Short Stories in French

by Richard Coward

  You do not forget. You do not forget anything. Pushing down on the handles, burying the blades, going down the paths of old, keeping your words to yourself, recognizing the trees and the birds: father was a marvellous teacher in all these subjects.

  ‘Laure,’ he used to say, however, ‘you don’t need to learn these things. They are in you. You only have to find them.’ And also: ‘Look at the world: it belongs to you.’ Indeed, to tease me, he often added: ‘The world has a taste for pretty girls. Look at it as you would a lover.’

  There we were in the middle of the water, in the centre of our own infinity. Just for a moment, I let go of the oars.

  ‘Listen!’

  Birds were calling to each other. They sang around the silence, without disturbing it. Their music would act more as a foil.

  ‘Let your hand trail in the water. It’s cold, isn’t it?’ How many times have I heard that sentence? Now it is my turn to enunciate it. One day, dear Céline, you will say these words to someone. Word for word, the same words, in order that this world never gets the idea of ending. Never, no never.

  Each day, each minute, is a season. As unique and as old as the world. There are, there will be, millions of autumns, just for us. The leaves return to the trees, we come back to the earth, eternally.

  Look, darling daughter. Let’s look at each other. ‘What we don’t say are often the most beautiful words, darling Laure. We don’t need to learn them; we cannot even forget them. We can be here. Feeling good, like this. The reason? Oh, the reason, who cares!’

  On the other bank, over there, a fisherman has settled down. Dressed like a fisherman. Motionless like a fisherman. Everything is in its place.

  Look carefully at everything, quietly. I shall look at you, you will not even know anything about it. The silver reflection, peaceful in the midst of the maple trees, is the tower of our church. Can you see it?

  Laure is no longer moving now. Everything has come to a halt. Something invisible and slow is coming down from the tops of the trees and allowing itself to slide to the bottom of our lake. Then the birds fall silent. It is the time when the echoes of life bathe before going off to sleep. The countryside holds its breath. The shimmering on the water has frozen in immobility, the rings on the surface, the slow movement of the clouds, the subtleties of the colours, the shadows, the edges of everything … The world is a beautiful picture in a book: we are in it.

  Soon, you will hear a sound like a sigh. The picture will be blurred. The trees will sway, the gentlest of breezes will trouble the mirrored surface of the lake, from this point to that other one, and we will set off. By pulling just a little more on the oars this time, whilst amongst the tree trunks, in the deepest part of the world, darkness will advance, still shy, concealed in a sort of drowsy dust, hanging above the river bank like a breath of honey.

  We are returning, darling Laure. Darling Céline, we’re coming back. Once again, we have seen everything. Everything remains to be seen. We will come back. Night never falls for ever. Winter always goes away one day, the snow flies off, the neighbours celebrate, we go to sleep in the morning.

  The fisherman has picked up his things. He slides his folding chair over his arm and sets off. It looks as though he’s going in the same direction as us. He is perhaps a father who does not hide a heavy heart under a red shirt, whom his daughter will not wait for in vain any evening.

  Are you cold? Would you like my jacket? Rowing is making me warm, I am not used to it. It is still a beautiful day. Every day should be more beautiful than the ones which went before. When the mist rises from the lake, we will have been back a long time. We are already getting close to the edge.

  I smile. You have your back to him, you do not suspect anything, but I have spotted his silhouette on the landing-stage. He has come to find us. He has put on the short jacket that you like so much.

  We are exhausted. He grabs you under the arms. He gives us a kiss. He hugs us. He says: ‘There’s darling Céline!’ More softly, he pronounces my name. He sits you on his arm. He rubs your face against his cheek. ‘Darling Laure! Darling Céline! My girls. My women.’ You cannot see the expression on his face.

  He kisses you again. He puts his other arm around me. He rubs his nose against yours and, immediately afterwards, buries it in my hair. There is nothing to say, so we pretend to keep quiet.

  On our left, behind the silver birch trees, the lake is a boundless murmur. We walk, the three of us intertwined along the earth path. We walk off in that transparent evening mist, on which floats a smell of smoke.

