Fragments of Place Read online

  FRAGMENTS OF PLACE

  AUDE

  Translated from French by David Homel

  Formatting note:

  In the electronic versions of this book

  blank pages that appear in the paperback

  have been removed.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Aude, 1947-

  [Éclats de lieux. English]

  Fragments of place / Aude ; translated from French by David Homel.

  Short stories.

  Translation of: Éclats de lieux.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-55096-494-3 (paperback).--ISBN 978-1-55096-495-0 (epub).--

  ISBN 978-1-55096-496-7 (mobi).--ISBN 978-1-55096-497-4 (pdf)

  I. Homel, David translator II. Title. III. Title: Éclats de lieux. English.

  PS8589.I77E4213 2016 C843'.54 C2015-906550-X/ C2015-906551-8

  Translation Copyright © Exile Editions and David Homel, 2015.

  First published in French as Éclats de lieux © 2012, Lévesque éditeur.

  The publishers have used this English edition to make certain changes to the original French book. All rights reserved.

  Published by Exile Editions Ltd ~ www.ExileEditions.com

  144483 Southgate Road 14 – GD, Holstein, Ontario, N0G 2A0

  PDF, ePUB and MOBI versions by Melissa Campos Mendivil

  Publication Copyright © Exile Editions, 2015. All rights reserved

  We gratefully acknowledge, for their support toward our publishing activities, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.

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  To all the women and men I have loved, and they are numerous.

  To all my readers, past, present, and future.

  To all women and men of good will; they are the majority on this planet.

  Contents

  A Foreword to My Readers

  The Spinners

  Taking Shelter

  Playing Knucklebones

  The Girls’ Room

  The Jackals

  Exile

  Other People’s Blood

  Indelible Virginia

  The Woman in the River

  The Wait

  A Living Soul

  Beyond Reproach

  A Drowning

  A Recurring Pattern

  Heart of Ice

  The Perfume of Ylang-Ylang

  Sapping

  The Woman in the Alley

  The Ultimate

  The Spinners (What Came Next)

  The goal is not to stay alive, but to stay human.

  —GEORGE ORWELL, 1984

  The goal is not to build great temples on the outside, but to create temples of goodness and compassion on the inside, within our hearts.

  —THE DALAI LAMA

  A Foreword to my Readers: Past, Present, and Future

  All of it was written in a spirit of joy, in a time of catastrophe.

  —JEAN-YVES LELOUP, L’absurde et la grâce

  All books by all authors are written at a specific time in their lives, in their personal histories, and at a particular moment in the history of the world.

  Sometimes it is difficult to detect what was happening in an author’s life when she was writing the book, unless she – or he – gives us clues in the lines, or through interviews, or in some other way. In some cases, the date of publication will tell us about the historical period in which it was written.

  Several of the stories in Fragments of Place were published long ago in literary magazines, especially in XYZ: La revue de la nouvelle.

  Yet most were written over the course of the last five years, when great waves of violence and deep conflicts wracked the planet. In 2011, hope suddenly reappeared with the Arab Spring and other crucial events. Great social movements based on indignation have come forward around the world. In different ways and different contexts, they have called for improvements to the common good, for true democracy without violence and with justice for all citizens, including those of the future. The protection of our Earth, which has become urgent and vital, is of course part of these demands. Certainly today, before any future can be radiant, there is an enormous amount of work to do, complex and delicate and with the capacity to reconcile the many opposing forces, while extremely powerful economic, political, and religious factions try to maintain their domination and seize the upper hand and impose their vision.

  Fragments of Place bears the mark of these pages of history.

  This collection does not, however, reflect – except, perhaps, in one story – what I was going through in my personal life as I was writing. In my own small history, major upsets occurred that turned everything upside down.

  I was writing my most recent novel Chrysalide, published in 2006, when everything began to change. Yet in this novel, there are no echoes of my private upheaval.

  For me, writing is the perfect way to travel through the vast and virtual expanse of my humanity, far beyond the limits of my identity. This turned out to be a saving grace in these circumstances, as it had been, previously, in others.

  Seven years ago in June, I was informed that I had blood cancer; it was deadly and incurable. The prediction, including chemotherapy and stem-cell treatment, was two years at best.

  Despite my death foretold, I decided to throw myself into the Chrysalide project that I had been intending to write before I received the fateful news. No matter what, that novel was inside me and I wanted to write it.

  Writing is always very demanding, and it was even more so with my more than precarious health. But the book let me turn away from the world of sickness and death.

