Closed due to death. The day after Boborikine died the sign was hung on the gate, what am I saying, on the heavy gate - because the epithet was melted, forged, welded, coated with minium and painted green, and so were the bars, the thick bars that seal the sole entrance to the cave. Visitors are said to have banged their heads against them; perhaps they thought the death notice referred to the creators of the paintings inside, whom they had believed dead for quite some time, years and years; so you see it is best not to tread on the grave digger’s turf and leave them to bury the mortals themselves when the time comes. And the visitors will have gone back home meditating on this lesson; perhaps along the way they mentioned the analogous, not unusual case of the writer who, famous in his youth, chooses nevertheless to withdraw from the literary scene; we lose track of him but his previous work us still impressive and in print, others are inspired by him, he is quoted, annotated, no one knows how he died, or where, or precisely when. Legends abound, perhaps it was suicide, or an airplane crash in the mountains, the Mexican border, until the day the octogenarian who has calmly lived out his life catches cold on his doorstep and finally dies for the last time, in his bed.
[Prehistoric Times, Chevillard, E.]
Friday, 5 August 2016
...of the figurehead of war
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.]
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.]
...of calm
Bea B. remained seated for a long time in front of the empty counter, watching, and running her fingers along the edge of the plastic table. Monsieur X smoked several cigarettes, stubbing each one out in the publicity-ashtray. There was no need to talk; soon no doubt, one would never talk again. On would no longer murmur all those phrases into another person’s ear, inhaling a faint whiff of the odour of skin and hair. One would never again say, in a strange husky voice:
‘I… I love you, I’
‘I’m afraid’
‘You are so beautiful, oh so beautiful’
‘Make love to me’
‘I - I never - never - want to be alone again’
There would be no more need to flee. Because everything would be so soothing, here, everything would be so pleasant that there would no longer be anything else to hope for.
[War, Le Clézio, J. M. G.]
‘I… I love you, I’
‘I’m afraid’
‘You are so beautiful, oh so beautiful’
‘Make love to me’
‘I - I never - never - want to be alone again’
There would be no more need to flee. Because everything would be so soothing, here, everything would be so pleasant that there would no longer be anything else to hope for.
[War, Le Clézio, J. M. G.]
...of airports
Bea B. walks the whole length of the great hall. A row of gleaming counters lines one wall from end to end. Above the counters are red circles, golden stripes, blue panels, white panels. Flags. And then, writing:
PAN AM LUFTHANSA IBERIA ALITALIA
LOT KLM BEA JAL GARUDA
crazy words, scraps of mute words that flash on and off. The counters are empty. The vast brightly-lit hall is full of empty counters. Bea B. sits down in one of the red imitation-leather armchairs facing one of the counters, and studies the posters and bits of paper fastened to the wall. Monsieur X remains silent, too, as he smokes a cigarette. Bea B. studies the advertisement-ashtray that has PAN AM written on it in big white letters, together with a caricature of the world and its meridians. She notices that the ashtray contains three crushed stubs and some ash. Then she picks up her red plastic travel bag that has TWA written on it in big white letters, and takes from it a little blue vinyl-covered notebook that has ‘EZEJOT’ DIARY written on it in gilt letters, and writes very slowly:
The dreadful silence that accompanies me everywhere.
[War, Le Clézio, J. M. G.]
PAN AM LUFTHANSA IBERIA ALITALIA
LOT KLM BEA JAL GARUDA
crazy words, scraps of mute words that flash on and off. The counters are empty. The vast brightly-lit hall is full of empty counters. Bea B. sits down in one of the red imitation-leather armchairs facing one of the counters, and studies the posters and bits of paper fastened to the wall. Monsieur X remains silent, too, as he smokes a cigarette. Bea B. studies the advertisement-ashtray that has PAN AM written on it in big white letters, together with a caricature of the world and its meridians. She notices that the ashtray contains three crushed stubs and some ash. Then she picks up her red plastic travel bag that has TWA written on it in big white letters, and takes from it a little blue vinyl-covered notebook that has ‘EZEJOT’ DIARY written on it in gilt letters, and writes very slowly:
The dreadful silence that accompanies me everywhere.
[War, Le Clézio, J. M. G.]
...of jail-birds
‘Sing, Pin,’ they say. And Pin begins singing, seriously, tensely, in that hoarse childish voice of his. He sings a song called ‘The Four Seasons’:
When I think of the future
And the liberty I’ve lost
I’d like to kiss her and then die
While she sleeps… and never knows.
