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Fiction

From “La Belle Amour Humaine”

By Lyonel Trouillot
Translated from French by Linda Coverdale
In an excerpt from his Prix Goncourt-shortlisted novel, Lyonel Trouillot sends a young woman in search of her family history.

There are seven hours of road between the noise and the silence. Between here in the capital and Anse-à-Fôleur. I suppose it’s the same where you come from, one town after another and all different. There are towns that yammer and others that whisper. There are towns that smile and others that sulk. Ones that daub themselves with every color of the rainbow the way a girl condemned to walk the streets disguises herself every evening to go into battle. And other towns that don’t display anything, don’t sell anything, don’t go in for showing off or putting up a front, but they smile easily when a visitor passes through. That’s what it’s like, my town by the sea. Here in the city, this is my real town. I was born here and I know the sounds of the place by heart. Its nooks and corners. Its disasters. But out there, that’s my town too. Well, my village. There I have planted my dreams. And the land that belongs to you, it’s where you plant your dreams. The land you would like to leave to your children. When we get there you’ll see the difference. Here, there’s here and out there. Here, it’s open city, outrage galore. Enough large families arrive here every day to stock a whole new city. Out there, in that tiny Anse-à-Fôleur where you want me to drive you, there’s not a lot of people: a few pals, a handful of souls who call one another by their first names and don’t care much for commotion. Children there still gather shells, put them to their ears, and the sea sings them some secret song, without bothering the grown-ups. The adults don’t raise their voices over trifles. They rarely lose their tempers, and when they do, the children smile behind their backs, knowing it’s all a game, a pretend thunderstorm soon over. Even the animals take turns crying out, when they need to, for fodder or care. Out there, people just don’t holler like they do here. When they decide on silence, even their laughter shows in their eyes. And when they speak, there is still silence hidden behind their words. When you arrive with your questions, what you’ll get for answers will be phrases curled up like waves, whose meaning you’ll miss if you do your lazy thing or your Daughter of Pure Reason number and interpret them too literally. If they trot out platitudes opining that every die has six faces and the night is sometimes longer than the day, don’t go thinking they’re dimwits talking to you to say nothing. A friendly word of advice: always see the recto and verso of things. If they ask you what’s the point of discovering the clever way milk—which has no legs—manages to climb into the very heart of the coconut, it’s because they want you to understand that few things are worth tracking back to their origins, their whys and wherefores; that there are unimportant facts not worth any chatter, and others rooted so deeply their causes escape all analysis, so that we must, to be happy, leave them to their mystery. “Leave things to their mystery.” That’s how they’ll answer you. That’s what my uncle told the investigator from the capital who came to “inquire into the origins of the fire that destroyed the twin houses of the businessman Robert Montès and Colonel Pierre André Pierre (retd), causing the death of these two illustrious citizens at an undetermined hour between evening and dawn in the locality of Anse-à-Fôleur.” My uncle himself, like the villagers, is part of the mystery. He wasn’t born in the village, however. For a long time he lived here, amid the hustle and bustle, shut up in his studio earning his bread painting faces to order, acquiring over the years a fine reputation as a portraitist. Government ministers, society ladies, notables, soldiers, old married couples, newlyweds. . . . On his canvases he depicted all kinds of paying faces, irrespective of age, sex, profession, color. The human face, he says, is the smallest unit of beauty and ugliness in living creatures, the tiniest battleground on which clash goodness and cruelty, stupidity and intelligence. When doctors informed him that there was no cure for his increasing blindness, he kept his affliction secret and decided to retire to a small town, preferably by the sea. Strangely enough, before his vision began to fail, he had felt no attraction for the sea, but now that he lives in shadows, his house on the coast is a little like a ship for him. He claims that a simple gesture, a few steps, a few swimming strokes are enough to bind his life to that of the water. That a seaside village, especially when you weren’t born there, feels like a door, and that what lies behind it, inland, is less grand and present than what lies before it: the whole breadth of the ocean. Every morning he gets out of bed, helped by Solène. She opens the window for him and he settles into his armchair to look out at the sea. It was there, at his window, seeing and blind, that he was visited twenty years ago by the investigator from the capital who stared at him in bafflement. “Leave things to their mystery. Now that I no longer see, I see no better use of my presence in this world than to look out the window. Yes, two men died, two houses burned. But is that really the most important thing! One day, you too will die. When your hour comes, ask yourself the question that does matter: ‘Did I make noble use of my presence in this world?’ If the answer is no, it will be too late either to complain or to change. So, don’t wait around. The circumstances of death offer no key for understanding. Death remains for the living the most commonplace of events, the only one that is inevitable. Death does not belong to us, since it marches on before us. But life. . . .”

