Fiction France n°7 (version anglaise) by Institut français

Twenty new books of French fiction to be read and translated

foreword

Published twice a year, Fiction France offers a selection of excerpts from French fiction, along with English translations. The French publishers wish to highlight these books abroad by targeting translators, agents and publishers who take the risk of promoting contemporary fiction. Fiction France’s aim is to create a new burst of enthusiasm for translations of contemporary French literature, to be a literary showcase for book professionals around the world, as well as an essential support to the French book market abroad. It is a tool which fully reflects the mission of culturesfrance.

How can you take part in Fiction FRANCE ? A selection of 16 to 20 titles are compiled in cooperation with the Book and 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, New York and Berlin—French Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs.

Page 113 of this seventh issue of Fiction France, you will find those titles presented in the previous issues whose foreign rights have since been sold. Please do not hesitate to contact the Foreign Rights Managers of the publishing houses at the addresses listed in the table of contents and on the page presenting each text.

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 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: 10th December 2010 Next publication date of Fiction France: 15th March 2011

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

contents

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p. 13

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p. 32

p. 37

Olivier Adam

Anne Berest

Agnès Desarthe

Virginie Despentes

Marc Dugain

The Steady Heart

Her Father’s Daughter

In the Black Night

Apocalypse Baby

The Stars Never Sleep

Publisher: Éditions de l’Olivier Date of Publication: August 2010 Foreign Rights Manager: Martine Heissat

Publisher: Éditions du Seuil Date of Publication: August 2010 Foreign Rights Manager: Martine Heissat

Publisher: Éditions de l’Olivier Date of Publication: August 2010 Foreign Rights Manager: Martine Heissat

Publisher: Grasset Date of Publication: August 2010 Foreign Rights Manager: Heidi Warneke

Publisher: Gallimard Date of Publication: September 2010 Foreign Rights Manager:

mheissat@seuil.com Translation: Jody Gladding gladding@together.net

mheissat@seuil.com Translation: Jane Marie Todd fmost@aol.com

mheissat@seuil.com Translation: Jonathan Kaplansky jkaplansky@videotron.ca

hwarneke@grasset.fr Translation: Donald Nicholson-Smith mnr.dns@verizon.net

Anne-Solange Noble anne-solange.noble@gallimard.fr Translation: Donald Nicholson-Smith mnr.dns@verizon.net

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p. 22

p. 41

p. 46

p. 52

Jean-Marie Blas de Roblès

Thierry Dancourt

Mathias Énard

Gisèle Fournier

Alexandre Lacroix

The Midnight Mountain

Winter Garden

Tell Them of Battles, The Last Word Kings and Elephants

The Orfan

Publisher: Zulma Date of Publication: August 2010 Foreign Rights Manager: Amélie Louat

Publisher: Éditions de la Table Ronde Date of Publication: August 2010 Foreign Rights Manager: Anna Vateva

Publisher: Actes Sud Date of Publication: August 2010 Foreign Rights Manager: Élisabeth Beyer

Publisher: Mercure de France Date of Publication: August 2010 Foreign Rights Manager: Catherine Farin

Publisher: Flammarion Date of Publication: August 2010 Foreign Rights Manager:

e.beyer@actes-sud.fr Translation: Charlotte Mandell cmandell@earthlink.net

catherine.farin@mercure.fr Translation: Valeriya Makohon vmakohon.traduction@gmail.com

Patricia Stansfield pstansfield@flammarion.fr Translation: Pascale Torracinta pascale_torracinta@hotmail.com

amelie.louat@zulma.fr

a.vateva@editionslatableronde.fr

Translation: Madeleine Velguth

Translation: Jeanine Herman

velguth@sbcglobal.net

jeanine_herman@yahoo.com

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p. 63

p. 69

p. 88

p. 94

Jean-Claude Lalumière

Patrick Lapeyre

Jean Mattern

Yves Ravey

Olivia Rosenthal

The Russian Front

Life is Short and Desire Neverending

Milk and Honey

Kidnapping with Ransom

Publisher: Le Dilettante Date of Publication: August 2010 Foreign Rights Manager: Claude Tarrène

Publisher: P.O.L Date of Publication: August 2010 Foreign Rights Manager: Vibeke Madsen

Publisher: Sabine Wespieser Date of Publication: August 2010 Foreign Rights Manager: Joschi Guitton

Publisher: Les Éditions de Minuit Date of Publication: September 2010 Foreign Rights Manager:

What Do Reindeer Do When Christmas Is Over?

claude.tarrene@ledilettante.com Translation: Tanyika Carey info@tanyikacarey.com

madsen@pol-editeur.fr Translation: Jonathan Kaplansky jkaplansky@videotron.ca

jguitton@swediteur.com Translation: John Cullen jocul@earthlink.net

Catherine Vercruyce direction@leseditionsdeminuit.fr Translation: Pascale Torracinta pascale_torracinta@hotmail.com

p. 74

p. 78

p. 83

p. 100

p. 106

Romain Monnery

Thibault de Montaigu

Martin Provost

Alexandra Schwartzbrod

Karine Tuil

Free, Lonesome, and Drowsy

Nights in Eden

Beefsteak

Farewell Jerusalem

Six Months, Six Days

Publisher: Au diable vauvert Date of Publication: August 2010 Foreign Rights Manager:

Publisher: Fayard Date of Publication: September 2010 Foreign Rights Manager:

Publisher: Phébus Date of Publication: August 2010 Foreign Rights Manager:

Publisher: Stock Date of Publication: April 2010 Foreign Rights Manager:

Publisher: Grasset Date of Publication: September 2010 Foreign Rights Manager: Heidi Warneke

Marie-Pacifique Zeltner rights@audiable.com Translation: Jane Marie Todd fmost@aol.com

Carole Saudejaud csaudejaud@editions-fayard.fr Translation: Tegan Raleigh teganraleigh@gmail.com

Christine Legrand christine.legrand@libella.fr Translation: Hester Velmans hestervelmans@gmail.com

Marleen Seegers mseegers@editions-stock.fr Translation: Julia Di Liberti dilibert@cod.edu

hwarneke@grasset.fr Translation: Madeleine Velguth velguth@sbcglobal.net

Publisher: Verticales Date of Publication: September 2010 Foreign Rights Manager:

Anne-Solange Noble anne-solange.noble@gallimard.fr Translation: Michael Lucey mlucey@berkeley.edu

Olivier Adam

The Steady Heart

Sarah is forty years old and she no longer knows who she is. Since her brother Nathan’s death three months ago, she feels misunderstood and increasingly imprisoned by her “perfect” family life. So she decides to follow Nathan’s trail to Japan, to the small village known for its suicides and for the man everyone calls the “savior,” Natsume. This former cop patrols the cliffs and persuades those attempting suicide not to take that final

Publisher: Éditions de l’Olivier Date of Publication: August 2010 Foreign Rights Manager: Martine Heissat mheissat@seuil.com

Translation: Jody Gladding gladding@together.net

Biography

Olivier Adam was born in 1974. He grew up in the Paris suburbs. He considers that his life began in a ten-year black hole and that since then he has remained a “specialist in disappearances.” After having lived in Paris, working for a cultural engineering agency, and then for Éditions du Rouergue, he settled near Saint-Malo. He has been on the programming committee for the Correspondances de Manosque literary festival since its inception in 1999. A novelist, he also writes children’s books. Many of his books have been adapted for the screen. Of special note, Olivier Adam collaborated with Philippe Lioret to write the adaptation of his first novel, Je vais bien, ne t’en fais pas (2006, winning multiple César awards in 2007). Publications Recent novels from Éditions de l’Olivier: Des vents contraries, 2008 (Grand prix rtl-Lire 2008); À l’abri de rien, 2007; Falaises, 2005 (prix France Télévision 2007). All these titles are available in paperback from Éditions Points.

irreparable step. Before his accident, Nathan claimed to have finally found peace with Natsume. By inhabiting her lost brother’s favorite places, Sarah hopes to “get close” to him one last time. But it will take more than this journey for her to fathom his past and to recognize that, beyond the undeniable brutality of his life, she has deceived herself and more than once acquiesced to convenient arrangements with the truth, to easy surrenders.

There is no moon tonight and it is hard to distinguish the water from the sky, the trees from the cliffs, the sand from the rocks. Only a few lights glimmer, the rare lit window, a dozen street lamps along the beach, two more beside the shrine, the neon glow of a bar, a vending machine, a myriad of brightly colored cans cast in its glare. No one lingers here at this hour. The end of summer has thinned out the tourists, the last cicadas rasp from the inn gardens, it is late September, but it is still warm. From the open bay rises the murmur of the surf. It mixes with the rustling of leaves, the swaying of bamboo, the creaking of cedars. The monkeys quieted down shortly after sunset, a little while ago they were shrieking in panic, then darkness fell and they gave up. I entered the cliffs again by that twisting path that I have taken for the past six days. Under the canopy of high trees where the first bats and last buzzards cross, among the ferns and moss, I skirted the already familiar lanterns, rugosa roses still in bloom, camellias with their gleaming petals, maples still green, wooden houses through the windows of which could be seen the low-slung furniture, paper screens, the straw blonde tatami mats. It was not yet seven o’clock, but already meals were being prepared, releasing their moist odors of broth and seaweed, green tea and soy. Three chattering boys in baseball uniforms followed behind me, bats over their shoulders. They turned off without my noticing it, when I looked around there was no one there, I could have just as easily been shadowed by ghosts. When I arrived at the inn, I chose a spot near the windows. Squatting around a lacquered wooden table, there were only five of us for

dinner, Katherine, myself, and three Japanese: an elegant, silent couple, both dressed in dark, perfectly cut kimonos, faces with such fine features they might have stepped out of a movie or a photograph; and, slightly withdrawn, a man in his fifties, charcoal suit over a light shirt, an entirely white cigarette stuck in his mouth. He drew them from a soft, sky-blue pack, pausing only to take a few bites or an unusually long swallow of beer, as if he were trying to empty his glass in a single draught. We greeted one another with nods, slight bows, and polite smiles, then each of us bent over our plates once again. The innkeeper served me a bowl of rice and eel before withdrawing to sit down to her own meal with her daughter Hiromi, a girl of fifteen whom I had run into earlier that day, right after school let out, when she had hiked up her skirt several centimeters, undone three blouse buttons, made up her eyes, and pulled her cell phone from her bag, from which hung a dozen charms: a good-luck Shinto, Manga figurines, creatures from Miyazaki films and the complete collection of AristoCats. Seeing her, I thought of my own daughter, I still did not miss her, do we miss children once they enter adolescence? I was not sure. I did not miss Romain either, Anaïs was almost sixteen and he had just turned fourteen. For quite some time now, we had only been crossing paths, we no longer really lived together, just alongside one another, under the same roof, a kind of cohabitation. It had taken me a while to realize it but seen from here, from so far away, yes, that was how things looked to me. “From a distance, one sees nothing,” Nathan often used to say, at the slightest provocation, and to him that phrase seemed to contain an essential truth. I never understood what my brother meant by that, but today I know that he was wrong, that it is exactly the opposite: from close up, in the ordinary course of things, one sees nothing of one’s own life. To grasp it, you have to pull back and lightly step aside. Most people never do that and they are not wrong. Who wants to glimpse the ice shifting? Who wants to find oneself suspended over the void? Our lives fit into a thimble. I do not remember who was saying that the other day, I think it was on the radio. Or did I read it in a book? I do not know anymore. But that sentence took hold of me, Nathan could have said it, I thought, to add to the dozens of others, all just as definitive and disenchanted, that served him as mantras, tracing a path which had never led him anywhere. I had taken the first plane for Tokyo, my heart pounding, in a state of total confusion, fleeing an indefinable threat that I felt was not far from engulfing me. When I called the children, upon arriving here, to tell them that, yes, I had gone to the other side of the world for a little while, that I needed a break, to find myself again, that some impulse had drawn me east, toward this country, these streets, these landscapes, all they did was vaguely acquiesce. Basically I think they could have cared less, for them it must not have meant much. Not much more than one of those neurotic adult whims from which they had been pretty well protected until then, safe and warm behind the thick walls of our comfortable home, the muted reserve and

level-headedness of their solid, reasonable parents, but which overflowed the carefully manicured paths of our lovely block: hysterics, blow-ups, perversions, adulterous alcoholic depressions, emptiness and resentments of all kinds, you only had to look out of the comfortable house to see this in the neighborhood, like everywhere else. And they only had to turn on the TV to find whole collections of parents identical in every way to their own, and to those of their friends, returning each evening from their important, lucrative jobs, with their clean, new automobiles of the best Swedish or German make, their second homes in Normandy, Brittany, or the Basque country, playing tennis, golf, or Sunday morning jogging, always impeccably dressed, relaxing in their neat, well-kept homes with their carefully chosen decor, whose varnish would crack at the first opportunity, revealing their putrid secrets, the entrails of lies and dissembling. They hung up the phone, saying doubtfully, “okay, well … talk to you later, Mom.” Alain, their father, would have put on his understanding, apologetic air, my perfect husband, your mother is fragile right now, he must have confided to them, worry lines wrinkling his forehead, after what has happened, we must be understanding, we are going to respect her decision and wait patiently for her to come back, what else can we do? They must have listened without reacting, powerless, out of their depths, not knowing for sure if this was really happening, nor what they were supposed to do in such circumstances.

Olivier Adam

The Steady Heart

I only have to make the slightest hand gesture and the innkeeper rises, kneels to clear the table, and serves me a little more sake. For dessert, she offers me a red bean paste wrapped in sweet sticky rice. I thank her with a smile. I can read nothing on her face, no sign of anything. Even though last night there were seven of us here. But she must be used to it, no other choice. It was a couple. They went out into the paralyzed night, from my window I saw them growing distant, hand in hand, nearly hidden in the trees, shadows swallowed by the darkness. In the morning their broken bodies were found lying at the foot of the cliffs. Tied together with a rope. The outgoing tide had washed away the blood. The gulls did not wait long to peck at them, to eat their eyes. The night was so black. Such darkness must have been too much for his vigilance. Try as he might, patrolling the paths with his flashlight, Natsume Dombori must not have seen them, or arrived too late, and trembling at the edge of the precipice, they must have finally let themselves drop. “It happens especially at night,” Hiromi confided to me. “There are too many people during the day. No one commits suicide in public, out of modesty, out of politeness. That is why he usually patrols at dusk.” The word “politeness” struck me, I wondered what suicide had to do with politeness, I thought of Nathan and told myself no, absolutely not, it had nothing to do with politeness, exactly the opposite, that idiot had just done it out of goddamn selfishness and worse yet, lately, I felt just as capable of doing it as he had been.

Anne Berest

Her Father’s Daughter

When I went to see the cliffs, the day I arrived, I was almost disappointed. The sky was grey, the sea calm, a sandy oyster shade. The rocks broke at right angles, bare and dull, split in many places, crumbling in others. It was all just angular verticality, sharp ridges. A harsh, dry, barren place. Each year dozens of desperate people flocked there to die, this mania had been going on for so long, no one could remember when it started. Just looking around, you understood their mental states, the depth of their suffering, the icy blades of nothingness gnawing at them. No more tears. No more anger. Not the slightest feeling. It was nothing but arid, bottomless wells, darkness. Was that where Nathan had found himself? And that couple? Yesterday at dinner they seemed so impenetrable. Two pale, nacreous blocks, cold as metal. “This time he will not have succeeded in stopping them,” Hiromi whispered to me at breakfast. She seemed fascinated. She stared at me for a long time, watching me choke down my scrambled eggs. It seemed that she was trying to figure out if I too had come for that. If she had asked me the question, I believe I would not have known how to answer her.

Date of Publication: August 2010 Foreign Rights Manager: Martine Heissat mheissat@seuil.com Translation: Jane Marie Todd fmost@aol.com

There are only four of us now. The Japanese man in the suit left the room, acknowledging us with a brief nod. Hiromi told me that he was there on business. I do not know what kind of business takes you to a deserted sea resort that attracts people with obscure motives. This afternoon watching the passersby I wondered what had brought them here. If some of them had come to “case the joint” and were going to take advantage of a moonless night to die. If they were simply taken with the desolate beauty of the cracked boulders, feeling they’d reached the end of the end of the world. Or if they rushed here drawn by the morbid aura of the place, adding each month to the macabre tally of suicides. Maybe they were hoping to witness “live” a leap into the void, or better yet, a rescue. Maybe they were hoping to see him. Him, the savior. The day Nathan had crossed his path, eight months ago, Natsume Dombori had not yet become a national hero, a celebrity. First he had to place his hand on the shoulder of a journalist at the edge of the abyss, take him back to his house, keep him there a few weeks, offering him shelter, food, and a patient ear, and the journalist then had to decide to recount all this in the newspaper that employed him, not omitting the fact that he was hardly the first to have been saved in this way, taken in, and cared for. Hiromi claims that since that old district cop had made it his mission to discourage prospective suicides and take them under his wing, three years ago now, the number of deliberate deaths had decreased by half. I do not know where she gets that, if statistics exist, if she keeps them herself.

Publisher: Éditions du Seuil

Biography

Anne Berest was born in 1979. After pursuing studies in literature, she joined the Théâtre du Rond-Point and founded Les Carnets du Rond-Point, for which she serves as editor-in-chief. In 2008 she participated in the adaptation and staging of Patrick Modiano’s Un pedigree, with Édouard Baer. Her Father’s Daughter is Anne Berest’s first novel.

Three sisters whose life paths have diverged reunite at their father’s house for a birthday dinner. In their childhood home, memories rise to the surface, leading to nervous gestures and slips of the tongue, sparking resentment around the dinner table. Over dessert, a family secret is revealed, a time bomb that will slowly and silently affect the daily lives of each of the daughters. This scathing first novel delves into the bittersweet relationship of three young women and a father.

On Her Birthday I like car trips because your thoughts do not linger but reel by with the landscape. The setting sun grazes the fields of grape vines on the way to Épernay. Night has been falling since Rheims, and today is Irène’s birthday. She’s thirtyeight, my big sister. Thirty-eight today but forever nineteen, wearing a light blue sweatshirt with the word “Rainbow” written on it. Each letter was a different color. Red R. Orange A. Yellow I. Green N. Blue B. Indigo O. Violet W. Her friend Katia gave it to her for her birthday. I was twelve, dreaming of being nineteen and of wearing the same sweatshirt as Irène. We’re three sisters, reunited in the backseat just like when we were little: Irène and Charlie next to the doors and me in the middle. The youngest and eldest have to have a window seat. I just want peace and quiet, no trouble. I wonder how long it’s been since the three of us were jammed together into the backseat of a car, pressed up against one another, all easy to spot with our red hair. Their bodies in contact with mine bother me. With the years that have passed, I’m no longer used to our casual physicality with each other. The pressure of their thighs against mine is so unpleasant that I spread my knees with sharp little jabs, so that unawares they move their legs aside. But I remember our young naked flesh when Charlie and I used to bathe together in the little tub in the bathroom at Épernay. The hairdos of lathered shampoo. Arms gleaming with soap. Flat chests. I can just see Charlie, her body smooth and straight as if carved from a block of flesh. A little monkey admiring my every gesture. Trying to imitate me.

When we were little, Charlie was a plaything my parents gave me to do with as I pleased. I let her take all of me, and she grew plump gnawing on all the little odds and ends that she snared whenever she could. Now I look at my little sister’s reflection in the car window. Orange rays of sunshine in her hair splash across the top of her face. In profile, her chin juts out terribly, as if trying to free itself from the rest of her face. For men and women both, noses and ears apparently continue to grow throughout life. In Charlie’s case, it would seem to be the chin. And she’s cut her hair short. Too short. Beside me in the car, I look at her and try to fathom what’s left of me in my little sister, what might remain of our childhood passion. I look but don’t find it. Nothing seems to be left of our innate dependence. I wonder when the vassalage dissolved, and which of us initiated the change. Our situation today is awkward, like lovers whose love has turned to ashes and who both apologize. Sorry for not loving you blindly anymore; sorry for no longer finding you so indispensable that my life depends on it; sorry for losing interest in you and searching elsewhere, looking to people more like me than you are now; sorry for wondering why I was so enchanted when I first saw you that I wanted you to belong to me. Where did it all go? Our love was replaced by others, by men. But it won’t be Mathieu with whom I share a bath. I’m not allowed to enter the bathroom when he’s bathing; Mathieu says that time there is like a “ritual” that must be respected if you want to respect yourself. When he comes over, Mathieu brings a black toilet kit filled with brushes, sponges, and washcloths, but none for me. I don’t ask for any. When Mathieu emerges from the forbidden bathroom, the scent of lemon wafts through my bedroom. He has no inhibitions about being naked. On the contrary, it seems to me his relaxed attitude proves his body is superior to mine. A perfectly articulated body. Complete. Smooth, no trace of the child. A magnificent body. And while he’s dressing, I silently observe his painstaking mannerisms, each of his movements an example of everything I am not — the elegance of each gesture and precision of his hands.

Anne Berest

Her Father’s Daughter

A little while ago, slipping into his trousers, Mathieu told me that his generosity has often been his undoing. Deep down, Mathieu believes I do not deserve him. And that idea fills him with pride, makes him strong in his own eyes. That strength is what makes him want to see me again. One last time. Every time the last. That strength is what I find seductive and what keeps me at his disposal. When we meet to make love, always at my place, Mathieu carefully folds his clothes and sets them on my chair before spreading his ideal body out on the bed. He lies down and then I have to get on top of him. At first he doesn’t move, as if he were dying. I must slowly kiss his skin. Then he comes alive and throws me down. Whatever happens, I have to keep my shirt, sweater, or T-shirt on,

I mustn’t be completely naked. I don’t know if that’s just with me, the redhead, or if it’s the same with the other women. It’s the fifteenth time he’s come over. Fifteen times he’s made the same gestures. Fold. Unfold. My chair never before had a purpose. Now it is very important. I’m patient, it’s a question of numbers—some day it will be thirty, forty-two, seventy-five times that he’s come over, and eventually I’ll lose count. You just have to wait and not let anything show, not the joy or the disappointment. Wait. I drift, letting myself be carried along by the car as it takes the road traveled a thousand times, each of its noises familiar: passing from the highway to the gravel road, the sound of the handbrake, the motor cutting off and the doors slamming. In my hand I clasp the key Mathieu gave me. I wanted him to come with me tonight for the birthday dinner, but he immediately replied: “I can’t come, because for my part I haven’t told my family about you.” Mathieu is someone who likes things tidy and situations egalitarian. But he gave me his key, so that I’d join him after the birthday dinner. Charlie, though, did come with someone. It’s the first time she’s brought anyone to Épernay. The guy is sitting in front, next to Irène’s husband, who’s driving too fast. He has a handsome face but his chest is skinny, his arms too. Our eyes meet in the rear-view mirror. He looks at me and averts his eyes. Then he looks again. As if he can’t help it. I wonder if he works with Charlie at the airport; he seems young for an air traffic controller. Charlie hasn’t ever said anything about him. She used to tell me everything, now she doesn’t tell me anything. Already I can see the end of the road; the time has gone quickly. The gate is open. We drive up the path, gravel crunching and grinding under the tires. Behind the trees, Épernay, our childhood home, comes into view. The huge black-tile roof, part of which needs to be redone since the storm. The windows cut into the thick millstone grit wall. And the two cypresses behind the house towering like bull’s horns in the night. The trees still have their leaves. Our father’s wife, Catherine, carefully tends the garden that grew wild in our childhood. She grows different varieties of flowers, mixes seeds, asks Irène for advice. Catherine, who has no children, patiently cares for the garden. Three daughters were already more than enough for one father. Getting out of the car, we all turn to stone when we hear cries coming from the house. Odd for us to be standing there, all leaning forward to hear better. Yes, all five of us recognize the same thing. A fight. But was that really Catherine crying out? Her voice was weak, barely more than a moan. Charlie starts to laugh and we don’t hear anything else. Irène orders her to hush, but in the meantime silence has returned inside the house. Nothing more. So then, did Papa and Catherine hear us arriving? No doubt.

