Avant Desire: A Nicole Brossard Reader. Nicole Brossard

space was now conquered at last. They claimed they suffered over their conquest. They suffered because the desert suffers no error. But men confused error with suffering. They concluded that their suffering could correct the error of nature, the very nature of error. This is how they hooked into death.

      – It’s a beautiful night.

      – Night is always beautiful for it forces us to feel with our skin and our inner eyes. At night we can count only on ourselves.

      – Night is beautiful in sheer solitude but your presence makes this night even more real for me.

      – Night is strange.

      – That’s because the body changes rhythm.

      – At night it is especially necessary to wait for the body to change its trajectory in the universe. To move in such a way that all of our senses can transit freely. Capture the vast emptiness. How old are you?

      – I hope I never become like other people.

      – How do you know you haven’t already?

      – I know.

      – I’m thirsty. How long have you had the butterfly tattoo on your shoulder?

      – A month. It gives me strength for facing reality. It gives me wings. I’m Sagittarius. It makes me feel like somebody put their hand on my shoulder, looked at me, taught me.

      – Taught you what? You really want to be taught about life?

      – You no doubt desired that once.

      – I made my own way. I don’t owe anybody anything.

      – Do you think that’s the way to find joy?

      – I’m thirsty. I spend hours and hours resisting thirst. Waiting for sunset. I spend my life watching the horizon in detail. I’ve never given happiness a thought. I charge ahead. I troat.

      – Do you know that animal?

      – Which animal?

      – The stag. They say it is often compared to the tree of life and that it symbolizes rebirth. For the Pueblos it represents cyclical renewal.

      – Mélanie, what are you talking about?

      – What I’ve read.

      – Come closer. Let me get a good look at this butterfly. It has the thorax of a great sphinx.

      – Well?

      – Nothing. Why did you say that night changes the body’s rhythm?

      – Because it’s true. Do you think I would have dared to follow you and speak to you in broad daylight?

      – During the day I’m far away, way off in the vastness. During the day all my attention is focused on the earth’s crust.

      – Don’t you want to be loved?

      – I’m not lovable. My thirst is too great. Mélanie, you’re very young. Your mother is probably already worried about your absence.

      – My mother knows me. She knows that night and day I feel the need to run. To always go a bit beyond myself to let reality loose.

      – I think we look alike.

      – Without a mirror it would be hard to tell.

      – I think our eyes are better able to tell when there are no reflections.

      – There, I’m close to you. Do you recognize me?

      – Yes, I recognize you. It’s true that you are ageless. You have always existed. Don’t go thinking that I’m making things up. I can tell among the signs and the clues what in you is made to last. You needn’t fear time. Only speed will damage you.

      – Don’t say that. I love living fast.

      – That’s what I recognize in you.

      – Rain.

      – Stay just a little longer. Rain can only soften our lips and make the night palpable.

      – The rain on your lips is fine.

      – ‘We pray thee send forth rain, blessings, immortality.’¹

       IV

       The scene can be imagined by parting the curtain between auther and translator. The distance is abolished by imagining the two women sitting in a café. One is smoking and so is the other. Both like dealing with silence but each one here is looking to understand how death transits between fiction and reality. The language spoken is the auther’s.

      – I feared for a moment that you wouldn’t come.

      – Here I am. Don’t worry, I took great pains to be here.

      – I have no rights. You come before me.

      – What do you want from me?

      – To hear what I can make my own. Everything you tell me will be …

      – Useful?

      – Necessary. I’ve been living with this book for two years. I’ve only just recently conceived the project of translating it.

      – What would you like to talk about?

      – One thing only: Angela Parkins’ death. I’d like to talk to you exactly the way I imagine Angela Parkins would if she could get out of character, if she were its ultimate presence.

      – I’m listening.

       – Why did you kill me?

      – You’re going fast, Angela, you’re getting too directly to the heart of the essential. Wouldn’t you rather we talk first about you or about me, that somewhere we find the familiar Arizona landscapes again? [Silence] So be it, if you like, we can talk about your death right now. But first, swear to me that you didn’t see anything coming. Swear it.

       – Saw what coming? Love, death? Saw what coming? Mélanie or the assassin?

       – Saw reprobation coming.

       – What! You would have punished me for what I am.

       – I’m not talking about you. I’m talking about everything around you. Intolerance. Madness. Violence.

       – In that case I saw nothing coming. Certainly I saw myself lost, delirious, wary and minotaur, drunk and arrogant, joyous and casual, nostalgic and in love but I never saw that man’s madness coming.

       – And yet you knew him.

       – I knew him by reputation. He was an inventor, a great scholar, but how could I ever imagine that that man carried such hatred inside him?

       – You never noticed anything in his ways, in his gaze?

       – He looked normal. He looked like a normal client. To tell you the truth, I never noticed him. My whole being was involved in the rhythm moving me closer to Mélanie.

       – Well then I’ll tell you. I’ll try to tell you why you died so suddenly, absurdly. You died because you forgot to look around you. You freed yourself too quickly and because you thought yourself free, you no longer wanted to look around you. You forgot about reality.

       – You could have helped me, given me a sign.

       – It’s true that I believed you out of harm’s way, safe from barking dogs. I imagined you passionate and as such able to repel bad fate. I believed you were stronger than reality.