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Fiction

Wild Daffodils

By Nathacha Appanah
Translated from French by Geoffrey Strachan
Mauritian writer Nathacha Appanah writes from the Vosges.

It was only during our first weekend together in the Vosges Mountains that I noticed how in tune we were. Before that, whenever we met I felt as if the city, the noise, and other people were preventing us from being completely ourselves. For our first evenings out we went to restaurants recommended by Sunday magazines, and these were often alike, with the stark lines of their décor, their brightly colored walls, geometric plates and expensive wines. There was nothing to tell us apart from the other couples dining there.

We talked a lot, for people by nature taciturn and thoughtful. I had not yet realized we had this in common and so was trying to get through to you with words, sentences—I think you were doing the same—and all the rest of the noise was simply added to the noise we were making. Returning home after those evenings I was exhausted, as if I had had to communicate using a foreign language. I think I acted like that because I already liked you a lot and was afraid my natural inclination toward silence—for which I have so often been reproached—might drive you away. That was why my last partner had left me. I often think about something he said to me: “Maybe, when it comes down to it, you’re just sly.” That, of course, is precisely the kind of rather cruel remark people fling at one another when they break up, but I remembered my mother using that adjective about me, on occasion, when I was in my teens and she discovered something I had hidden from her.

During those first times together I talked about everything under the sun, without really getting to the heart of any of it: my family, my childhood in Normandy, our holiday home in the Landes, my studies in England, my sister Laura’s wedding that was due to happen the following summer. You talked mainly about your work as a photographer, the places you visited, your plans. You made no mention of your family and in those days I did not ask you any questions on the subject. And yet I had the feeling that, when you were talking to me almost exclusively about your work, you were being more open than I was.

We took advantage of one of your trips to Strasbourg to spend a first weekend away from cities. I caught a train to join you on Friday and we hired a car to take us to that village in the Vosges some thirty miles from Colmar. These were the first days of spring, even though the valleys were still lightly sprinkled with snow in the morning. Slowly, as we made our way up to the village, the air became crystal clear, rid itself of the city’s impurities, and we, too, shed our masks. Where fir trees cast giant shadows on sharp bends in the road it grew dark, but you did not switch on the headlights. Odd gaps allowed us to glimpse part of a valley, a patch of blue sky, a hint of the green, densely wooded hillside we were plunging into. I lowered the window and took a deep breath, inhaling the cocooned scent of that mountain. You held my hand briefly just then and I felt something shiver in the pit of my stomach. Wordlessly, at last, I looked at you and I remember how wonderful your face was that spring afternoon.

Our room at the house we stayed in was simple and spacious, the walls white and bare, the cotton sheets crisp, the quilt plump and fresh. A desk, a vase with wild flowers, wide, almost black floorboards , and a great, light-colored wooden chest which held another quilt. There were red geraniums around the window, hanging from the shutters and in pots on the sill. All the houses there were decorated with flowers like this, I noticed, the best way, perhaps, to mark and welcome the spring, where winter is often harsh. We lay down for a moment and made love in silence with our eyes open. It was not like before, in my room or yours, after those talkative meals or evenings in crowded cinemas. There was something gentler about the way we meshed with one another from  then on, our bodies were more at ease together and thus we were speaking a more truthful, more confident language, more loving, too.

During that weekend I discovered your reserve matched mine when we were in wild surroundings and equally in daily life. We went for long walks, occasionally lasting half a day, and when, on our way back down the hillside that led to the village, you held my waist lightly, I felt, at times, like weeping over this unexpected, simple, unpretentious happiness. In the course of one of these excursions we came upon a field of yellow daffodils and, from where we stood, a little above it, they looked like a carpet of gold. We cut down through the fields and it was like being a child again, taking great strides to reach that expanse of flowers. All their yellow took my breath away and, just as when I first went bathing in the sea in the Landes, I had an irresistible urge to dive into it. It was here you took a picture of me for the first time. In the photograph I have rosy cheeks, shining eyes, and an impatient, slightly mischievous smile that makes me bite my upper lip. It is a close-up, there is not a daffodil to be seen, which is what is wonderful about it. We are the only ones who know the source of the emotion that is so apparent on my face, we are the only ones who know all the beauty that filled our eyes at that moment, who know what that weekend had revealed to us about ourselves. This photograph would probably not mean much to other people, but every time I look at it I feel as if I were in the Vosges in early spring once more, the yellow overwhelming my eyes, I picture again the little bunch we picked and placed in the vase in the bedroom, a cluster of gold in that plain and simple spot, with the two of us waltzing gently around it.

