The Book of Flights

  ‘My wife? Two years ago. My children have got it, too.’

  ‘Do they work on the plantation?’

  ‘The eldest one, yes. But my wife stays at home these days. She has a fever all the time.’

  The man chewed the end of his cigar.

  ‘It’s funny, I’d never have thought,’ he said. ‘I’d never have thought that that could happen, just like that, to everyone. Perhaps it is God’s curse upon us. Don’t you think?’

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps,’ said Hogan.

  ‘Perhaps the whole world will get to be like that. Perhaps the boss will get to be like that, and then you, and then the President, and then all the Russians and all the Chinese. Huh?’

  Y. M. Hogan looked around him at the white square. He took another gulp of the soda and gave the bottle to the man. The man drank what was left, then handed back the empty bottle. He wiped his mouth with his hand once more, and said:

  ‘Thanks. Thanks a lot, mister.’

  Then he got up, leaning his weight on a stick made from a length of sugarcane. Hogan had not noticed that the man was carrying a stick. The man turned his head towards Hogan; it was puffy with the nodules that infested it. He put the cigar in his mouth and said:

  ‘Thanks a lot for the cigar. I must get home now.’

  ‘Goodbye,’ said Hogan.

  ‘Goodbye,’ said the man.

  There it is. The secret is out, now. The tragic mystery has risen suddenly to beauty’s surface, forming its vile pustule. The secret has taken the shape of a gnat, this time. A minute black insect, half way between fly and mosquito, called Simulium. On the coffee plantations, the living clouds swirl into the air, then swoop down on the faces and hands of human beings, and suck their blood. Down the hollow needle of the insect’s proboscis glide the parasites called onchocerca caecutiens: these invisible worms spread over the skin, raising fibrous nodules on the face and scalp, and around the eyes. The microfilariae multiply in the dermis. Then the human host scratches at his skin with his nails, opening abrasions through which the streptococci swarm. The result is tumefaction, erysipelas and fever. Pain has already started striking invisible blows that become increasingly agonizing. Finally, the microfilariae pierce the nodules round the eyes, and spread. Conjunctivitis inflames the eye. Keratitis and choroiditis make the eye opaque. There is the secret, then. Perhaps it would have been better not to tell it. Perhaps it would have been better to bypass it and forget it. By now, one would be far away. One would be on a beach of golden sand, stretched out in the sun, and one would be free to think about infinity, or to write a poem that the tide would wash out, while watching the sea’s waves with their crests like the brows of bulls. Y. M. Hogan set off on a walk through the village where the people were blind. Around him, human figures were shuffling along, groping and tapping. He passed chains of men crossing the luminous square with linked arms. He saw an old woman striking the ground with the ferrule of her stick, and talking to herself as she went along. Near the black statue, two young men were sitting on the ground with bags at their feet. The glaucous eyes set deep in their ravaged faces were motionless and unseeing. Near the kiosk, a man was begging; but nobody could see him. Three women with long black hair were squatting on the ground, and above their heads there were these haloes of dots that moved like clouds. The square was full of men and women in motion. But it was a funnel of silence, really, a deep crater in which all movements were frozen still. Only the flies were active. They came and went in the transparent air, settling their delicate legs on faces, crawling along the rims of eyelids and the edges of lips. A blind woman was suckling a blind baby. In the dust, children were waving their arms around and yelling. But Hogan no longer heard anything. As he crossed the square, stepping over bodies, threading his way through the crowd in a zigzag movement, the tiny flies were already settling on him. Horror is not unimaginable, it has neither the face of a monster nor the bat-wings of a demon. It is calm and tranquil, and it is durable, lasting whole days and nights, months; years, perhaps. It is not mortal. It strikes at the eyes, only the eyes.

  The blind population moves to and fro along the village’s bright lanes. It gropes its way along walls, it enters the cool houses, it returns from the fields where the deep green plants grow. It sells, from the tents set up in the market, and it buys there, too. Behind the little mountains of pimentos, the hand reaches out and palpates. It takes a handful of the peppers and transfers them to the outstretched hand. Then it withdraws again, and the coin clinks as it falls into the tin box. Under the canvas awnings, the caravan advances, hand on shoulder. To the right, another caravan is moving in the opposite direction. In the impassive faces, the opaque eyes have closed up over the war that used to rage. But what has taken over is an insane peace, a peace worse than war. Tranquil suffering weighs down with all its weight upon the village. It is a cry which has been strangled in the throat and which has retreated within the body to ravage it.

  Elsewhere in the world, on the other side of the encircling mountains, are the terrible countries where looks bulge out. But here, the looks are open mouths that suck in and swallow ceaselessly. Elsewhere, vicious windowpanes are shining. But here, the wind is blowing, sweeping down from the sky and into the depths of the extinguished sockets. What chance of standing up to such a hurricane? Where to hide, when the whole world has vanished into its hideaways? All round the rectangular square are groups of men feeling their way along the walls. When their hands come into contact with a window, they stop and turn the white eyes in their set faces towards the light. No one, in this village of termites and moles, ever arrives anywhere. One goes round and round in a circle, never stopping, one paces endlessly up and down the luminous square. The blue sky, above, is unendurable. It flays ruthlessly, it rains down its white arrows on to the dusty ground. It is of a purity that it has never attained elsewhere. When night falls, the stars shine frenziedly in the depths of empty space, and the moon is incomparably bigger than the sun. Somewhere in the village, a gasping generator is providing current for the electric lamps that light the unpaved streets. And it is as though all the lightning flashes in the world had packed themselves into these little glass bulbs. There is no time left, oh no, there is no time left. Who knows just how far the hours can travel inside sealed skulls? To the end of eternity, perhaps. The blind people move forward over the flat ground. Each fingers the other’s clothes, brushes the other’s face with his hands, before recognition comes. Hope rebounds from day to day with its repertory of slow gestures. In the dark café, where the metal tables are the flies’ airports, the young girl sits patiently, listening to the music and the words that come from her transistor radio. When the loudspeaker vibrates with a quick tempo, she moves her right hand and whistles in rhythm with the tune. Her face has a delicately arched nose, and white teeth gleam between her parted lips; but the eyelids are stuck fast together. Her eyes will never again follow your movements as you pass to the right or the left. They will never again rise to look, miraculously, unwaveringly, straight into your own. They will never again flicker anxiously as they search for the mirrors that are everywhere. Who dared sew those lids together? Eyes, please open, just once. Look at me! I am here. I have come.

  In the village filled with this atrocious peace, Young Man Hogan waited for the bus.

  Real lives have no end. Real books have no end.

  (To be continued.)

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  Copyright © Editions Gallimard, Paris, 1969

  English translation copyright © Jonathan Cape, 1971

  J.M.G. Le Clézio has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

  First published in France under the title Le Livre des Fuites in 1969 by Editions Gallimard

  First published in Great Britain in 1971 by Jonathan Cape

  First published in English in the United States in 1972 by Atheneum

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