Fiction France n°2 (version anglaise)

Twenty new French-language writers to be read and translated

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© John Foley

foreword

For the use of all publishers who take the risk of editing contemporary fiction, Fiction France aims to create a new burst of enthusiasm for English translations of contemporary French literature, to be a “showcase” for English-speaking professionals around the world and to give indispensable support to the French book market abroad. It is a tool which fully reflects the purpose of culturesfrance.

Twice a year Fiction France publishes a selection of extracts of French fiction along with their English translation. The extracts are taken from books that French publishers wish to promote to publishing houses, translators or foreign agents abroad. Please do not hesitate to contact the Foreign Rights Representatives of one of the publishing houses whose details appear on the introductory page of each text.

How can you take part in Fiction FRANCE ?

A selection of 16 to 20 titles are compiled in cooperation with the Publications and the Written Word department of culturesfrance, the staff in the foreign rights departments of the French publishing houses and the staff of the book offices in London and New York—Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs.

Olivier Poivre d’Arvor director of culturesfrance

What are the selection criteria?

• The book must be French-language fiction (novel, short story, narration).

• Recent or forthcoming publication (maximum of 12 months before the publication of Fiction France).

How should work be submitted?

• The publishers should submit the book/draught/ manuscript. They will themselves have selected an extract of 10,000 to 15,000 characters.

• Every entry should be accompanied by a commentary, a biographical note and the bibliography of the author (maximum of 1,500 characters).

• Two printed examples of every proposed work will be sent to culturesfrance.

Next deadline for submitting texts: 30th May 2008 Next publication date of Fiction France: 30th September 2008

CULTURESFRANCE is the cultural exchange operator of the French Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs and the French Ministry of Culture and Communication.

Fiction France is disseminated free of charge through the French cultural network to its partners and to book industry professionals around the world.

Fiction France is also available on line at www.culturesfrance.com

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contents

p. 8

p. 13

Philippe Besson

Lisa Bresner

The Accidental Man 8.29 a.m.

Publisher: Éditions Julliard Date of Publication: January 2008 Foreign Rights Manager: Greg Messina

Publisher: Actes Sud Junior Date of Publication: March 2008 Foreign Rights Manager:

gmessina@robert-laffont.fr Translation: Frank Wynne info@frankwynne.com

Johanna Brock-Lacassin j.brock-lacassin@actes-sud.fr Translation: Sophie Leighton s.leighton@clara.co.uk

p. 20

p. 27

Sorj Chalandon

Pierre Charras

My Traitor

A Few Shadows

Publisher: Grasset Date of Publication: January 2008 Foreign Rights Manager: Heidi Warneke

Publisher: Le Dilettante Date of Publication: October 2007 Foreign Rights Manager: Claude Tarrène

hwarneke@grasset.fr

claude.tarrene@ledilettante.com

Translation: John Fletcher

Translation: Ian Monk

jwjf@kent.ac.uk

ian.monk@wanadoo.fr

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p. 34

p. 43

p. 49

Stéphane Denis

Éric Faye

Lionel Froissart

A too Perfect Spy

The Man with no Prints

Publisher: Fayard Date of Publication: January 2008 Foreign Rights Manager: Anna Lindblom

Publisher: Stock Date of Publication: January 2008 Foreign Rights Manager:

Boxers Always Come to a Bad End …

Usually

alindblom@editions-fayard.fr Translation: Howard Curtis curtis9@talktalk.net

Barbara Porpaczy bporpaczy@editions-stock.fr Translation: Paul Buck & Catherine Petit paul@paulbuck.co.uk

p. 55

p. 60

p. 66

Pascal Garnier

Serge Joncour

Linda Lê

The Panda Theory

How Many Ways I Love You

In Memoriam

Publisher: Zulma Date of Publication: January 2008 Foreign Rights Manager: Laure Leroy

Publisher: Flammarion Date of Publication: March 2008 Foreign Rights Manager:

Publisher: Christian Bourgois Date of Publication: August 2007 Foreign Rights Manager:

laure.leroy@zulma.fr Translation: Will Hobson willhobson@hotmail.com

Patricia Stansfield pstansfield@flammarion.fr Translation: Adriana Hunter adriana@hunter157.freeserve.co.uk

Raphaëlle Liebaert raphaelle.liebaert-bourgoisediteur@ orange.fr Translation: Lulu Norman lp.fn@virgin.net

Publisher: Éditions Héloïse d’Ormesson Date of Publication: October 2007 Foreign Rights Manager: Sarah Hirsch

sarah@editions-heloisedormesson.com Translation: David Macey davidmacey18@btinternet.com

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p. 72

p. 79

p. 84

Mathieu Lindon

Véronique Ovaldé

Yves Pagès

My Heart Alone is Not Enough

And my Transparent Heart

So-called

Publisher: P.O.L. Date of Publication: January 2008 Foreign Rights Manager: Vibeke Madsen

Publisher: Éditions de l’Olivier Date of Publication: January 2008 Foreign Rights Manager:

Publisher: Verticales Date of Publication: January 2008 Foreign Rights Manager:

madsen@pol-editeur.fr Translation: Sophie Lewis sophie_l@fastmail.fm

Jennie Dorny (mail to Françoise Guyon) f.guyon@seuil.com Translation: Adriana Hunter adriana@hunter157.freeserve.co.uk

Anne-Solange Noble anne-solange.noble@gallimard.fr Translation: Trista Selous trista.selous@btinternet.com

p. 90

p. 96

p. 103

Katherine Pancol

Yves Ravey

Charles Robinson

The Slow Tortoise Waltz

Bambi Bar

The Genius of Pimping

Publisher: Albin Michel Date of Publication: March 2008 Foreign Rights Manager:

Publisher: Éditions de Minuit Date of Publication: January 2008 Foreign Rights Manager:

Publisher: Éditions du Seuil Date of Publication: January 2008 Foreign Rights Manager:

Solène Chabanais solene.chabanais@albin-michel.fr Translation: Catherine Spencer catherinemarielouise@hotmail.co.uk

Catherine Vercruyce direction@leseditionsdeminuit.fr Translation: Louise Lalaurie Rogers lalaurie.rogers@gmail.com

Jennie Dorny (mail to Françoise Guyon) f.guyon@seuil.com Translation: Sophie Lewis sophie_l@fastmail.fm

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p. 111

p. 117

Frédéric Roux

Boualem Sansal

The Indian Winter

The German’s Village

Publisher: Grasset Date of Publication: December 2007 Foreign Rights Manager: Heidi Warneke

Publisher: Gallimard Date of Publication: January 2008 Foreign Rights Manager:

hwarneke@grasset.fr Translation: Carla Calimani carla_calimani@hotmail.com

Anne-Solange Noble anne-solange.noble@gallimard.fr Translation: Ros Schwartz schwartz@btinternet.com

p. 123

p. 127

Michaël Sebban

Claire Wolniewicz

Padlock in the Yehuda Market

In that Moment

Publisher: Hachette Littératures Date of Publication: March 2008 Foreign Rights Manager: Virginie Rouxel

Publisher: Éditions Viviane Hamy Date of Publication: January 2008 Foreign Rights Manager: Julie Galante

vrouxel@hachette-livre.fr Translation: Joséphine Bacon bacon@langservice.com

julie.galante@viviane-hamy.fr Translation: Imogen Forster imogen.forster@talktalk.net

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Philippe Besson

Date of Publication: January 2008 Foreign Rights Manager: Greg Messina gmessina@robert-laffont.fr Translation: Frank Wynne info@frankwynne.com

© Laurent Mauger

The Accidental Man

Publisher: Éditions Julliard

Biography

Philippe Besson was born in January 29, 1967 in Barbezieux in the Charente. In 1989, he moved to Paris where he began a career as a jurist and a professor of law. Not until 1999 did he write his first novel, In The Absence of Men, published by Juillard in January 2001 (in June of that year, it was awarded the Prix Emmanuel-Roblès by the Académie Goncourt). His second novel Son Frère was published in August 2001 and adapted for cinema by Patrice Chéreau in 2002. The film won the Silver Bear at the 2003 Berlin Film Festival.

Publications Se résoudre aux adieux, 2007 ; Un instant d’abandon, 2005 ; Les Jours fragiles, 2004 ; Un garçon d’Italie, 2003 ; L’Arrière-saison, 2002 (grand prix rtl-Lire 2003).

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Philippe Besson subverts the thriller to create a novel which explores the violent emotions which bind two people from very different worlds.

One is a workaday Los Angeles cop, the other one of Hollywood’s leading men, an actor worshipped by the public and hounded by the press and the paparazzi. Ordinarily these two men would never have met. But when the body of a teenage rent-boy is discovered in one of the most fashionable LA neighbourhoods, their worlds collide and an investigation which begins as a game of cat-and-mouse, becomes one of obsession, of smoke and mirrors, in which much more is revealed than simply whodunit.

This is not simply a murder investigation but a startling and searing love story in which passion leads the lovers to take ever more deadly risks. Behind their pretence, both straight-laced

cop and successful actor are lonely and vulnerable men, who find themselves unexpectedly, inexorably drawn to each other. How can these men — archetypes of a certain American masculinity, come to terms with the unthinkable, and how long can any love survive on the margins of the law.

In this homage to Hollywood, laden with allusions and visual references, Besson’s writing had never been more cinematographic.

Part film noir part road movie, An Accidental Man is also the story of Los Angeles, a mythical city where the glaring California sun blazes down on Lavish villas, on no-star Venice Beach motels and the wild pacific coast, exposing the underbelly of the Hollywood dream.

This is a novel of contrasts where dark secrets and sordid crime are tempered by the discovery of a love which transforms men and forces them to confront their true selves.

e told me to take a seat, and sat on a sofa opposite me. His jeans were ripped at the knees. I don’t know why, but for a minute, I found myself staring at his knees. He didn’t look as young as I’d expected. I suppose he wasn’t the teenage boy I still remembered.

There wasn’t much between us. Six years.

He picked up the pack of cigarettes that lay between us on the table and held it out. I shook my head and told him if he wanted to smoke, it didn’t bother me, but he put the pack down again without taking one. I looked up at him and in a neutral voice I said: “I’m here to talk about Billy Greenfield.”

That first time, I mean the first time I saw him standing there, half asleep and staggeringly handsome, like some relic from my past, I didn’t feel anything, swear to God. It would be easy to think everything happened in that split-second, that with that first look, that first handshake, my life was turned upside down. But it wasn’t.

Obviously, that was when it started. That was the moment when the machine roared into life, this machine we don’t know how to stop, but you’ve got to realise that, at that moment we don’t know, we have no idea anything is starting, we are still innocent, ingenuous. We don’t realise that we are putting our hands into a machine that will destroy us. It’s easy to ne a Monday morning quarterback. Me, I’ll stick to telling it like it happened. I don’t need to spin it.

Anyway, how the hell could we have known what was going to happen?

It came out of nowhere, this thing, came right out of left field. If anyone had told us what was going to happen, we wouldn’t have believed them. We might have laughed if off, maybe we’d have flipped out, but we would never have admitted it. It was beyond us. It didn’t fit in with our plans, with what we knew about ourselves. It was beyond reason, beyond belief.

I’ve heard people talk about being repressed, being in denial. I guess it

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happens, I guess I’ve been there. But back then, on June 17, 1990, I wasn’t in denial, you can’t deny something you don’t know. Period.

Actually, it was Jack who figured it out first. He was way ahead of me. After all, his life had him better for this thing. He knew about confusion, about self-doubt, he knew about the flashes of truth, the break-ups, the rifts, the obsessions, all that stuff. My life had always been pretty black and white, I just got on with things, I was in no hurry. That’s my excuse.

I suppose when I say ‘that’s my excuse’ people might get the wrong idea. Fuck ‘em. I don’t give a shit now. I haven’t come this far, haven’t given up on everything I once believed in, haven’t come through this shit-storm to be eaten up by guilt now.

So, anyway, I don’t really remember much about that first meeting. Oh, sure, I can reconstruct the scene, that’s my job — it’s kind of an occupational hazard.

I can remember pretty much how I felt, but what I remember is that I didn’t really feeling anything in particular, I didn’t feel uncomfortable, I didn’t feel shaky. Like I said, all that came later.

“It’s just routine,” I reassured him, “I’m investigating a murder. You weren’t a witness, and obviously you’re not a suspect, it’s just we found your name in the victim’s address book, so I need to ask you a couple of questions.” “Anything I can do to help, officer” he said solemnly, just like they do on the cops shows on TV. When he stopped speaking, his jaw pushed out his cheek. I didn’t think anything of it. Nobody feels comfortable being with a cop in the room, specially when he’s dragging a dead body into the conversation.

I went in hard. “Billy Greenfield. Name mean anything to you?” He paused for a bit, like he was trying to remember, he didn’t move his head, but he was staring at the ceiling. Eventually he said, “No, lieutenant, don’t think I’ve ever heard of him.” He shifted his jaw again, making his face look thinner.

“Well, the vic’ sure knew you,” I bluffed, “seeing as how he had your number and all.” “A lot of people go out of their way to get my number,” he shot back, “Journalists and fans for a start. You wouldn’t believe the number of calls I get from people I’ve never even met.” It was a plausible answer. Only problem was, it sounded liked he’d rehearsed it. Anyway, I didn’t think details like that were going to be important. Right now, all I needed was a statement.

I carried on ‘without deviating from my apparent impartiality’ (one of McGill’s favourite phrases): “Can you confirm that you did not meet with Billy Greenfield at half-past seven two nights ago?” He replied ‘without deviating’ from his studied composure: “Sure, I can confirm that.” I didn’t know if we were playing cat and mouse, but it sure felt like it.

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I lowered my voice: “Sorry if this sounds a little blunt, but have you ever had any — um, dealings — with prostitutes?” I asked, deliberately using a word that might refer to both men and women. He stiffened, rocked back in his seat and gave a loud unconvincing laugh. “No, lieutenant,” he said, “I’ve got everything I need. I don’t want to sound smug but, well, I don’t need to resort to that sort of… thing… if I need company,” I nodded, remembering the anorexic redhead by the pool. “Sure,” I said, “I get it.”

“You ever used narcotics?” I asked. “You gonna slap the cuffs on me if I say yes?” “No,” I said, “this is off the record.” “In that case,” he said, “Yeah, sometimes. But I don’t score from your dealer Mr Greenfield.” “I don’t remember mentioning that he was a dealer,” I said. He picked up the pack of cigarettes and lit one. I watched as he cupped his hand round the lighter as if to protect the flame and I wondered if his other hand, the hand holding the lighter, was shaking.

Philippe Besson

The Accidental Man

He looked me straight in the eye, his expression hard and pained. Was he pissed at himself for saying to much? Pissed at me for ambushing him? Right then, I couldn’t know that he was simply disappointed because I had reacted like a cop. He told me later that even then he’d been expecting something different from me. We weren’t in the same ballpark.

“I won’t keep you any longer,” I said, “Like I said, just routine.” I stood up quickly. He was clearly surprised by my abruptness, by the shortness of the interview. He took a moment before got to his feet and mumbled. “Are you sure you’ve got everything you need?” I nodded and held out my hand to say goodbye. Again, he took a moment to react, visibly unsettled. Did he think my briskness meant I thought he was a suspect? “I’ll see you out,” he suggested.

“That’s okay, I’ll see myself out.” I said and left him standing there in the middle of his living room. I still wonder why.

That night, as I closed the door to our apartment, I called Laura, called out her name and from the kitchen heard her voice answer “I’m in here!”. She was busy doing something at the sink, I pressed myself against her back, wrapped my arms round her waist and hugged her to me for a long time. My tenderness surprised her, she wasn’t used to me being affectionate. Silently, I buried my face in her neck, feeling her tense in my arms, still amazed to find my hugging her. Probably figured the investigation was getting to me, figured I needed to put it out of my mind. We are at out most abandoned when we hug.

We had pasta for dinner. Laura was a mean cook when it came to pasta. Probably a touch of Dago blood in her somewhere. I probably shouldn’t say shit like that, but she does make great pasta. Do you need to be Italian to be able to cook pasta? We drank some lousy wine. Laura didn’t know much about choosing

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wine, it had become a bit of a private joke. Sometimes I’d tell her it took real talent to find the most undrinkable wine in the store. We joked about it. I didn’t tell her about Jack. Thinking back, I realise these were our last untroubled times together.

We made love. I loved my wife’s body, her soft skin, the curve of her breasts, the arch of her hips, the way she moaned. Before I met her, I’d been a selfconscious lover, always quick to get it over with. She taught me to take things slowly, to be attentive. I didn’t realise her lessons would serve me well.

I woke up the next morning still running over the investigation in my head.

There was no panic. So far, everything had gone according to plan. We’d done everything by the book. The police academy would have been proud to see how faithfully I held to the principles I learned there. The only trouble was, we weren’t getting anywhere, and I was starting to think I had missed something, overlooked some essential piece of the puzzle. Laura noticed I was edgy, and laid her head on my chest. Did she notice my heart beating fit to burst?

I kissed her on the doorstep. She wasn’t due in at the bookshop until about ten, so she had time. I left her in that strange state of temporary enforced idleness.

She smiled and closed the door after me.

On the way to work, I looked up through the fronds of the palm trees trying to make out the white clapboard villas in the hills and thinking about the avenue lined with eucalyptus that led to Jack’s place. I wanted to go back, but I had no justification. I had to put it out of my mind.

When I got to the precinct, McGill was waiting for me. He set down a mug of java on my desk and coolly, without looking at me, like he didn’t want to see my reaction, like he already knew how I’d react, he said: “Jack Bell called. Got something he wants to tell you. Asked if you’d swing by. I said you would.”

Some days, I miss him so much it’s unbearable. I wake up cramps in my stomach, my throat burning like I want to throw up and I rush for the john and spend fifteen minutes with my head in the bowl staring at the porcelain and the stagnant water waiting for it to come, but nothing comes, except tears, sometimes. Yeah, sometimes tears drip down against the porcelain, I don’t even try to stop them.

What would people think if they could see me there, butt-naked, huddled on the bathroom floor, utterly humiliated, broken, beaten? Would they pity me if they saw me like this, would they help me, slip their hands under my arms and haul me to my feet again? Or would they be embarrassed by my humiliation, maybe think I brought it all on myself after all? Would they leave me slumped here, alone and desolate, my body racked with shivers the only proof that I am still alive.

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Lisa Bresner

8.29 a.m.

Publisher: Actes Sud Junior Date of Publication: March 2008 Foreign Rights Manager: Johanna Brock-Lacassin j.brock-lacassin@actes-sud.fr

© Lisa Bresner

Translation: Sophie Leighton s.leighton@clara.co.uk

Biography

Lisa Bresner was born in 1971. She was brought up in the world of showbiz from childhood by her mother and her grandmother. She published her first novel at the age of nineteen. She learnt Chinese and Japanese when she was twelve years old. But what was she going to do with this knowledge of China and Japan? Dancer, director and actress … She did not know how to choose nor want to do everything at the same time. So she combined all her passions by becoming a writer and publishing around forty books about them. Lisa Bresner died in July 2007.

Publications Published by Actes Sud Junior: Le Voyage de Mao-Mi, 2006; Mélilotus et le Cavalier sans visage, 2005; Lily-Rose au pays des mangas, 2004; Mélilotus et le Mystère de Goutte-Sèche, 2003; Le Secret d’un prénom, 2003; Les Dix Soleils amoureux des douze lunes, 2001; Un rêve pour toutes les nuits, 1999.

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8.29 a.m., Lisa Bresner’s posthumous novel, ‘an agonising story of youth’, conveys the fascination exercised over her by the Japanese lifestyle — particularly of secondary school pupils — and culture.

It reveals the influences of manga literature and the cinema of Takeshi Kitano (the name of one of the novel’s characters). The book forms a joyful kaleidoscope in which characters, destinies and themes interweave and combine.

Twin news items. A baby, abandoned in some left luggage lockers at the station in Nantes, manages to survive thanks to the presence of Fumiko, a pregnant young Japanese woman. Seventeen years later in Kyoto, Fumiko’s daughter is crushed by the gates of her secondary school because she did not arrive at 8.30 a.m. precisely.

Was it an accident or a crime? The abandoned baby has grown up and is called Louisa. The person who should have died is going in search of the person who should not have been killed.

ain is not yet falling on Nantes.

It is the last night of the funfair.

Autumn leaves are lying everywhere.

A lone mother is taking her seven-year-old boy over to a shooting gallery. Balloons of all colours are blowing about behind the bars. The rifles are all ready, lined up like long leather-clad miniature women. The little boy tugs his mother along by her dress. Beyond the shooting galleries, she has noticed Madame Violetta’s wooden caravan. She has never dared consult a clairvoyant — “Who? How? And afterwards …”

She gives her child a coin and fondles the note that is about to reveal her future.

The child wants to win and burst all the balloons. She is still beautiful but weary of feeling she has lost touch with the present. The child smiles because he knows in spite of his youth that she has nothing more to lose.

The mother can already hear Madame Violetta saying: “Take the cards …

Think of your question and cut!”

She pictures the gypsy woman telling her: “Yes, there’s a man who loves you; he’s waiting for you …” The gypsy doesn’t open her caravan door. An old woman shouts through the window that she has gone away. “Madame Violetta is going to be a long time. You’d better come back next spring!”

The mother nods, taking this in, fondles the note in her pocket and translates it into several merry-go-round rides for her son. In the end, the only one who loves her …

That is all she really needs to know. Just her own hand and his five fingers that speak to her as a book does to the wind.

“Mummy, I’ve won!”

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The fairground man whistles through his teeth. Some of them are gold-capped.

“What do you want, young man?”

The child is staring at a drum. It is hanging from the stand on a pretty red string. The child watches the man’s hands untie the string that will provide him with his prize.

“Do you like your drum?”, asks the mother.

The child nods; he is happy but he is looking the other way. Near the dodgems, he sees a Japanese woman crying silently. On her pale skin, the tears look like tiny crescent moons.

“Stop it, Fumiko!”

The child hears the voice of the Frenchman who is hurting the Japanese woman.

“But Jean, why didn’t you say anything to me before?”

Fumiko’s question goes unanswered. Jean runs his hand through his hair and taps his left foot in the dust. Fumiko follows him, head bowed, hands in her raincoat pockets, a small bag hanging from her right wrist.

“Come along, darling; it’s late now”.

The mother leads the child along as he beats his drum softly in time with Fumiko’s steps as she walks away and, for a few more moments, follows the person who is leaving her.

Lisa Bresner

8.29 a.m.

People start looking in different directions, and a thousand meetings die as soon as they are born. The big wheel of the funfair turns in the night like a multi-coloured eye.

Madame Violetta is breathing hard. Behind her, the hysterical cries from the merry-go-rounds are gradually dying down. She has put on her black sequinembroidered dress and placed a knitted shawl over her shoulders, and she is walking towards the station with a bundle of white laundry in her arms. Her hair is long, her lips are red and her hands are gripping the bundle of white laundry as if it were the full moon that she had to carry into the night.

She crosses through the traffic without once turning her head. The car headlights are shining on her legs and the rustle of her dress. Madame Violetta walks straight on and goes into the station.

A few metres behind her, Fumiko is sitting opposite Jean. They have ordered two coffees. Fumiko has taken off her raincoat, and her arms are pretty in her 1950s dress, but she is shivering as she plays with the packet of sugar she has left unopened. Jean is watching the travellers as they come and go.

“When you love, you have to leave”, he tells himself silently. No, Fumiko can’t understand an expression like that. He can no longer remember which sailor taught it to him …

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Fumiko is telling herself that her mother in Kyoto had been right. “You’ll see”, she had warned her before she left for Nantes, “we Japanese women are used to separation from a very early age. A relationship has scarcely begun before we start thinking about saying goodbye. This may be why we laugh whenever we can”.

Fumiko drinks a sip of cold coffee and forces a laugh. She covers her mouth with her hand. Only a month ago Jean was so fond of this gesture that he would gently move away her fingers to slide his mouth there and kiss her. Fumiko lets her hand melt on her chin, smudging a bit of lipstick on to her skin. Jean is no longer looking at her; his mind is already on his boats …

“Look, this is my address in Japan if you want any news of …”

With one hand, she touches her belly and with the other she holds out a small piece of paper that trembles between her fingers like a butterfly.

“Listen, Fumiko, I never wanted a child … Take care of yourself ”.

Jean gets up and leaves the station café. His long sailor’s coat floats in the distance like a ghost of love.

Fumiko watches him disappear into the throng of people leaving and arriving. It is over now and everything is beginning, she thinks, slipping her address into her pocket. She takes a sip of cold coffee and sees the gypsy moving towards the toilets with her white bundle. She notices that the lady from the caravans has wet hair and realises that night has fallen and that rain is falling on Nantes.

The lines by Izumi Shikibu, the poetess from 1000 ad, spring immediately to mind: Shinoburan mono to mo shirade ono ga tada mi o shiru ame to omiokeru kana.

“The weapons of your desire were truly obscure to me! I believed my life sorrows were known only to the rain.”

The gypsy woman has disappeared into the toilets.

Fumiko throws a few coins on to the table and goes over to the departure board in time with these two words: “the weapons of your desire”… Weapondesire-weapon. She has never felt such a strong desire to burst open her belly and have done with it as on that stormy night. But there is the tiny life that is pulsing below the belt of her dress … In the suitcase that she deposited at the left luggage office is her father’s sword. “I’ll go to the top of the butte SainteAnne and I’ll slice open my womb in the arms of the statue that points its white finger towards the Loire”, Fumiko tells herself.

In the station toilets, Madame Violetta has put her bundle of white laundry in the washbasin. Some raindrops are emerging from her still-wet hair and melting on the cloth that instantly absorbs them. There is a shudder, a scarcely perceptible jolt, but the gypsy knows everything and is breathing for two. She is clasping the bundle tightly to her chest. Her heels clatter like a metronome pendulum.

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In the left luggage office, she waits for some sailors to go. Locker 29; why this number? Yes, she will take twenty-nine steps before jumping from the butte Sainte-Anne and the river will bear her away.

Her movements are as calm as final heat-waves, although the sweat is running along her temples and multiplying in cascades like eels growing out of her head.

Lisa Bresner

The locker door is closed, the bundle is inside and the ticket is lying on the ground. There is no longer anyone around when Fumiko enters the left luggage office.

8.29 a.m.

She takes a ticket out of her small bag, and notices the one that is flickering on the ground. She picks it up and looks at the number. Behind her a cry rings out — tears and shouts from the newborn baby. Fumiko looks at the number and her eyes widen in terror. Locker 29, her cheek quivers, she presses her ear to it. She can hear, there on the other side of the steel, the little life that is beginning and fading in suffocation.

Fumiko rushes towards her locker and takes out an old suitcase. The baby’s cries burst out again. Fumiko imagines the little limbs struggling in the darkness of its prison and takes her father’s long sword out of her suitcase. The thin curved blade grinds the slit in the locker. With both hands on the hilt, Fumiko perseveres at the opening mechanism. On the other side of the door, the cries stop. Fumiko drives her sword in harder than ever. With a sound like a gunshot, the blade gives way. The locker is still closed like an inviolable tomb and the sword has snapped in two.

Fumiko calls from a phone connected to the emergency services.

The silence behind door number 29 is terrifying her. She drops her broken sword and moves her mouth towards the steel door. From the depths of her childhood rises an ageless voice that sang her a lullaby to the turn of a silk spinning-wheel. Nen nen okororiyo, boyawa yoikoda nenneshina, boyano komoriwa dokoe it ta? Anoyama koete satoe it ta. Sato no miyage ni nani morata. Denden taikoni sho no fue Sho no fue …“Sleep, go to sleep. Sleep, my child. You’re a good child. Sleep now. Do you know where your nurse has gone? She’s gone back to the village.

She’ll be back soon. What will she bring for baby when she comes back? A beautiful flute. And a thundering drum. And a thundering drum …”

Fumiko’s voice falls silent; she can no longer hear anything from the other side, but inside her body she has felt something move, like a feather drifting.

The first movements of the tiny life that is beginning and the last of the other life that is ending.

“Madam, stand up again.”

The superintendent signs to his deputies to help her.

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The doctors arrive, and the head doctor; everyone is asking questions at once. Fumiko takes a red scarf with a white flower from her pocket and bursts into sobs. The superintendent lights a cigarette.

“Madam, did you see anything?”

Fumiko draws her scarf tight on her mouth to stifle her tears and watches the head doctor placing his stethoscope on the locker door.

“How long has he been shut in there, Madam?”

Fumiko slides back on to her heels and curls up in a ball.

“I think she doesn’t understand anything”, the superintendent tells the doctor. “Take her outside.”

Two policemen support Fumiko, who goes along with them like a floppy puppet.

In front of the station are some police cars and an ambulance; the headlights glare, the sirens cry and Fumiko starts reeling with vertigo. Some hands are putting a blanket over her; others are passing her a cup of water. The crowd has stopped in front of the station; some people are watching through the bay window. Among the onlookers, the mother and her child with the drum are waiting for the final instalment.

“What’s going on?”, a man asks her.

The mother turns her gaze towards the stranger. She does not know, but she feels such a strong urge to reply to that man. That is how they start talking to each other and the mother does not feel her son letting go of her hand. The little boy with the drum has recognised the Japanese woman from the funfair.

“She was crying just a moment ago’, he says to himself, “and now she’s drinking from her cup, not with just one hand but with both hands like me …”

The superintendent stubs out his cigarette on the floor. Ready to force the door, the doctors are waiting for the signal.

“Something more?” The superintendent asks an officer. The officer switches off his walkie-talkie.

“There’s a report in that a woman of about forty has thrown herself off the butte Sainte-Anne …”

The superintendent gives the head doctor the signal to force open the locker.

“Suicide?”

“So it seems”, replies the officer.

“Dead?” The officer nods, his eyes riveted to the steel that the doctors are now forcing with their instruments. The head doctor reaches inside, picks up the newborn baby and runs towards the ambulance.

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In spite of the rain, all the passers-by remain motionless. Alone, Fumiko walks over to the ambulance and gives the piece of paper with her address and her red scarf to the head doctor.

She notices the small bundle of white laundry half-unrolled on the stretcher.

The head doctor is about to close the doors and carry away with him the abandoned baby’s fate.

Fumiko stands on tiptoes to look at him one more time. Inside the baby’s hand, she sees some ink marks, six letters: Louisa.

Lisa Bresner

8.29 a.m.

A few months later, in a hospital ward, Fumiko sees the large red portico of Kumano temple from her window.

She smiles and turns towards her baby.

He is wearing small striped pyjamas like a sailor suit. She had not been able to resist buying this outfit in the children’s department on the fourth floor of the shopping centre. In three months’ time, she will take her pram in the lift and this time she will go to the top floor. At the top of the shopping centre is a swimming-pool covered with a glass dome. People swim there with a view of the sacred mountains.

“Yes”, Fumiko thinks to herself, “I’ll sign up for those baby swimming classes … You’ll see, up to nine months, you’ll have all the apnoea reflexes and you’ll be able to swim underwater without drowning …”

The door opens, and a photographer comes in.

“Good day, Mrs Yamada, I won’t disturb you”. Fumiko sits up straight and smiles.

“I’m Jirô … I’m a bit early, sorry.”

“That’s all right”, Fumiko replies.

Jirô’s wide forehead and fleshy lips remind her of the cherries she had eaten with Jean on a beach in Piriac. They spat out the stones taking aim at limpets clinging to the granite of a house they would never be able to afford.