  Notes on French Texts

  LEARNING HOW TO LIVE (Fajardie)

  1. prolo: This is a contraction of prolétaire, as is sympa of sympathique at the end of the paragraph. This tendency to contract frequently used terms is a feature of modern French. Compare fac for faculté, resto for restaurant, sensas for sensationnel, etc. Also see n. 8, p. 213.

  2. Arts-et-Métiers: Metro station in central Paris between République and Rambuteau on the Mairie des Lilas–Châtelet line.

  3. place de la République: Vast square created by Baron Haussmann between 1854 and 1862 as part of his reconstruction of Paris.

  4. «Grandes Espérances»: A reference to Charles Dickens’s novel Great Expectations.

  ALL LIGHTS OFF (Fajardie)

  1. l’an III: An echo of the Revolutionary calendar, which replaced the Gregorian calendar during the French Revolution. For example, Year One of the Republic was declared as having begun with the abolition of the Monarchy on 22 September 1792.

  2. grandes écoles: Selective higher-education colleges that function alongside, though independently of, universities. Entry is by competitive examination (concours) two years after the baccalauréat. The oldest were created by Napoléon Bonaparte to train high-level technical specialists, though many more have been founded since his time. The best known are probably the École Normale Supérieure, the Polytechnique and the École Nationale d’Administration (ΕΝΑ).

  3. Kapital: Written by Karl Marx (1818–83), Das Kapital is the fundamental text of Marxist economics. Published in three volumes between 1867 and 1895, it focuses on the exploitation of the worker and appeals for a classless society where the production process is shared equally.

  4. la Libération: The liberation of France from German occupation in 1944.

  5. Mai 68: Initially a student protest, which began at the Nanterre campus on the outskirts of Paris in March 1968, against the perceived immorality of the international capitalist order as typified by the involvement of the USA in Vietnam. Police brutality caused the movement to spread until barricades were erected in Paris on the night of 10 and 11 May. Soon after there were massive strikes and factory occupations, and the sense of people power led to a euphoric sense of a new beginning.

  6. Giscard: Valéry Giscard d’Estaing (1926– ) was leader of the political party Union pour la Démocratie Française (UDF), and was president of France from 1974 to 1981.

  7. Daladier. Édouard Daladier (1884–1970). A radical socialist French prime minister who was largely responsible for the Munich Agreement and France’s subsequent declaration of war on Germany.

  8. Grifton: More commonly written as griveton.

  9. Calvados: Département of Basse-Normandie, which has given its name to the brandy distilled from cider.

  10. Mendès France: Pierre Mendès France (1907–82) was prime minister of France and his government was active in the prevention of the spread of alcoholism in the mid-1950s. The gradual disappearance of travelling stills, brought about by the passing of a new law preventing licences to be passed automatically from father to son, is attributable to this period.

  11. gabelous: Literally collectors of la gabelle, a pre-Revolutionary tax on salt. When used pejoratively, as here, it means ‘customs officer’.

  12. DS 19: Large car made by Citroën.

  13. Prost: Alain Prost, a French motor-racing driver.

  14. R.P.R.: Rassemblement pour la République (RPR) is
the name given to the right-wing political party which grew out of de Gaulle’s Rassemblement du Peuple Français (RPF), created in 1947.

  DAVID (Le Clézio)

  1. celle du jeune berger … terrifiés: A reference to the biblical conflict between David and Goliath.

  2. jouer au ballon: The French has a double entendre which has no equivalent in English that I can find. Taken literally, jouer au ballon means ‘to play ball’, but le ballon also has the meaning ‘breathalyzer’, which is being used as an image for the glue-sniffing that is taking place here. Souffler dans le ballon means ‘to blow into the bag’.

  3. métacarpes: The part of the skeleton of the hand between the wrist and the fingers.

  THE OCCUPATION OF THE GROUND (Échenoz)

  1. une cheminée … l’heure: The image is that of a huge sundial.

  2. pierre de taille: Any fine-grained stone, such as sandstone or limestone, which can be cut and worked in any direction without it breaking.

  THE OBJECT D’ART (Daoust)

  1. Clément Marchand: Born in 1912 in Sainte-Geneviève-de-Bastican, in Quebec, Clément Marchand is a writer of short stories and poems. He was the editor of the newspaper Le Bien Public from 1932 to 1978. In 1985 he won two prizes for his contribution to literature, and was elected to the Académie Canadienne in 1990.