On our return from that weekend we did not don our masks again, we stopped reaching out to one another by noise and movement once and for all. We took an apartment my sister had discovered for us several months earlier. At the far end of a sloping, paved courtyard, in a slightly antiquated district, three rooms on the ground floor, where you instantly spotted the future location of your office. These had once been dressmaking workshops, converted for residential accommodation. You had few possessions—most of what you earned went into  your equipment and your work—for you had taken advantage of our move to give away your furniture, you said you preferred what I had inherited from my parents and grandparents. The day we moved in you bought some big camellia plants, already well in flower. With the muted light that came into the building, these flowers, delicate and yet fleshy to the touch, gave our interior an old-fashioned feel. You used my grandmother’s ancient  bureau to store your equipment and polished the furniture once a month with exaggerated care, as if you were afraid I might reproach you for not looking after it. You often told me I was lucky to have “all this”: the old chiffonier, the photographs, the silver, the chest, my grandmother’s ring. You had no family photographs, not one of you as a child, no object you took round with you from house to house. You were as if new, and I envied you.

In time there were these gestures, expressions. I noticed them by chance, at first, later I came to expect them, in the end I took to counting them. The way you were always the one to break free from an embrace, the way you held my hand in public without really doing so (your fingers remained slack, soft), the way your face smiled at me when I came into your office, then closed up at once, sometimes even before my back was turned. At times you looked at me as if I were a stranger, an intruder or, worse still, sly. You went away for days, weeks at a time, returning with photographs of broken people, skies scarred with smoke, fallen trees. You would shut yourself in your office for a couple of days, then emerge just as before, or almost. But on the plus side, for there must always be one in such matters, there was your face, your talent, your silence that I loved to listen to. There was your body beside me and those childlike sighs you uttered when you were dreaming. I wished I had the courage to rummage through your things, but I did not do so.

At my sister’s wedding you stuck behind your camera and refused to mingle with us, politely at first, firmly later on. You were there in the corner of my eye, like those floaters people with high blood pressure say they have constantly on their retinas. At the end of the evening I went up to you. You were  sitting there, cross-legged in a corner of the room, peering at photographs, noting who knows what.

“Would you like a walk on the beach?”

“Yes, why not?”

I knew the way by heart, the slatted path that wound upward, the tall plants tickling one’s calves, the scent of the pine trees receding, the scent of the sea coming in gusts, suddenly hitting us, and the dark plateau streaked with white, which is the expanse of the Atlantic at night. I was panting noisily and because, for once, I could not bear your silence, I longed for you to say something, shout into the wind, yell, I asked you: “What are we going to do now?”

I was standing a few yards away from you and I wanted you to leave me, there and then. I wanted it to be theatrical, for my grief to be echoed by the turmoil of the sea.

You looked me directly in the face and murmured something that sounded to me like “daffodils.”

“What?”

“Shall we swim?”

And because at that moment I was simply not expecting you to say that, because the sea would have scattered every last one of any words of mine, I followed you into the waves, praying, as I did so, that the wind would blow away a vague premonition that you would not return.

© Nathacha Appanah. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2012 Geoffrey Strachan. All rights reserved.

English French (Original)

It was only during our first weekend together in the Vosges Mountains that I noticed how in tune we were. Before that, whenever we met I felt as if the city, the noise, and other people were preventing us from being completely ourselves. For our first evenings out we went to restaurants recommended by Sunday magazines, and these were often alike, with the stark lines of their décor, their brightly colored walls, geometric plates and expensive wines. There was nothing to tell us apart from the other couples dining there.

We talked a lot, for people by nature taciturn and thoughtful. I had not yet realized we had this in common and so was trying to get through to you with words, sentences—I think you were doing the same—and all the rest of the noise was simply added to the noise we were making. Returning home after those evenings I was exhausted, as if I had had to communicate using a foreign language. I think I acted like that because I already liked you a lot and was afraid my natural inclination toward silence—for which I have so often been reproached—might drive you away. That was why my last partner had left me. I often think about something he said to me: “Maybe, when it comes down to it, you’re just sly.” That, of course, is precisely the kind of rather cruel remark people fling at one another when they break up, but I remembered my mother using that adjective about me, on occasion, when I was in my teens and she discovered something I had hidden from her.

