Villa Bunker (French Literature) (12 page)

130.
And what if she were to press the stop button on the tape recorder, would he break off in mid-sentence? And she was thinking about my father, who was still upstairs; he was oblivious to what was going on down here, unaware that she was now hearing his voice as it must have sounded when he was a child, unaware that she was looking for family resemblances in this face that had taken on his voice. And so she couldn’t help but stare at the child, to make sure she wasn’t dreaming.

131.
He was sitting across from her. He hadn’t moved, but he still seemed farther away than before. The photo he was looking at had been taken on the docks of the Port of Dieppe. My father had often remarked upon it the first year they were married, after she’d gotten together all the pictures to make their first photo album. She’d gathered together old black and white photographs that she’d found in various envelopes, in metal boxes. The photo was of a man in his forties. He was staring into the lens, standing on the dock. He was thin, puzzled. Behind him, the ship’s hull forms an unbroken backdrop, with the letters Z É L A N, painted in white on the dark hull just above his head. If you look closely, you can make out dents in the hull, freshly repainted. She knows the story of the photograph. She could string together the two or three sentences that would reappear each time my father mentioned it. She could form a little frame out of these sentences, placing this frame around the photo as a final commentary on the scene represented in the picture. And so a motionless man poses, not for eternity, but just for the length of the voyage, slated to last several months. And since these several months also mean many miles, it appears that her father’s face is already showing his coming exhaustion and uncertainty, the harshness of the work, the worry. But that’s an entirely different matter. Unhinged, rambling words, and yet she understands. She understands neither the words nor the sentences they compose, she isn’t even sure the words strung together form sentences at all, but she appreciates the architecture of the whole. A story that was slowly taking shape, that was appearing like a photo in a chemical solution, right up to the point where the border and shapes become sharp. She is now in the photo’s world, in the cramped cabin of a ship. She is in front of a body that is hanging from a rope, she doesn’t know at what point in the voyage they are; apparently the boat hasn’t left the dock yet and she realizes that this man has been dead for several minutes, and she wonders why she’s the one who has found him. Strangely, everything is quiet—shouldn’t she be hearing the sound of the waves? She tries to think back. At the time she couldn’t have been more than fourteen, and she’d never been below on a boat before. And when she would think about it, she would tell herself that she still didn’t know who this man was. A movement to get herself out of this bad dream: She glanced at the window and, just then, a bird landed on the sill, pecking about. She remembered that there were bird feeders hanging in some of the windows, and that lately she was in the habit of filling them with seeds. Then the voice suddenly changed. It was no longer the annoying voice of a hysterical child, it was his voice from yesterday or the day before, his stubborn voice. He was no longer in the room, he was on the threshold of the bedroom, she couldn’t see him anymore. Did you find the car keys? That is what he was saying. She made sure the tape recorder was still recording. The little red light was lit. She’d heard this sentence before, not so long ago. She wasn’t trying to remember. It wasn’t an act of memory—or so she told herself—no, it was more like everything was happening in the present, at this very moment, sitting across from the tape recorder, in that part of the present tense sectioned off by the cassette tape, just for them. And out of the corner of her eye, she saw something fly up from behind the glass, a brown bird with horizontal stripes, a sparrow, perhaps the bird from a moment ago, but one couldn’t be sure. Next she is alone in front of the picture.

132.
She’s back at the shopping center buying blank cassettes, she fills two large bags with supplies—she tends to like soft foods—raisins, packets of chewy cookies, orange juice; next she decides to buy a pair of sneakers and socks in a sporting goods store located in the center, she makes these purchases without thinking, she has to hurry, it’s almost closing time. She exchanges a few pleasantries with the young cashier who is pregnant, and on the way home she’s afraid she might get lost. The headlights don’t give out enough light to read the markings on the signs. She should turn around and ask someone in a store at the shopping center, she says to herself, but she realizes that she forgot to get gas, and that she might run out if she goes all the way back. What she ought to do is tell herself that the villa doesn’t exist, that it suddenly disappeared in the dark, swallowed by the nightmare night; there aren’t any bedrooms, or corridors, the child she found never existed except in her imagination, and my father isn’t waiting for her either, my father left her years ago, he has become a perfect stranger who lives with another woman and has children with his new wife, it’s impossible for her to reach him, he doesn’t answer the phone anymore and avoids her in the street.

133.
He doesn’t send her to get his photos developed anymore, he’s making himself more and more scarce. He doesn’t say anything anymore. She hears his annoyed footsteps above her head.

S
ÉBASTIEN
B
REBEL
was born in 1971 in Argenteuil, France. He lives in Nantes where he teaches philosophy, and is the author of four novels, of which this is his first to appear in English.

A
NDREW
W
ILSON
is a graduate of the Master of Philosophy Program in Literary Translation at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. He lives in Berkeley, California.

M
ICHAL
A
JVAZ
,
The Golden Age
.

The Other City
.

P
IERRE
A
LBERT
-B
IROT
,
Grabinoulor
.

