THE MEETING

He thought that maybe it would have been better for him not to go to this meeting. The bus had now left the city and was rushing recklessly down the steep mountain roads. Here and there, a few gaunt cows were grazing the soft grass. Again he thought that maybe it would have been better for him not to go to this meeting, and he racked his brain for a long time trying to think of what had convinced him to go. He didn’t know the city he was on his way to, nor the person he was supposed to meet.

The bus, full of travelers, was moving at breakneck speed. The night, abruptly fallen, was so black that it was impossible for X to distinguish even the presence of his close neighbors, whom he had seen only a moment before in the light of day. With no star or moon, the night suddenly seemed full of threats. Lamenting that he was not sleepy, he decided he would smoke to kill time and took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket; realizing he had forgotten his lighter, he gently asked his neighbor to the right, then the one to the left, whether they had a light. They must have been asleep because they didn’t answer him. Disappointed, X returned the pack to his pocket.

In the early morning, he was stunned to see that there was no one left on the bus except for him and the driver, even though it had stopped only a single time. What had happened to the other travelers? Concerned, X got up to ask the bus driver. Once at his side, no matter how many times he repeated his question, raised his voice, even shouted, the man didn’t seem to hear or even notice a presence near him; X concluded that the man was likely deaf and, faced with the uselessness of his efforts, returned to his seat and shut himself inside his thoughts, which took a rapid turn for the worse and soon absorbed him so intensely that when the bus stopped, he wouldn’t have noticed if not for the violent strike on his shoulder. Under the wrathful eye of the driver, who was pointing at the exit, X stood up. Hardly had he placed a foot on the ground when the bus made a surprisingly fast U-turn and drove off in a cloud of dust. X watched it disappear with a sigh of relief.

From the small hill he had just climbed, X admired the city before his eyes: it was immense, immense and immobile; no traffic of any kind disturbed the tremendous silence. If he hadn’t been afraid of arriving late to his meeting, X would have happily remained for hours contemplating the order and harmony that reigned over the city. But not wanting to keep anyone waiting, and sensing that he didn’t have a minute to spare, he went back down the hill and immediately set out on his way.

He walked down an avenue bordered on either side by sumptuous palaces and magnificent buildings; their facades, constructed entirely from pink marble, projected richness and rare beauty; there were a significant number of windows, the lowest of which were about a dozen yards off the ground. One thing, however, disconcerted him: none of these houses had a door, and X wondered how anyone was supposed to enter.

Since he’d been walking for a long time and hadn’t yet encountered another living soul, X worried he wouldn’t be able to find his way if he didn’t come across someone who could help him; a clock showing it was eleven reassured him; it was ridiculous to think that at such a late morning hour everyone could still be asleep in their homes! At one moment or another, someone would have to leave their house, and then everything would come together. Walking aimlessly, X found himself on a street he had already taken several hours earlier. Here he was again. So he decided to jot down the street names in a notebook, which would spare him a great deal of fatigue and a significant loss of time. With the back of his sleeve, he wiped his face, which was covered in sweat, and regretted not bringing his handkerchief. In fact, he no longer had anything! His papers, his wallet, his keys, everything had disappeared! Only his notebook remained. But he realized suddenly that this notebook would not be of any use because he had nothing to write with.

The sight of the boulevard he turned onto, stretching endlessly, as far as the eye could see, apparently not intersecting with a single street, and of the sun setting like lead, crushing out the light, suddenly made him want to turn back. He was seized by a feeling of inhospitality, of desolation. But he continued walking straight ahead.

The persistent absence of people in the street, the silence that reigned over the city, was starting to worry him quite a bit. He told himself that maybe the inhabitants of this place were at a festival of some kind … That happens sometimes: people clear out of town to go to a special event, he shouldn’t panic, but this didn’t make him any less anxious. This meeting was really starting to irk him! One doesn’t just abandon people like this, especially not in a foreign land! They ought to have provided him with a guide! This lack of courtesy on the part of the people he was supposed to meet was somewhat hurtful. Suddenly realizing the absurdity of his situation, X found himself embarrassed for the Other. He wanted to believe, nevertheless, that this person had his reasons and that if he could have acted differently, surely he would have done so.

