Four Novels

by Marguerite Duras

  None other, none but yours. And this one, because it belongs to you, is hereafter exempt from the fate of any other, of some other which, just as well, instead of yours, might have created this white accident of quicklime in the pine forest. “I bought this house,” Mr. Andesmas had explained to Michel Arc, “primarily because it is the only one of its kind. Around it, look, the forest, nothing but the forest. The forest, everywhere.”

  The road ceased to be passable about a hundred yards from the house. Mr. Andesmas had come by car up to the point where the road ceased to be passable, a clearing with level ground where cars could turn around. Valérie had driven him, then she had left. She had not got out of the car, she had not gone up to the house, had not expressed a desire to. She had suggested to her father that he wait for Michel Arc and then for her. In the evening, when it had cooled off—she hadn’t said at what time—she would come to get him.

  A few days earlier, they had talked together about this road and the possibility of owning it all the way up to the pond, of making it a private road, except for Valérie’s friends.

  Mr. Andesmas’ friends were no longer alive. Once they had bought the pond, nobody would come through any more. Nobody with the exception of Valérie’s friends.

  In the heat of the road, she had sung softly:

  When the lilac blooms my love

  He was now sitting in the wobbly wicker armchair he had found in a room inside the house. In the heat, energetically, as if the heat were nothing, she had sung!

  When the lilac

  He had reached the plateau with difficulty, walking carefully, as she had advised him, taking his time. She would have sung the same way in the coolness of an evening or a night, in other places, somewhere else. Where wouldn’t she have sung?

  blooms forever

  While climbing he could still hear her. Then the noise of the car motor had murdered her song. It had grown weaker, fainter; later snatches had still reached him, and then nothing, nothing more. Once he had reached the plateau, nothing more could be heard of her or her song. It had taken a long time. A long time also to settle this body into the wicker armchair. When this had been done, no, really nothing, nothing could be heard of Valérie, or of her song, or of the noise of the car motor.

  Around Mr. Andesmas the forest rises motionless, around the house as well, and all over the hillside too. Between the trees there are heavy thickets which swallow up every sound, even the songs of Valérie Andesmas, his child.

  Yes, it was certainly that. It was the village waking up from its siesta. From one Saturday to the next, summer was passing. Dance tunes floated all the way up the plateau, sometimes several at once. It was the workers’ weekend rest. Mr. Andesmas never worked any more. It was up to the others to rest from their incredible labors. Only the others, from now on, from now on. Mr. Andesmas waited for them. Waited for them to be ready.

  The white square was crossed by a group of people. Mr. Andesmas saw only one part of this square. His desire to see all of it was not strong enough to make him get up and walk the ten steps separating him from the ravine where he could have seen it, and seen, too, behind the row of green benches, still empty because of the heat, Valérie’s black car.

  It was a dance.

  It ended.

  Behind Mr. Andesmas, at the edge of the quiet pond overgrown with duckweed and shaded by enormous trees, could there be children at this time of day, playing at catching frogs and innocently subjecting them to slow tortures, roaring with laughter? Mr. Andesmas had given much thought to the youth of this pond, ever since the dog had come by, who must drink there every day, and ever since he had decided to make it completely private, except for Valérie, his child.

  A series of very brief, dry, crackling noises suddenly surrounded him. Wind blew over the forest.

  “So, already,” Mr. Andesmas said aloud. “Already . . .”

  He heard himself speak, he started, and fell silent. Around him, in soft succeeding waves, the whole forest bent over. This was, from then on, an exceptional spectacle in the life of Mr. Andesmas. The whole forest bent over, but differently depending on the height of the trees, their slant, the more or less heavy load of their branches.

  Mr. Andesmas did not yet move to look at his watch.

  The wind died down. The forest again took up its silent pose on the mountain. It wasn’t evening, but only a chance wind, not yet the evening wind. Down below, however, the square was filling up more and more every minute. Something was happening there.

