Birth of a Bridge by Maylis de Kerangal Read Free Book Online

dogs – at the service of his fellow citizens? He has ideas for Coca – he was elected and he’s a man who keeps his promises: he is John the benefactor.
    FROM THEN on, he commands the territory by ukase, walking slowly around the huge maquette of the city he’s had installed in the middle of his office – a general on a campaign planning strategies, that’s what he makes you think of – chest leaning over his scaled-down model, hands crossed behind his back, examining a portion of cardboard and then suddenly grabbing a wand and ordering an internet city here, a media city there, a shopping centre here – a maze of malls paved with porphyry and adorned with fountains and cappuccino kiosks – a multi-purpose stadium here, a skating rink in the shape of a flying saucer there, an underground multiplex with fifty rooms, a cinder track on the roof of a row of low-rise buildings, a casino under a glass bell. He wants transparency, plastic and polypropylene, rubber and melamine, all things provisional, consumable, disposable: everything must be mobile, light, convertible, and flexible. Supercharged, he devotes himself to the manipulation of giant Meccano that he reconfigures daily, intoxicated by the infinite scope of new formal possibilities, by the hubs he draws, by the work sites he carves out, by the activity centres he defines and positions on the map. He has only one idea left in mind: to pull Coca out of the provincial anonymity where it has been sleeping peacefully and convert it to the global economy. He wants to build the city of the third millennium, polyphonic and omnivorous, doped up on novelty, shaped for satisfaction, for pleasure, for the experience of consumption.
    AND YET there’s something that wounds his pride: isolated as it is, Coca’s energy is rationed and dependent upon the coastal cities. The investors have fled for this very reason – it’s impossible to squeeze development out of a stingy little dump with a tight-assed population where spending is watched so closely. Moreover, the oil tankers that supply the city and its few industrial sites only come grudgingly up the river to the storage tanks downstream – the Boa sees condescension in this – isn’t he paying them cash, for Christ’s sake? He fulminates, mulls things over – alone at first, because he’s convinced that his people are incapable of coming up with a single idea. One evening a documentary on biofuel is on TV. It’s a revelation – he’s hooked by the subject and proceeds to study it in depth. Corn grows abundantly in the valley, and Coca has thousands of acres of preserves – the high red plains and the forest, whose edges could be cleared out, plus the interior of the massif if the Natives “play the gam e” – just don’t screw us over, that’s all I ask of them – this is how the Boa talks to himself. At the end of a brisk council meeting held at the beginning of March, he decides to convert the city to ethanol. An independent port will be constructed upstream at the oxbow in the river, a terminal with the capacity to hold ships of all tonnages and the corollary refineries. Fuelled thus, the city will export the surplus of energy to the coast, reverse the trend and shine at the forefront of global eco strategies. Coca, the green city! The Boa rubs his hands together, delighted with his coup, he’s done well. Now he just needs a bridge. A bridge by which they can enter the forest and reach the fertile valleys southeast of the mountain range, a bridge to connect the city to Ocean Bay.
    The old Golden Bridge is in the crosshairs. The thing is narrow, it strangles traffic, causing irritation, middle fingers brandished through car windows, slowing the pace and putting business in peril. It doesn’t suffice. The Boa can’t even look at it anymore without flying into a rage. I want to be finished with the slow, the old, the broken down. I want it destroyed. I want it tossed in the trash, the rubbish; I want it