Gringo

XXXII

THE WORLD AS IT IS

IT was very strange.

These skin-bags, you see — very watertight, where each one lived in their cozy little corner, gurgling, with telephone, vocal cords, and a guide book to communicate through the walls with other walls equipped with telephones that communicated with other telephones, and a few smiles painted on the walls — now they were all full of holes, like a sieve. But no cyclone, nothing before had perpetrated such a catastrophe! Because when walls are flattened you rebuild them — but how do you rebuild a flattened nothing? 

All the Larousse dictionaries had been flattened; flattened the Michelin guides, and the peaceful circulation of DNA from father to son. The whole system had been disrupted. And what would DAN 06 22 say to MOL 30 29? Hello-hello!... what? The walls were apparently intact — everything was intact — but there was nothing but wind inside, and what a wind! An enormous, silent wind.

All at once, four billion mouths fell open.

The student on his bench dropped his textbook of "Natural" Sciences. He was the first to be struck by the white tide.

— Say, Alexander...

— What? said Alexander.

— Er... what? said Leon.

— But what-what? said Alexander.

And what-what-what, and what-what-what?

— It's not natural, said Leon at last.

And all the students dropped their books on millions and millions of benches in all languages. It was a fantastic spontaneous mass unlearning and learning truancy all at once. Right in the middle of a geography lesson, the Atlantic was breaking on the cliff as if one were there, and the little white bears were sliding effortlessly on the ice floe. One couldn't speak about a thing without it being immediately there — or one being there. It was living geography. It was the-truth-there. And what was not there was not there. But in the room next door, the maths teacher remained with his chalk in the air, mid-asymptote: there was nothing there — only wind.

— What does it mean? he said.

He took his hat and left the classroom: he had forgotten everything.

"And what does it mean?" said the chemistry teacher. "What does it mean?" said the physics teacher, while his atoms collapsed into galaxies and his galaxies plunged into black holes, which were the great white corridor of all time. "What does it mean?..." Everywhere-everywhere it was "What does it mean?" The President of the Republic hung his top hat on the peg, turned to face his ministers, gathered around him in a circle, to... for what? He put his top hat back on and fled. The town hall secretary dropped his pen. The abbé leaped four steps at a time from the pulpit in the middle of Our-Father... The hairdresser stood with a raised comb, before a blond coiffure gazing in the mirror — and suddenly saw, astounded, a small dog leap out of his chair. "But what does it mean?"

The gray columns stopped. They looked at each other.

A worldwide lapse of memory.

— But good God! What's happening? exclaimed Alexander.

He felt his pockets, felt his head. Nothing was left. And suddenly he remembered a corner of Iceland with a small rocky lake and a child, hand on cheek, gazing. That was all that remained. It was there. All that remained was what each one carried in his heart.

Nothing remained but what existed. What did not exist no longer existed.

And the electric lamp fell on the yogi's head, who saw the stars.

Then, truly, a fantastic spectacle unfolded before the eyes of Gringo and Rani and the young student who held onto his corner of the lake by a thread: there were those who had no corner at all, anywhere - nothing inside them but grave problems and entire libraries. Ploof! — they suddenly slid into the legs of their trousers: there was no one there anymore. A small heap of trousers on the boulevard. Thousands and thousands of empty trousers.

There was a panic.

And then, suddenly, it was a fabulous menagerie. From the remaining trousers there began to emerge rats, little rabbits — numerous rats - porcupines, bulldogs, pomeranians, startled little hens clucking across the boulevard, and many serpents of every hue. It was quite astonishing. Monkeys — oh! a multitude of varied monkeys and parrots. It was suddenly like an immense zoo — each one returning to his original state. All the extinct species as if re-born and walking on two legs or four.

That was the world as it is.

And a few men standing upright, going zzi-zzi-ztt, feeling their pockets and pulling a forgotten old kite from the depths of their heart.

The issue of population explosion was resolved in one stroke.

Nobody had to die: everyone was going home, in the skin of a canary or a zebu, perfectly happy to be what they are. 

As for the rest, they were just forgotten trousers. The rats went back into the sewers.

Each person returned to his true self. 

The others left singing at the top of their lungs while the customs officers stared at those strange wire fences in the middle of the fields: "But what on earth does that mean?" And the great Imam went off to shave his beard. Rani was stamping her feet on the ground. 

Gringo was smiling. 

Then Vrittru stepped out of the "Around-the-world-in-24-minutes," looked left and right, held his fake nose between his thumb and forefinger, pulled it out and burst out laughing — laughing as he had never laughed before in his life. And suddenly he set off in the skin of a turkey, waddling on two legs and shaking his red wattle. He had nothing left to guard; everyone had come out of prison.

— Shall we go home, said Rani. 

Everyone was going home. 

The clocks had stopped. 

The men were considering the dream they were going to live. For dreams were all that remained. 

Each one was their own dream, in red or black, as an elephant or a poppy. 

It was the beginning of the Times-of-Truth, when no one could be what they were not. And the prisons opened in a flight of white doves. 

Ma was smiling. 

— Wait, you're not there yet. And She disappeared. 

A student sat down on the edge of the pavement, amid the forgotten trousers, and began to play the flute.