Jirô sets up the tripod and camera, and checks the light. Fumiko notices that he is wearing a sort of black lace round his wrist.

“What’s that handsome little boy’s name?”, he asks behind his viewfinder.

Fumiko takes off the pyjama hood and the baby gives a small sigh.

“It’s a girl, she’s called Eimi, and just look at her eyes — how bright they are!”

Jirô turns round his lens and then, surprised, leaves his gear to look Eimi straight in the eye, eyeball to iris.

“I know”, says Fumiko, “it’s unusual. Her father was French …”

Jirô leans over briefly and gives a sidelong smile. Behind his viewfinder, he methodically begins to take shots, but some beads of sweat are running from his temples and freezing his skin.

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Sorj Chalandon

My Traitor

Publisher: Grasset Date of Publication: January 2008 Foreign Rights Manager: Heidi Warneke hwarneke@grasset.fr

© Patrick Swirc

Translation: John Fletcher jwjf@kent.ac.uk

Biography Sorj Chalandon, fifty-four, worked as a journalist on the newspaper Libération for thirty years, covering both everyday stories and major events such as the Lebanese civil war, Chad, the Bhopal accident, Somalia, Afghanistan, the Iran-Iraq war and the first Gulf War. In 1988 he won the Albert Londres Prize for his reports on Northern Ireland and the trial of Klaus Barbie.

Publications He published Le Petit Bonzi in 2005 and Une promesse in 2006 (both with Éditions Grasset).

Une promesse then won the Prix Médicis.

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My Traitor is the story of Antoine, a Parisian instrument-maker who discovers Ireland, the land of the fiddle. He knows nothing of Northern Ireland. No matter. His heroes are bow-smiths, legendary builders of great instruments. So far, the war has passed him by, then one day it asserts itself. For the people of Belfast, Antoine will become Tony, because he will see them living, suffering and fighting, and because they will love him like a son in return.

Then there is Tyrone Meehan. Ireland is his battle. He drinks, sings, hugs you, takes you by the arm to talk to you in whispers.

He has made a life-long commitment and nothing will betray him.

He is the man beyond suspicion. So we have Tyrone, Antoine’s friend, his brother, his particular traitor.

Tyrone is not Denis, the real person behind the character called Tyrone. The look in their eyes is similar though. Sorj Chalandon is not Antoine, but their pain is the same.

Denis Donaldson was executed on April 4, 2006, while Sorj Chalandon was writing the story of Tyrone Meehan. He was killed with a shotgun, in the small family cottage where he was hiding.

We do not know who fired at him. No one has been arrested so far.

This is Sorj Chalandon’s most powerful novel, based on his reports from Northern Ireland and inspired by his profound knowledge of the country and by the exceptional relationship he had with the man who was, at one the same time, his friend, a hero and a traitor.

A Terrible Beauty saw Tyrone Meehan again on Easter Sunday, 1977, the day after we first met. I did not recognise him. He was standing with his back to me in the middle of the street, his hands in his pockets and the hood of his midnight-blue parka pulled down over his eyes. He was speaking in low tones to two men. When I passed close by he called out to me.

“Hey, sonny!”

The Irishman pushed back his hood with a flick of the thumb. He smiled and winked at me, with that slight movement of the head that people around here use as a form of greeting. By way of introduction he jerked his chin at Tim Devlin and Mike O’Doyle, telling them that I was French and an instrumentmaker. People greeted our group from all around. It was early afternoon. It was raining. Hundreds of nationalists were arriving on the Falls Road. Men in their cheap Sunday best, women all dolled up. In their hair little girls wore ribbons in the colours of the Irish Republic. It was the first time that I had celebrated the Easter Rising of 1916. The year before I had left before the procession began.

Tyrone Meehan was watching the demonstration as it assembled. Mike O’Doyle said nothing. A tall young man with slight stoop, lean face and very pale eyes. He was constantly on the alert and he kept glancing to right and left.

The other man, Tom Devlin, was speaking quickly. I didn’t catch it all. Several times the word “RA” stood out from the murmur. “RA” for “Republican Army”.

Soon, like everyone else, I would be calling the IRA that. At one point Tyrone moved towards a group of men leaning against the wall of a pub.

“You coming, little Frenchie?”

I pulled up the collar of my jacket and followed him. He got near to the group. He lowered his head. He went up close to another man who said a word

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in his ear, pointing to a street opposite. Tyrone then nodded, and with a wink asked me to go and wait at the corner of that street.

“What for?” I asked.

“It’s a surprise”, said Tyrone, patting me on the shoulder.

On the corner I found Mike again, talking to an old woman who held him by the arm. The Republicans were coming from all sides. Whole families, dozens of prams. I gazed at every face, every smile, every flag, and every lapel with its paper lily, the emblem of the rebels. I’d pinned mine on the day before to go to the club. My Easter lily was crumpled and stained and showed the hole made by the pin last year, but I did not want another one. An old man had given it to me. It was his. He’d taken it off his lapel and pinned it on mine. Because I was French and leaving before the procession. Wearing that green, white and orange symbol had been the first gesture I’d made showing I’d joined the cause.

The rain had stopped. In the middle of the street, thousands of Irish people were waiting patiently, packed on to the pavements, standing on posts, railings and roofs. When the British armoured vehicles appeared the crowd booed them. That was all. Today was not a time to be throwing stones. People were just honouring James Connolly and his starch-collared comrades. A policeman in a Land Rover announced over a loud-hailer that the gathering was illegal.

“Please disperse” was also the message displayed on a sign attached to the roof of the vehicle. Men spat on the ground. Children held up two fingers. A woman next to me shouted to the police to go back where they’d came from.

“This is my country!” a man yelled.

It was pure routine. The British reiterated that the march was forbidden but they did nothing to stop it. Too many children, too many old people, too big a crowd to be dispersed by force. The vehicles moved off to the roar of diesel engines and the rattle of armour-plating.

Just as I was turning my back to the street a huge clamour broke out. The crowd were loudly applauding something behind me which I could not see.

Flags were being waved vigorously, men were punching the air, hundreds of children were screaming with delight.

“IRA! IRA!” An IRA soldier appeared a few yards from where I was standing. The first.

He was the first. I would see others, many others, but he was the first. He was wearing a black beret, dark glasses, a black tie, a black jacket with a broad white belt, black trousers, a white shirt and white gloves. He was marching at the head of his company, some twenty men and women who, one behind the other, in threes, were going up the little street.

“Left! Left! Left, right, left!” barked the officer.

My fists were clenched, my eyes blurred, my mind blank. I was gazing at the joy, the laughter, the waving hands and this warlike march. I went with the flow.

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Were it not for the black uniforms and the hurried pace the crowd might have been greeting a carnival parade or a cycle race, or cheering a popular singer.

Nothing conveyed the drama. The street had changed. The whole district. All that made for sadness, for grief, all that smacked of fear and death, had all been extinguished under the soldiers’ feet.

Behind the small troop the people lined up for the procession, in threes, like the secret army. Three long lines, without banners or slogans. Silence reigned. The crowd was stern, solid, proud and fair. When confronted by British armoured vehicles they had seemed so fragile with their brandished fists, childish insults and angry looks. But when the paramilitaries took the lead, they raised their heads high. A man next to me placed his stick under his arm, like an officer’s cane. Another, winking at all and sundry, shouted “our lads are here” repeatedly. On the pavements the children had stopped talking.

I looked at them: they were motionless, staring open-mouthed at this wonderful present. Cathy and Jim had not arrived. Like hundreds of others they were waiting at the corner of their street to join the procession as it passed by.

And even today, many years after that Sunday, I still feel a tingle running down my spine whenever I recall the ceremony repeated every twelve months to celebrate the seizure of the General Post Office in Dublin. The stubborn crowd moving up the Falls Road, joined in silence from every side street by many others, many, many others.

“You OK, kid?”

Tyrone did not stop. He faced the IRA soldiers. Standing to attention, his hand raised, he ordered them to keep in line. Other men were there in the crowd, tense, caps and hoods pulled down over their eyes, standing in small groups and appearing to be on the look-out.

“The IRA, it’s those you don’t see, too”, Jim had explained.

I moved along the procession which was still stationary. In front of the company and its captain, four soldiers carried the colours of the Irish Republic.

Seven large flags under the wind and rain. I was familiar with the first, green, white and orange, the national flag. I knew too those of the four provinces of Ireland. The red hand of Ulster, the three crowns of Munster, the golden harp of Leinster and the sword-brandishing arm of Connaught. Jim explained the other banners to me. The blue studded with stars to honour Connolly’s socialism and the rising sun of Na Fianna Eireann, the Republican youth movement.

Behind the IRA the former prisoners had taken up their places, hundreds of them, in threes. Women, men, people scarcely more than children, grey and white hairs. I knew some of them. They met up at the club to talk in low tones that became louder as the beer flowed. Prisoners’ and victims’ families came next, husbandless women, fatherless children, men left with no one. I stayed a long while in front of this sad humanity. In those ranks everyone had the

Sorj Chalandon

My Traitor

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same look. I lowered my eyes as I met theirs. There was something in them of the veils of mist that linger of a morning, something sad and weary. The women wore headscarves to cover their hair in the rain. People’s clothes were poor, their hands red with cold. I moved from one to the other. I was merely skimming past.

A girl looked at me for a long time. Like the others she wore a crown of flowers. She made a gesture. A sign with her eyes to indicate that all would be well.

That I was not to worry. That, well, that’s the way it was. War, poverty, prison, death. That you had to have confidence. And that I wasn’t to cry, because no one else here was crying.

I was crying.

I’d felt nothing. Neither the stinging sensation before tears start flowing, nor their streaming down my cheeks, nor their sad taste. I looked at those morose shadows, those muddy clothes, that untidy hair, those orphan mouths, those weary backs, those eyes deprived of sky. And I began to cry. I needed to.

It was my way of cheering them on. I wiped my eyes on my sleeve.

The crowd had moved forward. A slow, meandering shuffle between the low houses, the bricks, the sagging pavements, the walls and the walls. I got up on to a concrete block. The populace stretched as far as the eye could see. I thought of an impoverished army. Then I followed the procession on the pavement. I’d decided to slip in beside Jim and Cathy, when we got to their level. Two helicopters hovered overhead, keeping an eye on our progress. Nobody spoke. They marched as one does, to the accompaniment of warlike fifes and drum.

As we got to Milltown Cemetery I saw Tyrone Meehan again. He was gathering a hundred or so women together in front of the memorial to the Republican dead. Cathy had joined them. Jim walked beside me between the leaning gravestones and the weeds. I’ve never seen a cemetery like it. At close of day, when the Irish sky turns grey and black, when the wind, when the rain, when a sliver of sunlight cuts through the sooty clouds, it looks like a wasteland. A jumble of Celtic crosses, of brambles and muddy earth sloping down to the lowest part of town. I leaned against a granite angel. A man with a microphone was speaking of Dublin, of the seizure of the post office by the rebels, of the defeat of the uprising, of James Connolly wounded, shot seated on a chair on 12 May 1916. And of the others, the Republican leaders, dragged one by one to the stake in the yard of Kilmainham Prison.

“Thomas Clarke, Sean MacDiarmada, Thomas MacDonagh, Patrick Pearse, Eamonn Ceannt, Joseph Plunkett”, intoned the man with the microphone.

The five IRA soldiers clasped both hands together and raised them towards the sky. The women around me put their hands over their ears. Children were lifted on to their fathers’ shoulders. Old men pulled their heads down between

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their collars. I had never seen firearms being used. A shotgun, perhaps, but not a real weapon. The officer gave an order. The soldiers fired. Once, twice, three times. I saw the metal glinting in the palms of their white gloves. At each salvo two young boys picked up the hot cartridge cases and handed them to Mike O’Doyle. I’d never heard the noise of war, the amazing sound of ripped steel.

I jumped violently, and bit the inside of my cheek. After the national anthem Tyrone took up position in front of the women he’d lined up. At his command they suddenly opened their umbrellas. All together. A hundred outstretched umbrellas. Some help up to the sky, others held out like a screen. Cathy was opposite us. Her red umbrella held out in front of her hid her face. The IRA men left the line and hurried to join the women behind the umbrellas. Mothers pushing prams followed them. Under the clouds the helicopters hovered lower.

“What’s going on?” I asked Jim. “It’s a magic trick”, he smiled.

The umbrellas closed. The Republican soldiers had vanished. In the midst of the pushchairs and laughing women there were only local people. No guns.

No uniforms. A wife on her husband’s arm. A father pushing a pram. Three friends ribbing each other. An old grump putting his cap back on. A couple clinging to each other as if leaving the pub. And the crowd around them moving back to the cemetery railings which had gobbled them up, hidden them, and then taken them back, one by one.

Sorj Chalandon

My Traitor

* […]

When I got back to Paris, I understood. Waking up the day after. Walking in the street, this April 1977. Looking at the sky for no reason. Bumping into others who did not know. I was different.I had another self. I had another world, another life, other hopes. I had a taste of bricks, a taste of war, a taste of sadness and of anger too. I left useless music so as to play only that of my new country. I started to read. Everything about Ireland. Only about Ireland.

Ireland. Ireland. Ireland. I searched for the name in newspapers, books, I read it on lips, in eyes, everywhere. I knew that “Óglaigh na-hÉireann” in Gaelic meant “Irish Republican Army”. I celebrated St Patrick’s Day. I died my hair green. I read the Book of Kells, I read about the Viking raiders, the battles of Toirrdelbach Ua Briain, king of Munster. I learned about the Norman invaders, the Gaelic resurgence, the Tudor conquest, the colonisation of Ulster, the rebellions crushed one by one, Cromwell’s savagery, the defeat of the Catholic James II. I discovered the penal laws, the Great Famine, Home Rule. I read in English about the war of independence, the civil war, the war in the North.

I read Flann O’Brien, O’Flaherty, Beckett, Kavanagh, O’Casey, Behan, Wilde,

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Synge, Swift. I tried to read Joyce. I cut out a poem by W.B. Yeats. I stuck it on the wall of my workshop, next to James Connolly.

“Now and in time to be Wherever green is worn Are changed, changed utterly A terrible beauty is born.”

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Pierre Charras

A Few Shadows

Publisher: Le Dilettante Date of Publication: October 2007 Foreign Rights Manager: Claude Tarrène claude.tarrene@ledilettante.com

© Le Dilettante

Translation: Ian Monk ian.monk@wanadoo.fr

Biography

Pierre Charras was born on 19th March 1945 in Saint-Étienne (Loire). Downhearted with this birth, Adolf Hitler committed suicide shortly afterwards. The period of universal happiness that succeeded these two events (and still does) corresponds to our author’s stay on the earth. An actor, distinguished translator from English, with a preference for contemporary American writers, and author of ten novels published by Le Mercure de France, his packed life will seem too short to him.

Publications Published by Les Éditions Le Dilettante: Plop!, 2005; Francis Bacon, le ring de la douleur, 2004.

Published by Le Mercure de France : Bonne nuit, doux prince, 2006; Dix-Neuf Secondes, 2003 (2nd ed., Gallimard, “Folio” collection, 2005).

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In eight short stories, Pierre Charras stands out as a refiner of catastrophes and distiller of chaos, in slight and irremediable doses.

Things are going smoothly, life is evolving limply, we’re swimming in calm waters, then suddenly along comes the splinter, or cramp.

Or a gulch of sludge. Our world is rotten, and his pen seeks out such moments of rupture. Deceptively, it is just such deceptions that skewer us. As so it goes: a “love nest” suddenly losing its charm;

a young girl met in the metro; a farcical prize ceremony; Bruno the lost child; a body borne along on a wave of pain; a fatal case of nudity, clicked on in Shanghai — in urgent instants of head-spinning intimacy. Welcome to the world of Charras, the great sharpener of malaises, king of disillusions, and layer of the landmine in the sandpit.

The Date ené gets there early. During the bus trip, niggling worries flutter around his head like dead leaves. It’s always been this way, the fear that some obstacle might block his way at the last moment. The closure of Le Balto for building work. A sudden shower making its terrace unusable. The layout of the tables having changed because of a whim of the boss. Or else? Quite simply the disappearance of Le Balto, why not? He would then have to improvise. Is it possible to improvise a copy of such a situation? He feels afraid. With the fear of a tenor when the orchestra strikes up the overture, and the stage-lights are already gleaming beyond the curtains. No, as usual, all will be well. In the sunlight, Le Balto is still set there as the backdrop to thousands of daily dramas. There’s just one snag: someone has taken René’s seat. And the idiot is writing, even though no one writes in cafés anymore these days. René sits down next to him, just to his left, as though putting him in the shade, or stealing his inspiration. To make him give up. To make him go. René gives him a chance, the time hasn’t come for him to start waiting yet.

But if this person has not gone by three o’clock, he’ll ask him if he wouldn’t mind changing places. If faced with a refusal, he’ll press the point. He’s not afraid of creating a scene. For a time, René lets his mind wander. He imagines that this stranger might become threatening or dangerous. Who knows, he might produce a knife and plunge it into his heart? You read of such things in the newspapers. But it has to be admitted that such a thing is more than he could hope for. People generally don’t bother themselves about doing others such a good turn. What’s more, René isn’t even asking for that much. All that’s certain is that this character is not going to stand in his way. No, he’d rather be taken to the police station instead. But there could be nothing worse than

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remaining so close to his place without being able to sit in it. So, why wait? He might as well sort the situation out at once. Later on, he may feel nervy, whereas right now he could adopt a polite tone … I mean really, what difference would it make if this person wrote on a different table rather than this one? If need be, to convince him, René could tell him the truth … Well, not the truth exactly …

It would be better if he pretended to make something up.

As you’re writing, I’m going to give you an idea. A story which I would certainly write myself, if only I knew how to set about it.

Then he’ll spill the beans, as though talking about someone else. Yes, that’s exactly what he’ll do. He’ll tell him everything, in detail, as though talking to a mirror. He leans over. But the man has already raised his head. He’s put the top back on his pen and closed his notepad. He stands up. He leaves. René slides onto the neighbouring chair, his chair, with a sigh, as though going to bed when tired at night. He makes himself comfortable, crosses his legs, then stares vaguely in front to kill the time before he’ll start waiting in earnest. They’ve had the terrible idea of putting an apparently pricy fountain with lavish sprays of water to replace the flowerbed that used to be the pivot of all these swirling cars. Its splashing partly conceals the exit of the metro, just opposite. He can see it, but through a haze. It’s as if his eyes were full of tears. He misses the flowers. With a bit of luck, they would have been yellow, like the ones seventeen years ago. Never mind. All’s well. He gradually feels that familiar void, that absence, open up inside him. That terrifying hope for approaching happiness.

That apprehension of a beginning.

And yet, it isn’t really a beginning. He’s seen Laure, three times, they spent longmoments together.” He’s kissed her, and hugged her close. He’s placed hand on her knee, in the bluish darkness of a cinema. But that day, it was a real date. Even more … How to put it? She’d let on that she’d be quite willing to go home with him. Well, not exactly. She didn’t just let on. In fact, she’d said yes. She said she’d come to see where he lived and, from the trembling of her lips, he saw that she understood what that meant. And, at that very moment, instead of being thrilled at the idea of possessing her, he suddenly felt scared of losing her.

The next morning, he woke up with a start, panicked at the idea that he didn’t even know her surname. Nor her precise address. And the street name that she’d mentioned once had slipped out of his mind. He felt a sort of dark premonition. She wasn’t going to come. Then he shook himself. She’d leant against him to say yes. She’d said yes with her body. He’d even wanted to put into words that crazy idea which was spinning around his head: that he loved her. He performed a bachelor’s spring clean but, once his bed-sit was spick and span it looked even more dismal. He went down to buy some flowers. And a vase too, because he’d never needed one before. Then, long before three o’clock, he went to wait at Le Balto, just by his home. By his home at that time.

Pierre Charras

A Few Shadows

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He took the necessary time to pick the ideal place to see Laure when she would appear, lifted up from the earth by the escalator of the metro. He practised examining the heads that appeared in groups, after each train, every three or four minutes. He’d recognise her at once, despite the distance. And he knew that just the sight of her mop of black hair, right there, on the other side of the yellow flowers, would make a thud in his chest. So, he would start to read his newspaper. He would let her cross the square, approach, say his name, or sit down in silence beside him before raising his eyes and smiling quietly. His only fear was that the noise of the ceaseless traffic that Saturday afternoon would not be enough to drown out his heart beat. He would also have to kiss her without showing too much impatience, even though kissing her already was his only thought. That day, his greatest enemy had seemed his impatience. Even when he would get Laure home at last, he would still have to appear calm and reassuring. But he would need to be so reassured himself. She was still young, or nearly. She’d obviously hesitate when they got down to the essential. Did he in fact have enough experience of women to be able to convince her without putting her off? Suddenly, he had his doubts. Wouldn’t it be a better idea to take her to the cinema, or for a walk? It was such a lovely day. Would he in fact feel such an imperious desire? Little by little, he built up short scenarios in which his failure began to seem more and more dreadful.

At three o’clock, urgency chased away his dreams and he began to wait intensely. He felt his body become heavier as if something from the spirit world had just rushed into him, adding its weight, with a density that took his breath away. Heads continued to appear, in bouquets, beyond the flowers. Twenty minutes later, Laure was no longer late but quite simply absent. René felt an emptiness, a lack, a burning thirst enter his body. His simple desire was to possess her as his mistress right then. A sort of rage bit obstinately into his calmness.

When there was nothing left, he noticed that his hope had also been devoured.

He was already no longer waiting for her and, under the apparently ironic gaze of the waiter who came over to renew his order, he convinced himself that she would not be coming. “She’s not coming!” he repeated to himself, as though defying God to prove the opposite, if He existed. But God didn’t exist or if He did had more important business to deal with, because Laure never appeared.

He went back home at about six o’clock, threw out the flowers and put the vase away in a cupboard, despite feeling that it would obviously be more far elegant to throw it out too. But his entire life was made up of such petty meanness, which would have ended up appalling Laure. Who knows if she’d not in fact already detected his mediocre personality and if that wasn’t the reason for her betrayal. She had weighed him up, grown weary of him and, so as to get rid of him, had pretended to promise she’d come all the better to vanish from his life. She had in fact never really had the intention of coming to his place. She’d been playacting. This let down had been horribly calculating. She must have

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experienced a certain pleasure in making a fool of him, and must be having a good laugh about it all right then. With someone else, perhaps? … Could that provide him with a pathway, a thread that would lead him to indifference, to stop loving her, and so hate her or, better still, scorn her? Then, one day, quite simply forget her. He’d work on it.

It took him nearly a week to master his anger, his pique and all those sharp, prickly feelings that had built up around his love. He tried to convince himself that once freed of its protective shell, that this love would soon evaporate. But the opposite happened. Those days of rancour had purified his memories of Laure until they became as hard and as sharp as a diamond. René tried to see her again. He dredged his memory for the street name she had once mentioned to him. He picked out three which sounded like what he’d obviously misheard given the fact that, at that moment when she was talking to him, he had been transformed into a gaze. He set off to explore. He felt strong enough to conduct a long investigation. But his adventure ended as soon as it began. Laure lived in the first street he tried and he found out at once why she hadn’t come.

On coming out of the metro, he went quite by chance into a bakery, just because he had to start somewhere. He started describing Laure, trying to be as objective way as possible.

Yes, I know who you mean. So what do you want to know about her? said the woman in the white apron, rather glumly.

I had a date with her last week, and she didn’t turn up. But I was supposed to give her back a book she leant me, René lied, with a fluency that surprised him.

The woman looked at him for a moment. She suddenly seemed more hesitant.

And your date was last Saturday?

Yes. She apparently thought this over for a while, before looking down and muttering: Come with me.

René went behind the counter and was soon in a large dining room with ancient wallpaper and dark furnishings.

Sit down, the baker’s wife said.

It suddenly occurred to René that, by an incredible coincidence, he was now sitting in front of Laure’s mother and that she was going to ask him how he’d dared to try and lure her home. But she didn’t look angry. Just sorry.

She lives on the corner of the street. Last Saturday, at about half past two, she came out of her building, ran towards the tram and …

At that instant, René too was knocked over and crushed. All he heard were scraps of sentences: “… both legs”, “… had to amputate there and then”, “… hospitalised for months …”

Pierre Charras

A Few Shadows

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That was seventeen years ago and, still today, René never walks in front of a bakery without tasting blood in his mouth. He often felt amazed at having survived that day. He marvelled at the fact that he still managed to laugh, that he did not want a life that was different from his, that he could be happy.

At first, for a long time, he avoided the neighbourhood. But for the past ten, or eleven, or nine years, he has no idea anymore, he has been incapable of stopping himself from coming back to this square, on the anniversary of his failed date with Laure. He stays there motionless, for a few hours, looking for her among the people that crop up like flowers on the opposite pavement.

He waits for something. A miracle. Let’s start all over again …

Then he goes home, almost relieved, reassured that there is no other way, no other life. He buys a bouquet of flowers. In the lift, he gets his breath back, panting, as though he’s spent the day underwater. He opens the door of the flat. When he hands her the flowers, Laure smiles at him from the armchair.

Sometimes, she’s strapped on her artificial legs and is waiting for him, upright, holding her crutches, and they go out again together for a short, staccato walk, like a couple of robots. During all those years, she’s never asked him where he comes from. But sometimes he has the impression that she knows. That she’d like to talk to him about it, but doesn’t dare. She obviously prefers to leave the initiative to him. But he’ll never be able to discuss it.

Maybe today, when he goes home with the bouquet, like last year, she’ll motion to him to carry her onto the bed, draw the curtains and make love to her. Whatever happens, he could never suggest such a thing. She might feel that he’s trying to compensate, to make up for her dissatisfaction. She might take it as a reproach. No, he’ll just tell her that he loves her, and she’s beautiful.

And he’s happy.

But right now he’s not thinking of going home. All he wants to do is wait.

To relive once again the last moments of his youth. To grant himself an instant of folly. To make that tram go backwards. It’s three o’clock. Seventeen years ago, he was staring with all the hope in the world. And it is just now that his hope is so hard to hold together. But he still runs towards it. A group has just blossomed, over there, beyond the fountain. Then split apart. René slumps down before gathering his strength. He’ll brace himself again soon, in a few minutes’ time. Then, again and again, he’ll go back to break himself on the rocks of this absence.

Another group has appeared. He looks at the heads of hair and, suddenly, gets to his feet, as though lassoed by a wild horseman. Maybe he’s just yelled out. She’s there! She’s just emerged from the earth. She looks around, raises a hand then sets off, with that obstinate gait of a puppet. It will take her a long time to walk round the square. René wouldn’t mind if it took her all her life, because she’s walking towards him. He sways from one foot to the other like a child being handed a present. He waves an arm. He laughs. And yet tears are

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drowning his eyes, as if the fountain had suddenly overflowed and flooded the square up to the roofs of the buildings. He waits. He won’t take a step towards Laure. She certainly wouldn’t want him to. It’s just that she’s come to their date at last. René is jubilant. He’d like to share this moment with others. Point her out. Make them laugh with him. And cry. But, in the end, what would be the point? The fucking cretins would probably just see a cripple.

Pierre Charras

A Few Shadows

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Stéphane Denis

A too Perfect Spy

Publisher: Fayard Date of Publication: January 2008 Foreign Rights Manager: Anna Lindblom alindblom@editions-fayard.fr

© John Foley/Opale

Translation: Howard Curtis curtis9@talktalk.net

Biography

Born in 1949, Stéphane Denis worked for various ministers at the end of the 1970s before becoming a journalist, for Le Quotidien de Paris and Paris Match among others. Currently leader writer and consultant to the director of Figaro, he also writes political pastiches under the names Manicamp, Bernard des Saints-Pères and Torquemada.

Publications Published by Fayard: Minty, 2005; Les Immeubles Walter, 2004; Charmant Garçon, 2003; Capitaine Troy. Une enfance au temps du Général, 2002; Sisters, 2001 (prix Interallié); La Grande Forme, 2000.

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William Travis, scion of a well-to-do Anglo-Swiss family, ex-Royal Navy, ex-NATO intelligence, has been working as a freelance journalist since the fall of the Berlin Wall. A sleeper agent, he has long since lost contact with the world of espionage when a coded postcard summons him to be in front of a specific painting in a wellknown museum, on a specific day at a specific time.

There, he finds his former superior, Premrose Troper, waiting for him, and is given a mission the implications of which he finds hard to comprehend: to locate and bring back, as discreetly as possible,

an old acquaintance named Dearlove, an officer with links to the Prime Minister, who has been missing for three months, and who, it transpires, has taken with him a fairly large sum of money from a so-called “special” fund.

This sharply humorous suspense novel in the tradition of John Le Carré tells the story of a retired ex-agent’s extraordinary search for a fugitive agent, ranging from London to Geneva and across the improbable borders of the former Yugoslav republics.

A tense, funny, dazzling novel.

Chapter 1 Calling the tune, the croupier cuts the cards, places them in the shoe, and reminds the players from time to time of the rules of the game. f you talk on the phone, you might as well be holding a press conference.

So to contact Travis they used an old ploy, hoping that he would understand, or rather that he would remember. You send a postcard showing a famous painting and a fanciful date: for example, a young girl by Greuze and December 11th 2007. The person who receives it knows that he has to be in Room xvii of the Louvre on the 11th of the following month, at twelve noon.

They had chosen a reproduction of Monet’s Water Lilies and an earlier hour. The words on the card were quite clear: Happy to know you’re with us. Aunt Irma. They were really keen for him to be there, Travis thought, unless they’re afraid I’m getting senile. Even the name, Irma: everything was supposed to be changing in the service, he had heard, but he couldn’t remember who had told him that. […]

The postcard was frightful. He wondered who had chosen it. Troper? That would be just like Troper. He always put a personal slant on whatever he did for the service. “I don’t have a high opinion of you” — that was what that garish picture of Water Lilies meant —“but I’m going to use you because I have no choice.” Travis remembered the first time they had met: Troper, younger than him, making an attempt at what he took to be British humour (although he was as incurably devoid of humour as a bottle of aspirin) and smiling briefly at his own effects: Troper smiling like a salesman or a politician posing, just as long as he has to,

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for the photograph that his secretary will send to Who’s Who with the proviso that for copyright reasons that’s the only one that can be published. Troper must be a section head now — Travis had heard that or had read it in one of those pompous profiles the upstarts at MI6 devoted to their high-ranking officials — Troper and his house by the Thames, the white trousers he wore on Sundays.

He very nearly threw the postcard away, but then set off obediently for the museum in Hadley Street. There was never anyone there, in what had once been the private residence of a rich tea merchant: Travis remembered it as a microcosm of everything money can buy. He bought a ticket, turned right, and stopped in front of a ceremonial bed which had been used by Napoleon. The bed seemed very small.

“We said in front of the Water Lilies,” a voice said beside him.

“I’ve always hated it,” Travis replied. “It reminds me of a wallpaper advertisement.”

“Still undisciplined, eh? We’ll have to change that.”

Travis turned his head and saw who the voice belonged to: a man in his thirties, Italian suit, athletic build. The kind of man mentioned in the situations vacant columns of the newspapers.

“Postwhite,” the man said.

“Travis.”

“I know you’re Travis,” the voice said, irritably. “How else would you have known about the Water Lilies?”

“I could have been someone else. A lot of people like the Water Lilies.”

“A lot?” They were alone in the museum. Even the guards’ chairs were empty.