© 2011 by Lyonel Trouillot. By arrangement with Actes Sud. Translation © 2011 by Linda Coverdale. All rights reserved.

English French (Original)

There are seven hours of road between the noise and the silence. Between here in the capital and Anse-à-Fôleur. I suppose it’s the same where you come from, one town after another and all different. There are towns that yammer and others that whisper. There are towns that smile and others that sulk. Ones that daub themselves with every color of the rainbow the way a girl condemned to walk the streets disguises herself every evening to go into battle. And other towns that don’t display anything, don’t sell anything, don’t go in for showing off or putting up a front, but they smile easily when a visitor passes through. That’s what it’s like, my town by the sea. Here in the city, this is my real town. I was born here and I know the sounds of the place by heart. Its nooks and corners. Its disasters. But out there, that’s my town too. Well, my village. There I have planted my dreams. And the land that belongs to you, it’s where you plant your dreams. The land you would like to leave to your children. When we get there you’ll see the difference. Here, there’s here and out there. Here, it’s open city, outrage galore. Enough large families arrive here every day to stock a whole new city. Out there, in that tiny Anse-à-Fôleur where you want me to drive you, there’s not a lot of people: a few pals, a handful of souls who call one another by their first names and don’t care much for commotion. Children there still gather shells, put them to their ears, and the sea sings them some secret song, without bothering the grown-ups. The adults don’t raise their voices over trifles. They rarely lose their tempers, and when they do, the children smile behind their backs, knowing it’s all a game, a pretend thunderstorm soon over. Even the animals take turns crying out, when they need to, for fodder or care. Out there, people just don’t holler like they do here. When they decide on silence, even their laughter shows in their eyes. And when they speak, there is still silence hidden behind their words. When you arrive with your questions, what you’ll get for answers will be phrases curled up like waves, whose meaning you’ll miss if you do your lazy thing or your Daughter of Pure Reason number and interpret them too literally. If they trot out platitudes opining that every die has six faces and the night is sometimes longer than the day, don’t go thinking they’re dimwits talking to you to say nothing. A friendly word of advice: always see the recto and verso of things. If they ask you what’s the point of discovering the clever way milk—which has no legs—manages to climb into the very heart of the coconut, it’s because they want you to understand that few things are worth tracking back to their origins, their whys and wherefores; that there are unimportant facts not worth any chatter, and others rooted so deeply their causes escape all analysis, so that we must, to be happy, leave them to their mystery. “Leave things to their mystery.” That’s how they’ll answer you. That’s what my uncle told the investigator from the capital who came to “inquire into the origins of the fire that destroyed the twin houses of the businessman Robert Montès and Colonel Pierre André Pierre (retd), causing the death of these two illustrious citizens at an undetermined hour between evening and dawn in the locality of Anse-à-Fôleur.” My uncle himself, like the villagers, is part of the mystery. He wasn’t born in the village, however. For a long time he lived here, amid the hustle and bustle, shut up in his studio earning his bread painting faces to order, acquiring over the years a fine reputation as a portraitist. Government ministers, society ladies, notables, soldiers, old married couples, newlyweds. . . . On his canvases he depicted all kinds of paying faces, irrespective of age, sex, profession, color. The human face, he says, is the smallest unit of beauty and ugliness in living creatures, the tiniest battleground on which clash goodness and cruelty, stupidity and intelligence. When doctors informed him that there was no cure for his increasing blindness, he kept his affliction secret and decided to retire to a small town, preferably by the sea. Strangely enough, before his vision began to fail, he had felt no attraction for the sea, but now that he lives in shadows, his house on the coast is a little like a ship for him. He claims that a simple gesture, a few steps, a few swimming strokes are enough to bind his life to that of the water. That a seaside village, especially when you weren’t born there, feels like a door, and that what lies behind it, inland, is less grand and present than what lies before it: the whole breadth of the ocean. Every morning he gets out of bed, helped by Solène. She opens the window for him and he settles into his armchair to look out at the sea. It was there, at his window, seeing and blind, that he was visited twenty years ago by the investigator from the capital who stared at him in bafflement. “Leave things to their mystery. Now that I no longer see, I see no better use of my presence in this world than to look out the window. Yes, two men died, two houses burned. But is that really the most important thing! One day, you too will die. When your hour comes, ask yourself the question that does matter: ‘Did I make noble use of my presence in this world?’ If the answer is no, it will be too late either to complain or to change. So, don’t wait around. The circumstances of death offer no key for understanding. Death remains for the living the most commonplace of events, the only one that is inevitable. Death does not belong to us, since it marches on before us. But life. . . .”

