there you’ll get a better view of the lake and the mountains. For the moment, why not just keep to the pleasure of imagining that the times have no effect on us. Let’s allow the newspapers to pile up on the living-room table.’
§
On her way to the post office, June thinks of Kim’s inevitable departure. She might have the time to install some new software on Kim’s computer. Kim has long dreamt of leaving the village, of no longer seeing her brother. ‘He’s started a series of armoires that send chills down my spine. I need to travel to the north, to be reborn as a silhouette in space, without landmarks. I want day and night, the entire surface of their twenty-four hours, in myeyes, in my body. It doesn’t matter to me what I become in that boundless Far North!’ June might leave with Kim.
§
Is there any way of concluding with certainty that the world has changed? In five, ten years from now, what will my stay at the château come to mean? I see few people. I follow Tatiana’s advice: don’t read the newspapers, don’t turn on the TV , hidden behind a folding screen as if it were the château’s disgrace. Seeing no one does me good, but it’s best, I do believe, to love your neighbour. Our worlds are made of a few words, a few images and an energy that each of us always shapes the same way, regardless of its intensity. In the foreign tongue, I occasionally don’t finish my sentences. I feel ashamed when this happens. Yesterday Tatiana had me read an article entitled ‘Could humans coexist, form a community in a society that had a legislative system but no code of ethics?’ The question leaves me thinking. Therein lies a fissure in meaning that distresses me, that threatens my integrity, so I prefer to believe that in the end, life will once again win out, rough, warm. Half truth, half fiction.
§
As usual, the café is empty. An unknown woman is sitting at the back of the room. She is writing or taking notes, who knows. The day is so warm and green, one could die of pleasure under the shade of the great trees that Charles still keeps wanting to cut down to make into sculptures. In the far distance, the mountains, and sometimes the great white jet of precious water that, they say, brings the city good fortune. The lake is glassy and untroubled. The day cleanses the slow dust that has accumulated hour after hour.
§
On the wall of my room, four photographs of Tatiana. She must have been ten years old. The era is easy to recognize because back then there was only one way of framing faces. All the girls’ hair was cut in the same style, with short bangs exposing the eyes and forehead. Tatiana seemed different because in her gaze one could easily imagine Red Square covered in snow, a bygone Russia of forests and wild mythologies. Tatiana was from a time that filled lives with massacres and suffering so vivid they cannot be forgotten. But history was repeating itself and, yes, Tatiana would say once again, ‘A massacre, my dear, is when there are corpses in a field, on a road or in a school, and you can’t distinguish the faces from the arms and legs. A massacre,my dear, is man-made cock-and-bull that whips victims around willy-nilly in the wind, and then harder still. Afterwards, you have to trudge through the muddy fields, wiping the blood from the uteruses of women and from children’s cheeks.’
§
It is through prose that the world is driven to creating assets; through poetry, it changes and reconnects with the living. I tire quickly when writing in another language. I still don’t know where to properly place the silences. I cheat constantly. Something escapes me. Tires me out. Makes me flee. This morning I went to the post office. I rarely run into anyone at this hour, but I noticed a man talking with a woman. He was holding her left hand strangely in his right, a bit like someone wounded who, in order to shield himself from an unfortunate blow, shrivels up into
§
On her way to the post office, June thinks of Kim’s inevitable departure. She might have the time to install some new software on Kim’s computer. Kim has long dreamt of leaving the village, of no longer seeing her brother. ‘He’s started a series of armoires that send chills down my spine. I need to travel to the north, to be reborn as a silhouette in space, without landmarks. I want day and night, the entire surface of their twenty-four hours, in myeyes, in my body. It doesn’t matter to me what I become in that boundless Far North!’ June might leave with Kim.
§
Is there any way of concluding with certainty that the world has changed? In five, ten years from now, what will my stay at the château come to mean? I see few people. I follow Tatiana’s advice: don’t read the newspapers, don’t turn on the TV , hidden behind a folding screen as if it were the château’s disgrace. Seeing no one does me good, but it’s best, I do believe, to love your neighbour. Our worlds are made of a few words, a few images and an energy that each of us always shapes the same way, regardless of its intensity. In the foreign tongue, I occasionally don’t finish my sentences. I feel ashamed when this happens. Yesterday Tatiana had me read an article entitled ‘Could humans coexist, form a community in a society that had a legislative system but no code of ethics?’ The question leaves me thinking. Therein lies a fissure in meaning that distresses me, that threatens my integrity, so I prefer to believe that in the end, life will once again win out, rough, warm. Half truth, half fiction.
§
As usual, the café is empty. An unknown woman is sitting at the back of the room. She is writing or taking notes, who knows. The day is so warm and green, one could die of pleasure under the shade of the great trees that Charles still keeps wanting to cut down to make into sculptures. In the far distance, the mountains, and sometimes the great white jet of precious water that, they say, brings the city good fortune. The lake is glassy and untroubled. The day cleanses the slow dust that has accumulated hour after hour.
§
On the wall of my room, four photographs of Tatiana. She must have been ten years old. The era is easy to recognize because back then there was only one way of framing faces. All the girls’ hair was cut in the same style, with short bangs exposing the eyes and forehead. Tatiana seemed different because in her gaze one could easily imagine Red Square covered in snow, a bygone Russia of forests and wild mythologies. Tatiana was from a time that filled lives with massacres and suffering so vivid they cannot be forgotten. But history was repeating itself and, yes, Tatiana would say once again, ‘A massacre, my dear, is when there are corpses in a field, on a road or in a school, and you can’t distinguish the faces from the arms and legs. A massacre,my dear, is man-made cock-and-bull that whips victims around willy-nilly in the wind, and then harder still. Afterwards, you have to trudge through the muddy fields, wiping the blood from the uteruses of women and from children’s cheeks.’
§
It is through prose that the world is driven to creating assets; through poetry, it changes and reconnects with the living. I tire quickly when writing in another language. I still don’t know where to properly place the silences. I cheat constantly. Something escapes me. Tires me out. Makes me flee. This morning I went to the post office. I rarely run into anyone at this hour, but I noticed a man talking with a woman. He was holding her left hand strangely in his right, a bit like someone wounded who, in order to shield himself from an unfortunate blow, shrivels up into
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