Fences in Breathing by Brossard Nicole

Author:Brossard, Nicole [Brossard, Nicole]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: FIC000000
Publisher: Coach House Books
Published: 2005-04-14T04:00:00+00:00

THE WATER LEVEL

… and met her gaze looking deeply from the same waters …

Louky Bersianik

They were two sentences with water and light. I had imagined them and now I wanted to write them. The sentences were simple, they spoke of unforgettable faces and of a bridge people crossed on foot or in cars. Both mentioned a woman. I no longer knew if it was the same woman in both sentences. One of the women ran her fingers through her hair while the other watched light streaming through the landscape.

The sentences were never exactly the same, depending on whether they were read quickly or slowly. Nonetheless, they always had a reassuring slowness. Wanting to write in our own style two sentences we have just read is natural, just as wanting to imitate someone we love seems quite legitimate and even pleasing. The sentences would stretch out as though they could make grooves in the air or give the impression of a voice and a melody about to drown, one inside the other. The tense changed from one sentence to the other, I could question myself, I could worry. I always felt like starting over. Whenever a sentence skimmed the surface of the lake, characters from a faraway time would spring up, then, without much hesitation, take off into the foreign language to indulge their fiercest fantasies. Screaming was never a solution. Screaming meant a state of emergency. Life needed to be organized to avoid emergencies. Each sentence had her own inner tense and I wanted to settle into it to get a sense of its colour. I had also noticed that, though they had the same number of syllables, one of them took longer to utter. Three syllables did not always equal three syllables. Therein lay a clue that, in each language, time could be stretched or it could contract to make it easier to decipher the cumbersome monotony of dailiness and the tenacious enigma of passions.

I didn’t know it yet, but both sentences concerned my most intimate self. ‘There must be a reverse side to what I am.’ The two sentences spoke about water and about downtown on a sunny day with frisky cumulus clouds.

I borrowed the château’s blue Volvo and drove along the serpentine road through Aubonne, then plunged into the forest, taking each curve in such a way as to make my heart race, wild in my chest. Light threaded through the violently green foliage, tropical-summer green. Tatiana had said, ‘Go and spend a few days in town, go.’ I had listened to her. The road glistened in the sun like young skin. The château, the village, already seemed far off, lost somewhere in the consciousness of an ancient character. I craved the city, craved skirting the shores of the lake and scrutinizing its dark water, happy there was water all around me. Noise, light, everything would do me good. Being by oneself all the time is difficult and perhaps not necessary. We need to be with other people at least half of the time so that life can intrigue, leap and roar.

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