“Americans,” Travis said, anxious to put his finger on the man’s nationality.

But Postwhite did not rise to the bait. He looked at his watch, turned to the main staircase, and gestured to Travis to follow him. They walked past tapestries which no one ever looked at. Postwhite took out a map, and realised he was holding it upside down. Together they managed to find Room 15. A man was standing at the door. He wasn’t an employee of the museum, but a guard of a different kind: Travis had always wondered where they found them.

The man opened the door to them, then closed it again carefully. They were in what could have been a conference room or a trade union office: Travis opted for the union office. There was a small poster advertising a holiday in the Maldives for seven hundred pounds, provided the reservation was made by January 5th. It’s already April 4th, Travis thought, perhaps they didn’t manage to sell all the seats on the plane.

“Sit down,” the man who seemed to be the Chief said.

The thick blinds which stop the sun from damaging the works of art in places like this had been carefully drawn, and the indirect lighting made all the faces

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look the same colour. Troper was the third man on the right. He was wearing his usual light-coloured suit and pastel tie: everything perfectly in place.

“Sit down, William,” he said, bringing out his famous smile.

Travis didn’t remember ever being that intimate with him: theirs was a world where people rarely used first names. He realized that he had forgotten Troper’s first name. Had he ever known it? It had to be a thrusting kind of name, like Harry or Patrick. Frederick wouldn’t have been suitable, and Nicholas too lustful. The fellow on the right must have been from the Treasury: there’s always someone from the Treasury. And his neighbour, from Operations. The other two could have been anyone. None of them looked like a museum director.

“Well, now, old chap, it hasn’t been all that difficult to track you down.

Premrose did tell us that, but, well, there are always imponderables.”

Premrose? Travis looked at Troper, who blushed. He remembered now: Premrose Troper. Life couldn’t always have been easy for him if he’d been a boarder, but perhaps his mother had thought of that. In a day school he’d have been able to limit the damage.

Silence ensued, as if they were not sure of their roles. In this kind of meeting, nobody wants to be the first to speak: the first Christian in the arena gets the biggest lion, as Travis’s instructor always used to say.

“Well now — er — the thing is,” the Chief said, “we’ve been thinking of having you come back to work for us. You must still have the old spirit, eh?”

Travis wondered if he should say something, but nobody seemed to be expecting him to. What could he have said anyway? That the world had become a bit too complicated for him?

“But there are procedures to go through,” the Chief said. “You’re not on the list any more, that kind of thing.”

“He doesn’t have any authorization,” said the man Travis had identified, purely arbitrarily, as assistant head of Operations. “None at all. You know the difficulties we’d have trying to give him a Cosmic. The Americans will never agree to it. They’ve become very sensitive about that kind of thing. Very. I was telling —” “Oh, we may be able to manage a Defence Confidential,” the Chief said.

“After all, this mission isn’t —” “Impossible,” the Treasury man said. “Don’t you realize that a Confidential would mean reallocating him to Section Six O? We agreed on a Temporary.

That’s as far as I’m prepared to go. No further.”

“A Confidential wouldn’t even get him into the Foreign Office canteen,” Troper said. “I insist on a Cosmic.”

“On your head be it, then,” the Treasury man said. “But they’ll never — ” “We can deal with that later,” the Chief said. “Premrose, perhaps you could bring Travis up to speed on what this is all about. I’d like to get it over with before lunch.”

Stéphane Denis

A too Perfect Spy

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“Actually, sir, I was planning to get straight down to it. About the details of the mission, I mean. Man to man, you might say. If you’d like to give just a broad outline, I’m sure we could all get back to more pressing matters. As long as everyone’s agreed, what comes next seems to me to be within the remit of Operations.”

I was wrong, Travis thought, Troper is head of Operations. The fat fellow must be here to make up the numbers. The assistant who raises objections at the right moment, I suppose.

“Well, then,” the Chief said. “The fact is, old chap, we’re counting on you for something right up your street. Old loyalties and all that. In my opinion, the best way to understand human nature is in what ties us to the past. As I was saying only the other day to the Prime Minister, without our ties to the past we … Damn it, Troper, I’m going to be late. If everything’s arranged, take care of the rest.”

The fat man Travis had taken for Operations leaned towards his neighbour, one of the two men who had remained silent so far.

“It’s a golf day at Hurlington,” Travis heard distinctly.

“But I thought he was playing at Blades.”

“Blades is closed on Wednesday. It’s possible to play at Hurlington, provided you put your name down in advance, of course.”

“He just has time to catch the shuttle,” Operations said. “I think we can let Premrose deal with the rest. He’ll love that.”

There was a hubbub of voices, involuntary hand gestures. On the whole, they felt proud and happy that Travis had agreed, the fat silent man most of all.

In the old days, Travis thought, we would all have had a drink: they always used to give their instructions over a drink, as if they were anxious to observe an age-old ritual. Even in places like this, they made sure the traditions were maintained. They kept up appearences. Wasn’t that all they had left? But it was a very long time since he’d last worked for the secret service: and those words, which never used to be uttered without a certain embarrassment, as if they were the only words that could be found to convey the grim reality, were all over the evening papers now. No drinks, he thought, but headlines. Troper, he also thought, must be delighted.

Now that the others had gone, the room was much too large for two mature adults who didn’t like each other but couldn’t admit it: Troper because he had something to ask, and Travis because he was trying to appear impartial towards Troper. He was always suspicious of people he didn’t like. Travis didn’t trust his own judgement: he had frequently been disappointed by those he had liked.

Troper gave a shrug and looked at his watch. The first of these movements meant that he was relieved that the Chief was out of the way, and the second that he had a lunch appointment with one of his important contacts in the

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ministries. His knowledge of restaurants was restricted to Piccadilly: he had the feeling that if he got too far away he would lose sight of the future for what might turn out to be the crucial five minutes.

“I’m afraid I shall have to dispense with the preliminaries,” he said, opening the file he had placed in front of him, which Travis could have sworn was only there to give what was about to follow a veneer of legitimacy. “You’re not part of the Department any more, in fact …” (he was about to add, “you were never part of it”, unaware that in doing so he would have granted Travis’s wish, but he stopped before subjecting him to what would have been, in his mind, a pointless humiliation: let them think they’re the salt of the earth, that was the Bible, though a Bible eroded by tears and somewhat damaged by contractual cuts, they were really nothing more than pets) “… but the thing is, we need you.”

Travis realized that he had not yet said a word. Purely as a humane gesture, he gave a little “hmm” which might have been an expression of assent, perhaps even enthusiasm. Enthusiasm was infectious in the Department, even if it didn’t go further than the eighth floor. “As you know,” Troper resumed, “we work directly for the Cabinet. The fact is, this is a strictly internal matter. An administrative matter, I’d call it. That’s why we’ve been asked to sort it out. It concerns someone you know well, someone we’d like to be able to — how shall I put it? — to locate as quickly as possible. To be frank, we’d like to talk to him.

But that — er — seems to be proving difficult. We thought an old friend would be the right person for the job. There’s a certain lack of trust, you might say. I’m sure you keep up with current events.”

He opened the folder he had brought and pretended to glance over a note which seemed to give him all the reassurance he needed. Travis felt as though a kind of mist was creeping up to his waist. “That’s what it’s like these days,” one of his former colleagues had said to him. “Imagine you’re working in a business. A big store, for example, the household linen department, the electrical goods department, the cafeteria, the underground car park: everything in its place, and Troper patrolling the aisles.”

“Anyway,” Troper went on, “we’re not asking you for the moon. For fairly trivial reasons — so don’t go imagining things — we’d like to have a chat with Dearlove.”

And he waited to see what effect this name would have on William Travis.

Stéphane Denis

A too Perfect Spy

* * * One of the few things Travis had learned in the Navy was to seem as unintelligent as possible. It had served him well in his profession but he could not completely conceal his emotions: a particular scene manifested itself on his face without anyone being able to define it precisely. He didn’t even raise an eyebrow

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at the name Dearlove: a Frenchman would have described him as impassive and an Englishman as sleepy. The truth was rather different: his reflexes had been aroused, and he was waiting to see how Troper was going to tackle this.

“After all,” Troper said, “you were quite close.”

He had chosen a dubious compromise. Travis knew that for Troper friendship was synonymous with efficiency. Troper’s friends were people who could help him to reach the goal he had set himself, though there might also be a few pleasant get-togethers at weekends: the parents of children who might turn out useful later to the young Tropers. He had also spoken in the past tense. Start with a touch of guilt and see what happens next, Travis thought: they always stick to what they’ve been taught.

“Oh, I know who you mean. Dearlove … But I haven’t seen him in ages.

You know how it is. Always moving around. I didn’t know he was still in the Department.”

“He isn’t,” Troper said, and there was something unpleasant in his tone.

Travis was certain it was not meant for him, but for Dearlove. “If he were, we wouldn’t need you. But he’s still, er, within the margins.”

Dearlove the blue-eyed boy of the ministers, that’s what you mean. You could hardly do without him. You must have been green with envy before you retired him. Then you realized the old devil hadn’t retired after all. People were still consulting him behind your back and all you could do was sign his expense claims.

“To tell the truth, he’s always been fairly self-sufficient,” Troper said. “I told the minister it was an unusual situation. Completely against the rules. Things have changed a lot, you know. We’re all on the same level these days. No firebrands, no prima donnas. But Dearlove … well, he does whatever he pleases, damn it!”

“You mean he’s still with you?” Travis asked.

He might have been trying to gain time, but a shrewd observer would have said he was simply trying to satisfy his curiosity.

“He’s still on the list of active officers, yes,” Troper said, sorry now that he had left himself open to attack. “But at Prime Ministerial level. A remarkable character. Exceptional record. An incredible career, as I was saying to the Director only this morning.”

“Then you should be able to look him up in the Department phone book,” Travis said. “I assume his number is classified no higher than Confidential.

Anyway, you’re Cosmic, or even higher, I suppose. In my day, there was a mysterious classification, called Orion, I think. We were very impressed by that.

I carried some Orion documents once and I remember I wasn’t allowed to take the briefcase off my wrist. Not very practical in the lavatory, as you can imagine.”

“We did all that,” Troper said. “Called him, I mean. In fact, we’ve been calling

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him for three months. His telephone’s been cut off, and he doesn’t answer his mobile. There’s never anyone at home, and he hasn’t even been to collect his mail. No one knows where he is. We’re starting to get worried.”

“What do you mean by ‘cut off ’?”

“He cancelled his susbscription.”

“And what do you mean by ‘worried’?”

“We’re worried about him, Travis. We’re afraid something may have happened to him. He may have had an accident, may have lost his memory, who knows? He was always so damned solitary. We wouldn’t like to find out that he needed us and we weren’t able to do anything. He is one of the family, after all.”

Troper’s had raised his voice slightly, like a mother reproaching her child for not calling her after a long journey.

“And that’s all there is, is it?”

“What else could there be? He was surplus, like all these old members of the Department. He was consulted now and again, analyzed material. He was like a king in his own kingdom, if you know what I mean. The rest of the time, he went all over the place at the taxpayer’s expense on the pretext that he had to check out his hunches. He always chose nice countries where he had old friends.”

“Nothing more vital than that?”

“What do you mean, vital? Good God, the high spot of his day was reading the newspaper about three o’clock in the afternoon. You know the corridor they call the Elephants’ Graveyard? Well, that’s where he had his office. I should have been firmer with him,” Troper went on, “but he didn’t have any family and when his wife died, five or six years ago, it didn’t seem the humane thing to dismiss him. Listen, I don’t want to seem abrupt, but I’m really in a hurry.

There’s this conference business and the minister won’t let us off the hook. I’d like to catch the five o’clock shuttle. You heard what Sir Henry’s deputy said.

We’ve taken you on for a limited period as a — as a consultant. That’ll take care of insurance, the bank, the pass. Postwhite will help you with whatever you decide to do. In fact, he’ll go with you. He has a press card, so no one will be surprised to see you working together. Any requests you might have, he can pass on to me. We’ll cover your expenses but I don’t suppose there’ll be that many. A couple of lunches, perhaps? Postwhite will give you a copy of our Guide to Claiming Expenses. I wrote it myself, and I must admit I’m quite proud of it. Things aren’t what they used to be, Travis. Cigars, that kind of thing …

We’re very strict now about equality. Once a week, I have lunch in the canteen: terribly exciting.”

“Can I ask you a question? Why come to me in particular? I was never really in the loop, and Dearlove has other friends who are still active.”

“Because they failed,” Troper said, as they left the room.

Stéphane Denis

A too Perfect Spy

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Postwhite was waiting alone in the corridor: the tough-looking doorkeeper had disappeared. Travis and Postwhite couldn’t have been important enough for anyone to make sure they weren’t disturbed.

Troper’s car was waiting, but he did not suggest giving him a lift. He really must have come up in the world, Travis thought: it was a German car, with a civilian number plate. Much too expensive for people who ate regularly in the canteen, if Troper saw what Travis meant.

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Éric Faye

Date of Publication: January 2008 Foreign Rights Manager: Barbara Porpaczy bporpaczy@editions-stock.fr Translation: Paul Buck and Catherine Petit paul@paulbuck.co.uk

© David Balicki

The Man with no Prints

Publisher: Éditions Stock

Biography

Éric Faye was born in 1963. With Stock, he has published Croisière en mer des pluies (1999), Les Cendres de mon avenir (2001), La Durée d’une vie sans toi (2003), Mes trains de nuit (2005) and Le Syndicat des pauvres types (2006).

He has also published two collections of stories, one of which, Je suis le gardien du phare, 1997, received the Prix des Deux-Magots 1998. He has also written books about Kafka and Ismaïl Kadaré.

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In the imaginary Latin-American republic of Costaguana the writer B. Osborn is buried. Each year, his widow Aurelia undertakes a long journey to visit his grave in the Indian lands. This time, she is to meet a German professor who claims he can reveal certain things about her late husband’s past.

However, others wish to unmask “the century’s most secretive writer”: Rebecca Hamilton, an American woman who was Osborn’s last lover; Thomas Ahorn, the German professor, an authority on Salinger; Wagenbach, an old anarchist exiled to an island in the Baltic Sea; Aguila Mendes, a young, ambitious and unscrupulous journalist. And even Alfred Hitchcock, who was said to have tried to adapt for the screen one of the novels of the mysterious writer,

for the disturbing Kim Novak. Each narrator strives to put together the pieces of the puzzle of a life built on deceit.

And yet Osborn keeps slipping away. Editor of an anarchist publication in Berlin, ethnologist in the jungle, inn-keeper, literary agent … he spreads confusion and stays elusive beneath multiple identities.

Inspired by B. Traven, author of the enigmatic The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Osborn is a fascinating character, a kind of adventurer who chose to go underground. Beyond the captivating investigation tracking down his hero, Éric Faye questions the effacement of the writer behind his work and his impossible biography.

t the very moment she was about to open the door, the widow paused, hesitating for little more than a semi-quaver, her hand with its long, spider-like fingers retained on the handle. Somewhere close, in the darkness of the upper floor, a small clock stole time as I quivered on the threshold of the writer’s sanctuary. No sooner had she opened the door than the widow decided to recall the incident. My chatting had gained her trust, and it seemed she was only waiting for that sort of situation to open her mouth.

“I had my first suspicions at this precise spot here, when I entered his room.

It was a stormy night, I remember everything very clearly. It was not raining yet, the thunder could be heard in the distance, prowling like a puma around its prey, just before striking.

“I forgot the exact date. I think we had been married for a couple of years. In your life, have you ever experienced that moment when the woman discovers that the man she loves is a stranger? Even years after Stig’s death, I still can’t stop reliving that moment again and again. A moment both frightening and fascinating … I thought I knew everything about him. In reality I knew hardly anything about that part of him called B. Osborn, the writer of international renown who was hiding beneath Stig Warren’s identity. It was such a perfect showcase that I always called him Stig, not knowing, ever, what had been the real name of my companion and lover at his birth, in the playground, at the time when the child didn’t know yet that he would soon have to hide till the end.

“That evening, exceptionally, Stig had gone up to write here, in this workroom he used to call, between us, the ‘gangway’ as a tribute to his stay in the Marines, during one of his youths. I said exceptionally for we used to spend the evening together, downstairs or on the terrace, whether we had customers or

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not. He must have had urgent business to attend to, for he had told me around 9 o’clock: “I have work to do, I won’t be long.” An hour later, as he still hadn’t come down, at a time in the evening when, and it was a ritual, he used to drink his expresso, I started to worry. It was pointless to call, he had hearing problems. I decided to go up and have a look and, so as not to enter his workroom without a pretext, I prepared his coffee, placed it on the tray we always used, and went up. I was worried about him feeling ill, or I would never have dared for all the world to venture into his room, which he’d always forbidden me to do. Forbidden is not exactly the right word. He’d always made it plain that his kingdom had to remain inviolate, that I never had and never would have a place in there. Our cleaning lady didn’t enter it either. Once on the landing, I knocked but, because of his near deafness, he didn’t hear me. Discreetly, I opened the door and saw him bent over his typewriter. My husband looked completely absorbed. I watched him closely. He was typing feverishly, and it couldn’t be his novel, for I knew his rhythm then was slower. I presumed he was busy with some mail, and I took a step forward. He had his back to me and did not notice I was there. The window was wide open. Outside, behind the mosquito net, it was night, the pitch dark night of Costaguana, with its effluvia, the creepers of our garden and the thousands of rustlings and bird calls which have made me anxious to the point of madness on the very first nights, for I believed the man I loved would somehow respond to them and run away, in spite of his age, which he did, by the way, sometime later … I came a bit closer and leaned over his shoulder. My eyes glimpsed short words, articles that helped me to identify the language. And other words too, some longer, in red: his way to emphasize the titles on the typewriter. I took in die, der, ein, which abounded on the page, and some titles, one of which began with Im Schatten … I knew enough German to recognize it concerned one of his novels, In the shade of the ebony trees, so I couldn’t help letting out a surprised exclamation. He turned around, taken aback by my presence and seemingly furious, before calming down when he saw the tray with the coffee and chocolate bar with cinnamon.

I must have turned very pale in the blink of an eye for he’d always told me the only language he knew, besides Spanish, was English. But I had no doubt: it was well and truly in German that he was typing a letter. Stig forced a smile and thanked me for the coffee, he would have liked to finish his mail earlier but he still had things to do. I said nothing. I couldn’t say anything, though the question was burning my tongue. As I was not leaving but remained there gazing into space, he said to me very softly, Go down, Aurelita, I’ll be there shortly, with the tone one uses with a patient. I couldn’t keep the question to myself. “Stig … Do you speak German? That letter …” The man who sat up abruptly was no longer my husband and had never loved me. His chin contorted, he probed me, eye to eye, and I thought for the first time that he could actually hit me. In a firm voice that I’d never heard before, he barked, I repeat, ‘barked’: No! It’s

Éric Faye

The Man with no Prints

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not German! You know nothing, you ignorant fool!

“He had never talked using that tone before, and I almost fell about laughing, a laugh he used to call satanic. But I didn’t want to fire his anger, so I chose refuge in silence, and went back downstairs. It’s not German, it’s not German!”

“What happened in the end when he joined you downstairs?”

“In the end? I stayed on the stairs for a while, confused. The birds, taken by surprise too, I swear, were singing more softly. Then the metallic letters started again, their clacking broken by brief pauses during which Stig was probably searching for words. I hadn’t reacted quickly enough to look at the name of the person he was writing to. It was undoubtedly his publisher in Zurich. Something else was responsible for my confusion. Until then I believed what he had told me about his American origins and his life before he arrived here, in Costaguana. Suddenly, I discovered a dark, deep crack, and I was scared, without knowing exactly why … A quarter of an hour later, I saw him appear downstairs, smiling, relaxed, and he proposed we drank a glass of sherry together.

His smile indicated that nothing had happened upstairs. For me, however, my husband had become a stranger.”

“That incident was never mentioned again, between you?”

“We had a code of conduct, you see, since we met. My son too knew the limits he was not to cross: talking to journalists, if there were any around, or talking about journalists. They were simply taboo. Or going back a bit too far into Stig’s life, evoking periods on which he answered evasively, I mean the years prior to his settling in Costaguana. He rolled his dark eyes at the curious impertinent, obviously uneasy, with the air of someone who’s brewing a storm, but the storm never came, he never raised his voice, it proceeded no further than fears. He never uttered the least edict nor formulated any interdiction.

It’s me who, two or three times at the beginning, had to ‘reformat’ Alvaro, my son, and warn him about the limits not to exceed.”

Now, with a wave of her hand, the widow invited me to enter the sanctuary where, she pointed out with the insistence of a museum guide, nothing had been moved, from the workroom where she had surprised him writing the letter in German to the libraries and Indian artefacts. Outside, the darkness of the garden and the bird calls that multiplied that idea of jungle must have been quite similar to what was heard on that memorable day. My eyes skimmed quickly over the bookshelves lingering at places where I recognized the author’s name. Books in Spanish and others, not so many, in English, from floor to ceiling. How many could it be, around two thousand for this room alone, the widow advanced, showing me the upper shelves, inaccessible without steps, dozens of books about politics in German, she said. I only discovered them after his death, when I could finally dust them … I found her oddly lacking in shrewdness, suddenly, a bit silly behind her airs and graces. If I had been in her shoes … All the classics of anarchism, from Bakounine to Kropotkine, in German.

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Did they feed the pamphlets he wrote in Berlin? And here I was back near his workroom again, amid the translations of his books in thirty-six languages, and I still receive some from time to time, he is still read in many countries, he is forgotten here, but re-discovered elsewhere, it’s strange, my guide commented. And suddenly, a bit further, I caught sight of Stig … He emerged surrealistically from the wall like a ghost. He sprang. His dark features stood out against a wooden plate.

I remained still before it. Trembling, facing his death mask, I remained quiet.

I would never have thought I would find him so ‘alive’ in a plaster cast, his eyes closed for his posthumous siesta.

“Officials from the government insisted … I wasn’t too keen. But now, I’m quite grateful. Come on, let’s not stay here, let’s go back downstairs if you like.”

“Just a few seconds, please. Give me a few seconds.”

And during those few seconds when I was staring at him, I forgot her. For a moment I convinced myself that others would like to see me take the mask and break it, or carry it away. Run away with it. Run away? Who runs away at my age, at seventy-five? Behind me, my host started to talk as if to herself, undoubtedly looking at the mask too. For the first time, her voice sounded like a widow’s.

“To live next to a man whose obsession is to erase his tracks is a confusing, exhausting experience. What you don’t know about him, what he doesn’t want you to allude to, acquires the aura of the marvellous, like the storeroom in the museum, a forbidden place you suspect is harbouring the best pieces.

His date of birth, his true origins, his nationality: those certainties, so natural in a couple, have cracked gradually, as I engaged in the work of remembering, worse, of verifying, of a permanent doubt.

“Those were my first suspicions. Later, I did my best to bury them deep down inside me. I was a divorcee, remarried, which is not approved of here.

I just let it go. A lot of time passed, then, until other ‘incidents’ occurred. And, of course, the suspicions that have been best sealed, end up sooner or later, leaking. You read Spanish, I suppose? I have a book for you which has just been published and will certainly open windows on Stig’s life, on the barriers he erected against fear, you’ll see, it’s very interesting. It’s the Memories of Aguila Mendes, you probably heard about that politician from Costaguana who originally was just a journalist working at the Diario de Noticias. He reveals how he tried to unmask B. Osborn in 1961, you know the story, don’t you, but he certainly brings, for critics like you, a certain amount of new insights. Aguila Mendes, allow me the parenthesis, was our worst enemy twenty-eight years ago. The wolf who had succeeded in penetrating our well-guarded sheep-pen.

But the wolf ’s testimony is always more interesting than the sheep’s, isn’t it?

As a politician, a deputy, then a governor, Mendes never did much. But it’s not entirely wrong to say the Osborn case launched his journalist career, gave him a name, with the ‘revelations’ he made on that front page one day in 1961,

Éric Faye

The Man with no Prints

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and which represented for Stig the first serious alert. I’ll give you a copy next time we meet.”

She breathed in deeply, in my silence, gazing into space, her brow wrinkled.

“First and foremost, Stig was passionate about the ambiguous links between man and the freedom he says he likes so much. I haven’t read many writers who went as far as he did, and didn’t just churn out the clichés in fashion. Write that down. That he was right or not, the questioning of the myth of freedom is one of the most precious aspects of his texts. We talked about it regularly.

A tiny proportion of men cherish freedom and want to make use of it, Stig said repeatedly, but mankind generally prefers servitude. According to him, man only needs two forms of freedom, being able to move first, and to trade, to earn money as he wishes. The other forms of freedom, he can do without.

Sometimes he even hates them. Read history again, using that measure, and you’ll see …”

As I was about to leave the gangway, my eyes fell on a rucksack placed at the foot of the bed where Stig had his siestas, and had probably lain down one day to die, and I couldn’t take my eyes off it. The bag was overflowing with freshly ironed clothes. Seeing me there, nailed on the spot, the widow allowed herself a little nervous laugh.

“I left it as it was. Stig always kept it ready, in that place, stuffed with spare clothes, a toilet case and God knows what else, an ‘expedition kit’, as he used to say, a compass, fake ID … He was like a soldier who keeps his boots on in bed, in case of a surprise attack.”

Yes, I could have said, I know that bag very well, it kept guard like a dog at the foot of the bed of my last lover, in Iquita, ready and overflowing with the same clothes. And, like a pet, at a sign Stig must have caught, it had jumped on his back and both had disappeared while I was asleep. I never saw Stig Warren again. Why? I had serious doubt that this word, why, had a meaning for that man.

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Lionel Froissart

Date of Publication: October 2007 Foreign Rights Manager: Sarah Hirsch sarah@editions-heloisedormesson.com Translation: David Macey davidmacey18@btinternet.com

© Arnaud Février

Boxers Always Come to a Bad End … Usually

Publisher: Éditions Héloïse d’Ormesson

Biography

Born in 1958, Lionel Froissart is a sports journalist who has worked on Libération for over twenty years and a regular contributor to the Eurosport television channel. He is a motor sports and boxing enthusiast and has written many books on Formula 1 and its drivers, including Ayrton Senna.

Croisements d’une vie (Anne Carrière, 2004). In his first novel Les boxeurs finisssent mal… en général he abandons the framework of the classic biography.

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One day, they left the ring’s square of magic light and never went back into it: the noble are has not always been charitable towards its greatest champions.

This book, which is a novel in the form of a twelve-round fight, revisits the meteoric trajectory of some of these unfortunate fighters. A rape-accusation hastened Mike Tyson’s sporting decline.

Boxing’s macho man Carlos Monzon was jailed for guilty of throwing his wife out of a window and was killed in an accident while out on release. A botched trial put Anthony Fletcher on death row. The trajectory of Marcel Cerdan, who was his people’s pride, ended

on a mountain shrouded in mist. The death of Davy Moore inspired a song by Bob Dylan.

Sporting exhaustiveness is not the priority here. On the contrary; it was when they returned to ‘normal’ life that many of these men, always brave, sometimes pitiful and often unhappy, added substance to their legends.

Les boxeurs finissent mal… en general is a work of fiction based on actual facts and features characters who appear under their real names. Some of the events reported are fictional; others are true to reality.

Round 10 At the end of the row obert Dalley crawled down the J.F. Kennedy Expressway towards Chicago airport. He was caught up in the morning jams and the only distraction was the sight of the blow-ups of his mug on the big billboards that praised his talents as a lawyer specializing in private litigation. It was his associate-lawyers’ office that had come up with the idea for this expensive advertising campaign. Its main professional competitors had immediately done the same. As a result, the expressway looked like a portrait gallery of guys in dark suits with reassuring smiles. On a few billboards the blow-dried good looks of a stunning female colleague broke the monotony of the landscape. Robert wondered who on earth had time to note down just one of the numbers given on the billboards. They all began with 1-800.

Dalley had the rather unpleasant feeling that he was wasting his talent. He had trained as a specialist defence lawyer, but most of the cases that had come his way of late had been just two-bit affairs. One day, he was defending the owner of a little shack who had declared war on a supermarket whose sign, which was at least ten feet high, encroached upon his land and meant that his backyard got no sun. The next, it was a grandmother who was hoping to hit the jackpot by suing the architect who had designed her ideal home. The staircases failed — by a fraction of an inch — to meet the specifications and she had fallen and broken her hip. And the day after that, he was trying to enforce the rights — and especially the financial rights — of a spare-time inventor who was suing a lawnmower manufacturer for stealing his anti-stall system. It was usually a matter of getting as much dough as possible for his client, and for himself.

The ethics of the cases he handled came down to the number of zeros on the

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cheque. He put the same determination into chasing damages as into working out in the ring.

Boxing was the only thing that kept him going. Robert Dalley was twentyseven, glad to be single and spent most of the little free time he got sweating it out in Chicago’s boxing gyms. Beating the life out of a punch bag or facing up to this trainer with gloves on his fists got rid of the week’s stress. And it was by flicking through a back issue of The Ring –the ‘bible of boxing’, as the specialist magazine proudly described itself at the bottom of every page — that Robert Dalley had come across the story that just might allow him to get away from his usual clients’ shitty little problems. Robert, who prided himself on knowing all about the history of boxing, could not get over the fact that he had never heard of the exemplary case of Anthony Fletcher, a one-time US lightweight champion who had been accused of murder and sentenced to death in 1993.

For almost ten years, Fletcher had been rotting in a cell in a penitentiary in Pennsylvania –what people outside call death row — and protesting his innocence. The long article devoted to him ended with what sounded like a cry for help. Anthony Fletcher wondered if there was an attorney out there who might be willing to look into his case. The solution to this kind of problem often came down to the amount of time the lawyer could devote to it. Officially sentenced to die by lethal injection on 7 May 1993, Fletcher had been told he would be executed in March 2001. The execution had been scheduled for 3 May of that year, over eight years after the murder was alleged to have happened. But the fateful date had passed long ago and he was still alive. Various appeals had postponed the fateful day. In the many letters he sent to the few people who still took an interest in his case, Anthony Fletcher said again and again that he was living one day at a time, but he was always afraid that, one morning, they would wake him up for the promised injection.

Robert Dalley knew that there was often little room for manoeuvre in cases like this, but as long as his client was still in the land of the living there was every hope of saving his life. On the other hand, what was the point of putting a lot of effort into rehabilitating the memory of a guy who had already been fried in the chair or whose body had been so stuffed with chemicals that both his nervous system and heart had been paralysed? Dalley did not see himself a knight in shining armour who was trying to stop them adding one more name to the long list of men who had been found innocent after they had been executed.

He just wanted to pull off something spectacular.

In his line of business, the best way to succeed was usually to take up a lost cause, dig up a dusty file on a case that had got nowhere and get enough people interested to make a textbook case. In the same article in The Ring, the journalist mentioned Mumia Abu-Jamal, a member of the Black Panthers who had been sentenced to death for the alleged murder of a cop in 1981 and locked up in the same joint as Fletcher. The case was quite similar, except that Abu-Jamal

Lionel Froissart

Boxers Always Come to a Bad End … Usually

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was a former radio journalist from Philadelphia, and his contacts had rallied around to prove him innocent. His execution had been postponed and his death sentence had finally been quashed when his lawyers succeeded in demonstrating that a lot of procedural errors had been made during the original trial. A defence committee had had no difficulty in collecting over a hundred thousand dollars to get a defence lawyer for the man with the dreadlocks. More than twenty years in prison had done nothing to soften Abu-Jamal’s determination that, one day, he would get out as an innocent man, and not feet first.

