Read Online Fences in Breathing by Nicole Brossard - Free Book Online Page B

It’s like a game of hide-and-seek with buses poorly framed in the light. The woman appears, disappears, I feel I might know her. The man has moved closer to the woman. First he taps her shoulder twice sharply, then, from the way he fingers the woman’s sweater, it’s as if he were trying to ascertain thequality of the fabric. The woman pushes him away, stretching out her arm, folding it back, extending it as though trying to find the gesture that will allow her to keep the stranger at bay once and for all. The man gives the impression of wanting to explain something, he might even be wanting to leave with his arm around the woman’s waist. A police car stops alongside them. The woman glances toward La cité du temps. The man climbs into the patrol car, head down, shoulders hunched as if he were about to dive into another world. In his head, it’s all about staying alive. There are thousands of little holes for shelter. He regrets touching the woman’s sweater. Nylon. Nylon. Fall is coming. It will soon be time to dive into the dark.
    This is how the verb
to dive
began to take shape. I started saying it out loud, then murmuring it like somebody trying to understand by chanting the same syllables. Diving sometimes resolves the question of diving. Parting the veil, the surface that is obstacle or attraction, opacity or transparency. At the other end of the bridge, while listening to the wind, I felt the verb
to dive
station itself sideways across words and I thought about women’s caresses, their hands, the softness of their cheeks, about the slightly crazy heat that rushes to the head and transforms how we see. I wish the lake were the sea, I wish the whiteness of the shore around it would change into milky morning blue, into the soft royal blue of afternoon and theblue again of sea and horizon, as they have been described in my language ever since they became the stuff of dreams. I don’t know how much time has passed since the woman reappeared walking toward me. Talking about this passerby in the other language is difficult, and even in my own I can barely find the words, the story of words necessary to appreciate the small and great follies within us of hope, of renewal of energy, and of humanity. Women’s caresses are smooth, existential, full of yes, a power of presence and a bond that reaffirms all bonds. Now I am sure I glimpsed that woman in the village. She was wearing a red T-shirt that bared her tanned shoulders. I had seen only one part of her body, the rest had remained hidden behind the tall cedar hedge bordering part of the village. Then I remembered how every time Tatiana recalls an event that is important to her, she says, ‘That summer was pure velvet. That was the summer Nathalie Sarraute came to the château.’
    I walked on the other shore for a long time and found myself in a little cemetery full of beautiful aged trees under which I stopped. Without realizing it, I found myself at the grave of Jorge Luis Borges. A stone with a two-sentence inscription. I moved closer, convinced I would be able to translate the words that seemed familiar. Nothing happened except that time stretched out whitely as in a Piero Manzoni painting. I knew there was beauty in theinscription, even though there loomed an unspecific threat echoing the fog-laden sentences coming at me at this moment
that’s it like at this moment nobody can contradict me because I forget who I am from too much digging in between words, too much diving into the pink and ancient shapes of my love for everything that swirls and sparkles ribbon of slow music that drowns out sorrow in small doses of cello or eyes of a species that shelter a constant sun I’ve forgotten how the day packs up and goes with tender words crouched behind bare cheval glasses in grand hotel rooms forgotten why in another language I erupt while making a hell of a racket as if this could protect me from the beautiful rolling noise of living beings thrilling in the