We move toward the front door and hold our breath on the threshold, Irène and her husband, Jean-François, Charlie, the young guy, and I, all frozen, our arms weighed down with bags. Our father opens the door and kisses his oldest daughter, wishing her a happy birthday. He kisses Charlie, then me, and he shakes hands with the men. Usually Catherine is the one who greets us at the door while Papa remains in his workshop, repairing things of no use to anyone. But for once we’re all bunched up behind one another on the doorstep, no one daring to enter, and Papa grows agitated: “You’ve all turned shy! I’ll leave you outside if that’s what you want.” He adds: “Cat is just finishing up, she’ll be here in five minutes.” Then he asks Irène if she thought to bring flowers. Irène replies: Shit, it’s her birthday, and she’s not supposed to think about flowers for Catherine on her birthday. Normally, it would be the reverse, in fact. Just once someone could give her, the florist, flowers. Papa takes our coats, making the point that you don’t say “shit” to your father but refrains from saying anything more about the flowers.

Anne Berest

Her Father’s Daughter

Irène and her husband disappear into the kitchen. Charlie too disappears, no one knows where. The guy who came with her is there, alone in the sitting room next to the veranda in front of the dinner table, which is decked out like a show dog for the occasion. Catherine has used her trousseau dinner service: linen mats, lace napkins, silver butter dish, mother-of-pearl knife rests, and of course, the champagne flutes she makes herself. The rims are colored by hand, decorated with hazy iridescent stars. The young guy is looking around, there’s something in his face, something that both impresses and irritates me. Something that keeps me from speaking up to put him at ease. But Papa steps in and urges me to give “my guest” a tour of the house. I told him I might be bringing someone, so he’s mixed up, thinking the guy who came with Charlie is Mathieu. He thinks he’s mine. Going upstairs, I explain to him that for the last few years, this house hasn’t really been ours anymore. After Charlie left, Catherine moved in and rearranged the house for her own comfort. My bedroom, the largest, has become a little sitting room where she puts her personal things, including a copy of the poster for the film “Bagdad Café” that Catherine herself painted in watercolor. Charlie’s bedroom has changed the least, it’s simply been rebaptized the “guest room,” even though no one ever comes to sleep in it—except Charlie from time to time.

Jean-Marie Blas de Roblès

The Midnight Mountain

At the center of this novel is an extraordinary character: Bastien, caretaker of a Jesuit secondary school, who has a secret passion for everything concerning Tibet and Lamaism. Kept out of things in his neighborhood for some obscure reason, the old man lives a life more solitary than a Buddhist monk. The adventure begins in Lyon, with an encounter between the old sage and Rose, who has just moved in together with her little Paul. Attracted by the man’s strangeness, Rose becomes

Publisher: Zulma Date of Publication: August 2010 Foreign Rights Manager: Amélie Louat amelie.louat@zulma.fr

Translation: Madeleine Velguth velguth@sbcglobal.net

Biography

Born in 1954 in Sidi-Bel-Abbès, Algeria, Jean-Marie Blas de Roblès spent his adolescence in the department of Var, in southern France. He studied philosophy at the Sorbonne, history at the Collège de France, and sailed in long-distance regattas on the Mediterranean. Appointed director of the Maison de la culture française at the University of Fortaleza in Brazil, he also taught there before being transferred to the People’s Republic of China. He gave the University of Tianjin’s first courses ever on Sartre and Roland Barthes at the end of the Cultural Revolution. His first novel, L’Impudeur des choses, was published in 1987. After a stay in Tibet he took the Trans-Siberian Railroad to his new appointment at the University of Palermo in Italy. His third novel was begun in Taiwan, where he gave up teaching to devote himself to writing. He traveled to Peru, Yemen and Indonesia. In 1990 he began to publish essays and poetic texts in journals. A member of the French Archaeological Mission in Libya since 1986, he has participated every summer in underwater excavations of Apollonia in Cyrenaica, and of Leptis Magna and Sabratha in Tripolitania. He created and currently directs Edisud’s “Archéologies” series in which he has published several works on archaeology for the general public. He also edits the journal Aouras, devoted to archaeological research in the Aurès region of Algeria. Publications Là où les tigres sont chez eux, Zulma, 2008 (prix Médicis 2008) (paperback ed., J’ai lu, 2010); Le Rituel des dunes, Seuil, 1989; L’Impudeur des choses, Seuil, 1987.

so attached to him that she makes it possible for him to accomplish the journey of his life … Truths and lies, wrongs and redemption interweave and incite in this novel that, with calculated casualness, examines the “nonsense machines” of contemporary History. A novel with a message, perhaps, The Midnight Mountain, under the joys of pure romance, reads like an intrepid exploration of knowledge and illusion.

My little Paul … I feel a bit silly still calling you that—and the young man that you are must think the same thing about his “old” mother—but, well, that’s the way it is. Thank you, first of all, for showing me the first pages of your novel. It’s a token of your trust that touches me deeply, believe me. But after that, what can I say? I’m not a good reader, and in any case, as you know, we don’t have the same taste. So you won’t hold it against me if I don’t express an opinion on your text. It’s not that I’m refusing to do it, but I’m just plain incapable. This story is mine, and I can’t glance at even one line of it without reviving the feeling of guilt associated with it in my memory. There is even, I’ll admit, a bit of shame— almost obscenity, even if the word is a bit strong—at seeing my own life spread out like this, a bit of resentment too at feeling myself dispossessed of it. I’m trying to be sincere, you can see that, but I want you to know that I don’t hold it against you for a single second. By telling you this part of our past, I myself gave it to fiction: that of my memories, no doubt subjective and incomplete, and that which you are fabricating now for people who will appropriate without realizing it an intimate part of what I am. Bastien was very close to the picture you give of him: naturally, since I’m the one who over the years painted this portrait in your mind, but it’s too vague to really do him justice. I alone am responsible for this lack of precision. You won’t be annoyed, I hope, if I touch it up a bit today. When Monsieur Lhermine came to see us, for instance, he had put on his Sunday best. A threadbare black suit, a shoestring tie dangling from a big

rumpled collar, a bag of chocolates in his hand, you would have thought he was an immigrant from eastern Europe. For over an hour he sat paralyzed on a corner of the sofa without touching his fruit juice. I could hardly get him to say a word, and when he asked if I was spending Christmas with my family, my parents, I was the one at a loss. I told him my father had passed away years ago, but I lied about maman. I don’t know what got into me, I invented a story that she was on a pilgrimage to Auschwitz. To Auschwitz, what an idiot! I felt so stupid that I then talked about her past in the Resistance in Lyon, to explain her desire to visit the camp. A truth for a falsehood, that gives a semblance of truth anyway … I still wonder if he believed me, but he certainly seemed to and started to reminisce about Fort Montluc, the Franc-Garde militiamen headquartered at the Jesuit Fathers’ school on Rue Sainte-Hélène, right next door to us, so much so that he gave me the impression that he had been a Resistance fighter himself. I didn’t have a chance to ask him, because you came in with the present prepared for him: a post card representing the Dalai Lama that you had chosen yourself during our last vacation. And what a shock that was! His face was transformed; it was suddenly filled with light. The photo trembled in his hands, his gaze passed from you to me, seeking an explanation. His whole being showed that you had come as close as possible to touching what he lived for. Words almost flowed out of him: though he had never gone there, Tibet had always been his sole passion, he had devoted his existence to it; did we know what a mandala was?—and he was addressing you as well as me when he said that—Lamaism, you understand, more than a philosophy, more than a religion, how can I put it … And it’s a child who is giving me this picture! Incredible, I can’t believe it, he kept repeating, in two failed attempts to develop his thought. His agitation was so great that he stopped talking for a moment to drink his fruit juice down in one gulp and ask my permission to pour himself some more. So, the more time goes by, the more I’m convinced that everything was set in motion at that instant. Then, I felt obliged to admit to my own fascination with that country. At my level, of course, not like him—and there I said under what circumstances I had caught sight of him in the library of the Maison de l’Orient—for me it was mainly because of Alexandra David-Neél, of those adventure-filled journeys that I would undoubtedly never be able to undertake. Which led us to the Digne museum during our vacation, and this post card that had just lit a very big spark. “It is still a sign,” he said, taking you by the hand, “something very important for me. If you’re a bit interested in Tibet, you know that coincidences don’t exist, there are only necessary encounters.” Something that I never told you either: a few days after he came to our house, I had to keep an important appointment for my work; a specialist of

Pompeian painting was passing through Lyon, she had only two hours to give me, in the middle of the afternoon; you were napping and I couldn’t get hold of your baby-sitter … In desperation, I went up to Bastien’s and asked him if he couldn’t come keep an eye on you. He seemed surprised for a moment, but accepted right away. Before leaving, I warned him that you might wake up screaming because of your noise phobia: “Maman, there’s an animal in the ceiling …” I don’t think you remember, but the slightest creaking above your bed threw you into immeasurable terror. Wolves, monsters, witches? I never managed to get a single word out of you about what was haunting you, which made it seem all the more frightening to me. At that time, I had even begun thinking seriously of taking you to see a child psychologist. You know my doubts about the effectiveness of this practice—that shows how worried I was about those inexplicable frights. I was not happy about leaving you in his company, and to tell the truth, during my whole interview I kept thinking about what that awful woman had hinted to me on the staircase. I took a taxi to get home more quickly, but when I came in and heard your childish giggle, I realized I’d been wrong to worry so: you were both at the kitchen table, and he had used my extra butter to help you model all kinds of figurines! Rams’ heads, flames, skulls, dragons that you were daubing with the splashy colors of your poster paints … I was staggered. “I’ll reimburse you for the butter, of course,” he said sheepishly. I’m still annoyed for getting all muddled in my denials, unable to show I didn’t give a damn about the butter because I was so relieved, delirious with joy at finding you unharmed and so happy in his company! Before leaving, he took me aside: I shouldn’t worry anymore about your ceiling phobia, the two of you had discussed it when you’d started bawling at the noise of the upstairs neighbor’s vacuum cleaner … At the time, I remember finding him a wee bit presumptuous. The fact remains that from that day on you were never again frightened by noise, whether it came from the ceiling or elsewhere. My maternal pride took a knock, I’ll admit, but only the result counted, even if I still wonder today what Bastien could have invented to restore your confidence so durably. Three weeks later, in any case, we left together for Tibet.

Jean-Marie Blas de Roblès

The Midnight Mountain

Thierry Dancourt

Winter Garden

Why has Pascal come to Royan, a seaside resort, in the middle of winter? He tells Serge he has an appointment. However, he spends his time at the public library, consulting local publications in an effort to locate a villa on stilts that appeared in an old snapshot left to him by Helen, a young Englishwoman with whom he had a brief but intense relationship. It happened in Paris long ago but Pascal has forgotten nothing…. It is Serge Castel who happens upon the villa, just as it was in the long-lost photo and as Pascal remembers it, back during the war. But Helen is gone. A young student named Abigail lives there now.

Publisher: Éditions de la Table Ronde Date of Publication: August 2010 Foreign Rights Manager: Anna Vateva a.vateva@editionslatableronde.fr Translation: Jeanine Herman jeanine_herman@yahoo.com

Between the banks of the Seine and the shores of the Atlantic, Winter Garden weaves the taut, almost invisible threads of a plot in which a story of romance and history are subtly interlaced. The wintry present is populated by singular characters while the past is haunted by the figure of a beloved young woman. A novel of love lost but never forgotten, of memory attached to forsaken places, Winter Garden is the sequel to Hôtel de Lausanne.

A warm rain slants down on Kennedy Square. The flowerbeds, the winding paths, the grass and clusters of bushes, the pond with its fountain, the guardian’s booth—the setting is familiar. I come here often. I see M. André Smeyers, Mme Georgette Desnoyers, M. Lucien Rochais, people I know, all practically retired. The benches in Kennedy Square have red and white traverses made of plastic to resist the humidity and salt air. I am seated on one of these benches, observing, waiting, watching the far side of the Palais de Congrès across from the Façade de Foncillon, a wide avenue divided by a median. Further on, the ocean. The ocean is light gray and blends into the sky with the same flat tint that blurs the line of the horizon. Kennedy Square, with the ocean backdrop and the impressive building that forms a bridge above rue Pierre-Jônain, is indeed familiar to me. Unlike the bench I am sitting on.

Biography

Thierry Dancourt was born in Montmorency, in Val-d’Oise. He lives in Paris where he works as a freelance writer in the fields of architecture and urban planning. Publications Hôtel de Lausanne, La Table Ronde, 2008 (prix du Premier roman 2008).

Nobody is in this rain-spattered park. Rivulets of water trail down my forehead and cheeks. I light a cigarette after three tries; I could use the lady’s umbrella M. Smeyers has lent me, but it stays there on the bench, I don’t open it. It’s the end of winter, and I’ve spent it here. She used to love this place. I’m sure of it.

II The bus stopped in front of the station—a building with a curved, partly glassed-in facade that extended through a gallery mounted on slender supports. Night was falling, and the city floated in a sort of radiance that blurred all contours and put everything on the same plane. I’d kept my things with me on the bus. My suitcase was on the luggage rack above, my typewriter and tape recorder on the seat beside me, carefully doublewrapped in plastic bags. I sat behind the driver, to his right, so as to take in the landscape framed by the windshield, and, after a young couple got off, we were alone. He smoked and hummed along with the music on the radio and as he maneuvered the big steering wheel he thrust his weight forward as though wrestling with the bus itself. Eventually I dozed off, lulled by the radio and the rumble of the engine. When I awoke, the ceiling lights diffused a yellow glow throughout the interior, at a low intensity that seemed to vary with our speed. I glimpsed the silhouette of Notre-Dame as the church emerged from the mist like an insect resting, then rising among the buildings—a butterfly, a cicada. The driver was still singing at the top of his lungs. “Oh, did I wake you?” he asked, turning around. “Excuse me, I can’t help singing when I drive. You know, our job is not much fun. We’re alone with the machine most of the time … At night … Alone, or with people who don’t talk much … It gets us down … So we sing.” Somewhat disoriented, suitcase and plastic bags at my feet, I stood for a moment beneath the gallery of the bus station, watching the cars drive by lethargically, as though slowed by the fog. The Course of Europe was decidedly the “grand boulevard” the driver had talked about and which, according to his directions, “would easily get you to the center of the city.” On the side of the bus a bold italic typeface spelled out Tabard Buses. Inside, still seated, the driver kept the motor running; I observed him through the condensation covering the windshield: he’d lit another cigarette and consulted his watch continually. The time had come, he was going to leave again, make the trip in the other direction. Then he would return. And so on—endlessly, in song. The Course of Europe ended in a traffic circle dominated by a building with a row of cube-shaped windows fronted by a gallery that recalled the one at the bus station; beneath the clock embedded in the façade and stopped at three o’clock, it read: “Poste - Telegraphe - Telephone.” I followed the street to the right, where the shops were already closed. The fog was getting thicker here in the center of town. The light from the street lamps was insufficient to dissipate it, only accentuating the radiant haze. The blurred corners of buildings melted into each other; the few people I passed on the sidewalk emerged from the fog suddenly, seemingly remote

though only steps away. As the driver had indicated, I reached the esplanade of the church of Notre-Dame. As I approached, what had seemed like a butterfly from the bus moments ago had now turned into a giant cricket, built of raw concrete and sixty meters tall. On the far side of the esplanade a plaque read Rue de Foncillon. I saw a blue neon sign that managed to pierce through the dull, milky veil covering the neighborhood: the word hotel was composed vertically in long thin letters. I walked up a street bordered by small white buildings and passed the public library.

Thierry Dancourt

Winter Garden

“A room? The room, you mean… I only have one. You’re lucky the door wasn’t locked. By all rights I shouldn’t be here. I’m shutting my doors.” “An employee of Tabard Buses recommended your establishment.” “Claude?” “Yes, perhaps. Claude.” “And did Claude tell you I also own a restaurant, while he was at it?” The tone of his voice softened. “As it happens, you’re in luck. The room was supposed to be occupied, but it so happens the guest has delayed her arrival by a few days. She won’t be here until next week. You’re lucky, very lucky… Especially since finding a hotel open in the middle of winter would be a miracle here.” He let me come inside. “Otherwise, I am no longer accepting guests. It’s over, I’m done. I’m cashing out. This will be my last season.” I asked him why, in that case, his sign was turned on. “Oh, habit, probably … When daylight fades I turn on the lights. It’s like a landmark on the street for neighborhood people. A beacon, a sort of nightlight … But you’re right, the sign is compelling. You’re proof of it. It would be best if I turned it off … forever … To be honest, I’m having a hard time finding the resolve … How long do you plan to stay?” “I haven’t really decided. Three days, maybe four.” “It can even blink.” His face had a mischievous, almost childlike expression. “Excuse me?” “The sign. I can make it blink if I want.” He showed me a switch on the wall with different positions. “I just have to turn the switch to the left … O.K., follow me, I’ll give you the key to your room. Or, the room …” He suppressed a small laugh. The reception desk was on the first floor, reached by an open staircase with a steel cable banister. He had taken the suitcase. I had the plastic bags. Up there, he sat at a desk whose three drawers he opened and shut noisily. “Oh, where could I have put that key? And to think there’s only one! What would happen if I ran a luxury hotel …” I noticed a map of the city tacked to the wall behind him. The red dot pro bably indicated the place: The Oceanic Hotel.

Agnès Desarthe

In the Black Night

When the boyfriend of his daughter Marina dies in a motorcycle accident, Jérôme finds himself unexpectedly confused and grief-stricken. He is deeply unsettled: his ex-wife, Paula, resurfaces, his daughter leaves him, he falls in love with a stranger, and an odd retired police captain shows a keen interest in him. Jérôme has an unusual background. Born to unknown parents, he seems to have lived in the forest, like a small animal, before being taken in by Annette and Gabriel, who became his adoptive parents. The mystery of his origins remains unexplained until the very end when, revisiting the black night that enveloped Europe between 1939

Publisher: Éditions de l’Olivier Date of Publication: August 2010 Foreign Rights Manager: Martine Heissat mheissat@seuil.com

Translation: Jonathan Kaplansky jkaplansky@videotron.ca

Biography Agnès Desarthe was born in 1966 in Paris. Her first novel, Quelques minutes de bonheur absolu, was published by Éditions de l’Olivier in 1993 and won a grant from the Fondation-Hachette in 1995. A professor of English, she has translated novels and short stories by Aimee Bender, Alice Thomas Ellis, Cynthia Ozick, Elena Lappin, Emma Richler, and Jay McInerney; and with Geneviève Brisac she co-wrote an essay on Virginia Woolf, V.W. ou le Mélange des genres (2004), as well as programs for France Culture (Virginia Woolf, Flannery O’Connor). She has also written many books for children and teenagers published by L’École des loisirs. Publications Her most recent novels from Éditions de l’Olivier include: Mangez-moi, 2006; Le Principe de Frédelle, 2003; Les Bonnes Intentions, 2000. All these titles are available in paperback from Éditions Points.

and 1945, he discovers his true identity. Finally he can cast aside the character he invented for himself—and which is suffocating him. In this novel real life persistently mingles with spellbinding imagination and deciphers history, famously described by James Joyce as a nightmare from which he was trying to awake. Combining police investigation, family saga, and erotic storytelling, and using the resources of fiction and those of the fairy tale (reminiscent of the brothers Grimm and the German romantic Märchen), Agnès Desarthe constantly surprises and enchants.

“A fireball sent flying from one side of the highway to the other. Then, at one point, around the bend, wham—into a tree! The fireball crashed into the trunk and burned everything: leaves, branches, even the roots. I thought it was a paranormal phenomenon. But no, it was the kid. On his motorcycle. That never is supposed to happen—motorcycles catching fire like that, for no good reason. But it did happen. I was there. I watched from above, on the bridge over the highway. That’s where I saw it. A fireball.” Jérôme rereads the account in the local paper. His hands tremble, his gut groans. He reads it again, wonders why the journalist didn’t tidy up the language of Madame Yvette Réhurdon, farm worker. For a moment, he manages to distract himself, imagining the meeting at which editors decided to transcribe verbatim the tape-recorded words of the elementary school teacher in charge of local news. The trembling, which had subsided, suddenly starts again. Jérôme wants to cry, thinking it will soothe him. But tears don’t come. The kid was not his son but his daughter’s sweetheart. Is that what she called him, her sweetheart? He doesn’t know. What did Marina call him? My boyfriend? No, she called him Armand. Jérôme, sitting in the living room, hears sobbing, groaning, sometimes a cry through his daughter’s closed bedroom door. He has no clue as to what he ought to do.

Before going to work that morning, he went in to see her. He turned the handle very gently so as to not wake her, just in case. But she wasn’t asleep. Lying on her stomach, she was crying. He moved closer. He intended to caress her shoulder. But hearing him, Marina turned over. Jérôme glimpsed her face and fled. Of course she’s angry at me, he told himself. Why wasn’t I the one to die? It would have been simpler. It would have been natural. Jérôme is fifty-six years old. How old was the kid? Eighteen, like Marina? Maybe nineteen. Armand. A nice name, Armand. Jérôme daydreams, playing with the fish-shaped trivet that sits imposingly in the middle of the table. He puts the newspaper down. He wants to read the account of the accident once again. He doesn’t dare. What’s the point? Nothing remains of the boy. A boot buckle, perhaps. The zipper of his leather jacket. Jérôme thinks of the song by Édith Piaf. He is angry at himself for being so easily distracted. He’d like to stay swallowed up by grief, like Marina. But his mind wanders. He thinks so many silly things. Rereading the interview of Yvette Réhurdon, farm worker, might leave him able to concentrate. What’s the point? He doesn’t know. He feels a reaction is expected of him. But what? And who expects him to react? He’s been living alone with Marina ever since Paula left him. That was four years ago. Paula. Another nice name. He hates the state he’s in. Sentimental and uncertain. But powerless. He feels as if he’s lost control. He’s drifting, unmoored. Death does that. Death is powerful. No, he tells himself: I can’t be thinking such stupid things. But he is. That’s exactly what he’s thinking, that death is powerful. He thinks it with the same intensity as a few seconds ago when he thought that Paula was a pretty name. Paula was also a pretty woman. He does not understand why she left him. Nor had he understood why she married him. If she were there, she would know exactly how to handle it. She would draw a bath for his daughter, talk to her, rub her hands. She would open the window to let in fresh air. Say some nonsense about the soul, about everlasting memory that makes us strong, that life wins in the end. Jérôme admires her. How does she do it? Paula always gave him the impression she had penetrated some mystery … all mysteries in fact. After the separation, she bought a small house in a picturesque village in the south with a large lavender bush and wisteria in the front courtyard. She drinks rosé with her neighbors at sunset. Sometimes he thinks of her, of the life she made for herself far away from him. A successful, harmonious life. On gray days, on the weeks when the thermometer doesn’t climb above

minus five, he dreams of joining her. On the map of France on the evening weather forecast on television, there is almost always a sun over the area where Paula lives, while where he and Marina live, it is all freezing fog, morning mist, and disturbances caused by a low pressure front from the northeast. What are they doing here? Why didn’t Marina go with her mother when they separated? It’s natural for a girl to go with her mother. He doesn’t remember discussing it with either of them. Then, suddenly, it comes to him: Armand. He and Marina must have been in the same school. She was young, but already in love. Marina didn’t choose between her father and her mother. Marina chose love. Jerome is sure of it. Yet he only discovered the boy’s existence recently. Marina is discreet. She never had anyone over to the house. Then one day, six months ago, she told him she’d like to invite someone to dinner. “I’ll cook,” she offered. “I’ll make a roast.” And from her reddened cheeks and the ‘o’ when she said roast, Jérôme understood. He understood without understanding. He did not say to himself: My daughter has a lover, she wants to introduce me to the boy she loves. He said nothing to himself. From his thoughts came no sentences. They stopped just before. At eight-thirty the bell rang. Jerome went to open the door. The kid was there, a bottle in his hand. Jerome remembers finding him tall. He had to look up. What a handsome boy. The skin … his cheeks … the thick black eyelashes, the sparkling eyes … Jerome starts to cry. He takes his head in his hands, lets out a couple of sobs. One for the bottle of wine in the boy’s hands, the other for his beauty. And then it stops. No more tears. No more images. The church bell chimes. Jerome gets up and looks out the window. The valley beneath his windows, the road in the distance below, then the slope opposite rising toward the forest. The rows of reddish brown vines, with bare earth between their gnarled feet. Sun in the white sky. Sap freezing in the plants. Tiny mauve flowers were growing in the shade of the holly hedge. Jerome looks at them and thinks that Armand will never see them. In a book he remembers reading that bottoms of bottles were placed over the eyes of the dead before laying them out in the coffin. He doesn’t remember the book’s title. Was it a novel? Perhaps simply a newspaper article. He doesn’t remember but likes the idea. Those eyes will never see again. Or only through the bottoms of bottles. Paradise is so distant, so high up, that you need lenses to look down to the earth below. Jérôme wonders if he should go to the funeral. Meeting in-laws who will never be in-laws. He feels awkward and shy. He’s afraid. He doesn’t know how you shake the hand of a parent who has lost a child. He considers such contact to be a sacrilege. I would never dare, he tells himself.

