Traduction

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Elle est de Rachelle Renaud, écrivaine et traductrice franco-ontarienne, qui vit à Montréal depuis 1992.

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We took up residence on the tenth floor of a glass tower. There’s hardly any air. The walls are gray, the furniture black. Someone has set a vase of tall, elegant paper flowers on the buffet; their studied shadows stand against the big bay window overlooking the city, the world, the gardens, the river. Lampshades filter the light, a jazz melody floats over the divans, filtered as well. I miss you. How I miss you, my wee ones!
“What’s wrong with her?” asks the bellboy.
“Don’t worry about it, it’s nothing! She’s lonesome!” your father explains.
Your father’s absolutely right. I miss you, I’m lonesome: it all boils down to the same thing. The earth, cold and hard. A river heavy with mercury runs in our sad veins. Tides slowly rise along the coast, groveling in the sand. Cranes and pontoons under a tin-colored sky. Machines wreaking havoc. Arctic plants eating away at the chalky soil. Your eyes full of dreams in the rearview mirror!
“What are children for?” I wonder. They’re born, they’re beautiful, they grow up. They love the sea, love swimming in the waves, so we go to the sea, go swimming in the waves. They love the city and we go to the city. They love children’s movies and we go see children’s movies. Now that you’re no longer children, I’ve lost children’s films, books, puppets. We won’t go to McDonald’s any more, that era is long gone. Your mother is like a Haydn piece for four instruments, my wee ones: un poco adagio e affettuoso! Unanswered questions remain, feelings of remorse fall from the clouds. “This matter needs looking into”, sings the first violin, but the second violin doesn’t quite agree. Things get out of hand. Worries get the upper hand and there’s no end to the turmoil. “Be reasonable, my wee ones, listen to your father. Study, do your homework! You’ll be rich and famous, your children will love you!” Sostenuto.
The relentless ebb and flow of images on the paper when I try to write to you and when all I say turns into superfluous advice. All that emerges are tiny recommendations, directions for use that aren’t worth much really; I might as well crumple them in one hand and throw them in the trash can, my dear children. Hide them under the rug, no one will notice. And above all, don’t let them bother you.
Young men with curly hair. They cross the screen, showers of red locks falling over their faces. They’re acrobats, or tightrope walkers. They’re dancers who dance. How they dance, my wee ones! I wish you could see them, mimicking our heavy hearts, our fumbling movements, our failings, our sluggish ways, all of us, covered with hieroglyphs, with worries, eaten away by remorse. Their steps are rudimentary, like our own hearts. They tell their mute stories with a raspy tongue. They’re huge, lean birds brutally crashing onto the dry earth, clouds of insects swarming over a world laid waste.
Black writers win prizes. Their books are bursting with brightly colored birds and poisonous flowers. Their mouths bleed. Their work is full of sweat, there’s the smell of musk, and then a woman is singing, somewhere, beneath real lashes. Elsewhere, there’s been a recent snowfall, wet and heavy. People complain and dream of torrid mornings.

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I wake up with the awful sensation that there’s even less air. “I’m suffocating”, I say to your father. “This place is a towering inferno, I think I saw Charlton Heston and Geneviève Bujold yesterday, in the elevator. Let’s get out of here before it’s too late!”
I rush down the stairs at top speed. “For God’s sake, wait up!” shouts your father, who can barely keep up with me.
It’s windy. I simply love the wind. I finally catch my breath, the breath the high tower had robbed me of. “Air, finally some air!” I say. Tears are running down my face.
“What’s wrong with her?” say the people we pass in the streets.
“It’s nothing, really! Don’t make such a fuss. She’s suffocating, that’s all! It happens to her a lot,” says your father.
Paths for walking, for running, for going ahead, going backwards, going in circles. Benches to sit on along the canals, beside or overlooking the locks. Your father and I run into people in their sixties, red and out of breath. They collapse… They’re dropping like flies everywhere. The city’s overrun with people. Cyclists wearing gloves, helmets, racing shorts and in a hurry. No smile on their lips, no notice taken of the murky water in the canal, not even the slightest kind thought for their fellowmen, not lighthearted or sad. Being in shape, that’s all that matters, just being in shape. Serene biceps, flexible kneecaps. Do they love their children? Do they play at war? I don’t know, but I’d be very surprised if this were so. They rush along and they bore me, my dear children. They scare me. I’m so out of shape… Are they going to boo, shout, spurn me? Will they be at their wits’ end at the sight of me? Accuse me of every evil under the sun, punish me with exercise? I feel as though I were an obstacle on the paths, a sluggish stain on the landscape. “It’s a disgrace! She shouldn’t be allowed to do that!” I hear people saying all around me. A young, skinny man with pimples, in red shorts with a thin white stripe, ran into me at the turn and didn’t even bother apologizing. What a diabolical city! People are passing me on all sides. I’m “out of order”, a “has been” like we used to say at school, with Diane, in the late sixties. I expect to be summoned at any time. Big Brother is watching. People look at me with disdain, exasperation written all over their faces. If looks could kill. And bang, it happens! Right there and then! And besides, my wee ones, my old house has been torn down, the lovely little blue house where I used to live, once, just along the river. Orange curtains, green roses. The park around it is in ruins. I call on the passersby to witness that this is so.
“There was a house here once, it’s true, I assure you, I lived there, from the time I was three months old till I was three.”
“Oh, really? Well, I had no idea. I didn’t know there was a house there. They tore it down, you say? Too bad really. Because the view’s lovely, isn’t it? The river, the tiny forest over there… it must have been so wonderful living here…”
The man says goodbye; he runs, leaving us behind, and as he runs, he takes his pulse, his blood pressure. He listens to his breathing. His heart beats and puffs as it should. “I have a good heart,” he thinks to himself.
“I met two nutcases”, he’ll tell his wife when he gets home. “They lowered my average…”
People are so petty! Not the least bit of compassion… Most joggers refuse to stop when I show them where my little pink house was, the lilac that screened the porch, the poles from the swings lying on the ground.


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Translator’s Bio

RACHELLE REBAUD is a poet, short story writer and novelist of Franco-Ontarian descent who’s lived in Montreal since 1992. Her poems and short stories have been published in several literary magazines in Quebec and Ontario. She won the Prix Jacques-Poirier-Outaouais 1996 for her first novel Le roman d’Éléonore (VLB éditeur, Montreal). She has written two collections of short stories, L’amour en personne (Les Éditions du Nordir, 1998) and Chocs légers (forthcoming, 2003). Her translations of poems and short stories have appeared in Exile, Beacons, Ellipse, Ruptures, TransLit, and Moebius.


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