Marie Nimier

Traductions

• 

  chinois, paru en janvier 2010.

  Plusieurs nouvelles sont disponibles en ligne sur le site des éditions Douban

  Vous dansez en chinois

• Anglais, paru en janvier 2009.

  Traduction de John Fletcher

  SOLO

   

  I put my arms round the tree, soaking up its warmth.

  It feeling my warmth, communing with me.

  I cannot say which of us needed the other’s warmth most.

  Nijinski

   

   

  I am all alone

  Me, moi, I

  All alone in the middle of the stage

  All alone to occupy the corners

  The four corners, for me all alone

  Putting my shoes on all alone

  Without ever really knowing

  Which one is left and which is right

  Twenty years later still the same doubt

  Not knowing on which foot to dance

  Exactly

  Making one’s life of that, one’s profession.

   

  And yet all that was very precise between my parents

  Very office calendar with green Stabilo and gun dog on the cover

  Even weeks, mother

  Odd weeks, father

  Holidays, split in two

  And the grandfathers, dead

  And the grandmothers, senile

  And me, in very good health

  Always in very good health

  Not having anything to justify

  Not having to explain anything to anyone

  Neither why my mother has not remade her life

  Nor why my father has not remade the world

  In spite of the packed meetings

  The men talking loudly in the next room

  Those men who prevented me getting to sleep

  A week here, a week there

  Provincial tours: Hôtel de la Paix, des Trois Colonnes, de la Providence

  Free, detached, light

  But no one to carry me

  No one to appreciate this lightness

  To arrive alone at the theater

  And leave it when I liked

  All alone, dancing all alone

  As you whistle in the dark to get up your courage

   

   

  You always have to draw attention to yourself, my father used to say

  Not two like you, my mother used to say

  Him

  Her

  Reconciling all that

  Her and him, separated

  Them and me, in one body

  Reconciling, conciliating, compromising

  Too, too many things to put together

  Too, too many

  For one man

  Longing to escape

  To leave running

  I me I me personally in my singular singularity

  Too burdensome

  Too much responsibility

  Only son

  Bearing the brunt

  Deflecting attention

  From me

  From me, moi, I

  Get them to see something else

  Imagine something else

  My part missing

  The bitten side of the apple

  My hollow

  Or on the contrary

  My excrescences

  My phantom limbs

  What is cut off and still hurts

  Everything that makes me and that is not me

  Those secrets no one sees

  And yet there, in full view, set out on the stage

  All those who inhabit me

  The orchestra and the conductor

  The eyes also are two making but one look

  Disgusting questions, peculiar conspiracies, little solitary rituals

  Count to three before putting your hand up

  Not kick over the traces

  A star-shaped brooch left on the parquet

  A puck launched by a hopper

  Alone, very alone

  Playing with the captive ball

  And off we go, making the best of things

  Gallant little soldiers

  My fears, my strength and me

  As one man

  I self-quote

  I self-stimulate

  I self-mimic

  With this satchel weighing sixteen pounds

  And always left behind something in the room at the other’s place

  Men’s voices raised through drink

  The grandmother put in an old people’s home, the Christmas visit, the end-of-year show

  I sing The Black Eagle

  A nurse plays the accordion

  August in rented accommodation

  I would often get bored

  But no one knew

  I would pretend to sort stamps

   

  Dancing, dancing

  Telling no story: taking up space.

  Catching attention to fill the void, make it less indigestible

  Eating one’s words

  Not binding: enumerating. Be incapable of binding, be a disabled bindee, unbinding one’s movements, making its one’s style, one’s trademark, be loved for that

  In the end

   

  I unfold on to myself

  I am my own support

  I let go

  I go against myself, I leave my body

  I get rid of it

  I am connected to it by a rubber band

  I am the dog chasing its tail

  I am the stammerer making speeches

  The solitaire is a diamond

  The solitaire cuts glass

  Me, I

  Made a thing of

  Served up

  Separately

  Displayed

   

  I am all alone

  And even when I’m being partnered

  I am all alone.

  But it’s less obvious.

                                                                                                Traduction John Fletcher

  -----------------

  The compass

  He, coming from Somalia via Montpellier, debarking like that, not knowing the language. I take him under my wing.

  My protection.
  His head under my arm. Sometimes I squeeze a bit. Two years pass. Two years have passed since he

  arrived. We are in a corner of the playground, at school. He asks if I can lend him my compass. In return he insists on giving me something. I tell him not to bother.

  Don’t bother, I say again.
  He insists.
  I gather it’s a matter of principle for him.
  Not wishing to owe me anything. Already owes me

  a lot.
  My stomach churns.

  - You really want to give me something in return? All you have to do - I tell him - is stab me in the thigh with the point of the compass, one sharp blow, like that, through my trousers. That’s what I want. You to stick the compass into my thigh.

  - Come off it!
  - Well, just do it, what are you waiting for?
  I hear him repeating again, with his accent, ‘Come

  off it ‘, trying to laugh. He doesn’t know if I’m joking or not, in truth...

  In truth, yes, perhaps I was joking at first, but very soon his jaws clench and I get serious.

  Strident belli, classes resume.

  Without his compass he will fail his geometry test and his move to the lower sixth is in jeopardy.

  When the point goes in, I don’t cry out.

  I press my trouser leg against the wound to deaden the pain, and I spit out: ‘Little bastard’.

  That’s not like me at all, the expression ‘little bastard’, and my voice doesn’t sound like mine, a nasal, shill voice like in French movies shown at the film society.

  The scenario ends there.
  No apology scene, no calming dialogue.
  No relief. Unless...
  Unless a scab forming can be considered an apology

  scene, the body dialoguing with the fabric, sticking to it.

  Interior, evening; undressing: the scab comes off. The wound starts bleeding again.

  Elation subsides.
  Pain reawakes.
  An insistent, deep, dull pain, as if something has

  remained in my body. A piece of lead. A splinter. After showering I press hard, nothing comes except a pinkish lymph. The skin closes again, the foreign thing still inside.

  When even now I press there, on the thigh, it feels like a cyst.

  What happens next, you want to know what happens next? He passes the written exam, I don’t speak to him anymore. I somehow make it impossible for him to return the compass and throw the box of spare leads into the waste bin.

  On the way to school, in the playground, in the corridors, I avoid him. I regret having made him hurt me, a regret that manifests itself in a rather weird way. With hindsight I now understand: I’m starting to detest him.

  His gentleness disgusts me.
  His servility disgusts me.
  His pleasant air. His willingness to integrate. His

  resilience.
  I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. The very

  worst of me.

  I see us again, in front of the school, the day the exam results were published.

  He elbows his way to the lists pinned on the school doors.

  His mother nearby with her coloured turban. Very erect, the mother, very anxious, but giving nothing away.

  Me, waiting calmly at the back, I know I’ll get an A, I haven’t a moment’s doubt. And I get an A. In those days everything worked out well for me, girlfriends, studies, even passing the driving test first time.

  Today, I just drift. I’m a failure.

  I didn’t want to suffer, believe me, I wasn’t a masochist or anything like that, I just wanted to punish him for refusing to borrow my compass free of charge, for nothing in return.

  Deliberate vengeance. Pure nastiness.

  Marie Nimier, translated by John Fletcher

   Translation © John Fletcher 2018