Agnès Desarthe

In the Black Night

The telephone rings. It’s Paula. “How are you doing, big guy?” she asks him. Jérôme’s heart swells in his chest, ballooning between plexus and collarbone. I love you. I love you. I love you. That’s what he would like to say to his ex-wife, for whom he had ever experienced only measured emotions. Instead, he replies: “Not great.” “And Marina?” Jérôme says nothing. No words come. “What a fool I am,” says Paula. “I’m sorry. Forgive me. The funeral is tomorrow, right? I’ll take the plane, then the last train tonight. I’ll get there late. Can I sleep at the house? No, not a good idea.” “Yes, yes, it’s fine. I’ll leave the door open.” “That’s very kind of you.” “It’s only natural.” “It’s horrible.” “Yes.” “What happened exactly?” “I don’t know. No one does. The motorcycle caught fire. They don’t know why, or how. Apparently he hadn’t been drinking.” “How to know?” “There’s no way of knowing.” “What kind of boy was he?” “Perfect.” Jérôme is surprised by his own answer. Paula falls silent. She feels cheated. She didn’t know her daughter’s perfect sweetheart. She herself has had only unstable relationships. Her marriage? Nice, that’s the word she most often uses to describe it. As if to make her suffering complete, Jérôme adds: “I never saw anything like it before. A … how to put it? … An attachment … an … you see, when they were together …” “Spare yourself, big guy. Spare me.” She hangs up while he’s saying Je t’embrasse. As if it were important, as if their lives depended on it, the weight of the world, justice itself. I’m going gaga, he thinks; and smiles because of the word and the way he has of holding the telephone in the hollow of his hand like a frog or a mouse. A pleasant feeling takes hold, warmth, slight euphoria. In a moment, he has forgotten Armand’s death, because instead of thinking about the calamity, he’s thinking of animals of field and forest, the ones you meet when you’re out walking and with whom you exchange secret, furtive, unique glances. It was only a reprieve. His smile dissolves. He heads toward the door. The bell has rung three times.

On the other side of the frosted glass, he recognizes the figure of Rosy. Rosy has always been fat. She has been Marina’s best friend since kindergarten. She has huge cheeks, like the vast Manchurian plateau, Jerome tells himself. He doesn’t know why the word Manchurian he has always associated with Rosy. Perhaps because of her slightly slanted dark eyes, small flat nose and pony-like gait. “Hi Jérôme,” she says, offering her incredible cheeks. “Hi Rosy,” he replies, kissing her. They remain intertwined for a moment, pat each other’s backs awkwardly, then suddenly separate, embarrassed. “Nice of you to come.” “Sure. How is she? I brought her schoolwork.” “Oh, you know, I don’t think …” “Yes, yes,” says Rosy, very sure of herself, moving down the hallway, her enormous body swaying from one leg to another. “Mustn’t give up. Mustn’t give up on anything.” How does she know? Jérôme wonders. He watches her go to the bedroom door. He remembers them, she and Marina, when they were seven. One would lay her head on the other’s stomach and say, “I love you because you’re comfortable” and the other would reply, “I love you because you always say kind things.” Those are two very good reasons, he thinks, to love one another. When the door to the bedroom opens, the racket made by Marina invades the house. It is violent as a gust of wind. Jérôme raises his hands instinctively to his ears. The noise has to stop. But as soon as he becomes aware of the movement, he orders his arms to return to his sides. It’s his child who’s crying, not some jerk next door trimming his hedge. Rosy does not become discouraged; she enters the room and closes the door. The noise level goes down immediately. Jerome takes a few steps into the hallway and listens. He hears Rosy’s voice. Then crying. Rosy’s voice again. Then nothing more. Rosy’s voice singing a song in English. A cascade of sobs, hiccups, howling, sobbing, shouting. Rosy continues to sing. The tears stop. Rosy is singing. Louder and louder. And suddenly the door opens and Rosy surprises Jérôme, his ear practically glued to the wall.

Agnès Desarthe

In the Black Night

Virginie Despentes

Apocalypse Baby

Valentine Galtan, an enigmatic and troubled adolescent girl, has disappeared. The narrator, Lucie, a thirty-something anti-heroine, is a private detective with no particular conviction or talent who has been hired by Valentine’s grandmother to keep a close watch on the girl’s movements. But she has lost her on a platform in the Paris Métro. How can Lucie track her down? What about the revealing photos of Valentine showing just how experienced she is with boys? Could Valentine have run off to find her mother, whom she has never met, in Barcelona? Lucie’s best hope is to join forces with The Hyena, another private eye, whose methods are radical, to say the least. The Hyena is a strong, flexible woman prone to sporadic

Publisher: Grasset Date of Publication: August 2010 Foreign Rights Manager: Heidi Warneke hwarneke@grasset.fr

Translation: Donald Nicholson-Smith mnr.dns@verizon.net

Biography

The novelist and filmmaker Virginie Despentes was born in Nancy on June 13, 1969. As a young woman she passed her baccalaureate exam without actually attending school and took all kinds of jobs, working as a maid in Longwy, a hostess in a Lyon massage parlor, a stringer for rock and porn magazines, and as a salesgirl at the Virgin Megastore in Paris. Success arrived for her with the publication of two novels: Baise-moi (Florent Massot, 1993), which sold over 40,000 copies and was quickly made into a film, and Les Chiennes savantes (1995). Despentes has been translated into more than ten languages and is at present in pre-production on her new film, an adaptation of her book Bye Bye Blondie, starring Béatrice Dalle and Emmanuelle Béart. Publications Among her most recent works, all published by Grasset, are King Kong Théorie, 2006 [translated by Stephanie Benson as King Kong Theory (London: Serpent’s Tail, 2009; New York: Feminist Press at cuny, 2010)]; Bye Bye Blondie, 2004; Teen Spirit, 2002; Les Jolies Choses, 1998. All these titles are available in paperback from J’ai lu and Le Livre de Poche.

outbursts of violence. In exchange for cash and a good time, she accepts Lucie’s proposal. Although it would be hard to imagine two more ill-matched partners: The Hyena is a fiery lesbian, Lucie a low-frequency heterosexual. The pair zigzag down through France and Spain to Barcelona, searching for an immature runaway, a daughter of the bourgeoisie who is probably going to end up a hardcore delinquent. This is a road book, something like a road movie, filled with portraits of wounded beings, traversing different social strata. Virginie Despentes’ masterful novel is a cross between the contemporary crime novel and the most corrosive kind of social satire.

It wasn’t so long ago. I was still only thirty. Anything was possible. All I had to do was make the right choices at the right time. I changed jobs frequently. Instability was an asset, a chance to find out how things worked behind the scenes. I’d sold hip-hop and wrestler tees at the Clignancourt flea market, been a waitress at Hippopotamus, done phone surveys for Ipsos, worked as a customer service rep at Canal Plus, as a cashier at Décathlon, as a tester for L’Oréal, and as an order filler at a pharmaceutical lab. My contracts were never renewed; I never had time to get bored. I had no complaints about my life style. I rarely lived alone. The seasons followed one another like packets of colored candies: ever-changing and easy to swallow. I don’t know exactly when it was that life stopped smiling for me. Today I earn the same salary as I did ten years ago. At that time I thought I was doing pretty well. Once I turned thirty I lost my momentum—the wind was no longer at my back. And I know that the next time I am on the job market I will be a mature woman with no skill set. The exciting Bohemian feeling of earlier days will be gone. That is why I cling for dear life to my present position. It doesn’t keep me from being regularly late to work. Agathe, the young receptionist, tapped her watch, frowning. She was wearing fluorescent yellow tights and shiny pink heart-shaped earrings. She is ten years younger than me—easily. I should have ignored her disapproving sigh, she thought I was taking too long to take off my coat, shut her up with a scathing comment before

going to make myself a cup of coffee. Instead, I mumbled an incomprehensible excuse and hurried over to knock on the boss’s door. Hoarse screams could be heard coming from inside the room. I recoiled a step or two in alarm. I looked questioningly at Agathe, who grimaced and whispered, “It’s Madame Galtan. She was waiting for you outside the main door before opening time this morning. Deucené has been getting chewed out for twenty minutes now. Go in quickly—that should calm her down.” I hadn’t the faintest idea how my arrival might calm this fury. For a moment I was tempted to turn on my heel and hare off down the stairs with no explanation. But I knocked timidly on the door, and my knock was heard. For once Deucené did not need to glance at the files scattered over his desk in order to remember my name. “This is Lucie Toledo,” he said, “whom you have already met. She was just …” Before he could finish his sentence the client broke in, screeching. “And where’ve you been, you idiot?” She left me two seconds to process this verbal hit before turning up the volume, “Do you know how much I’m paying you to not let that girl out of your sight? And she dis-app-ears? In the métro? In the métro, you dolt—you actually pulled off the amazing trick of losing her in the métro! And then you wait half a day before leaving me a message? The school called me before you did! Do you think that’s normal? Perhaps you think you were doing a good job?” The woman was obviously possessed by the devil. Luckily I was not responsive enough for her liking and, losing interest in me, she turned back to Deucené, “And why was this dimwit assigned to follow Valentine? You have no one better than her?” The boss was cornered. He actually covered for me (for once): “I can assure you that Lucie is one of our most valuable assets. She has vast experience in the field and—” “Do you really think it’s normal to lose a fifteen-year-old kid who takes the same route every morning? ” I had first met Jacqueline Galtan when the case was opened ten days earlier. Smartly turned out with her short blonde bob and her red-soled spike heels, she was a chilly woman, very well preserved for her age and very precise in her directions. I never suspected for a moment that the slightest aggravation would propel her into a bad case of Tourette’s syndrome. There was a little white foam at the corners of her mouth. Her forehead frown lines deepened markedly: botox had clearly met its match. She stalked up and down the office, her narrow shoulders shaking convulsively. “Just how did you contrive, you moron, to lose her in the métro???” This last word seemed to excite her. I have no idea whether she ever took the métro, nor what she imagined it was like, but I could not see what was so shameful about losing a subject there. Deucené seemed to shrivel as he faced

her. I was happy to see him cut down to size like this: the man never missed a chance to play the tough guy. Turning her attention to me, Jacqueline Galtan adlibbed a rapid-fire stream of insults, taking aim randomly at my ugly face, my stinking clothes, my inability to do my job despite its being so simple, and the stupidity of my approach to anything I tried to do. I concentrated on Deucené’s bald pate, which was spotted with disgusting brown blotches and made you think death had already clamped its thighs around his head. Short-legged and pot-bellied, the boss lacked self-confidence, which often caused him to act like a brute with his subordinates. But right now he was scared stiff. I pulled a chair up and sat at the end of his desk. The client paused to catch her breath, I grabbed my chance to speak: “It happened so quickly—I didn’t think that Valentine was likely to disappear. Do you think she did a bunk?” “That’s a good question, and about time too! That’s what I want to know and that’s what I’m paying you for!” Deucené had spread various photos and reports out on his desk. Jacqueline Galtan picked up a single sheet of paper at random, held it between two fingers like a dead insect, glanced briefly at its contents, then let it float back down. Her red-lacquered nails were exquisite. I tried to defend myself: “You asked me to watch Valentine, to report on her comings and goings, who she saw, how she passed the time … But I never dreamed that something might happen to her. That would have called for a different m. o. altogether. Do you see what I mean?” She burst into tears. The final straw, to put us completely at ease! Now she wanted us to pretend her ranting was a sign of vulnerability. “It’s just so horrible not knowing where she is.” Shamefaced and stammering, Deucené avoided looking at her. “We’ll do everything we possibly can to find her for you. But I feel sure that the police—” “The police? Do you really think the police give a damn? All they care about is getting the story into the media. Yapping to journalists is the only thing on their minds. Do you really think Valentine needs this kind of publicity? You think it’s a great way for her to start her life?” Deucené turned toward me, silently pleading. He would love for me to invent a lead. But, truth to tell, nobody was more taken aback than me that morning, when I saw that Valentine was not having her usual coffee in the café across from her school. After pausing to shift her face into dominant tragic mode, our client was off again: “I’m willing to cover the expense. Your squalid negligence in this matter does not, I grant, make you entirely responsible for Valentine’s disappearance. And we’ll amend the original contract. If you get her back to me within two weeks, there’ll be a bonus of five thousand euros. On the other hand, if you don’t, I guarantee you I’ll turn your life into a living hell. We have connections, as you must know, and I doubt that an agency such as yours really wants to deal

Virginie Despentes

Apocalypse Baby

Marc Dugain

The Stars Never Sleep

with a series of—unpleasant—inspections. Not to speak of the bad publicity.” As she uttered this last sentence, she looked up, staring Deucené straight in the face. Rather slowly, a pleasing movement, reminding you of old blackand-white films. She must have been practicing it all her life. She was beautiful at that moment. Once more she leaned over the papers heaped on Deucené’s desk and read part of a report. The files scattered there were mine: not only the notes I had accumulated over the preceding day and evening, but also everything they had scooped up from my workstation. There again, they obviously had no qualms when dealing with someone like me: of course they checked to be sure I’d produced everything and forgotten (or hidden) nothing. I had in fact spent hours gathering the most important documents together and organizing them, but they had screwed things up completely. It was all there: from the check from the café where I had waited for her to every last photo that I had taken—even those where only a bit of her arm was visible. I have no idea who’d had such fun rooting through my computer in search of supposedly missing documents. Deucené must have thought that quantity was key: the more sheets of paper he could produce, the greater the impression of work done. I cannot even say for sure that I was suspected of concealing some important information; in any case I would hardly have left it on my office computer. No, this was simply a way of letting me know that, even if I spent 24 hours working on a file to be sure it was picture perfect when it was called for, they thought I was incapable of judging what was important and what was not. And why would they, any of them, refuse themselves the sadistic pleasure of tormenting a fellow human being, when I was there, available, at the bottom of the heap? She was right to call me a nitwit, that old cow. If it would make her feel better. It’s a structural thing—part of my job description. I was the underpaid nitwit who had just spent two effing weeks staking out a nymphomaniac teenager, strung out on coke, hyperactive. Another one. Over the almost two years that I had been with Reldanch, I had never been assigned anything but teenager detail. And I had performed no worse than anyone else. Until Valentine vanished.

Publisher: Gallimard Date of Publication: September 2010 Foreign Rights Manager: Anne-Solange Noble anne-solange.noble@gallimard.fr

Translation: Donald Nicholson-Smith mnr.dns@verizon.net

Biography

Marc Dugain was born in Senegal in 1957. After studying political science and finance, he worked as a chartered accountant before becoming the owner of an air transport company. His first novel was La Chambre des officiers (1998), which received eighteen prizes (prix Nimier, prix des Libraires, prix des Deux-Magots, etc.) and was translated as The Officers’ Ward by Howard Curtis (London: Phoenix House, 2000; New York: Soho Press, 2001). Publications Among his most recent novels (all from Gallimard): Une exécution ordinaire, 2007; La Malédiction d’Edgar, 2005; Heureux comme Dieu en France, 2002. All these titles are available in paperback from Gallimard in the “Folio” collection.

In the autumn of 1945, as the Allies settle on the occupation of Berlin and the rest of Germany, Captain Louyre leads a company of French troops into the southern part of the country. As they approach the town that is to provide their quarters, their attention is drawn to an isolated farm. There they make two discoveries: a wild-haired adolescent girl living like a savage, and the charred corpse of a man. Since she is incapable of explaining her abandoned state or the presence of the dead body, the girl is detained. Against the wishes of his superiors, Captain Louyre embarks

on a relentless search for the truth about this situation, perhaps trivial relative to the disasters of the war, but which may have a hidden significance of quite another order. In the course of his investigation, he will uncover the existence of another “final solution” —one that preceded the Shoah and was in fact a prologue and dress rehearsal for it, namely the extermination, by the most barbarous methods, of the mentally ill and of anyone so classified on the grounds of his or her ‘maladjustment’ to the Nazi régime.

When the caretaker of the institution bowed several times to the doctor, she did so in an overdone way reminiscent of serfs bowing to aristocrats in a nowfaraway Russia, before the Revolution briefly restored a little dignity to the peasantry. Her son was still standing behind her, with his round head and eager face. Seeing the place again filled Halfinger with pride in a lost grandeur only he could understand. He turned brusquely toward Louyre. “Why did you bring me here?” His expression conveyed vanity as much as indignation. His nose in the air, Louyre did not deign to look at him as he replied: “What a lovely spot, don’t you think? I can almost hear the peals of glee of the children frolicking here, once summer comes. It will be a time of rebirth, a time for a new generation of young Germans full of vigor and hope. And the end of your time, of which nothing shall remain. An administrative committee should be convened quickly. Do you have the authority to do that?” The doctor nodded. “Certainly.” Louyre sensed the immense irritation the doctor felt at being nothing but the former head of an institution now repurposed. The officer walked towards the building with his hands behind his back. “Tell me, Halfinger, where is all the furniture?” “Several truckloads were transferred to centers near the Front.” “Who transported them?” “Police attached to the Ministry’s transport department.”

“Do you know them?” “By sight, certainly.” “There must be chairs left over somewhere, and a table that would do as a desk.” “What for?” Louyre stopped to contemplate a centuries-old oak tree thrusting its mighty branches towards the sky. “I would like to continue our conversation in what used to be your office. I’m sure that the setting will suit you better than the town council’s assembly room, which is so impersonal. Could someone find a couple of chairs and a table for us?” Halfinger spoke to the caretaker, who looked dubious for a moment, scratching her head, then brightened as inspiration struck her: there was a locked shed near her house with some pieces of furniture inside. Louyre gestured to his driver, Voquel, to accompany the woman, while he made his way to the large room that on his first visit had appeared to him to be the office of the hospital’s director. From there, as he recalled, there was a view from the front of the building over the old town. The rear overlooked kitchen gardens. A dozen or so drapes of doubtful opaqueness supplied a gratuitous uniformity. Louyre drew them one by one to let daylight into the wood-paneled room, while Voquel and the caretaker—still followed by her son—arranged a table and two chairs. The officer dismissed them with a wave of the hand and showed the doctor to his place: back to the old town, facing the back garden. He went to the door, locked it, put the key in his pocket, and lit a cigarette. “But you have no ashtray,” protested Halfinger. Louyre stared at him through half-closed eyes. “Never mind. I’ll stamp my butts out on the floor. Now let’s talk seriously. We have nothing to eat, nothing to drink, no beds to sleep in and no electricity. But we shall not leave this room until everything that needs to be said has been said. If you try to escape, I’ll shoot you dead. And if you try to jump out of the window, I’ll do nothing to discourage you. We have no secretary and I have no paper on which to take notes. “So what’s the point of all this then?” “Nothing. I merely want the words to be spoken.” The doctor pulled at the knot of his tie. “Are you intending to kill me, once this interrogation is over?” “It’s not an interrogation. It’s a confession.” “You do not mean to bring me to trial?” “I thought of it, but in the end I find trials repugnant. A trial has no purpose but to edify and punish. I fail to see anything edifying in a life such as yours, and as for punishing you I’d rather leave rebuke and revenge to others. Do not imagine that I have any interest in you, Halfiger. I am intrigued, nothing more, which is a very different matter.”

Marc Dugain

The Stars Never Sleep

Mathias Énard

Tell Them of Battles, Kings and Elephants

Publisher: Actes Sud Date of Publication: August 2010 Foreign Rights Manager: Élisabeth Beyer e.beyer@actes-sud.fr Translation: Charlotte Mandell cmandell@earthlink.net

From his inside pocket he drew the bundle of letters written by Maria’s father. “Here is the charge sheet. Watch what I am going to do with it.” Using his lighter, he set one letter alight and tossed it onto the parquet floor. Then he did the same thing with all the others, until he was ringed by incandescent sheets of paper burning silently, sending black smoke spiraling towards the ceiling. “I’ve forgotten one of the rules of the game, though. It’s optional, I grant you, and it gives me an authority that I have never in my life sought. You are going to give me your version of the facts. If at one moment or another I deem that you are wandering too far from the truth, or that you are lying, or manipulating me, I shan’t hesitate to put a bullet in your head.” He contemplated the ashes that were all that was left of the letters scattered about the floor. “Everything was written on those pages. A man about to die does not lie to his own daughter. And he is dead now.” “How do you know that?” “A deep certainty.” “Who else read those letters?” Louyre replied without hesitation. “No one but me. Maria Richter no longer has any glasses. Her optician has not returned from the Front, and is very likely dead as well. So you see, my dear Doctor, we are the only two people to know. And the truth is not important enough to me to want to dissuade you from dying, should that be your wish. If need be, your death will be enough to satisfy me.” “I have no intention of committing suicide.” “You had time enough to run away after learning that I was following a trail that was bound to lead me to you. So why didn’t you?” “Because I felt that I had nothing for which to reproach myself.” “Very well then,” sighed Louyre, suddenly feeling exhausted. “Now that the rules are clear, we can get started. You may take your time. A tightrope walker always checks the soles of his shoes before stepping onto a high wire.” Halfinger rose and went over to the window that gave onto the orchard. His hands were clasped behind his back, his fingers twisting and turning like fat slugs on a head of lettuce. “Once you’ve addressed the part of the truth that contradicts the orders you were given, the rest will come naturally,” said Louyre impatiently. “Come on, let’s go!”

Biography

Born in 1972, Mathias Énard studied Persian and Arabic and spent long periods of time in the Middle East. He currently lives in Barcelona. Publications With Actes Sud: Zone, 2008 (prix Décembre 2008, prix du Livre Inter 2009) (paperback ed., “Babel” collection, 2010; forthcoming in English from Open Letter Books); Remonter l’Orénoque, 2005; La Perfection du tir, 2003 (prix des Cinq Continents de la francophonie) (paperback ed., “Babel” collection, 2008). With Verticales: Bréviaire des artificiers, 2007 (paperback ed., Gallimard, “Folio” collection, 2010).

On May 13, 1506, a certain Michelangelo Buonarotti disembarks in Constantinople. In Rome, he has left unfinished his plans for a tomb for Julius II, the poorly paying, bellicose pope. Michelangelo is responding to an invitation from the Sultan, who wants to entrust him with the plans for a bridge over the Golden Horn, a project that was taken away from Leonardo da Vinci. Working under pressing deadlines, in a whirlwind of meetings, seductions, and dangers of Byzantine strangeness, Michelangelo, the man of the Renaissance, sketches a sublime but foiled meeting with the Orient. In a narration of quick brushstrokes— somewhere between history and fiction, between documentary precision and poetic flights—Mathias Énard invents (in the sense

that he brings into the world, makes real and palpable) the missed encounters, productive distractions and failed meetings of a disoriented genius. And makes this decisive sojourn culminate in ancient tragedy: the heartrending sacrifice of a friendship. What if the bridge between the two fraternal continents, which Michelangelo does not complete, is also the one he is also trying to build toward himself, without ever managing to achieve it—an incomplete gesture that we will find on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, a gesture that it is up to us, today, to prolong? This anti-Zone is also for Mathias Énard the pretext for a fascinating reflection on the utopian gesture of creating, on the impotent and omnipotent arrogance of writing.

with your foot, placing it on a stool; then with your face, using a mirror. Only then will you be able to move on to a model, for the postures.” “You think it’s possible to get to that point, Maestro? Here no one draws like that. The icons …” Michelangelo interrupts angrily. “Icons are children’s pictures, Manuel. Painted by children for children. I assure you, follow my advice and you’ll see that you will draw. Afterwards you can amuse yourself copying as many icons as you like.” “I will try, Maestro. Would you like for us to go for a stroll or visit a monument?” “No, Manuel, not now. I’m fine here, the light is perfect, there are no shadows on my page, I’m working, I don’t need anything else, thanks.” “Fine. Tomorrow we’ll go see your studio. See you soon, then.” And the Greek dragoman withdraws, wondering if he will dare to put his hand on the table and start drawing too.

