Flesh and Other Fragments of Love (6 page)

10. THE HEART

PIERRE

Today

the sea is imitating your calm

like a drowsy lioness.

The tide has erased all traces of yesterday.

It's as if yesterday never existed.

I would like to be that wave

that erases everything and deposits, in exchange,

a bit of itself.

Its mark,

delicate etchings on the sand,

a bit of lacy froth,

driftwood,

bleached white as bones.

I would like to be that wave

that consoles your transformation.

I would like to rediscover everything you are,

every part of you,

rebecome the pioneer of your body,

forget all the previous expeditions,

be amazed, once again,

by your shapes and textures,

your geography that would never cease to dazzle me,

like an undertow of marvel,

a perpetual shower.

I would like to examine you down to the skeleton

that forms your architecture.

Your patient skeleton knows that in the end

it will be all that is left.

Speak to me again.

SIMONE

I say

My love

I say

I say

I say my love

I used to say our life

our life for two

I used to say

our wedding

our days

our nights

I used to say

our story

our past

and our future

I used to say

our childbirth

our breastfeeding

and I said

our disease

our treatment

our degeneration

I dreamed of saying

our dying day

you remember

I wanted my dying day to be yours too

but now I know that one life

is not enough for two,

we would each need at least ten lives,

time to learn how to live

just imagine

don't worry my love

I won't take you with me.

I won't drown us.

Words are what will drown in my memory.

Soon.

I know it.

My words like ants in amber.

I have captive ants in my impure tongue.

I will speak until the end of language

and lies,

my syntax will be dismembered,

my grammar will be dislocated,

my sentences decapitated.

My words will turn against each other.

My tongue torn out.

Soon.

I won't know how to say.

But I say

I will not drown myself.

I will return to the source of language.

Where lexicon and cosmos

have yet to take form.

I will return to that non-verbal place,

before the colonization of language,

before all words are trapped.

I say

Look, my love:

The landscape like an eternal banquet.

A feast for the eyes.

But soon I won't be able to say what I see.

Listen, my love:

I say

Murmuring shadows on the sand

The reach is a blanket of supreme birds

Look how high they roar and slide

I say

The signals pop waterweed beneath their feet

Tear tooth and nail the flesh of pearls

I say

The bashing and nippling of waves

The sun is sunk, it's going to bet

Look, my love

I see one swing and I sway another

The sky is mauve and draped in cotton

untravelled

Oh

Words are tripping and jumbling

There is sand in my ears

Listen, my love

I say

We are no longer three

We are no longer two

And you are not alone

We are innumerable

Death, with its clever fingers,

weaves swallow nests

in the hair of the drowned

I say

At dawnbreak the horses will stomp

slow tide

You will remember their hoofs

and the horse that died one day

And that it wasn't you.

I say

Words embrace me

I say

Chaos triumphs

I say no more

I sound

Listen

Soon

I will only know

how to say

my love.

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE

For those who might wish to compare this translation with the version published by Leméac Éditeur in 2012, please note that, at the author's request, I have translated the play as revised for the original production.

Playwright and actor Evelyne de la Chenelière studied drama at École Michel-Granvale in Paris. She was the recipient of the 2006 Governor General's Literary Award for Drama for her play
Désordre public
. Evelyne lives in Montreal.

Linda Gaboriau is a Montreal-based dramaturge and literary translator. She has worked as a freelance journalist for the
cbc
as well as the
Montreal Gazette
, and worked in Canadian and Québécois theatre. Linda is the recipient of numerous awards for her translations of more than one hundred plays and novels by Québec writers, including two Governor General's Literary Awards for Translation. She was the founding director of the Banff International Literary Translation Centre.