  2. Montréal: Inland port on the junction of the Ottawa and St Lawrence rivers in the province of Quebec, in Canada. Except for Paris, it is the world’s largest French-speaking city.

  3. Sherbrooke: Metro station situated on the rue Berri and one of the stations on the line running from Rosemont in the north to Longueuil on the south bank of the St Lawrence river. The better-known rue Sherbrooke, which gives its name to the station, runs across the city from west to east.

  4. mont Royal: The hill where the city of Montreal was founded. It was originally called Mont du Roi by Jacques Cartier in 1535, in honour of the French king François 1. This was soon changed to Mont Royal, hence the name of the city.

  5. ère paléozoïque: The era of geological time that began 600 million years ago and ended 225 million years ago.

  6. alea jacta est: ‘The die is cast.’ This is a (Latin) phrase used when one takes a bold decision after hestitating for a long time. It has been attributed to Caesar, who made the decision to lead his army across the river Rubicon and into Rome from the north, which was forbidden by law.

  7. Théâtre d’Aujourd’hui: A theatre showing plays only in French from September to May.

  8. Louis Fréchette: A French-speaking Canadian author born in Lévis (Quebec) in 1839, who died in 1908. La Légende d’un peuple is considered to be a national epic.

  9. carré: This French-Canadian use of le carré is in place of the more standard la place or even le square,

  10. avant-midi: French-Canadian word for ‘morning’.

  THE HUNTERS’ CAFE (Boulanger)

  1. rose des vents: Literally ‘compass card’, but to translate as ‘at all points of the compass’ seemed excessive.

  2. jusqu’aux pierres: Literally ‘even the stones’.

  3. Futland: This refers to a First World War naval battle fought between England and Germany on 31 May 1916 off the west coast of Jutland, a peninsula belonging partly to Germany and partly to Denmark.

  4. la Cyrénaïque: An area of what is now eastern Libya. Conquered by Italy in 1912 and captured by the British in 1942, it was handed to Libya in 1951·

  5. alsace: Alsace is a region of north-east France, with a border on the Rhine, which gives its name to the dry still white wine which is produced there.

  6. de derrière les fagots: Literally ‘from behind the sticks’, hence the sense of the wine being hidden away for special customers.

  7. Soldat Inconnu: This refers to the tomb of the Unknown Soldier, which lies beneath the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.

  8. Champ-de-Mars: Originally a large military parade ground, it is now a large public park, with the École Militaire at one end and the Eiffel Tower at the other. In its present form the garden owes its appearance to C.-J. Formigé. Work began in 1908 and went on, intermittently, until 1928.

  9. École Militaire: This is a fine example of eighteenth-century architecture at the end of the Champ-de-Mars furthest from the Seine. A military academy, the building was designed by Jacques-Ange Gabriel and opened in 1760.

  10. pergola: A covered walk with climbing plants trailed over trellis-work. The description of it being aveugle seems odd, therefore, and one can only assume that this refers to some form of lean-to building erected at the back of the café.

  11. Casanier: The adjective casanier literally means ‘stop-at-home’, and describes a person who does not like going out often.

  12. courait: The subject of this verb is le silence particulier. Boulanger uses the inversion to convey stylistically the all-embracing secrecy of the meeting.

  13. arrondissement An administrative district of Paris, in which town alone the term applies.

  14. général de Gaulle: Charles de Gaulle (1890–1970) refused to accept Pétain’s truce with the invading German army in 1940 and became leader of the Free French whilst in exile in London. His return to Paris in 1944 was one of triumph.

  15. Les Anciens: This is more normally expressed in its full form: les Anciens Combattants.

  16. Champs-Élysées: A wide, busy avenue leading from the Place de la Concorde to the Place de l’Étoile, where stands the Arc de Triomphe, a gigantic arch whose construction was ordered by Napoléon Bonaparte in 1806 in honour of the French army. The Armistice Day parades in Paris all take place on the Champs-Élysées, hence the characters’ decision to take action there.

