Mauve Desert by Nicole Brossard

Author:Nicole Brossard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC019000
Publisher: Coach House Books
Published: 2006-03-08T00:00:00+00:00

SCENES

I

Time begins again between Kathy Kerouac and Mélanie. Faces make an effort and lips and the gazes slant can be seen obliquing their way through words. The heat is high, the pool water blinding.

– Its vague, an effort suffices, or a few words said, or else seeing you in front of this television set.

– It’s vague! And yet there are words for saying what you’re feeling.

– You look at Lorna and see nothing else around.

– My gaze is wide.

– Vague. You don’t see me.

– I see what I love, what is reason to live. You’re the center core of my existence. You have no idea what goes on inside me. Do you think my thoughts are free of your face, of all those memories that settle in our memory over the years?

– Anything to avoid the present, right? But don’t worry, I’m leaving. You’re both too present and too absent. You exist too strongly inside me because you never talk to me. I’m forced to imagine your tenderness, to invent dialogues in which you tell me of your love, your esteem, your appreciation. But I’m weary of these fantasies. I don’t want to spend my life in emotional disorder. I want the horizon very clear before me.

– A girl does not go out into the desert to feed on the sun and the horizon. A girl must not go as far as where the eye is misled.

– My gaze will be vigilant. I’m alert in the questioning state.

– The sun, the heat, the solitude will overcome you.

– The heat originates inside me. I know how to be alone. If only you could imagine in my eyes the splendor of existing!

– You mean that your gut wants to speak.

– I’m saying that my eyes are speaking about existing.

–Your eyes are so full of arrogance and pride that they will necessarily mislead you. Don’t you know that…

– No, I don’t know anything. I’m leaving because you don’t teach me anything. You watch that television. Your attention turns only to Lorna. No, you don’t teach me anything.

– You know, eyes, oh! you’ll know soon enough.

– What about eyes?

– Eyes that seek to get ahead of the horizon. Impatient eyes will always be disappointed.

– I will be bright and patient.

– There is no outsmarting them. Eyes need to think and when they’re thinking, we must yield. Eyes cause the faces they penetrate to crack. You too will yield.

– I’m not afraid of death.

– Mélanie, you mustn’t think about death. Death is something somewhere invented by men to forget and to elude reality.

– Don’t be ridiculous. Death is an encounter for everyone.

– I’m saying that men invented death because they think about it. They cultivate it raucously.

– Have you never thought about death?

–I became mortal the day I gave birth to you. Death does not come toward us, it’s we who in time quite naturally go toward death.

– Why are you talking to me like this now?

– I’ve always wanted you to be able and whole.

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