Birth of a Bridge (20 page)

SUMMER WALKS TOWARDS THE QUAY AT A GOOD clip, full dawn, brilliant skin, cool nape, optimistic girl overflowing with verve, this day is mine and I dance for it
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, she’s steady, goes without rushing, crosses intersections on the diagonal so as not to deviate from her initial idea: today I will cross to the other side of the water.

In less than twenty minutes she reaches the banks: the sky is suddenly wide, flared like a basin, the clamour breaks through, and the light whitens. Summer reaches the dock, there, a vending machine, she buys a bottle of water and empties it in one gulp, elbow raised to vertical, she’s sweating, takes her place in the short line of people waiting to buy a ticket for the journey, and once the price of the crossing is settled, goes down the steel gangway, jumps into the barge, and, following the wave of people boarding, finds herself in a large room, clammy and sonorous, the windows are dirty, the ceiling low, the odour heavy. Most of the people who boarded with her have spread out along the benches and settled themselves against the walls, chin to chest and arms folded into pillows, eyes soon closed, they worked the night shift in bars, hotels, casinos, gambling dens, and nightclubs in the city, and will soon collapse into unmade beds, shivering, shirts bunched up at the foot of the bed – dirty collars, ties knotted still, just loosened and pulled over their heads, cuff unbuttoned with weary hands.

THE SIREN
bawls, the ferry jolts sideways from the dock, and Summer gets up, strolls along the benches, those who aren’t sleeping cast hostile glances towards her; she reaches the upper deck, looks for an observation post, finds one at the prow in front of a pickup full of worn-out tires, two guys – Natives, stocky, wide-brimmed black felt hats, turquoise jewellery – smoke cigarettes and parley in low voices, indifferent to the deafening motors, indifferent to the odour of rot – wood, fish, fruit – that clings to the hull. Summer wants to take advantage of the view for the less than twenty minutes it takes to cross from one bank to the other. At this hour, the river is mauve, languid, large and oily folds, no reflection. She looks at the city as it softly grows distant, revealing itself whole as it shrinks, leaning over the greyish eddies that coagulate and dissolve against the hull, while before her, in an opposite movement, the forest rises, rises, huge and black, devouring space. At the exact moment when she passes the median of the river, suddenly close to nothing, far from everything, her heart tightens, tears rise to her eyes in a handful of seconds; the smell of fuel, she thinks as she closes her eyes, it stinks, it’s going to give me a headache, and suddenly breathless, she nearly falls over backwards. An immense fear. She knows the one. It’s Sunday on the Porte Dorée lake, at the edge of the Bois de Vincennes. Late afternoon. She’s five years old. There are four of them in the boat. Her father, her mother, her brother, and her. It’s the end of winter and it’s a sunny cold. They’re rowing. They pass temples, grottos, mills, rotundas. The light on the water is magnificent. Her mother has reflections of gold on her face and she closes her eyes smiling above her shawl. It’s her father who’s in action. He leans forward, back, to the rhythm of his legs bending and unbending, the oars held firmly in the ring of the oarlocks. They move slowly. They glide over the lake. Little splashes fly into the air while the water creases here and there against the boat. Everything seems easy, beautiful. There is soft laughter in the air. The perfect postcard of a happy family. The boat is named
Marianne
, like her mother. They were glad to get this one, it’s a sign, honey, said her father as he held out his hand to his wife to step in. The
Marianne
is red edged with blue, slathered with thick paint that shows the trace of the brush and the drips solidified along the planking. Suddenly her father stands up, right in the middle of the lake. The boat rocks abruptly, her mother lets out a cry, her father bursts out laughing and grabs her little brother by the waist. He lifts him and holds him out over the lake. Her mother opens her eyes huge and stammers, what are you doing, stop. Her father laughs, he’s playing, don’t be so silly. The boat pitches in fits and starts. The little boy gesticulates, his thin ankles and his shoes with laces kick in the void, his father heaves him back and forth above the water as though he were going to throw him in. The little girl is petrified, clinging to her mother who’s screaming now, screaming at her father that he’s crazy, while he stands there, before them, immense, legs spread wide in the bottom of the boat. He laughs, opening his mouth wide. Then an oar slips from the oarlock and falls into the lake. Her father puts the little one down carelessly, swears, shit, then leans over the water and stretches out his arm but the oar is out of reach. The piece of wood floats for a moment on the surface, then disappears. Silently, they head back towards the wharf. The sun has set and it’s cold. Everything is sombre. On the banks, the naked trees bend frozen branches towards them. Her mother wraps the little boy in her arms and silently holds back her tears. Her father is out of breath trying to make the boat move with only one oar. He grows tired. The little girl is worried they’ll never get there. Once they’re back on land, her mother bursts into sobs and stammers incomprehensible words. Her father sighs, the evening is a disaster.

