Free Birth of a Bridge by Maylis de Kerangal Page B

BRIDGE, THE FIRST morning. Polaroid dawn. Blacks that lighten and whites that get darker, progressive pigmentation of all the greens – fluorescent, emerald, pistachio, olive, forest, lime, turquoise, Wrigley’s Doublemint, spinach and malachite, chartreuse and mint cream – becoming fixed on the retina, and the river is there, supple, calm folds, long fluorescent grasses stretching out on the surface, thickets drift, as do cans and bottles: the water is milky and dirty.
    Diderot has walked around the perimeter of the Pontoverde platform which is his domain from now on, a surface of two square miles, cleared out, asphalted, open to the river via a long empty quay and striated with rails that link hangars, workshops, maintenance and repair shops, team facilities, engineering offices, cafeterias, and locker rooms. And now he’s smoking a Lusitania. In profile he really does have a big nose, a prominent chest; his Ray-Bans are pushed up on his forehead and his shirt is untucked, he’s ready to go, he’s exactly in his element, and at the bottom of his pocket his hand taps a secret tempo. It’s the peak hour, the hour before all hands on deck, the hour of silence before battle, and the moment the skier stands poised at the top of a steep run – evaluate the slope before launching forward, visualize the route, go over the difficulties, the turns, the bumps, the hollows, the patch of black ice just after the twelfth gate, take note of possible acceleration zones, the exact flexion of the knees needed to jump and then glide on the last curve, the exact thrust of the chest, balance of the head, position of the arms – the hour of meteorological worry, and Diderot has his preferences, knows what he needs: continental climate, dry and rough winters, hot summers. For a man like him, there’s nothing worse than rain, wind, and storms – nothing worse than mud.
    ON THE OTHER side of the gates, the men are already waiting. The newcomers and the local workforce, silent types with hair in side parts, cigarettes dangling, clean hands, and lunch boxes tucked under their arms, guys in tracksuits, baseball caps front to back, visors at the neck or a hood hanging between the shoulder blades, young guys with cheap sneakers, a handful of women – but it’s confirmed that there are no kids there, contrary to the rumour and the alerts from international organizations. Among them, in priority, are Natives aggregated in groups of three or four, solid, with closed faces, hired in large numbers since they’re immune to vertigo and used to the climate, to parasites, familiar with the terrain because they’re at home – the Boa had ordered their presence on-site, a neutralizing strategy. Of what awaits them, they know little. The unemployed Natives who had applied had asked about the qualifications to emphasize – which ones? And the hiring agent, the one who typed the names into the computer before handing over magnetic ID badges that allow them access to the site when swiped through the time clock, had pinched his biceps: qualifications, my darling, involve three things: muscle, muscle, and more muscle. No one had laughed, and everyone had showed up.
    When the doors open, they move forward onto the site like a Roman tortoise. There are nearly eight hundred of them. Mo Yun is there, ready, a clean T-shirt over his hollow chest and miner’s glasses around his neck, he looks all around him, trying to imitate those who surround him – only knows the words that ricochet off of kitchen sinks – and floats in the crowd like he floats in his blue-collar overalls nabbed at a thrift store for fifty cents, standing on tiptoe, head back so he can breathe more easily, so light that the human mass lifts him from the ground and moves him, so thin that he’s carried along by the crowd, and among others by Duane Fisher and Buddy Loo, who force their way forward a few feet from him, don’t want to let themselves be pushed around, outdistanced – the