Robert Dalley promised himself that Fletcher would be his Abu-Jamal. He was going to fight to defend him and turn him into a man who had been washed clean of all suspicion.

The young lawyer was rather pleased he had convinced his office to send him to Waynesburg, which was near Pittsburgh, to meet Anthony Fletcher. After weeks of negotiations and letters to and from the prison administration, Robert Dalley had obtained a visiting order. That was a favour that was not granted to many guys on death row. He had even been able to look at an extract from Fletcher’s file and was already familiar with the broad outlines of his case.

He was not on his way to meet a choirboy. If he hadn’t got mixed up in this murder business, the former boxer would probably have found himself behind bars soon enough because of a drug deal or some other funny business. But Dalley refused to believe he was guilty of homicide. A quick glance at the file had revealed cracks as wide as the San Andreas Fault. Robert was going places.

This time it was about saving a man’s life, not saving a patch of lawn or getting a multinational to cough up a few thousand dollars. He was sure that once he had looked into the eyes of the man who was going to be his special client, he would know more about his guilt or innocence.

The décor was just what he had imagined. After a two hour drive south from Pittsburgh on Freeway 79 and through a grey, monotonous landscape, Robert Dalley parked outside the grim metal gates of Green State Correctional Institution just before noon. The sky was washed out, and it looked as though they were in for either freezing rain or snow, even though it was only early fall.

After he had gone through two security checks, he was given a specific list of questions. The fact that he was there in his official capacity as an attorney did nothing to alter the procedure. Having crossed the no man’s land between the main gates and the entrance to the cell block, Robert had already some idea of why they described this joint as one of the cruellest in the United States. A lot of reports had already pointed to serious failures to respect even the most basic humanitarian rules on the humane treatment of inmates. Several complaints of sexual assault by the guards had landed on the State Governor’s desk. The State Correctional Institute opened in 1963, and it was no model prison. This was one of the grimmest ‘death rows’ in the country and it was only because

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a particularly close watch was kept on its prisoners that the suicide rate was as low as it was. But the case of Anthony Fletcher was the only one the young lawyer from Chicago was interested in today.

He was shown into a visiting room. There was a room like this in most prisons.

It wasn’t much more than a few square yards, divided by a partition of bulletproof glass two thirds of the way down it. Pale blue walls and a tiled floor. To the height of three feet, the walls were painted dark grey. A single chair, which he guessed would be uncomfortable, facing an opening in the glass. The gap was so narrow that no physical contact between the prisoner and his visitor was conceivable. Cameras on either side of the glass picked up the slightest movement of anyone in the room. But the slot in the glass was wide enough for someone to slip a cutter or a blade through, if they could get it through the metal detector or the body searches all visitors had to submit to. Lawyers were no exception to the rule.

Robert had put his gabardine on the back of his chair. He was wearing a sober anthracite suit, a white shirt and a tie in the same shade of grey as the walls. All bought at a Brooks Brothers’ sale in a mall in the north of Chicago.

He realised that this was the first time he had visited a correctional institution. As he waited for a guard to bring Anthony Fletcher in, Robert got a little notebook and a pencil ready, like a schoolboy getting his desk ready before an exam.

Lionel Froissart

Boxers Always Come to a Bad End … Usually

Robert Dalley discretely looked at his watch. He had been waiting for half an hour and was as still alone in a room that was as silent as the grave. He was probably being softened up. So he just had to be patient. When Anthony Fletcher was sitting opposite him, they would be able to talk for as long as they liked.

He had got an ‘unlimited time’ visit, which was what was usually granted. All he had had to do was ask. Article 14B of the State of Pennsylvania’s prison visit regulations made that clear, if you read it carefully. After he had been waiting for thirty-seven minutes, the heavy door at the back of the room opened, on the other side of the glass. Robert instinctively stood up to welcome the man he had come to talk to.

He still looked young even though he was almost forty-five. Through the glass, Dalley could see the outline of his shuffling, nonchalant figure. He was of average height but Anthony couldn’t have weighed much more than he did when he was in fighting trim, about one hundred and twenty pounds. He was wearing heavy-rimmed dark glasses, as though to protect himself from the sun he saw for only an hour a day when he was let out alone into the exercise yard.

The two men said hello and sat down in a perfectly synchronised movement.

Anthony took off his intimidating shades, almost apologising for not having done so sooner. He explained that he had gone blind in the left eye. A detached

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retina had not been treated properly and an attack of facial paralysis had left him with this fixed expression. The two health problems had put an early end to his career. Having introduced himself, Robert Dalley explained the reasons for his visit. He was ready, he explained, to take a new look at the former boxer’s case, no strings attached. He explained how he had come across his story by chance. If they were even going to begin to work together, Robert needed to know more. He reassured Anthony that, despite the presence of the cameras, the room was not bugged, and that they could talk freely. The basis for a good defence was a complete understanding of the case and the facts, and mutual trust. The lawyer warned his client that their chances of getting a retrial were slim, and that time was not on their side. It was clear from the way he talked that he was already taking the side of a man who had yet to open his mouth. Anthony Fletcher had been living on death row for over ten years. He knew it all.

The unbearable heat made the atmosphere even more suffocating. Robert put his jacket on top of his gabardine. It was Anthony’s turn to talk. The chronology of events did not matter much. He just had to search his memory and dredge up the key events in his life. Anthony threw himself into it like the boxer he was, weaving around his opponent and punctuating every sentence by punching the air. It took him hours to tell his life story, and he told it with fantastic energy. The energy of despair.

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Pascal Garnier

Date of Publication: January 2008 Foreign Rights Manager: Laure Leroy laure.leroy@zulma.fr Translation: Will Hobson willhobson@hotmail.com

© Raphaël Gaillarde

The Panda Theory

Publisher: Zulma

Biography

Born in 1949 in Paris, Pascal Garnier left home as a teenager to travel the world. Short-story writer, noir novelist and author of children’s books, he is a prolific and versatile writer with an unparalleled ability to evoke ordinary characters mired in drab lives. Unsparingly clear-eyed, his sensibility is nonetheless marked by a great tenderness and fellow feeling towards his protagonists. ‘An innovative and unmistakable highpoint in the landscape of noir fiction.’ L’Humanité. Pascal Garnier now lives in Lyon where he continues to paint and write.

Publications Comment va la douleur?, Zulma, 2006; Flux, Zulma, 2005; Parenthèse, Plon, 2004; Les Hauts du bas, Zulma, 2003.

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Thanks to his talents as a chef and his indolent charisma, Gabriel has barely appeared from parts unknown before he is on intimate terms with the inhabitants of a small town in Brittany–amongst others, an extremely beautiful hotel receptionist, two strung out junkies and, in particular, Jose, the owner of the Faro, whose wife is in hospital.

Like the stuffed panda that has ended up on the Faro bar, Gabriel offers himself and his time to the men and women who gravitate towards him, by turns surprised and seduced, but all equally trusting. And yet if only they knew …

Once again Pascal Garnier displays all his charm.

e is sitting on his own at the end of a bench. An empty railway platform with a tangle of metallic roofing merging into the gloom. The station of a small town in Brittany on a Sunday in October. It could be anywhere by the look of it but it is Brittany all the same–its inland, at least: the sea is a long way off, unimaginable; it’s not a picturesque place. A faint smell of manure hangs in the air. A clock shows 17.18. Head bowed, elbows on knees, he is looking at the palms of his open hands. Your hands always get dirty on trains, he thinks. Not dirty exactly so much as greasy, especially under the nails, with that grey sweat that comes from all the people who’ve touched the handles, armrests and tables before you. He shuts his hands again, lifts his head. Since the complete inactivity on all sides seems to provoke him, he gets to his feet, grabs his overnight bag, walks fifteen or so yards up the platform and takes the underground passage to the station exit. He doesn’t meet anyone on the way.

With his teeth he tears open the plastic envelope covering the minuscule bar of soap and washes his hands for a long time. The sink has two taps, which means he has to go back and forth between the two of them because the water comes out boiling from the left and freezing from the right. He doesn’t look at himself in the mirror, just catches a glimpse of his face because he can’t help it, like an anonymous passer-by as you turn the corner of a street. The towel is hardly bigger than a handkerchief, made of honeycomb cloth, the kind you always get in cheap hotels. He does a circuit of the room wiping his hands. A table, a chair, a bed, and a cupboard containing a pillow, a Tartan blanket– predominant colour: almond green–and three coathangers. All made of the same imitation wood, MDF and veneered rosewood. He throws the towel down on the brown chenille bedspread. It’s stifling. The radiator only offers two options: on or off.

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He had got rid of a litter of kittens once by shutting them in a shoebox lined with cotton soaked in ether. It hadn’t taken long, the miaowing, the scratching of their claws. His bag at the foot of the bed, the handles flopped down at its side, the tongue of its zip hanging out, looks like an exhausted dog. He jerks back the curtain and throws the window open wide. Still that smell of manure.

A street light sprays a wan glow over half a dozen lock-up garages with corrugated iron doors of the same indefinable colour. Above them hangs a sky: there always has to be one of those. The bed is as soft as the ceiling is hard. The overhead light with a frosted glass dish clumsily suggesting some sort of flower in bloom fails to brighten up proceedings. He turns it off.

“Do you know where you can get something to eat round here?’

“Sunday evening? … Try the Faro, second on the left going down the street.

But I don’t know if it’s open. Shall I give you the door code in case you get back after midnight?”

“No need, I’ll be back before.”

The receptionist is called Madeleine, if the pendant round her neck is to be believed. While not beautiful, she is not ugly either. She wavers between the two, shall we say. But she is indisputably a brunette. A hint of moustache highlights her upper lip.

A few dark shops on the street, like empty aquariums. A car passes in one direction, two in the other. No pedestrians.

The Faro is more of a bistrot than a restaurant. Apart from the owner sitting at the bar, a pen in his mouth, engrossed in a few obscure bookkeeping tasks, the place is deserted.

“Evening. Any chance of getting something to eat?”

“I’m not serving food this evening.”

“Ah … A Coke then … No, a beer.”

Off his stool, the man can barely be more than 5 ft 4. Stocky with a rough growth of beard, he is like a wild boar with doe-eyes, their gaze filtered by long lashes that curl up at the end. He pulls a glass of beer, sets it down on the counter after mechanically giving the spot a wipe.

“Usually I serve food but not this evening.”

“Too bad.”

The owner stands there awkwardly for a moment, his eyes lowered, shaking his cloth, and then abruptly returns to his stool behind the cash-till.

Apart from the four brass lamps drenching the bar, the rest of the establishment is sunk in shadow. Probably because there are no other customers. Tables and chairs can be made out, and further off, in the back room, children’s toys, a pedal tractor, building blocks, Lego, an open book, sheets of paper, scattered felt tips.He doesn’t touch his beer. Maybe he doesn’t really feel like it after all.

“Would you like to eat?”

“Yes.”

Pascal Garnier

The Panda Theory

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“My wife does the cooking. But she’s in hospital.”

“I’m sorry.”

For a moment all that can be heard is the fizzing of the froth on top of the beer.

“Do you like cod stew?”

“Yes … I think.”

“I’ve got some left over. I was going to shut. If you fancy …”

“That would be good.”

“Have a seat. No, not in the restaurant, come with me.”

The backroom suddenly erupts in a clamour of lemon yellow neon. Together they step over the pedal tractor, the building blocks, the Lego bricks, the sheets of paper spattered with brightly coloured children’s drawings.

“Go there.”

The table he sits at faces a monumental television. It is covered with an oilcloth with a pattern of white daisies against an apple green background.

“I won’t be a minute.”

Before leaving the room, the owner presses a button on the remote. The screen pumps out a stream of incoherent images and deafening noises like blood from a slit throat, a constant gurgling. … BUT THE TOLL IS ONLY AN ESTIMATE. IN NORTHERN IRELAND …

“Bacalao!”

The owner sets two plates filled to overflowing with cod, potatoes, peppers and tomatoes on the table along with a bottle of vinho verde.

“Bon appétit.”

“Thank you.” … THE PARENTS HAVE DELIVERED A MESSAGE TO THE KIDNAPPERS. WE GO OVER TO THEM NOW …

“It’s Marie, my wife, who makes it but I’m the one who taught her. I am Portuguese, she is Breton. She could only make crepes. She still does. We’re in Brittany so you have to make crepes for the Bretons. Are you Breton?”

“No.” “I didn’t think so.”

“Why?” “Bretons down their beer in one, not like you.”

“Is it serious?”

“What? Not to be Breton?”

“No, your wife.”

“No. A cyst. She’s strong. It’s the first time she’s been ill. I drove her to hospital this morning. The children are at their grandmother’s. It’s better for them.”

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… THE ACCIDENT FORTUNATELY CLAIMED NO VICTIMS. FROM OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT IN CAIRO, LAURENT PÉCHU …

“How many do you have?”

‘Two, a boy and a girl, Gaël and Maria, seven and five.” … IT COULD BE HUMAN ERROR …

“How about you, do you have children?”

“No.” “Are you a sailor?”

“No.” “I said that because of the reefer jacket.”

“They’re practical things to wear.” … AT HALF TIME, THE SCORE WAS 3-2 …

The cod hasn’t been desalted enough. He doesn’t like the vinho verde, he would rather water but there isn’t any on the table.

He only has to ask … The owner isn’t going to refuse … it’s like the beer he hasn’t drunk … Stupid.

“Do you know Portugal?”

“I’ve been to Lisbon.”

“Beautiful city. Big! I’m from Faro. It’s pretty too but smaller. I came to France in 1977. St. Etienne, bricklayer. And then …” … VICTORY AT OLYMPIA. HERE IS A FAN …

“Then I gave up the building trade to run the restaurant with Marie. Do you want a coffee?”

“No thanks.”

“Ah …” … OVERCAST BUT CLEARING AND BRIGHTENING UP TOWARDS THE END OF THE DAY …

“It was very good. How much do I owe you?”

“Um … Ten euros. I won’t charge for the beer.”

“Thanks.” … WONDERFUL EVENING AND STAY WITH US ON ONE …

“I thought I’d be eating alone this evening and anyway … I’m called José.

You?” “Gabriel. See you tomorrow.”

“Yes, see you tomorrow … But I won’t be serving while Marie’s in hospital.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

Pascal Garnier

The Panda Theory

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Serge Joncour

Date of Publication: March 2008 Foreign Rights Manager: Patricia Stansfield pstansfield@flammarion.fr Translation: Adriana Hunter adriana@hunter157.freeserve.co.uk

Photo Arnaud Février © Flammarion

How Many Ways I Love You

Publisher: Flammarion

Biography

Serge Joncour is forty-six and lives in Paris. Throughout his childhood he was brought up with the rigorous teachings of monks in various different schools, then he forsook his military calling to launch himself into studying philosophy at the Sorbonne, only to re-emerge very soon as a swimming instructor. In 2000 he was awarded the Xavier Forneret Black Humour Prize for Vu, published by Le Dilettante. UV won the France Télévision prize for a novel. All his books have gone on to be published in “poche” (a mark of popularity) in France and his work has been translated into several languages.

Publications Que la paix soit avec vous, Flammarion, 2006; L’Idole, Flammarion, 2004; UV, Le Dilletante, 2003 (published in uk in 2005); In vivo, Flammarion, 2002; Situations délicates, Flammarion, 2001; Kenavo, Flammarion, 2000; Vu, Le Dilettante, 1998.

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Eighteen stories of loving, eighteen ways to lose someone or find someone.

These two have been writing emails to each other for weeks, and they have finally arranged to meet this evening, they have decided to see each other just to see. Those two there have seen each other every day for ten years but the suggestion of them touching has never come up. And those two, after sixty years of life together they decide to separate when the hand of illness sketches the contours of a new way of living with each other. There’s the woman who never kisses, except perhaps to bite. And the elusive one who keeps her lover at a distance by hiding behind a mobile number. There’s the couple who are haunted by the child they didn’t have, the child who is still there as the memory of an emotion, the scar of a missed appointment. Then again there’s this man feeling too alone this

evening, looking through the numbers on his mobile one by one, a living luminous memory in the crook of his hand.

The other stories tell us about ourselves, about the hopes and disillusion we all have in common, hidden inside. We do a lot in life out of love, we spend whole nights, whole lifetimes believing in it, touching it, and when we have it we break our own hearts at the thought of losing it or damaging it. Sometimes the hurt it causes is on a par with the pleasure it has brought, sometimes physical desire outlasts the contempt of day-to-day habits, and the persistent temptation to meet someone else.

Every facet of love today, its moments of magic and its timeless despair. Carver-style Snapshots, poignant in their veracity and humanity.

I love you; let’s meet. e met on the internet, at least that’s what people thought, that we actually met when all we really did was write to each other, drawing closer in small cautious stages, both safely sheltered behind our screens, as if protected by them, until our emails became more and more trusting, more and more urgent, until we tried to see each other’s faces behind the words.

Then we started baring our souls as quickly as possible, saying all there was to say thanks to Send/Reply, sending it all with just one click, too impatient to wait any longer, our unit of time was the second. The simple joy of turning on the computer every time to see if there was a new message, and there always was. Love means at least having the two of you there together. In brief sentences we told each other everything, without really knowing who we were talking to, not properly aware of what we were doing, we opened our hearts and exchanged all our hopes, surrendering ourselves with mad abandon, not even bothered that we were giving ourselves to a shadow.

At first, though, our emails had been utterly professional, with no more the usual formulaic niceties, it’s just that as the days went by we slipped from best regards to warmest regards to love from. Imperceptibly we went from pretty technical exchanges to wider questions about the weather, how we were feeling, mentioning our private lives, without saying too much, never really revealing anything, but what we said became more and more personal, more and more trusting, even — in the last few days — quite intimate.

What sort of image did we have of each other? The photos we exchanged — in my case I sent her the best two pictures I’ve got of myself, we all have those shots, snaps where the light does us miraculous favours. Photos are convenient,

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they isolate the body for one moment, not saying anything definitive, some even manage to lie, some can make you look beautiful, so what’s she really like, I mean for real? But then again why is it so important?

Things went very quickly between us, we found so much in common, instant messaging is time’s catalyst, a particle accelerator, shaping bodies from the scantest clues, drawing on fantasy and imagination, not really taking account of reality, feelings are not to do with material things after all, the electronic realm is absolutely made for them, you could even say that’s what it’s there for. Because we were lonely we genuinely grew close, we felt we were there, I went so far as imagining myself falling in love with her, with no contact except for words, it was beautiful, we didn’t talk about seeing each other, our involvement existed outside any physical presence, our relationship was always one step ahead of us.

Eventually we did have to settle that one detail, though, seeing each other just to see. We felt the time might have come to have a drink on neutral territory, somewhere reassuring if possible, with people around but not too many, so we didn’t feel swamped by our complete innovation, which consisted in meeting someone but not before you loved them.

So that’s why I’m here in a café, sitting a little way back, away from the bay windows. I got here very early, not that it was calculated, and not really to avoid the fatal faux pas of arriving late for a first date, no, but more out of impatience, under the illusion that if I brought the time forward I would see her coming from further away, I would get more of an understanding of her. Am I allowed to admit that at one point I even thought that by backing away a bit, sitting at the back, the field would be clear for me to get out, should the need arise. It’s awful to think like that. No, I can tell we’re going to like each other, the doors are going to open right there in line with the sun, she’ll appear perfectly outlined between the double doors, and I won’t see her properly at first because of the light from the southfacing terrace, she’ll walk forward in a halo of exalted light, because this girl isn’t just anyone, you know, this girl may be the strength and comfort I need beneath her airy perfume dissipated by mohair, this girl won’t just understand me, she’s the one who will avenge all the tactlessness of the others, all those indifferent girls who’ve never looked at me, this girl is compensation for those icons I only ever brushed past in the street, those anonymous girls born just to walk by, not even seeing me, or discounting me, yes, that’s it, we do need to be lucky and finally meet the right person at some point in this life, as if in response to all those hours wasted on passing figures, this time a woman’s going stop oh so gently, a woman plucked from the world in such an inconsequential way, a woman who’ll walk up to me … it’s her, there she is, I can see her now, it’s her, I can tell, I’m sure it is, the closer she comes the more obvious it is it’s her … She’s almost here now, she spotted me straight away even though she wasn’t really looking for me, she’s got the right kind of smile, with just a hint of wariness. My immediate thought now

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is she’s not the sort I’d turn to look at in the street, that’s for sure. You only get that in films when men meet women much better looking than themselves, and why is that actually? And why would I actually meet a great beauty myself? I’m not good-looking, I don’t look like an actor, far from it, I can tell you, I’m not the sort of man people notice, I’m average. In fact I cheated a bit in my description, I went up to 6 foot and the 88 kilos are definitely there but not in the same proportions as those sporty types in advertising, I’m more in line with the everyday.

I can see disappointment in her face too, clearly, we like each other enough, no more. We’re like two survivors surrounded by ruins, all around us, clear for all to see, a whole world has fallen apart, a whole dream, and all that’s left of it now is a cloud of steam, what has just evaporated in front of us is the magic of all those hours spent writing and making promises, those nights we each spent believing we’d been saved as we kept alive the flame of our intimate conviction that we had finally found the one.

So where do we go from here? We should still order something to drink, two hot chocolates, say, then at least we can commune through its taste. It’s always like this when you come back down to earth, you hover for a moment, there’s a bitterness that stops you even wanting to talk, astronauts often have to supported — carried sometimes — when they come back from space. But we’re here now, we’ll have to say something, we’ve got to make a couple of comments about this meeting while it’s knocking us both flat, so we talk about ourselves, taking disenchantment as the starting point, getting a bit closer to the truth, not trying to pump ourselves up so much, when we refer to ourselves now we’re fairly and squarely in the tangible world, a far cry from the illusion of the image we want to portray.

We have to go right back to the beginning. On the subject of work, we didn’t lie to each other, yes we do both have jobs but, when it comes down to it, not as great as all that, with moderate pay, as for all that travelling we talked about and more or less promised each other we would do, all those crazy trips we discussed, the weekend in Grenada or Tangiers, the week in the West Indies, we both know now that even if we liked each other, even if we’d got completely carried away, we would probably never have gone on them, mind you that suits me fine at the moment, I haven’t got any money and, as for her, she’s just admitted she’s afraid of flying.

What we’re looking for in life isn’t really the glory of an explorer discovering a new continent, no, when we look for a soul mate all we’re actually trying to find is some peace, having someone to ourselves in the evening when it’s time to go home, a presence that clings to our bodies like clothes, a concept of someone else that trots through our heads all day long, we want to expiate the feeling of abandonment, to love so that we don’t feel so alone. … But it’s big step to go from that to hooking up with someone we don’t really fancy! Because, if I’m honest, she and I should be able to admit that what

Serge Joncour

How Many Ways I Love You

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we’re busy doing now is not fancying each other, it’s plain to see, in fact I can’t see how we can avoid saying so, how we can dodge the shrapnel of our disappointment flying around us. We bury our faces in our big cups, homing in on the smell, and a little bit of childhood comes back to us, the fine mist settling on our noses tells us to be good and everything will be fine. At the end of the day the only things we’ve got in common is disappointment, there’s that at least, it’s almost a starting point, I mean a shared experience. So, instead of leaving it at that, instead of lurching alone into that slice of December afternoon when the sun has almost set, I suggest we should go on and have this supper, because, after all, the thought was at the back of our minds all along, to meet in a café late in the afternoon and, if everything went well, to drag the time out until we could say it was time for supper. The little restaurant isn’t far, I now model my behaviour on the strategies of the smitten man I should have been at this precise moment, as a precaution I actually made a reservation three days ago, so that I could have this very table, the one next to the bay window, to get the view, not really of Paris but of the street. We study the menu without enthusiasm, accept the apéritif offered because it doesn’t occur to us to refuse, make sensible choices, not bothered what each other will think, not even worrying what repercussions the dishes might have on our breath or digestion. It’s the same with the wine, no showing off, a red Sancerre, from the Loire, as if everything that happens this evening should glide as harmlessly as that great river.

Our conversation turns gradually towards sincerity, we tell each other about our failures and missed opportunities, talking about our experiences and how we think love is improbable, as if sniffing each other out like injured animals, we can see how much each other has suffered too, it’s reassuring, it makes you feel less alone in your loneliness. She’s known plenty of men, she’s met crafty ones who, under cover of blinding love, made dates with her with the sole intention of getting into her knickers so, once or twice, and she admits she doesn’t feel too guilty about it, she went along, she tells me this as she would to a girlfriend, not in the least worried I might be jealous, she’s already telling me about the guys she slept with recently with no illusions. I can’t say the same for myself, no woman would ever have come on a date with me in order to get me into bed, that’s never yet happened to me. Besides, so far I haven’t met any women I’ve found on the Internet, not for real. A total of one. But she tells me it’s easy, that it’s an easy way for men to find women, she even knows some who’ve met dozens. I’m missing something.

The second bottle of wine relaxes us a bit more. There aren’t that many people here this evening, hardly any cars in the street. As if on purpose, it’s Christmas next week. On the eve of this great family occasion, our failed lovers’ dinner is all the more incongruous. We need to salvage something from this indecorous fact, it’s almost sacrilege to meet someone on the threshold of a Christian celebration,

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but it’s even more insolent if the meeting’s for nothing, all we need now is to start talking about making love, right now, all we need now is to float the idea of sleeping together, after all, apart from the dozen snails we’ve each treated ourselves to, there’s nothing to counter-indicate getting closer, all the necessary conditions have been met. I’ve always noticed that my initiatives don’t go down well, when I start things that’s very often where they stop, so it’s her who takes my hand, a strange distant movement from some meander along the Loire, near Sancerre, that sort of area. For a moment I see myself as the bastard who gets a woman to drink in order to snare her smile. I don’t know what to think of myself any more, still less of her, got to admit I’ve had a fair bit to drink. I can see my hand in hers like a hamster in a child’s arms, I’m not sure what it’s doing there. Her whole soul seems half weary and half despairing as she takes my hand and smoothes it over her face, almost as if it were her own. I interpret this as an admission of terrible distress, a beacon warning of imminent perdition, a signal meaning the boat is about to founder, she’s trying to find a buoy for the night, I’m here, as if by chance I live just up the road, so we go there, the lights are on in my apartment, precisely so that we don’t have to put the lights on and lose ourselves completely, trampling the mind-blowing disillusion of not finding what we wanted, so we take each other, we don’t even undress, you can’t see in the dark, you can escape back into the images conjured by our words, desire springs again from the absurd hopes we put in them, we make love urgently, contorting, biting, consuming each other like a meal after too long spent fasting, the revenge of the conquered, we do everything to each other, even if that means doing it badly and even if that means hurting each other at times, switching between virtuoso movements and workaday positions, trying everything without the fear of disappointing, yes, that’s it, we do everything to each other this evening, we go all the way, letting go completely, granting ourselves the pleasure we didn’t know how to find, life is a revenge there for the taking, you have to steal it like a victory. Only the future can tell us what our next emails will be like, it might be we stop writing to each other tomorrow. For weeks now our words have been fuelling this fusion of bodies, that’s all writing will have done for us, given us one evening to abolish any trace of poetry.

We’ll see, for now she’s fallen asleep, she’s sleeping, I almost feel like getting up and turning on the computer to write her an email, to talk about this, about us, ask her what she thinks of it. I almost feel like sending her an email even if only to get an answer, or to wait for one at least. I miss her. I miss that waiting.

Yes, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll send her an email. I miss writing to her, connecting every five minutes to look out for her reply, I miss that little icon: 1 new message, I miss it so much, my little evening message, as if loving each other meant no longer writing to each other.

I’ll drop her a line.

What if she replies?

We’ll see about that tomorrow.

Serge Joncour

How Many Ways I Love You

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Linda Lê

In Memoriam

Publisher: Christian Bourgois Date of Publication: August 2007 Foreign Rights Manager: Raphaëlle Liebaert raphaelle.liebaert-bourgoisediteur@orange.fr

© Mathieu Bourgois

Translation: Lulu Norman lp.fn@virgin.net

Biography

Linda Lê was born in 1963 and lives in Paris. There have been many different stages between her birth in the town of Dalat in Vietnam and her move to Paris: first Saigon, and her studies at the French lycée, then, after the fall of Saigon, her repatriation to France with her French mother and her sister. Having had three books published while very young, her next book was Les Évangiles du Crime, unanimously praised in the press for its exceptional originality.

Publications Published by Christian Bourgois: Le Complexe de Caliban, 2005; Conte de l’amour Bifrons, 2005; Kriss, followed by L’Homme de Porlock, 2004; Autres jeux avec le feu, 2002; Les Aubes, 2000.

In the Titres Collection: Les Évangiles du crime, 2007.

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One spring morning, a woman takes her life. She leaves behind four books, all of them enigmas for the two men who have loved her, two warring brothers who find themselves disconsolate. The narrator, a writer himself, had been first to approach her; he paints the portrait of an insurrectionary creating a body of work both for and in opposition to everything, in which compromise plays no part. It’s a story of grief that works as an epitaph to an implacable woman and a eulogy in praise of a Resistance fighter, but it’s also a confession in which love, rivalry, and the stubborn search for truth

reveal their different faces. The quest for the other, the sacrifice made to literature, the dance of ghosts wishing to be reborn; by asking himself questions about the departure of this lover who’s revealed his true self to him (but who didn’t say goodbye and left no note) the narrator reviews his own life. In a lucid, humorous style, he describes his literary beginnings and his quarrels with his brother, who’s destined to be his rival. And perhaps, finally, the challenge is to express his passion for a woman who’s retained her mystery to the end, and has conquered death with her words.

’d have gone mad if I hadn’t written this book. Madness lay in wait for me anyway: as soon as I finished it I burnt it. Is it crazy to complete your life’s work and then destroy it or does it make sense? I didn’t need to ask the question. I was oscillating between dream and reality. I’d perceive everything acutely for a while and then, a minute later, be asking who I was.

Sometimes I’d spend hours contemplating a Laguiole knife, wanting to slit my throat. I’d grip it in my hand and stare at the reflection of my eyes in the blade.

I no longer left the house: I’d have been capable of stabbing the first person I passed — and I’m sure it would have been a woman. A slender young woman who’d ventured onto my path to say, Kill me, if you dare. I didn’t trust myself, or the state I was in, exasperation alternating with astonishment. At night, I couldn’t sleep, I was on the alert, listening for the convulsions of my soul.

I lived in total isolation, which I myself had created. I’d ordered the few friends who still asked after me to leave me in peace. But I sought this peace in vain. As long as I was covering pages with ink, I could still believe in the possibility of a rebirth. Once the job was done, I found myself facing a jumble of words, and what might have strengthened me triggered a despondency the like of which I’d never known. I’d sit mumbling on my bed, in a daze. When I recovered, I’d go to the opposite extreme, pacing in dreadful agitation, chain-smoking until I felt sick. It was hard to gather my thoughts. My mind had fled and was playing tricks on me. My body was only there to taunt me — which of us would win?

If it was my body, I’d turn into a mummy, I’d draw the thick curtains over my windows and, in the pitch black, curl up into a ball and not move.