Mathias Énard

Tell Them of Battles, Kings and Elephants

* Manuel the translator visits the sculptor every morning to ask if he needs anything, or if he can accompany him anywhere; usually he finds Michelangelo busy drawing, or else writing one of his countless lists in his notebook. Sometimes he is lucky, he gets to watch the Florentine as he draws, in ink or lead, an anatomical study, or the detail of an architectural ornament. Manuel is fascinated. Amused by his interest, Michelangelo shows off. He asks him to put his hand on the table and, in two minutes, he sketches the man’s wrist, the whole complexity of curved fingers, and the flesh of the fingers. “It’s a miracle, Maestro,” Manuel whispers. Michelangelo guffaws. “A miracle? No, my friend. It’s pure genius, I don’t need God for that.” Manuel is still stunned. “I’m joking with you, Manuel. It’s work, above all. Talent is nothing without work. Try it, if you like.” Manuel shakes his head, taken aback. “But I don’t know how, Maestro, I don’t know anything about drawing.” “I’m going to tell you how to learn. There is no other way. Lean your left arm on the table in front of you, with your hand half open, the thumb relaxed, and with your right hand draw what you see, once, twice, three times, a thousand times. You don’t need a model or a teacher. Everything you need is in your hand. Bones, movements, material, proportions—even drapery. Have faith in your eye. Begin again until you know how. Then you can do the same thing

The studio is in the outbuildings of the former palace of the sultans, a few yards from a grandiose mosque which has just been built. The secretary-poet Mesihi, the page Falaschi, and Manuel go with Michelangelo to help him move in, a little worried about the artist’s reaction. A tall, vaulted room, filled with a crowd of draughtsmen and engineers, standing in rows in front of large tables piled with drawings and plans. Scale models on stands, several different models of a strange structure, an unusual bridge, two parabolas that form a deck at their asymptote, supported by a single arch, a little like a cat arching its back. Here is your kingdom and your subjects, Maestro, Falaschi says. Mesihi adds some words of welcome that Michelangelo doesn’t hear. His gaze is fixed on the models. “They’re models that were made based on the drawing proposed by Leonardo da Vinci, Maestro. The engineers thought it inventive, but impossible to build and, how to say it, the Sultan found it rather … rather ugly, despite its lightness.” If the great Da Vinci understood nothing about sculpture, well, he doesn’t understand anything about architecture either. Michelangelo the genius approaches the project of his famous elder; he looks at it for a minute, then, with a giant swipe, knocks it off its base; the glued-wood structure lands on its four feet without breaking. The sculptor puts his right shoe on the collapsed model and crushes it furiously. The bridge over the Golden Horn must join two fortresses; it is a royal

bridge, a bridge that will transform two conflicting shores into one immense city. Leonardo da Vinci’s drawing is ingenious. Leonardo da Vinci’s drawing is so innovative that it is frightening. Leonardo da Vinci’s drawing is devoid of interest because it takes into account neither the Sultan, nor the city, nor the fortress. Instinctively, Michelangelo knows that he will go much further, that he will succeed, because he has seen Constantinople, because he has understood that the work he is being asked for is not a vertiginous footbridge, but the cement of a city, the City of Emperors and Sultans. A military bridge, a commercial bridge, a religious bridge. A political bridge. A piece of urbanity. The engineers, the model makers, Mesihi, Falaschi and Manuel all have their eyes riveted on Michelangelo as if they’re watching a lit fuse on a bomb. They wait for the artist to calm down. Which he does. His eyes sparkle, he smiles; he looks as if he has just emerged from a disturbing dream. He shoves the debris of the broken model aside with his foot, then says calmly, “This studio is magnificent. To work. Manuel, take me to see the Santa Sophia Basilica, please.”

sculptures to distract the gaze from God; just a few arabesques, serpents in black ink, seem to float in the air. Strange beings, these Mohammedans. Strange, these Mohammedans and their austere cathedral, without even an image of their Prophet. With Manuel as interpreter, Mesihi explains to Michelangelo that a white plaster coating hides the Christian mosaics and frescos that used to cover the walls. The calligraphies are our images, Maestro, the pictures of our faith. Manuel deciphers the barbaric writings for the artist: There is no god but God, Mohammed is the prophet of God. “Mohammed here is the one you call Maometto, Maestro.” The one Dante sends to the fifth circle of Hell, thinks Michelangelo before resuming his contemplation of the building.

Mathias Énard

Tell Them of Battles, Kings and Elephants

* The sculptor has never seen anything like it. Eighteen pillars made of the finest marble, flagstones made of serpentine and facings of porphyry; four arcs form the main arch, bearing a vertiginous dome. Mesihi takes him to the upper level, to the gallery overlooking the prayer hall. Michelangelo has eyes only for the cupola, and above all, for the windows through which sunlight cut into squares is pouring in full force, a joyful light outlining imageless icons on the walls. Such an impression of lightness despite its mass, such a contrast between the outer austerity and the elevation, the levitation almost, of the interior space, the balance of proportions in the magical simplicity of the square shape onto which the dome’s circle fits so perfectly; the sculptor is almost moved to tears. If only Giuliano da Sangallo, his teacher, were here. The old Florentine architect would no doubt immediately set to work sketching, picking out details and drawing elevations. Below him, in the main hall, the faithful are prostrating on countless prayer rugs. They kneel down, place their foreheads on the ground, then stand up, look at their hands held in front of them as if they were holding a book, then press them to their ears, the better to hear a silent clamor, and then they kneel again. They murmur, chant, and the hum of all these inaudible words buzzes and mixes with the pure light, without any pious images, without any

Gisèle Fournier

The Last Word

The narrator appears to be in a state of deep confusion. She has felt hunted and spied upon for a long time. First, she suspected her husband was an assassin, that he wanted to kill her. But now that he seems to have fallen off the balcony, she doesn’t know what to think. Paralyzed with fear, she writes about it in her notebooks. Sometimes she writes in the first person, sometimes as if she is watching herself, in a sort of schizophrenic split. With clinical precision and the attention to detail which is characteristic of her style, Gisèle Fournier portrays a woman slowly sinking into a state of depression verging on madness.

Publisher: Mercure de France Date of Publication: August 2010 Foreign Rights Manager: Catherine Farin catherine.farin@mercure.fr Translation: Valeriya Makohon vmakohon.traduction@gmail.com

She looks into the distance. Far away. Beyond the mountains. She sees nothing. Perhaps she no longer has a future. This will be yet another sleepless night. She listens to the whispering of the darkness. The aspens in the neighbouring garden rustling. A cat or a weasel swishing through a hedge. An owl hooting.

She has only a few hours left in this house. She comes to the window, touches the wall, strokes it. A murmur comes from her lips. The depth of the night muffles her words. The only scarcely understandable word is perhaps “love.”

Biography

A trained economist, Gisèle Fournier worked for many years as financial analyst in Paris. She has lived in Geneva since the late 1990s, where she now devotes her life to writing. Her first book of short stories, L’Ordre secret des choses, was published in 1998 by HB Éditions, and her first novel, Non-dits, in 2000 by Minuit editions. Publications Works published by Mercure de France: Ruptures, 2007 (Swiss Bibliomedia award in 2008); Chantier, short stories, 2006; Perturbations, 2004 (paperback ed., Gallimard, “Folio” collection); Mentir vrai, 2003.

“Love”? What she will have to leave behind. What is already leaving her. What will abandon her a little more every day from now on. Does anything matter? Why continue now? Do nothing. Let go. Slowly and gently. There are butterflies everywhere. Not orange tips, sphinxes, or parnassians, all those species whose names she can’t remember. Just bits of paper that she places on her work desk—does she still work?—on the bathroom mirror, on the closet doors. Writing everything down. Asking herself ten, twenty times what she’d forgotten to write.

She does not sleep. Stands by the window. The odd cars’ headlights piercing the darkness as they round the curve. Lighting up the ceiling. That ceiling worries her. The workman who came to repair the hole—wood cement plaster, she does not remember what fell down—he said, gazing at the still drying oval patch: I hope it will hold. She hopes so too. Lifts her eyes. Inspects the ceiling. Nothing. Not a trace. Not even of the fresh paint.

She, open to the winds. Wonders where her limits, her contours are. The ground is rocking beneath her feet. Wobbling. She looks at the floor. It isn’t moving. But she is swaying. Adrift. I know. So what?

You’re going nuts. I know. How do I admit it? Yesterday morning the neighbour rang my doorbell. The one who wanders in the streets till noon—to the butcher, the baker, the news dealer—unwashed, her hair not combed. Holding a newborn baby in her arms. Dirty. The cheeks smeared with … with what? I won’t kiss him, I might have a cold or something, I said. Oh yes, she answered, you’re right, I just wanted to show you how cute he is. Today, when I ran into her, I asked: how’s your grandson? She gave me a strange look. She said: how could I possibly have a grandson if I don’t have any children?

So she walks. In the living room, around the coffee table, the armchairs, the sofa. Going toward the wall, she studies a reproduction of a painting by Staël. Cracked, saturated, burnt earth. The snake. What if it is hiding here? In the folds and crevices of this fissured earth? She scrutinizes it. Sees nothing. Maybe because it isn’t there. Maybe because it is inside her.

Gisèle Fournier

The Last Word

She walks. Through the bedroom. Between the bed and the dresser. Back to the living room. Enters the office. Goes back to the bedroom. Moving. Above all, keep moving. Stop moving, and everything stops. She would die. She is scared. Scared of being scared, perhaps. The shaking, in the morning.

You’re going crazy. I know. What can I do? People are really strange. Looking at me like that, as soon as I go outside. But I am just like everyone else. Nothing sets me apart. A woman, aging of course, but how many others are just like me? Medium height, lusterless hair, eyes of an uncertain greenish brown color, nothing well defined actually, no distinguishing marks, except for the lines of my face deepening in the mirror. Or maybe they’re actually deepening on my face. Yes, nothing special at all, just as it says on my identity card. So why are they staring at me? Why are they sneering? I can see they’re talking about me when they get together. Mocking me. I do not know why. The hole in the ceiling. Once again I lift my eyes to it. Not a trace. Nothing. And still, I know. I feel. A presence. The other morning, as I was standing on the edge of the sidewalk, a car stopped to let me pass. I did not like it. This is not how we do things here. I looked through the windshield. I saw nothing. Maybe because of the sun. From standing against the light. Was it a man? A woman? It does not matter. That presence. Here. Again. That car, stopping to let me cross the street, where the cars never stop. Not even at the crosswalk. Suddenly … I am not so sure any more. Maybe it was actually at night, in the light of the street lamps and the traffic lights.

Things moving. These things—chairs, table, bathtub, sink—jumping at her face. Perhaps it is an internal movement. Dark areas. Confusion. One night, the ground moved. One of her legs, the right crossed over the left one, or the other way round, one of them jerked. Brief, choppy, uncontrolled movements. The armchair moving slightly on the parquet. An earthquake? Inner turmoil? I am sinking. I know. What can I do? She remembers the child who cried in the night. By the open window. No other sound. Only the child crying in the night. Only the cry. Maybe there was a moon beam. Or the light of a star. She is not sure about the star. Nor about the ray of moonlight. She knows now—although she probably knew it at that very second—that that night, a child died. Nevertheless, he still lives in her. Begging. He is here. Questioning. Waiting. He did not realize that the die was cast a long time ago. Hesitation.

Learning. Learning, like old people, like the sick, to walk slowly, leaning on the walls, close to the furniture, touching it discreetly with an uncertain hand. Watching your step. Holding on to the banister. Maybe she should just let things go, without knowing what they are or what they will become. Let go. Go forward. Going forward … toward what? Going … where? She remembers the bird on the windowsill. Dull protruding eyes. Completely stiff body. Did it come here to die? Did it bang into the window? A bad omen. Do not touch it. Just take the broom. Push it. It would fall on the lawn. The cats or some other animals will take care of it. Like this other dead body. The moment she thinks “like”, she wonders what it means. It was in a street. She does not remember which one exactly. All those places she used to live. She only sees the gurney pulled—pushed?—how do you say when one is in front of the other, behind a shape lying under a white sheet, or a blanket, no not a blanket, why would someone put a blanket over a dead person who does not feel anything does not think any more, on top of nothing, on an empty body, a dead body, for this is what it was, that inert body lying there, under a white shroud. She wondered why, when and how. But maybe she did not want to know. Just those two white shapes, pushing, pulling. And the white sheet.

Aging skin. Wrinkled. Indeed. But she remembers those old photos. Airbrushed. Wrinkles erased. Smooth cheeks and eyelids on the paper. Perhaps the photographer wanted to please her. She did not recognize herself. Tore the photographs up and threw them away. Here again it is not me. Who is it then? One ordinary morning, she looked at herself in the bathroom mirror. But that day she did not see herself. She rubbed the glass, as if to wipe away the steam, but she could not see anything, no reflection, no contours, not a trace of her neck or face. She clung to the sink, then fell back onto the edge of the bathtub.

Gisèle Fournier

The Last Word

Chasing the intangible. Breaking away from herself. Without losing herself. Without breaking down. What can I do? What should I do? Yesterday night, I burned my identity papers. Now, nobody will know who I am. Who I was.

And the face and the body of death, which she saw in the bus. The bus climbing the hill. In the heat. Flies, hornets, wasps flying in through the open windows. Spain? Italy? The South of France? The wheels crunching on the gravel. Sometimes skidding on the shoulder of burnt grass. Then he, Death, suddenly walking up the aisle between the two rows of seats, surrounded by the smell of thyme, rosemary, other scents she knew but could not name, maybe spruce, lavender, sage, honeysuckle; that man in black, with his round head out of proportion to his body. What was Death doing here, among the almond, apricot and fig trees? A dream, maybe. Her reflection in the mirror: a dream too. Her face looks drawn. Frozen. Crumpled lips, creased cheeks. The woman she sees is not her. Who is it then? Her mother? And yet, as a child, she had told herself that she would never have these dark shadows, bags under her eyes, the sagging cheeks, all expressing the profound boredom and weariness of her mother’s life. Maybe even her desire to end it all.

Alexandre Lacroix

The Orfan

Alexandre Lacroix recalls the event that marked the end of his childhood: the discovery, at age eleven, of the lifeless body of his father, who hanged himself. Today the writer, an adult and father, describes without the least pathos the shadow of grief this event cast on his existence. He evokes memories of his father, an extraordinary character, the son of shopkeepers who attended the École nationale d’administration, belonged to the Socialist Party in the early 1980s, and worked in government service only to end up a broken man, alone and overwhelmed, living in the provincial countryside in his native Poitou.

Publisher: Flammarion Date of Publication: August 2010 Foreign Rights Manager: Patricia Stansfield pstansfield@flammarion.fr Translation: Pascale Torracinta pascale_torracinta@hotmail.com

This rich novel, divided into three parts, also calls up impressions of his mother, love, religion, birth, and writing. Indeed, a childhood memory provides the key to the book’s title: At the age of seven, young Alexandre decided to write his first novel. On the title page, he wrote (with a spelling mistake): The Orfan! This ambitious book constitutes the final part of an autobiographical trilogy that started with De la supériorité des femmes and Quand j’étais nietszchéen. And if today the child’s manuscript is lost, The Orfan, a moving meditation about the meaning of life, makes up for this loss.

Biography

Born in 1975, Alexandre Lacroix has been the editor-in-chief of Philosophie Magazine since 2005, and is a professor of literature at the Institut d’études politiques in Paris. In addition to his novels, he has also published two essays in the collection Perspectives critiques (Presses universitaires de France): Se noyer dans l’alcool? concerning the role of alcohol in contemporary literature, and La Grâce du criminel—a study of the criminal personality in fiction. Publications His most recent novels, published by Flammarion, include: Quand j’étais nietzschéen, 2009 (paperback ed., J’ai lu, 2010); De la supériorité des femmes, 2008 (paperback ed., J’ai lu, 2009); Un point dans le ciel, 2004; La Mire, 2003.

My mother was obsessed by the sweetness of the child she could feel moving inside her. Very sweet, I often heard her say of me later on, really tender, caressing her from inside. That is why she wanted to call me Clement, a name that reflected for her my innate sweetness of temperament. My father, on the other hand, preferred an emperor’s first name, something more conquering, less bland, and it is he who insisted I be called Alexander. My great grandfather was named Alexander, so he meant to carry on a family tradition … But let’s get to the point. During the pregnancy my father went to see a prostitute. He was unfaithful and had numerous mistresses. With this prostitute, unfortunately, there was a slight problem: she gave him the gift of syphilis. At the time, men almost never used condoms; I imagine only a few given to scrupulous hygiene ever used them, or else perverts as an accessory. In any event, Papa brought syphilis home and gave it to Mama. When my mother discovered she was ill, she of course rushed to the hospital. She was examined by doctors who told her she would have to undergo a rather intense and demanding course of treatment. Yes, it could be dangerous for the baby. But leaving the disease untreated was even worse, because it would cause irreversible damage to her as well as to me. With a heavy heart, she resigned herself to take the medication, in the form of injections. At that moment, something broke inside her. Her youth, her candor and naiveté, her desire to form a family with her husband—all her dreams of conjugal peace were crushed, swept away. The love she had for my father received a fatal blow from which it would not recover. Of course, she didn’t make a fuss

or ask for divorce. It would take another five years for her to become confident enough and take that step. But the bond that united her to her husband, a man slightly older than herself, whom she adored, who both dominated and fascinated her, had just been severed. From now on, he represented a threat, a danger to her child. She had to protect herself and to protect me, and to learn to live on her own, against him. By seeking the company of whores during her pregnancy, he was playing with fire, trying to escape, in his own way, from the curse of paternity; or perhaps he even wanted to precipitate her and me into the void so that his selfishness might triumph. But what does it matter, I am not being judgmental. As you’ll see, I’m not well placed to give lessons in morality. What is stranger, if I think about it again, is the way in which this family secret, so well kept, was eventually disclosed. My mother remained silent for a long time, for twenty-nine years to be exact. When I was a child, I never heard her say one word against my father. And when she finally made sure that I heard about the matter of syphilis, it was in a roundabout way. Yet the circumstances by which the secret resurfaced almost seem to have been fabricated, stagemanaged, belonging to that small class of events that make people say truth is stranger than fiction, which give life the appearance of a novel. This knot of coincidence I will now try to undo.

2. Buckets of rain. Suddenly I can’t see more than a few feet ahead. In a matter of seconds, my bathing suit is soaked and water streams down as if I’m under the shower. Raindrops pelt my eyes, forcing me to flutter my eyelids with my eyelashes stuck together. The downpour has started suddenly with torrential brutality. The light is dwindling; it seems like dusk already when it’s only four o’clock in the afternoon. The thunderstorm makes for an autumn evening in the middle of summer. The cars with blurred headlights look lost, like blind people on roller skates. I glance at the saddlebags attached to the rear rack of my bike. I didn’t pay much for them and their rain covers are far from waterproof. The fabric of my rolledup-tent is already drenched—it was the most exposed. If my mat, sleeping-bag and camping stove get wet, I will really be in trouble and tonight won’t have even a minimum of comfort. Not worth playing Quixote against the elements. I have no choice but to find shelter. As it happens, a sign along the road indicates I’m coming into a village: Chens-sur-Léman. Luckily, a hundred yards further on, there glows the sign of a bar. I put my bike under a roof and go to stand at the counter. I order an orange juice to start, sipping it in small gulps while glancing anxiously through the bay windows. I still hope the rain will subside and I will

be able to continue my journey. When I bike I avoid alcohol at all costs: it’s a physiological mystery but nothing knocks you sideways like a beer. An hour later it’s still pouring. The intensity of the aquatic music resounding on the prefabricated roof of the bar hasn’t diminished. Better to abandon any idea of further progress. I won’t be going anywhere tonight. I order a draft beer and decide on a closer look at my surroundings. Beside me is an old man with a horseshoe mustache and white sideburns. He is massive as a millstone and displays a Harley-Davidson emblem on the back of his leather jacket. He is a rustic Hell’s Angel, lost in this hole of a village in Haute-Savoie. We start chatting. He talks motorcycles, I talk bikes. After a few rounds, our complicity is established and we are like old buddies having a good time. Wonderful: I have brothers in all the bars the length and breadth of France … Seven o’clock by the Ricard clock. I must really start thinking about a place for the night. I run it by my buddy Patrick and Anouck, the waitress (we’re all using first names now): “Is there some small hotel, a boarding house, or any kind of cheap accommodations around here? “Can’t think of anything, sorry.” “Best,” says Anouck after a moment’s thought, “would be the town camp-site.” “And where is that?” “It’s easy. You take the small, steep road across the street and go down to the lake, into the pine forest. The road is a dead-end, you can’t make a mistake.” I give them a warm goodbye, sure I’ll never see them again.

Alexandre Lacroix

The Orfan

Outside, it’s still raining. The air has turned cooler, and so have I. My muscles are stiff, I’m slightly drunk, with no desire to get wet again. The little road she indicated does indeed descend abruptly between the trees. I hurtle down it quite a while. It’s pitch black and I don’t have a dynamo light or anything else to light the way. After a few minutes, I start having doubts: Is this really the right way? I don’t have the courage to go back up the hill in this freezing monsoon. I look up over the tops of the umbrella pines, swinging in the gusts of wind far above. The asphalt and tree trunks and pine needles sparkle as lightning flashes … And what if this campsite doesn’t exist? Worse still: What if they have set a trap? I’d better be rid of such ridiculous thoughts. The atmosphere might be like a horror movie but it doesn’t mean danger. Likely just the opposite. In real life, trouble always befalls you unexpectedly, not foreshadowed by an ominous landscape. Finally, to my left I spot a metallic gate at the top of which is fixed a moldeaten sign: lemania campsite. The entrance is blocked but an intercom is mounted on a cement pillar. I ring. After a while a small woman with short hair turns up, without an umbrella,

Jean-Claude Lalumière

The Russian Front

her head sunken between her shoulders as if to protect herself from the rain. “Good evening, Madame. I am on a bike trip. Have you got any space? “Ah, no, sorry. We’re full.” “Damn it.” I must smell like beer and am in no state to argue. I just stare with intense affliction at the fenced campsite—a large field on which two or three tents have been set up and a few caravans parked, but which seems generally empty. Then I turn my head sadly in the direction of the road that I will be forced to climb again. I haven’t said anything but the little lady, who hasn’t moved an inch, continues, with a strong Spanish accent: “Your tent is wet, isn’t it? “Well … Yes, I think so.” “With this weather, there’s mud everywhere; I can’t accommodate you properly.” “To be honest, that’s the least of my concerns.” “Well, then, don’t worry … My daughter is gone on holiday in the South of France. I know what it’s like. Here, I will lend you her tent.” “Are you sure it’s no trouble? “No, none at all. It will be 12 euros, paid in advance.” I search my handlebar bag for exact change. Then, something strange happens. The woman stares at the ten-euro bill and two coins like they were somehow unreal, or as if they were diamonds. “Come here, I am going to show you the tent. Have you had dinner yet? “No.” “In that case you must come and see me. I live in the trailer next to the entrance. I’ll make you a snack.”

