitter-sweet smoke smelling of sweat spreads through the air, pleasant to breathe.
There are all the things that can’t be said in words because they’re too lovely, too clear, because they’re self-evident and seem to have always been. There’s the transparency of the air, the fluidity of water, the heat of the mid-day sun, the blindness of the night. There are the stars, sparkling in the furthest depths of space. The pale moon slipping behind the clouds. The bats skimming the earth, then darting up and swooping through the darkness. There are the cries of birds in the morning in the trees. The movement of goldfishes’ fins. The screams of parrots. The exhausting sound of the sea, the sound of raindrops, the thunder echoing through mountain caves. There’s the earth drying in the sun, and the marks of tyres in the mud. There’s this woman’s body, white and peaceful, or burning with fever and desire. There are eye-lashes, eye-brows, nails. The pores of the skin. The pattern of the flowered dress, the lipstick, the dirty comb. There’s the transistor radio, gleaming white and gold, with its long chromium antenna. There are the dark glasses. But it’s inexhaustible, and you can never see everything.
So you must plunge, like Chancelade, into the glittering chaos, and give yourself up to the sounds, the colours, the smells, the millions of simultaneous and perfect sensations. Perfect earth, beloved earth, abhorred earth, earth where nothing is lacking, where there is nothing to be desired. A new abyss, an ant-hill that swallows you up in a few seconds, but with what delightful torture! You can also just sleep quietly, or sing the sad and silly little songs of childhood. You can recite over and over again in a funny little twang:
Hallo, Billy boy, had your dinner?
Yes indeed, ma’am, I had a pie.
What was in it?
A nice fat linnet.
One two three
And out goes he.
Aide la belle s’en est à sa fin alede
A A KOTKI DWA
SZARE, BURE OBYDWA
PRZYSZLY DO NAS NOCOWAĆ
MAŁY CHANCELADE PIASTOWAĆ
Ajakaa Hiljaa Sillalla
In a thousand years, in ten thousand years, will there even be anyone alive who’ll remember you existed? Perhaps in a museum, deep in some strange building of concrete and glass, there’ll be a skull with empty sockets, eaten away by time, worn, broken, with a sort of jaw stuck with rotten teeth. In the glass case, beside the skull, there’ll be a few mysterious objects unearthed by the archaeologists: a rusty lighter, two or three dim coins, a telephone disc, an earth-blackened ball-point pen, and, set out like some object of magic, a pair of dark glasses with gilt frames and one lens broken. There’ll be an entry in the catalogue corresponding to the number in the glass case, say B 10078:
Maldec skull and jawbone found 6/19 666 at Saatac. (Carbon 14 dating: 15,000/18,000)
Maldec man is a Caucasoid of the last post-Ice Age, belonging to the advanced civilization of Northern Europe and America. This exhibit may be compared with the skulls from Combe Capelle, Mladeč, Zlatý Kůň, Rothekopf, etc. But Maldec man seems to have been a direct descendant of the higher neolithic races. Tall in stature (6 feet 1 inch), Maldec man seems to have had a graceful skeleton and a cranial capacity of 1,800 cubic centimetres (just below the present average). He belonged in fact to a very advanced culture in which machines already occupied an important place. Maldec man is often considered to have been contemporary with the atomic era, though no proof of this has been adduced. He left numerous buildings, and had attained a very high artistic level. Various objects found near the skull were probably ritual objects, Maldec man having a highly developed religious sense.
Maldec man seems to have lived in communities, in tall concrete houses divided into rooms. His was essentially a working and fetishist civilization. Wars were frequent and deadly, as is proved by certain burial-places recently discovered. These wars were probably due to racial or religious differences. The civilization of Maldec man was also ritual, nationalist, and based on the family. It thus belongs to the polymorphic pre-desertic period, which lasted about 5,000 years. It may be that Maldec man was contemporary with the beginning of the great drought which occurred at that time and which caused his civilization to disappear.
Little is known with certainty of the language spoken by Maldec man, and his writing has not so far been deciphered. It is generally supposed to have been an articulate and descriptive language. It must have been spoken all over Europe, and is sometimes called the Paleo-European language, though it must also have been used in other parts of the world. Some also maintain that the pre-desertic civilization was contemporary with the first inter-stellar flights, but it is more reasonable to suppose that these came in the post-desertic era.
The site where the Maldec skull was discovered is a characteristic one (sites typical of the last pre-desertic period are towns, roads, pyramids, aqueducts, buildings of concrete). It must not be forgotten that most of these sites were afterwards severely damaged in the drought and the atomic wars. Garraza’s machine, the paintings of Jong and the steel tower at Han Pringk are usually attributed to the Maldec civilization.