I’d begun to work not simply as people cling to a last hope: I wanted to melt into those pages until there was nothing left of me and I’d no longer repeat that sentence She killed herself, which tolled the knell of a story I’d never been able to control. The title of the manuscript was Sola’s Tomb. We called her Sola because

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she was alone and solitary, she lived in supreme solitude. One spring morning Sola had killed herself. No letter — not even a terse Forgive me — had been found near her. And that refusal to explain herself, that disdain for the world she was leaving, weighed heavily in the balance. There was nothing to suggest that that Monday in April she was about to end it all in such a violent way. I say it was impossible to foresee that decision. I might just as well have said that in my heart of hearts, I’d always known her life would end that way. She hadn’t written a farewell note, but she had, before knotting the rope to hang herself, called my brother Thomas to ask him to come over, without betraying her intention.

He was the one who took down the body. He was the one she’d chosen to touch her one last time and not me. She was excluding me to the last. And that drove me wild with grief. The war of love that had been waged between the three of us ended in the crowning of Thomas, the lucky victor. Because, by calling him before she committed suicide, by telling him in her calm voice Come by in an hour, she’d indicated to me that she’d always thought me a joker and that at that supreme moment, she only trusted my brother.

For days I tried to convince myself that she had thought about me, that she’d had the sensitivity to spare me the sight of her lifeless body. But it was no use deluding myself with fantasies. It was glaringly obvious that Thomas was the chosen one. A few lines from her would, however, have offered me a bulwark against grief.

When I learned the news, not only of the suicide but of the visit of my brother, who’d been granted the privilege of talking to her before her death, I began to hate Sola. She’d left with no explanation, as if I wasn’t worth a letter.

There was no point expecting a Forgive me from her. She was too confident of the rectitude of the least of her actions. But she might have said goodbye, assured me that she’d loved me, even if she added that she loved Thomas too, in a different way, less ambivalently. But she hadn’t. She’d walked out slamming the door in my face, and left me frozen with dread, my only legacy a deafening silence. The tragedy had happened. Sola had turned her back on me, and my brother draped himself in a widower’s grief. I hated them both. The picture presented to me showed my brother shedding tears over the corpse of this woman he’d stolen from me, and who’d named him, at the last moment, as her closest survivor. It was sickening. They were both sickening. They’d shut me out, as parents shut out their child when they make love in their room.

I’d warned my brother I wouldn’t be at the cremation. Thomas had recorded some Schumann pieces to accompany Sola to the hereafter — those were his words.

To accompany her on her return to dust, I’d corrected him. He’d shrugged his shoulders and gone on, There’s no heaven for Sola, she wouldn’t have been able to stand heaven, she’s in the seventh circle of hell, in the forest of the suicides, and I’ll make sure her name lives on. I’d sniggered. He’d found a way to ensure that he’d be the only one looking after her, her remains, her funeral. Me, I was holed up in my flat, going

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over the story and reworking it. If Sola had said to me Come by in an hour, I’d have run over and saved her. But would I really have been able to save her? Perhaps my brother and I, blinded by our faith and her habit of bouncing back, hadn’t realised that she’d reached a point of no return. Many times my instinct had alerted me: treading a tightrope, just like me, she might easily succumb to the dizziness of the void and decide to cut short her days. But up until that spring, she’d been able to resist the siren calls of her black angel. She’d just put the last full stop to a story — I knew what it had cost her, all the while praying that this result of her efforts would act as a safety net that would stop her from sinking. The morning she hanged herself, it was the manuscript I was wondering about. In her place, I’d have been proud of myself and what I’d accomplished. That’s why I couldn’t understand what I saw as an abdication. The last novel she’d published had shown me, even me who wasn’t easily shocked, how far her imagination liked to ambush and unsettle the reader. And now she’d finished another, surely just as disturbing. The two books should have signalled her victory over nothingness. Her most recent work had been snatched from the night, after months in which, listless and mute, she’d slumped into depression. At that time, I had no doubt it would be the end of her. She’d gratified us with four books, then everything had abruptly stopped. Thomas, who’d moved in with her, forced her to eat, washed her, put her to bed. There too, he was the one she’d tacitly nominated to be near her. She’d be sitting stock still, but when I touched her, she’d bring her hand to her face and hide her eyes — my presence made her uncomfortable. Since at the time I was working on a short story which was my last chance — either I got the better of whatever it was that was holding me back, or I threw in the towel and abandoned literature for good — I’d stepped aside for Thomas, and had restricted my attentions to short visits which, as the days went on, reinforced my certainty: Sola was worn out. After the four dark short stories she’d completed, we wouldn’t have another line from her. I’d seen her terrified or distraught before, but now she was lifeless. She looked like a wickerwork mannequin that my brother placed in an armchair in the morning and laid out in bed in the evening. Was she even aware that Thomas was with her? In any case, she didn’t want anything to do with me. Maybe, even if she was a stranger to the real world, she knew in a corner of her fuddled mind what I was up to: that I might be obsessed by my latest gamble tormented her. We’d always been the two sides of a mirror. When she was in full flow, I was dry. When she gave up, I’d be working flat out. But whatever the situation, I always felt obliged to show her that I was as demanding of myself as she was.

It was during those long weeks when she’d retreated into a no man’s land to which I had no access that I’d been afraid for her, afraid she might kill herself. But she had no will left, not even for suicide. Her whole being screamed no. She probably didn’t remember that she was the author of four miraculous books. I didn’t admit how much I admired them, except in the early days. On

Linda Lê

In Memoriam

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the contrary, I enjoyed asserting that she hadn’t stretched herself to the limit — I was expecting her to silence her detractors by writing the book. It was true I hadn’t stopped hoping for one thing: that she’d choose between my brother and me. And she could only prefer me, not only because I was involved in literature and because Thomas never knew that feeling of defeat when words abandon you, but also because, like her on this point at least, I had a terror of life and a passion for expressing myself. I was her twin, I’d said one night when she’d told me the legend of a dybbuk. She’d disabused me: according to her, we weren’t at all alike. My long-cherished dream, to have an alter ego, was fading.

More than blunt refusal, I read indifference in her denial. She didn’t deign to be as one with the universe I was creating for us. It took time for me to admit she was protecting herself from any intense relationship. She was afraid of being engulfed by it, and this fear led her to her divide herself between Thomas and me, abandoning one for the other, then shutting the door on both of us in favour of secret trysts with characters of her invention.

I wouldn’t let myself take part in the cremation service and I declined the offer to write Sola’s obituary for a newspaper. That attitude earned me a barrage of fierce criticism: friends of the deceased disapproved of this failing in my duties. But I was counting on her indulgence — had I killed myself, she wouldn’t have buried me in just a few pages either. Sola has gone, and I have to work out her reasons for sneaking off without saying goodbye, I’d said to my brother.

The moment he’d told me Sola was dead I’d blurted out: Have you come across her last book? What’s happened to her manuscript? Thomas answered, I don’t know, I haven’t a clue. And he added, Who cares about her papers right now, don’t you realise she’s committed suicide? He sounded like a headmaster rebuking a kid for insisting on trivialities at a serious moment. We were at his place. He was framing a photograph of Sola and him sitting on some steps in a museum they’d visited in Germany. Thomas had gone with her to several German cities where bookshops had organised readings. She’d come back annoyed that she’d accepted the invitation. Why did people come to these events? Out of sympathy for the brave little soldiers of the shadows, paraded for inspection? She remembered one woman in particular, a pharmacist, who’d come up to her, asked her to sign a book and had said point-blank, after skimming the prologue, It’s very nice, what you write. Very nice, Sola had exclaimed when she’d described the scene to me, laughing. There could have been no worse insult from that nitwit, who held her third novel in her hands — a torpedo, I’d thought when I read it. Sola, my brother told me, had glared at the pharmacist, and he’d thought she was going to throw one of her books in her face. But she’d merely smiled, then turned to Thomas, indignant witness to this remark. She was always disappointed when she met people at literary gatherings, my brother commented as he pulled from a drawer more photos of Sola and him taken on the trip. She’d never enjoyed making small talk with curious people, in France or anywhere else. Since her

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true self was buried within the printed pages, she was no more than a fairground freak. When she was showered with compliments, she was even more bewildered: she’d hunch over, like an imposter about to be unmasked. Her double, made to measure, who made mechanical gestures and said the right thing, walked off with honours that she didn’t deserve. Above all she dreaded having to deal with those well-meaning people for whom she was just an immigrant’s daughter who’d entered the literary kingdom by dint of sheer tenacity. These sympathetic souls wanted to hear her bemoan her condition or sing the praises of the country that had taken her father in. She was confined to the role of poor homeless wretch, elevated to the rank of sorceress of words, Thomas concluded, and for once we were in agreement. Except that he saw her as a fairy and, deep down, he’d have liked to lead a life with her in which literature would only have played a tiny part, while in my eyes she was a writer above all, a defenceless creature, yet gifted with a determination I wrongly supposed to be unfailing, and which helped her, just when you thought she was floored, to muster enough pugnacity to go on and to dazzle those who’d wiped her from the land of the living. And paradoxically it was Thomas who’d encouraged her, breathed enough energy into her to triumph over the obstacles and pursue her path, as he told me that day in order to point up how important he was, all the while berating me for not going to mourn her at the crematorium. During the months when she was paler than an anaemic plant, my brother had cared for her as if she were a backward child or a helpless old woman. Meanwhile, I’d given up; she’d intimated that I could do nothing for her. Too selfish, too clumsy, too anxious not to appear a busybody, I kept a low profile — watching over her was like playing with fire, I was liable to go up in the blaze. I limited myself to making this vow: that her creative madness should live on, that the storm that brewed inside her would be one that purified the landscape, a prelude to renewal.

Thomas claimed that I hadn’t wanted to take part in the cremation ceremony in order to shine by my absence. He was right, in a way. I didn’t want to appear as at best a close friend of the deceased. By remaining apart from the group who’d exchange condolences, I’d be showing others and myself that elective affinities have no need of conventional tributes. While her nearest and dearest, assembled in the cold room, would be listening to Schumann, I’d be cloistered at home, my company the memory of the Antigone who’d taught me revolt, and who possessed an alchemical formula: the sacrifice made to literature. That was why I was infuriated by Thomas’ reply: Who cares about her papers. Sola’s manuscript was her only legacy. So what fate had she reserved for it? I phoned her publisher, telling myself she might have sent it to him, to leave a posthumous text. He was completely taken aback: he’d heard nothing from her. I called some of Sola’s friends.

They were all surprised she’d re-entered the fray. None of them had had even a phone call from her in months. There was no sense in chasing after a phantom book. Yet I couldn’t rid myself of the notion that there was a message in it for me, something that would shed light on her passage to the act.

Linda Lê

In Memoriam

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Mathieu Lindon

Date of Publication: January 2008 Foreign Rights Manager: Vibeke Madsen madsen@pol-editeur.fr Translation: Sophie Lewis sophie_l@fastmail.fm

© Hélène Bamberger

My Heart Alone is Not Enough

Publisher: P.O.L.

Biography Mathieu Lindon was born in 1955. In 1984 he joined the newspaper Libération, first as a literary critic and then as a columnist, a position he still holds today.

Publications Published by P.O.L.: Ceux qui tiennent debout, 2006; Ma catastrophe adorée, 2004; Je vous écris, 2004; Lâcheté d’Air France, 2002; La Littérature, 2001; Chez qui habitons-nous?, 2000.

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A man receives a strange letter, requiring him without delay to contact the daughter of one of his closest friends — who has just died. He hasn’t the faintest memory of this friend, yet, alongside an instinctive mistrust, his curiosity too is roused and he makes his way to the country to look up the peculiar family of his so-called ‘friend’. There, while his memory returns little by little, while he marvels at the people around him — they are quite a constellation of rare intelligence and courtesy, from the children so plentifully endowed in both qualities to their charming parents — he suffers a mild heart attack. He does not die but comes so close to death that, back in the living world, everything seems transformed by his experience.

In this unclassifiable work, Mathieu Lindon relates a tale that strays far from the novel’s usual territory. It’s unusual in that, while

never neglecting the storyteller’s classic devices and constructing the book in more or less traditional manner, Lindon always manages subtly to slip in a seed of doubt, to show that nothing can be taken for granted and so to reach further, to exceed the everyday confines of fiction with complete originality. Doubt emanates from his idiosyncratic sentences, which are continually tipping into imbalance and are all the more intriguing for it. Doubt penetrates via a mind that refuses to settle for clichés, whether political, social or emotional. And this is how many of life’s big questions are examined here, among them friendship, love, death, racism and art, in disarmingly unportentous style but always with remarkable clarity and sensitivity.

Dear Sir, Allow me to inform you that my father passed away this morning. He spoke to us so often about you and about your adventures together, in Africa and all over the world, that you have become a part of the family and you are the first to whom I write with this sad news. Please be assured that, despite the vicissitudes of life, you remained his dearest friend until the end.

With the ardent hope of meeting you soon and hearing you recount your memories of him, I send my most grateful thanks for all that you gave him.

Dominique Turna-Veille It’s definitely my name on the envelope. But I’ve never heard of any Turna or Veille, nor of the address written on the letter. As for Africa, I must have been twice for a week’s holiday, about twenty years ago; I can’t think of the slightest acquaintance I struck up with anyone there. The rest of my peregrinations as this supposed globe-trotter similarly can only be explained as standard tourism.

This Dominique who signed off, is it a man or a woman? asks Simon on the telephone.

I thought it was a woman, because of Turna-Veille, that could be her married name, also the name of the man I’m supposed to know.

That would work, he says.

But that’s not the point.

Everything makes me uneasy, the idea that there’s been a mistake as much as that of being the correct recipient of the letter. The situation troubles me.

What memories can I call up for the benefit of a loving daughter or son avid for reminiscences? What hopes to disappoint! And why say “inform” in the very

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first line, as if I had anticipated this death already? There is a telephone number beneath the address but I don’t call.

That evening I do a close analysis of the text, which accomplishes nothing apart from disturbing my sleep. How old is the filial signatory? And the dead man? Who is “us” — just the deceased and the letter’s author or are there other characters involved? What is it that I gave so generously? Why be so grateful to me? Is this ironic — which would perhaps account for “inform”?

I turn it over and over for two days; that’s to say I do nothing. On the morning of the third day, I receive a second letter.

Dear Sir, While sorting through some of my father’s belongings, I have found a sealed letter addressed to you. I don’t dare send it to you by post for fear it will be lost, as may be the fate of my last letter, to which I have received no reply; I prefer to deliver this one into your own hands. Please telephone me, so that we can arrange a meeting. I could come to Paris to meet you, as you prefer.

Reminding you of the sudden death of my father and the attachment that bound him to you even in his last moments, I indicate once more my most sincere gratitude.

Same signature, same address, same telephone number. One additional detail: the death was sudden, as unexpected for those close to the deceased as for me the communications that followed it. But, once again, that’s not the point.

I succumb to irritation at finding myself again profoundly doubting this friendship. And why “I indicate … my most sincere gratitude”? The verb is no more appropriate than “inform”. Are these signs for me to interpret or just stylistic clumsiness? The fact that anyone can write letters despite potentially having no literary skill makes it impossible to read them correctly!

I am going to have to respond, whether with a silence that would necessarily be aggressive and, I sense, unsustainable, or — I see no alternative but to telephone on the evening following the arrival of the second letter.

That is me, says the voice of mourning that responds when I ask to speak to Dominique Turna-Veille.

I say my name, which elicits an excited, joyous “Ah”. Then comes a gush of thanks, in the middle of which the woman breaks off to reassure me that this talk only pertains between us two, speaking “face to face”, an expression that she articulates in a tone of the greatest benevolence but which I can’t help finding somewhat threatening — talking, too, is easy even to those who don’t have perfect mastery of their idiom. I don’t dare to try setting things straight, to point out my notion with a witty comment, with this person who is most likely not in the mood for jokes.

Of course, I can come to Paris, but surely you would prefer to be there on the spot yourself, to take in the surroundings in which he chose to live out his

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last days, she says. We can put you up without any trouble. As you may imagine, his bed is free now.

In my unease, this invitation also seems disturbing; if he died in this bed, is that also where I’ll end up?

I don’t know, I reply.

I wish for nothing more than that this affair be over, that it had never happened.

I’ll be waiting for you at home, she says, that’s the best. Come, night or day, as you wish, but do come.

I am so little in control of conversation that I find myself invited to stay for a proper visit, without even having mentioned the mix-up, the probable confusion of names to which I owe this misdirected gratitude. I struggle to explain my problem tactfully, so as not to offend this orphaned girl but she gaily cuts me short.

That’s it exactly. You have a lookalike who has the same name and also lives with you.

Why a lookalike? I wonder if she has photos, if I’m being spied on or if she’s just elaborating in order to play up enormity of the coincidence.

I have nothing to do with this affair, I say.

This is no longer true, since I am indeed involved in the business now.

What’s more, I ought to have come out with it straight away. It would have been better to write than to call, I would have been able to lead the discussion my own way. When she puts the telephone down, perfectly politely but leaving me quite dumbfounded, I have agreed to a meeting in Lille, on the following weekend.

Mathieu Lindon

My Heart Alone is Not Enough

Stepping down from the train, I realise that I will not be able to recognise Dominique Turna-Veille since we haven’t exchanged a single word of description, and also that I know her number at home but not that of her mobile phone, just as she only knows my home line but not my mobile. How will we speak if we miss each other at the station? In truth, I am hoping that she will show such a close resemblance to her father that her physiognomical heritage, followed in reverse, will allow me to identify him. Throughout the journey, I had puzzled over what I would say to my questioner when we met — without fixing on any convincing formula, moreover —, but hadn’t given a thought to the meeting itself.

I was afraid you had missed your train. Excuse me for thinking that of you.

And yet, I know you’re not the kind of man who would allow himself to miss this sort of appointment.

She finds me on the platform, where it is raining and I have scarcely stepped away from the edge. She is attractive, a pretty brunette with long hair, she must

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be only an inch or so shorter than me and about old enough to be my daughter.

She doesn’t bring to mind anyone but herself. There are too many verbs there: “the kind of man who would miss this sort of appointment …” would have seemed more welcoming to me. She holds out her bare hand to me and I decide it is respectful, sympathetic, to unglove my own in order to shake hers. I stoop to retrieve my glove, having dropped it in a small puddle.

You cannot imagine what you stand for to me, now more than ever, she says, sheltering me with her umbrella and so obliging us to stand rather close together. The funeral was yesterday; everything went quite well. As it were.

That means that we have laid papa to rest without any scandal; nothing more can disturb him while he rots.

If I really were her father’s best friend, wouldn’t such a reception only increase my unease? Her speaking of ‘papa’ also prepares me for the moment when all sense of distance will be abandoned, when we will have to commune in our shared emotion, the loving daughter and the perfect stranger. I want nothing of this imposture but it is as if she is demanding it with all her orphaned heart.

Is her mother still living? Suddenly, this question preoccupies me. That would be a relief.

Everyone is very excited about meeting you, she adds, rather vaguely. It’s just what we need.

I can’t tell if ‘it’ is me or something rather magical of which I am the vessel.

Have you got the letter?

This question seems the most appropriate to ask at this point. That is, if it’s still reasonable to claim any urgency for communication with a being now beyond the tomb.

You’re keen to see it? Good. It’s waiting for you at the house, I didn’t want to carry it around with me. One loses everything in the car. You’re lucky: we would also have loved some access to his posthumous existence.

These last words leave me stunned. For a second I have a notion of some literary conspiracy — but something indefinable about her modest mourning makes the thought quite indecent.

In the car, intentionally or not, she imposes silence. From time to time she utters remarks of such emotional presumption that I can’t think how to respond: “Dear God, how good it will be to have you there” or “The more I think about it, the more certain I am that he also left this letter behind to make sure we would meet you.” When I dare once more to mention the mistake which has brought me here, placed me in this position of emotional appeal to which I’ve not the least right, she pays my words no attention.

I’m very sorry, I begin.

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And she, her mind elsewhere: The road is dangerous, awfully icy.

It is raining hard now. I don’t venture another word. Instead of the countryside, I gaze at the windscreen wipers, at this perpetual movement, at once endlessly efficient and ultimately useless, since the water is indeed diverted and yet almost instantly returns. For a second, crazily, I catch myself identifying with the wipers: do they deserve thanks for what they do, sparing us accidents due to poor visibility? But I’ve done nothing at all for any Turna-Veilles, apart from this train journey and now being in this car, apart from receiving some letters and a phone-call — nothings, which are turning out to be worth something.

The noise of the rain on the car relieves us of any embarrassment in our silence, even joins in our general mourning. I’m anxious to arrive although I have no conception of what I’ll find there. Without analysing my thoughts, I just want to get to the next stage, where I imagine that my position can only improve.

From outside, the house appears both sober and beautiful. We draw up about a hundred yards away, on a gravel path that leads through a well-kept garden, to frame our first view of the house in perfect perspective. Clearly there is wealth in the family, so it can’t be some kind of financial racket that’s behind my adventure, as I had fleetingly suspected.

Three people welcome us as we enter the elegantly decorated living room: an older woman, that is, she looked about my own age, and two children — the mother and children of Dominique Turna-Veille. All of them have pleasant faces and show me the greatest goodwill, each kissing me on both cheeks.

If the widow is still alive, why offer me the dead man’s bed?

Lunch is ready, she says.

I am shown to my seat. I’m at the end of the table, the mother is opposite, the children to my left, facing their mother. I’m afraid that being so well received will only dig me deeper into this web of obligation, so I do my best to discharge my debts as early as possible by refuting them: “I am not the person you think I am”.

You’re an imposter? asks the little girl, laughing.

J’ose dire pourtant que je n’ai mérité ni cet excès d’honneur ni cette indignité 1.

That’s from Racine isn’t it? Papa loved Racine, says Dominique Turna-Veille.

I explain that these famous lines from Britannicus have always struck me as strange, since one cannot truly deserve an excess of anything, this epithet thus excluding the possibility of justice along with fairness. Everyone gives their opinion.

Mathieu Lindon

My Heart Alone is Not Enough

1. I dare to tell you I have not deserved this undue honour or indignity. (trans. John Cairncross, II, iii, 609-10, Penguin, 1968).

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We do say “I love you too much”, says the older child, Ikbal, who’s nine.

Racine was a pioneer. He already spoke like today’s young people, suggests his grandmother, smiling.

The conversation has veered off completely, and I have the uneasy feeling that I have contributed to the swerve.

I loved grand-papa too much, says the little girl.

Her name is Dounia. Odd names for children I think; they might just as well come from Russia as from ancient Egypt. Their looks betray no more about their origins than do their names.

You can read the letter with your coffee, says the grandmother.

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Véronique Ovaldé

Date of Publication: January 2008 Foreign Rights Manager: Jennie Dorny (mail to Françoise Guyon) f.guyon@seuil.com Translation: Adriana Hunter adriana@hunter157.freeserve.co.uk

© Véronique Ovaldé

And my Transparent Heart

Publisher: Éditions de l’Olivier

Biography

Véronique Ovaldé was born in 1972 and is the author of four novels, translated into several languages.

Publications Déloger l’animal, Actes Sud, 2005, published in English as Kick the Animal Out (MacAdam Cage, us, 2007; Portobello, uk, 2008); Les hommes en général me plaisent beaucoup, Actes Sud, 2003; Toutes choses scintillant, Éditions de l’Ampoule, 2002; Le Sommeil des poissons, Éd. du Seuil, 2000.

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Do we ever know who we’re living with? Lancelot has been constantly confronted with this question since his wife, Irina Rubinstein, died in a car crash that sent her into the depths of the Omoko River. Still reeling from his loss, he immediately suffers a “Very Big Additional Shock” as he uncovers mysteries surrounding her death. The secrets his wife carefully hid from him are gradually revealed. Faced with the realisation that there was a whole other Irina, one he didn’t know, all he can do is carry out his own

investigations and elucidate this enigma: what was Irina doing that day, in Catano, at the wheel of someone else’s car with a boot full of more than suspect items …

In each successive book Ovaldé has built her universe, inhabiting it with her flights of fancy and sense of wonderment. With Et mon cœur transparent, she carries us along in the whirlwind of her imagination to discover a dark, intriguing novel full of trompe-l’œil.

1 ancelot’s wife died tonight.

When, on the day they met, he told her, My name’s Lancelot, he said it in such an apologetic, such a contrite way that she was won over. She replied, Well, that’s not a problem, I’ll call you Paul. And she burst out laughing when he told her his surname was Rubinstein. Lancelot Rubinstein. He felt both put out and delighted by the way his wife — who was not yet his wife — laughed. She had a bouncing laugh, a laugh that pinged off smooth surfaces and was reflected everywhere. Lancelot Rubinstein thought he would find it hard getting by without it from now on. It was to do with the fact it was warm and woolly. That’s what he thought that first evening, the evening of the day he met his wife. Lancelot was a man who could think of a laugh as warm and woolly.

So tonight Lancelot lost his wife who called him Paul.

The night that marks the beginning of Lancelot’s mourning is an arctic one, a night of blizzards and black ice. Lancelot and his wife live in Catano, a rather isolated town not far from Milena. A sort of elastic suburb. Milena is the most interesting city for many kilometres around; it has a university, bars that are open on Sundays, drugs, grocery shops (not just huge supermarkets you can only get to by car), a festival of short films and two theatres, one of which is devoted entirely to animal puppets. Milena is in the middle of an area that’s cold virtually all year round with the worst bouts in February. There are still bears and wolves in the forests around Catano, and local poachers are most likely to trap white hares, ermine and arctic foxes. All creatures whose pelts they can sell off in Milena. There are people there who know what to do with them and will buy them at exorbitant prices.

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Lancelot isn’t asleep tonight. He’s sitting in his favourite armchair in latticework leather with fake zebra skin cushions for his head. When the telephone rings he’s watching a programme about Thomson’s gazelles that he recorded earlier and is playing in the background. Shit, he thinks with a scowl, they really should think before calling at this time of night, it could wake the children.

The children he’s worrying about at this point are imaginary ones.

Lancelot and his wife don’t have any children. Despite this incontestable truth, when the inopportune phone rings, his very first thought is for his imaginary children. He frowns, scolds himself and picks up.

Hello?

Lancelot Rubinstein? (there’s quite a degree of uncertainty in the caller’s voice as he says this name, and the voice actually reminds Lancelot of someone, Robert Mitchum perhaps?)

Yes. Milena Police Department.

Oh? (Now Lancelot’s wondering is he sure he’s up to date with his fishing permit, has he still got any cannabis in the tool box on the shelves at the back of the garage and did he definitely renew his car insurance.)

It’s about your wife.

My wife?

You do have a wife?

Yes, yes, of course, I was on the phone to her just quarter of an hour ago.

You need to get to the Omoko bridge right away.

Why? Your wife’s had an accident.

At the Omoko bridge?

Yes. That’s impossible. It’s not my wife. Quarter of an hour ago my wife was at the airport waiting for her flight (Lancelot wriggles deeper into his latticework leather armchair and takes one of the fake zebra skin cushions to hold over his stomach). I took her there myself this evening.

Is your wife called Irina Rubinstein?

Yes (Lancelot takes a second cushion, then a third, piling up layers of protection over his abdomen).

Well, I advise you to come as quickly as possible before we manage to get her out of the vehicle and take her … (the man hesitates, gives a little cough) to hospital? (he doesn’t sound very sure that this is where Irina Rubinstein will be transferred to).

Lancelot swallows hard and hugs his shield of false zebra skin close to him, he can feel panic starting to creep over him, beginning with the tips of his fingers, he feels it very specifically taking hold of the pads of his fingers and working its way up his nerves, he’d like to curb the process but the panic

Véronique Ovaldé

And my Transparent Heart

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is right there, permeating his whole body and mind, lodging itself brutally in his sternum like an uppercut, he can’t breathe any more, his field of vision shrinks (Am I going to pass out? he wonders), then opens out again. He says, I’m coming. But no sound comes from his mouth. So he clears his throat and articulates, I’m coming. He’s not absolutely sure Robert Mitchum heard him but that doesn’t matter. Lancelot hangs up, gets to his feet, grabs the car keys, goes down to the garage, and hurtles off into the dark and the snow. He forgets to worry about his imaginary children. All he can do is rush to be with Irina, his star, his treasure, his light, all he can do is try and ward off what he suspects has already happened by saying, No no no no no, over and over again as if to convince himself, saying it through clenched teeth, and the rhythm of it becomes another thrumming in his body, he launches off clinging closely to the steering wheel to make himself go faster and help him see through the snow which is coiling and swirling with indecent exuberance, Lancelot would love to go even faster and invert the course of time to suspend the onset of the drama that has erupted into his life and, he can tell, will now take up every millimetre of space.

2 When Lancelot met Irina he was already married.

But every day spent with his wife Elisabeth left him more perplexed, what could he be doing with her and what can he have thought he would achieve with her?

Elisabeth was a primary school teacher and, over the years spent exercising that profession, had adopted a very particular way of addressing people. She seemed to confuse adults she came across with the children she was responsible for in class. For example she would ask Lancelot, Could you make that delicious chocolate cake (pronouncing her request with excessive gaps between the syllables as if dictating it to him and grimacing with effort so she seemed to be performing complicated exercises to minimise wrinkles) but obviously not with any rum in it, and could you please cut it (here she mimed with an invisible knife in her right hand) into equal parts to make it easier for the little ones.

Lancelot looked at her, wondered what he was doing with her and made his delicious chocolate cake for the school fair.

Lancelot stayed at home all day correcting proofs. He sat down at his desk early in the morning, just after Elisabeth left, and started work, breaking off at about eleven thirty to make a sandwich, he turned on the radio, listened to the topical comedy show of the time, switched off the radio, and stood by the window to eat his sandwich full of gherkins (they titillated his palate and made him salivate), watching what was going on in the tree out in the courtyard.

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A great deal went on in that camphor tree. It was utterly exceptional. At the time Lancelot and his wife lived in a very large town called Camerone, and the fact that a tree like that had managed to survive toxic attacks, bombings in the last war and the strange viruses that had decimated the camphor tree population in the area was in itself a miracle. Lancelot could gaze at his miraculous camphor tree for hours. Several cats lived in it (he even suspected they weren’t cats at all but opossums, he was sure he’d caught some of them sleeping head down with their tails coiled round a branch, and the proof was their easy cohabitation — their complicity — with the birds in the tree), Lancelot tilted his head, tried to stay as still as possible, attempting to reduce his breathing to a minimum, keeping his balance by holding the window latch as he watched his camphor tree and the cats who thought they were opossums.

He studied the sun’s rays with some application as they filtered through the tree quivering in the breeze. Shadows wavered delicately around him.

Having watched the camphor tree for a long time Lancelot went back to his proofreading and set to work again with a degree of delectation, rather like the brimming contentment he felt as a child when his mother was cooking supper in the next room (that’s exactly what he thought when he tried to pinpoint the feeling — and Lancelot was a man who liked his precision. It reminds me of when I was a child, he thought to himself, when mum was making supper and I could hear the radio burbling something inaudible, I felt good, as good as I do now …). Then he would smile and savour the physical pleasure, sitting back in his chair for a moment and smiling, almost succeeding in forgetting that his wife Elisabeth would soon be home talking to him as if he were a five year-old.

Still, she never managed, however slightly, to dull Lancelot’s tiny pleasures.

It was when he met Irina that he realised his life was a gaping hole.

Véronique Ovaldé

And my Transparent Heart

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Yves Pagès

So-called

Publisher: Verticales Date of Publication: January 2008 Foreign Rights Manager: Anne-Solange Noble anne-solange.noble@gallimard.fr

© Catherine Hélie

Translation: Trista Selous trista.selous@btinternet.com

Biography

Yves Pagès was born in Paris in 1963. He works with Bernard Wallet and Jeanne Guyon at Éditions Verticales.