During those first times together I talked about everything under the sun, without really getting to the heart of any of it: my family, my childhood in Normandy, our holiday home in the Landes, my studies in England, my sister Laura’s wedding that was due to happen the following summer. You talked mainly about your work as a photographer, the places you visited, your plans. You made no mention of your family and in those days I did not ask you any questions on the subject. And yet I had the feeling that, when you were talking to me almost exclusively about your work, you were being more open than I was.

We took advantage of one of your trips to Strasbourg to spend a first weekend away from cities. I caught a train to join you on Friday and we hired a car to take us to that village in the Vosges some thirty miles from Colmar. These were the first days of spring, even though the valleys were still lightly sprinkled with snow in the morning. Slowly, as we made our way up to the village, the air became crystal clear, rid itself of the city’s impurities, and we, too, shed our masks. Where fir trees cast giant shadows on sharp bends in the road it grew dark, but you did not switch on the headlights. Odd gaps allowed us to glimpse part of a valley, a patch of blue sky, a hint of the green, densely wooded hillside we were plunging into. I lowered the window and took a deep breath, inhaling the cocooned scent of that mountain. You held my hand briefly just then and I felt something shiver in the pit of my stomach. Wordlessly, at last, I looked at you and I remember how wonderful your face was that spring afternoon.

Our room at the house we stayed in was simple and spacious, the walls white and bare, the cotton sheets crisp, the quilt plump and fresh. A desk, a vase with wild flowers, wide, almost black floorboards , and a great, light-colored wooden chest which held another quilt. There were red geraniums around the window, hanging from the shutters and in pots on the sill. All the houses there were decorated with flowers like this, I noticed, the best way, perhaps, to mark and welcome the spring, where winter is often harsh. We lay down for a moment and made love in silence with our eyes open. It was not like before, in my room or yours, after those talkative meals or evenings in crowded cinemas. There was something gentler about the way we meshed with one another from  then on, our bodies were more at ease together and thus we were speaking a more truthful, more confident language, more loving, too.

During that weekend I discovered your reserve matched mine when we were in wild surroundings and equally in daily life. We went for long walks, occasionally lasting half a day, and when, on our way back down the hillside that led to the village, you held my waist lightly, I felt, at times, like weeping over this unexpected, simple, unpretentious happiness. In the course of one of these excursions we came upon a field of yellow daffodils and, from where we stood, a little above it, they looked like a carpet of gold. We cut down through the fields and it was like being a child again, taking great strides to reach that expanse of flowers. All their yellow took my breath away and, just as when I first went bathing in the sea in the Landes, I had an irresistible urge to dive into it. It was here you took a picture of me for the first time. In the photograph I have rosy cheeks, shining eyes, and an impatient, slightly mischievous smile that makes me bite my upper lip. It is a close-up, there is not a daffodil to be seen, which is what is wonderful about it. We are the only ones who know the source of the emotion that is so apparent on my face, we are the only ones who know all the beauty that filled our eyes at that moment, who know what that weekend had revealed to us about ourselves. This photograph would probably not mean much to other people, but every time I look at it I feel as if I were in the Vosges in early spring once more, the yellow overwhelming my eyes, I picture again the little bunch we picked and placed in the vase in the bedroom, a cluster of gold in that plain and simple spot, with the two of us waltzing gently around it.

On our return from that weekend we did not don our masks again, we stopped reaching out to one another by noise and movement once and for all. We took an apartment my sister had discovered for us several months earlier. At the far end of a sloping, paved courtyard, in a slightly antiquated district, three rooms on the ground floor, where you instantly spotted the future location of your office. These had once been dressmaking workshops, converted for residential accommodation. You had few possessions—most of what you earned went into  your equipment and your work—for you had taken advantage of our move to give away your furniture, you said you preferred what I had inherited from my parents and grandparents. The day we moved in you bought some big camellia plants, already well in flower. With the muted light that came into the building, these flowers, delicate and yet fleshy to the touch, gave our interior an old-fashioned feel. You used my grandmother’s ancient  bureau to store your equipment and polished the furniture once a month with exaggerated care, as if you were afraid I might reproach you for not looking after it. You often told me I was lucky to have “all this”: the old chiffonier, the photographs, the silver, the chest, my grandmother’s ring. You had no family photographs, not one of you as a child, no object you took round with you from house to house. You were as if new, and I envied you.