Y
UZ
A
LESHKOVSKY
,
Kangaroo
.

F
ELIPE
A
LFAU
,
Chromos
.

Locos
.

I
VAN
Â
NGELO
,
The Celebration
.

The Tower of Glass
.

A
NTÓNIO
L
OBO
A
NTUNES
, Knowledge of Hell
.

The Splendor of Portugal
.

A
LAIN
A
RIAS
-M
ISSON
, Theatre of Incest
.

J
OHN
A
SHBERY AND
J
AMES
S
CHUYLER
,
A Nest of Ninnies
.

R
OBERT
A
SHLEY
,
Perfect Lives
.

G
ABRIELA
A
VIGUR
-R
OTEM
,
Heatwave and Crazy Birds
.

D
JUNA
B
ARNES
,
Ladies Almanack
.

Ryder
.

J
OHN
B
ARTH
,
LETTERS
.

Sabbatical
.

D
ONALD
B
ARTHELME
,
The King
.

Paradise
.

S
VETISLAV
B
ASARA
,
Chinese Letter
.

M
IQUEL
B
AUÇÀ
,
The Siege in the Room
.

R
ENÉ
B
ELLETTO
,
Dying
.

M
AREK
B
IE
CZYK
,
Transparency
.

A
NDREI
B
ITOV
,
Pushkin House
.

A
NDREJ
B
LATNIK
,
You Do Understand
.

L
OUIS
P
AUL
B
OON
,
Chapel Road
.

My Little War
.

Summer in Termuren
.

R
OGER
B
OYLAN
,
Killoyle
.

I
GNÁCIO
DE
L
OYOLA
B
RANDÃO
,
Anonymous Celebrity
.

Zero
.

B
ONNIE
B
REMSER
,
Troia: Mexican Memoirs
.

C
HRISTINE
B
ROOKE
-R
OSE
,
Amalgamemnon
.

B
RIGID
B
ROPHY
,
In Transit
.

G
ERALD
L. B
RUNS
,
Modern Poetry and the Idea of Language
.

G
ABRIELLE
B
URTON
,
Heartbreak Hotel
.

M
ICHEL
B
UTOR
,
Degrees
.

Mobile
.

G. C
ABRERA
I
NFANTE
,
Infante’s Inferno
.

Three Trapped Tigers
.

J
ULIETA
C
AMPOS
,

The Fear of Losing Eurydice
.

A
NNE
C
ARSON
,
Eros the Bittersweet
.

O
RLY
C
ASTEL
-B
LOOM
,
Dolly City
.

L
OUIS
-F
ERDINAND
C
ÉLINE
,
Castle to Castle
.

Conversations with Professor Y
.

London Bridge
.

Normance
.

North
.

Rigadoon
.

M
ARIE
C
HAIX
,
The Laurels of Lake Constance
.

H
UGO
C
HARTERIS
,
The Tide Is Right
.

E
RIC
C
HEVILLARD
,
Demolishing Nisard
.

M
ARC
C
HOLODENKO
,
Mordechai Schamz
.

J
OSHUA
C
OHEN
,
Witz
.

E
MILY
H
OLMES
C
OLEMAN
,
The Shutter of Snow
.

R
OBERT
C
OOVER
,
A Night at the Movies
.

S
TANLEY
C
RAWFORD
,
Log of the S.S. The Mrs Unguentine
.

Some Instructions to My Wife
.

R
ENÉ
C
REVEL
,
Putting My Foot in It
.

R
ALPH
C
USACK
,
Cadenza
.

N
ICHOLAS
D
ELBANCO
,
The Count of Concord
.

Sherbrookes
.

N
IGEL
D
ENNIS
,
Cards of Identity
.

P
ETER
D
IMOCK
,
A Short Rhetoric for Leaving the Family
.

A
RIEL
D
ORFMAN
,
Konfidenz
.

C
OLEMAN
D
OWELL
,
Island People
.

Too Much Flesh and Jabez
.

A
RKADII
D
RAGOMOSHCHENKO
,
Dust
.

R
IKKI
D
UCORNET
,
The Complete Butcher’s Tales
.

The Fountains of Neptune
.

The Jade Cabinet
.

Phosphor in Dreamland
.

W
ILLIAM
E
ASTLAKE
,
The Bamboo Bed
.

Castle Keep
.

Lyric of the Circle Heart
.

J
EAN
E
CHENOZ
,
Chopin’s Move
.

S
TANLEY
E
LKIN
,
A Bad Man
.

Criers and Kibitzers, Kibitzers and Criers
.

The Dick Gibson Show
.

The Franchiser
.

The Living End
.

Mrs. Ted Bliss
.

F
RANÇOIS
E
MMANUEL
,
Invitation to a Voyage
.

S
ALVADOR
E
SPRIU
,
Ariadne in the Grotesque Labyrinth
.

L
ESLIE
A. F
IEDLER
,
Love and Death in the American Novel
.