  I owe it to myself to talk to Michel Arc, Mr. Andesmas thought clearly. I’m hot, My forehead is covered with perspiration. He must now be over an hour late. I wouldn’t have thought that of him. To make an old man wait.

  It was a small dance, like every Saturday at that time of the year.

  The melody, taken up now by a phonograph, rose from the main square. It filled the emptiness. The same one Valérie had been singing lately, the one he heard her sing as she walked through the corridors in their house; the corridors were too long, she said, and she got bored going through them.

  Mr. Andesmas listened to the tune, attentively, quite contented now, and his waiting for Michel Arc became less pressing, less painful. From Valérie he knew all the words of the song. Alone, and never again able to make his ruined body dance, never again, he could still recognize the appeal of dancing, its irresistible urgency, its existence parallel to its design.

  Sometimes, finding them too long and becoming impatient, Valérie dances in the long corridors of the house, most of time as a matter of fact, Mr. Andesmas remembers, except during her father’s siestas. The pounding of Valérie’s bare feet dancing in the corridors, he listens to it every time, and each time he thinks that it is his heart which is racing and dying.

  Mr. Andesmas settled himself to wait for a man who did not keep his word, patiently.

  He listened to the dancing tunes.

  From his lost youth this was left him, this much: he would at times move his feet in his black shoes, keeping time. The sand of the plateau was dry and lent itself well to this game with his feet.

  “A terrace,” Valérie had said. “Michel Arc claims that it’s essential to have one. Far away from you. But I’ll come, every day, every day, every day. The time has come. Far away from you.”

  Could she be dancing in the square? Mr. Andesmas does not know. She had really wanted this house very much, Valérie. Mr. Andesmas had bought it for her as soon as she had expressed the wish. Valérie says she is reasonable. She says she never asks for anything she doesn’t need. Just the pond, she had said, and after that, I’ll never ask you for anything again.

  This is the first time that Mr. Andesmas has seen this house bought by him for Valérie. Without seeing it, just because she wanted it, he had bought it for her, for Valérie, his daughter, a few weeks before.

  As the whole wicker armchair creaked, Mr. Andesmas examined the place chosen by Valérie. The house was small but the land around it was flat. One could easily enlarge it on three sides whenever Valérie expressed the desire.

  “My room, you’ll see, will open onto the terrace. That’s where I’ll eat my breakfast, in the morning.”

  Valérie, in her nightgown, will therefore soon be looking at the sea, to her heart’s content, from the moment she wakes up. Sometimes the sea will be calm, as it is today.

  When our hope is here every day

  When our hope is here forever . . .

  Every twenty minutes, approximately, the melody begins again with greater and greater force, more devastating, strengthened by its regular repetition. And then the square dances, dances, dances, all of it.

  Sometimes, the sea would be foamy and sometimes, even, it would disappear in the fog. At times it would also be purple, swollen, and there would be storms that would frighten Valérie from the terrace.

  And Mr. Andesmas is afraid for his child Valérie, for his love of her rules without pity over his declining fate; afraid she will be frightened by the storm
s to come when, waking up, on this terrace over the sea, she finds them raging in all their fury.

  There must be lots of young people in the village square. On the banks of the pond, deserted, even by that gadabout dog, weren’t there flowers in full bloom which tomorrow would be fading? Valérie should go to her pond and look at her flowers. A short cut would take her there, in a minute. One could undoubtedly buy this pond, for very little. Valérie was right to want it for herself. Valérie, it seemed, still laughed at frogs swimming across the surface of ponds, didn’t she? Valérie, it seemed, still thought it was funny to hold them in her hand? still laughed at terrifying them like that? Mr. Andesmas no longer really knew. Even if the age for torturing them had passed, wasn’t she still amused by them in another way, by holding their life locked up in her hand and by their terror? Mr. Andesmas no longer knows at all.

  “Michel Arc,” the girl said, “asked me to tell you that he’d be here soon.”

