The Flood (4 page)

Why am I still here? They told me that people from Saintin came in boats around six, and that they found me lying on a chimney, passed out. The flood was cruel. It took away
everyone
I loved; why not take me too? I wouldn’t have felt a thing.

I survived. All the others are gone – the children in their swaddling clothes, the girls who would have got married, the young couples, the old couples. And then me: a stubborn weed rooted right down between the stones, shrivelled and stringy – but alive! I’d do what Pierre did if I had the guts. ‘I’ve had enough. Goodnight!’ Chuck myself into the Garonne and join the others. I have no children left. My house is destroyed, and my land is ruined. How happy I was, when we sat down to eat, the old ones in the middle, the children eldest to youngest! How happy I was reaping the harvest, all of us at work together, picking the grapes, coming home proud of our riches! Our beautiful children and our beautiful vines, our beautiful girls and our beautiful crops: all my joy, the living reward for a life’s work! With all that gone, God, why keep me alive?

There’s no consolation. I won’t take accept. I’ll give my fields to the neighbours whose children aren’t dead. They’ll
have the energy to clear up the mess and replant the crops. When you don’t have children, all you need is somewhere to die.

There was only one thing I wanted. A final wish. I wanted to find their bodies and bury them in our plot, under the slab where I’d soon be joining them. I heard that many of the bodies had been carried downstream; they had been lifted out at Toulouse. I decided to go.

It was horrific. Nearly two thousand houses had collapsed. Seven hundred people were dead. Every bridge had been smashed up; a whole district lay buried in mud, razed to the ground. Twenty thousand people were dying of hunger,
walking
around in rags, half naked. The city stank of dead bodies; everyone was terrified of catching typhoid. There was a funeral procession in every street. Charity couldn’t heal these wounds. Walking through the devastation, I saw nothing. I had my own dead to think of; I was devastated too.

They had retrieved many of the bodies, they said. A lot of them were already buried in some trenches in a corner of the cemetery. The thing is, they’d taken care to take photos of anybody that couldn’t be identified. I found Gaspard and Véronique in these upsetting pictures. They had died in the middle of their wedding kiss. They were clutching each other so fiercely – mouth clamped to mouth, their arms wound tightly around their backs – that you would have had to break their bones to separate them. They were photographed
together
, and together they sleep under the earth.

This is all I have: this frightening photograph of two beautiful children, disfigured and bloated by the water, their livid faces fearless with their love for one another. I look at them, and weep.

After the victory, four soldiers set up camp in a deserted corner of the battlefield. Night had fallen. Corpses lay all around, and the men were having a hearty supper.

Sitting on the grass, they grilled lamb, not waiting for the slices to be cooked through before tucking in. The glowing red flames threw a flickering light over the soldiers, casting misshapen shadows far into the distance. At times the firelight glinted off the weapons strewn around them; and one might have noticed, in the darkness, some of the men who slept with their eyes open.

The soldiers laughed riotously, unaware of these eyes watching them. It had been a day of fierce fighting. Not
knowing
what the next day would bring, they made merry with their rations and were grateful for the respite.

Night and Death swooped down onto the battlefield; their beating wings cut through the ghostly silence.

When the food was finished, Gneuss sang. The cheerful air boomed out into the sad, gloomy night and echoed back like a dirge. The soldier raised his voice, surprised to hear this peculiar lament. An awful scream rang out from the darkness.

Gneuss stopped dead. ‘Could be that we didn’t finish the job,’ he said to Elberg. ‘Investigate.’

Elberg took a piece of burning wood from the fire. For a few moments his comrades could track his movements by the light of the flame. They saw him crouch down and prod some of the corpses. He ferreted around in the bushes with his sword. Then they lost sight of him.

Nobody spoke for a while.

‘Clérian,’ said Gneuss at length, ‘the wolves are out tonight. Go and check on our boy.’

It was Clérian’s turn to vanish into the dark.

Fed up of waiting, Gneuss and Flem huddled into their coats and bedded down around the guttering flame. They had just drifted off, when another awful scream rang out. Flem got up without a saying a word and headed for that same spot where his two comrades had vanished.

So Gneuss was on his own. The shrieks coming from that black hole frightened him. He tossed some twigs onto the fire, hoping that more light would set his mind at ease. Flames the colour of blood shot up. They cast a glowing ring on the grass. Inside it, the bushes pranced around, and the corpses seemed to twitch.

Now Gneuss was afraid of the light. He scattered the
burning
twigs and stamped out the flames. But when darkness shrouded him once more, he shuddered. He didn’t want to hear that deathbed scream again. He sat down, and then he got up, calling out for his men. His booming voice scared him; he worried that he might be waking the dead.