THE OTHER
bank disconcerts Summer. The large public square that meets the dock is still in shade, and it’s much colder and wetter here than on the other side at the end of May. A little crowd of poor folk – mostly Natives – come and go between shabby stalls, banged-up vegetables, frilly underwear, used tools, kitchen knives and machetes riddled with rust spread out on little braided rugs, bottles of fake spring water, everything drowned in a smell of boiled cabbage, fatty fish, and soap. Here and there, people toss offal into large cast-iron pots heated on makeshift stoves, cook them over low fires in a spicy sauce, then stuff them into a sheath of big bread sprinkled with lemon, disgusting thinks Summer, nauseated, crossing the square, goes into the first greasy spoon – a mosaic of compressed Coca-Cola cans wallpapers the facade – orders a coffee, the guy behind the counter looks her up and down without a word of greeting and mechanically pours bitter liquid into a plastic cup, turns his back, and picks up his paper again. Summer glances at her watch, almost seven o’clock. She takes a quick look over her shoulder and, through the half-open door, sees the ferry, already at the dock and ready for boarding. The excitement of this trip “to the other side of the water
,”
as everyone says here, dies away all at once, she’s cold, what an idea to come here, alone, without a plan, without anything to do. Indecisive, she sips her coffee, soon lukewarm, and while she’s counting her change, head down over her open palm, the guy at the bar calls, you looking for something? No, nothing, I’m fine, I’m gonna catch the boat back, she pushes her strap farther up her shoulder, turns towards the door, and behind her the guy continues, so there’s nothing for you here, you don’t like it? Mocking smile – translucent enamel at the edge of teeth that are very yellow and very straight – in contrast with a cold glance, transparent as a cat’s eye marble, Summer, uncomfortable, heads for the door, reconsiders and says simply, I’m looking for Sugar Falls. The guy joins her in the doorway of the greasy spoon, you go to the edge of the square on the left, the path that goes up from there, it’s straight till the pavement ends, then you’re at the viewpoint, keep to the left on the forest path, take it a little farther and then you’re there. His voice mixes in with the noises of the square that have bulked up now, just like the crowd that’s growing, the market is opening. Summer asks, it is far? An hour and a half walking, double that if it’s been raining. Oh. Summer looks at her watch. You’re in a hurry, eh, miss? He considers her, sarcastic, spiteful. You’re from the bridge, right? She nods her head. He takes a pack of hardened tobacco out of his pocket, rolls it quickly between thumb and index, lights up a skinny little smoke, props it in his mouth and tosses out, you should get off that site, take the time to go see it up there, it’s gonna shake up your identity, Miss Cannibal Bridge.

SHE BUYS
oranges, Coke, and bread, climbs the slope of the road, the river at her back, the forest before her. The little lopsided apartments and stone buildings that border the market square have disappeared, she’s now walking along beside wooden houses tangled in with one another, some of them in complex and ambitious shapes – Chinese pagodas, Swiss chalets, thatched cottages from the Auge region of France – most of them like western movie falsefronts, walls askew but with an abundance of decorative details. At this hour, children are slamming doors and running into the street, schoolbags dangling from their shoulders, women in worn old slippers lift a crocheted curtain to watch them, and, suspicious, stare at Summer who peels her first orange, we can hear dogs barking behind the hedges, the air smells of detergent and babies.

Soon the sun is beating down, the pavement heats up beneath running shoes, the houses line up poorer and poorer, bricked-up windows or broken panes, garbage and scrap metal heaped up here and there in unkempt yards. Soon unmovable trailers with dusty windows alternate with crude wood cabins, done up with tires or tarps coated with tar, and (always ingenious) outdoor showers through a gleaming slotted spoon, a roof of nailed-on planks, one or two deboned mopeds in the grass, red, yellow, and blue plastic kids’ toys, an atmosphere of shacks on the verge of becoming junkyards, a smell of boiling iron, surprised insects bouncing off old axles, grilled instantly, no more children, no more shouts. This is the last section of the road now. Apparently uninhabited, not a soul in sight, but the forest like a bellows, the roots of young trees smashing the pavement open, grass infiltrating every corner and waist-high ferns on the sides of the road, the last huts, a tire-marked porn magazine forgotten on a stony berm, the last bits of trash, more cans, a bunched-up T-shirt, worn-out sneakers, finally a sign that indicates the viewpoint and Summer reaches a little bench graffitied with dicks and sexual insults, a phone number or two. She sits down, heart beating, out of breath, and suddenly discovers Coca silver-plating itself in the juvenile sun, on the other side of the river, the metallic brassiness of the financial district, the shattering whiteness of city hall and the bridge work site; she struggles to assemble the landscape, a light suffocation seizes her, a faintness she recognizes and she forces herself to breathe slowly, images pass – the Tiger who’s fallen off the face of the earth and whose eyes are disappearing, the Blondes who laugh on Skype with large movements of their hair, her father – she breathes deeper and deeper, thinking I’ve got to get a hold of myself, without being able to, submerged by her internal cacophony, displaced, unable to attune herself to what’s around her, she sways forwards, spits on the ground, finally closes her eyes. Then lifting her head again looks at Coca, looks at the edge. And suddenly enters the forest.