  With the help of words, I built a character called Catherine (“Catou” for her intimates), a young woman of twenty-two, and then I slipped into her skin. I had to inhabit her fully, and blend into her and her reality. Catou, the narrator, is writing a sort of personal journal. I, Aude, couldn’t write it for her, with my vocabulary, my style, and my experience. What a magnificent transmigration!

  Afterward, my many encounters with students at the college level proved to me, beyond a doubt, that they considered Catou as one of them. I had succeeded my metempsychosis.

  Thanks to the fabulous power of fiction, I could project myself into other experiences outside the ones typical of my age, sex, appearance, state of health, cultural belonging, and the choices I made through the course of my life. Through the writing and reading of fiction, my limits were wiped away and everything became possible.

  After the diagnosis and prognosis, two years went by without the death foretold occurring. The treatments went on with their ups and downs. At times I came close to death, then recovered my strength.

  Shortly after Chrysalide was published, despite my shaky health, I went back to writing, short stories this time. Little by little, the idea of a collection began to take shape. Writing isolated stories is one thing, but to see a collection come together is completely different.

  I applied for a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts, unsure whether I could actually complete the project. I received
what I asked for, and I must admit that the acceptance was a very strong stimulant that helped me with my writing despite extremely difficult times. I thank the Canada Council for the Arts for its support; up until now, it might not have been able to gauge its importance to me.

  A year later, when I had written further stories, I sent the results to Gaëtan Lévesque, my publisher, along with the “Detailed Description of My Project” that I had submitted to the Canada Council. Gaëtan was my constant companion as I made my way. He acted without ever exerting pressure, always urging me to look after myself first. Every time I sent him a new story, he read it immediately. And every time he responded, and what he wrote gave me wings to fly. I can never thank him enough for believing in my writing all through the years, and for backing up his trust with concrete actions, over and over. From The Indiscernible Movement in 1997 to Fragments of Place in 2012, his support has been unwavering.

  Of course I couldn’t always write at a pace I would have liked to maintain. But the fascination, exaltation, and happiness that arose from immersing myself in words and characters were awaiting me each time.

  Was I able to carry out my project completely? Not entirely, even if Fragments of Place is now a book, and has everything necessary to form an honest collection of stories.

  Inside me, I still have other stories asking to be born. I can clearly see characters and scenes. I hear sentences in my head. There are pathways to explore, words to follow up on.

  But I’m afraid that time and energy are deserting me…

  If that’s not the case, if death continues to circle without urging me onto the dance floor, I intend to write the stories turning inside me, the ones I have not had time to attend to. I might publish them in that wonderful, stimulating magazine called XYZ: La revue de la nouvelle, also edited by Gaëtan Lévesque.

  Sometimes, when I feel defiant, cocky, and in the mood to laugh, I raise my middle finger to the sky and, once again, at the end of a new story, I shout, “Fuck death!”

  Can death grab me by the hide if I’m not inside it anymore? Can it catch up to me if I am camouflaged within the skin of my characters? Death doesn’t know how to read – everyone knows that. It’s too busy scouring the countryside.

  Actually, I’m not at war with death. I am toying with it, as it toys with me. It started first! But I have learned to live with it. It is part of my life. And who knows, maybe one day I’ll be the one to lead it onto the dance floor.

  To give you a better idea of everything that was bubbling away inside me, and continues to simmer, regarding Fragments of Place, I’ll let you read the “Detailed Description” that I submitted to the Canada Council as part of my grant application.

  DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PROJECT.

  Currently I have five short stories that, though all very different, are related at a deeper level, which makes me feel I have a true collection in gestation, and not just disparate stories.

  One of them, “The Spinners,” would be the first in the collection, since it sets down what the issues will be in the rest of the book. In this story, the Fates, who spin and spool off, then cut the thread of human life, have decided to stop giving the gift of life to humans:

  Outside, the madness of men, already so great, had gone beyond all limits in its fanaticism, cupidity, barbarity, and indifference. Nothing could appease their greedy gaze.

  When other women came to ask asylum and protection from them, the three sisters decided to stop spinning the silky thread of life that was their gift to men. They ceased spooling it across fields of time, then cutting it off, when the hour was right, to preserve the world’s harmony. It just wasn’t worth the trouble anymore.

  This story is different from the others that will follow (the four that have been written and those to come) because it gives a complete picture, a view “from above,” a superior point of view on what is happening “down below.” The fate of human beings is in the hands of these three women.

  The other stories in the collection will carry us into the field, down below, here in our world made of chaos, and we will experience the intimate lives being lived in different places on the planet. There will be war, social instability, and totalitarianism. Other places live in peace, and seem to be harmonious and secure, but even there, life implodes more each day, undermined by silent, destructive violence.