In time there were these gestures, expressions. I noticed them by chance, at first, later I came to expect them, in the end I took to counting them. The way you were always the one to break free from an embrace, the way you held my hand in public without really doing so (your fingers remained slack, soft), the way your face smiled at me when I came into your office, then closed up at once, sometimes even before my back was turned. At times you looked at me as if I were a stranger, an intruder or, worse still, sly. You went away for days, weeks at a time, returning with photographs of broken people, skies scarred with smoke, fallen trees. You would shut yourself in your office for a couple of days, then emerge just as before, or almost. But on the plus side, for there must always be one in such matters, there was your face, your talent, your silence that I loved to listen to. There was your body beside me and those childlike sighs you uttered when you were dreaming. I wished I had the courage to rummage through your things, but I did not do so.

At my sister’s wedding you stuck behind your camera and refused to mingle with us, politely at first, firmly later on. You were there in the corner of my eye, like those floaters people with high blood pressure say they have constantly on their retinas. At the end of the evening I went up to you. You were  sitting there, cross-legged in a corner of the room, peering at photographs, noting who knows what.

“Would you like a walk on the beach?”

“Yes, why not?”

I knew the way by heart, the slatted path that wound upward, the tall plants tickling one’s calves, the scent of the pine trees receding, the scent of the sea coming in gusts, suddenly hitting us, and the dark plateau streaked with white, which is the expanse of the Atlantic at night. I was panting noisily and because, for once, I could not bear your silence, I longed for you to say something, shout into the wind, yell, I asked you: “What are we going to do now?”

I was standing a few yards away from you and I wanted you to leave me, there and then. I wanted it to be theatrical, for my grief to be echoed by the turmoil of the sea.

You looked me directly in the face and murmured something that sounded to me like “daffodils.”

“What?”

“Shall we swim?”

And because at that moment I was simply not expecting you to say that, because the sea would have scattered every last one of any words of mine, I followed you into the waves, praying, as I did so, that the wind would blow away a vague premonition that you would not return.

Les Jonquilles

Ce n’est que lors de notre premier week-end ensemble dans les Vosges que je remarquai nos accords. Avant il me semblait que la ville, le bruit, les autres nous empêchaient d’être tout à fait nous-mêmes quand nous nous retrouvions. Pour nos premiers rendez-vous, nous allions dans des restaurants recommandés par des magazines du dimanche et souvent, ils se ressemblaient avec leurs lignes de décor abruptes, les couleurs vives au mur, les assiettes géométriques et les vins chers. Rien ne nous différenciait des autres couples dans ces dîners là.

Nous parlions beaucoup pour des gens de nature silencieuse et contemplative. Je ne savais pas encore que nous avions cela en commun, aussi j’essayais de t’atteindre par des mots, des phrases – je crois que tu faisais de même – et tout ce bruit ne faisait que s’ajouter à d’autres entre nous.  Quand je rentrais chez moi après ces soirées, j’étais épuisée comme si j’avais dû utiliser une langue étrangère pour communiquer.  Je crois que je me comportais comme cela parce que tu me plaisais beaucoup, déjà, et que je craignais que mon penchant naturel vers le silence – qui m’a été tant reproché – ne te fasse fuir. Mon dernier compagnon m’avait quittée pour cette raison là. Il m’avait dit une phrase à laquelle je repense souvent, à la longue on se demande si tu n’es pas qu’une sournoise. C’est, certes, le genre de choses un peu cruelles que l’on se lance quand on se quitte mais je me suis souvenue que ma mère utilisait parfois cet adjectif à mon égard quand j’étais adolescente et qu’elle découvrait quelque chose que je lui avais caché.

Au cours de ces premiers moments ensemble, j’évoquais un peu tout, sans toutefois en dire l’essentiel : ma famille, mon enfance en Normandie, notre maison d’été dans les Landes, mes études en Angleterre, le mariage de ma sœur Laura qui aurait lieu pendant l’été prochain. Tu parlais principalement de ton travail de photographe, des lieux que tu visitais, des projets que tu avais. Tu évitais les sujets sur ta famille et je n’ai posé aucune question à ce sujet durant cette période.  J’avais pourtant l’impression qu’en me parlant presque uniquement de ton travail, tu étais plus sincère que moi.