Publications Published by Éditions Verticales: Portraits crachés, coll. “Minimales” series, 2003; Le Théoriste, 2001 (2nd ed., Éd. du Seuil, “Points” collection, 2003) (prix Wepler 2001) ; Petites Natures mortes au travail, 2000 (2nd ed., Gallimard, “Folio” collection, 2007); Prières d’exhumer, 1997.

From other publishers: Plutôt que rien, Julliard, 1995; Les Fictions du politique chez L.-F. Céline, essay, Éd. du Seuil, 1994; Les Gauchers, Julliard, 1993 (2nd ed., Éd. du Seuil, “Points” collection, 2005); La Police des sentiments, Denoël, 1990; Les Parapazzi, play, Les Solitaires intempestifs, 1998 (Avignon festival, 1998).

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On 6 February 1973, a school in the Rue Édouard-Pailleron, Paris, burnt to the ground in just a quarter of an hour. By the next day there were over twenty dead. Yves Pagès has taken this fact and other real events from the early 1970s as the basis for a work of pure fiction. After Le Théoriste, narrated by the guinea-pig in a laboratory experiment, the author takes us back to the hallucinatory childhood

world of Romain, absconding witness and unwilling accomplice to the fire. In the rhythms of children’s speech, images borrowed from cult films of the day and echoes of the spirit of protest Pagès finds a wealth of imagination and humour with which to elude the siren calls of the “so-called” reality principle.

Making films is like writing on burning paper.

Pier Paolo Pasolini

Table of contents was coming up eleven and couldn’t stick being shut up with a book, couldn’t be bothered either after seven hours of blackboards at school.

Couldn’t even be bothered with speech bubbles in comics, better to skip them, same for subtitles at the bottom of the screen in films in their most original versions. Just the pictures did me fine, told the story all by themselves, not like Marianne, who used to cloister her free hours in her own room, eldest’s privilege, please do not disturb, quiet please! the story’s rolling, while she’d keep a light under the covers, sneakily devouring classics for younger readers, then older readers, then luxury editions, halfway to insomnia.

That Tuesday 6 February 1973, around 7.15 p.m., when my sister was supposed to be practising her scales at the Conservatoire, there I was, lying on my bed, deep in a book of high philosophy, studious as never before. Strange as it may seem, I was puzzling my way through a great classic from a bygone age, not making much of it, but not daring to stop either, one line every two or three, with the tips of my eyes, ploughing through it, just to look innocent, as absent as possible, because I was afraid of what was bound to happen, the row I was going to face once my sister got home. I just wanted to disappear, curled up on the quilt, wanted to be forgotten forever, but since, around 7.15 p.m., there was no one in the flat to confirm that I was at home cultivating my mind, no one wanted to believe my alibi and I was suspected of having deliberately destroyed the evidence. And it soon became impossible to prove the contrary, because by

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that stage of the investigation twenty minutes of solitude was just a hole in my timetable and, with no witnesses, coming up eleven, my word against theirs, well it didn’t count for much.

Because that night, wham! everything went wrong at once. My father was doing a double bill at the Albatross, two Technicolor westerns for the price of a normal feature, my mother was a guest at the premiere of a film by CostaGavras with a satellite link to a bunch of hooded guerrillas somewhere in the southern hemisphere, and the TV had been out of action since the start of winter, three months of cathode snow instead of Pippi Longstocking, the orphan on channel two, just before the news. No one at home to check my statements, the usual family hide-and-seek, everyone with their own excuse to make a song and dance elsewhere, missing meals and delegating household chores to Mamzelle Mildread, the West Indian Lady of the Mezzanine and matron of all work as and when, nanny to several households, ours, hers, the twins on the fifth floor, the wheelchair-bound invalid and other services rendered in our building except that, that night, worse luck, she wasn’t slaving over our hot stove like always, cooking up some sauce and leaving it to simmer, but still downstairs, in her own flat, hanging on the telephone, the first to have raised the alarm, at 7.38 p.m. according to the incident report by the firemen from Château-Landon, enlisted the help of passers-by, found an old ladder in a local shop and piled a few mattresses on the ground, first things first.

Up in my room I hadn’t noticed that night had fallen too quickly, suspiciously black, due to the curtain of smoke outside, I was miles away, in the twilight zone, having done things that would take a lot of forgiving, without the faintest idea that the roles were reversing, my sister trapped in my own classroom, on the first year floor, in the middle of a music lesson while, over the street, on the fourth floor with no lift, I was trapped between the lines of an old extracurricular textbook, commanded by the author to respond to a kind of ultimatum, each of us playing a score against type, me jealous of Marianne learning to plinky-plonk rhymes from my baby days, her loving to make fun of my bad marks for book summaries, me jealous of her full stop, her wishing I’d never been born, each of us out of sorts in the other one’s skin, a point of no-return, but that was something I couldn’t have guessed.

At seven-thirty still no Marianne, so what? Nothing yet to belie the course of things, she must have had a change of mind and heart, come back from music class through Les Buttes-Chaumont park for a smooch with a view, don’t talk just kiss, between the temple pillars, no tongues just lips, or the unbuttoned thrill of a wandering hand on suicide bridge, I’d already spied on her romantic goings-on, hiding out in the bushes, except that, according to the poster put up the day before on the door of the Conservatoire, Temporary closure for building work, evening classes had been moved to the school over the road, our own school in fact, pavement swapping morning noon and night, but the sixty kids

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staying back to do their homework weren’t part of the plan, up there on the top floor of the prefab, around 7.40 p.m., shortly after the fire broke out on the ground floor, a last-minute misunderstanding, like Mamzelle Mildread not being in our kitchen, I only found out about that after the second time I was taken in for questioning. Back then I had no reason to go and check, an unexplained short-circuit, between my sister and me as well, a gas leak no doubt, according to the statement by the civil engineers who investigated, either that or the oil-fired boiler blew up, in other words a tragedy that was still unexplained four or five days later, like the passage I’d been stuck on since I started reading lying on my bed on my front, not sensing the plot being woven outside, obsessed by a sentence taken out of context, surrounded by quotation marks and ten centimetres of polystyrene in the false ceilings, according to the statement of the Schools Safety Council. But for me, from 7.45 p.m., it was counsel with an ‘e’ and heavy with threat that made me deaf, dumb and blind to the tumult in the world outside.

Yves Pagès

So-called

Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law of Nature.

Never mind how often I repeated this choice piece from memory, they tried every way they could to make me contradict it, although I’d also confessed to the title and name of the author, so it was easy enough to go back to the source and check. I’d only just got home when, at the bottom of my satchel, I’d discovered a book knocking around by mistake, where my swimming things should have been, a case of mistaken identity at the counter of the public library where I’d sought refuge in the mid-afternoon to escape several suicidal temptations, including immolation on the public square, like Jan Palach, my mother’s beloved martyr, who had burned himself alive as an example to us all on my birthday, five candles on the cake and bitter chocolate tears, for the funeral of the Prague spring, as featured on the cover of L’Express magazine, which had been enshrined ever since on the water heater in the bathroom, but there’s no need to go so far back through my thoughts, you can take me at my word, around 7 p.m. near enough I was at home, despite appearances that initially accused me of the contrary, it’s true, it is, I was leafing through that book suspecting nothing, till page after page I kept coming on that sentence, whose beginning I can still recite by heart today, and you can’t make up a thing like that: Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become …

Even ten times in a row, in a low voice over and over, no way could I get to the end of the tunnel. By what maxim can I will both to go on reading and understand nothing so that this failure should become the universal law of my

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nature? It was infuriating to see myself ruled out automatically, worse than nought out of ten from those filthy printed letters, not good enough, see me, and totally incapable of crushing the lesson-giver who was breathing down my neck to intimidate me with his global imperative method, as announced on the book’s spine: Practical Philosophy. And, worst of all, I think it was written in the 1780s, that style from beyond the grave, another dictation trap for the slow and unwary in junior classes. The kind of punitive homework to be copied out a hundred times by tomorrow, I’d had more than my fair share of that before I started secondary school. Golden rules for good behaviour, shoving cocky pupils into line, thanks but no thanks! except that, playing the same old song over and over, too many verbs and nothing doing, it was turning nasty, this message encoded in the mists of time, just before the French Revolution and the abolition of spelling privileges.

At coming up eleven your mind soon starts to race, making up for a lack of living with tales of pirates, messages in bottles, secret codes, notes from the kidnappers, sealed parchments, ransom demands and royal orders, so I set my mind running along a new track and, just like that, dropped the book to shout at this illegible enemy, waylaid in my room, accusing me of being a wimp, suggesting I should put up or shut up … Put up what? A plastic catapult and a cup and ball game picked up on the spot. What spot? The torn carpet on which lay twenty horses on their stands and a whole heap of knights about ten inches high rounded up in one hand, but no way was my Bastille going to be stormed, no way was any white tissue or flag going to be waved, I’d give this conspirator of the round table maxims and manners … What table? My old rocking horse, and as for fighting him for a trophy … What trophy? My holy fencing club cup would be enough to dethrone him from the stool that was so wobbly that his pedestal was already missing one leg, while my rival’s head … What head? The head of the light bulb hanging from the ceiling begged for mercy before shattering cleanly when it was at its most ardent, but I didn’t mean to, just helped it swing on the end of the wire. Not my fault if the fuses suddenly went, shattering my triumph and plunging my duel’s defining moment into darkness, just an accidental short-circuit, according to the provisional conclusions of the Prefect at his press conference, now I just had to get rid of the traces, pick up all the tiny fragments of glass all over everywhere, except that, according the noise getting louder outside, everything was coming together perfectly, with a profusion of drums and trumpets … What trumpets? Let’s say the salvo of nee-naws from the two fire engines that arrived on the scene at 7.48 p.m., the bluish splash of their flashing lights reflected on the tiles. Though I still didn’t know the reason for these signals addressed to me in secret, I was going to throw the window open and go forth to greet my loyal subjects, verbs and objects gathered beneath the highest tower of my inner fort.

That was almost it, I had risen to the challenge thrown down two centuries

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before I was born, washed away the insult from Sir Immanuel Kant and lanced the boil of his grand, aristocratic title, his Foundations of metalchemical of sisters, renamed skew-whiff with all the dyslexic aplomb of coming up eleven. Bang on eight already, everything was unfolding unbeknownst to me, way beyond plausibility, same place, same day and the prefabricated theatre of the same events, exactly what happened next, life-size. A rain of ash between my intestinal jousting and the heat of the present action.

Yves Pagès

So-called

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Katherine Pancol

Date of Publication: March 2008 Foreign Rights Manager: Solène Chabanais solene.chabanais@albin-michel.fr Translation: Catherine Spencer catherinemarielouise@hotmail.co.uk

© Sylvie Lancrenon

The Slow Tortoise Waltz

Publisher: Albin Michel

Biography

“I was born in Casablanca, Morocco and spent my early years beneath the palms of Media …

At five, I went to France. After studying literature, I became a journalist (Paris Match then Cosmopolitan).

An editor spotted me and asked me to write a novel. That was Moi d’abord in 1979. The sky fell around my ears, along with success. I went to New York to forget all that. But literature grabbed hold of me again …”

Publications Published by Albin Michel: Les Yeux jaunes des crocodiles, 2006; Embrassez-moi, 2003; Un homme à distance, 2002; Et monter lentement dans un immense amour, 2001; J’étais là avant, 1999.

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Whether or not a yellow-eyed crocodile had devoured her husband Antoine, who had disappeared in Kenya, Joséphine could no longer care. She has left the grey suburbs of Courbevoie for a smart building in Passy, a chic area of Paris, thanks to the money made from her best-seller, the one which her sister Iris had tried to pass off as her own, paying cruelly for her deception in a psychiatric clinic. Free, still timid and unsatisfied but nonetheless an attentive onlooker of the comic, strange and sometimes aggressive spectacle afforded by her new neighbours, Joséphine seems to be searching, in vain, for a great love. She watches over her daughter Zoé, an engaging and tormented teenager, and observes the success of her ambitious elder daughter Hortense, who is launching into a career as fashion designer in London.

Joséphine had never encountered the violence of the world, until the day when a series of murders comes to destroy the upper middle-class serenity of her area. She herself, doubtless taken for someone else, narrowly escapes an attack. The presence of her brother-in-law Philippe, who loves and desires her, enables her to forget these horrors. Impossible, on the other hand, to forget that kiss on Christmas Eve that had turned her world upside down.

Happiness is on the horizon, as long as she can get rid of her disturbing neighbour Lefloc-Pinel, an elegant banker whose charm masks far too many depravities.

Around the irresistible and discreet Josephine gravitates once again a whole world of seducers, low-lifes, tricksters and many other good and generous people. Just like in life.

here must be some other way of conveying love for one’s daughter.

Who had made her so grasping and so blasé that nothing but the hope of a day spending money could tear a moment of tenderness out of her? The existence I imposed on her or the harshness of the times? But one mustn’t blame everything on the age or other people. I too am responsible. My guilt dates from my earliest negligence, my first inability to console or understand her, an inability that I tried to cover up with promises of gifts, shopping trips for just the two of us, me awestruck before the elegant aplomb of a dress on her slim waist, the exquisite adjustment of a little top, the love affair between a pair of jeans and her long legs; she, happy to receive what I placed before her feet. My dazed wonderment at her beauty, which I want to adorn, like make-up applied to the wounds of her life. Creating that mirage is easier than giving advice, presence or a food for the soul that, trapped in my clumsiness, I do not know how to prepare. We are both paying for my negligence, my darling, my beauty, my beloved whom I love to distraction. She held her in her arms for a moment and repeated these words in her ear.

“My darling, my beauty, my beloved whom I love to distraction.”

“I love you too, Mummy,” mumbled Hortense in a single breath.

Joséphine was not certain she was lying. She felt a real surge of joy that made her put her shoulders back and gave her renewed desire and appetite. Life was beautiful once more if Hortense loved her and she would have written another 20,000 cheques to hear her daughter again declaring love in the hollow of her ear.

The distribution of gifts continued, punctuated by announcements on the subject from Zoé and Alexander. Papers flew around the sitting room before dying in the fire, bits of string curling on the floor, torn labels sticking randomly to the paper lying on the floor. Gary threw logs on the fire, Hortense tore

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open the knots on packages with her teeth and Zoe opened the lucky-bags with trembling hands. Shirley got a beautiful pair of boots and the complete works of Oscar Wilde in English, Philippe a long scarf made of sky-blue cashmere and a box of cigars, Joséphine the complete collection of Glen Gould’s albums and an iPod: “Oh, but I don’t know how to work these things,” she cried; “I’ll show you!” promised Philippe, putting hearms around her shoulders. Zoé couldn’t fit it all in her arms to carry it to her room. Alexander smiled, marvelling at his presents and, relocating his nitpicking sense of observation, asked the company “Why do woodpeckers never get headaches?”

Everyone burst out laughing and Zoé, wanting to add her contribution, threw out: “Do you think that if you speak for a long, long time to someone, in the end they forget your big nose?”

“Why do you ask that?” said Josephine.

“Because I got Paul Merson so intoxicated with my endless talking yesterday afternoon in the cellar that he asked me to go and listen to his band on Sunday in Colombes!”

She pirouetted and plunged into a deep bow to receive the acclamation of the company.

The melancholy of the afternoon had evaporated. Philippe uncorked a bottle of champagne and asked how the turkey was doing.

“My God! The turkey!” cried Joséphine, taking her eyes off her ballerina daughter’s nicely rosy cheeks.

Zoé seemed so happy! She knew just how much she had been longing to get closer to Paul Merson. Josephine had found a photo of him in Zoe’s diary.

It was the first time Zoe had hidden a boy’s photo. Josephine ran to the kitchen, opened the oven, tested to see how well cooked the turkey was. Still pink was the diagnosis. She decided to increase the heat.

She stood in front of the oven, encircled by a large white apron, her eyes creased up with the effort of braising the turkey without spilling the sauce on the red-hot baking tray, when she sensed a presence behind her. She turned round, spoon in hand, and was taken into Philippe’s arms.

“It’s good to see you again, Jo. It has been such a long time …”

She lifted her head up to his and reddened. He clasped her to him.

“The last time,” he remembered, “you came with Zoé whom I was taking to Evian with Alexander …”

“You had enrolled them on a riding course.”

“We met each other on the platform …”

“It was summery weather, with a little breeze under the glass ceiling of the station.”

“It was the first lot of departures for the holidays. I said to myself, another school year over …”

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“And I said to myself, what if I asked Joséphine to come with us?”

“The children went to buy drinks …”

“You were wearing a suede jacket, a white T-shirt, a checked scarf, golden earrings and hazel eyes.”

“You said ‘how are you?’ and I said ‘fine’!”

“And I really wanted to kiss you.”

She lifted her head and looked him in the eyes.

“But we didn’t …” he began.

“No.” “We said that we couldn’t.”

A silence.

“That it was forbidden.”

She nodded her head in agreement.

“And we were right.”

“Yes,” she whispered, trying to get away.

“It’s forbidden.”

“Completely forbidden.”

He again took her in his arms and, stroking her hair, murmured: “Thank you, Jo, for this family celebration.”

His mouth brushed against hers. She hesitated, turned her head.

“Philippe, you know … I think that … we mustn’t …”

He straightened up, looked at her as if he didn’t know what she was saying, wrinkled his nose and exclaimed: “Do you sense what I sense, Joséphine? Isn’t the stuffing coming out all over the dish! It would be a shame to eat a dry, empty bird!”

Joséphine turned around and opened the oven. He was right: the turkey was slowly emptying itself in a brown-coloured mass that was caramelising at the edges. She was wondering how to stop the haemorrhage when Philip’s hand was placed on top of hers and together, handling the spoon carefully, they pushed back the overflow of stuffing spilling out of the turkey’s stomach.

“Is it ready? Have you tasted it?” asked Philip from Josephine’s neck.

She shook her head.

“And the prunes, have you left them to soak?”

“Yes.” “In water with a little armagnac?”

“Yes.” “That’s good.”

He murmured the words into her neck and she felt them being imprinted on her skin. His hand still on top of hers, guiding it towards the appetisingsmelling stuffing, he took a little sausage-meat, chestnut, prunes and fromage blanc and slowly, slowly lifted the full and steaming spoonful towards their joined lips. Eyes closed, they tasted the delicate stuffing of softened prunes

Katherine Pancol

The Slow Tortoise Waltz

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that melted in their mouth. They sighed and their mouths mingled in a long kiss, tasty and tender.

“Perhaps not salty enough,” commented Philippe.

“Philippe …” begged Joséphine, pushing him away. “We shouldn’t …”

He grasped her to him and smiled. A little rich sauce ran from the edges of his lips and she felt the desire to taste it.

“You make me laugh!”

“Why?” “You are the funniest woman I have ever met!”

“Me?” “Yes, so incredibly serious that it makes one want to laugh and to make you laugh …”

And still these words that fell from his lips with all the lightness of mist.

“Philippe!”

“And that stuffing is very good, Joséphine …”

With that, he went back to get some with the spoon, bringing the contents to Joséphine’s lips, leaning forward as if to say: “Can I taste?” His lips mingled with Joséphine’s, brushed against them, those soft, full lips perfumed by prune coulis with a dash of armagnac and she understood, with a sudden premonition of happiness, that she would not decide anything more and that she had already trespassed beyond the very boundaries that she had vowed to herself she would never cross. There comes a moment, she said to herself, when you need to realise that boundaries do not keep others at bay or protect you from problems and temptations — they only enclose you and cut you off from life.

So, either you decide to harden yourself and to stay within the boundaries or you gorge yourself on a thousand pleasures by exceeding these very limits.

“I can hear you thinking, Jo. Stop examining your conscience!”

“But …”

“Stop, otherwise I’ll think I’m kissing a nun!”

But there are certain limits that are much too dangerous to cross, certain limits that must in no case be ignored and that is precisely what I am doing — and my God, my God it feels good, this man’s arms around me!

“It’s because …” she again tried to formulate the words. “I have the feeling I’m …”

“Joséphine! Kiss me!”

He squeezed her to him tightly, gagging her mouth as if he wanted to bite it. His kiss became brutal, imperious; he pushed her against the burning hot door of the oven and she made a movement to free herself but he pinned her to him, forcing open her mouth and searching it as though he was still looking for a little stuffing, a little of that stuffing she had kneaded with her fingers, as if he was licking the fingertips that had handled the mixture, the taste of prunes filling his mouth. He salivated. Philippe, she moaned, oh Philippe! She clung

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to him, plunging her mouth in his mouth. For so long, Jo, for so long … and he threw himself on the white apron, crumpling it, hitching it up, pushing her back against the glass door of the oven, entered her mouth, entered her neck, opened the white blouse, caressed the hot skin, dropped his fingers to her breasts, pressed his mouth to the least fragment of skin torn from the blouse, the apron, finally putting an end to day after day of tortured waiting.

A burst of laughter emerging from the sitting room made them jump.

“Wait,” whispered Joséphine, freeing herself. “Philippe, they mustn’t …”

“I don’t care, if you knew how much I don’t care!”

“We mustn’t do this again …”

“Not again?” he cried.

“I mean …”

“Joséphine! Put your arms around me again, I didn’t say it was over …”

It was another voice, belonging to another man. One that she didn’t recognise. She abandoned herself, carried away by a new insouciance. He was right.

She couldn’t give a damn. Wanted only to do it again. So this was what a kiss was? It was like in books, when the earth moves mountains crumble and one prepares to die with a smile on the lips — a force that lifted her from the earth and caused her to forget her sister, her two daughters in the sitting room, the wounded tramp in the underground, Luca’s sad expression, and threw her in the arms of a man. And what man! Iris’s husband! She drew away, he caught hold of her again, pinned her to him, propped her up from the tips of her toes to her neck, as if he were holding on to a firm, absolute support, a support for all eternity, and whispered: “And now, we won’t speak any more or in silence!”

From the kitchen doorway, her arms full of the parcels that she had decided to put in her room, Zoé watched them. She stayed there, contemplating her mother in her uncle’s arms, then lowered her head and slipped to her room.

Katherine Pancol

The Slow Tortoise Waltz

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Yves Ravey

Bambi Bar

Publisher: Éditions de Minuit Date of Publication: January 2008 Foreign Rights Manager: Catherine Vercruyce direction@leseditionsdeminuit.fr

© Hélène Bamberger

Translation: Louise Lalaurie Rogers lalaurie.rogers@gmail.com

Biography

Yves Ravey was born in Besançon (Doubs) in 1953.

Published by Éditions de Minuit: L’Épave, novel, 2006; Dieu est un steward de bonne composition, play, 2005; Pris au piège, novel, 2005; Le Drap, novel, 2003; La Concession Pilgrim, play, 1999; Monparnasse reçoit, play, 1997; Alerte, novel, 1996; Moteur, novel, 1996; Le Cours classique, novel, 1995; Bureau des illettrés, novel, 1992. Published by Gallimard: La Table des singes, novel, 1989.

Published by Solitaires Intempestifs: Pudeur de la lecture, 2003; Carré blanc, 2003.

Publications

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When two gendarmes knock at Leon’s door, at dawn, they claim to be making inquiries about a hit-and-run incident involving a girl, outside a dance club.

But their questioning quickly turns to the activities of the girl’s place of work, the Bambi Bar — a suspicious joint, where Leon has just been hired to repair the boiler …

heard them knocking. At dawn. The two gendarmes were standing on the other side of the door. I opened it and asked them to come in. Then corrected myself: in fact, I would prefer to see them in my workshop.

If they would just give me a moment to pull on a pair of trousers, over my pyjamas. The gendarmes told me that was fine, they would wait, I could take my time.

I got dressed and we went down together to the yard, to the shed I used as my workshop. There, I took out my bunch of keys. I dug into the lock. The door opened.

I glanced behind me: one of the two gendarmes had stopped along the way.

He was talking to the concierge of the building, who turned to point out my shed.

The sergeant stepped into the shed. It was dark. He asked me switch on the light, but the bulb was no longer working. He announced that we had better talk outside after all, and put his briefcase down on my workbench in front of the shed: “A routine visit, nothing of importance, just checking a detail, nothing in it really, but there we are, all in the line of duty.”

I asked him exactly what it was he wanted. The sergeant leaned against the wall of the shed. He placed his kepi on top of his briefcase and told me to wait.

Agreed, he hadn’t asked any questions as yet.

“Not as yet!’ he stressed.

I turned around. The concierge was heading back to his lodge with a wave in the direction of the gendarme.

“It’s about your car,” began the sergeant.

He checked the knot of his tie, then smoothed the front panels of his jacket with his hand, and I asked him to get to the point. And so the sergeant asked

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me, quite simply, if I had used my car on Wednesday at about 6 p.m.

I thought for a moment: “I didn’t, but … wait, it’s coming back to me … perhaps, I went to the temporary employment agency in the afternoon.”

The sergeant asked if I was sure about this … Yes? Or no? He leant forward to get a better look at me, and I repeated that I had gone to the temporary employment agency.

He asked me another question: “And what did you do there, at the agency?”

I didn’t answer. The sergeant tapped his kepi with a screwdriver left lying on my workbench. Keeping his eyes on me all the time. His colleague joined us. He stepped around me to take a look inside the shed, remarking that he should have brought his torch.

My eyes met the sergeant’s, and I spoke again: No. In fact, I couldn’t remember exactly what I had done the other day. If he’d asked me about yesterday, I might still remember. But last Wednesday, wait, I would have to think …

“In fact I think, actually I’m almost certain, I didn’t go out at all. Not to the agency, nor anywhere else.”

The sergeant stood up.

“Good, then!” He indicated to his colleague that they could take their leave.

I asked why he hadn’t ordered me to show my residence permit, as was usual, and he answered that there was no need, not this time. The other gendarme raised his eyebrows in my direction, indicating that I should take full advantage of this unusual piece of luck.

The gendarmes crossed the yard. They stopped in front of the lodge. Apparently, the concierge had nothing particular to add. And so I took my keys again, and locked the shed door behind me. As I was putting the bunch of keys in my pocket, I saw the sergeant retracing his steps. He walked over to me and asked if I had a garage.

I answered that I didn’t have a garage, but a parking space at the back end of the yard. My car was down there.

“Indeed. About your car,” said the sergeant. ‘Cream-coloured bodywork, isn’t it? I wonder if I might take a look.”

I took them to the parking lot. I pointed out my 1972 Ambassador and asked the sergeant what he was looking for, in fact?

“A young girl was involved in a minor collision on Wednesday evening, coming out of a dance club.”

I asked him what that had to do with me? The sergeant didn’t answer. He just peered along the side of the Ambassador: “The car swerved. The driver didn’t stop.”

Then he moved closer to the car. His colleague stepped around the

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Ambassador’s far side, and the two of them met in front of the hood. The sergeant looked at me again. Sideways. There was nothing to report. His colleague retraced his journey around the car. He stopped level with the rear wing.

He squatted down. I took a step forward and bent down to look.

The gendarme examining the rear wing scratched the nape of his neck.

He stood up, and I heard the cracking of his knee-joints. Then he smoothed his hands down the sides of his jacket, over his hips.

“Come and take a look, sergeant,” said the gendarme.

The sergeant moved along the side of the car. He took out his notebook.

He squatted down, took out his ballpoint pen and played with the push-button top. Then he looked at me again and began to write.

The other gendarme spoke to me.

“And this, Mr Rebernak, what have you got to say about this?”

He pointed with his index finger to the chrome strip above the wheel. Then he ran the flat of his hand along the curve of the wing, turning his head and keeping his eyes fixed on me as he did so.

“I think we’ve got it this time,” he confirmed, and I asked what on earth he was talking about. To which the gendarme added that he was glad he had stopped by.

Yves Ravey

Bambi Bar

The sergeant got to his feet, dusting his knee. He tugged at the seam of his fly.

Then he asked what I thought about the trace of paint, and I responded by asking what exactly he was talking about?

The sergeant told me: “This.”

He squatted down once again and invited me to do the same.

“See here, you’ve got a collision mark, and there …” — his index moved a couple of centimetres to one side — “a bit of red paint. The same colour as the bicycle. We’ve been looking for the car that was described to us, for three days: foreign plates, cream with a trace of red paint on the rear wing as the result of a collision, and finally we’ve found it, Mr Rebernak. So we’d like you to be a little more forthcoming …”

I said I didn’t know anything.

The sergeant repeated his question: “Where exactly were you on Wednesday the 23rd at 5.45 p.m.?”

I remained silent. He put his notebook away in his pocket. The gendarme began another tour of inspection, remarking that this was a car whose papers he’d like to see. I indicated that they were perfectly in order, upstairs, in my apartment, I had presented them at the gendarmerie on the day I arrived in France.

Suddenly I remembered my diary. In the drawer of my kitchen table.

I should have thought of it before! I told them. The sergeant replied that in

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that case he would be interested to take a look … straight away.

“I didn’t go to this dance club, I swear it. On my mother’s name.”

“I wouldn’t swear if I was you, Mr Rebernak. Up you go …! Make it fast …!”

I came back with the notebook given to me by the temporary employment agency, having removed the rubber band from around the cover. The sergeant took off his kepi again and placed it on my workbench.

“Now, let’s take a look at this diary.”

I stepped around the boxes of boiler burners and handed him the diary.

The sergeant took it and opened it. He leafed through the book, moistening his index finger and rubbing it against his thumb. At every page. Finally, he pointed a questioning finger at a note in a box, under the line marked March 23rd, and raised his eyebrows.

“You were out shopping on Wednesday.”

He turned the diary around and showed it to me: Opposite the number 23, written across the lines: Wholesale Heating Supplies. The sergeant sat down on the edge of the workbench. He took back the diary. He asked me if the note was in my handwriting. I answered that yes, it was. At his side, the gendarme remarked that Wholesale Heating Supplies was in the same street as the dance club.

The sergeant lifted one leg and crossed it, ankle on knee. Showing no sign of impatience, I asked if the questioning was going to take much longer. The sergeant ignored my question. He took out his notebook once again and jotted a few words.

“We shall have to come and see you again, Mr Rebernak. You’ve nothing further to add, I suppose?”

I had nothing further to add.

“Anything you might have forgotten?”

I answered that I had forgotten nothing. But if I remembered anything important, I would certainly get in touch.

I accompanied them back to the lodge. The concierge was cleaning his kitchen windows. The gendarme went across to him. The two of them talked.

I tried to hear what they were saying, to no avail. The sergeant turned around.

“We’ll be seeing one another again,” he repeated, and I asked him if I could take the car to the bodyshop.

“Certainly not,” he retorted. “Certainly not.” Bringing his hand up to the peak of his kepi in a parting salute, he added that it would not be in my interest to do anything of the kind, and that if I did get rid of the traces, I risked scoring an own goal.

Back in the apartment, I got into position behind my binoculars. I trained the lenses on the building opposite, over the Bambi Bar: the first floor. Monica was in her bedroom, as usual at this time of day.

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She got up. Now the kitchen. She reappeared. She opened and closed a cupboard door. Finally, she went back to her bedroom.

Just to be sure, I closed the curtains a little. Next, I adjusted the height of tripod. Monica’s daughter, Caddie, came out of her bedroom. Monica went to the kitchen and sat at the table facing Caddie. She opened the door of the kitchen cabinet, took out a box of tea and put a pan of water on the gas.