Publisher: Le Dilettante Date of Publication: August 2010 Foreign Rights Manager: Claude Tarrène claude.tarrene@ledilettante.com

Translation: Tanyika Carey info@tanyikacarey.com

Biography

Jean-Claude Lalumière was born in Bordeaux in 1970. After writing several commissioned works, including a detective story and some twenty pieces for Radio France, he is now publishing his first novel. He currently lives in Paris.

To satisfy his desire to travel and need for job security, the narrator takes the exam to become an Administrative Attaché at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Sadly, the Quai d’Orsay isn’t always a springboard for advancement, and after a disagreement with the head of personnel he’s sent to “the Russian Front,” the branch where problem agents of this venerable institution are relegated. Set against a satirical backdrop of the administration, Jean-Claude Lalumière’s first novel uses absurd humor to illustrate the

difficulties of shedding one’s upbringing. Both funny and cynical, The Russian Front is a clever story that will touch both lovers of sharp cynicism and bittersweet melancholy alike. “We’re sending you to the Russian Front! Not a good place for a new employee.” I didn’t feel like arguing with him. “Can you just tell me where it is?” I pressed. “In the new offices, right behind Austerlitz station.”

In fact a big surprise was in store for me in the days that followed. The letters I’d sent some weeks before were finally bearing fruit: the French consulate in Yakutsk was asking me to welcome an official delegation. Yakutsk is the capital of Yakutia. Yakutia, better known as the Sakha Republic, is located in the northeastern part of Siberia. It’s a huge territory that’s more than three million square kilometers, with a very small population and a subsoil rich in raw materials: oil, gas, diamonds, gold … Consequently it has a very high GDP. This small piece of information faxed in the mission order from Yakutia emphasized the importance of this delegation. Some heavy economic issues were riding on it, and this small delegation of high-ranking Yakut officials was to be treated with the utmost respect. I told Boutinot about the request. He wasn’t surprised by this sudden increase in activity and offered to use his connections with senior management to secure any logistical support I might need. I declined. Our dear branch director’s affairs weren’t getting any better. The Yakut delegation was staying at a hotel in the heart of Paris on Boulevard Saint-Michel. My assignment was simple. I was to take this delegation of approximately forty people to different tourist sites: Versailles, the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower … Our itinerary read like a class trip, except this time I wouldn’t be in the back seat goofing off with my classmates or comparing the brown bag lunches our moms had made us. In addition to the cultural activities organized for our Yakut guests, there was also a half-day trip to Eurodisney, a few hours of shopping at the big department stores on Boulevard Haussman and

a sampling of French gastronomy. Their stay was brief, only three days, and at the end the delegation was scheduled to attend an address by the Minister of State for Foreign Trade. Not an impossible assignment, in theory. But things got off to an unexpected start: when I arrived at the hotel lobby, I found out that the members of the delegation spoke neither French nor English. I had to call the Ministry and have an interpreter rushed over. I could’ve kicked myself for overlooking this key detail because it showed my lack of experience. While waiting for the interpreter, I tried my best to convince the delegation members to put on warmer clothes before leaving the hotel. It was the end of October and with Paris in the midst of an unseasonably chilly eight degrees, they needed more clothing than touristy T-shirts with “I Love Paris” silkscreened on them. But despite my pantomimed explanations, which had barely improved since the pigeon episode, the delegation just smiled and waited to board the bus parked in front of the hotel. When the interpreter arrived, he immediately clarified things for me. “Where they come from, the average temperature is forty below. Eight degrees is like summer to them.” My western egocentrism had blinded me. It was time for me to renew my subscription to National Geographic. Once we had the Yakuts on the bus, I asked the interpreter more about this country, which despite my years of exploring places on paper, was new to me. He confirmed the little bit of information my colleagues had previously provided. “Are there many Yakuts?” I asked him. “I read that there’s a small population.” “How many are in this delegation?” “Forty-two,” I answered. “Well, I think that’s all of them …”

Jean-Claude Lalumière

The Russian Front

Our sightseeing tour went without a hitch. The Yakuts took pictures in front of all the monuments and smiled the entire time; they were happy to be in Paris. Some of them never even saw the sights because they spent the whole day with their eyes glued to the screens of their little digital cameras. At the end of the third day, the bus took us to the Ministry of Finance to attend the address by the Minister of State for Foreign Trade. I was very satisfied with how the assignment had turned out. I was already imagining the words I’d use in my report as well as the ones in the “Thank you” and “Congratulations” letters the consulate of Yakutia would no doubt be sending me. When we arrived at Bercy, we were welcomed by the Minister of State’s chief of staff who escorted us to a room where several journalists were already waiting. The Yakuts sat down and methodically put on their headphones to listen to the translation of the Minister of State’s speech. “Do you have the press kits?” the chief of staff asked me.

“What press kits?” I asked. “We emailed the papers this morning so you could review them and add them to your documents and printout.” “But I haven’t been to my office in three days. You know I’ve been taking the delegation sightseeing and that …” The chief of staff abruptly cut me off and thrust a folder in my hand with the Minister of State’s speech. “Run back down to the reception room. On the right you’ll see a porter’s office with a photocopier. Make ten copies of his speech. At least we’ll have that to give to the reporters.” I silently complied. I knew it was better to keep quiet when dealing with bossy government officials. As I walked out the door, he barked another order. “And hurry up. I gave you the Minister of State’s copy. He’ll be here in five minutes.”

for me. The Minister of State was there talking to his chief of staff, who saw me come in and glared at me. “Jesus Christ! What were you doing?” He snatched the speech out of my hands without waiting for an explanation and handed it to the Minister of State who went straight over to the lectern to begin his speech: Jean-Claude Lalumière

“Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear Yakut friends, “A renowned French economist, Professor Paindorge, author of a work on globalization and relocation, clearly stated the problem of developing countries. To be competitive, there are but two basic logics: one, the logic of cost, and two, the logic of innovation. These two logics are not exclusive of each other. To that I might add…”

The Russian Front

He continued. I anxiously listened, waiting for the second page. I put the stack of papers in the photocopier tray, selected the number of copies and pushed the green button. This would take no more than three minutes. I was in the middle of telling myself how much more practical it would be to install self-service copiers in each section and not machines with access codes like the one in the other section, when an error message popped up on the screen: “Paper Jam: Pull out originals and place back in tray in original order.” Panic started washing over me but I tried my best to contain it. An arrow on the screen was pointing to the jam. I just had to follow the instructions. I opened the side door of the copier and saw three pieces of paper stuck in some kind of roller. I pulled out the jammed pieces, put them on the copier, took out the ones that were still in the tray, put them on the copier too, then lifted up the top cover to get the paper that was on the glass so I could put all the pages in order. But when I lifted up the top cover, I knocked all the papers down in between the copier and the wall. I started sweating. If only Aline were here I wouldn’t be in this mess. I felt like calling out her name. I squeezed my arm through the gap to pick up the scattered sheets and then realized to my horror that the pages weren’t numbered. More than five minutes had gone by since I’d left the conference hall. I could just see the Minister of State growing impatient on the podium, waiting for his speech. I was also worried the chief of staff would show up and see how inept I was at performing a task as simple as making a set of photocopies. There were about fifteen pages. I easily found the first and last pages of the speech but in my panic the rest of the speech was just a big jumble and I had a hard time figuring out the chain of words from one page to the next. Pressed for time, I ending up throwing the pages back in the tray hoping I hadn’t mixed up the order too much, and then I restarted the job. Two minutes later, I had my ten copies of the speech and returned to the room where everyone was waiting

“… this undertaking must support the costs tied to the exchange rate, the costs of …” He turned the page. “… the friendship between our two countries is a firm foundation for this booming exchange …” No, the page mix-up did not go unnoticed. The interpreter faithfully translated the words and the audience, who had been somewhat inattentive thus far, lifted their heads, surprised. The chief of staff looked over at me and frowned. My days were numbered. The Minister of State continued reading without pause. “… In the age of renewable energy, the system and the mechanisms of aid have been fundamentally reformed after a study …” Page change: I hunched my shoulders. “… on the cultural exchanges likely to be put in place between our two countries and the tourist exchanges that these will involve.” The inconsistencies in the Minister of State’s speech were too absurd to ignore; the Yakuts burst into laughter every time he turned the page. Some of them even applauded. For me, it was a disaster. I had just pulled off three days of exemplary work with the Yakut delegation and now this business with the

Patrick Lapeyre

Life is Short and Desire Neverending

Publisher: P.O.L Date of Publication: August 2010 Foreign Rights Manager: Vibeke Madsen madsen@pol-editeur.fr Translation: Jonathan Kaplansky jkaplansky@videotron.ca

miscopied speech, a task that was not my responsibility but that of the Minister of State’s administrative employee, was going to ruin everything. I was in no danger of disciplinary action as far as civil service regulations were concerned, but being on the wrong side of the chief of staff and probably the Minister of State, even though they were from a different ministry, was not the best way to start off my career. I waited, resigned, until the end of the speech to escort the delegation—some of whom were still laughing as they boarded the bus—to the airport. They were set to leave at eight forty-seven that night. That evening I saw Aline and told her about my misadventures, from the photocopier jam—for which she offered several technical suggestions that were of absolutely no comfort to me—to the point when I said goodbye to the chief of staff who hissed, “I’m going to handle your case personally,” before rejoining the furious Minister of State who was in his office demanding an immediate explanation for what had just happened. The chief of staff was in hot water and when heads started to roll, mine would no doubt be the first.

Biography

Patrick Lapeyre was born in 1949 in Paris. After studying French language and literature at the Sorbonne, he became a French teacher. He began his literary career with the publication of Le Corps inflammable in 1984. Publications With P.O.L, his most recent novels include: L’Homme-sœur, 2004 (prix du Livre Inter 2004) (paperback ed., Gallimard, “Folio” collection, 2005); Sissy, c’est moi, 1998 (paperback ed., Gallimard, “Folio” collection, 2000); Welcome to Paris, 1994.

His name is Louis Blériot—just like the pioneer French aviator—but he’s an odd fellow, thoroughly out of touch with the world around him, maladjusted and living on his wits or off his wife. Life is Short and Desire Neverending begins when, gone to scrounge off his parents yet again, Blériot receives a call from Nora—with whom he is madly in love. Indecisive, elusive Nora. He has been waiting for her to call for two years. Nora will make him suffer and she will suffer, too. So will others around them: Nora’s other friend, for instance, because Nora is

indecisive, just like Blériot. How to choose? Who to choose? This is a story of the constant, inevitable, and overwhelming pain of love. It is told in Patrick Lapeyre’s inimitable way of describing a world in which everything goes wrong. Touches of insight and intelligence leave us perplexed; insignificant events are not at all trivial. Unexpected metaphors gradually create a vision of the world. The humor is intensely clear-sighted, both human and generous. Reading this novel, with its immense melancholy, we can only see ourselves and keep smiling.

Without a breeze, the sun grows hot. The white car is parked to the side of the road, at the entrance to a narrow lane lined by shrubs and fern. Inside the car, a bristly-haired man seems to be sleeping with eyes open, his temple resting against the window. He is dark-complexioned with somber eyes that have a child’s long fine lashes. The man’s name is Blériot. He has recently turned forty-one, and today— Ascension Day—he is wearing a small black leather tie and, on his feet, red Converses. As the occasional car passes, seeming to undulate with distortion from the heat, he continues to scan the landscape—the pastures, the herds seeking shade—while sitting motionless as if mentally counting every animal. Then, still attentive, he climbs out of the car and limbers up a bit, massaging his stiff lower back, before going to sit cross-legged on the hood of the car. At one point, his phone begins to ring on the car seat, but he doesn’t move. It’s as if he’s not there. Blériot possessed the strange talent of both being present and absent, acquired without training or particular effort, just by chance while listening to a piece on the piano while observing his neighbors’ shuttered windows. He later realized that sound of any kind could work quite nicely, provided he

focused on a midpoint and blocked his lungs like a diver without a tank. He does exactly that until his lungs threaten to burst and he’s forced to release his breath. Suddenly he feels himself become lightheaded and weightless while blood gradually returns to his extremities. He then lights a cigarette and realizes he hasn’t eaten a thing for two days. Patrick Lapeyre

He drives for about thirty kilometers in search of a restaurant halfway appealing and, growing tired, ends up parking in front of a one-story building surrounded by a wooden terrace and five or six dusty palm trees. Inside the air is sticky, almost static, despite the open windows and the large blue fan on the counter. Not many people are left in the restaurant at this hour, aside from a trio of Spanish truck drivers and a tired couple who seem to have lost the urge to talk with one another. A waitress is busy behind the bar as the breeze from the fan brushes back her blond hair. It is an ordinary day in early summer. Blériot, eating his crudités and not expecting anything or anyone, is calculating when he’ll arrive in sight of the foothills of the Cévennes when, like trumpets of destiny, the ringtone of his cell phone sounds in the empty afternoon. “Louis, it’s me,” says Nora in the hoarse, reedy voice he would recognize anywhere. “I’m in Amiens right now, staying with some English friends. I should be in Paris in a few days.” “In Paris?” he says, rising to hurry toward the washroom, away from indiscreet ears. She tells him she’s calling from a café across from the railroad station. “And you,” she asks, “where are you?” “Where am I?” He’s used to thinking slowly—so slowly that he’s usually the last one to understand what’s happening to him. “I’m having lunch somewhere near Rodez and on my way to see my parents,” he begins, before realizing—his lips continue to move—that they’ve been cut off. He tries to call back several times, but invariably comes across the same recorded voice: Please leave a message after the beep. At that moment, the lights of the washroom go out and Blériot remains standing in the dark, phone in hand, not looking for the switch or even trying to open the door, as if he had to collect himself in the dark to take stock. He’s been awaiting this call for two years.

Life is Short and Desire Neverending

Returning to his table, he remains for a moment, arms dangling over his plate, feeling a sudden fever and a shiver down his spine. Some women disappear, perhaps, just for the pleasure of returning one day. So he supposes, searching for his napkin. He orders another glass of wine and sets about finishing his cold meat,

letting nothing show, without changing the preoccupied expression that typically disguises his reactions. The Spanish truck drivers have started to play cards while behind him, the couple in crisis still haven’t exchanged a word. He sits up straight, fully selfpossessed and, aside from slight trembling of the hands, gives no hint of the confusion or his emotional state since the phone call. Blinking as he turns to look out the window, Blériot experiences two contradictory feelings. He wonders if the second, excitement, isn’t a kind of trap designed to distract him from the first, which has no name but which might be a kind of premonition or fear of suffering. At the same time, his excitement mounts as if to divert him from any apprehension and to impress upon him how lucky he is to be able to meet her again in Paris. Before getting back in the car, he tries to call her back on his cell phone, with no more success. So ambivalent is he that when he hears the same message in English, it’s almost soothing. As he has cautiously decided not to change his plans, he telephones his parents to let them know he’ll be at their place by early evening; then he calls his wife for no particular reason, just to talk, and to incidentally make sure she’s aware of nothing. “Hello?” At the moment he hears his wife’s voice, Blériot feels his legs give way as if overcome by weakness. He has just enough time to hang up. It’s the heat, he thinks, noticing in front of him the couple in crisis as they flee, like Jack Palance and Brigitte Bardot in a red coupe. He remains huddled in his car for a few minutes, feeling slightly nauseous. Watching the trucks stream past on the highway between the rows of plane trees, he tries to remember the last time he saw Nora, some two years ago—but he cannot. Try as he might to rack his memory, he can recover nothing. No sound or image. As if his mind had erased the scene so it can begin again. So this time can be like the last. He drives a long while without thinking of her, driving just to drive amid the bare mountains and high clouds in geostationary orbit above the valley. Due to the heat, he drives with the windows closed while the air conditioning runs silently like an anesthetic gas diminishing the press of reality, dulling the immediate past. So much so that each of the events that just happened— Nora’s call, her announcement that she was returning, the interrupted phone call—is now tinged with such uncertainty that he could just as well have imagined them. Some events are so long overdue—two years and two months in his

case—that they exceed our power to react but overwhelm our conscious minds and become assimilable only as dreams. Blériot comes alert on the outskirts of Millau, with the viaduct, congested highway, sad houses and, on the horizon, hamburger signs to whet young appetites and demoralize animals. He takes the first exit on the right to leave the highway and finds himself at the suburban edge of the city, passing life itself—a maternity hospital, a public housing project, two or three shuttered shops, a cemetery—before driving up a long slope to brush-covered hills. Now alone on the road, he drives cautiously as if a clandestine observer in an unknown country. As far as the eye can see there are stone plateaus bordered by sharp ledges and steep drops, at the bottom of which a river, hidden by trees, can occasionally be glimpsed. It occurs to him that at this height probably no one can contact him, and vice-versa. There mustn’t be a transmitter for miles. If he wanted, he could disappear unseen and unknown—Blériot loves to scare himself—change his name, make another life in the middle of a forgotten valley, settle down and marry a shepherdess.

Patrick Lapeyre

Life is Short and Desire Neverending

He parks his car in the shade, in a deserted area and remains for a moment, chin up, assailed by an odor of coniferous trees and cut grass, He searches the glove compartment for sunscreen that he smears on his face and forearms, then improvises a little game of imaginary basketball to relax before sitting back behind the steering wheel. Suddenly he feels rejuvenated. For two years, trapped in a web of sorrow, he had methodically set about growing old. He had lived dangling by an invisible thread, refusing to look up, worrying about nobody else, busy with his own niggling affairs and worries, foregoing interest in all else as if he wanted to stop living. In fact he was almost dead when she’d called. Still feeling its effects, Blériot absent-mindedly listens to tunes by Massenet, as he drives with nonchalant pleasure along winding roads in the hills of the Cévennes, shaded by dark chestnut trees. Until he notices a small village ahead, apparently not on his map. He suddenly decides to stop for cigarettes. The red stone village consists of two parallel streets ending in a small square around the Mairie and a café-tabac. Blériot purchases a carton of Virginia tobacco and, celebrating his newfound youth, treats himself to a beer at the counter, listening to the locals on the terrace discuss agricultural subsidies and policies, more from boredom than working-class conviction. A circle of talking mushrooms waiting for day to end. Back on the street and once again dazed by the heat, he remains for a moment with his back glued to the wall of the Mairie, taking advantage of the shade from the yard and a slight breeze cooling his legs.

Jean Mattern

Milk and Honey

He crosses the square and heads gallantly to his car. Not that he is especially in a hurry to see his parents—were it up to him, he would turn back and order a beer. But since Nora’s phone call, something muted inside him, either impatience or anxiety, is pushing him to go forward. So Blériot folds his long, thin, almost tubular body behind the wheel, puts on his sunglasses, adjusts his headphones—as if young for life—and takes off at top speed.

Publisher: Sabine Wespieser Date of Publication: August 2010 Foreign Rights Manager: Joschi Guitton jguitton@swediteur.com

Translation: John Cullen jocul@earthlink.net

Biography

Jean Mattern, born in 1965, is of Central European heritage. He lives in Paris with his wife and three children and works in publishing. His first novel has been translated into seven languages. Publications Les Bains de Kiraly, Sabine Wespieser, 2008.

When he first met Zsuzsanna, in 1957, they were leaving a benefit concert for Hungarian refugees, and the narrator knew at once that he would offer her a life of milk and honey. With this radiant and determined young woman, who had fled Budapest and its failed revolution, he had in common the experience of exile and an unquenchable desire to build a worthwhile future. Although he’d arrived in France some years earlier, he too had escaped the vise of history. Now, toward the end of his life, longing to unburden himself, he confides his story, bit by bit, to his son Gabriel. He casts his memory back, well before meeting Zsuzsanna, and recalls his long struggle against typhus in a makeshift hospital, his friend Stefan, and their

precipitous departure from the western Romanian city of Timisoara (Temesvar in Hungarian) in the fall of 1944, when opposing forces were fighting over the town. As the narrator’s story unfolds, the reader begins to understand how much the old man has missed Stefan over the years, ever since the two were separated on a railway platform in the Budapest train station. Six decades later, the separation still haunts him … Jean Mattern’s second novel is an intimate story of a double exile. With magisterial precision and great subtlety, the author weaves a dense web of emotions and sensations, creating characters that are both touching and true.

1 It seems to me the first time was easier. It was in Austria, not far from Vienna. I’ve never been curious enough to find the exact place again or even to learn whether it was a real hospital as opposed to one of the converted high schools used as refugee camps to receive the thousands flooding in from the East. All I remember clearly is that it was a big building with a double exterior staircase leading down to an enormous lawn. I arrived there, at the foot of that staircase. As for the rest, I’m not sure … no, wait, there was something else: a tiled bathroom. Cream-colored or yellow. The famous Habsburg yellow? How to know, sixty years later? But I’m certain that, looking at those tiles, I figured dying would be easy. I thought about Stefan. Or about nothing at all. My condition didn’t permit a lot of reflection. The first signs of my illness had been bouts of high fever, followed by vomiting. Then a new stage when my body temperature began a steady rise. A few hours after my arrival, I’d been overcome by spasms and convulsions so violent that the young physician on duty said, “He’s hopeless. Put him in the bathroom–we need all the space we can get out here.” Did he suspect I could hear that what he said sounded unequivocally like a death sentence? Did he realize that I was conscious and still capable of understanding, in spite of feeling as if I was wrapped in a thick fog? Typhus was killing thousands, I knew that. I’d be just one more victim, dead amidst filth. I’d left Temesvar six months

before but would never reach my goal; I’d failed to extract myself from the net. I’d escaped the Red Army but the rats and lice–or, to be more accurate, the Rickettsia bacteria they carried–had gotten the best of my determination to survive the war. No spirit, however resolute, can resist the stupor induced by several days of raging fever. I no longer wanted anything, and I’d stopped struggling. But still I thought of Stefan. I failed to catch a train at a station in Central Europe and sixty years later I still miss him. But why did I talk to my son about him? “Stefan who?” he asked. “Dragan. Stefan Dragan. Born in Timisoara in 1928.” “All right, Papa. I’ll see what I can do. It shouldn’t be a problem, you know, not with the Internet. But why didn’t you ever talk about him before?” I don’t know how my son went about his research; my ignorance concerning those things is complete. Or rather–to tell the truth–it suited me to say I was too old to take an interest in them. But soon, right before my eyes, there was a piece of paper with an address: Stefan Dragan, Ocean’s Drive 12, Honolulu, Hawaii. To my way of thinking, nobody really lived in Honolulu, except in American television series. Nobody, and especially not Stefan. Several weeks before that talk with my son, I’d seen a doctor. I’d cut him off before he could subject me to the inevitable demonstration of standard-issue compassion. The days would pass faster now–the doctor’s diagnosis had been clear–but for me, the tick-tock of that particular clock is by no means an unfamiliar sound. What’s the point of panicking?

Jean Mattern

Milk and Honey

The idea that someone born in Timisoara would be living on a street called Ocean’s Drive struck me as incongruous. Our old geography professor at the Timisoara high school, Mr. Szerb–could he even have shown us Honolulu on one of the old maps left over from the days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire? At thirteen, did we think it possible that one of us would end his days on an American island called Hawaii? And yet, my death certificate will contain the same entry that will show up on Stefan’s one day: place of birth, Timisoara. Bar-sur-Aube, France or Honolulu, Hawaii – they probably amount to the same thing. We’d become separated in the chaos of the advancing battle. We were lost to each other, lost in the middle of a gutted continent with no place to go. During the course of a long summer, the war had transformed us into fraternal twins and then suddenly, at the sound of a stationmaster’s whistle, it was all ripped apart. An outstretched hand, a train leaving for the West; I remained on the platform, and Stefan’s incredulous cries as he thrust his head dangerously out of the compartment window couldn’t change a thing.

