Read Online Yann Andrea Steiner by Marguerite Duras, Barbara Bray - Free Book Online Page B

would do with fate.
    I ask if you hoped never to find them again, neither the trace of their steps nor of their bodies.
    You don’t answer.
    You say, “The child is still moving forward.”
    I say that the child will not die. I swear it. I weep, I cry out, I swear it on life itself.
    You say he is disappearing, hiding, and she can no longer see him.
    You say that it’s done: he has disappeared, but not to die, never again to die, ever. And you cry out in fear.
    I call out that I love you. You don’t hear. From fear and hope, you’re still crying out.
    You say that now, even if she wanted to, she couldn’t see him. I say: Nor kill herself.
    You say that we could have seen the child again, that he climbed back up the cliff, that he was hidden by the trees, that he didn’t go down toward the buses. That he must have hesitated, then decided. That he had not gone to take the buses. That it was raining.

    You say that never again will he climb on those buses, never again in his life, and we weep for joy.
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    He did as she asked.
    You say, She had already explained to him the night before how to head for the cliff that overlooked the parking lot. Openly he skirted the bus parking lot. Some truck drivers had seen the child and blown him kisses without looking at him, his eyes lowered in the direction of the sea. Then fear gripped him again and at first he walked faster; then he smiled at the truck drivers.
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    And suddenly the light subsided, and time did, too; already, abruptly, twilight invaded the sea and the forest.
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    The child walked.
    He didn’t wait for her. He knew she would come.
    He moved forward.
    And she had gotten up. She had begun walking far behind him. Then she had begun following him again. She had reached the cliff.
    Now and then the girl drew nearer to him. He heard her
footsteps and smiled and cried at the same time, tears of mad joy.
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    In the dark room we remain standing, apart from each other.
    We close our eyes. We look at them; we see them. We weep for their happiness.
    We cannot share this joy. We don’t want to. We can only weep for it.
    You continue to tell me the details of their walk along the cliff.
    You say, “He must have reached the other side of the cliff. She is very close behind him.” You say, “They are in a state of horrified happiness.”
    You say, “He doesn’t turn around. She doesn’t want to catch up to him yet. She is white as chalk. She is afraid. But she is laughing. She is so young and at the same time like a dead person. She knows this.”
    I ask if you hoped ever to find them in the streets of some city, someday, who knows?
    You say yes, you hoped for it as you had never hoped for anything else.
    You say, “They are leaving us.”

    You say that it’s done.
    You say, “Now, even if she wanted, she couldn’t remain on that cliff. She would be arrested by nightfall. She has to follow the child.”
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    For him, for the child, she is singing very low that at the clearwater fountain she had rested and that never ever would she forget him and that never would she leave him. Never never never.
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    We have gone back inside the Roches Noires hotel.
    We went out on the balcony. We didn’t say anything. We wept. We are weeping.
    The south suburb camps arrived at the end of the afternoon, when it was still light out. They called the roll for the new children. The same first names came back over and over. The name Samuel came up again.
    And again I wept.
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    And then you stopped talking about both the child and the counselor. You spoke about that woman, Theodora Kats. You asked me again why I hadn’t written anything else about her.
    You wanted to understand this about me, only this.

    I said that I had managed to speak of her only up to the discovery of that hotel in the Swiss Alps. And there, the book had ended.
    That Theodora was too much for a book. Too much .
    You said,