The Restless. Gerty Dambury

      

      Published in 2018 by the Feminist Press

      at the City University of New York

      The Graduate Center

      365 Fifth Avenue, Suite 5406

      New York, NY 10016

       feministpress.org

      First Feminist Press edition 2018

      Copyright © 2014 by Gerty Dambury

      Translation copyright © 2018 by Judith G. Miller

      First published in 2014 in France as Les rétifs by Les Éditions du Manguier.

      All rights reserved.

      This book was made possible thanks to a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

      This book is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

      This work is published with support from the Centre National du Livre, France.

      No part of this book may be reproduced, used, or stored in any information retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the Feminist Press at the City University of New York, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

      First printing January 2018

      Cover and text design by Suki Boynton

      Cover photograph by Meena Bhandari, courtesy of IPS North America.

       Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Names: Dambury, Gerty, author. | Miller, Judith Graves, translator.

      Title: The restless / Gerty Dambury; translated by Judith G. Miller.

      Other titles: Rétifs. English

      Description: New York, NY: The Feminist Press at CUNY, 2018. | Originally published in French as Les retifs (Paris: Les Editions du ManGuier, 2014). |

      Identifiers: LCCN 2017015491 (print) | LCCN 2017025484 (ebook) | ISBN 9781936932078 (E-book)

      Subjects: LCSH: Collective memory--Fiction. | Guadeloupe--History--20th century--Fiction. | Guadeloupe--History--Autonomy and independence movements--Fiction. | France--Colonies--Guadeloupe--Fiction. | Political fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Literary. | FICTION / Political. | FICTION/Coming of Age. | FICTION / Historical. | GSAFD: Historical fiction.

      Classification: LCC PQ3949.2.D27 (ebook) | LCC PQ3949.2.D27 R4813 2018 (print) | DDC 843/.92--dc23

      LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017015491

       To my mother

       CONTENTS

       TITLE PAGE

       COPYRIGHT

       DEDICATION

       Prologue

       The Warm-Up

       The Waltz

       The First Figure: Pantalon

       The Second Figure: L’été

       The Third Figure: La Poule

       The Fourth Figure: Pastourelle

       A Conversation with Gerty Dambury by Judith G. Miller • October 15, 2016

       ABOUT THE AUTHOR & TRANSLATOR

       ALSO BY FEMINIST PRESS

       ABOUT FEMINIST PRESS

       Prologue

      We are in Guadeloupe, an overseas department of France. It is 1967.

      After the failure of preliminary talks between management and the construction workers’ union, work stoppages begin erupting throughout Pointe-à-Pitre on May 24, 1967. Serious negotiations commence at the Chamber of Commerce. On May 26, the discussions fall apart again because of the obstinate refusal of one group of owners to raise wages even though certain managers have proclaimed their willingness to cede to the workers’ demands. A crowd gathers in front of the building where the negotiations are taking place, and the situation degenerates quickly. Pierre Bolotte, the French-appointed governing prefect of Guadeloupe, orders the police to fire on the demonstrators, and around three in the afternoon, the first shots ring out on La Place de la Victoire. The barely repressed anger turns into violent confrontations at the city’s center. Extra troops of “red kepis” are dispatched to Guadeloupe, and these French soldiers crisscross the city all throughout the night, shooting and arresting people without warning or warrant.

      The exact number of people killed remained in question until 2016, when the documents concerning this event were finally declassified and a new report was published. The original count was five dead. Somewhat later, the unofficial statistic, the one released by the authorities, rose to eighty-seven. With the release of the documents, we now estimate that over one hundred people were seriously wounded or killed.

       THE WARM-UP

      1.

      Émilienne is seated on her small bench, the one that actually belongs to our mother.

      The small one for doing laundry in the courtyard.

      The child has taken over the bench, the courtyard, even