  17. pelage de loup: Literally ‘wolfskin’. The image is a combination of stealth and menace.

  18. moitié montante: The right-hand side of the Champs-Élysées for cars driving up towards the Place de l’Étoile and the Arc de Triomphe.

  19. Le Chant du départ: Literally ‘the song of departure’. This is a patriotic French song with words written in 1794 by Marie-Joseph Chénier (1764–1811) and music by Étienne Méhul (1763–1817).

  ACCURSED NOTEBOOKS (Cotnoir)

  1. Shoah: The Hebrew word for ‘holocaust’.

  2. charbonnier. Literally ‘coalman’, but combines with une foi de to mean ‘blind faith’.

  3. Dachau, Auschwitz, Buchenwald: Nazi concentration camps during the Second World War.

  4. Vergissmeinnicht: The German word for ‘forget-me-not’.

  HÉLOÏSE (Germain)

  1. Héloïse: In her youth Héloïse was the lover of Abélard and the mother of their son, Astrolabe. When his seduction of, and secret wedding to, Héloïse became known, Abélard was castrated at the instigation of Héloïse’s uncle and became a monk. In 1129 Héloïse became a nun and eventually founded the nunnery at Paraclete, of which she became abbess. Her letters to Abélard reveal that she had a strong and, at the same time, pious character. Abélard died at Châlon-sur-Saône in 1142 and was buried at Paraclete. Héloïse was buried beside him in 1164.

  2. Edmond Fabès: A poet, born in Cairo in 1912, who moved to Paris in 1957. Generally considered to be a mystic whose words misrepresent the nature of reality: for him, only paradox can give meaning.

  3. Apocalypse: The symbolic and mystical last book of the New Testament, said to have been written by St John the Evangelist, though there is doubt about this. It is more usually known as the Book of Revelation, and looks forward to the second coming of Christ. In Chapter 6, when the seven seals of the book of destiny are broken, war, revolution, plague and famine are unleashed, personified by the Four Horsemen.

  4. caparison: A decorative covering, usually for horses, which has its origins in protective covering for warhorses.

  THE CHARACTER (Escomel)

  1. zamezégarées: This form of neologism is almost untranslatable.

  2. Carco: His full name was François Carcopino-Tusoli. He was a French writer (1886–1958), the author of poems, memoirs and novels, of whi
ch the best known is Fésus la Caille.

  3. Apollinaire: Guillaume Apollinaire was the name taken by Wilhelm Apollinaris Kostrowitzky (1880–1918). The author of Alcools (1913) and Calligrammes, he led symbolist poetry in new directions until it became the precursor of surrealism. In addition, he was a strong supporter of the Cubist painters.

  4. Pierrot: A traditional pantomime character, always dressed in white with a whitened face.

  5. Clichy: Chef-lieu, which approximates to ‘county town’, of the Hauts-de-Seine département, to the north-west of Paris.

  6. mordus-sanglants: Mordu is the past participle of mordre. The image mordus-sanglants, therefore, is one of the kisses being like bites, which draw blood.

  7. Prévert: Jacques Prévert (1900–77) wrote poetry for the common man. His work was basically oral, often sentimental, and usually scornful of authority, whilst singing the praises of the oppressed. His best-known work, Paroles, was published in 1946 but he was also a writer of film scripts, of which the most famous is Les Enfants du Paradis, directed by Marcel Carné in 1945.

  8. mélo: A contraction of mélodrame. Also see n. 1, p. 207.

  9. Invalides: This was a vast hospital that could accommodate 7,000 disabled soldiers. Built between 1671 and 1676, it is perhaps now best known as the last resting place of the remains of Napoleon Bonaparte.

  10. Montparnasse: Best known as a district where artists and writers congregate.

  11. Bottin: A telephone directory of Parisian telephone numbers.

  12. quatre sous: A sou is a unit of money that now exists only in idiomatic expressions such as je n’ai pas un sou, meaning ‘I’m broke’. To give some context, in the late eighteenth century, when it was still in circulation, 4 liards = 1 denier, 12 deniers = 1 sou, 20 sous = 1 livre. It was said that a man needed 300 livres a year if he was to live in reasonable comfort.