Through all the years since, that instant has obsessed me. However, there are moments in the story that my memory can no longer reconstruct—namely, the minutes before the stationmaster blew his whistle. The sixty years that separate me from those few moments aren’t the reason why the images have vanished. Not many days after, when I was looking at the white and yellow bathroom tiles in a makeshift hospital, I was already unsure of the reasons why Stefan and I had not been together on that train. No one has the nerve to tell me how the end is going to come, to tell me precisely how my body will smother me, poison me, desert me—describe the exact manner in which it will betray me. No German bullets will be required, and no typhus, either. Because a common disease, a disease that afflicts ordinary people, will have me in its clutches. Trapped without panache. That’s a word I learned when I arrived in France, one of the words I love. The idea that I’m going to die without panache saddens me terribly. For the rest, … who cares? I’d love to take my leave while listening to cello music. Bach’s suites, or better yet, one of Haydn’s concertos, accompanying me on the way to the great silence—whether something to fear, that silence, I don’t know. I should ask Suzanne while I still can. She knows I love the sound of string instruments, but I’ve never told her why the cello is my favorite. Our high school music professor in Timisoara used to tell us that the cello’s frequency range is closer than that of any other instrument to the range of the human voice. When I was struggling with the English horn–learning a musical instrument was obligatory at school, and mine I’d inherited without feeling the least enthusiasm for it–I envied Stefan. The sounds emanating from the next room had nothing in common with the maladroit hoots I produced, despite my best efforts, from first exercise to the last. I didn’t understand anything about music. In spite of my diaphragm, which had convinced my professor that I was “made for a wind instrument,” I could never get used to the one that had been placed in my hands. My fingers and mouth produced nothing but disordered noises. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t control my breathing, and I was always pressing the wrong valves and keys, while my cheeks puffed out ridiculously. The results were nothing but false notes and embarrassing, absurd explosions of sound. After the two symphonic concerts we had attended with the rest of our class, I’d formed an exalted idea of music; but I found it impossible to reproduce even the vaguest semblance of that magic as I huffed and puffed on my English horn. It was only listening to Stefan’s cello that brought back a little of what I’d felt at the concerts. Even when he was playing scales, it sounded nothing like mundane practice, nothing at all; it was, quite simply, beautiful. When the sound faded into pianissimos, my flesh quivered. When the bow stroked several strings at once, I jumped as though those polyphonic

cries of anger were addressed to me. And sometimes, when Stefan plucked the strings with the fingers of his right hand, I thought I heard raindrops falling on the Temes River. Unlike me, Stefan was talented, even gifted, and when he played, unfamiliar sensations welled up inside me. I liked watching him practice as much as listening to him; I liked observing him while he played the same scales, again and again, making the fingers of his left hand run up and down the neck of his instrument or, with his right, finding the ideal path for the bow to take across the strings. He’d begun very young. Does Stefan still play the cello, over in Hawaii?

Jean Mattern

Milk and Honey

The French civil status officials who one after another reviewed my documents never yielded. As far as France was concerned, Temesvar was the Hungarian name of the Romanian town now known as “Timisoara.” I had no grounds on which to appeal, seeing as the town had changed names ten years before I was born; and my repeated requests to have the former Magyar designation of the place appear on my identity papers could not be justified. Mine was only a sentimental whim, especially considering that we’d Gallicized our given names, forgotten our language, and turned our son into a good little Frenchman– Suzanne insisting that we had to assimilate. We were no longer living on the plains of the Danube and its tributaries; we were high on a hill in Champagne. Nowadays, one uses the term “host country.” It seems to me that I didn’t have at my disposal such a formal and practical vocabulary for thinking about my immigrant status. Communist Romania had vomited us up, we’d fled from prison or poverty, but the moment came when De Gaulle remembered. He’d let us come in or come back, honoring the memory of some distant forebears whose history I didn’t know, but that mattered little. The French administration might strike out the name of my birthplace but that was no reason to be ungrateful. It could not grasp how important, in that part of the world, was the way a word is spelled. The idea of looking back just because death is near saddens me. Why yield to nostalgia a quarter of an hour before the end? All my life, I’ve eschewed the self-indulgence of memories. I hope my death throes don’t shake my resolve.

Romain Monnery

Free, Lonesome, and Drowsy

Just out of college and unemployed, Whatshisname is living in Lyon with his parents. Fed up with watching him vegetate, they throw him out. He has little choice but to join an old college girlfriend in Paris, where he shares a rental with two other people. Once settled into his new life, he finds a paid internship at a cable network, where he is exploited, like every self-respecting intern. When his boss makes advances to him, he quits, head held high, and enters a long “less” phase: jobless, ambitionless, girlfriendless, aimless.

Publisher: Au diable vauvert Date of Publication: August 2010 Foreign Rights Manager: Marie-Pacifique Zeltner rights@audiable.com Translation: Jane Marie Todd fmost@aol.com

He stays cooped up for days on end in his apartment with his companion in misfortune, his housemate Bruno. When the housing arrangement falls apart, Whatshisname must look for a new apartment and go back on his promise: he really will have to find a “shit job” and face normal adult life. Told from the point of view of an antiRastignac, this is a novel of lost disillusions, in which the first years of the twenty-first century play out around intentional failure and constructive resignation.

Biography

Born in Lyons in 1980, Romain Monnery pursued studies in languages and communication, a designation that always puzzled him. Having received his diploma, he planned to become a journalist and collected a hodgepodge of media internships (Les Inrockuptibles, Télérama, Canal + Cinéma, Volume, Direct 8). He listened to recordings with unpronounceable names, analyzed documentaries on the orca, scrubbed toilets with his shirtsleeve, and gave the weather forecast without using his hands. Between the slave wages and the invisible newscasts, his résumé filled up like a World Cup sticker album but his bank account remained empty. He put two and two together and quietly retired from the media world to go lie down. He might earn less but he could sleep more. Romain Monnery has now found his dream job. He works (a little) at Argus de la Presse, where he is paid to watch TV. Following the publication of several short stories, Free, Lonesome, and Drowsy is his first novel.

I was a child of the precarious generation and I quickly came to understand that aiming for a job just out of college was like jumping from an airplane without a parachute. It was getting ahead of yourself. A young graduate like thousands of others on the market, I was one of many told by companies, “Get thee to a training job!” The twenty-first century had proudly stepped onto its pedestal, but still slavery seemed to be thriving. Like any young layabout who still believed in Santa Claus, I had to accept the inevitable. For now, no real job was on the horizon. I could always take a shit job, folding sweaters at the Gap or selling Big Macs, but damn it all—I’d been to college! So I chose an internship, taking it for what it was not: a springboard to employment. What kind of employment? I had no idea. I had got caught up in my studies the way you get caught up in a protest march. I allowed myself to be carried along with the crowd, without really thinking about what I intended to do afterward. As for the various vocation counselors I consulted, I’d driven them crazy. “Really now! There’s no career that appeals to you?” “No.” “You must have a hobby or a passion!” “I really like to sleep.” “That’s it?” “I really like pasta too.”

In the absence of careers plans, I replied to an ad. An audiovisual production place was looking for an editorial assistant to compose press releases and write up index cards for the announcers. I was not one to be impressed but the job title put stars in my eyes. It had never been my ambition to work in television, but what I imagined about the atmosphere, artistic and bohemian, was enough to persuade me. Stéphanie gave me her blessing: “It’s the chance of a lifetime,” she told me. “Go for it!” They hired me without looking at my résumé. That seemed strange but I took it as a vote of confidence. Maybe they had discerned under my “Less than Zero” T-shirt all the potential Stéphanie said I had. In any case, I now had one foot in show biz. I would have liked to be blasé about it, but without meaning to, I got pretty excited. Although my monthly income would amount to only 300 euros, I wasn’t worried. Sure, I hadn’t hit the jackpot, but if I added that to my state-subsidized housing allowance, what I was being offered would be enough to pay the rent. And that was the main thing. But what assurances would I have? That question kept cropping up. I knew many cases where internships had amounted to nothing but a swindle. I shared my doubts with my employers the day of the interview, but they burst out laughing. “Don’t fret so much. You’ll see. It’ll be good for your career!” So I was going to give up napping, keep my sleep carefully corralled, and work ten hours a day, including weekends, for close to poverty wages. But according to my superiors, such was the price of fame. I wasn’t really expecting that but I took them at their word. To hear them talk, renouncing the present was all it took to build a golden future. I wasn’t ambitious, but hey—I had nothing against it.

7 The euphoria that came over me when I signed up soon evaporated and I was beset by doubts. The pace that my bosses forced on me at work made me wonder: Wasn’t I doing all this for free? The editorial tasks I had been promised were constantly being put off till tomorrow. Running errands, stocking the warehouse, photocopying: I’d become a gofer! Reduced to cleaning up the set where the program was filmed, I kept repeating to myself, “It’ll be good for your career.” But I didn’t really believe it. I didn’t see how scrubbing a toilet could help my career but I tried not to think about it. Stéphanie encouraged me not to give up, swearing that most television personalities, from Michel Drucker to Thierry Ardisson, had been through this. That made me smile. They weren’t exactly my role models. I said: “You’re right. It’s worth sticking it out.”

She didn’t see the irony but it was better that way. Her enthusiasm was a joy to behold, and I would have felt bad if I’d disappointed her. And then, for the first time in a very long while, my mother, when I told her about my new position, was almost proud of me.

8 My status as a free-lance production assistant rang false but did not fail to impress Stéphanie, a predictable moth drawn to even the most artificial light. A provincial girl for whom getting on TV was an end in itself, Stéphanie harbored a limitless fascination with celebrity. For her, the importance of a person was to be judged not by status or physique but by notoriety. She had read Glamorama without realizing it was a satire. For her, being famous was an innate quality, like intelligence or generosity. Balzac would have loved her. The world of show business was a wonderland she dreamed of getting lost in, a heady brew of culture and red carpets. I was not really part of it perhaps, but in her eyes I was getting close. As pathetic as it might be in reality, my experience fascinated her. Our meals together were an opportunity for her to subject me to endless interrogations. What was I was doing, whom had I seen? She wanted to know everything. Jealous of the interest Stéphanie was taking in my work, Bruno lowered his head and clenched his fists, waiting for a subject he knew something about— like what kind of shape Zinedine Zidane was in or Tony Parker’s three-pointer. Valérie was indifferent, content to blend into the wallpaper, absentmindedly sipping her soup. One evening when Stéphanie seemed particularly admiring and excited, after I had divulged that I had taken a glass of orange juice to Claude Lelouch (“Wait, you mean you touched his hand?”), Bruno let me know he wasn’t fond of my stories. Hardly had the lights gone out when his voice came through the curtain: “I see the game you’re playing.” Persuaded I was a rival, Bruno saw me as a threat: “Watch out, Delarue, I was here first. Show biz or no show biz, Stéphanie’s mine.”

Romain Monnery

Free, Lonesome, and Drowsy

Thibault de Montaigu

Nights in Eden

“They would go to Saint-Germain-des-Prés to listen to jazz and to Montparnasse to dance the cha cha. For a change of scenery, they’d hitchhike or take the night train down to the Riviera. Vibrant and stirring, the young generation of the 1950s wanted to live.” Antoine, a well-to-do Parisian, might well have missed out on such guilty pleasures if he hadn’t met Francine, who introduced him to her generation’s irresistible allure. Driven by fascination as much as by love, Antoine squanders his fortune by opening

Publisher: Fayard Date of Publication: September 2010 Foreign Rights Manager: Carole Saudejaud csaudejaud@editions-fayard.fr

Translation: Tegan Raleigh teganraleigh@gmail.com

Biography

Born in 1978, Thibault de Montaigu is a writer and a graduate of the Institut d’études politiques de Paris and the Centre de formation des journalistes. Publications Fayard: Un jeune homme triste (A Sad Young Man), 2007; Les anges brûlent (The Angels Are Burning), 2003 (paperback ed., Pocket, 2005).

a nightclub in Saint-Tropez. He calls it Eden Beach and succeeds in making it a place of carefree revelry. Within a few years it becomes legendary, frequented by the likes of Brigitte Bardot and Françoise Sagan. But the nights and the summers always come to an end, and Antoine discovers he can’t live without the constant euphoria. The silent partner behind all sorts of excess, he supplies his little world with a final fix that leads to his downfall.

It was their first summer on the Riviera. The train poster read: “The land of your dreams at the end of the night.” Francine and Kiki were renting a room in a pension that cost two thousand francs a day, waiting for some young rich kid or wealthy party boy invite them to his villa. To no avail. Tourists and locals looked upon them with alarm: two short-haired girls who smoked State Express cigarettes and rode on Vespas behind rogues in espadrilles. It wasn’t long before their friends started coming, too—by the night train, hitchhiking, or driving down in a wheezing jalopy—only to find themselves equally broke. All they had left was foosball at the pension, strolls through the reeds beneath the shade of umbrella pines, late afternoons on the beach and smoky nights dancing the cha cha in a basement club by the harbor. Vacation à la française. The two girls woke up just when the old people and youngsters were settling in for their naps. Kiki slipped off to the post office, hoping to cash a money order an uncle or some beau had sent from Paris. Francine lingered in bed, making do with coffee, grilled sardines, and peaches before whiling away the afternoon on café terraces; then she decided to go for a swim before nightfall. She went to the little beach bordered by tall houses. On the other side of the gulf, night hesitated in the hollows of the mauve mountains, over the blue curaçao of the waves and amidst the lazy sails—fishing boats and sloops returning from Camarat—as the citadel turned pale and seagulls circled the

cemetery. Francine swam a crawl out to the first mooring buoy and stretched out to float on her back, arms outspread and eyes closed. Water still warm from the sun, echoes of laughter and the sound of distant motors, all the certainty that nothing bad could happen to you—surely this was the stuff of unalloyed happiness and indelible memories. Francine loved moments like this when she forgot about herself, far from obligations, money matters, and romance. Kiki’s money order, the distressed calls from her parents, the young skipper she’d met yesterday…so what? They didn’t matter. She wanted to succumb to the imperious sense of youth and never wake up. “Francine! Francine!” Shouts reached her from the jetty. Kiki was waving at her wildly. Next to her stood a man leaning against a sports car. He was wearing a navy blue suit and looked stiff and solemn. The light was too dim to make out anything else. “What’s the matter?” she shouted, now upright in the water. “Come here! I want you to meet somebody.” “Right now?” “You’ll see. He’s marvelous. Besides, he’s going to take us out driving. “Driving where?” “You’ll see. Come on! Hurry up.” Francine sighed. She didn’t know how to say no. They shared everything: cigarettes, boys, nights out. And she never found any reason to complain. Kiki had such a gift for life and meeting new people. To pursue their endless weekend she would have followed her anywhere. And now there was this silent man of indeterminate age, leaning against a sports car on the little beach bordered by ochre and purple houses. Francine plunged into the water and swam toward them. When she resurfaced, they were already waiting for her on the short pier. Kiki had her usual mischievous look and the man was smoking, his lips pursed. He was handsome, with a cool gaze that yet had something childlike about it, or anxious or put-on – Francine wasn’t sure. Kiki rushed to the water’s edge. “Francine, this is Antoine. Antoine Braque, Francine Dalle.” “I’m not going to kiss you since I’m drenched.” “Of course.” He stepped back, confused. “No offense?” “Of course not. I’d risk getting my suit wet.” “Is it flannel?” “Yes. English.” “You must be dying from the heat.” “Truth be told, it’s all I brought with me.” Francine burst out laughing, and Antoine gave a stiff little smile. “I met Antoine at the post office,” Kiki said quickly. “Would you believe he’d

been there since nine in the morning, waiting for a telegram that never came?” “On vacation?” asked Francine. “Not really.” “Independently wealthy, huh?” “No, it’s not that either.” “But what are you doing here?” “I wanted to see the sea, so I came down.” “From Paris?” “ I made a few stops along the way.” Exchanging glances, Francine and Kiki broke into laughter. Gaiety bubbled up out of nowhere and they couldn’t help themselves, and they’d flaunt it in the face of sorrow and tedium. Antoine avoided their eyes by smoothing back his short-cropped black hair, streaked with gray. In the distance, the sun went down like a house ablaze. “Sorry. It has nothing to do with you.” “It’s only when we’re together.” “Women should spend more time together. It’s when they’re with men that they become tiresome.” “Aha! You see,” said Kiki, “’He’s not as much of a stick-in-the-mud as he looks.” “And with a car like that..” Francine inspected it, letting an index finger trail along the surface. Shiny black, with leather upholstery. It had a hood as long as the last furlong of the Vincennes hippodrome and wire hubs like roulette wheels. Francine smiled, water spilling in silvery needles from her hair onto the radiator grille. “Do you like it?” Antoine asked. “Maybe.” “It’s an xk 140 roadster. I got it straight from the factory. It’s practically the same model that won at Le Mans two years ago.” “Are you a racecar driver?” “Far from it, unfortunately.” “Antoine’s in the drug business,” interjected Kiki. “Actually, I own a company that manufactures pharmaceuticals.” “That sounds pretty healthy.” “You could say that.” A thin smile stretched across his lips. As he tossed away his cigarette, the sun shone darkly in his eyes. He looked like a student at the top of his class, thought Francine—or a lunatic. But Antoine was already looking awkward again. Kiki grabbed a towel from the backseat and immediately started rubbing Francine’s hair with it. Francine resisted, laughing, and Antoine was sprayed with droplets.

Thibault de Montaigu

Nights in Eden

Martin Provost

Beefsteak

“Antoine promised me that he’d let us drive it,” Kiki announced. “What about your accident?” “I was thinking of you. And he agreed.” “It wouldn’t bother you?” Francine asked, turning towards Antoine. “Not at all. It would be my pleasure.” “That’s very sweet of you!” To Kiki she said: “You’ll have to tell me how you met him.” “I already told you,” said Kiki. “At the post office. He was waiting for a telegram…”.

Publisher: Phébus Date of Publication: August 2010 Foreign Rights Manager: Christine Legrand christine.legrand@libella.fr

Translation: Hester Velmans hestervelmans@gmail.com

Biography

Martin Provost was born in 1957 in the town of Brest. After some years in Paris pursuing the acting career for which he had left his native Brittany, Martin Provost turned to writing and directing. He shot two shorts before tackling his first full-length feature, Tortilla y Cinema (1997). He followed that up with Le Ventre de Juliette (Juliette’s Stomach) in 2003 and the international hit Séraphine in 2008, with Yolande Moreau in the lead role, which won no less than seven Césars in 2009. Publications Léger, humain, pardonable, (memoir), Éditions du Seuil, 2008; Aime-moi vite (fiction), Flammarion, 1992.

Synopsis: In the Plomeur family of Quimper, the butchering business is passed down from father to son. It’s the war of 1914, and Loïc and Fernande’s only son, the adolescent André, turns out to have an unusual gift: that of “making the flesh sing”—not just any flesh, but that of the women queuing up at the Plomeur Butcher Shop for a taste of the greatest delicacy of all. André cheerfully and expertly takes on the conjugal duties of the men who have left for the front. But when Armistice Day comes, the husbands return. One morning outside

the butcher shop, André discovers a wicker basket with a baby inside. And then another one, and a third, and a fourth, are left on his doorstep. From one day to the next, André finds himself the father of seven offspring, as well as being stalked by a jealous husband who wants him dead! In order to protect the fruit of his loins, for whom he feels a boundless love, he decides to set sail for the Americas. During the voyage, however, the rowdy little family is cast up on a deserted island …

André Plomeur was born in Quimper on a fine day in April. His mother was just finishing larding a roast when suddenly she felt a jab that skewered her like a trussed chicken. The customer she’d been waiting on, seeing her gasp and choke, thought that she was having a heart attack. But no. It was happening lower down. As her water gushed out onto the sawdust, someone was sent on the double to fetch the father-to-be from the slaughterhouse, to warn him that the love child was on the way. Raised on whole milk, young André was soon following the ancestral tradition by helping out in the butcher shop from the age of five on. At seven he could already work the till, at eight he slit his first ovine throat, at ten he could debone a shoulder of lamb in two strokes and the blink of an eye, and lard it expertly right under your nose. It was touching to see how he loved his meat. If pianists are born with a musical gift, André’s gift was to make a piece of tenderloin sing. He spent all his school years in the butcher shop, under the sign with the family name painted in blood red letters on a fuchsia background. Upon the arrival of their offspring, Loïc, his father, and Fernande, his mother (a direct descendant of a line of charcutiers from the île de Molène, who had created the signature sausage of that name), decided not to tamper with the principle of an education handed down from one generation to the next. So Loïc took it upon himself to teach the boy his vowels and consonants. Hacking up a side of beef with his cleaver, he would make André repeat out loud the words written on the panels on the shop walls, featuring cows, sheep, pigs and horses, neatly drawn in ink and divided into their various parts. A as in Abdomen, B as in Brisket, C as in Cutlet, D as in Duck (Plomeur’s also sold fowl), E as in Entrails, F as in Filet Mignon, G as in Gigot, H as in Ham, I as in Indigestion …

Fernande taught him to write. Thus he became as familiar with scallops, mince, rack, chop, loin, shank, haunch and cutlet of veal as other children were with Gargantua or Snow-White. No one ever told him a story. What use were those fairy tales people crammed down their children’s throats from a very young age, thought Fernande, except to clutter their little minds and enrich the writers? André went to bed every night with a marrow bone to nibble on. Naturally his first word wasn’t the sweetly lisped “Papa” or “Mama” one usually expects—generally cited as indisputable proof of the human heart’s predisposition to name the one or the other: no, not at all. After the usual gurgles and onomatopoeic babbling, the day Fernande decided to wean her little munchkin by firmly tucking away her tits, the latter uttered a single word which would go down forever in the family lore: “Beefsteak!” “No,” she replied sensibly, pointing out on her white skin where he had gone wrong. Similarly, when it came to arithmetic, Fernande wasted no time on abstractions. For his first sums, there were no counting beads, no wooden puzzles to assemble, no writing slate. From the time he was little she let him play with the coins she religiously sorted every night. Thus he very soon learned to tell the difference between francs and centimes, and by the same token revealed an innate business sense, that is, for the way meat is converted into currency. André never went to Sunday school. His folks showed no more emotion over a bleeding Christ on the cross than over a side of veal fresh from the slaughterhouse. Meat, whether human or animal, meant profit, not transcendent matter. The chiming church bells rang only to give the time of day, for that matter, and for a long time André thought that church on Sunday was to the faithful what the slaughterhouse was to cows and pigs on Saturday. On his thirteenth birthday he discovered love. André was precocious in that department. Not that he was particularly tormented by it, nor handsome to the point of tormenting others; on the contrary. Blond, with a low brow, round eyes rimmed with lashes so pale he looked almost albino, he had a slack mouth and a flabby, receding, prematurely triple chin. His arms, plump and short, seemingly without elbows, appeared to be welded directly to his trunk, without any articulation, as did his legs. Often, when he was happy, he would palpate his own heart with his stubby, greasy fingers, not without a sense of even more profound joy in feeling, under his ribs, his own entrecôtes. But he was pleasing enough just as he was, the kid, notwithstanding his lurid pink skin or gummy hair, which, even if he took care to shampoo it every Lord’s Day, invariably returned to its natural greasy state the next day. Having your hands stuck in meat all day long, as Fernande liked to point out, doesn’t exactly improve your cholesterol levels.

