A Life on Paper: Stories
Page 21
The young woman bowed and stepped gracefully aside to let me pass. I stepped into the green light that bathed the grotto. I found it childlike in spirit and Hollywood in its actuality. Surely the austere Benito Guardicci had never had a hand in this. Still, it was pleasant: the womb we should never have left, the ideal lap to lay our head in and fall asleep on returning from a terrifying adventure in the world.
Laurencais called out to me. I spotted him, haloed at the far end of a golden beach that gently sloped down to the emerald water. He seemed to take a long time reaching me, though the distance between us couldn't have been more than sixty yards or so.
"Hello! Have you made up your mind?"
"I wanted to thank you for The Odyssey. A princely gift! I have a few misgivings-not about accepting it, but owning it. These things are really only safe in museums or major libraries."
"Bah! If your apartment catches fire, that book is probably the first thing you'll try and save. In any case, I'm happy you like it."
I jerked my head, indicating the grotto. "I should've come earlier. It's a stunning place."
"I'm not sure it's in good taste, but I wanted it. You can adjust the lighting to suit your mood, like in a theatre."
"Ligeia's not here?"
"No. I'm worried, I'll admit. As always, at spring tide-she goes out, see? She can't help it, she has to go back…"
"Where? This entire island is yours, and we're-how many miles did you say, the other day? Eleven hundred nautical miles from settled land?"
Laurencais shook his head. "I see I'm either going to have to tell you everyt ing, or keep my mout s ut.
"Is this about-"
"Yes. The story. Let's go back to the past. A short hop: twenty years. Picture me twenty years younger, stronger, more adventurous… but already rich enough to be offered certain experiences exclusive to a handful of individuals for whom money no longer has any reality. This time it's not about sex, but rather sport. I can still picture the man who contacted me. He was a sailor, a Chilean. He died later, of delirium. He was possessed-but that doesn't matter. This man said: `I hear you're a fisherman, Senor Laurencais…' As a matter of fact, I went deep-sea fishing at the time. `I'm offering you a fishing trip the likes of which you've never seen. This is an opportunity not to be missed, senor! It might be the last time…' I shrugged. I'd hunted every creature of the sea, even whales! But the good man smiled in commiseration, his eyes agleam: he had a billionaire on the hook. `Senor, there is a creature you've never caught before-the one I'm bringing you! Of course it'll cost you a great deal, but only if you're satisfied…' I'll spare you the negotiations and the details. Finally the Chilean convinced me."
"What was he talking about?"
"I thought you'd understood. Sirens!" sighed Laurencais, turning his gaze on the unruffled green surface of the waters.
"So Ligeia-"
"I caught her twenty years ago, a few miles from here, on the reef." Laurencais' voice grew soft. "I'd never seen death so close-up before. Siren-fishing is no doubt the most dangerous sport in the world. I know a few others-very few, over the years-did it before me, and maybe even a few after. You're in a tiny boat, deliberately hurling yourself at the shoals. That's where you'll find them by night, at spring tide. It seems a nightmare now, twenty years later. The roar of the waves, the howling wind, the foam on the jagged rocks, those pale bodies glimpsed in the dancing flashlight beams, and in the space between two breakers, when the storm was catching its breath, their song-
"Their song?"
"Of course! Have you forgotten your Homer? My present will refresh your memory. But the aoidos was mistaken, like every poet who's tried to write about mermaids. Their song isn't meant to draw men, but males of their species, undines. They're the wanderers; the sirens never stray from their shoals. How many still exist on our planet today? Our wars have decimated them, our waste poisoned them, and we hadn't even the slightest suspicion. In a house that's been bombed to bits, roaches in the basement, mice in the attic, or even crickets by the hearth aren't counted among the casualties. It seems the nomadic undines were at once less numerous and more exposed than their mates. Their fraught mating habits couldn't have helped the species survive, either. They reproduced at spring tide, between sheets of foam, on half-exposed reefs, in an often fatal love-drunk rapture. When I came from the open sea with the Chilean and his crew, we surged up with our nets in hand right in the midst of this conjugal trance. It all went very fast. A terrified creature rolled into our legs. We threw a net over her blindly. A breaker swept someone away. The Chilean gave the signal to depart. There was no question of turning back. Our only chance at survival consisted of clearing the reef and landing on this island. It would've been as deserted and hostile as on the first day of creation if I hadn't set up a base there in advance. We reached land and made it to camp, by what miracle I'll never know. More dead than alive, we examined the siren by floodlight. She was a young girl, wounded; she'd broken her leg trying to flee. While Chilean and his men patted one another on the back for having made it through alive-and rich, for they'd earned their bonus-our catch seemed so pitiful to me that I was crushed with shame. This was the result of my money and passion: this pain, this terror! Aware at first glance of the gravity of my error, I decided to turn my guilt into responsibility. I'd torn this creature from her world; I had no choice but to help her while waiting for a chance to send her back. So-you see!"
Laurencais spread his arms, as though to take in not only the grotto but, beyond its walls, the entire complex he'd built on the island.
"All for her?"
"How could I take her away from the reef? Confront her with our world, with curiosity of every stripe-government, scientists, the media-how? Never! So I built this refuge for her. But I'm getting ahead of myself. My initial intention had been to heal her, then bring her back to the reef by helicopter in calm weather. The time it took her to heal decreed otherwise. She was too young, too impressionable, too close to us… in a few months she'd grown too human. When I realized it was impossible to throw her back in the sea like a fish, I bought this island and converted it to suit her needs. She can neither live fully there nor here… and it's my fault."