  One of the stories I have written, “The Jackals,” takes place in a tent in a refugee camp. Four women are hiding there. Two Jackals are on the prowl, waiting for the armed guards to leave, as they have come to escort another woman refugee; when the coast is clear, the Jackals will attack. “The Jackals” is the name I chose for a group of male refugees who have taken over the camp and are terrorizing the inhabitants.

  The Jackals are on the lookout, prowling in silence, in groups of two or three, near the tents where death has left its seal and made room for others.

  Lilia heard two of them walking close by, so close they brushed against the canvas. They even urinated on it. The very short story “Playing Knucklebones” could be set in our world, in our peaceful and “civilized” universe, where survival is not a way of life.

  The title of the collection came to me after I read the five stories in a row. Fragments of Place. Through its multiple meanings, it creates a strong generating principle for the stories to come.

  Fragments can refer to horrible things, as in the story “Taking Shelter,” in which two famous war photographers are now trapped, after a career of successfully capturing moments of astonishment and horror. They spent their lives hoping to faithfully bear witness, through their photos, to the dreadful events in countries that most people prefer to forget. But now they are chasing after horror the way others crave a drug they can’t live without.

  Sometimes, in situations of extreme tension, they secretly wished that the worst would befall them, right before their eyes. That a rocket would shred human flesh, that the carnage would begin, that heads and hands would be torn away, right now, in front of them, as they trained their telescopic lenses on possible targets.

  Fragments of a pulverized world, beyond what is imaginable or possible, “a common grave where bodies are ground into the rocky soil with a bulldozer, in order to obliterate all traces of the massacre,” “a wall splattered with death.”

  But also, fragments of different places, inner worlds destroyed in various ways by other human beings. Fragments of families, couples, mistreated children, stripped of their childhood.

  Fragments of dreams.

  Fragments of bodies falling apart in illness, bones growing fragile, breasts assaulted by the scalpel, limbs amputated, no longer responding to messages sent by the brain.

  Fragments of memory adrift, having lost everything that was stored, what we thought was our lives, but has now run aground like in a shipwreck.

  Fragments of everything that disappears as age carries out its slow and pitiless work on body and mind, as it mocks everything that once was important, laying low love, parents, and the dearest friends.

  In Fragments of Place, there is also the possibility of dismissing fear, taboos, rules, censorship, cages, and ordinary ways of seeing, thinking, and living, so that freedom, desire, light, and hope shine through. And with it solidarity, so precious and necessary.

  Bursts of laughter; outbursts of joy. Children’s voices in the street. Sunbursts.

  Here, as elsewhere. Inside and out.

  This project was so fertile that it is hard to staunch the flow of creation it continues bringing forth.

  FRAGMENTS

  OF PLACE

  THE SPINNERS

  In the beginning, they were three.

  Three sisters come from the night.

  For an eternity, they had spun time between their fingers, beautiful and silent, their bodies and minds dedicated to men, in the spacious room where sunlight and fresh air freely entered through veils undulating in the breeze.

  Their dresses of raw silk whispered sweetly with each of their move
ments, like the wings of a dragonfly.

  The days slipped by, easily, governed by the cycle of life. The primal forces were still in control, and no one thought to question everything at all times.

  But they aren’t alone anymore now, in the vast dwelling where voices and footfalls are muted, as if someone were dying in the next room.

  Some time ago, nine other women came seeking refuge with them. When the nine arrived, they were in terrible condition. Outside, they had been tracked down, beaten, and raped.

  The three sisters were in consternation, and took them in and cared for them, setting aside their work, neglecting the patient and secretive woman’s work that creates life and accompanies it to the end.

  The wool with its rich and varied colours, the wooden frame, the distaff, and the scissors – all were cast aside, into forgetfulness.

  Even in the worst moments, and there had been many, had they thought they would reach such an extreme decision.

  Now there were twelve of them.

  Most of the women were at the dazzling yet fragile crest of maturity, just before everything begins to turn, slowly but inexorably, to drag them silently toward oblivion, covering them with a fine layer of chalk under which their features will grow indistinguishable, their eyes sightless, until they disappear entirely. But that will not happen to these women. They are of another lineage.

  Moira, one of the three sisters, was the eldest among them. She alone was dressed in black. She was the most fearsome of them. She stood straight, majestic, and inflexible.

  The youngest of the refugees wasn’t even twenty. She had the graceful movements of a doe. Sometimes she could scarcely contain the wild energy that sent her bounding toward the outside despite the dangers and despite the fear that had entered her like a poison.

  Now they were living by lamplight, even during the day. The windows had been blocked by heavy draperies that let nothing in from outside.

  They spoke very little, and when they did, they murmured.