La Belle Amour Humaine

Il y a sept heures de route entre le bruit et le silence. Entre ici et Anse-à-Fôleur. J’imagine que chez toi aussi les villes se suivent et ne se ressemblent pas. Il est des villes qui aboient et d’autres qui chuchotent. Il est des villes qui sourient et d’autres qui font la gueule. Des qui se peinturlurent comme une fille condamnée à faire le trottoir se déguise chaque soir pour partir au combat. Et d’autres qui ne montrent rien, ne vendent rien, ne font pas dans le show off ni dans la devanture, mais sourient sans forcer quand passe un visiteur. Ma ville sur mer, elle est comme ça. Ma vraie ville, c’est ici. J’y suis né et je connais ses bruits par coeur. Ses recoins. Ses désastres. Mais là-bas, c’est ma ville aussi. Enfin, mon village. J’y ai planté mes rêves. Et la terre qui t’appartient, c’est celle où tu plantes tes rêves. Celle que tu aimerais léguer à tes enfants. Lorsque nous arriverons là-bas tu pourras faire la différence. Ici, il y a ici et là-bas. Ici, c’est ville ouverte, scandale à profusion. Chaque jour il arrive par la route assez de familles nombreuses pour peupler une autre ville. Là-bas, dans le lieudit d’Anse-à-Fôleur où tu souhaites que je te conduise, c’est peu de monde, quelques copains, une poignée de vivants qui s’appellent par leurs prénoms et ne cultivent pas le vacarme. Les enfants y ramassent encore des coquillages, les portent à leurs oreilles, et la mer leur y chante quelque chanson secrète, sans deranger les autres. Les adultes n’élèvent pas la voix pour un oui, pour un non. Ils se fâchent rarement, et quand ça leur arrive, les enfants sourient dans leur dos, sachant que c’est un jeu de rôle, un faux orage, qui passera vite. Même les bêtes ne crient que chacune à son tour, quand besoin est, d’herbe ou de soin. Là-bas, les gens, ils braient pas comme ici. Quand ils optent pour le silence, même le rire leur passe par les yeux. Et lorsqu’ils parlent, y a encore du silence caché derrière leurs mots. Quand tu arriveras avec tes questions, ils te feront en guise de réponse des phrases enroulées comme des vagues dont le sens t’échappera si tu fais ta paresseuse ou ta fille de la raison pure et les interprètes à la lettre. S’ils te sortent des lapalissades comme quoi les dés ont six faces et que la nuit est parfois plus longue que le jour, ne va pas croire qu’ils sont débiles et te parlent pour ne rien dire, c’est un conseil d’ami qui t’invite à voir en toute chose l’avers et le revers. S’ils te demandent à quoi cela sert de découvrir l’astuce par laquelle le lait qui n’a pas de jambes s’arrange pour grimper jusqu’au coeur de la noix de coco, c’est qu’ils souhaitent que tu comprennes que peu de choses méritent qu’on en saisisse les origines, les pourquoi et les conséquences. Qu’il est des faits sans importance qui ne valent pas le bavardage, et d’autres dont les causes sont d’une telle profondeur qu’elles échappent à toute analyse, et qu’il convient