The men sit in silence, with their eyes lowered, as if listening to a hymn. All of them have been in prison; no one is a real man to them unless he has. And the old jail-birds’ song is full of melancholy which seeps into the bones in prison, at night, when the warders pass hitting the grills with a crowbar, and gradually the quarrels and curses die down, and all that can still be heard is a voice singing this song which Pin is singing now, and which no one shouts for him to stop.
At night I love to hear
The sentry’s call,
I love to watch the passing moon
Light up my cell.
[The Path to the Spider’s Nests, Calvino, I.]
When I think of the future
And the liberty I’ve lost
I’d like to kiss her and then die
While she sleeps… and never knows.
The men sit in silence, with their eyes lowered, as if listening to a hymn. All of them have been in prison; no one is a real man to them unless he has. And the old jail-birds’ song is full of melancholy which seeps into the bones in prison, at night, when the warders pass hitting the grills with a crowbar, and gradually the quarrels and curses die down, and all that can still be heard is a voice singing this song which Pin is singing now, and which no one shouts for him to stop.
At night I love to hear
The sentry’s call,
I love to watch the passing moon
Light up my cell.
[The Path to the Spider’s Nests, Calvino, I.]
...of tacit consent
Dritto’s men are now chattering with cold behind the boulders; their heads and shoulders are wrapped in blankets, like Arab burnouses. The detachment has had one casualty - the commissar, Giacinto the tinker. He had been hit by a burst of German fire and his body lay in a meadow below, rid now of his colourful dreams of vagabondage and of all his lice too, which no insect powder had ever done. There was also one man slightly wounded in a hand, Count, one of the Calabrian brothers-in-law.
They have now been joined by Dritto, whose yellow face and blanket round his shoulders make him look really ill. Silent, his nostrils quivering, he watches the men one by one. Every now and again he seems on the point of giving some order, then says nothing. The men have said nothing to him yet. If he gave an order, or any of them talked to him, the rest would certainly turn on him, and violent words would fly. But this not the moment for a show-down; both he and the men realise that by tacit consent, so he avoids giving orders or reprimands and the men avoid any occasion for them. The detachment has been marching with discipline, and there has been no dispersion or quarrel about shifts; one could never have told it was leaderless. But Dritto is still in fact their leader, he only has to glance at a man to make him straighten up; yes, he is a great leader, he has a magnificent leader’s temperament, Dritto.
[The Path to the Spider’s Nests, Calvino, I.]
They have now been joined by Dritto, whose yellow face and blanket round his shoulders make him look really ill. Silent, his nostrils quivering, he watches the men one by one. Every now and again he seems on the point of giving some order, then says nothing. The men have said nothing to him yet. If he gave an order, or any of them talked to him, the rest would certainly turn on him, and violent words would fly. But this not the moment for a show-down; both he and the men realise that by tacit consent, so he avoids giving orders or reprimands and the men avoid any occasion for them. The detachment has been marching with discipline, and there has been no dispersion or quarrel about shifts; one could never have told it was leaderless. But Dritto is still in fact their leader, he only has to glance at a man to make him straighten up; yes, he is a great leader, he has a magnificent leader’s temperament, Dritto.
[The Path to the Spider’s Nests, Calvino, I.]
...of condemnation
‘You understand, then,’ says Dritto, ‘the detachment will take up position between the pilon on Mount Pellegrino and the scond gorge. Cousin will take over command. You’ll get new orders from the batallion when you arrive up there.’
Now all the men’s eyes are on him, sleepy brooding eyes, crossed by locks of hair.
‘What about you?’ they ask
Dritto’s lowered eyelashes are covered with a slight discharge.
‘I’m ill,’ he says, ‘I can’t come.’
There, now they can say what they like. The men say nothing. ‘I’m a finished man,’ thinks Dritto. Now everything can take its course. It’s terrible, though, that the men say nothing, make no protest; that means they’ve already condemned him, are pleased at his shirking this last test. Perhaps they expected it. And yet they cannot understand what it is that makes him do this; neither does he, Dritto, himself. But now everything can take its course, there is nothing for him to do but let himself drift.
[The Path to the Spider’s Nests, Calvino, I.]
Now all the men’s eyes are on him, sleepy brooding eyes, crossed by locks of hair.
‘What about you?’ they ask
Dritto’s lowered eyelashes are covered with a slight discharge.
‘I’m ill,’ he says, ‘I can’t come.’
There, now they can say what they like. The men say nothing. ‘I’m a finished man,’ thinks Dritto. Now everything can take its course. It’s terrible, though, that the men say nothing, make no protest; that means they’ve already condemned him, are pleased at his shirking this last test. Perhaps they expected it. And yet they cannot understand what it is that makes him do this; neither does he, Dritto, himself. But now everything can take its course, there is nothing for him to do but let himself drift.
[The Path to the Spider’s Nests, Calvino, I.]
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