The moon rose. Gneuss watched in horror as a ray of light slithered over the battlefield. The night would hide the atrocities no longer. Under this moonlight shroud the ravaged lowlands stretched out for miles, scattered with corpses and wreckage. This light wasn’t like daylight; it showed you what lurked in the shadows, but only made you more afraid.

Gneuss was on his feet, sweating. He wished he could run up a hill and snuff out that pallid night-light. Now that they could see him, he wondered what was keeping the dead from rising up and taking their revenge. It frightened Gneuss to see them so motionless; he shut his eyes and waited for something awful to happen.

He was standing just like this when he felt something tepid and wet at his feet. He bent down to examine the ground
and saw a thin trickle of blood. It nipped from pebble to pebble, carefree, emerging out of the darkness and into the moonlight, then winding back into the shadows like some enormous black-scaled snake with endless, wriggling coils. Gneuss jumped back, but he couldn’t shut his eyes; an excruciating spasm forced them wide open, fastening them on this gory rivulet.

He watched it slowly widen and swell. The rivulet turned into a stream – a gentle, placid stream that any child could have skipped over. The stream turned into a crashing torrent, spraying reddish foam around its banks; the torrent turned into an immense, monumental river.

This river was full of bodies; they were being carried along on the glut of blood that spurted from their wounds. It was a horrible, bizarre spectacle.

Gneuss recoiled in front of the bulging river. He couldn’t see over to the other side; it seemed to him that the plain was now a lake.

All of a sudden he was knocked down onto a rocky knoll. He regained his balance, before feeling a wave lap against his knees. The drifting corpses were jeering at him; their wounds turned into mouths that mocked his cowardice. The deep sea kept rising; it stained his hips. He made a huge effort to climb out, digging his hands and feet into the gaps between rocks. The rocks crumbled; he fell. It was up to his shoulders.

A pale and miserable moon was watching over this sea that reflected no rays. The light hung in the sky. The howling black sea looked like a vast portal to a cavernous void.

The waves rose, spraying Gneuss’s lips with their red spume.

The noise of Elberg returning woke Gneuss at dawn. ‘Mate, I got lost in those woods. I must have nodded off after I sat down for a minute under a tree. I had some really bizarre dreams; my memory’s still clear even now I’ve been awake.

‘It was back at the beginning of time. The sky was like a great big smile. The unsown soil was spotless under the spring sunshine. The grass grew taller than the tallest of our oaks; the trees were covered with leaves like we’ve never seen. Sap ran freely through the earth’s veins, and there was so much of it that it didn’t stay only in the plants; it poured into the rocks too, bringing them to life.

‘A calm horizon shimmered. It was Nature, waking up. Like a child giving thanks to God for the morning light, it offered up all its scents and all its songs, lingering fragrances and inimitable music, so much so that I could hardly bear it, so holy did it seem.

‘The lush sweet soil bore fruit without labour. The trees grew with abandon; the roads were lined with wheatfields, just like today’s are lined with nettles. The air smelled fresh; there was no trace of our sweat. God alone worked to provide for his children.

‘Man lived off the fat of the land. He picked the fruits from the trees, drank spring water, and at night slept under the shelter of leaves. Meat disgusted him. He didn’t know what blood tasted like, and his palate valued only those foods that water and sunlight had made for him.

‘So man stayed blameless. His innocence crowned him king of all other creatures. Everything was in harmony. You can’t imagine how pure it all looked, or how peaceful it was. When the birds flapped their wings, it wasn’t because they were
fleeing; the forests hid no fugitives in their trees. All of God’s creatures lived together under the sun as one, following one law: be good.

‘As I was walking among all of this, I felt that I was becoming fitter, stronger. I breathed deep lungfuls of the air; leaving our polluted atmosphere for this cleaner world, I felt like a miner climbing back to ground level.

‘I was still dreaming. This is what I saw as I slept in the forest.’

‘Two men followed a narrow path through the
undergrowth
. The younger man walked ahead; he was humming without a care in the world, enjoying the scenery. Now and then he turned back to smile at his companion. I’m not sure quite what it was, but something about his kind smile made me think the two men were brothers.

‘The other one was stern. He didn’t smile. He stared at the back of the younger man’s neck, full of hate. He quickened his step, stumbling. He seemed to be chasing a victim who wasn’t escaping.

‘I saw him stop to cut down the trunk of a tree, which he hacked crudely into the shape of a club. He ran, hiding the weapon behind his back. The young man had sat down to wait for him. Hearing him approach, he got up and kissed him on the forehead, as if they had been apart a long time.

‘They walked on. The sun was setting. The boy hurried, spotting a hillside’s gentle slope through the trees at the edge of the forest, yellow in the dying light. The unsmiling man thought he was running away. So he raised the tree trunk.

‘His younger brother turned around to spur him on for the final leg of the trek. The tree trunk smashed his skull,
spraying
blood everywhere.