Feeling something brush against the bottom of his leg, X looked down and saw a cat. It was small and skinny, so skinny and so small that he felt a profound pity for it. Moved, X gently caressed the animal; the small fearful body shivered beneath his hand. The cat’s gaze was fixed on him and he thought he saw something like supplication … a glimmer of hope. The cat was hungry, it was dying, so X sadly extended his finger to it.

When X came back to, he realized he was on the ground, splayed out on the sidewalk. A violent pain in his hand evoked his encounter with the cat; it had disappeared. A vending machine affixed to the wall gave him hope that he, too, might eat; he jumped up. One of the rows—the others were empty—contained a roll wrapped in cellophane. Trying his luck, X pulled the lever; this triggered a noisy mechanism and the sandwich fell to the bottom. The bread was golden and warm; unwrapping it, X noticed a thick layer of cheese, nice and creamy, and recognized its aroma as Camembert. It was all so unexpected that X stared at the bread, wondering if it wasn’t merely the trick of a dream. Then, finally bringing it to his mouth, he took a large bite. An immense disgust gripped his insides and he vomited on the spot. What he had just put in his mouth could not under any circumstances have been food. Furious, he could not hold back the continuous vomiting that had seized him.

Sadly, he continued on his way. He noticed that there were no more rich and sumptuous palaces around him, only old houses, dirty and dilapidated. They too were missing doors; black gaping holes stood in the place of windows. He had the feeling that thousands of hidden eyes were watching him, observing each of his gestures, reading each of his thoughts. To evade the fear he felt mounting in him, he screamed, cried out; it was his own name that he screamed loudly. At that very moment, and as if responding to a signal, a strange and long procession appeared about a hundred yards in front of him; it was a striking and strange gathering, and X couldn’t tell whether they were human beings or they were … But he didn’t dare finish his thought, so terrifying did it seem to him. Prey to so much raw emotion, he didn’t know whether to turn his back to the group and flee, or, on the other hand, to try and catch up with them. In the end, he decided on the latter.

Although the procession seemed to be moving very slowly and X was running as fast as he could, it was impossible for him to approach them, or even to get within a few yards. Curiously, the distance between them always remained the same. The pursuit was exhausting; X, feeling quite weak, would have liked to rest for a few moments, but the idea that this group might have been tasked with bringing him to his meeting and that, if he stopped, he risked missing the only chance given to him, filled him with such anxiety that he forced himself to speed up instead. The shooting pains in his finger made him suffer cruelly. The thought came to mind that eventually he would need to take care of it to stop the spread of infection. A torrential rain pelted down onto the city; it formed a greasy mud on the ground, which stuck to his shoes and made his race all the more dreadful. His clothes, plastered to his body, were like an icy envelope. To convince himself that his meeting was real—after all, he wasn’t in this city for nothing, and suddenly he felt a desperate need to be completely assured of this fact—he tried to figure out the circumstances that could have led to this meeting. In response to this investigation, his brain, abruptly drained of all thought, offered nothing but a blank space in which X couldn’t grab hold of anything. When he stopped running, he saw the procession disappear in front of him, row by row, as if erased by an invisible hand, soon vanishing completely. At the same time, he heard the deafening sound of footsteps on the road, startlingly close and even, it seemed to X, gathering around him. Then there was silence. And, abruptly, night. X could no longer distinguish anything of the street he was standing on. He knew it was long and narrow, with horrible houses on either side.

Not letting himself devolve into panic, and resuming his route very slowly, as calmly as possible, seemed extremely important to X. But, first things first, he would bandage his hand; once stable, it would cause him less suffering. In any case, it was worth a try; so he tore off a piece of his shirt and made it into a dressing. Indeed, the pain eased. This sudden improvement seemed like a good omen. But he was stupefied when, after a few steps, his forehead crashed into a wall; and yet he was sure he hadn’t seen any obstacle in front of him earlier, in the light of day; the proof was the procession he had been following. But perhaps he had walked toward the houses instead of toward the street, which would explain everything. He only had to distance himself a few steps from the edge to be parallel to the houses with the street in front of him once again. Although that seemed plausible to him, he wasn’t at all convinced. Nevertheless, he put his plan into action. He was walking in the dark now, fearful, his arms extended in front of him, dreading an obstacle. In about twenty yards, thirty at most, his hands crashed into a coarse wall. I got my directions mixed up again, X thought to reassure himself and to deny the mounting evidence. Because he was surely lost, he would change strategy, and, in order to continue on his way and avoid the disagreeable surprise of encountering another wall, or a house, he didn’t know what exactly, he would walk next to the wall while running his hand along it. That would allow him to avoid getting lost and to keep moving forward. Since it suddenly felt strangely heavy on his shoulders, X removed his jacket, mechanically, and, mechanically, hung it from a nail that his hand had just grazed. He wanted to re-tie his shoelaces, but he noticed that they were gone.

