The blackness of the night, blackness fallen from the uttermost depths of the empty heavens, had descended on earth, and was implementing the true reign of matter: sleep, chill non-being, mastery over death. Under its sway days and months had fallen silent, had increased their numbers in darkness, and now there was nothing left to cover the minuscule activities of life but this profound eternity, its dull and constant sound-waves expanding all around, ecstatically unfolding its sumptuous petals of dying light and mingled colours, to reveal, at last, the face of darkness.
Night had spread its substance evenly over the town. Out in the streets the cold air stirred from time to time, and blew along the rows of closed shutters. Bright white or red holes in the darkness, near the bottom of buildings, formed words such as: CAFE CINEMA BAR PIZZA MOTEL. Pigeons slept in corners of ledges, each with its head tucked under its left wing. There was also, running through the middle of the town, a river, its wide bed choked with stones and thorns. The night had poured into this
channel, and now it was a mere carbonaceous crevasse that looked as though it went right through to the centre of the earth. The sound of its waters rose up with the mist, and it was a noise of blackness and terror. Not far from the sea a bridge, with three still arches, spanned the river. Cars sped over the damp macadam, each with two red, mistily shimmering stars of light behind it. Far away to the north the mountains blended with the vast yawning gap of the sky. And in the country, not to mention along the boulevards, countless trees were sleeping where they stood.
They were not the only sleepers. Men and women slept too, inside their little private castles, lying on their flat beds, in numbers past counting — many millions, probably, stretched out stiff and chill, eyes turned up, breathing lightly. Jacques Vargoz, for instance. Or Sophie Murnau. Noëlle Haudiquet. Hott Ben Amar. Infinity had descended upon them, and they were gently breathing it in without knowing it. They were savouring the calm of eternal being, and their bodies were sliding perilously on the slippery slope of peace. Tomorrow, perhaps, when the feverish day began its course once more, some of them would remain prisoners of the night, and never wake again. Children, curled up in their cots, would begin to dream of monsters. One of them, torn abruptly awake for no particular reason, open eyes trying vainly to brush away the veils of darkness, began to scream, all by himself, drilling his red point of life in the heart of the void, making an act of creation, standing up against the flatness and emptiness, taking chisel and hammer and carving into that vast indifferent wall the words that liberated him: I AM ALIVE I AM ALIVE I AM ALIVE.
Chapter Seven
François Besson watches the sun rise — The vegetable market — Besson looks at the river-bed — Brief discussion with the man with the cigarette-stub — Besson packs his bag — The adventures of Texas Jack: Episode 26: The fight against Rattlesnake the Indian
ON the seventh day, the rain more or less stopped. Besson had not slept at all. Very early in the morning, before first light, he left the flat. The redheaded girl and the little boy were still asleep. He went into a truck-drivers’ café and had a hot espresso to keep out the cold. Down the far end of the bar, near the door to the W.C., was a very old man, all covered with wrinkles, and dead drunk. A group of three or four men, plus a woman who looked like a tramp, were standing by the counter, talking, laughing, shouting, singing. Suddenly a corpulent, elderly man began a row with a bearded youngster, and after a preliminary barrage of insults, began to beat him over the head with both hands. The bearded one backed away, holding up his arms to protect himself. A general brawl ensued, and while it was going on the young man slipped out of the bar. Besson waited a few minutes, until things had quietened down again. Then he walked out and sat down on a bench facing the sea.
It was here that he saw the sun come up, very slowly, behind a mountainous rampart of clouds. At first, for an hour or more, there was the gradual retreat of darkness, as that great black vertical plane ceased, little by little, to be a hole, a nothingness, and objects began to fill it, one after the other, materializing imperceptibly, blocking in the void. The horizon became visible towards the east, a stretch of coastline, the surface of the sea. Far out from shore the white glint of the wave-crests became increasingly visible. Then, as the growing light continued to dilute that inky expanse, the water became progressively dirtier, its surface showed up harsh and wrinkled. The various points of light — yellow from the street-lamps, red from the light-house beacons — lost their former blinding intensity. Deep patches of shadow, till now so impenetrable and terrifying, gradually shrank in on themselves, retreated, like pools of water drying in the sun. Above the sea the clouds suddenly swam into view, rising palely from the darkness like troops of elephants or buffaloes. Minute by minute their outlines acquired more solidity and depth. Great balls of cottonwool hung motionless in the vault of heaven, and through their ragged edges shone glimpses of clear sky, midway between pink and grey, empty, limitless. With ebbing strength the night swung westward, in retreat now, so that more and more objects which had been limed in its viscous blackness were released, almost without one noticing. The blackness lost its intensity, became merely sombre, then grey; paler still now, the colour of milk, then skim-milk, till even this pallor began to fade, retreated beyond the visible limits of whiteness. It was as though the earth, stripped of the membrane that rendered it invisible, had nevertheless not, as yet, recovered its pigmentation, and was floating between these two violent extremes, undecided, ghostly-pale, almost non-existent. On the opposite side of the horizon, above the town and the mountains, there was a sort of dark funnel-shaped gulf into which the shadows were slowly absorbed.
After a while the landscape emerged in every detail, but still lit by that unearthly pallor. Then the true light began to appear. It climbed the sky like rose-tinted smoke, with the majestic movements of some great bird taking flight, a great pear-shaped mass that slowly spread out above the clouds. Everything, on land and sea alike, began to glitter as though dusted with thousands of tiny nacreous crystals. The concrete surface of the pavement, the balustrade, the pebbles on the beach, the troughs of the waves, the windows of houses and the topmost branches of trees — all lit up in a moment, and glowed peacefully, each with its delicate crust of pink icing-sugar.
The boundaries of the sky receded further and further: everything seemed to expand, grow deeper, stretch out into vast and distant perspectives. Like a desert. For a quarter of an hour or so everything was tinged with pink. Then, one by one, the other colours returned — on chunks of scrap-metal, on rocks, in the middle of cloud-formations, at the bottom of clumps of grass. Shoe-polish brown, mahogany, straw-yellow, periwinkle blue, mauves, blacks, mouse-grey, Veronese green. Imperceptibly, as the minutes passed, these variegated dots of colour began to glow and expand. Pink was still the dominant motif, but a close scrutiny revealed the presence of these other colours, all jostling and struggling for precedence, streaming out in wild confusion. For a little while earth sky and sea resembled a gigantic confectioner’s counter. Then the sun came up over the horizon, transforming the landscape from sweetshop to abattoir.