Gringo

XXIX

CLICK-CLACK

HE opened his eyes and looked.

It was all the same: columns and columns.

Ma was standing near him, very tall — She seemed to tower over the whole crowd. But no one saw Her. She was dressed in white light.

— I see nothing, said Gringo. It is still going on.

— But no, little one — you are looking with your everyday habit.

— Ah?

Gringo looked again, craning his neck a little. The tide continued. He found himself suddenly inside the head of a trouser-man: it went click-clack, click-clack... Then he slid into the head of another trouser-man: it went click-click-clack, click-click-clack... Then, like a monkey in the branches, he began to slide from head to head: clack-click, clack-click, click-click-clack; clack-click, clack-click, click-click-clack... It was an enormous empty railway hall, with a metronome clicking in a cavernous silence — louder and louder, louder and louder: click-clack, click-clack, click-click-clack. And then from time to time a loudspeaker and a very slow, toneless voice, also cavernous: 17 hours, forty-two minutes, thirty seconds; 17 hours, forty-two minutes, thirty-one seconds... click-clack, click-clack, click-click-clack... And it went on and on across the horizon — to Chinese Turkestan and Kamchatka — with language making no difference: clock-clock, cluck-cluck-clock, clock-clock, cluck-cluck-clock... From time to time, in a small corner of a head from a lost country, there was a small misfire: it went zzii-zzii-ztt... like a bird whose neck is wrung, ploc! That must have been a lost man, or a manufacturing defect — zzii-zzii-ztt-ztt-ploc... or someone who hadn't read the morning paper properly. And Gringo slid from branch to branch. Sometimes a whole column derailed: crac-crac-croc-cric. That must have been a change of government, or a military purge — or perhaps a religious crisis. But they recovered very quickly: clack-click, click-click-clack... On the whole, none of it was especially amusing. Gringo returned to his own head. He knocked on it a little to see if it went click — but the clock had stopped: a lost man.

Ma watched him with a mocking air.

— Well, said Gringo. It's not amusing. How long will it go on like this?

— Don't know, said Ma... As long as they want.

— Then, said Rani, always practical — why don't you go get us a glass of beer and two ice creams while we wait?

— Listen, Rani, you're not funny.

— Ma said "As long as they want," so... Unless there's a general derailment?... We can stock provisions while we wait — you can bring sandwiches too.

Gringo was exasperated — none of this was funny at all.

— But Ma, he cried — isn't all this going to change?

— It's a delicate operation, she said. But one can try — oh! I've been trying for a long time... But you see, they go clock-cluck, click-click-clock, in Japanese, in Hindu, in Marxist and in Ashram, and at the Sorbonne and in... the whole list.

— Yes, that I saw — or rather heard. Can't you stop the clock? The world's zero hour? That wouldn't be bad. I've had enough.

— Have they had enough?

— Perhaps they don't know it can be otherwise? They only want to improve the clock. They can't conceive of time without a clock... Nor can I, for that matter, but I'm fed up.

— They would all have to be "fed up," as you say. They would all have to be calling for something else. Is it possible to do that against their will?

— Listen, said Gringo, exasperated — no one asked to emerge from a DNA molecule, did they?... A small change of molecules?

— No, my little one — not a change of molecules: they'd make new clocks with other molecules. No, it's simpler than you think.

— But damn it! cried Gringo, whose patience was never his strong point. With or without molecules, it must be done. This mad clock has to be stopped! You send a small white wave: it stops.

— You'll stun them. You see the little Marxist who no longer knows his catechism, the little Ashramite who no longer knows his catechism, the bus driver, the dental surgeon who no longer know their catechism — no one knows their catechism anymore: the top hats fall, and the fake noses, the turbans and the bishops' bonnets, Gandhi's bonnets, aviator's bonnets, magistrate's bonnets — all the bonnets...

— Ji! cried Rani. That would be really funny!

— You'll have no more sandwiches and no more ice cream, Gringo interrupted.

— Listen, little one...

Ma turned toward Gringo; her diamond eyes shone like a star in the night.

— I am not here to perform irrational miracles...

— The rational doesn't matter — it's part of their catechism. The clock must be stopped, Ma! It's urgent.

— Show me 172 men — as many as there are countries — who TRULY WANT to stop the clock.

— I've heard a few little zzt-zzts here and there. You yourself told me it was time: "This time it is."

Then Gringo stopped — his words fell away. He saw again that courtyard beneath white spotlights, those shot here, those hanged there, those prisons and prisons in every catechism in the world — that enormous hygienic and mathematical Prison with ice cream and saxophone, those gray and gray columns mounting the assault on a sky without birds, with a few helmets and capsules to change moons and beat their metronome under other ionospheres: click-clack, click-click-clack, on Venus and Neptune and the Constellation of an extinct Swan.

Then Gringo cried out:

— Ma! It isn't possible, it isn't possible!... And it was as if the whole earth were crying out in a single small human heart — oh, so futile.

Ma smiled and stroked Gringo's hair.

— I needed a cry, little one — a single true cry to undo the magic they invented. For I do not perform miracles: I only undo what they have added.

Then She let her gaze wander over that crowd.

— I'm going to show you the non-magic, the world without their magic, as it is. 

And She took the hands of Gringo and Rani.