Now that he had been walking for hours, an infinite number of hours, and with his hand still touching the wall, he felt a secret satisfaction at the idea that the strategy he had come up with was in fact perfect. No obstacle would stand in his way anymore. However, he wished he knew how long night lasted in this country, then he might have felt some relief; he would have seen things from another angle, with less pessimism perhaps. He ran his hand along his forehead, softly, very softly, as if to erase his thoughts.

He must have lost a lot of weight for, in order to keep his pants up, he had to tie a large knot in their front. And his shoes were now much too big; he became aware of this fact. To keep them on any longer would only aggravate his feet; he had made so much effort to keep his feet inside that asking any more of them, X understood, would have been too much. So without leaning down, he simply stepped out of his shoes and abandoned them there on the spot. He possessed so little, so few things, that this abandonment made him rather sad. It was as if his house had suddenly been taken. He took off running.

His hand had just brushed something; it groped, felt around, then entered into a pocket; X, suddenly remembering his jacket, felt a surge of joy. He grabbed it from the hook in order to put it back on, but then, his arm in the air, he froze; his blood ran ice cold. He realized that he was caught in a circle, surrounded by a wall, and that instead of moving forward, he had only gone in a loop.

Annihilated, suddenly drained of all strength, X let himself slide against the wall and remained there with his back against it, seated on the ground. The shadows were unfathomable. He saw only black. Nothing but black. He had the impression that his head and his entire body were filling with black.

This meeting astonished him to no end, just as the Other’s neglect was continuously surprising to him. Remembering his walk through the city where he hadn’t encountered a single human being, he wondered whether the Other was the only inhabitant. That would mean he possessed a strange influence. This thought was a balm for his heart: if that were the case, a person of that caliber wouldn’t grant him a meeting only to abandon him! It would make no sense! He simply had to wait, entrust himself to the Other, and take a moment to rest. X lay down on the ground.

As he was trying to fall asleep, he heard a voice murmur in his ear, “You must come … I’m waiting for you …” The tone was plaintive, begging. X sat up and searched the shadows. He wanted to speak; no sound came out of his throat. “We must meet … Come.” The voice was no more than a whisper. X was suddenly distraught by the idea that the Other needed him, needed his help perhaps. He made up his mind immediately: he would do everything possible to answer this call! First, he needed to get out of here. Perhaps somewhere along the wall there was a hole, a hole big enough for him to pass through. He didn’t see any other way to find out except to grope the surface of the wall, from its base all the way up to the highest point he could reach on tip toe, with his arms in the air. And on like that, for the entire way around.

It was very slow work: it lasted months, and yielded no result. So X decided to do a second loop along the surrounding wall. But this time, to reach even higher, he would climb on the rocks and nails; their presence in the wall had been revealed to him by all his painful groping, which had slashed his hands. These supports, because they were invisible and spaced out irregularly, demanded infinite time and patience from X simply to locate them. But the real difficulty was keeping his balance once he had found a nail and managed to hoist himself onto it. In the dark, seized by vertigo, he would often fall down and have to start all over.

For some time now, X had been plagued with obsessive ideas. The advantage of this was that his mind was occupied for weeks on end. The idea currently preoccupying him was about his pants. They were the only possession he had left, and he didn’t want to lose them at any cost. When he realized he was in fact completely naked, he leaped panic-stricken from his perch and splayed on the ground, face in the mud. When he recovered from the vertigo that had caused the fall and wiped away the dirt stuck to his eyes and mouth, he set out looking for his pants. Applying a specific calculation he’d come up with, he walked back 1,252 steps, then he advanced 28 steps. Then, turning his body to the void, he counted another 50 steps. Stopping short, he turned left, and after 1,222 strides he reached the precise location where his pants should have been. The ordeal exhausted him, but it was the only distraction he allowed himself, once or twice a year.