Caddie disappeared again. I knew where she was going, to the bathroom, two windows along. If I positioned my binoculars exactly between the chest of drawers and my armchair, I could see every detail of the ceramic tiles. I swivelled the binoculars and adjusted the focus. Caddie entered the bathroom. She got undressed, leaving her blouse and skirt on the back of the chair, then she got under the shower.

Monica entered the room. She must have spoken to her daughter, telling her she was going out. And she did go out, putting on her leather jacket before disappearing through the door. Now I picked up the telephone handset, still looking through the binoculars, and punched in the number. Caddie came out of the shower, grabbed a towel, wrapped it around herself, ran across the kitchen and hurried to the telephone in the sitting room. She picked it up. The door to the apartment opened. Monica stepped inside and leaned against the sitting room wall, watching her daughter, a cigarette in her hand. I heard Caddie’s breathing: she asked who was on the line? I knew she’d keep quiet while her mother was there. Monica came closer. She snatched the phone from her daughter’s hand.

I heard Monica’s voice in my ear, demanding to know if the caller had had enough of bothering them, and if he had the courage to say who he was, at long last? She cut the connection.

Yves Ravey

Bambi Bar

The gendarme indicated a parking space under a horse chestnut tree at the back of the yard. I walked over to him, and he opened the door to the offices.

The sergeant was waiting for me behind his desk, legs resting on a chair, hands behind the nape of his neck. He greeted me, offered me a seat, and observed that I was highly punctual. I presented my papers. He glanced at my residence permit, and the ownership documents for the Ambassador.

I asked him what was wrong.

“Don’t worry, Mr Rebernak,” he said, “we wouldn’t call you in for no reason.”

He leaned forward, making the springs in his swivel chair creak. Rested his arms on his desk, took out a pencil and played with it.

“You can take the car to the bodyshop and call your insurance, Mr Rebernak. You have been more or less eliminated as a suspect in the business of the bicycle.”

He returned my papers. I tucked them into my jacket pocket.

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“Is the young girl all right?” I asked.

The sergeant stared at me without blinking. He lowered his head, looking for traces of cigarette ash on the collar of his braided jacket, and I noticed his greying hair, black at the roots. He looked up again.

“Good news, isn’t it? Sit down, please …”

I nodded. I sat down. He went on: “When you came out of the temporary employment agency, you got into your car and unfortunately — we haven’t established the exact cause, but it’s of little importance — your rear wing knocked a girl coming out of the same agency. It all happened in a matter of seconds. You didn’t see a thing, didn’t hear a thing, nothing very unusual in that.”

“Didn’t see a thing, didn’t hear a thing,” I repeated.

As before, I felt the gaze of the other gendarme on my back. He was sitting between two metal filing cabinets. I turned around and asked him why he was looking at me. The gendarme rose to his feet, but the sergeant told him to sit down again. There was no need to keep staring at me. The gendarme sat down once more.

I said it didn’t matter. The sergeant acquiesced with a nod of the head: “Agreed.”

He went on: “You see, Mr Rebernak, we’re glad we came to see you the other day, because now everything’s quite clear.”

“If it’s all clear, then …”

I made to get up, but the two gendarmes stayed where they were, staring at me. I announced that I would go home and after that, perhaps, if it didn’t seem improper, I might even go and see the young girl … who I didn’t know … But perhaps someone might, or rather, you, Officer, might give me her address …

The sergeant heard me out, staring straight at me. I asked what exactly was going on. He answered that something was bothering him a little, all the same.

All the same … the phrase stuck in my mind. I shrugged my shoulders and the sergeant asked me if everything was all right.

“Everything’s fine.” He didn’t move. I repeated that I wanted to go home.

But the sergeant had a question for me. Just one question, he explained. Yes, I said, I’m happy to answer your question. The sergeant looked first at his colleague, then turned to me and asked where I had been before I collided with the girl.

“You said just one question, and then you let me go?”

“That depends on your reply,” corrected the sergeant.

I repeated that I didn’t understand what they wanted from me. All these questions, really … my car, the summons … But I hadn’t done anything wrong The sergeant persisted: “Tell me, where had you been?”

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Charles Robinson

Date of Publication: January 2008 Foreign Rights Manager: Jennie Dorny (mail to Françoise Guyon) f.guyon@seuil.com Translation: Sophie Lewis sophie_l@fastmail.fm

© Catherine Gugelman

The Genius of Pimping

Publisher: Éditions du Seuil

Biography

Charles Robinson is thirty-five. After studying applied mathematics for business, he moved into research. He now lives and works in Paris. This first novel is the fruit of a year and a half ’s work.

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A certain orthodoxy within French economics would prefer all profits to arise out of innovation and new technology. A utopia, and surrounding it on every side — desert. He who has not made it to the oasis stumbles in circles and covers his face with ashes.

We don’t believe this. It’s a lazy assessment. We directors of a firm specialising in sex have examined the potential, that’s to say the significant reservoirs of unskilled labour. And we have examined the requirements, which, for personal service, are considerable.

Our response is, therefore: we need to invent an investment.

We do not covet our neighbour’s cake, trying to divide it into ever smaller portions. No! We bring a brand-new cake to the table and proudly ask who wants some. The more guests we have, the more cakes we will need: this is the essence of capitalism.

Authorisation or several months, in the names of its many officials, the Hydra-headed state weighed and digested all contradictory accounts. The beast’s digestive process took in validation of the procedure, advice from the European Fund for Regional Development, the release of subsidies, a follow-up report from the Committee for Economic Expansion — not to mention the necessary special legislative dispensation. To us, the final signing of the approval represents six months of work by twelve people at more than sixty working hours per week. You need a sturdy bank account to stomach this.

Then at last the ball got rolling. After all our explaining, analysing, calling in promises, recalling our own commitments — the risks were all ours, the true risks: we alone would go to prison as soon as we put a foot wrong. We constructed our project squeezed in the narrow strait of clear water between walls of civil servants of every sort — chamber of commerce, the health service, the police, the courts, customs and immigration — all on guard against our slightest false step, ready summarily to cut off our business in its infancy.

One day we received the final authorisation. It was a courageous political decision. Finally. We’ll try, we’ll see how it works. Evaluate. Then we’ll adapt, or repeal, depending on the results. A monitoring committee. Not a dozen committees — one. With people who know the field, who can provide an informed opinion: if malfunctions are indicated, and continue, we stop there. An object lesson.

Sometimes in France, very occasionally, a niche, a hairline fissure of opportunity opens for a micro-second.

We sniffed it out, in that micro-second.

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Even now, at general meetings, our principal English financial shareholder, banks’ representative Camille Sainz, watches us constantly with dazzled blue eyes. He’s never shaken my hand, not since we started up; he gives us all bear-hugs. A feeling something like returning victorious from a commando operation in terrain mined by Kurdish peshmergas. It’s interesting that an Englishman should observe the fostering of enterprise in France like this. I find Iraq interesting, instructive. It shows things. We should be open to it, sensitive to the lessons. Pay attention to these signs. But over there they prefer to stay blind and deaf, it’s better protection.

Our elites carry serious responsibilities. They are trained to bring together organisations already in existence: the big industrial groups, institutions, public services — from this point of view, public or private, it comes to the same thing, same training, same culture. These are the chosen few that safeguard the status quo; they know how to make the most of historical distributions, it’s in their interests to perpetuate them. When you attempt to innovate, the choir of unmovables intones its warnings, and those professionals who fill the press with their bile take up the role of coryphaeus. They won’t break your legs for you — they’re happy to stick with scaring off everyone who might have supported you.

This powerlessness, as theorised by academics for whom risk-taking is a shameful disease, shows in symptoms including archaism, erecting obstacles, ossification, an entire battery of obstruction that is quite frightening.

Because they have never ventured anything, they want to ban you from trying. They want to strip you of this freedom, the fundamental freedom of effort, of failure, of second wind and recovery, which is nevertheless at the heart of the human adventure.

Charles Robinson

The Genius of Pimping

[…]

Financing According to the hallowed wisdom of French economics, the orthodoxy is that all profits should arise out of innovation and new technology. A utopia, and stretching away on every side — desert. He who has not made it to the oasis stumbles in circles and covers his face with ashes.

We don’t believe this. It’s a lazy assessment. As directors of a firm specialising in sex we have looked into the potential — where we see significant reservoirs of unskilled labour —, and the requirements — where we perceive considerable scope for personal services.

So we say: there is an investment to be invented here. Not to realise — to invent from scratch.

We do not covet our neighbour’s cake, trying to divide it into ever smaller portions. No! We bring a brand-new cake to the table and proudly ask who

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wants some. The more guests we have, the more cakes we will need: such is the essence of capitalism.

Socialism is when you divide the cake into ever smaller equal parts, to the point of famine. With capitalism, you invent industrial-scale bakeries and delivery by 24-hour shifts.

Pierre-Hervé Fleury, Financial Director: “… We need to stop being overprotective of our wallets. These are infrastructures which in fact will benefit the whole region. The taxpayer provides the funds because he/she is the ultimate beneficiary — will in fact benefit twice over. Before, when there was only the desert, it cost the taxpayer nothing — true. Now his local amenities include a motorway and an industrial hub, another source of added value.

A division between public and private will continue to operate for large projects, each according to its particular needs, and the majority of funds raised, in concrete terms, will always be fed back to the public sector. In a way, taxes make no sense if they don’t do this: they support innovative projects that present interesting new perspectives but at a level of risk that is incompatible with the demands of shareholders, or with profits that are deferred for too long.

If taxes cannot do this, we should abandon them! These days, we entrust everything to private firms. But you will no longer be entitled, as you are currently, to demand accountability from them. No excuse to moan if the road isn’t built where you wish and doesn’t serve your village of three hundred souls.” […]

Our ranking according to the international business banks was excellent and our address book well-filled with names.

Despite this, the first investments were difficult.

To say that we weren’t well received would be to give undue publicity to the establishments concerned: the French banks all disputed our loan — disputed the foremost of the sacraments due to men from the economy.

I saw directors of banks go pale, the faces of some shading straight to mahogany when our financial director set out our corporate identity. They begged us never to mention our visit to them.

Far from being welcomed into inner sanctums, we were invited to meetings in annexes on the margins of business complexes. We were received by business assistants who had been expressly forbidden to underwrite even the most limited contract.

Oh, the pusillanimity of French banks! We had to compile such thick files in order to obtain the slightest of advances from the treasury. We all understand

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about kids thieving in the suburbs — we discourage their initiatives. They are brimming with ideas and energy, full of adolescent experience; they could set themselves up in businesses, but they haven’t the starting capital. They haven’t the family support to finance them. And when they go into a bank, the official in charge of business relations discreetly pushes the alarm that’s wired to the nearest police station. So, they thieve, and France buries its head ever deeper.

All of this is connected. There’s no mystery. A country’s economy can only grow as much as its power to invest: all economies are equal to the risks they will take. So, in France, we have an economy about as risky as a pair of bedroom slippers. With our noses buried in our slippers, ready? for the great race to globalise, we’re counting on avian flu to dispose of our competitors.

Charles Robinson

The Genius of Pimping

[…]

Launch ceremony […]

A typical day in the region. It was drizzling. The sky weighed heavy with leadbottomed clouds. The officials’ cars were half an hour late; we even thought for a moment that their route had been blocked by demonstrations. A barricade.

We alerted the police station. There had been explicit threats. When I think about it now, it makes me laugh: it’s never the launch that brings in the dollar, but, naïve superstition aside, we didn’t want to make a dud start.

While our cars still weren’t in the parking lot, the officials had taken their places and not a single seat remained empty, I may say with no false modesty: the angel of confidence hadn’t yet completely won his struggle against the demon of potential disaster. If I found myself smiling nevertheless, that was only because over the last couple of years setting up this venture, the angel and I had been jogging together every morning.

A blurry mass of beige raincoats, double-breasted suits, blank faces, expressionless eyes, settled into silence; I kicked off with a general speech in soothing mode, emphasising our genuine neutrality, giving due credit to all points of view.

Since the time of Saint Paul, virginity has been regarded as the most perfect state of being for a Christian. The majority of the sages of antiquity were celibate; we know how much the gymnosophists, the Brahmins and the druids honoured chastity. Even the savages thought of it as divine: people in every time and every country speak as one voice on the excellence of chastity. The priests and priestesses of the ancients, who were believed to communicate intimately with the gods, were required to live solitary lives; the slightest breach of their vows would be followed by terrible punishment. Only heifers that had never borne calves could be sacrificed to the gods. The sweetest and most sublime creatures

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in our folk tales were virgin: thus Venus-Uranus and also Minerva, goddesses of genius and of wisdom; Love was an adolescent, and Virginity herself, personified in the figure of the Moon, casts her mysterious modesty out into the cool space of the night.

Nevertheless, men have never agreed on common principles, and the wisest of institutions have found their detractors.

Then followed the customary acknowledgements. […]

Even the closing party, a bit wilder than the opener, as we were still keen to show off our slick handling, only led to very selective comment in the press.

Nevertheless, the strippers were highly acclaimed, and the show greeted with thunderous applause.

To begin: Modesty, dressed in a sack, a rope around her waist and barefoot, her face covered in ash, with lowered eyes, weeping.

Silence in the auditorium.

Following which, the Virtues climbed like pure lights into the heavens: some, as dazzling suns, drew all eyes by their brilliance; the rest, shy stars, sought out the shadows’ modest protection, yet shone out all the same.

Shower of rose petals.

The show concluded with a participation initiative that got the whole audience on their feet, joining in a game made up of moves pre-set by us. Nothing indecent, just friendly gymnastics.

Our group leaders demonstrated the movements; liberated from their excessive, overblown prudishness, the gathered bodies responded gracefully, regardless of age or status, fair mirrorings of Eros.

A moment of grace, free from all self-consciousness. A communion. A hundred-strong crowd of people all breaking away and clasping each other close, turning, embracing, swaying rhythmically together. The symbolic penetration is delicate: a gift of love.

“Choreography synchronised to the millisecond. [ … ] Fluidity and distinction. [ … ] Elegant, refined, with ingenious good taste. [ … ] Inventive, never vulgar. [ … ] Gobsmacking. Phenomenal. [ … ] A revitalisation of the form that will last and last. [ … ]” “Those who find the chaste Queen of the Angels a screen for nothing but murky obscenities should indeed be pitied.”

I’ll send you the press pack.

The only real problem we had was announcing: ‘we’re closing’. For the inaugural day did seem to miss the mark somewhat.

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We managed it like that, at each stage sidestepping the cynics’ expectations, gambling on our teams’ professionalism. And we overcame the obstacles. The crowds hung on to the edge of the stage in the hope of seeing us fall, since ours was the only completely sold-out show in France.

It was working. […]

Charles Robinson

The Birds […]

The Genius of Pimping

Thighs, arses, hair-dos, chests, the geography of the City offers a series of sublime reliefs: the shimmering was sublime, also the valleys’ gentle slopes, the vertiginous drops, audacious passages, unexpected curves. We pluck, we tattoo, we re-shape, we henna our hair and skin, we scar ourselves.

Make-up, pigments. Underwear. Leather boxes.

Our hairdressers, recognised as world-class stylists, work regularly for fashion shows; we have given them special training. For a graphic pubic shave, I don’t know that you can do better.

I’m not made of stone; I had stashed away a good collection before getting married, although, when one becomes a professional in this field, a true specialist in carnal supports, the imagination that nature shows in composing her staggering creations catches you by the throat every single day.

Every week, and I mean this sincerely, not just to lure clients — I am bowled over, truly moved to tears. I receive a call in the office, a team-director wants me: Charles come see this. A marvel. I fall for it every time, like a kid; a wonder.

A child’s body, inch-long pink nipples rising from areolas bristling with spikes.

Milky skin. A motif of stars on the shoulders. 100% natural, raised in open fields, we get such results without any photoshopping, no cosmetic surgery either. The genius of nature. Or maybe the Creator is also a mischievous doodler in his spare time. This is Delphine, seventeen years old, with full parental consent; she’ll specialise in themes of adoloescence. In six years time you would think she’s still 15. A body like that, there’s no need to do much work on it: wearing nothing but a string vest, naked buttocks just showing, you sit her on the arm of a sofa: 100% rate of occupancy. With fresh products you must take care not to spoil them with any additions, above all nothing artificial. We have only touched up the hair; and also accentuated the pubic mound. […]

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J.-B. Massillon, Publicity Director: “So you want me to show you my beauties. What stock we have left. At this point, I can’t promise anything, we’ll just have to see what we can find.

Carole. With Carole, on a foundation of brunette with large breasts, quite a standard type, we have constructed a rather suggestive ensemble. It’s all in the face-on side. The arse isn’t great, for example, well it’s not bad. We cover that.

For the front, we supply a deep, hand-modelled vulva, with a delicate, slender frame, the whole skilfully textured. We have topped it off with a border of hairs so that it retains that foresty, crunchy feel.

It was only during training that we first noticed Carole’s particular qualities.

Superb length in the mouth. A spicy, heady muskiness, well-rounded secondary juices. Such balance through length is very rare.

The playful final result: reliable pleasure. For lickers as much as for fuckers, even if, in theory, one would usually finish her off doggie-style.

An ‘alternative’ classic, and still good value in her category. You should snap her up. You won’t find anything like her next season, at this price.”

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Frédéric Roux

The Indian Winter

Publisher: Grasset Date of Publication: December 2007 Foreign Rights Manager: Heidi Warneke hwarneke@grasset.fr

© Richard Dumas

Translation: Carla Calimani carla_calimani@hotmail.com

Biography

Frédéric Roux was born on 25 April 1947 in South-West France. He is an artist, an art critic, a journalist and a writer. For the past thirty-seven years he has been married to the journalist Dominique Casteran, with whom he has three children and five grandchildren. He was a French university boxing champion in the middleweight category. He is a qualified chiropodist who has done a variety of jobs including painter and decorator, labourer, leaflet distributor, and personal protection assistant.

Publications Et mon fils avec moi n’apprendra qu’à pleurer, Grasset, 2005; Ring, Grasset, 2004; Fils de Sultan, Mille et une nuits, 2002; Assez!, Sens & Tonka, 2000; Le Désir de guerre, Le Cherche Midi éditeur, 1999; Mike Tyson, un cauchemar américain, Grasset, 1999; Mal de père, Flammarion, 1996; L’Introduction de l’esthétique, L’Harmattan, “Esthétiques” collection, 1996; Lève ton gauche! / P.-S., 2nd edition Gallimard, “La noire” collection, 1996; Expos 92, ensbam, 1992; Tiens-toi droit, Seghers, “Mots” collection, 1991; Lève ton gauche!, Ramsay, “Mots” collection, 1984.

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Neah Bay, opposite Vancouver, in North-West America — the end of the end of the world. Beyond a huge forest of cedars and sequoias as far as the eye can see is a Native American reserve that looks out onto the Pacific. At the close of the 19th Century there were 40,000 Makahs who inhabited the region; now only 1,500 remain. Forgotten by all, dispossessed from themselves, their culture and their land, in-bred, they live a life of poverty and alcoholism, not so far removed from that of our modern, supposedly civilised, world. Until the day that six of them decide to go whale hunting again …

The Indian Winter tells of their desperate bid to regain their dignity, in an unequal battle against the environmentally crazed

Whites. This is a masterful novel, whose powerful characters, evocative landscape, constant humour, indestructible love and friendship prevail like a cure for poverty and sadness. Based on a true story that one of the author’s favourites, The Indian Winter will interest all readers with its subject-matter (namely environmental and ethnic minority issues).

An impressive ‘American novel’ by a decidedly unpredictable French author that constitutes a formidable display of creative and stylistic prowess as he wrestles with the ‘big blue yonder’.

Father. I thought you had said that we are all going to live again.

Crow Woman

e only tend to truly confide in those we don’t know, and Howard and Dale didn’t know each other. The fact they were father and son didn’t change that.

Undoubtedly, a psychiatrist would not have recommended the harsh therapy they underwent in a Portland bar after Howard had been reunited with his son, for fear of the risks involved. Had they had anything to do with such a person (an unlikely theory), father and son could have pointed out to him that nothing that happened to them could be worse than being alive, that they had been living the worst ever since birth, despite having been born in heaven on earth: surrounded by pine trees, sequoias, cedars as far as the eye could see, the sky and clouds above them, the Indian Summer, the waves, the Winter snow on the mountains like icing sugar, and the ocean, that along with the wind would beat against the beaches, the does in clearings and the way their necks moved, the ten-horned deer in the woods, the eagles, their flight, the glistening trout on the riverbank, the silver sparkle on the belly of coho salmon, the shoals of halibut that parted as a canoe passed, the seagulls, birdsong. And yet they had been chased out of this heaven, now invaded by tourists, campers, walkers, by pasty pensioners in camper-vans who didn’t look at them, didn’t respect anything, only saw the pictures boasted by the brochures they had picked up at the tourist office in Port Angeles.

“Neah Bay? Without the Native Americans, it’d be perfect!”; “All they’ve done is ruin the scenery …”; “You can’t trust them, they’re worse than the blacks!”

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Fortunately, these invaders — the last wave before being buried in the sea — didn’t venture inland, where the woods were being secretly destroyed in a cacophony of chainsaws … Forests that had taken forever to become what they were ended up in the sawmill. To make what? They didn’t know, or those with a better understanding of what was happening didn’t want to know … furniture, partitions, paper, parquet floors, beams, joists, panelling, handicrafts.

They were left with the remnants … the carpet and the brochures thrown out of the window. The only part they could still play was that of extras, but at least in Hollywood extras could have a free meal at the canteen and some cash at the end of the day. For three times less, they spent hours, come rain or shine, by the roadside, whipped by the wind generated by the laden Peterbilts with their giant trunks. One would stand at each end of the construction area, with a fluorescent orange sign that had “Stop” written on one side and “Slow” on the other.

When the cars went by, they’d wave hello to feel less alone.

Abandoned.

They spouted all the sweet-talk on the Makah nation mechanically, without believing it, while the old ladies, a cushion under their behinds so as to reach the pedals, kept smiling kindly at the strangers who never gave them right of way. Not so long ago, they used to get shot at for trying to fish the salmon.

Their salmon!

The dams upstream had emptied their rivers.

The truth was that the Whites had reduced a sovereign nation, an entire people, dominating thousands of kilometres squared, to a few hundred interbred individuals. And that was when they hadn’t cross-bred with the poorest of the Whites, the ones who lived in caravans of dubious ownership, stuck in the middle of rubbish dumps, with the American flag permanently flying above them. Or with the coastguards and soldiers on the naval base, who were so bored they’d screw the Native American women when they were drunk.

At the entrance to Neah Bay, on the right, after the welcome sign, was the coastguard base, fenced-in, which looked like building blocks, seemed phosphorescent in the sunlight. Opposite, on the left, a Makah Museum had been built to house the thousands of artefacts found in the Ozette excavations (which, some felt, meant killing them a second time) and to show off what they had once been … before, when they knew how to speak their own language, honour the gods, fish, make fish-hooks, weave baskets so tightly that no water would leak from them. The Museum was always dark, as if the electric lighting had understood what it was there for: a wake. Only a few hundred metres away were those who were still alive although already dead. There they were, seemingly alive, among the rusty car wrecks (the Hoko River scrap dealer would’ve made a fortune if he’d collected them all), cracked boat hulls, graffitied basketball hoops and dogs stretched out in the middle of Lincoln Street, scratching their teats.

Frédéric Roux

The Indian Winter

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They’d been banned from drinking there, so they went to drink further away. The only thing they’d inherited from their ancestors was a weak liver, they’d be drunk after three beers, it made the Whites laugh. They’d go back to the reserve blind drunk, and even though they knew the road off by heart they’d always miss a turn, so they’d walk back, leaving the remains of the car they’d bought on sale with interest-free credit.

Nothing could describe their despair and their loneliness.

The first time he’d read Dostoyevsky’s The Possessed, Howard had been struck by an idea. If ever, one day, instead of writing poems he were to write a novel, he would tell their story and call it The Dispossessed. Some had been dispossessed for so long that they didn’t even remember ever having possessed anything.

He had written twenty pages before realising that he had nothing to tell. If he was sometimes able to capture the emptiness in a poem, he was not able to hold it for any longer. He was too intelligent not to notice that his padded-out despair was no more than self-indulgence, the darkness went round in circles, it drowned in shamelessness. Howard had realised that he was unable to risk not emerging unscathed from what he wrote, unscathed meaning still himself. Drunk, he was able to write poems, he even had the (possibly mistaken) impression that the drunker he was, the better they were, but he suspected that in order to write novels and not lose the plot, he’d have to be sober. So he’d gone back to poetry, which despite what everyone said was easier. It suited him to believe that when a writer does nothing he writes best, that it was madness that allowed him to keep his reason. Ease suited him, otherwise he’d have had to work and stop drinking; he preferred letting inspiration strike like an electric shock, a miniature epileptic fit, in a flash, at the bar where there were always a couple of guys unable to string a sentence together to admire his aphorisms.

“It’s a state of mind!”, he’d reply to those who asked where his gift came from.

“To get the mind in shape, now that’s another kettle of fish!”, he’d mumble, cursing himself afterwards every time.

The truth buried at the bottom of his soul was that he despised himself even more than he despised his drinking companions. He despised them for not knowing anything and not understanding anything and enjoying it; he despised himself for knowing and understanding, but not being able to do anything useful about it. For this he would have needed to know more, understand everything, but it was out of his reach, he didn’t have the courage, not even to contemplate getting any closer.

Face to face with Dale, he was overwhelmed by the same feelings. They’d just started talking when he began complaining and he realised, almost at the same time, that not only did his son not have much to say to him (which he had suspected), but also that he despised him too. At least this was something they had in common. Psychiatrists would no doubt have agreed that this was a good basis for discussion. Instead, they preferred to shout then cry together,

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sat opposite one another at Jiffy’s Ice Pop, without paying attention to the other customers glancing over at them.

Two drunk, sentimental Native Americans.

Not very clean either.

Dale still had his work clothes on, Howard hadn’t changed since leaving Neah Bay. “I waited for you night after night, the slightest sound would make me jump, whenever a car went by I thought it’d stop and you’d be at the wheel and I’d spend the whole night on the look-out, listening to the sound of cars coming and going, the sound coming, the sound going, getting further away until it disappeared. I’d lie with my eyes wide open in the dark, on my back, looking at the headlights on the ceiling, then night would come again, and so would the waiting. Sometimes, in Summer, I’d go out on the veranda and wait, I so wanted you to come back that my head hurt, I’d end up falling asleep on the floor on the dog’s blanket … with the dog. I waited for you with the dog … the dog died, I waited some more, and when you did come back I’d given up on waiting for at least two years … it was over, it didn’t matter any more … whether you were alive or dead, it didn’t matter any more, it was all the same to me. I didn’t need you any more.

“I’m here, aren’t I?” “Better late than never, is that it? Why the hell should I care that you’re here?

For the past two hours you’ve been telling me that Vietnam was different from Kuwait … so what? What’s the problem? Everything has its place, everyone has their place and you, you’re not in your place and neither am I in listening to you going on.”

“Things can change …”

“You think you’ve changed? You still talk the same crap and when you’re not talking crap, you’re feeling sorry for yourself instead of worrying about others.

It’s the best way …”

“I thought of you … not all the time, but I did … I thought of you, I think …”

“Yeah … you think. You sent two cheques to grandma. With the first, we got enough wood to see us through Winter, with the second, she bought me a mountain bike.” “You see!”

“I see what? That I wasn’t cold one Winter and that I cycled round the Peninsula and that now you’ve come to tell me I’m your son, you’re my father … Get fucked, Howard!”

“Say what you want to me … you have the right to! You certainly have the right, but there’s one thing you can’t change, and you’ve just said it yourself: I’m your father.” “You fucked!”

“That’s the way it works.”

“Not only.”

Frédéric Roux

The Indian Winter

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“Not only …”

“Well then?” “Nothing! I’m not going to tell you any bullshit … we never spent Christmas together and all that crap … the little house on the prairie and Halloween, forget it! But we’re two human beings, we can … maybe, I’m saying maybe, do something other than throw insults at each other.”

“I dunno.”

“I dunno whether we can be civilised, but let’s try as if … things could change!”

“I’m as civilised as you are! I don’t understand what you’re talking about …

I don’t understand what you want.” “When you do understand, it’ll be worse!”

“Great!”

They both laughed and ordered another couple of beers. At that moment, it’s what they needed to do. They felt, for the first time, like father and son.

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Boualem Sansal

Date of Publication: January 2008 Foreign Rights Manager: Anne-Solange Noble anne-solange.noble@gallimard.fr Translation: Ros Schwartz schwartz@btinternet.com

© Catherine Hélie / Gallimard

The German’s Village

Publisher: Gallimard

Biography

Boualem Sansal is in his fifties. He trained as an engineer and has a doctorate in economics.

He was a senior civil servant at the Agriculture Ministry in Algiers before being dismissed in spring 2003, and has published technical manuals in Algeria. He lives in Boumerdes, about thirty miles from Algiers. publications Published by Gallimard: Petit Éloge de la mémoire, “Folio” collection, 2007; Poste restante: Alger (lettre de colère et d’espoir à mes compatriotes), 2006; Harraga, 2005; Dis-moi le paradis, 2003; L’Enfant fou de l’arbre creux, 2000 (Michel-Dard prize); Le Serment des barbares, 1999 (prix du Premier Roman; prix Tropiques de l’Agence Française du Développement; bourse Thyde-Monnier (sgdl)).

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The two narrators, Malrich and Rachel, are brothers born to an Algerian mother and a German father (Hans Schiller), and brought up by an elderly immigrant uncle on a housing estate in the Paris suburbs. In 1994, their parents are massacred by the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) along with a number of others in their village of Ain Deb, near Sétif. Rachel, the eldest brother, then discovers the truth about his father. Hans Schiller, a reputed chemist before the war, joined the Nazi party and then the Waffen SS. Posted to Auschwitz, he played an active part in the extermination of thousands of people. At the end of the war, like many Nazi officers and scientists, he managed to escape via Turkey to Egypt, where his skills were used. Then Nasser “lent” him to the burgeoning Algerian FLN. After Independence, he settled in Ain Deb, where he started a family, enjoying the respect given to the mujahideen…

Based on a true story and inspired by Primo Levi, the novel tackles profound and emotive issues. It makes a connection between three very different but interlinked chapters of history: the Holocaust, seen through the horrified eyes of a young Arab who discovers the truth about the mass extermination; Algeria’s dirty war of the 1990s, a theme in Sansal’s earlier works, and the situation in the French suburbs, in particular the life of the Algerians who have been living there for two generations and are becoming increasingly marginalised: “At this rate, because our parents are too pious and our kids too naive, the estate will soon be a perfectly formed Islamic republic. You will then have to declare war on it if you want to simply contain it within its present boundaries.” On this sensitive issue, Sansal’s voice rings out with searing clarity.

Malrich’s diary October 1996 achel’s been dead six months. He was thirty-three. One day, two years ago, something just snapped inside his head and he started rushing all over the place, France, Algeria, Germany, Austria, Poland, Turkey and Egypt. Between trips, he’d read, shut himself away and brood, write and rant. He lost his health. Then his job. Then his mind.

Ophélie left him. One night, he killed himself. It was the 24 April of this year, 1996, around 11 p.m.

I knew nothing of his problems. I was young — seventeen when that something snapped inside his head — and I was on a downward path. I didn’t see much of Rachel, I avoided him, he did my head in with his constant preachifying. I hate to say this, he’s my brother, but he was so righteous, it was scary.