Martin Provost

Beefsteak

Jeannine was the first to arouse his manly proclivity. On that fateful day, young André had just brought a cup of chicken soup to his parents, both in bed with strep throat, when the doorbell sounded its happy little ding. Jeannine Le Meur worked a stall in the market, and she definitely had a gift for snaring men. There’s no doubt that she also had the gift of second sight, because as soon as she saw the young butcher, her flesh began clamoring for a taste of his. Although in those days the Ogino (or “rhythm”) method was the only contraception available, it did not stop one from having dangerous urges. A few bristles barely a deeper gold than the hair on his head glinted on André’s upper lip, leading Jeannine to conclude that puberty had begun. She threw herself upon him, and made him close up shop. Once the shop’s metal shutter was lowered, the seductress performed her business right there on the old tile floor, amongst the piles of dog scraps, the marrow bones and the blocks of lard. Her fine ass rolled around in the sawdust as she introduced the youngster to the pleasures of the flesh—that flesh I mean, the one that, suddenly coming alive, began to sing under her fingers. Heretofore the young man’s curiosity had just brought him to fondle the occasional chicken’s backside, or to canoodle with a cow’s udder, and when his father returned from the slaughterhouse to the butcher shop with armloads of offal (Fernande, arms crossed, sternly waiting for the ingredients of her famous sausages), André never suspected that the pig’s organs his sainted mother fried up in a pan with pearl onions could have the same function as those rattling around inside his pants. In discovering Jeannine, he discovered the mysteries of the heart. She, delighted at being loved all the way to her entrails, realized that she had discovered a true artist in the butcher, and sang the praises of his great genius all over the Finistère. Consequently, street markets from Quimper to Le Faou, from Landerneau to Brest and from Plougonvelin to Roscoff, began buzzing with rumors of a young butcher who had the gift of making the flesh sing. Let’s not forget that André—like Mozart—was descended from a line of ancestors whose genes were passed down to him through the ages. His glory was not solely a matter of his own talent. It can take several generations of musicians to create a great composer. The war of 1914 having swept off all the men of the canton, Jeannine soon made André’s reputation. Within a few months, a goodly number of the women of Quimper exposed their most secret places to his celebrated fingering. That’s a fact. Although nothing in his physique predisposed the very young butcher to such success, in his hands a woman’s flesh would begin to sing. Very soon, the queue of housewives stretched from Plomeur’s butcher shop to Boénec’s bakery, then from Boénec’s bakery to the fishmonger Magadur, from the fishmonger Magadur to Fashions of Paris, and from Fashions of Paris to the cathedral square.

The good parents Plomeur took the crowds at their door in stride. They attributed their good fortune to their marital alliance linking North and South Finistère. Without Fernande, Quimper would never have sampled the sausages of Molène. But when the local society ladies who normally sent their servants to do the shopping started appearing in person, Solange Coétmieux for example, the subprefect’s wife, or the Countess of Kergaradec herself, who ordered her royal carriage to stop in front of Plomeur’s and went to stand in line like everyone else, Loïc and Fernande were overcome with a kind of mystical excitement. What if an angel had passed this way to replenish their cash box? It must be said that the war of 1914 went on and on. Three years had gone by and early enthusiasm for the war had had time to fade. Then the lonely, the war widows and the ones who might as well be widows, all those poor women, paupers born with nothing and ladies born with everything, all followed suit, standing in the queue at Plomeur’s to get their meat. And when André’s stubby fingers with their ragged nails began expertly dressing the shoulder of beef, the hanger steak or the flank steak, the aspirants would throng up to the counter, hoping for the best wares by showing him their own.

Martin Provost

Beefsteak

Yves Ravey

Kidnapping with Ransom

Max and Jerry haven’t seen each other since Jerry left the family home for Afghanistan. Max, his brother, is still working as an accountant in a metal stamping firm. When one evening Jerry passes illegally through customs ostensibly to spend a few hours with his family, it’s really because he and Max are pursuing a goal that should make them a lot of money. The plan cannot fail. Even if it means resorting to extreme measures.

Publisher: Les Éditions de Minuit Date of Publication: September 2010 Foreign Rights Manager: Catherine Vercruyce direction@leseditionsdeminuit.fr

Translation: Pascale Torracinta pascale_torracinta@hotmail.com

Biography

Yves Ravey was born in 1953 in Besançon. His latest novels, published by Les Éditions de Minuit, include Cutter, 2009; Bambi Bar, 2008; L’Épave, 2006; Pris au piège, 2005.

Publications

The night of his return, I crossed the Swiss frontier to meet my brother at the train. When he saw me, Jerry put down his suitcase to embrace me, to hug me tight, and tell me he had been waiting a good half hour. I understood then that nothing had changed since he left twenty years ago. And immediately, although I forgot nothing of the bond between us—our childhood, father and mother— tension came between us. Still, we remained on the platform and held each other a long time. But when he loosened his embrace, he asked if I was still willing to kidnap my boss’s daughter, who had rejected my advances, and I nodded. From the train station we went to the mountain. At the bottom of the slopes, a ski instructor and former colleague of mine opened the door for me to the maintenance shed of the funicular and Jerry put his belongings in a backpack. Then I helped put on his equipment. The ski instructor put the suitcase in a storeroom and handed me an ignition key. I packed our ski touring gear on the sled and we left for the high altitude restaurant on a snowmobile owned by the Romandie ski lift company. We made the last part on skis. When he reached the summit, Jerry asked to rest for a while, taking shelter behind the chairlift terminal. It started to snow. I waited for a sign from him to start down the other side. But Jerry wanted to lead the way and I let him pass in front of me, advising him to ski more cautiously. After all these years, he could have lost his mountain skills. We followed the edge of a steep field, then cut across to access the Northern face on the French side. The snow became twice as heavy. We were forced to go back. Jerry pulled his hat down over his ears. I caught a glimpse of his backpack, then

nothing. I followed his tracks but you couldn’t see beyond a few feet. At the bottom I heard Jerry’s cough, then the click-clacking of his sticks against the rocks, proof he was already safe under the fir trees. We were far from the slopes. I asked him if he knew the way, and why he hadn’t gone right, instead of taking us so close by the alpine chalets. Down below, those are the chalets, aren’t they, Jerry? Perhaps we haven’t climbed high enough? He answered that he didn’t trust the border guards. He had taken off his mittens. Before putting them back on, he searched the side pocket of his parka. The snow is supposed to stop, he told me, pointing at the illuminated screen of his cell phone. I looked at the screen. I said: We could have gone diagonally through the field … Jerry took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. I turned to him. You’re not going to smoke here, are you? And why shouldn’t I smoke? Because no one needs to know we’re here. Really, no one at all. He lit up anyway. He said: I’ve spent winters in the mountains in Afghanistan. A fire is easy to spot, I agree with you, Max. But not the flame of a cigarette lighter. He raised his head toward the field. The snow had stopped. We could see the moon. He told me: See the posts …? Up there …? That’s the first leg. We’ll need to save our energy. He adjusted the straps of his backpack while giving advice and talking to me as though I didn’t know the mountain better than he did, as if I’d never worked on the ski patrol for the ski lift, and had not been a skiing instructor before becoming an accountant. In fact, it must have amused him to talk to me again in that tone of voice, after so many years. The snow was filling the tops of my shoes. I buttoned my gaiters. But Jerry was already climbing. So I followed. Reaching the middle of the field, I scrutinized the tree line. Jerry was breathing heavily. He tightened the bottoms of his trousers by pulling on a cord above the clasp of his shoes. He said: We’ll be an hour behind schedule, perhaps two. But it will be fine. I replied it wasn’t fine, that things would only work if we kept to the schedule. We had two hours left, no more, no less. He added: It will be less, Max. He asked me if I had my breath back. Of course, I’ve got my breath back! I answered. We’ve been talking here in the middle of the slope for ten minutes! He looked out at the row of pines. According to him, we had to get closer to the edge of the woods, then cut across northward. We started back up. Close to the summit, he reminded me that he had often crossed the border here and that the mountain didn’t change. He said: The tall tree over there, you saw it twenty years ago; well, it’s always the same tree. We crossed the last bit of flat terrain without exhausting ourselves. Reaching the fir tree, he looked down at the little mounds of snow blown by the wind. Then, facing the slope, off he went, knees bent, before starting his turn.

I followed, lifting the tips of my skis. My turns were wider. Again I lost his tracks only to find them further below: He was waiting for me at the base of a rock, eyebrows covered with frost. We went on skiing downhill along the gentler slope of the valley, to where the path to the customs checkpoint meets the top of the cable car. He turned off along the clearing. In the newly fallen snow. I could see the shiny triangle sewn on his backpack. He bent down under a branch, going slow in deep snow, until he reached the first ice sheets. We took a break in front of the circular sign that said: black diamond trail. Dawn was breaking. Jerry went first. He strung one turn after another across the ice. A few seconds later, I caught sight of him in front of the trees; then he disappeared through a corridor between the cliffs. I went on. Sideslipping, with no problem. But at the entrance to the corridor, I went off the trail by mistake. My shoulder hit the rock face. At the same time, I heard the click of my bindings. My downhill ski came off. I hit the snow, waited for the sliding to stop, lying on my back going headfirst across the slope, groping for my ski. I found it stuck by a stump. I put my ski back on. I went down side-stepping, step by step. My brother watched me hesitate between the trunks. Did you hurt yourself, Max? No, it didn’t hurt. I thought you’d fallen. I didn’t fall! I went off the trail. All right, Max, you went off the trail. I saw some smoke above the peaks. He told me: We are just above the sawmill. Then we tackled the slope, sideslipping between the rocks. At the bottom of the slope, Jerry wanted to know if the van was parked at the agreed-upon spot. I nodded and asked him if he thought it could work. He sighed: It’s too late to worry. I know, Jerry. You don’t ask yourself those kinds of questions! From the back of the sawmill, we could see the cable car terminal in the distance. And, further south, the lights of the houses. I took my skis off. So did Jerry. He tied the straps of his sticks around his wrists and lifted his skis onto his shoulders. So, the van, where is it? Not more than two hundred yards from here, Jerry. We walked along the tarmac, the buckles of our bindings undone, dragging our feet. Jerry’s shoes knocked heavily along the ground. The Ford Transit was parked behind a shed at the first intersection after the sawmill. I took out the keys and opened the door. Then I handed my brother a pair of regular shoes. Back home Jerry first inspected our parents’ bedroom and approved of the way I had set things up. But he insisted on making sure everything was in order, that I hadn’t made any mistakes.

Yves Ravey

Kidnapping with Ransom

Later on, after a hasty breakfast in the kitchen, he took out his pack of cigarettes. But his fingers were shaking. He could barely manage to grip the filter. I noticed him shivering. I cleared the table in silence. He shivered some more. Bring the bag closer to me, please, Max. From an outside pocket, he took out a tube of pills. He opened it and took two tablets that he swallowed without water, telling me they were for malarial fever. I went to the cellar to fetch wood for the boiler. When I came back, I heard a metallic click. I jumped when I saw the weapon in his hand. I stayed with my back to the wall. He said: Desert Eagle. Fifty caliber magnum. Made in Israel. He went to the window to scan the zone around the dirt track that stretched from the house to the main road, before putting his gun away inside his sweater at his side. He turned to me. But I didn’t say anything. At 7:20 sharp, I took the Ford out of the courtyard and we left for the other side of town. I stopped at the intersection of the ski slopes and the sawmill. Then I parked the van along the road, behind a wood pile, hidden from view. It was barely dawn. Jerry was banging on the windshield. I suddenly saw his face. I must have dozen off at the wheel. I opened the door and went out for a short walk. When I came back, Jerry was waiting next to the embankment. He gave me the final instructions. I climbed back behind the wheel and moved the Ford. Parallel to the road, still behind the wood pile. Then he made a sign. I lowered the window on the driver’s side. He told me: Turn off the lights. I looked at the houses down below. Not a single light was on. They’re all asleep over there. He looked back at the sawmill. Then, further on, before the cable car, we saw the chalet of Salomon Pourcelot, my boss. She won’t be long now, I said. I switched the engine back on and turned on the heat, pushing the lever to the maximum. He told me: Switch off the engine. I’m cold. Switch the engine off. And keep the window open. There’s no risk, Jerry! Turn off the key, please. I switched off the engine. We waited. He kicked some stones. She’s going to be alone? Are you sure? She’s always alone. Sometimes with Sauvonnet. But not today. How do you know? He’s on the night shift.

My brother emerged from the shadow. He moved nearer … Got the rope? I opened the glove compartment. No rope. Some sticky tape. We needed rope. He pulled out his gun. He passed it from one hand to the other. Where did you find a weapon like that, Jerry?

Yves Ravey

Kidnapping with Ransom

Olivia Rosenthal

What Do Reindeer Do When Christmas Is Over?

“You have a lot in common with animals. Moreover, you’re fond of them; you love animals. You know tons of things about the way they behave, their habits, the ways they reproduce. This book tells their story and yours. It’s the story of a young girl who believes that Santa Claus brings Christmas presents on his sleigh, and who, when the time comes, must stop believing in him. Everyone has to grow up, become an adult. Everyone has to win their independence from those around them, from their family, from society’s rules, and this is no easy task. In fact it’s impossible. In this regard, you are exactly like animals, all those animals that we imprison, that we raise, that we protect,

Publisher: Verticales Date of Publication: September 2010 Foreign Rights Manager: Anne-Solange Noble anne-solange.noble@gallimard.fr Translation: Michael Lucey mlucey@berkeley.edu

or that we eat. You too are imprisoned, carefully raised, trained, and protected. Neither you nor the animals know what to do to get out, to find freedom. There must be a way.” Olivia Rosenthal is remarkable in the ways she can weave together different voices and narrative possibilities. Showing amazing virtuosity in fragmentary composition while providing an intense emotional experience, What Do Reindeer Do When Christmas Is Over? is fiction as liberation — for its characters and for author and reader alike. The truth embodied in its characters brings about an original narrative form, taut and exact, a tale that leaves us full of questions, turmoil, and joy.

You don’t even know if you like animals, but you absolutely do want one. You want a beast. It’s one of the first manifestations of your desire, a desire all the more powerful because it remains unsatisfied.

Biography

Olivia Rosenthal has published seven previous works of fiction with Éditions Verticales. She is also the author of two stories that are part of a larger project on “Architecture through Words.” Rosenthal has also worked in various dramatic genres including a play, Les félins m’aiment bien, published by Actes Sud-Papiers (2004) and in recent years has been collaborating with filmmakers, writers, and visual artists in a variety of artistic spaces and festivals. publications Among her most recent novels published by Éditions Verticales are On n’est pas là pour disparaître (We’re Not Here Just to Disappear), 2007 (prix Wepler) (paperback ed., Gallimard, “Folio” collection, 2009); Les Fantaisies spéculatives de J. H. le sémite (The Speculative Imaginings of the Semite J. H.), 2005; Les Sept Voies de la désobéissance (The Seven Ways of Disobedience), 2004; Puisque nous sommes vivants (Because We Are Alive), 2000.

Tigrons, leopons, pumapards, jaglions, tiguars, jaguleps, leotigs, tiglons, liards, leonards. These are not only rare words; they refer to creatures of flesh and blood, born and bred in animal nurseries, with the help and under the watchful eye of researchers determined to ensure the survival of the great predators. These strange beasts cannot really be considered wild, given that properly speaking they don’t exist in nature; they don’t belong to any officially classified species. It follows that it must be perfectly legal to purchase them. Still, we should keep in mind the danger to one’s life that comes with welcoming one of these specimens into our home, especially since scientific studies have shown that interspecies offspring are given to frequent and quite serious mental difficulties. You’ve been told that you really didn’t want to come out of your mother’s belly. There are even photographs of you seated proudly between the legs of your progenitrix, with your head up. What is known as the breech position would be the first sign of your willfulness.

Now we might ask what the words “mental difficulties” could possibly mean for an individual who results from the coupling of a tiger and a lioness, a tigress and a lion, a lioness and a leopard, a leopard and a puma, a jaguar and a leopard, or other multiple combinations for which, if need be, new names could be invented. Perhaps the observers who come into daily contact with these beasts will have noted abnormal tendencies towards docility. This could explain how they might possibly be classified as domestic animals, and therefore why one might be permitted to share one’s abode with them. Anything is possible when it comes to hybrids. You’ve also been told that you were a magnificent baby with a well-formed head and a smiling, round face—doubtless due to the fact that you were born by Caesarean section, thus sparing you the slightest physical effort. According to family lore, your docile temperament would be the result of this indolence. To know which animal you have the right to own or to domesticate you must consult laws, codes, decrees, standing orders that create distinctions between species, races, and varieties of domestic animals, wild animals, endangered species, endangered species in the wild, protected species, species considered to be dangerous, protected species that are considered to be dangerous. You don’t much care for wild animals, you prefer more familiar ones, those that live with humans as part of the family; those are the ones you want. Thanks to public legal codes, anyone can determine if he or she is breaking the law by keeping a boa constrictor at home, or a bug, or a marsh frog of the subspecies Rivan 92, or a yellow-tailed woolly monkey, or a moon bear, or a cheetah (acinonyx jubatus)—such a gentle companion while young, when it will jump up on your bed and lick your face before curling up at your feet. Gentleness does not work as a firm criterion for distinguishing between wild and domesticated animals. For a long time you were convinced your mother had watched Rosemary’s Baby, the film by Roman Polanski, while she was pregnant with you. Years later, when you saw the movie, you conjured up the terrible anxiety she must have felt waiting to see if her baby would turn out to be man or beast. Is it possible to love something you hardly know, something you never get close to, something you never see, never touch, only imagine? Is imagination the basis of love?

All through the earliest years of your life, despite your docility and perfectly regular skull, you showed a tendency to put your life in danger by violently rocking your crib or by screaming vehemently. You retain no memory of this period when you expressed yourself with an abandon that has since disappeared. In certain wolf kennels, where the beasts being raised are kept behind bars and howl at the incursion of the smallest unknown guest, one sometimes finds both wolves and “hybrids.” The term, used by breeders to reassure visitors and to tone down the apparent ferocity of the animals, doesn’t always have the desired effect.

Olivia Rosenthal

What Do Reindeer Do When Christmas Is Over?

Already at age three you were asking for a pet that would put some distance between you and the companionship of humans. You had grasped the fact that your teddy bear was not a living being. Giving it kisses, pulling its ears, pulling out its hair therefore seemed only mediocre forms of pleasure. Everyone loves teddy bears. Many people also love animals. It’s only those people who use animals, make a living from them, raise them, capture and sell them, hunt them, or kill them who do not speak of love. When it comes to animals, love is a luxury one may or may not choose to offer oneself. Not everyone has the good fortune of being able to love animals. You really want to be lucky, to be like everyone else. You really want to be able to say, “I love animals.” Saying something like that, after all, needs no justification; love is sufficient unto itself and exempts us from everything else. You love animals. Already at the age of three you were asking for an animal, a little ball of fur that would be entirely dependent on you, that would belong to you, be under your control, in your hands, under your power, yours alone. Your parents refused to give you one, believing you would be unable to take care of it, thinking they would be obliged to do your work for you; you somehow had the impression, without really knowing why, that the reasons for their categorical refusal were deeper. Undomesticated animal species are those that have not undergone any modification as a result of human selection. On the other hand, domesticated species have been shaped by the pressure of continuous, constant selection. This very pressure has resulted in the formation of a species, that is to say, of a group of animals with acquired stable, genetically transmissible temperaments, and which cannot naturally produce viable offspring with other species.

Rosemary’s Baby tells the story of a woman who has horrible nightmares throughout her pregnancy. She cannot quite remember the circumstances under which she conceived her child, and so finally she begins to wonder if her husband might not have drugged her and then turned her over to a horrible beast who coupled with her. You would like to know what effect viewing this film might have had on your mother’s pregnancy. In legal parlance, “offspring” designates a newly born animal, the result of the copulation of two other animals, which are anthropomorphically labeled “parents.” When there are no parents around, it’s because they have been killed or captured by predators, including humans. It also happens, in many species, that an animal is abandoned by its parents at birth, either because it is not viable or simply too vulnerable, or, in the opposite case, because it possesses innately and from its earliest days all the necessary qualities to ensure its independence and survival. Should animals that have been left on their own in the wild be thought of as abandoned or simply as independent? Unless being abandoned is what is required in order to become independent. Like many children, more than wanting to buy a pet, you want to adopt an animal born in nature but abandoned by its parents. You get a sharp reprimand from your father each time you express this desire. His anger is incomprehensible to you. You bring it up again and again.

The world is woven of words. By this text—at once maternal and coercive —we are all kept safe and sound. You need your parents. You could die in your sleep, or by getting something stuck in your throat, or by sticking your fingers into an electrical outlet, or by knocking over a pot of boiling water, by using a blunt object in the wrong way, by toppling out of an open window, falling into a swimming pool. You are in constant danger; people must be looking out for you day and night. Accidents happen in a flash. You are under the watchful eyes of your parents. Wolf kennels are normally located far from cities so that the howling of the wolves won’t bother nearby residents. The breeders, on the other hand, must live close by the kennels, both in order to keep track of the comings and goings of their animals, and also because all forms of training require regular contact with those being trained.

Olivia Rosenthal

What Do Reindeer Do When Christmas Is Over?

The howls you let out in the first few years of your life have left no trace in your memory. On the other hand, you remember quite precisely the fear you could read in your mother’s eyes when you were crawling around on all fours under the bed, or when you were trying to hide so she couldn’t find you. There are no wild animals, only ones under protection.

In France, until the passage of the law 76-629 on July 10, 1976, which introduced the idea of natural patrimony and of the preservation of species, flora and fauna were considered res nullius. That is to say, they were considered as belonging to no one. When something belongs to no one, it can be appropriated by anyone. Once someone has taken possession of it, the proprietor becomes responsible for his or her property, as is indicated by article 1385 of the Civil Code: “The person who owns an animal, or the person who makes use of one during the period of that usage, is responsible for any damages caused by the animal, whether the animal be in his or her charge, or escaped, or lost.” Because of this law, the terms of which neither your father nor your mother have any exact knowledge, but which they assert by some kind of intuition, you are not allowed to take in any animal, abandoned or otherwise. Were you to do so, you would become responsible for it, and you are not deemed capable of this. Indeed, at the age of four, responsibilities cannot be made to stick.

Alexandra Schwartzbrod

Farewell Jerusalem

2017. Kazan, Russia. Mounir prepares for the Hadj, the great pilgrimage. On the eve of his departure for Mecca, the site explodes before his very eyes. In the airplane, he is seized by convulsions and dies shortly after his arrival, unaware that he has unleashed upon the Holy City the most terrible scourge, one believed to have been eradicated since the Middle Ages: the bubonic plague. The bacteria spreads with an uncontrollable speed among the worshippers. The deaths number in the thousands. In the panic, a rumor spreads, crossing the borders all the way into Jerusalem: the Jews have poisoned the waters of Mecca. Palestinians and Israeli Arabs begin reprisals against the Jews. Israel erupts in violence and Jerusalem falls.

Publisher: Stock Date of Publication: April 2010 Foreign Rights Manager: Marleen Seegers mseegers@editions-stock.fr

Translation: Julia Di Liberti dilibert@cod.edu

Biography

Alexandra Schwartzbrod is a journalist for the newspaper Libération. For nearly three years during the last Intifada she worked as their correspondent, living in Jerusalem. Based on her experiences there she wrote her novel Balagan (Chaos) which came out in 2003 and was awarded the Prix du polar sncf. Publications Among her most recent works at Stock: La Cuve du diable (The Devil’s Vat), 2007; Petite mort (Small Death), 2005 (paperback ed., Le Livre de Poche, 2007).

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The catastrophe upsets the chessboard of international politics and in its wake individual destinies change forever. Through them, history takes shape: from Kazan to Mecca, from New York to Tel-Aviv, from Washington to Istanbul, from Catania to Dubai. Their world, our world will never be the same. And what if it were true? From hope to illusion, assassination to reprisals; for sixty-two years the fate of the Jewish State has never ceased to be at the center of world conflict. A warning cry or conspiracy theory: this fiction sends shivers down our spines.

At the end of the table, Suleiman Pasha was fidgeting with a Kleenex he’d used to grab the burning handle of the teapot. He seemed to be under enormous stress. — My friends … this is a difficult time. Even if this hospital has expanded considerably, it’s not equipped to properly handle all the people who will need our care. Incidentally, are we now certain of the nature of the illness affecting the pilgrims? Chedid? The Egyptian shrank back in his chair. — Initially I did some spinal taps to analyze the spinal fluid, the only way to determine the origin of the bacteria. But I found nothing. Because all the patients had serious respiratory problems, I ordered chest x-rays, and on each of them we found an anomaly. That’s what we need to look at. We’re in the process of getting some bronchial endoscopies done, and, of course, we’re analyzing sputum samples. But something’s wrong. We’ve discovered traces of Yersinia pestis, the bacillus of the plague … Pasha jumped. — Please tell me you’re joking. — Unfortunately not. That being said, with all due respect, while this hospital relies on the most advanced equipment, it is not set up to deal with such precise analyses. We should send some samples to a laboratory affiliated with the World Health Organization, I think the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, the most specialized, or the Pasteur Institute in Paris, the closest … Suleiman Pasha was silent for a few moments. When he started speaking again, there was a slight quiver in his voice.

