On one clear pane of glass a tiny gnat was visible: it might have been walking across the blue-grey sky. It advanced very slowly, millimetre by millimetre, on several gossamer-fine pairs of legs. Its body had a greenish tinge about it.
The newspapers carried their usual news items, with banner headlines for earthquakes and revolutions, somewhat smaller cross-heads for crimes passionnels, and so on down to ordinary close-set type for such things as car accidents, thefts from parked vehicles, or the exploits of bums and down-and-outs.
In various discreet corners the beggars were plying their trade. Old women were scattering crumbs for the pigeons on their window-sills, and in the restaurants couples were eating sauerkraut. Wherever you went there was the same faint odour of garlic and grease and rusty metal, the gurgle of stopped-up sinks. A man was sitting in his car at an intersection, waiting for the red light to turn green, and picking his nose. Drunks were taking nips from their bottles of wine, and fat women were licking at chocolate ices.
Some people were reading novels in the dim light of their shuttered rooms, stories all more or less written according to the same formula as this sample: ‘Once more my mouth tasted the joys of her soft, burning skin, and we rolled over on the quiet sand, muscles rigid with desire. When my hand, in the course of a wandering caress, found the zip of her swimsuit, down her back, she tried to struggle for a moment. But the satiny material parted, like a flower tremulously opening in the warm sunlight, to reveal the agonizing delights of her nakedness. But only for a brief instant did I feel her bare breasts soft and caressing against my chest, explore the roundness of her buttocks, feel her still childish stomach and long slender legs melting into mine; only for a brief instant did I savour that rare sensation of a body still freshly damp in patches from the sea, and tanned for long hours by the sun. For suddenly, supple and elusive, she slipped from my grasp and ran with a defiant air, still half-naked to the sun and wind. From a long way off came the faint hoot of the ferry-boat. With an enchanting lack of modesty she ran on, paying no attention to her unzipped swimsuit. The sun suddenly touched the horizon, turned blood-red, and flooded sea and beach with the glow of its magnificent demise … She came back towards me, hair flying, a grenadine tinge colouring her pointed breasts and the curve of her belly. “Half past five!” she called out furiously….’
Others were painting gaudy pictures, in which the dominant colours were shocking pink and madder. Others again spent all afternoon playing the flute, or listening to jazz records. Any insect society has its organization. Throughout the town at this moment everything was perfectly flat, or perfectly square, or, at a pinch, perfectly round. On the doors of public toilets and bar-room W.C.’s penknives had carved obscene words and incised pornographic figures; but these words and figures possessed a dignity almost amounting to virtuousness. On two identical notices, printed in red letters, appeared the words GENTLEMEN and LADIES. A train moved slowly along the coast from one stop to the next, twenty black carriages drawn by a steam locomotive belching smoke downwind. As it rattled along the track it emitted, with monotonous regularity, a deep wooooooooooooo! which shook the ground underfoot. It would plunge into tunnels, emerge again, steam round long curves, brake, whistle, labour up gradients and rattle down them the other side, trigger off signals and level-crossing alarm-bells. It wheels drummed along regularly over the rail-junctures, producing a cadenced clack-clack, clack-clack which formed its basic rhythm. Valves opened and shut, steam blew off. Occasionally the train passed over a set of points, and the rhythm of the wheels became confused, made noises like coughing and sneezing and spitting. In each compartment, with its worn felt seats, people sat smoking, chatting, eating, drinking, or just staring at one another, while the ground fled back beneath them. Their conversations were always the same:
‘What time do we get there?’
‘I’m not sure — if we’re not running late, we ought to be in about eight o’clock.’
‘They always run late.’
‘Did you see how long we were held up last time?’
‘Well, a train had been derailed further down the line.’
‘That’s no excuse.’
‘After all, we’ve paid for our tickets …’
‘Let me tell you, madam, when my son came out of the army, do you know what time he got home? At midnight, madam—midnight!’
‘Just like my sister-in-law — she was on her way home from Italy—’
‘And the time when our kid had the mumps—’
‘What can you expect, eh? What can you expect….’
A little boy stood leaning against the wall in a quiet back street, smoking his first cigarette. He had taken it from a brand-new packet with red and white stripes, labelled WINSTON. Then he put it in his mouth. He struck a match and lit it. Now he was inhaling the acrid, sweetish aroma of the smoke, and salivating.
Two young women in bikinis were strolling round the edge of a swimming-pool that smelt of disinfectant. The one on the right was a tall brunette; her costume had a pattern of small green and white squares. The one on the left was thinner, and wore a white bikini, all covered with little pearl shells. Both had on sunglasses with large circular lenses, and the white radiance blazed down on them like a searchlight’s beam.
Everywhere civilization was established, and had set up its notices: no parking, no entry, no billsticking, private property.
In the middle of the countryside lay a large ham-shaped rock, quite motionless. The plane-trees grew imperceptibly, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, feeling nothing, simply thrusting back clods and granules of earth, stretching up their branchy fingers to the bright sky above them. This was the way it was.
A coachful of tourists spent some time threading its way through the streets of the town. Then it set off across the hills, and each time it stopped all the passengers turned their heads as one man to left, or right, in obedience to a voice which announced, in several languages:
‘You can see on your right the ruins of an aqueduct built by the Romans. Lens aperture, f.1.5.’
‘Vous apercevez sur votre droite les ruines de l’aqueduc construit par les Romains. Ouverture de l’objectif: 1.5.’
‘Rechts können Sie die Ruinen der von den Römern gebauten Wasserleitung sehen. Offnung des Objektifs: 1.5’.
‘U ziet nu op uw recht de ruinen van de romeinse waterleiding. Opening van de lens: 1.5.’
‘U kan regts die ruiëne van die Waterleiding sien, wat deur die Romeins gebou was. Opening van die lens: 1.5.’
The construction team was still busily at work on their site in the middle of the river bed. Another month or two, and the bridge would be finished. The blind man sat on the beat he had bought and sold newspapers, listening to music from his transistor radio. Every night the voyeur prowled through the thickets up on the hill and every evening, at the same time, the woman whose face was so white that it might have been made of plaster would enter the church and sit staring straight in front of her, at a point just above the closed tabernacle.