  Mr. Andesmas hadn’t seen her come. Could he have dozed off as she was approaching? He discovered her all of a sudden, standing on the plateau, at the same distance as the reddish dog. If he had dozed off, was it while she was approaching or even somewhat earlier?

  “Thank you,” Mr. Andesmas said, “thank you for coming.”

  The girl, at this respectful distance, examined the massive body, imprisoned in the wicker armchair, the massive body she was seeing for the first time. She must have heard them speak of it in the village. Below the very ancient, smiling and bare head, the body was richly covered with beautiful dark clothes, meticulously clean. You could see the immense shape only vaguely, it was very decently covered by these beautiful clothes.

  “So, he is going to come?” Mr. Andesmas asked in a friendly tone of voice.

  She nodded that he would come, yes. She was already so tall that it was only because of the improper way she stared at him that Mr. Andesmas realized she was still a child.

  Beneath her black hair, her eyes seemed light. Her face was small, rather pale. Her eyes slowly became accustomed to the sight of Mr. Andesmas. They left him and surveyed the surroundings. Did she know the place? Probably. She must have come here with other children, and even as far as the pond—that pond where soon she would no longer be coming—she must have come. There, no doubt, before, the children of this village and those of the distant hamlets behind the hill must have met.

  She was waiting. Mr. Andesmas made an effort, moved in his armchair, and took a franc piece out of his vest pocket. He held it out to her. It was also the way she came up to him and very simply took the coin that confirmed his impression that she was still a child.

  “Thank you, Mister, Mr. Andesmas.”

  “Oh, you know my name,” Mr. Andesmas said softly.

  “Michel Arc, he’s my father.”

  Mr. Andesmas smiled at the child by way of greeting. She smiled a polite little smile.

  “What should I tell him you said?” she asked.

  Taken by surprise, Mr. Andesmas looked for something to say, and found this.

  “It’s still early, after all, but if he could come soon, it would be very kind of him.”

  They both smiled at each other again, pleased with this answer, as if it had been the perfect one the child had been waiting for and as if Mr. Andesmas had guessed it by wanting to be nice to her.

  Instead of leaving, she went to sit on the edge of the terrace-to-be and looked at the chasm.

  The music was still drifting up.

  The child listened for a few minutes, and then she played at taking the hem of her dress—a blue dress—pulling it down over her folded legs, lifting it again and pulling it down again, several times.

  And then, she yawned.

  When she turned toward Mr. Andesmas, he noticed that her whole body started, briefly, and that her hands flew apart and dropped the franc piece.

  She did not pick it up.

  “I’m a little tired,” she declared. “But I’m going down to tell my father what you told me.”

  “Oh, I have plenty of time, plenty of time, why don’t you rest,” Mr. Andesmas begged her.

  When the lilac blooms my love

  Together, they listened to the song. With the second verse, the child began to sing also in a thin, uncertain voice, her head still turned toward the chasm of light, completely forgetful of the old man’s presence. Although the music was loud, Mr. Andesmas listened only to the childish voice. At his age, he knew how not to make his presence bothersome, ever, to anyone, particularly children. Turned away from him, marking the rhythm like a schoolgirl, she sang the whole song.

  When the song was over, a clamor arose. Just as, every time it ended, there were shouts of men and girls reveling in it, happy. They requested it a second time, but it didn’t come back. Silence, near silence, strangely took hold of the square, laughter and shouting almost stopped, having run their course, exhausted, overwhelmed by their own flow. Then the child whistled the tune. It was a sharper, slower whistling than it should have been. She probably wasn’t old enough to dance yet. She was whistling, with strained application, badly. It pierces the forest and the listener’s heart, but the child doesn’t hear herself. Valérie whistles in the corridors, wonderfully, except during her father’s siestas. Where have you learned to whistle so well, my little Valérie? She cannot tell.