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—If we do that, we’re alerting the health authorities, and we will be ostracized by the international community. I would prefer that we try and work this out ourselves, just as we did with the Indonesian … At the other end of the table, a Moroccan doctor seconded the chief of staff. — Can you imagine? What a gift for the Westerners? Muslims from the entire world confined to the perimeters of Mecca! We are not going to give them that pleasure… Chedid jumped up quickly. — The disease is progressing at a phenomenal speed and you’re talking about hiding it from the whole world! First of all, as for discretion, I have to laugh … you’re forgetting cell phones and the internet. The pilgrims are alerting the entire world this minute while we’re talking. And believe me, people will be pointing their fingers at us if we don’t take the initiative here … Pasha put his hands up to his mouth, his eyes fixed on the bay window, and beyond it to the blue heavens above, as if he were waiting for a sign. Then he turned to Chedid. — I have to admit I hadn’t thought of that. I’ll alert the WHO. I’ll also ask the Minister of Health to charter a special plane for Paris. But I beg of you, at this point, please don’t mention the word plague. We will literally be considered the scourge of the entire world. For now we’ll only say we suspect meningitis. From here on, we will need to stop this epidemic. By any means possible. A glacial silence hung over the table, punctuated by the air conditioning and the tulip shaped lamps swaying without the slightest hint of a breeze. — Whatever this turns out to be—meningitis or even—I hate to even think about it—plague, we are going to need astronomical quantities of Rifampicin, if only to offer preventative treatment to anybody who came in contact with the victims. — And … why is that a problem? — I went to check our inventory; we must be down by half. Suleiman Pasha turned white. — I beg your pardon? He turned towards a massive man in a red and white checkered keffiyeh. The supply chief. — Sami? How is this possible? The man spread out his hands in a gesture of helplessness. — It’s not my fault. I’ve been waiting for a delivery for weeks. I didn’t think we would need it so soon. A man came bursting through the door. Pasha’s assistant, red-faced and dripping with sweat. — Doctor, doctor … something terrible is happening … — Now what? — The worshippers … they … they’re accusing the Jews of having poisoned our water.

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— The Jews? Just what we needed. What is this insanity ? Chedid rushed to the bay window and watched the crowd running in all directions. He turned towards Pasha. — What are we going to do? The head of Health Affairs raised his palms towards the sky. — I have no idea. Pray, maybe. After all, we’ve got a direct line from here … Alexandra Schwartzbrod

* It was the time of day when, on the cobblestones, shrimp heads arrived to tickle the squids’ eyes: The fish sellers dumped out entire buckets of a reddish water which ran into the cracks, carrying with it scales, fish guts, and bones, all of which the Sicilians preferred be left in the stalls but which, sooner or later, ended up under their feet. Every day, at the same time, stationed on his balcony, Victor Herbelot reveled in the spectacle of these events. It was never the same. Depending on the weather, the season, the political situation, the pickings were more or less slim, the crowd more or less dense. When the longtime head of the Sicilian mafia had been arrested near the village of Corleone, a hundred kilometers inland, fish and shellfish had seemed bigger and brighter; the air of the Catania Market was charged with electricity, as if it needed to be worthy of the incident making the forgotten island the center of the world. For the third time this morning, Victor Herbelot attempted to manipulate the joystick which allowed him to answer the phone. A slight press of his index finger, and he was able to communicate thanks to a chip implanted in his ear canal some months earlier. It didn’t take much, but for this he had to summon energy all the way down from his toes which clenched the edge of his chair as if to plant themselves into the ground. Swearing, he fell back in his wheelchair. His body had given out on him a long time ago but he refused to admit it. His entire life, he had fought against the weakening of the human organism, the attacks of hostile pathogenic agents … How could he have become this impotent body which only reluctantly obeyed the commands of his brain? His mind still worked, worse still, it churned constantly, repulsed slightly more each day by the carcass that refused to follow it. He was two people in one, an appalling situation for him as he had never seen his mind and body as separate entities. To calm himself, he let his gaze wander to the red canopies that the fish sellers placed above their stalls to protect the fish from the sun’s rays. Even in winter the sun could spoil the fish. By dint of imposed immobility, his skin had become insensitive but his other senses seemed to develop more with inactivity. From his balcony, he could smell—literally—the arrival of red mullets and mackerels and immediately

Farewell Jerusalem

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began to salivate, anticipating the taste they would have. In the same way, he was able to tell the order in which the fish sellers arrived just though the simple sound of their delivery van wheels bumping up the cobblestones. He knew whether it was Stefano or Guido who set up first. This sensitivity to noise made him certain that the phone was about to ring again. No, not this time—this time he wouldn’t miss the call. He engaged his abdominal muscles, or what was left of them, inflated his chest, and in a single breath, undertook to release the little strength he could muster in his arm, his hand, and the end of his index finger. The finger quivered, trembled, and landed on the joystick just as the telephone began to ring. Exhausted, he panted more than he spoke: — Herbelot … — Professeur Herbelot? Uh … It’s Youssef Chedid. Am I bothering you …? The old man’s face relaxed. He had recognized the voice immediately. — Youssef … what a pleasant surprise … Give me a few seconds to catch my breath. — I can call back a little later if you prefer … — Absolutely not. How long has it been … four years? Five years? A youthful laugh burst through the wire; he savored it like a whiff of one of the Cohibas he used to allow himself for special occasions, which he no longer had the right to smoke even in his dreams. — You’ve forgotten … I’ve been practicing at the el-Azhar clinic for seven years now. The last time we talked I had just started working there. — I remember that well. An epidemic … let’s see … an epidemic of what exactly? — Meningitis. And I’m afraid I’m calling you for the same reason this time. — Good God ! You weren’t able to contain it? I thought a … A new burst of laughter interrupted him. — Professor, the entire population of Cairo would have died if that meningitis epidemic were still raging. No, this time I’m in Mecca and we have a problem … a big problem. His voice had hardened. — I’m listening. At the Institut Pasteur, Dr. Herbelot had been known for his ability to quickly grasp and resolve a wide variety of problems without showing the slightest hint of nerves or the least bit of worry. His students appreciated this quality in him. He was straight-forward, solid, and reliable. Since his retirement to Sicily, a lifelong dream of his, he continued to get calls from the four corners of the world. He took pride in saying that both bacteria and fish knew how to slip through nets and that he was there precisely for that reason: to catch them. A scientist who doubled as a poet. — Professor …

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His voice was shaking. This was not at all like Youssef Chedid, thought Herbelot, one of the most solid doctors whom he’d ever had the pleasure of meeting. — Those who’ve come to pray at Mecca are falling ill one after the other. I was called in as back up with about ten others to try and get a handle on what’s happening. At first the symptoms pointed me towards meningitis … The silence stretched from Mecca to Catania. — Professor Herbelot ? Are you still there ? — Yes, yes … I’m listening. Is that it ? At the other end of the line he heard a throat clearing. — No, of course not. I wouldn’t have bothered you for that. It’s just that I’m not sure that it’s still a question of meningitis. The victims are coughing noticeably. I’ve analyzed their spit and it didn’t clarify anything very much … I’ve found traces of Yersinia pestis. I’ve sent samples to Pasteur, and I’m waiting for the results. The bigger problem though is that we’re really low on Rifampicin. If the diagnosis is confirmed, I won’t even have enough to treat those who were close to the infected people and, God knows, there are many of them who have come in contact with the disease. Below him, where the fishmongers were watering down their stalls, Victor Herbelot realized that the trattoria La Paglia would be delivering his dinner soon. He was betting on pasta with alici, those small anchovies that he’d seen glistening on the ice since dawn. When the professor began once again to speak, his voice seemed to be coming from the beyond …

Alexandra Schwartzbrod

Farewell Jerusalem

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Karine Tuil Date of Publication: September 2010 Foreign Rights Manager: Heidi Warneke, hwarneke@grasset.fr Translation : Madeleine Velguth velguth@sbcglobal.net

Six Months, Six Days

In present-day Germany: Juliana Kant, Germany’s wealthiest woman, married, reserved, apparently “virtuous,” has an affair with a man who has all the characteristics of a sexual predator, Herb Braun. After a few months, progressing from clandestine rendezvous to secret meetings in hotel rooms, the man threatens to reveal their affair to the press: all their lovemaking has been taped. Contrary to all expectations, the heiress brings charges against the gigolo. He is sent to prison, morality is almost intact and the money is safe. A sex scandal? A run-of-the-mill case of sleeping around that turns into sordid blackmail? Karine Tuil unveils the hidden

Publisher: Grasset

Biography

Born in Paris in 1972, Karine Tuil has written eight novels. Publications By Grasset, among her most recent novels: La Domination, 2008; Douce France, 2007; Quand j’étais drôle, 2005; Tout sur mon frère, 2003. These titles are all available in paperback from Le Livre de Poche.

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face of this high-risk affair: who created such a vast German fortune? Why was Juliana’s grandfather, Magda Goebbels’ first husband and an acknowledged Nazi, not arrested at the end of the war? Is it known that Magda’s adoptive father was a Jew whom she disowned and then erased from her memory? Why did the Kants never authorize an inquiry into their industrial activities in Hitler’s Germany? Was Braun’s father really a former inmate of the Stöcken concentration camp, or is that a false trail? Did his son decide to avenge him by sexually humiliating the pretty blond beast? Who is Herb Braun really? What does he want? Are sons responsible for the sins of their fathers?

I saw everything, heard everything, for I was there when Juliana met Herb Braun for the first time, in that luxury hotel in the heart of the Tyrolian Alps. A hotel for the stressed wealthy promising light, relaxation, and rest in mystical terms. Germans, mostly, come to purify themselves. Their colon gets cleaned out; that makes them less nasty. We arrived on a Monday, each in his little sandcolored room. Scenery to dazzle your eyes: snow-white mountains and in the middle, this establishment, all plate glass windows, to see and be seen. Juliana had asked me to accompany her; I always traveled with the Kants, despite my age. What still tied them to me? Reciprocal affection, a certain intellectual complicity? I’d been so close to the father, so loyal, sacrificing everything to him, seeking to please him. As the years went by, I’d made myself indispensable. I knew without daring to express it what my devotion betrayed: I wanted to be part of the clan. I had succeeded beyond my expectations … During the first two days of vacation, Juliana spent her mornings and afternoons drinking depurative teas. In the evening, she had a light supper of soup and went to bed early, at 9:00pm. As for me, I was in my room sipping Scotch whisky while reading Günter Grass’ memoirs—his Peeling the Onion brought tears to my eyes. Finally, on the third day, she decided to relax next to the pool, not to swim, the air burned your skin, stinging your eyelids … The sight of water calms her—yes, behind dark glasses. A glance to the left, to the right, no one in sight, she stretched out on a chaise longue, a book in her hand. […]

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Juliana was lying there when Herb Braun appeared, dressed simply in a white bathrobe, a file folder under his arm and a vacant, evanescent air. Braun is handsome, that must be said, because it is all there, concentrated in that word: glory and tragedy, sexual attraction and dependency, all of it heralded by his mere presence, a sensuality affected by nothing, neither his little tortoiseshell glasses nor his espadrilles of white, slightly faded canvas which gave him a sporting, simple, unaffected look. He walked slowly, with a light, athletic step. There was gentleness in his biblical hero’s gaze, but a corrupting gentleness hinting at an instinct for possession and the possibility of violence. Tall, dark, slender with blue-green eyes, creamy skin, maybe 45, an approachable age. He sat down, oh not very far from her, ordered a bottle of mineral water and opened his folder. He took out photographs, large shots in color; from where I was, I saw only red, blood, it stared you in the face. Pictures of war, taken to shake up civilians who would scream to high heaven, and go to bed with full stomachs. The terrace was almost deserted. Juliana was watching him; Braun felt her gaze and put on an air of concentration while thinking only of how to approach her without rushing her. After a few minutes, he looked up at her, absorbed, scrutinizing her as if she were some kind of research subject, a smile stuck to the corner of his mouth. Did you see his teeth? Straight, white, short and perfectly aligned—a carnivorous smile. There they were, face to face, intimate before exchanging a word. Attraction, desire, the passion to come—you could see it all, from the beginning … there was nowhere to hide … Have you ever experienced that? You’re not the type to give up everything for love, that’s obvious right away … you’re scared stiff … you’re a coward, in fact. Like me. Give me a hug. Juliana looked away, like those voyeurs who walk around a body lying on the ground, looking back from time to time to see if he’s still moving … What was this woman in her prime thinking, at contact with this man smiling at her— and with what aim? Did she have a foreboding of devastation? Herb Braun’s cell phone started to ring; he got up and began to speak rather loudly of bombings, horror, that’s what he said, victims, buildings torn open; I was only half listening; war, the dead, etc. didn’t interest me. But Juliana … You should have seen her … The swaying of her body, her hands jumping like cats … in combat, against whom? “I have the photos!” he was yelling so she would hear him, it was earsplitting. Then, all at once, he ended the call abruptly. “Excuse me for speaking so loud, excuse me for bothering you, I know they recommend turning off cell phones here”—he laughed—“I’ve just come back from Georgia and …” She asked, “Are you a reporter?” “Not really.” And quickly, as though he feared being overheard, he added, “My name is Herb, Herb Braun, I’m a war photographer.”

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“And you covered which conflicts?’ “Rwanda, Bosnia, Georgia, among others … and you?” “Only family conflicts …” “Those are the worst! Let me guess: you’re a psychologist, a family mediator—no, you wouldn’t be at the pool of this hotel in the middle of the afternoon. You’re a writer, a dramatist maybe, a tragic actress?” She shook her head at each response—what was she playing at? “A psychoanalyst? A school counselor? An attorney specializing in family matters?” She laughed. Go on, admit it! Let’s get this over with! Her job was to be the daughter of Philipp Kant—well-paid, full-time, without risk of unemployment or suspension; her job was to attend general meetings without knowing their agendas, read reports that she hadn’t drawn up and honor with her presence colloquia on subjects as thrilling as The Banking Situation in Germany or The European Economic Crisis: Issues and Perspectives. “Won’t you help me out just a little?” “Let’s say I’m in business.” “And you are? You haven’t introduced yourself …” “Juliana Wittgenstein.” “Has anyone ever told you that you look like the actress Liv Ullmann?” “Yes! All the time!” “You could have made movies with Bergman!”

Karine Tuil

Six Months, Six Days

This terrified me … It wasn’t the coming infidelity that revolted me, but this total abandon, this sudden absence of self-control when she’d been taught to be wary, to keep her distance, she knew the threats: swindlers, unstable individuals, the mafia, the gutter press; at fifteen she’d been kidnapped—didn’t you know that? You’re not well informed, I was sure of it. A novice can be spotted right away. Few people remember, but for me everything has remained intact, the details, each thing in its place like the bedroom of someone who has died. Memories, they come, they go … those, in the flesh, are inscribed on the dark pages of the history of the Kants. One morning, a dozen hooded guys burst into the family home and took Juliana and her mother hostage. Former secret police torturers. Huge guys with dull peaty eyes. Trained to abuse, frighten and slash. Arrested a few hours later by the police. Her carefree life was over. Since then, she didn’t go out without being accompanied by two bodyguards. Except in this hotel, safer than a bunker. I warned her: “Juliana, watch out.” He told her that he was of German origin. That he lived in Zurich. That he had lived for a long time in Berlin, New York and London. She traveled little, hated

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flying, rarely left her native city. He spoke to her in Italian, Russian and Chinese—she spoke only German and understood English, “badly,” she added. He made her laugh, she who never laughed, so focused, perfect in her role of daughter of, eternally submissive to parental control, still at forty-five an orphan, Daddy’s girl, she even guffawed, loosening the reins when they should have been held firm, or tightened. “What are you reading?” He leaned toward her, looked at the book’s cover. “The Alchemist? It’s my favorite book!” I had a criminal impulse. A man whose favorite book was The Alchemist could not be entirely sane. And he began to talk about it, to cite excerpts bombastically, like the literary critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki presenting his latest favorite on television, he found this in it, and that, and what a marvel.

her internal agitation. When he came out of the water, after some fifteen minutes, she put her things away. He took a large bath towel embroidered with the hotel’s initials and, drying his face, he came toward her. He invited her to dine with him that evening, in the hotel. I heard everything from where I was and inwardly I was jubilant, for I knew what her answer would be—she was to have dinner with me, she’d said, Karl, this evening we’ll go into town. Oh yes! She’d told him yes, around 8 o’clock, at the hotel’s bar, and me, later, I’m tired, Karl, I’ll have dinner in my room. That’s how it all started.

Karine Tuil

Six Months, Six Days

Braun could have staged this meeting elsewhere, in the main dining room, in a hall leading to the bedrooms or in the heart of the vast park with a view of the chalky mountains, but he had chosen to approach her near the pool. At a first meeting, people try to appear in their best light, don’t they? Look at you: with your sweater tied around your waist, whom are you trying to charm? We would make a fine-looking couple, but you’re not my type. And that long hair falling onto your shoulders … it looks sloppy … Pull it back! Although … I do like those black bangs across your forehead … You look like those strippers gyrating in dive bars for a few dollars slipped into their polyester panties. What’s the matter now? From me, that’s a compliment. Juliana is quite feminine—oh a classic beauty: a little suit, low-heeled sandals with rounded toes, of course, hair in a smooth bob, not much makeup, earrings, often, clips that she buys at Chanel, nothing more. That day she was wearing a black dress that hid her calloused knees, ballerina flats and an anthracite gray sweater flecked with green, matching her eyes. Braun asked her if she intended to swim. “No, it’s too cold and …” “Come on, the water is delightful …” “No.” Juliana won’t swim. She hates her body. I don’t like to display myself in a swimsuit either, I’m too thin, and even at home, when the female of mixed blood of the first degree comes to wash me, I’m a bit ashamed to undress, not that I’m modest … it’s coquetry … But Braun … When he got up … the minute he took off his bathrobe, you could tell that he was experienced, that he had already done it a hundred times … That’s all you saw, this perfect body, muscular, the body of a trapeze artist. His skin was white, smooth, his chest hairless. There was something feminine about him that excluded violence. He headed toward the pool. He didn’t shiver, in spite of the very cool temperature. There was no one in the water. If I had dived in that day, I would have died; for him it was nothing, he dove in one go, without hesitating, and swam evenly and steadily. Juliana was watching him. She was pretending to read, but you could feel her turmoil,

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A Year Abroad

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d’études céliniennes]

Malte Marcus

Hesse Thierry

Zulma

Demon

Éd. de l’Olivier

u Castilian [Duomo, Spain] u Italian [Fazi

Editore] u Norwegian [Agora]

Garden of Love

Flammarion

Nahapétian Naïri

Révay Theresa

Liana Levi

Belfond

Who Killed Ayatollah Kanuni? u Dutch [Querido] u Spanish [Alianza]

Ovaldé Véronique

A Lion Hunter

Éd. de l’Olivier

u Chinese (simplified characters)

u Italian [Piemme]

And My Transparent Heart u English [Portobello, United Kingdom] u Italian [Minimum Fax] u Korean [Mujintree]

Pagano Emmanuelle

Childish Hands P.O.L

Fake

u Italian [Piemme]

Viel Tanguy

Éd. de Minuit

u German [Wagenbach] u Italian [Neri Pozza]

u German [Thiele] u Greek [Patakis]

Grasset & Fasquelle

u Spanish [Akal]

u Portuguese [Rocco, Brazil]

Taiwan] u Greek [Papyros]

u Russian [Astrel/Ast] u Serbian [Nolit]

Sansal Boualem

Pancol Katherine

Gallimard

u Italian [Garzanti] u Korean [Yolimwom]

u Chinese (complex characters) [Ye-ren,

u Romanian [Humanitas]

Albin Michel

u Catalan [Edicions 62] u Chinese

Ravey Yves

Editori] u Portuguese [Bizâncio] u Spanish [Ediciones Destino]

Kitap]

u Dutch [De Arbeiderspers]

A Dead Dog After Him

The Indian Winter

Allia

u German [BTB Verlag]

Verlag] u Italian [Feltrinelli]

Kingdom] u German [Ullstein]

u Italian [Einaudi] u Turkish [Dog ˇ an

Rolin Jean

u English [Viking, United States]

Minghini Giulio

Julliard

u German [Deutscher Taschenbuch

u English [MacLehose Press, United

The Women’s Chorus

Éd. de l’Olivier

u Greek [Kastaniotis] u Italian [Marsilio

Khadra Yasmina

u Danish [Arvids] u Dutch [De Geus]

Viviane Hamy

Roux Frédéric

Perhaps a Love Affair

Zulma

Captive Moon in a Dead Eye

u Chinese [Art et littérature du Hunan]

[Wisdom House] u Russian [Riopl]

Éd. de Minuit

Varenne Antonin

Fakirs

u Spanish [Acantilado]

u Spanish [Anagrama]

u Italian [Ponte Alle Grazie]

u Chinese [Phoenix Publishing] u Korean

[Aquarius, Taiwan] u Dutch [Prometheus/ Bert Bakker] u English [Dalkey Archive Press, United Kingdom] u Galician [Glaxia] u German [Frankfurter Verlaganstalt] u Italian [Barbes editora] u Spanish [Anagrama editorial]

Paris-Brest

u Polish [Czarne] u Russian [Text]

Olympus of the Unfortunate

Éd. de la Table Ronde

Some Men

Flammarion

[Éd. d’Art et de littérature du Hunan]

u Chinese (traditional characters)

[Shanghai 99 Readers] u German [Berlin Verlag] u Italian [Barbès] u Portuguese [Sextante] u Spanish [Matalamanga, Peru and Chile]

Page Martin

u Castilian [La Esfera de los libros]

How Many Ways I Love You

Éd. de Minuit

u German [Berlin Verlag]

Garnier Pascal

Flipo Georges

The Commissaire Is Not a Poetry Fan

Éd. du Seuil

P.O.L

u Vietnamese [Les Éditions littéraires

Mauvignier Laurent

Rolin Olivier

u German [Verlag Klaus Wagenbach]

(traditional characters) [Business weekly] u Chinese (simplified characters) [Thnkingdom] u Czech [Jota s.r.o] u Danish [Bazar Forlag] u Finnish [Bazar Kustannus Oy] u Italian [Baldini Castoldi Dalai Editore] u Japanese [Hayakawa Publishing] u Korean [Munhakdongne Publishing] u Norwegian [Bazar Forlag] u Polish [Sonia Draga] u Russian [Astrel] u Swedish [Bazar Forlag] u Turkish [Pegasus Yayinlari]

Joncour Serge

u Czech [Euromedia] u German [Der Club

Liana Levi

Ollagnier Virgnie

The Uncertainty

The Slow Tortoise Waltz

du Vietnam]

All the Dreams of the World

Bertelsmann ; Goldmann] u Hungarian [Athenaeum] u Polish [Swiat Ksiazki] u Portuguese [Circulo de Leitores] u Russian [Family Leisure Club] u Serbian [Alnari] u Spanish [Circulo de Lectores]

u Swedish [Sekwa]

u Italian [Piemme] u Polish [Albatros] u Spanish [Paidos] u Turkish [Pupa]

Stock

Bambi Bar Éd. de Minuit

u Greek [Agra] u Romanian [Bastion

Winckler Martin

P.O.L

The German’s Village u Bosnian [B.T.C Sahinpasic]

u Catalan [Columna] u Danish [Turbine]

u Dutch [De Geus] u English [Europe Editions, United States ; Bloomsbury, United Kingdom] u German [Merlin] u Greek [Polis] u Hebrew [Kinneret] u Italian [Einaudi] u Polish [Dialog] u Serbian [IPS Media II] u Spanish [El Aleph]

Seksik Laurent

The Last Days of Stefan Zweig Flammarion

u Chinese [Shanghai 99 Readers] u German [Karl Blessing Verlag] u Korean [Hyundaemunhak]

u Spanish [Ediciones Casus Belli] u Turkish [Can Yayinlari]

Editura]

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