He had his life, I had mine. He was a high flyer in a big American company, he had his girl, his house, his car, his credit card, and every moment accounted for, while my life was a 24/7 struggle along with the other casualties on the estate. It’s a category-1 Sensitive Urban Area. No respite, it’s one disaster after another. One morning, Ophélie phoned to tell us what had happened. She’d dropped by the house to see how her ex was doing. I had a premonition, she said.

I grabbed the moped that belonged to Momo, the halal butcher’s son, and shot over there. There was a bunch of people in front of the house, police, ambulance, neighbours, busybodies. Rachel was in the garage, sitting on the floor, his back against the wall, legs outstretched, his chin on his chest, his mouth open. He looked like he was having a kip. His face was all covered in soot. All night, he’d breathed in the exhaust fumes from his car. He was wearing weird

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pyjamas, striped pyjamas I’d never seen him in, and his head was shaved like in prison, all wonky. So weird. I took it in without batting an eyelid. It hadn’t hit me yet. The doctor said to me: Is he your brother? I said: Yes. He said: Is that all you can say? I shrugged and went into the sitting room.

Ophélie was with Com’Dad, the local police superintendant. She was crying. He was taking notes. When he saw me, he said: Come over here! He asked me questions. I replied that I knew nothing. It’s true, I didn’t see Rachel.

I suspected something was up, but I told myself: He’s got his balls, I’ve got mine.

It’s sad, but that’s how it is, there are suicides all the time on the estate, you’re stunned for a moment, you’re gloomy for a day or two and after a week, you don’t give it another thought. You say to yourself: That’s life, and you get on with it. This time, it was my brother, my older brother, and I was supposed to understand.

I hadn’t a clue what could have happened to him and I had no idea that things had got so bad for him or that they’d get so bad for me. I must have thought of everything, and I thought and thought for days at a time — a love affair, money, some political business, an incurable disease, the worst that can happen in this shit life, but not that. Oh God, no, not that! I don’t think anyone else in the world has ever experienced such a terrible tragedy.

Boualem Sansal

The German’s Village

After the funeral, Ophélie went off to Canada, to stay with her cousin Cathy who was married to a filthy rich fur trader over there. She left me to look after the house, saying: We’ll sort it out later. When I asked her why Rachel killed himself, she answered: I don’t know, he never said anything to me. I believed her, I could see from the way she was shaking that she didn’t know. Rachel never said anything to anyone.

So I was alone in the house, my spirits at an all-time low. I was angry with myself for not having been there when Rachel sank into depression. For a whole month, I went round and round in circles. I was in a bad way, I couldn’t even cry. Raymond, Momo and the other guys kept me company. They dropped by in the evenings, we chatted half-heartedly, knocking back beers. We stayed up all night, like owls. That’s when I started working at the garage that belongs to Raymond’s father, Monsieur Vincent. The Ladies’ Paradise the sign says. Paid an apprentice’s wages, plus tips. It did my head in, being on my own. One good thing about work, you lose yourself in it.

A month later, Com’Dad called the garage to say: Come by the police station, I’ve got something for you. I went after work. He stared at me for ages, rolling his tongue around in his mouth, then he opened a drawer, took out a plastic bag and held it out to me. I took it. There were four fat tattered notebooks inside.

He said: That’s your brother’s diary. We don’t need it any more. He jabbed his finger

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under my nose and added: Read it, it’ll knock some sense into you. Your brother was a good guy. Then he went on about his various pet subjects, the housing estate, the future, the Republic, the straight and narrow. I listened to him, shifting from one foot to the other. He looked at me and said: Go on, off with you!

The minute I started reading Rachel’s dairy, I fell ill. I was burning up inside.

I held my head in my hands to stop it exploding, I wanted to howl. It’s not possible, I said to myself at the end of each page. Then, when I’d finished reading, I suddenly felt calm. My insides were ice. All I wanted was to die. I was ashamed to be alive. After a week, it dawned on me, his story is my story, our father’s past.

Now it was my turn to live it, follow the same path, ask myself the same questions and, where my father and Rachel failed, try to survive. I felt it was too much for me. I also felt, very strongly, without knowing why, that I must tell the world this story. They’re old stories, but then life’s always the same, so this one-off tragedy can happen again.

Before I start, a bit of background info. Rachel and I were born over there, in a godforsaken village in rural Algeria, I don’t know exactly where. It’s called Ain Deb. Uncle Ali once told me that it meant “donkey’s spring”. That made me laugh, I pictured a donkey proudly standing guard over the spring named after it, selfishly scratching its paunch.

We were born to an Algerian mother and a German father, Aisha and Hans Schiller. Rachel arrived in France in 1970, when he was seven. The name Rachel came from Rachid and Helmut, his two first names, and it stuck. I came over in 1985, I was eight. My names, Malek and Ulrich became Malrich, and that stuck too. We lived with Uncle Ali, a good man who had seven sons and a heart as big as a lorry. With Ali, it was the more the merrier. Born in the village, a friend of father’s, one of the first to emigrate, he’s suffered every hardship but has managed to build a nest for his old age. He’s nearing the end of his life, poor soul, he’s lost his mind. He’s a chibani — an old man — dying in silence. I was a real handful. He never complained, he’d say with a smile: You’ll be a man one day. One after the other, his sons disappeared, four died, of illness, accidents at work, and the last three are around somewhere, maybe in Algeria, maybe somewhere else, in the Gulf, or Libya, wherever there’s work, chasing after life. They’re as good as lost, they never come here, they don’t write, they don’t phone. Perhaps they died too. When it comes down to it, I’m all Uncle Ali’s got. I never saw my father again. I haven’t been back to Algeria and he never came to France. He didn’t want us to return to the village, he used to say: Later, we’ll see. Our mother visited three times, for a fortnight, and spent the whole time crying. It was crazy, we couldn’t understand each other, she spoke Berber while we spoke the street Arabic of the Paris suburbs and some broken German, which she barely knew, and

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we only had a few odd words and phrases from our childhood. We’d smile at each other and keep repeating Ya, ya, gut, labesse, azul, ça va, genau, cool, et toi. Rachel went back once, and that was to bring me over to France. Our father never left his village. It’s weird but family stories are always weird, we don’t know them so we don’t pay attention. After high school, where he did German out of family duty and English because he had to, Rachel went to engineering college in Nantes. I wasn’t so lucky, I didn’t get beyond primary school. They blamed me for some misdemeanour — smashing the Head’s cupboard — and kicked me out. I was left to fend for myself, hanging out, work experience, manual jobs, wheeling and dealing, the mosque, the courts. Me and my friends were like fish in water, we swam with the flow and followed our instincts. Sometimes we got caught, but more often we were thrown straight back. We made the most of it before we were old enough to go to jail. I went before every committee and in the end, they forgot about me.

I’m not complaining, the past is the past. It’s fate, mektoub as the old Arabs around here say. Me and my friends say things like: Adversity’s the best teacher, danger makes the man, using your fists gives you balls …

Boualem Sansal

The German’s Village

At twenty-five, Rachel obtained French nationality. He threw one hell of a party. Ophélie and her mother, a hardcore National Front supporter, no longer had any reason to put off the wedding. Algerian and German, but still, he’s French, and an engineer into the bargain, they said to anyone who asked.

Another party. Mind you Rachel and Ophélie were childhood sweethearts and old mother Wenda had always had her eye on him, she’d watched him grow up into a polite, trustworthy young man. What’s more, he had blue eyes and fairer hair than Ophélie who had chestnut hair and dark eyes. Rachel’s German side, which he’d inherited in full from our father, and Ophélie’s mixed blood did the rest. Their life was a music roll, all you had to do was turn the handle. Sometimes I envied them and sometimes I wanted to kill them to spare their suffering. To stay on good terms, I avoided them. When I did go over, they looked anxiously about them as if a tornado was approaching their nest. Ophélie walked in front of me wherever I went, and went back after to check.

After his naturalisation, he said to me: I’m going to get yours sorted, you can’t carry on like this, you’re a loose cannon. I shrugged: Whatever, do what you like. He did.

One day, he came by the estate, got me to sign some papers and a year later he came back to say: You’re one of us, congratulations. Your decree’s been signed. He explained that his boss had put in a word for us. He invited me out to dinner in an expensive Paris restaurant, near Nation. It wasn’t to celebrate my getting French nationality, it was to lecture me about the duties that went with it. So as soon as I’d polished off my dessert, I was out of there.

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I sorted things out with Monsieur Vincent, I took a month’s paid holiday. It was nice of him, I’d only worked three days here, five days there, and hadn’t even finished the car I was working on. He smoothed things over with the local authority, which was funding my work experience.

I needed to be left alone. I’d reached that point where you can only stand people if you can get away from them and wallow in your misery. I read and reread Rachel’s diary. This thing was so huge, so terrible that I could see no end to it. And all of a sudden, I started writing feverishly — me, who hates writing.

Then I started taking off in all directions. What I went through, I wouldn’t wish on anyone.

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Michaël Sebban

Date of Publication: March 2008 Foreign Rights Manager: Virginie Rouxel vrouxel@hachette-livre.fr Translation: Joséphine Bacon bacon@langservice.com

© Jérôme Bonnet

Padlock in the Yehuda Market

Publisher: Hachette Littératures

Biography

Michaël Sebban is a forty-one-year-old French Jew who spends a lot of time in typical French cafés, prays daily, loves to surf the waves whenever he can and enjoys a morning cigar. He has written four novels featuring his literary double, Eli S. In Le Cadenas du Marché Yéhouda [The Yehuda Padlock], Eli S. returns to Israel where he pursues his occupation of debt-collector for his own benefit and in his own way. This is a return to the roots which can be explained by the fact that, in real life, Michaël Sebban married recently and has been living in Jerusalem since 2007.

Publications Kotel California, Hachette Littératures, 2006; Lehaïm. À toutes les vies, Hachette Littératures, 2004; La Terre promise, pas encore (The Promised Land, not Yet), Ramsay, 2002 (2nd ed., Pocket, 2004); La philo, ça prend la tête (Philosophy does your head in), Plon, 2001.

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In his previous lives and novels, Eli S., Michaël Sebban’s literary double, taught philosophy in Paris and worked as a paparazzo and chauffeur in Los Angeles. He currently operates as a debt-collector in Jerusalem. It may not be the ideal job but it enables him to use his innate sense of anything that isn’t on the level and lets him get away from it all when he fancies travelling to the opposite end of the world so he can catch the wave, something that the Promised Land is incapable of providing. These are periods of calm that he finds he needs in order to be able to bear the hectic life of Jerusalem, where violence lurks on every street corner. Eli S. would rather not have been around on Jaffa Road when, right before his eyes, a suicide bomber blew five people to smithereens. Television stations around the world transmit the event, but they do not show one vital element, something that Eli S. witnessed, something that shattered all of his

certainties. With his contacts and his professional reflexes, he sets out on an investigation to try to discover what no one has attempted to understand. How can a child become an assassin? Why are two padlocks no better than one? And, above all, how can politics have become the coverall that conceals a family history?

After taking us on a world trip in three novels (Israel with La Terre promise, pas encore …, France with Lehaïm and the United States with Kotel California), Eli S. has finally unpacked his bags for good in the Holy Land, offering us a religious detective story in which, of course, there will be much talk of cigars, surfing, kemia (North African appetisers) and sacred writings.

The novel, which is also being published in Hebrew, will appear in 2008 for the Paris Salon du Livre at which the guest of honour is Israel.

laughed heartily when I saw the kid walking up to the big dark-haired man who wore a kaftan. I said to myself ‘Well, life’s beginning again’.

Here he was, barely ten years old, kicking someone in the shins who was three times bigger than he was. He’s got a great future ahead of him!

Obviously not the type to let things go when anyone starts to annoy him. ‘Who do you think you are, eh! Just because I’m not old enough to have been barmitzvah’ed doesn’t mean that grownups have all the rights’. And wham! The kid launched himself at the man’s shins and I was doubled up with laughter.

It’s a great way to begin the day. For a moment I wondered what a little kid was doing wandering the streets alone at that time of the morning but I dismissed the question, telling myself that he was off to school and asking the waiter if it was ready. Except that children on their way to school carry a satchel. That was something I hadn’t noticed.

The waiter replied that the croissants were just coming out of the oven and he would bring them over to me with my café au lait. Good news. My first real breakfast for a month. With forty hours of flying time in my legs and a hard day’s grind in front of me, I owed myself this at least. I looked at the clock in the square. It read seven o’clock. Too early to wake up my wife and tell her I was back but not too early to light up a robusto. In any case, morning or not, nothing had changed for me. Papeete/Los Angeles/Zurich/Tel-Aviv is enough of a time zone change for starlight or sunlight to have little effect on my state of mind. An unreal state in which the final moments of surfing in Taapuna mingle with the headlamps of my Volvo as they cut through the mist of a Jerusalem dawn. I make a detour to the Persian synagogue in Agrippas Street for the morning prayer and then take a seat on the terrace of the first café to open on Jaffa Road, the Atoma. It’s a beautiful day, already warm but less humid than in the Pacific. The first customer of the day, a spectator watching life restarting

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in the city I love. The waiter has placed the croissants and coffee in front of me.

I detect the fragrance of cinnamon — and then there’s a ‘Bang’.

The explosion has torn through the warm air and opened a breach in the sky. It shatters the display window of the shop facing me, the chairs on the terrace and several passers-by. Time has stopped, stabbed by a blast of air that has come out of nowhere. Silence. A few moments pass and the atmosphere is filled with the unbearable odour of calcinated metal and burned bodies. And life starts up again, quickly, very quickly. As if to catch up with those moments that have just escaped the clock, a deafening din invades the street. Police and ambulance sirens, the cries of the wounded and of passers-by, frantic rushing in every direction. I don’t know what has happened to me but at that moment, I calmly drew on my cigar and screw up my eyes, staring at what I have just noticed of the other side of the street. I remain in my chair, struck by the absurdity of the world and my mind suddenly closes in upon itself. The Russian responsible for checking people entering the café from which I was watching the scene has fallen down. He had been watching me, with my absent air, my cigar on my lips and he must also have asked himself whether he was dreaming.

The noise becomes louder and louder. Sirens, helicopters and the shouts of the first-aiders mingle with the others. It’s the usual scene that follows an attack.

I try to swallow a mouthful of coffee because one had to do something. No one needs me from across the street so I stay there and try to realise what’s happening. Although there’s not much to realise. I am back in Jerusalem and in this city moments of calm are always stolen moments. A day on which everything had seemed normal. Shops opening, waiters bringing croissants, buses passing, kids off to school, their feet being trodden on. And a big Bang, a reminder that here, nothing is as it is elsewhere. The first television truck had already arrived. I did not even need to pay any attention to it, I knew the drill. Some insignificant Palestinian grouplet would claim responsibility for the attack, if this hadn’t happened time and again, with a video to support the claim showing some dumb-assed suicide bomber, half-fearful half-aroused by the idea of buying his place in paradise as people used to buy pardons from archbishops.

Work could wait. I had a cigar to finish, croissants to eat and a question in my mind that began to make me forget the taste of the havana and the odour of death. At the moment of the Bang, I had had my eyes fixed on the other side of the street. The kid had disappeared but not the man in the kaftan who was lying on the ground in his own blood. There’s nothing strange about that I told myself, a bombing is designed to make people bleed, whether or not they are wearing a kaftan. Except that, jetlagged or not, I would burn my surf on the fact that the man in the kaftan had been lying on the asphalt even before the Bang.

No one took any notice of me. The whole world was busy saving the peace process, and I was busy solving problems of chronology. Why had this guy fallen

Michaël Sebban

Padlock in the Yehuda Market

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down before the Bang? Was he the suicide bomber? A suicide bomber in ultraorthodox disguise? It wouldn’t be the first time that one of these bastards had disguised himself as a Jew so as to pass unnoticed but a suicide bomber doesn’t lie down before the Bang, he’s the one going off Bang with his bomblets. He commits suicide by pressing the button, doesn’t he? Unless he fell on his bomb before he blew himself up. The sight of bodies torn to pieces was not the best way of solving my enigma. The waiter helped the Russian to get to his feet and came to sit tremblingly next to me.

“Son of a bitch!” “…”

“There’ll never be any peace with these fucking bastards. Drop a big bomb on Gaza and I’m telling you that will solve the problem with these swine.”

“Possibly.”

“What, you don’t agree?”

“Yes, you could be right. Could you make me another coffee?”

“Yes, and I’ll make one for myself as well.”

I wasn’t in the right frame of mind for geopolitical discussions. Bomb or not, someone may have dropped dead just before the explosion and I had a feeling that he did whether or not this was in the script. The waiter had turned on the radio which was commenting live on what was happening on the pavement opposite. The whatever brigades had already claimed responsibility for the attack as reprisals for whatever. It was just a lot of hot air, something I had been forgetting as I scraped my fins on the corals of Tahiti and I listened as if it were coming from somewhere I wasn’t. My second coffee had arrived and the radio had announced that the suicide bomber was a little girl from Beit Jalla, the secret services were already questioning her parents. So the Jew in the kaftan was not the suicide bomber and neither was the kid. Unless the kid had been a girl. Do they have haircuts like boys now? Nothing would surprise me in this country, but why would a suicide bomber disguised as a boy kick an orthodox Jew before she exploded her chastity belt? I continued to sit in front of the Atoma café where I remained, puffing on my cigar and meditating on the time zones.

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Claire Wolniewicz

In that Moment

Publisher: ÉditionsViviane Hamy Date of Publication: January 2008 Foreign Rights Manager: Julie Galante julie.galante@viviane-hamy.fr

© Éditions Viviane Hamy

Translation: Imogen Forster imogen.forster@talktalk.net

Biography

Claire Wolniewicz lives in the country. Formerly a lawyer and television script-writer, she is now a journalist. In terms of genre, she has an equal liking for the novel and the short story. As she says, “The novel perhaps makes me more anxious, because it brings with it more of the unknown, but it’s a great adventure every time.”

Publications Ubiquité, Viviane Hamy, 2005 (2nd ed., Pocket, 2007) (prix Librecourt 2006), currently being adapted for the screen; Sainte Rita patronne des causes désespérées, short stories, Finitudes, 2003 (2nd ed., Pocket, 2006).

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“Madelaine’s collection for children had something for everyone from new-borns up to ten-year-olds. Her customers begged her: “What about after ten? Our children are growing, and we need something for twelve-year-olds, fourteen-year-olds.”

She had never thought of it, and the reason wasn’t hard to find.

At twelve, you’re an adult, aren’t you? She had had to be, at least.”

Madelaine is eleven when her father abandons her in an orphanage. A rebel against authority of any kind, and solitary among the other boarders, she finds a refuge in sewing. The nuns place her with Madame Volladier, in her dressmaker’s shop in Limoges, where she discovers the breadth of her talent and works extraordinarily hard.

“You’ve got to learn, Madelon, that’s what saves you, nothing else” is the constant message of Léonarde, the cook, her confidante, adviser and friend.

At the age of fourteen, she creates her first dresses, which dazzle the eye with their flowing material and gorgeous colours. She is

already skilled in the art of cutting, for which she has a natural gift. She finds a better position in Paris, where her perfect eye and impeccable standards soon attract notice. Customers come by, spot her creations and order them; the workshop is a hive of activity, overflowing with work. Her creations are the talk of the town. From now on, the business will carry her name: Madelaine Delisle.

Ever solitary, Madelaine works feverishly, unremittingly. She has a nose for trends, for what women want, their need for comfortable, practical clothes, but also their wish to be seductive. The world of fashion runs riot, the century unfolds with all its inventions and its acts of destruction, like the War, which “presents” her with Tadeusz, a concentration-camp survivor, passionately in love with life. Lucie is born. Madelaine designs vast numbers of clothes for her, but she is never able to love her. The old demons are still there, and they burst out without her knowing why. Why is she unable to express her love, why can’t she kiss her daughter, touch her, talk to her?

Madelaine cuts herself off … and falls.

Madelaine’s mother is dead, her father has abandoned the whole family. So she has been placed in an orphanage, where she makes only one friend: Hélène. Now aged fourteen, she has succeeded in finding a trade: dressmaking. The action takes place in the interwar years.

year later, the nuns placed her with a draper and dressmaker in Limoges. Behind her now were the long hours spent mending sheets, the greyish uniforms of the orphan boarders. Madelaine was impatient. Her nights were solitary, Hélène sent no news, but Madelaine presumed she was happy and had never forgotten to add to the little pile of stones. She was fourteen, and going out at last into the big world. Slim and beautiful, despite the fear that tied a knot in her stomach, she walked with an almost light step towards the shop named À la Belle Confection, owned by a widow, Madame Volladier.

Its tarnished sign hung in front of a large, dirty shop-window. She pushed the door open. Her nostrils were filled with the smell of mothballs, all was dark and dim.

“Mind the draughts.”

The words were spoken in a thin, reedy voice. As she tried to see where they came from, the door closed, pushed shut by a silent hand. The young seamstress gave a start. An old lady with grey hair and hollow eyes, dressed all in black, was standing in front of her, frowning as she examined her from head to toe. She was so small, so slight, a draught was indeed all it would have taken to blow her away.

“You’re from the orphanage, are you? I thought so.”

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She walked around her without making the slightest noise, as light as a feather.

“That’s good. You’re short, you won’t frighten the customers. Women who’re too tall are frightening. Men aren’t, of course. If they’re tall and strong and at the ladies’ service, they’re reassuring. My husband, my dear Lucien, was tall.

She spoke in an even tone, devoid of emotion. The shop was huge, highceilinged, out of proportion with the height of its proprietress. Its flaking paintwork showed how badly it had been neglected, and the bolts of cloth were few and far between. Madame Volladier, in a faint cloud of dust, went ahead of her to show her the back shop, a large room furnished with five work-tables, bare shelves and a dozen tailor’s dummies lined up in a corner. The place was gloomy, the lighting feeble. A large, faded photograph occupied pride of place on the wall; it showed ten smiling young women, surrounding a giant with round cheeks and a jaunty moustache. Madame Volladier was standing near him, young, and smiling too. The photograph was over twenty years old.

“My husband, Lucien. He died on the Chemin des Dames in 1917. It’s a pity Adrien isn’t in this picture, he was ill. He died too, cut down right at the start, in 1914, at Mouchy-au-Bois, in the Pas-de-Calais.

“The young girls — did they work here?

“Of course. Shop assistants, or dressmakers — there used to be lots of people at À la Belle Confection. It was famous all over the département. Nowadays, two people can handle the work. I should close down, but it keeps me busy while I wait for Armand to come back.

Madelaine didn’t dare ask who Armand was, but Madame guessed what she was thinking: “Armand’s my younger son. He was seriously wounded in the war — that bloody war — and he’s resting in a convalescent home. For the time being he can’t travel very far, he’s disabled, but I hope he’ll come back. If it’s God’s will, that is.

The same words as at Obazine. Madelaine instinctively stood up straight.

The same words, except that the nuns would have taught this widow that she ought never to have waited.

“You’ll do the sewing, and when it’s quiet, you’ll serve in the shop. You’ll sweep it every evening. You’ll have to put away the rolls of material, fold up the short pieces and tidy your table. Needles in their box, reels of thread in the drawer. I like everything to be in its proper place. You’ll start by cleaning the window. The last assistant left two months ago. She was another one who didn’t like work. I hope it won’t be like that with you.”

Claire Wolniewicz

In that Moment

Madelaine got down to work. The shop was indescribably dirty. Putting aside her visions of the big world, she spent her day washing, while the proprietress,

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installed behind her cash register, divided her time between her accounts and her missal. Madame Volladier moved her lips only to greet in a low voice three of her friends, widows clad in black and resentment, buttoned all the way up to their necks. Gathered round the cash register, they studied Madelaine at length before whispering: “She doesn’t look very sturdy”.

“No bad thing, you’ll save on her food.”

“As long as she lasts, of course. Nobody wants to work any more. Have you heard what they’re asking for? A forty-hour week and paid holidays! The world’s turned upside down.”

The whispers died away. When the friends had left, all was silence again.

When night fell, Madame Volladier announced: “We’ll go to my house now, my dear. It’s only a stone’s throw from here. You’ll have a room on the top floor. It’s not very big, but as you aren’t, either …”

Madame lived in a grand three-storied townhouse, with some twenty magnificent but unoccupied rooms. She showed her only a few of them, but the little that was revealed had a magical effect on the young girl. With its silk curtains, fine paintings and furniture, its wax-polished floor and dazzling chandeliers, Madelaine had never seen such splendour.

“This house is much too big for me. Before, it was perfect. So many people used to come here — guests, parties.”

The light that had brightened her face for a moment went out immediately.

“At present I use only part of the sitting room for my meals, and my bedroom. But Armand will come back, and it’s better that I keep it. And I am not alone.

With these last Delphic words, she handed Madelaine over to Léonarde, who, with the building itself, was the only survivor of the glorious years, the years “before”.

A plump sixty-something with shrewd, bright brown eyes, her hair in a small white bun, Léonarde had been Madame Volladier’s cook. She still was, but as she no longer had to feed four people every day, or provide dinner for ten people two or three times a week, she also saw to the upkeep and management of the household.

Madelaine ate with her in the kitchen, while Madame dined alone with her silverware and the photographs of her dear departed in her “little sitting room”. Their meals took place without a word being spoken, and the young girl believed she was going to live with two tight-lipped women. She was mistaken.

After a week, Léonarde addressed her: “The orphanage — what was it like?”

Madelaine was taken by surprise, and sat up; she was on her guard.

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“It was all right.”

“And working in the shop?”

“It’s all right.”

Léonarde sighed, put the plates to one side and took out her snuff-box. First one nostril, then the other. Another, deeper sigh and she gave Madelaine a long hard look.

“When you arrived, you were standing up straight, a week later you were already stooping. If you carry on like that you’ll shrivel up, you’ll look like a little thing left in a corner and you’ll be like her, our Madame Volladier, with a tiny body and a tiny soul. Is that what you want?”

Madelaine was dumbfounded and couldn’t think of a thing to say. Léonarde was not tight-lipped, and the orphan who spent her time studying places and people, their habits and expectations, in an attempt to avert disaster, had just realised it.

“Cat got your tongue?”

“No.” The left corner of the cook’s mouth turned up.

“We’re making progress. All the girls who came before you left because of her. And they didn’t stay long. Just long enough to turn limp and grey. Some of them fell ill as well — you have to admit the climate in the shop isn’t the healthiest — do you want to fall ill?”

“No.” The right corner turned up.

“Good. We’re going great guns. Shall I continue?”

“Yes.” “You have a good position here, food — and good food at that — lodging, and a job that will let you get to know the world and its blunders, do you follow me?”

“Yes, yes.”

“You’re not going to be overworked, there aren’t many customers, but you’ll have enough so you can learn from them, if you don’t let them get to you.”

“Yes.” Madelaine waited eagerly for what was to follow; no-one had ever spoken to her like this before. But nothing followed. Léonarde’s smile died away.

“Yes what?”

“Um, yes, I mustn’t let them get to me.”

“And how are you going to go about it?”

“Um, I don’t know.”

“Better learn to speak up, young lady, or you’ll turn into a silly fool. Well, then?”

“Do you know how it’s done?”

Léonarde gave her a broad smile.

Claire Wolniewicz

In that Moment

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“It’s not easy to live with a woman who’s half dead, and you, my dear, are alive and kicking, so you should just ignore her. Behave as if she didn’t exist.

Think about something that warms your heart, and the minute you notice you’re not thinking of it any more — there you are, you’re thinking of it.”

Madelaine nodded, looking both convinced and doubtful.

“And do I stop doing the work?”

“Of course not, the very thought! You’re not silly and you’re not deaf, you’ll follow instructions and you’ll do what you have to do. But everything else is your business, and it’s up to you to pay attention.

Madelaine nodded very slowly this time. Léonarde got up with an effort.

“Good. That’s enough. You’ll wash the dishes and I’ll clear Madame’s table.

But first, I’d like you to say thank you for the meal that I made for you.”

She stood facing the young girl sitting there, small but erect.

“Thank you.”

The cook winked to show her intense satisfaction and, turning toward the passageway, added: “And while you’re about it, pay attention to your palate. You gobbled up your dessert, double-quick. An out-of-work washerwoman would have eaten it more slowly. Any idea what it was?”

“No.” “A soufflé! An orange soufflé! Better learn.”

And Madelaine learned.

Jams, babas and mousses. Ragouts, gratins and hotpots. She had found what it was that warmed her heart, and she worked, not standing up straight but squeezing Hélène’s hand in her own. No, Léonarde was far from tight-lipped, she opened her mouth only when she saw fit, and watched over her like the Good Lord himself.

“You’re stooping tonight, Madelon. How did you spend your Sunday?”

“Um …”

“Did you stay in your room and cry all day long?”

“I went for a walk outside the shop.”

“You walked a hundred yards and came back? You’re talking about a little stroll, that’s not the way to get some fresh air, my girl. Better learn. Next Sunday I’ll take you with me. Tell me, do you like the work you do?”

“Yes” Her tone was lifeless. Léonarde went on.

“Why?” Breaking through her sadness, the memory of the lovely Hélène flashed before her.

“Because it makes other people happy.”

Léonarde savoured her reply as she took her snuff, before noisily pushing back her chair.

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“Come with me.”

And she took her to the attic. A real attic, with spiders and spider-webs, dusty furniture, boxes, cupboards and trunks, and in some of the trunks, dozens and dozens of fashion magazines.

“Everything that’s been written on the subject’s there. She still gets them but she doesn’t want to read them any more. She was a coquette, our Madame Volladier, and she knew all about fashion. She doesn’t enjoy it any more, but you’re entitled to. Seeing you’re a dressmaker, go the whole hog, be a dressmaker like no other, with fingers like the ones you’d see on a fairy’s hands. Better learn, Madelon, that’s what saves you, nothing else.

Then Léonarde went back to her little apartment in Les Ponts, and Madelaine, her head full of that strange airy thing called an orange soufflé, carried the magazines to her room. There, holding Hélène’s hand in hers, she turned the yellowed pages, the dust flying up around her.

The Belle Époque: the age of gallantry, of boudoir and bedroom, rustling underclothes, veiled glances and heady scents. Woman, the woman of Paris especially, reigned supreme; the sinuous lines of her body were to be found even in the scrolled architectural details. Art nouveau, with its undulating shapes and curving lines, was born, and with it a new ideal of beauty. The names of the great courtesans floated in the air, out of reach, envied: La Belle Otéro, Liane de Pougy, Émilienne d’Alençon.

As Feydeau confided: “With yesterday’s fashions, it was impossible to follow a woman in the street. You’d overtaken her after three steps, whereas nowadays …”

Madelaine stared up at the window through which the sky cast its bluish light. Sister Geneviève was right, the world was huge. The young woman breathed a deep breath.

Claire Wolniewicz

In that Moment

At the shop, she now began to smile as she worked, and Madame Volladier watched her, astonished to see that she did not fall apart at her touch, amazed at her unfailing pleasantness. The widows’ chorus murmured: “My dear, this little girl is irreproachable. I hope you’ll keep her.

Madame raised her eyes to Heaven with a look of ostentatious piety.

“I shall keep her if it’s God’s will. I don’t drive them away, they don’t want to work. Young people …

And the old ladies, as one, glanced up at a Heaven that could not but give them its approval.

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