Bibliography:
—Z. Arkham : The Discovery of the Maldec Skull.
—Ostra: Man in the Upper Pre-desertic Era.
—Parsindom G.: Maldec Man—Witness of the Cataclysm?
—Sestemas: Paleo-European Civilization: Its Arts, Manners and Wars.
—Ramahot : Before, During and After the Desert.
That’s more or less what will be written in the catalogue of that museum, in ten or twenty thousand years. That’s all that will remain of Chancelade, his life, his thoughts, his love and his hate. Engulfed, worn, ground to dust, scattered in the wind and rain, buried in the mud, his brain, his soul, his body, his passions. Mingled with the earth, with the weathered rocks, with the roots of shrubs. And all these buildings, and all these houses of steel and concrete, and all these familiar objects near at hand, gas-lighters, sun-glasses, red and blue ball-points, cigarettes, handkerchiefs, coins a
nd telephone discs; wrist-watches, keys, nail-files, cuff-links, imitation crocodile note-cases: all will have descended slowly into the dark ditch, forgotten, rejected, abandoned to the heedless elements. It was the long sacrifice of wearing away, which had never begun and which would never end, the mere passing from one bottomless abyss to another bottomless abyss.
Chancelade had always known this, even when he was nothing, even when he just performed every act in the sheer momentum of life. This was why he was in a hurry now, why he was struggling as hard as he could. This was the real cause of his intoxication, the main reason for his madness. He was walking on the beach at night holding Mina’s hand, and somewhere in the depths of his consciousness a queer mechanical voice was slowly reciting:
521, 522, 523, 524, 525, 526, 527, 528, 529.
A little further on he was sitting looking at the sea throwing stones at the waves and the voice went on counting:
586, 587, 588, 589, 590, 591, 592, 593, 594.
He breathed in the smell of grass from Mina’s hair, he touched the skin of her belly under the mauve dress, he kissed her lips, her ears, her brow, her nose, her neck, her bare arms:
599, 600, 601, 602, 603, 604, 605, 606, 607.
He lit a cigarette 740, he watched the blinking lights of an aircraft taking off 777, he shut his eyes 781, opened them again 782, he breathed in deeply 783, breathed out with a sigh 785, said a few words to Mina, ‘Pleasant, isn’t it?’ 797, ‘Yes, I don’t feel a bit tired’ 801. So each little thing had its figure, and each figure could be infinitely divided 853 (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 and so on). There was no end to it. However far back you went in time, however deep you dug and with whatever frenzy or haste, all you found was time and yet more time. You never arrived at peace, at the chill luminous zone, the chill black zone where nothing happens.
But this wasn’t a cause for despair; it was a sort of intoxication, a continual hallucination, a nightmare fiesta in which everything exploded simultaneously, everything sparkled and burned, and somewhere, untiring, the great magic wheel turned through the earsplitting noise of loudspeakers.
Chancelade advanced into the midst of the fair, jostling the crowd, his left hand holding the hand of the girl. There was so much noise and movement he couldn’t speak any more. Neon lights flashed on all sides, and loudspeakers on posts mouthed incomprehensible cries. The stalls all glittered in the darkness, blinking out their barbaric names:
CASSIDY CASSIDY CASSIDY
In places there arose the strong smell of frying or toffee, actual pink and grey clouds floating a few feet above the ground. The crowd advanced, withdrew, advanced again like a long tapeworm twitching mechanically. The faces kept changing, the masks appeared and disappeared in the livid avalanche of light. Eyes shone cruelly, open mouths uttered raucous cries. In dark corners men and women coupled in bestial postures. On platforms outside booths hairy men yelled into megaphones, or a fat woman with yellow skin danced in a whirl of red and green lights. The sound of shots skimmed the ground; you could smell the bitter smell of gunpowder. Chancelade staggered into the middle of the chaos, scarcely looking or listening. He was already lost, forgotten in the centre of the human sea, unknown, anonymous. The sweat was trickling down his back, and mingled on his hand with sweat from the hand of the woman. He’d been walking through the tumult for hours, hours, months, years perhaps. It was as if it would never be daylight again, as if there would never be another cold clear morning. Only this darkness shot through with flashes, this din, these crawling smells, these bodies crammed together and stifling. All the chaos of the universe had descended on this square in the centre of the town. Galactic vortices, solar storms, explosions of super-novae, impenetrable nebulae, falling stars, all had come together here in the darkness. There was little left to understand or to desire. Giant caterpillars whizzed round, sirens shrieking. Trucks rushed unaided up into the sky, then hurtled down