Nous avions profité d’un de tes déplacements à Strasbourg pour passer un premier week-end hors des villes. Je t’ai rejoint en train le vendredi puis nous avons loué une voiture pour ce village dans les Vosges, à une cinquantaine de kilomètres de Colmar. C’était aux premiers jours du printemps même si le matin la neige saupoudrait encore les vallées. Lentement, à mesure que nous montions au village, l’air devenait cristallin, se débarrassait des impuretés de la ville et nous aussi, nous nous sommes défait de nos masques. Dans les lacets, la route s’assombrissait des ombres géantes des sapins mais tu n’avais pas allumé les phares. Quelques trouées nous dévoilaient un bout de vallée, un coin de ciel bleu, une esquisse de la pente verte et touffue dans laquelle nous nous enfoncions. J’ai baissé la vitre et j’ai respiré profondément l’odeur ouatée de cette montagne. Tu as pris brièvement ma main à ce moment-là et j’ai senti quelque chose frissonner dans mon ventre.  Sans un mot, enfin, je t’ai regardé et je me souviens du visage magnifique que tu avais cet après-midi de printemps.

Notre chambre dans cette maison d’hôtes était simple et spacieuse, les murs blancs et nus, les draps de coton craquants, l’édredon gonflé et frais. Un bureau, un vase avec des fleurs sauvages, des grandes lattes presque noires au sol et un grand coffre en bois clair qui contenait un autre édredon.  Des géraniums rouges entouraient la fenêtre, sus pendus aux volets, en pots sur le rebord. J’avais remarqué que toutes les maisons étaient fleuries ainsi, peut-être pour mieux accueillir et marquer le printemps là où l’hiver est souvent rude. Nous nous sommes allongés un moment et nous avons fait l’amour silencieusement, les yeux ouverts.  Ce n’était pas comme avant, dans ma chambre ou dans la tienne, après des dîners bavards ou des séances de cinéma bondées. Il y avait quelque chose de plus doux dans la façon dont nous nous imbriquions désormais, nos corps étaient plus détendus l’un avec l’autre et ainsi, nous parlions une langue plus vraie, plus rassurée, plus aimante aussi.

J’ai découvert pendant ce week-end que tu avais, comme moi, la même retenue devant la nature et, également, dans la vie quotidienne.  Nous faisions de grandes balades qui duraient parfois une demi-journée et quand nous rentrions en dévalant la pente qui mène au village et que tu me prenais la taille légèrement, j’avais parfois envie de pleurer pour ce bonheur inattendu, simple et sans prétention. Au cours d’une de ces promenades, nous sommes tombés sur un champ de jonquilles jaunes et de là où nous nous tenions, un peu en hauteur, on aurait dit un tapis d’or. Nous avons coupé à travers champs et je me sentais comme une enfant à nouveau, faisant de grandes enjambées pour rejoindre cette étendue de fleurs. J’avais le souffle coupé par tout ce jaune, ça me faisait comme pour les premiers bains de mer dans les Landes, une envie irrésistible de m’y plonger. C’est ici que tu m’as photographié pour la première fois. Sur la photo, j’ai le rouge aux joues, des yeux brillants, un sourire impatient et un peu malicieux qui me fait mordre ma lèvre supérieure.  C’est un plan serré, il n’y a pas une jonquille en vue et c’est cela qui est magnifique. Il n’y a que nous pour savoir d’où vient cette émotion si palpable sur mon visage. Il n’y a que nous pour savoir toute la beauté qui se dessinait devant nos yeux à cet instant et ce que ce week-end nous avait révélé de nous mêmes.  Cette photo est probablement un peu insignifiante pour les autres mais à chaque fois que je la regarde, j’ai l’impression d’être à nouveau dans les Vosges, au début du printemps, ce jaune envahit mes yeux, je revois le petit bouquet que nous avions cueilli et placé dans le vase dans la chambre, cette tache d’or dans ce lieu si simple et nous deux tournant autour.