He was stupefied to find that his pants weren’t there! They’ve stolen them from me, he thought, perplexed. Nevertheless he deemed this judgment a bit rash, for, in the end, how could there be a thief here … He decided to do a meticulous survey of the ground. His position: his knees on the ground and his hands in front of him, a respite from the debilitating position he was normally obligated to assume to complete his daily work; he could finally relax. When he felt the precious article of clothing in his hands, he nearly cried with joy! He put the pants on and was astonished, once more, by how little contact there was between his skin and the fabric; the pants were so loose they felt more like underwear: he couldn’t believe it! Sadly, he returned to the wall; sadly, he grabbed a nail, climbed onto it, and resumed his task. But when he lifted his arms into the air, stretching his body as much as possible in order to reach the highest point on the wall, his pants immediately slid down his body and fell at his feet. Unable to jump from one point to another without losing or tearing his pants, he had to gather them constantly, hike them back up and knot them at the waist, which of course cost him an infinite amount of time.

The only hand he could use to slide endlessly over the wall—for the other was in a state of extreme rot—was considerably worn, the nerves almost raw. When a nail got stuck inside, X would faint. He reminded himself that as soon as his tenebrous exploration was over, he could finally allow his body to rest; stretched on the ground, he would hold himself in a sweet stillness that would make him forget his suffering; he would let himself go. Abruptly he remembered that he had a meeting.

“A meeting?” said a small mocking voice inside him.

“Precisely! A meeting!” X said aloud.

“And where might that be?” questioned the same small voice.

Suddenly gripped with a violent anger, X began to knock his head against the wall as tears of rage poured from his eyes. However, once he’d calmed down, he resumed his slow walk. His body glued to the wall, he advanced like an insect over rocks, from one nail to another, for days on end, his wide-open hand traversing the rough surface.

Soon, the goal of this groping was no longer clear to him. It all seemed to be utterly useless. How absurd to find oneself in such a situation! What must he have looked like, in the dark and flattened against the wall! Descending cautiously, he removed his pants, folded them up, placed them near him, sat on the ground, and resolved this time to stay put.

It was thanks to a moonlit night, while X was mindlessly playing with his feet, thanks to a very full moon located just over the wall, that he saw, thirty yards up from the ground: a hole. He felt a shiver of pleasure tinged with hope. He kept his eyes fixed on the opening, wondering how he would reach it. It seemed to him that the only possible solution would be to pull out a few nails from the wall to loosen the greatest possible number of stones which, piled one on top of the other, would reach the height of the opening.

In order to identify, in the darkness, the place at the bottom of the wall that corresponded vertically to the hole, X quickly placed his pants there. The moon had shifted; he was in the dark once again.

Thus began an incredible amount of work. He’d had the idea that this hole could have been a sign from the Other, and so X devoted himself unceremoniously to his labor. However, sometimes his meeting seemed strangely insignificant; he even thought that once out, he wouldn’t go to it. But he knew that this was only a game on his part, and that he would go!

The rocks piled up slowly in the shape of a pyramid; when X estimated it was high enough, he began the long and painful ascent. How many times already had he climbed that heap of stones! When he reached the front of the hole a few days later, X was dismayed. He couldn’t believe how narrow it was! Distraught, dumbfounded, X kept his eyes fixed on the opening. Although he had lost a considerable amount of weight, he couldn’t imagine being able to pass through it!

Nevertheless, he attempted the impossible. He started with his head. This was the most difficult part. Extremely so. His body followed boldly, stretching in a disconcerting fashion as he passed through. On the outside, X saw a cord. Using it to slide down, X arrived at the bottom and sat on the ground facing the entrance of a tunnel. All around him a blazing sun flooded fields of flowers with a joyous light. Long fine grass swayed gently. He shivered with happiness at the sight. Although he could have admired the spectacle forever, he told himself that when he so desired, soon, in a moment, he would experience the sweet softness of the grass beneath his feet; he was already imagining how cool it would be on the burning wounds of his body when he lay down. But he didn’t want to rupture the enchantment of such a spectacle before he’d truly exhausted it.

