spreads his arms and makes circles in the air, he adds flatly: you’re responsible for feeding the site, Diamantis, you’re in charge of perpetual motion. Then he retracts the screen with a sharp movement the way you’d pull on a blind, turns off his computer, and circulates copies of a handout detailing phase one of construction. Since no one has spoken any questions aloud, everyone leans over their documents, comments to one another about the technical data, and then the surveyor confirms the plan measurements, the steward presents the menus for the first two weeks, they ask about beer at lunchtime – one 473 ml can per worker – and Diderot cuts them off, forget it, white with rage. Get out, all of you. Meeting’s over.
Summer Diamantis has only one idea in mind: to go see the mixing plant. Shuffling of papers, repositioning of chairs, she holds herself apart at the end of the table, dawdles, pretending to read over her notes, waits for the men to finish leaving the room, and now some of them turn towards her from the doorway, see you tomorrow, Diamantis! And ready to roll, eh, Diamantis!
IT’S ALMOST nine o’clock in the morning when she leaves the building and the heat takes her by surprise, the hot breath of it, and though nothing budges in the sky, a cushion of burning vapour grabs her by the nape, already she’s mopping her forehead. She sets off across the site, a hundred yards on the diagonal, rocky ground the colour of plaster, crunch of her steps in the silence; she continues past the cranes and the parked vehicles that gleam, the bluish sheds; steps over pairs of rails and goes round the water tanks; the earth smokes in her wake and quickly coats her ankles in a fine flour, not a living soul on this side, nothing, it’s crazy, she looks at her watch mechanically, thinks tomorrow at this time we will have started, continues on her way, throat tight, step growing firmer, silhouette precise against the backdrop of the tidy site, hand soon held as a visor at the level of her eyebrows; she speeds up, repeats Diderot’s words to herself, maxillae strained by a smile that clogs her mouth since she doesn’t open her lips (too restless, she too) – he’d said: the concrete, Diamantis, that’s your domain – she’d nodded her head in all seriousness, yes – the plant, the towers, the bins, the drums, all that, that’s you – his gesture was wide and his voice loud, he’d looked her deep in the eyes, he’d designated her place. All this, she sees it now that she’s reached the plant, all this takes up about a hundred yards by sixty – in other words, a fair portion of territory, edged by a quay on the river. Summer immediately begins to familiarize herself with the internal organization. Her eyes move from the river to the quay, from the quay to the giant mounds placed in the centre of the space – cement, gravel, sand – following the line of the conveyor belts that link the materials cone to the blood-orange concrete towers, notes the mixing buildings, walks past the control room, inspects each of the twelve mixing trucks, drums aligned neatly and ready to go, lingers by the recycling pit, the basins for water treatment and reuse of aggregate and waste concrete. Panoramic tracking shot, traffic plan, Summer takes in the validity of the organism: an open-air factory, a concrete factory. So all this is me?
IT’S UNDERSTANDABLE that she would have her doubts. Although the Coca bridge had selected her, Summer had not always been chosen. This contract redeemed in one fell swoop a particular event from her childhood, an event that was labelled a core trauma by a psychologist who coloured checkerboards on graph paper during their sessions: when her mother left, she took Summer’s little brother with her, in her arms, and left Summer behind. Not enough time for two children, not enough money either, not enough space in the one-bedroom apartment in the chic suburb of Saint-Raphaël where she was going
Summer Diamantis has only one idea in mind: to go see the mixing plant. Shuffling of papers, repositioning of chairs, she holds herself apart at the end of the table, dawdles, pretending to read over her notes, waits for the men to finish leaving the room, and now some of them turn towards her from the doorway, see you tomorrow, Diamantis! And ready to roll, eh, Diamantis!
IT’S ALMOST nine o’clock in the morning when she leaves the building and the heat takes her by surprise, the hot breath of it, and though nothing budges in the sky, a cushion of burning vapour grabs her by the nape, already she’s mopping her forehead. She sets off across the site, a hundred yards on the diagonal, rocky ground the colour of plaster, crunch of her steps in the silence; she continues past the cranes and the parked vehicles that gleam, the bluish sheds; steps over pairs of rails and goes round the water tanks; the earth smokes in her wake and quickly coats her ankles in a fine flour, not a living soul on this side, nothing, it’s crazy, she looks at her watch mechanically, thinks tomorrow at this time we will have started, continues on her way, throat tight, step growing firmer, silhouette precise against the backdrop of the tidy site, hand soon held as a visor at the level of her eyebrows; she speeds up, repeats Diderot’s words to herself, maxillae strained by a smile that clogs her mouth since she doesn’t open her lips (too restless, she too) – he’d said: the concrete, Diamantis, that’s your domain – she’d nodded her head in all seriousness, yes – the plant, the towers, the bins, the drums, all that, that’s you – his gesture was wide and his voice loud, he’d looked her deep in the eyes, he’d designated her place. All this, she sees it now that she’s reached the plant, all this takes up about a hundred yards by sixty – in other words, a fair portion of territory, edged by a quay on the river. Summer immediately begins to familiarize herself with the internal organization. Her eyes move from the river to the quay, from the quay to the giant mounds placed in the centre of the space – cement, gravel, sand – following the line of the conveyor belts that link the materials cone to the blood-orange concrete towers, notes the mixing buildings, walks past the control room, inspects each of the twelve mixing trucks, drums aligned neatly and ready to go, lingers by the recycling pit, the basins for water treatment and reuse of aggregate and waste concrete. Panoramic tracking shot, traffic plan, Summer takes in the validity of the organism: an open-air factory, a concrete factory. So all this is me?
IT’S UNDERSTANDABLE that she would have her doubts. Although the Coca bridge had selected her, Summer had not always been chosen. This contract redeemed in one fell swoop a particular event from her childhood, an event that was labelled a core trauma by a psychologist who coloured checkerboards on graph paper during their sessions: when her mother left, she took Summer’s little brother with her, in her arms, and left Summer behind. Not enough time for two children, not enough money either, not enough space in the one-bedroom apartment in the chic suburb of Saint-Raphaël where she was going
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