  When she had reached the end of the song, the child scanned the village square, for a fairly long time, then turned toward Mr. Andesmas, this time without fear. On the contrary, she had a happy look. So, then, perhaps she was calling for a compliment that didn’t come? Perhaps she hadn’t forgotten this old man’s presence as much as one might have thought? Why such joy? The happy look lasted, fixed, then suddenly it faded into an immobile and unjustified solemnity.

  “You whistle well,” Mr. Andesmas said. “Where did you learn.”

  “I don’t know.”

  She looked at Mr. Andesmas questioningly, and asked:

  “Shall I go? Shall I go down?”

  “Oh, take your time,” Mr. Andesmas protested, “take all the time you want, why don’t you rest. You’ve lost your franc piece.”

  Perhaps she was intrigued by so much concern. She picked up the coin, and once again examined the impressive bulk which seemed thoroughly at rest, squeezed into the armchair—in the shade of the white wall of the house. Was she hoping to find some sign of impatience in those trembling hands, in that smile?

  Mr. Andesmas tried to find something to say to distract her from this spectacle, but finding nothing, he remained silent.

  “But I’m not that tired, you know,” the child said.

  She turned her eyes away.

  “Oh, you have all the time in the world,” Mr. Andesmas said.

  Smiles no longer registered naturally on Mr. Andesmas’ face. Except when Valérie would appear in the frame of the French door which opened on to the garden, and when an uncontrollable, animal-like joy would break through, crisscrossing his whole face, Mr. Andesmas only smiled when he seemed to remember that social conventions called for it, and he could only do it with difficulty, pretending just enough to give the impression of being a good-humored old man.

  “You have all the time in the world, I assure you,” he repeated.

  The child, standing up, seemed to be thinking.

  “Then I’ll go for a walk,” she decided. “In case my father comes, I’ll go back with him by car.”

  “There’s a pond, over there,” Mr. Andesmas said, his left arm pointing at Valérie’s future forest.

  She knew that.

  She walked off toward the top of the hill, where the reddish dog had come from. She walked awkwardly on her skinny, nearly shapeless legs, bird’s legs, while the old man looked on, smiling with approval. He watched her until he could no longer see anything of her, nothing, not one speck of her blue dress, and then once again he found himself in the state of abandonment whose disconcerting vastness she had only emphasized through her appearance, no matter how discreet.
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  On the sunny plateau her dress had been very blue. Closing his eyes, Mr. Andesmas recaptures the exact shade, while he already has difficulty recalling the color, reddish, of the dog who preceded her.

  He is suddenly sorry he encouraged her to leave. He calls her back.

  “And what is your father doing?” he asks.

  While up until then she had acted disgusted, but respectful, before so much old age, she now becomes insolent. A shout comes back, piercing, exasperated, from the forest.

  “He’s dancing.”

  Mr. Andesmas’ waiting began again.

  Oddly enough it was at first calmer, more patient than a moment before.

  He stares at the chasm of light. At this altitude the sea is almost the same blue as the sky, he notices. He stands up to stretch his legs and to have a better look at the sea.

  He stands up, takes three steps toward the chasm, filled with a light already turning yellow, and he sees as he had expected, beside the green benches of the village square, in the shade of the trees, Valérie’s black car parked.

  And then he walks back to his armchair, sits down again, again considers his bulk, in the dark clothes, sunk in this armchair, and it is while he is preparing to wait still longer for Michel Arc, and, also, for the return of the child, an expected, foreseen return; it is then, during this interlude, that Mr. Andesmas will know the terrors of death.

  Having sat back sensibly, ready to accept Michel Arc’s delay, reduced by his own choice to a complete indulgence of any slights to himself, at the very moment when the memory of Valérie returns to him even though she is so near—her black car is there on the white rectangle of the square—Mr. Andesmas knows the terrors of death.

  Was it from having watched the child walk on the path, her frail way of stepping on the pine needles? from having imagined her solitude in the forest? her somewhat frightened running toward the pond? from remembering her submissiveness, that devotion to the duty her father had imposed upon her to inform this old man whose sight had sickened her, a devotion which had in the end marvelously exploded into insolence?