with a noise like thunder. Planes went up and down, up and down, at the end of steel arms studded with lights. Hammers struck gongs, lottery wheels clicked round, rifleshots rang out. All was movement, pointless movement to kill and conquer and crush inertia. Neon suns rose everywhere, then set in blood-red twilights, and comets drew dazzling ellipses across the sky. The ground never stopped trembling underfoot, as though a herd of buffalo were charging. Monstrous faces of cardboard and plastic rolled their phosphorescent eyes. And everywhere broken mirrors reflected all this movement into other mirrors, and they into others again, endlessly. You were caught. You were shut up inside the furious labyrinth. You walked with the others, staggered with the others, laughed and cried with the others. You breathed in the smells of sweat and grease, you ate doughnuts and red toffee, you drank fruit drinks, you touched women’s flesh, you fought with crop-headed athletes. The thousand different voices of the music joined together and entered into you as one great unvarying cry, an inhuman and barbaric howl that vibrated in your chest, your innards, and the nape of your neck, and issued from your mouth as a cry. The light too was reduced to one, red, white and black, which spun round in a circle over heaven and earth, sweeping you along in its mad current. But what was worse and even stranger still was that there was no longer any Chancelade or any fair-haired girl called Mina; there was only a great living, palpitating mass, like a giant body sprawling on the ground and living its thousand blended lives. A body without head or belly or sex, an opaque and naked body wallowing on the ground and writhing there in the midst of a web of electric sparks. It trampled with its thousand legs, breathed through its open pores, sweated, devoured, vomited in all directions at once. There was no more thought. No more speech. There was only one huge strange desire burning in this body’s every cell: to people and cover the earth, to spread out and possess it, to snatch fire from heaven and engulf everything—time, space, the world, and itself. It coiled up voraciously and felt with its thousands of antennae, jaws, feet and suckers at the world that was set before it.
A long time after, Chancelade and Mina were cast out again. Before they left the terrible zone in which the beast with no head and no belly thrashed about, they looked at the dodgem cars. They saw the little trucks gliding over the black floor in all directions giving off sparks. They moved about at random, colliding, stopping, starting for no reason beneath their antennae. This was the boundary of noise and madness. Beyond the dodgem cars was the black night, silence, solitude. Chancelade took the girl by her left hand this time, and in that direction they disappeared.
ALL THESE LANGUAGES I SPOKE
There were so many ways of saying such things without speaking. You could do a drawing, for example, a portrait of a woman, with two shadowy anxious eyes, fair hair down to her shoulders, a delicate nose, and a mouth with parted lips revealing very white teeth. You could write a letter, a long letter full of adjectives and adverbs in which, lying slightly, you tried to say what you think.
At the end you’d put:
‘Yours with love
C.’
Then you’d put the letter in an envelope, and the envelope in the letter-box, trying not to think that it might get lost or end up screwed into a ball in a dustbin.
Or you could go down to the sea-shore with an empty bottle and put a note in it with a message. Then you’d throw the bottle in the water and watch it drift along the coast.
It was all very simple really. All you had to do was leave messages anywhere and everywhere, under stones, fixed to trees, between the pages of the telephone directory or the Divine Comedy, and one day Mina would come and find them, one after the other, and understand.
Or you could take a knife and carve letters on the leaves of aloes or in the trunks of plane-trees. It was there all round you if you could only read. Inside the bells on dogs’ collars, inside sardine-tins. In Coca-Cola bottles, or on the backs of cinema tickets. One letter here, another there. You took the V from television, the O from florist’s, the Z from Cinzano. And you made up your message. There was nothing mysteri
ous about it, or even hidden. If only you wanted to be able to read, the message appeared in the street, over the sky, or on the grassy earth. All the millions of different messages that all meant the same thing.
You could send a telegram something like
SO SAD PRETTY DRAUGHTBOARD OF
RASPBERRIES STOP SO SAD
MAHARADJAH OF RAGE STOP CHANCELADE
Or you could send a book, with the relevant words underlined. Or a message in code, putting i for o, t for b, k for z, u for i, and o for a. You could leave signs in the street—a knotted handkerchief, a broken match, a chicken-bone, two crossed cigarettes, an arrow chalked on the pavement. At the end of them all would be perhaps the treasure. Drinking water, or happiness.