‘The grass flinched from the first drop, horrified. The earth drank it down, trembling, afraid; it screamed out in disgust, and the sandy path returned that sickening brew to the
bloodstained
moss.

‘When the boy screamed, I saw a wind of fear scatter all the animals. They fled from the sight of people, avoiding the normal routes; they waited at crossroads, and the strongest set upon the weakest. I saw them skulk off to polish their fangs and sharpen their claws. It was the rape of the earth beginning.

‘I watched a never-ending exodus. The kestrel attacked the swallow; the swallow plucked the fly from the air; the fly settled on the corpse. All creatures felt under threat, from the worm down to the lion. The world was eating itself; and it would carry on devouring itself, forever.

‘Nature convulsed with horror. The horizon’s clean straight line snapped. Bloodstained clouds hid the stars and sunsets. It never stopped raining. And, each year, the trees toss rotting leaves from their gnarled branches, down onto the earth.’

Clérian appeared as Elberg finished. He sat down between his two comrades.

‘What I’m about to tell you, I don’t know whether I saw it or dreamed it, so much did the dream seem real and what was real seem a dream.

‘I was on a road that crossed the world. It was lined with cities, thronged with travellers.

‘I saw that it was paved with black stones. I slipped before realising that they were black with blood. The road sloped on both sides; in the middle ran a stream of thick red water.

‘I followed this road; there was a bustling crowd. I went from group to group, watching life go by.

‘Fathers sacrificed their daughters, having promised their blood to some evil god. The girls bowed their blonde heads under the knife, turning white at the kiss of death.

‘Proud shivering virgins killed themselves, fleeing kisses that would shame them; instead of white dresses, they had gravestones.

‘Lovers were dying mid-kiss. One woman died on the water’s edge, mourning her loss, transfixed by the waves that had swept away her beloved; another woman was murdered in her lover’s arms; she flung herself around his neck, both of them dying in an everlasting clinch.

‘Men who were tired of living in darkness and poverty set their souls free in search of the liberty denied to them on this earth.

‘Kings trailed bloody footprints all over the road. One had walked in the blood of his brother; another, in the blood of his subjects; another, in the blood of his God. Their red footprints in the dust sent a message to the crowd: “A king was here.”

‘Priests butchered their victims; then, bent dumbly over throbbing innards, they pretended to unravel heavenly secrets. They hid swords in their vestments and preached war in God’s name. On hearing their sermons, the people set on each other, laying waste for the glory of our father in heaven.

‘All of humanity was drunk; it banged into walls, sprawling out over the flagstones soiled with hideous muck. It shut its eyes, gripped a double-edged blade with both hands, then went out for a night of slaughter.

‘Shrouded in a damp thick reddish mist, the crowd breathed carnage. It roared and surged in a furious orgy, trampling down anyone who fell and squeezing the last drops of blood from
their wounds, swearing with breathless rage at the corpses that no longer screamed out in pain.

‘The earth swilled it all down; its guts relished these bitter juices now. Like a ruined drunk it gorged itself on the dregs.

‘I pushed on; I wanted to get away from these scenes. There seemed no end to this black road; I was following its bloody flow out to some unknown sea.

‘The landscape became more harsh and bleak the further I walked. The plains were tearing themselves apart. Rocky masses carved the earth into barren hills and gloomy valleys. The hills grew taller, the valleys widened; stones turned into mountains, and furrows became gorges.

‘There were no leaves and no moss. The sun bleached the summits of the desolate hills; at the bottom, they were dark and shadowy. The road ran between these rocks, deathly silent.

‘Eventually, after a sharp bend, I found this grim place.’

‘Four mountains pushed against each other to form a vast basin. Their smooth, steep slopes rose – like the walls of some Cyclopean city – and, inside, there was a gigantic well, as broad as the horizon.

‘The stream ran into this well; it was full of blood. Inside, the calm, deep sea rose gently. It seemed to be sleeping on its rocky bed. The clouds were purple with the reflection.

‘It was then that I knew it was full of all the blood from all the fighting. Each wound, ever since the first murder, has wept into this gorge, so much so that it’s full.’

‘I saw a river running into that pit, last night,’ said Gneuss.

Clérian carried on. ‘I was horrified. I stood at the verge, trying to see how deep it ran. From its dull sound it seemed that it went down to the earth’s core. Then I saw that the flood had reached the mountain peaks. A voice cried out to me from
the void. “The sea is rising. And it will keep rising. Soon it will reach the summit. Then it will rise some more. It will burst, and flow out into the plains. The mountains will not be able to fight the flood. They will crumble. The lake will surge out over the earth. There will be a flood. And so it is that men who are yet to be born will die, drowned in the blood spilled by their fathers.”’

‘That day is coming,’ said Gneuss. ‘The waves were high, last night.’