Then I saw a woman coming toward me, a woman so beautiful that it was as though life had never previously existed on this planet. She was walking alone along the cement-lined street, in the midst of the violence and chaos. She did not see me. She glided effortlessly over the ground, as though upon wheels, parting the air and the light as she went. The sun lit spangled reflections across her body, setting her hair and clothes on fire. She advanced in silence, encased in iron and nylon, striking the ground with her hard heels. Her long legs passed perpetually through space, and her transparent eyes looked straight through my own, like headlamps. One day, by chance, I saw this woman walking away into the distance. I saw that there was a magic force alive within her, as within all women, a force that I would never understand. This was her way of proclaiming nonchalantly that violence was beautiful, and that therefore a universal explosion was imminent. I was unable to follow her. I was unable to speak to her, or to the others. I was unable to kill her. Instead, a sudden shiver ran through me, a sort of fever. I sensed that this woman was the war’s figure-head, gliding safely through the scenes of battle while slaughter raged around her. Her water-repellant skin was moulded to her flesh like a breastplate, and her garments clung to her like a second skin. She was coasting aimlessly along, sparkling brightly, a beautiful new car with windows raised. Let him who knows her speak to her, let him rip her belly open and read her smoking entrails. She is called Bea B., or else Beauty Lane. She is also called Bothrops atrox. Let him who knows something about her, or about any other woman, speak now. Perhaps the war’s mechanism is still inside her body, perhaps it could be torn out. Speak! Speak! But no-one speaks. Each day, each year, I pass the glittering body of Bothrops atrox bound, no doubt, for the far end of the labyrinth to beget her foetuses of dynamite and guncotton. She must be stopped! Her skin must be stripped off, and air and water allowed to filter through her body. But the air is absent and the water is imprisoned within pipes and taps.
Ku! Listen! You dwell in Alahiyi, o dreaded woman! There, in Alahiyi, you dwell, o white woman! No-one is ever lonely in your company. You are very beautiful. No-one is ever lonely in your company. You have shown me the way. I shall never again be sad. You have set me on the white path. You have set me down, there, in the middle of the earth. I shall stand upright on the earth. No-one is ever lonely in my company. I am very beautiful. You have placed me in the white house. I shall be inside it when it starts to move. No-one will ever be lonely in my company. In truth, I shall not be sad. Unhesitatingly, you have decided things for me.
Listen, woman of steel, listen to me. Give your perfect engine a few moments’ rest, stay still for once. One word from you, a single word, and maybe the war would end. Give your orders. Then you will rise above the swirling eddies of flesh and bone, clad in your veil of light, and you will be queen.
But her painted mouth never utters a word, and her eyes glint behind the lenses of her Polaroid glasses. Around her, the world is tensing its stomach muscles, voiding an endless stream of new things, unknown objects, from all its secret orifices. Heaps are mounting skywards, mountains of gold and beauty. Second by second, they proliferate upon the earth in all the gaudy splendor of their aluminium casings, their wrapping paper, their coloured buttons, their plastic-coated surfaces, their networks of wires. Machines, boxes, cylinders, reels, all made for her. The tons of new goods inside the stores and on display in their windows and showcases. There is not enough flesh for them, there are not enough noses, mouths or eyes for them. There are not enough thoughts for all the words that swarm constantly in the air like clouds of buzzing insects. There are not enough roads for all the wheels.
[War, Le Clézio, J. M. G.]
No comments:
Post a Comment