When he got up and walked toward the field, X was surprised to find that a post, a kind of signpost, was there, right next to him, where before there had been nothing; glancing at it, he was about to look away when he saw inscribed on the plaque: MEETING. An arrow showed the way: through the tunnel. Without glancing back at the fields and flowers, his heart choked, full of regret, X plunged into the tunnel.

The dampness inside was glacial; it penetrated his bones and his teeth started to chatter. Feeling himself suddenly bitten cruelly on his hip, he yelped and searched for the wound with his hand; to his great displeasure, he found that his pants were gone! Where could he have lost them? On the surrounding wall, perhaps, when he had passed through the hole … All the efforts he had undertaken to preserve this meager article of clothing had proved useless, and X felt profound disappointment and sadness. Fate was too kind to him, truly! A burst of laughter made him jump. “Is someone there?” asked X, who couldn’t see anything. Since no one answered, he asked again, in a rather feeble voice, “Is someone there?” His feet were suddenly covered in water; soon it was up to his hips, then his neck. He understood that now he had to swim.

Stroke by stroke, he advanced haphazardly as snippets of frantic voices rushed around him. Vociferations erupted, unintelligible but uniquely violent, then everything was calm again. X heard nothing else except for his own very short breathing and the sound of water. At a bend, he saw a cone of light in the distance. That must be the end of the tunnel. He was surprised that the question of whether he would ever emerge from this tunnel had never occurred to him. Where had this sudden indifference come from? He couldn’t explain it and remained troubled by it. Suddenly his body scraped up against rocks. There was no more water. Trying to stand up but unable to, X decided to continue by crawling on his hands and knees.

At the end the tunnel, X propped himself up, lifted his head, and looked around. A woman, her body naked and seemingly ravaged by worms, was dragging a young child behind her, also naked. He seemed very tired. The woman pulled the child forward, but the little one’s legs sagged with each step. Here and there, men and women appeared. Those with a face—which was rare—had astonishingly thin mouths and glassy eyes. They walked, each alone and as though unaware of the others. Many were making threatening gestures. No one said a word. “Obviously from one country to the next, people can’t all be the same … many things are different … surprising …” X said with a somber stubbornness as he resumed his body’s reptilian movements. “I myself … haven’t I changed … does that mean …” He stopped short in front of a small street where rats were skittering in single file over the pavement. A long shiver ran through him. Maybe they’re not dangerous, X thought, turning down the narrow alley. Immediately a few climbed over his back and dashed down again, while others, jumping onto his face, bit him on the nose and mouth; some were content to cling on. Seriously exasperated, X swore that, once the introductions had been made and he and the Other were, perhaps, seated in large armchairs sipping tea, he would demand an explanation. If the Other, looking down on him, refused, he would insist, discreetly but firmly, that the Other elucidate the things that were tormenting him. But X was sure deep down that such a conversation would be unnecessary, for the Other, from the first moment of their encounter, would be eager to clear up any misunderstandings.

He was about to tear a rat from his ear that was more burdensome than the others, scurrying over him in a manic fashion, when he saw the street suddenly expand into a vast avenue full of houses; they were exceptionally low to the ground; X thought that no man, nor even a tiny child, would be able to stand up in them; there was, however, something comforting about them; he couldn’t explain what, but he was very moved.

A bright light, bursting from a house a few yards ahead, suddenly blinded him. This had to be the location of his meeting with the Stranger! He was paralyzed with happiness. It was not that he had doubted ever reaching it, but now that he had finally arrived, after so much difficulty and sadness, he felt nearly intoxicated.

The idea that he would present himself to the Other like this, crawling on the ground, was intolerable to him; so, managing with tremendous effort to stand up, his body contorted with suffering, he took the few steps that still separated him from the house.

This house, contrary to the others, was immensely tall and narrow. At the entrance was a metallic door. As X approached and was about to knock, it swung open.

X cried out in horror; his eyes haggard, wild with terror, he tried to recoil. A whirlwind of air wrapped around him, enveloping him like a shroud. He felt himself sucked in irresistibly. Once he had crossed the threshold, the door shut slowly behind him.

X knew he had arrived.