Au retour de ce week-end, nous n’avons pas remis nos masques, nous avons cessé de nous atteindre par le bruit et le mouvement en permanence. Nous nous sommes installés dans un appartement que nous a déniché ma sœur quelques mois plus tard. Au fond d’une cour pavée en pente, dans un quartier un peu vieillot, un trois pièces en rez-de-chaussée où tu as tout de suite repéré l’emplacement futur de ton bureau.  C’était des anciens ateliers de couture reconvertis en logement. Tu avais peu de choses – l’essentiel de ton salaire passait dans ton matériel et ton travail -, tu avais profité de notre aménagement pour donner tes meubles, tu préférais, disais-tu, ceux que j’avais hérités de mes parents et mes grands-parents. Le jour de notre aménagement, tu as acheté de grands camélias déjà bien en fleurs. Avec cette lumière tamisée qui rentrait dans la maison, ces fleurs délicates et pourtant charnues au toucher donnaient un air désuet à notre intérieur. Tu utilisais le vieux coffre de ma grand-mère pour ranger ton matériel et une fois par mois, tu cirais le meuble avec un soin exagéré comme si tu craignais que je ne te reproche de ne pas l’entretenir. Tu me disais souvent que j’avais de la chance d’avoir « tout ça » : la vieille commode, les photos, les couverts en argent, le coffre, la bague de ma grand-mère. Tu n’avais, toi, aucune photo de ta famille, aucune de toi enfant, aucun objet que tu traînais de maison en maison. Tu étais comme neuf et je t’enviais.

Ensuite, il y a eu ces gestes, ces expressions. Je les avais d’abord surpris, puis attendu, ensuite je les comptais. La façon dont tu étais toujours celui qui se désengageait d’une étreinte, la manière dont tu me donnais la main en public sans vraiment le faire  (tes doigts restaient lâches, mous), ton visage qui me souriait quand je rentrais dans ton bureau et qui se refermait aussitôt parfois avant même que je tourne le dos. Tu me regardais parfois comme si j’étais une étrangère, une intruse ou pire, une sournoise. Tu partais des jours, des semaines et tu revenais avec des photos de gens cassés, de ciels balafrés de fumées et des arbres à terre. Tu t’enfermais deux jours dans ton bureau et tu en ressortais comme avant, ou presque. Mais sur la balance, puisqu’il faut une balance dans ces choses-là, il y avait ton visage, ton talent, ton silence que j’aimais écouter. Il y avait ton corps à côté de moi et ces soupirs d’enfants que tu avais quand tu rêvais. Je souhaitais avoir le courage de fouiller dans tes affaires mais je ne le faisais pas.

Au mariage de ma sœur, tu es resté derrière ton appareil photo et tu as refusé poliment d’abord, fermement ensuite, de te mêler à nous. Tu étais là, au coin de mon œil, comme ces mouches que les hypertendus disent avoir sur la rétine en permanence. A la fin de la soirée, je suis venue vers toi. Tu étais assis dans un coin de la pièce, les pieds en tailleur, tu visionnais les photos, tu notais je ne sais quoi.

—tu viens faire un tour sur la plage ?

—oui, pourquoi pas ?

Je connaissais le chemin par cœur, le sentier de planches qui serpente en montant, les hautes herbes qui chatouillent les mollets, le parfum des pins qui s’éloigne, le parfum de la mer qui vient par à coups, qui vient d’un coup et ce plateau noir griffé de blanc qu’est l’étendue de l’Atlantique la nuit. J’ai respiré bruyamment et parce que je ne supportais pas ton silence, pour une fois, j’aurais aimé que tu dises quelque chose, que tu cries face au vent, que tu hurles, je t’ai demandé :

—on fait quoi maintenant ?

Je me tenais à quelques mètres de toi et je voulais que tu me quittes, là, ici, maintenant. Que ça soit théâtral, que mon chagrin ait comme écho le tumulte de la mer.

Tu m’as regardé en face et tu as murmuré quelque chose qui m’a semblé être « jonquilles ».

—quoi ?

—on nage ?

Et parce que là, à ce moment-là, je ne m’attendais pas du tout à ce que tu me dises cela, parce que la mer aurait jeté loin la moindre de mes paroles, je t’ai suivi dans les vagues en priant que le vent emporte ce pressentiment diffus que tu ne reviendrais pas des vagues.

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