The Life of Elves by Barbery Muriel

Author:Barbery, Muriel [Barbery, Muriel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Europa
Published: 2016-02-08T16:00:00+00:00

At the very moment she saw the bridge, Eugénie heard voices chanting a celestial hymn. But unlike Maria she had not heard the words.

on a day slipping between two clouds of ink

on an evening sighing in the lightest of mists

The transparency of the world in these moments of song was dazzling, and she was hollowed out by a dizziness of frost and snow, their silkiness sparkling intermittently through the drifting mists. Maria knew this canto of passing voices and clouds. It came to her at night time, in her dreams, but also during the day when she would walk along her paths. Then she would stop, gripped by such marvelous fright that she almost wished she could die of it that very instant—then the song and the vision moved on, and she set off in quest of a hare that might offer some comfort, for there was always an instant, after the voices had fallen silent, when she thought she no longer desired anything, apart from that song and those mists. At last the world was clear again and her trouble was eased by violets and leaves.

She set off walking and wondered whether this grace she had seen was a dream, or rather another weft of reality. Similarly, as if in a dream she saw strange landscapes of fog. Day was breaking over a pier above the hollows thick with trees. Access was through a wooden pavilion; its walls were pierced with large openings that used the view to create splendid pictures. On the uneven oak floor, powdery with a light dust, gilded, comet-like, with bursts of light, there was a plain earthenware bowl. Maria would have liked to caress its gritty irregular sides. But she could not go closer because she knew it would leave a dishonorable script upon the dust; so she gave up and looked at the earthenware bowl, worshipping it with great covetousness.

Yes, the song had been even more crystalline, more heartrending and expansive, and this warning, accompanied by patience, had opened a diagonal insight that was both magnificent and terrible. And because she was absorbed by her dream-like, misty trance, she had not seen the iris at the decisive moment, but she suddenly heard a hundred horns sounding a deep, powerful note, so beautiful and funereal that the surfaces of reality had trembled in unison and whirled around a fixed point that spiraled in upon itself. How had she been able to do this? How had she not known? And beneath the thick red duvet she wept profusely, although this brought no relief, because the iris that Eugénie had shown her could not console her for the exchange that was depriving her of love.

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