pour être heureux de les laisser à leur mystère. “Laissez les choses à leur mystère.” Voilà ce qu’ils te répondront. C’est ce que mon oncle a dit à l’enquêteur venu de la capitale “s’informer des origines de l’incendie ayant détruit  les maisons soeurs de l’homme d’affaires Robert Montès et du colonel à la retraite Pierre André Pierre et causé la mort des deux illustres citoyens à une heure indéterminée entre le soir et l’aube dans le lieudit d’Anse-à-Fôleur”. Mon oncle, lui-même, comme les gens du village, appartient au mystère. Pourtant il n’est pas né là-bas. Pendant longtemps, il a vécu ici, enfermé dans son atelier, en plein coeur du vacarme, et gagné son pain à peindre des visages sur commande, se construisant au fil des ans une belle réputation de portraitiste. Ministres, dames du monde, notables, militaires, vieux mariés, jeunes mariés… il a mis sur ses toiles tous les visages solvables, indépendamment de la profession, de l’âge, du sexe, de la couleur. Le visage humain est, dit-il, la plus petite unité de la beauté et de la laideur des espèces vivantes, le plus petit territoire sur lequel s’affrontent la bonté et la cruauté, la bêtise et l’intelligence. Lorsque les médecins l’ont informé que nul traitement ne pouvait le guérir de la cécité annoncée, il a gardé le secret sur sa maladie et decide de se retirer dans une petite ville, de préférence au bord de la mer. Etrangement, du temps où il voyait, la mer ne l’attirait pas. Mais depuis qu’il habite l’ombre, sa maison sur la côte, c’est un peu comme sa barque. Il prétend qu’il suffit de quelques pas, de quelques brasses, d’un geste, pour lier sa vie à celle de l’eau. Que, surtout quand on n’y est pas né, on a l’impression qu’un village côtier, c’est une porte, que ce qu’il y a derrière, les terres intérieures, est moins grand, moins présent que ce qu’il y a devant : toute la largeur de l’océan. Chaque matin il se lève de son lit avec l’aide de Solène, elle lui ouvre la fenêtre et il s’installe dans son fauteuil pour regarder la mer. C’est là, devant sa fenêtre, aveugle et voyant, qu’il a reçu il y a vingt ans l’enquêteur venu de la capitale qui le dévisageait sans comprendre.

“Laissez les choses à leur mystère. Maintenant que je ne vois plus, je ne trouve pas meilleur usage de ma présence au monde que de regarder par la fenêtre. Oui, deux hommes sont morts, deux maisons ont brûlé. Mais est-ce là le plus important ! Un jour, vous aussi vous mourrez. Quand viendra l’heure, posez-vous la question qui compte : «Ai-je fait un bel usage de ma présence au monde ?» Si la réponse est non, ce sera trop tard, pour vous plaindre comme pour changer. Alors, n’attendez pas. Les circonstances de la mort n’offrent pas de clé pour comprendre. La mort demeure pour le vivant la plus banale des occurrences, la seule qui soit inévitable. La mort ne nous appartient pas, puisqu’elle nous précède. Mais la vie…”

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