"You said she'd gone human. Are you sure? She feels so distant, aloof…"
Laurencais gazed at me ironically. "What would you have her be, a flirt? For her, humanity consists of me and two or three other people who looked after her the first few years. Her emotional vocabulary stopped developing long ago."
"So…?"
"So she watches out for undines at spring tide. She sings in the whirlpools to call them, like her sisters. And I'm terrified a wave will knock her senseless."
"Is she out on the reef right now?"
He nodded. "She never tells me, but I know. She comes back exhausted, often wounded, and sleeps entire days at a time."
"And you can't-"
"Can't what? Hold her back? What would be left of her then? She's barely tame. When she was younger, afraid of the dangers out there, I wanted to shut her in when the tides came. She threw herself headfirst against the door. I gave in, of course, and away she swam, her forehead still bleeding. That night I thought she'd never come back. But she did, silent, distant. So I promised I'd never do that again."
We went back to the party. Cindy/Christie was showing the Nobel laureate her latest rash, and the guitarist was talking with the tennis player about highs and which drugs went best together. In the wee hours, I ran into Laurencais again. He was beaming. Ligeia had returned home once more.
It was high time I started to drink in earnest if I wanted to get into that helicopter tomorrow with any semblance of composure-that is to say, dead drunk. To think that as a boy I'd dreamed of being a pilot! When I was ten, I lifted my gaze upward and thrilled to the blue above, seeing myself up there, free in the light… What is it that terrifies me now? The skies? The light? Freedom? Bah! I became myself by giving that all up. I managed to fall dead asleep at last on Cindy/ Chr
istie's shoulder just as the helicopter flew over the reef.
Several years have passed since my visit to Laurencais Island. I hear people talking about him from time to time, in the paper or on TV: he lost a bundle of money in phosphates, he made a bunch in rare earths… I like to believe he still manages his empire from his rock at the far ends of the earth, and still trembles at spring tide, waiting for Ligeia to return.
I entrust these pages to my safe. Fifty years after I'm dead, Ligeia will be beyond reach… I leave it to anyone who reads this to decide if what they're holding is a true story, or another story, the one I promised Laurencais.
Paris-Bazas, Jul.-Nov. 1996
About the Authors
Georges-Olivier Chiteaureynaud is the author of nine novels, two young adult novels, and over one hundred short stories. Despite a lifelong fear of flying, he has been to Peru-his only time on a plane-and lived to pen a travel memoir about the experience. He is the recipient of the prestigious Prix Renaudot, Prix Goncourt de is nouvelle (for short stories), Prix Giono, Prix Valery Larbaud, and the Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire. His work has been translated into fourteen languages.
Born in Paris in 1947, Chateaureynaud was a solitary child who became a voracious and unprejudiced reader, ingesting Treasure Island as avidly, as Lady Chatterley's Lover. He studied English at the Sorbonne, discovering Stevenson, Shelley, Stoker, and Wells, and later took a degree in library science from the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Bibliotheques. In 1968, he embarked on a series of odd jobsincluding antiques dealer and auto assembly line laborer-that comprised, in his words, an "apprenticeship in human nature," cementing his sympathy for the marginal, outcast figures who would become his luckless, well-meaning, Everyman heroes and narrators. Grasset published his first collection in 1973, Le fou daps is chaloupe.
With novelist Hubert Haddad, and fellow Goncourt winners Frederic Tristan and sinologist jean Levi, Chateaureynaud is a founding member of the contemporary movement La Nouvelle Fiction: "New" because it rose tip against the prevailingly minimalist and confessional tendencies (autofiction) of recent French writing, seeking to rouse it from what critic jean-Luc Moreau called "the slumber of psychological realism," and to restore myth, fable, and fairy tale to a place of primacy in fiction.
In 1983 and 1990, Chateaureynaud was a representative of the Foreign Services Ministry to Quebec and then to Greece. He has been consistently involved with the Centre National du Livre and the SGDL (Societe des Gens de Lettres de France). He plays an active part in fostering new talent, serving on the juries of such diverse prizes as the Fondation BNP-Paribas Young Writers Award, the international Prix Promethee de la nouvelle, the Prix Renaudot, and the Prix Renaissance. Chateaureynaud sees his enthusiastic participation in these institutions as a way of repaying the literary community that has allowed him the luxury of dedication to his craft. An Officier des Arts et Lettres of France, he is currently the editorial director of foreign literature at Editions Dumerchez. In 2006, he was made a Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur.
Edward Gauvin has published George-Olivier Chateaureynaud's work in The Southern Review, Harvard Review, AGNI Online, Conjunctions, Words Without Borders, LCRW, Joyland, F&SF, Postscripts, Epiphany, The Cafe Irreal, Eleven Eleven, Postscripts, Sentence, and The Brooklyn Rail, among others. A graduate of the Iowa Workshop, he has received a Fulbright grant as well as fellowships from the Centre National du Livre, the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) and the Clarion Foundation and residencies from the Maison des Ecritures Midi-Pyrenees, Ledig House, and the Banff International Literary Translation Centre. Other translations of his have been featured or are forthcoming in PEN America, Tin House, Interfutions 2, Subtropics, Silk Road, Two Lines, and Absinthe. A consulting editor for graphic literature at Words Without Borders, he translates comics for Archaia, First Second, and Tokyopop. He has lived in Austin, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, New York, Taipei, and Amiens, France.
Translator's acknowledgments
Merci millefois d Paul and Sylviane Underwood, and the many readers and editors who've supported these tales along the way. Time to work on this manuscript was generously provided by the Banff International Literary Translation Centre, to whose director, Susan Ouriou, I owe special thanks. For his kindness, his generosity, and his stories, a debt of gratitude to G.-O. C.