Read Online Augustino and the Choir of Destruction by Marie-Claire Blais - Free Book Online Page A

medication, tell Charly to come and see me, I can show you the club she goes to in the evenings, it’s just a matter of cheques and stolen goods, I can forgive for all of it, you, Harriett, and Miss Désirée, you misjudge her, you’re a zealous woman, always off to church to pray when you’re not here with me, and if I decided to stop eating, what would you do, let me die in peace, just one star detached from the heavens and we see nothing anymore. I don’t think it’s good for you to pray so much, good thing you sing as well when you’re in church, and sometimes I go to sleep to the sound of your voice, but I sense too much begging and prayer in it, as though you were reciting psalms to get on my nerves, yes, like you were doing it on purpose, Désirée, remember how I used to love hearing the guitar-players in the streets of New Orleans, the rhythm of those blues, and the Mardi Gras celebrations, remember, Harriett, my mother used to say those rhythms set me loose, even then I felt myself possessed and ready to break all the rules, though they left everything up to you, Harriett, because my family didn’t have much time to bring me up, so you had to decide everything for me, like Mai, that girl of Mélanie’s, you couldn’t do anything with me, and if that one is already a runaway, just wait and see how much trouble Mélanie’s going to have with her, and in Delhi Charles meet his devastating angel without knowing it, theatre was Cyril’s stock-in-trade, true or false, was Cyril a comedian, lazy and unemployed? The young man certainly had the key to reciting poetry with a deep voice, you like the contemplative poets, like me, Charles said, Milton, Blake, how could one be still in the company of a thirty-year-old, whether it was all lies or truth, and Cyril said to Charles, wasn’t it like a fiancé’s promise, and Cyril lacked Charles’ modesty, Charles who was truly great, I will read your poems all over the world, here in Delhi, later in Holland where they’ve invited you, not without vanity, Charles basked in this new discovery, Cyril was excessively lanky, more than Charles liked, without being wiry, his back and shoulders being muscular, it would be very pleasant to travel, continue those professional travels that Charles had told everyone he was giving up, but meeting Cyril changed everything, he would go off tomorrow to those conference halls he so hated with this alter-ego whose clear and azure eyes — so clear one saw nothing in them — one got lost in, this double lyrically reciting Charles’ poetry, contemplative, reflective, like the work of Milton to whom the critics compared him, Charles, who was reserved, relating to his admirers only through letters, forgot his reserve, welcomed Cyril’s spontaneity, he who dressed Charles up in his cajolery, and how can those accustomed to discreet, almost cold, personal relations with others, not be suspicious of the comfortable bodies of such liars? Perhaps at this moment Charles missed the peace and safety of his correspondence over many years with Vladislav, the young Russian poet, one of Charles’ passionate admirers, whose face, praise heaven, he had never seen nor whose tempestuous heat he had never felt close to him. Cyril, though, was simply there, never asking Charles if he was wanted or not, but just there waiting to be taken in his arms, at once abandoned and compromising. Heavier still, and bulkier than Charles had ever imagined, when he constantly felt the attraction of eyes so very clear, yes, perhaps at those moments he missed the unpremeditated quality of Frédéric, the subtle words of Vladislav, the Russian that Charles knew how to translate, disconcerted, Charles wondered what was happening in his life, he felt spoiled and put upon, like his friend Caroline, where had he stumbled and into what trap? He recalled Jacques, so loved by Tanjou, and who knows,