Everywhere you went, you were bound to come up against existence, walls of solidity and life that drove you back like some echo of the birth-agony. It was all a trick with mirrors, reflection upon reflection, as intense as they were pointless. There was nothing in the world that could absorb and destroy you, return you to the indifferent blank expanse of the void; nothing that could be penetrated by the rapier of your frenzy. Wherever your footsteps carried you, the world was a kind of travelling circus, presenting you with a special vision: each object was self-contained, adaptable, and meticulously ringed round with a thin black wiry line. Reality, truth, the power of nature: vast-stretching deathless concepts against which the keen light of understanding and communication bruise themselves for ever. In this organized chaos there was no chance of escape. Four streets converging on a square where the clock in the clock-tower said six o’clock now held this inner reality for ever, stamped with its seaclass="underline" hundreds of square yards of asphalt and concrete and plaster, rain beading its surface like sweat, right-angled corners on the pavement, gleaming rivulets down the gutters, scars left by winter frost and summer heat, cracks, the chalk marks of old hopscotch games, names, names, names: Salvetti, Geoffret, Milani, Apostello, Caterer, Chez Georges, Chinaware, Port Pharmaceutical Store, Astoria, Dental Surgeon, S.E.V.E., La Trappe de Staouëli, Lanfranchi, Caltex Tyres; Chevrolet 418 DU 02, winter banana, Motta ice-cream, Simon, 84.06.06. Empty spaces that darkness absorbs without effort, long streets lined with plane-trees at regular intervals, their branches bare and leafless, each planted in the pavement and growing up through a sunshaped iron grating. Fountains, concrete and stucco buildings, balconies overgrown with creepers; roofs bristling with aerials, or tilted over as though the sky leaned down more heavily on one side of them, barred windows, shutters open or closed, plywood doors, spy-holes, culverts and gutters. At one point in this rectangular pattern, a little way up on the left, stand two parallelopipeds, an exception to the general rule: it is just a trick of perspective, or are they really like that, two bluish blocks apparently joined at the top and forming a sort of triumphal arch? In fact they are the walls of the XVth Army Corps Barracks, St. Anne’s Hospital, and Police Headquarters. These walls are pierced with heavily-barred windows, which look out over the sidewalks, respectively, of the Rue Durante, the Rue Gilli, and the Rue Carnot.
At midday, during the rain, there is a man standing behind each of these windows, hands clutching the bars, staring out into space. You can see about a dozen of them in all, half-hidden by the shadowy background of their cells, tirelessly scrutinizing the bright and grimy world which they cannot reach. At first they are possessed by a violent desire to break through the metal barricade, free themselves in a flash — this, surely, is what freedom means—, embrace this patch of road in all its stunning brightness, so light in comparison with the gloom of their cells it seems the sun must be shining on it. Then the urge fritters away; they seem to retreat before a still stronger barrier, something like a thick sheet of glass, unseen and unexpected, doubtless the phenomenon they call ‘reason’; and their eyes relax into stillness again, gaze for days on end at the vision of freshness and brightness outside, never moving, so that in the end their overflowing love makes them cleave to it till they reach the point of oblivion.
In this state of counterfeit reality, this amalgam of atmospheres, equipped with this precise and clearly-outlined relief-map, one still would be hard put to it, at this moment, to tell whether it was raining still or a blazingly sunny day. The moment has been reached when the rectangle becomes progressively more blurred and undulating: other smaller rectangles exist within it, each enfolding its own adventure, human or vegetable. All that remain now are the edges, as though neatly cut out from the soft velvet shadows. At last, with the neat finality of a tunnel unfolding around a car in motion, the patch of white light opens its window on the infinite.
Chapter One
François Besson — François Besson listens to the tape-recorder in his room — The beginning of Anna’s story — Paul’s departure — Advice from Besson’s mother — The vendetta
THIS is the story of François Besson. One might have begun it somewhat earlier, after his meeting with Josette, for instance, or when he had given up his teaching job in the private school, and had come back to live with his parents, in the old dilapidated house near the centre of town. But granted one embarked on it at this later point, then François Besson was lying sprawled out on his bed, amid a disordered tangle of sheets and blankets, towards the end of winter, and, for the moment, not smoking. His eyes were shut. He was no longer asleep, but remained in the same position, fists clenched. The light from the street outside struck the wall of the building opposite; its reflection shone into Besson’s room, and stayed there. The yellow-bright chinks between the shutters showed occasional patches of paint.
Besson lay in a bath of colour. When it reached his face, the yellow shaded off into various tones of bistre; it was round his nostrils that he took on the most cadaverous appearance. The light distorted his naturally youthful features, sharpening the jawline, obliterating tones of red and brown, wrinkling the skin around the eyes. Colour, real colour, remained outside, beyond the closed shutters. What stalked the interior of the room was more a species of very soft and subtle reflection, much like the shadow cast on the ceiling by an electric light bulb.
When Besson got up and moved across the room, with measured steps, feet bare and both hands thrust into the pockets of his pyjama jacket, shoulders a little bent, it was like a cloud passing over the moon, or whatever else — street-lamps, headlights, the sky — might be producing that yellow illumination outside. Suddenly he came to himself, forced his eyelids apart and un-gummed his lips. There were dark rings under his eyes, he breathed noisily, and one of his ears was redder than the other, because of the way he had been lying on his pillow for the past hour.
He walked. He set down his bare feet on the cold tiled floor, one after the other, toes crimping as he did so. He only stopped when his nether belly bumped into the table. Then he abruptly tugged open one of its side drawers, and began to search through it, still in semi-darkness. The drawer was crammed with a variety of objects — dirty handkerchiefs, unwashed socks, notebooks, sunglasses with cracked lenses, razor-blades, a toy pistol, ink-soaked sticks of chalk, postcards, boxes of Italian matches, a packet of miniature cigars labelled ‘La Neuva Habana’, an assortment of wastepaper and scraps of cardboard, an Air France application form for a post as steward on one of the international lines, a fragment of mirror, an English-French French-English dictionary, the bottom of a Stiegl glass, a magnet, a snapshot of himself taken in a snow-covered London street, a roll of adhesive tape together with a pair of blunt-nosed scissors, passport, cufflinks, a watchstrap with no watch, a key-ring with no keys on it, a toothbrush-tube minus its toothbrush. He did no more than fumble through this detritus, with his right hand, using his left to keep the bottom of the drawer steady. Then he must have become aware of the discomfort of his position: he abandoned the bureau for a moment and went to fetch the one and only chair, a metal one, which stood at the far side of the room. He cleared off the heap of clothes littering it, and brought it slowly across, feet dragging, stubbing his rubbery toes on the tiles.