FIRST THE
undergrowth, penetrated by a multitude of wells of light, the coolness that falls into indistinct space, then darkness.

It’s night in here, a green and humid night, the clamour of a fairground. Summer is surprised that the path is so wide and the earth so well packed, traces of tires, of paws, of soles, soon she passes two children following each other on skateboards, is this the freeway or what? She feels good now, back on her feet after the weak-kneed episode at the viewpoint. Around her, sequoias like gigantic stakes, ferns in compact masses, fluorescent mosses that cushion the roots, long sharp sedges, and all over the embankment are black holes – Summer shudders, imagining putting a hand in there and the prehistoric beast that would bite it, a cross between a wild boar and a red-eyed otter, some kind of duck-billed platypus that she would be waking. Little by little the forest grows more dense, the light doesn’t pass through the canopy anymore, you’d think you were at the bottom of an aquarium, and actually Summer does hear the sounds of water, turn in the path, a stone shaped like a rocket that reminds her of the ones in the Bois de Vincennes, and immediately the acrid smell of a fire from a berm on the river, she goes closer, two guys, both standing with a stick in hand, are watching a patch of earth perforated with holes that let out smoke, the smell is heavy, bloody flesh is visible here and there under the screed of earth: Duane Fisher and Buddy Loo are smoking game, and chewing tobacco from their own harvest.

They recognize Summer who doesn’t recognize them but quickly spots, against their dark skin, the sparkling yellow bracelets they wear on their wrist, a plastic strip with a barcode, stamped with the company logo, beeped each morning at the entrance of the site, an open sesame. The two guys throw each other a look that says, what’s Miss Concrete doing coming over here? Can’t stay where she belongs, “on the other side of the wate
r”
? She’s got to turn up out of the blue, naively play the tourist? What is she deluding herself with? They all sit down cross-legged around the fire and munch on a nice piece of the meat, telling one another jokes, as though they weren’t one girl and two guys, one white and two others, a black guy and a Native, one senior exec on the bridge and two workers who aren’t even skilled, who were immediately assigned to cleaning out the canal; in other words, one engineer and two garbage collectors, so what does she want, coming to see them up close? Since when do white folks come and barbecue with blacks in this country? Buddy Loo is cautious. He’s had problems before – in January 2006, a Friday night, fifteen degrees below zero, a girl is passed out drunk in the parking lot of a bowling alley on Colfax, Woody’s, Buddy picks her up, she had thrown up on her cream-coloured down coat, her eyes are rolled back, he hoists her into his car, leans the seat back, thinks it over, gotta go to the hospital, no desire to keep this girl in a full-on alcoholic coma in my ride; later, at the hospital, he signs the forms and hits the road, but the next day the cops turn up at his place while he’s at school, search his room, twenty-seven dollars are missing from the girl’s wallet, when he gets home Buddy is nabbed, sent to the hole, held in custody, they verify that the girl hasn’t been raped, no, nothing, Buddy makes bail, a month in reform school and community service for stealing, he’s sixteen, swears he’ll find that girl again and roll her for real, once he’s out he starts hanging around the bowling alley again, one night that same bitch staggers out accompanied by a giant with a bull’s neck, empty eyes, they’ve been drinking, Buddy holds himself back from head-butting the girl right away – she can’t recognize him, of course – he springs up from the darkness between two big cars, pulls out a gun, threatens the two of them, the girl laughs and then cries when he orders them to get undressed, but for Christ’s sake keep your panties on, I don’t wanna see your little white asses, your snitchy asses, empty your pockets,
oh-ho
, forty-three dollaaars; makes a pile with the clothes and puts the two pairs of shoes on top, sprays it all with mineral spirits, strikes a match, and leaves them naked and poor, feet in the snow, he took off and never went back to the bowling alley on Colfax, they say there’s a price on his head, set by empty-eyed bullneck. So he tells himself he should limit his contacts. Summer intercepts their stare, clears her throat, asks where Sugar Falls is – to have something to ask ’cause she doesn’t know what to say, there’s nothing to say – she sputters, the smoke stings her eyes, Buddy Loo gestures limply towards the heart of the jungle without even looking at her, while Duane Fisher turns his back and throws stones harshly into the water. She’s not welcome here, no, not at all. Buddy Loo doesn’t make another move, silently uses a giant rhubarb leaf to ventilate the coals. Summer nods her head once more, bye, takes a step or two backwards and then turns and picks up the path once again, keeps moving forward because she can’t turn back now, the falls are there, she can hear them.