Collected French Translations: Prose

by Ashbery, John

  Wishing to indicate her recognition of divine intervention, the Magdalen cried:

  “I thank thee, Lord, for deigning to cross out my past.”

  And the phrase became celebrated.

  Into the order of the Gray Crosses entered anyone, man or woman, who, disowning a turbulent past, made a vow to change direction. The members sported a long black hooded gown bearing on its chest a meaningful ash-gray cross. Living ascetically on alms, they wandered from town to town, forcing their way into places of debauchery to recruit adepts while preaching on the theme Cross out your past, the while distributing a sacred picture wherein, from a cross of ashes that a kneeling crowd surrounded, one saw these words formed by the meanders of a slender thread of smoke: “Fenced frippery.”

  Romé became a Gray Cross—and sallied forth.

  One evening, having been able to interrupt a drinking bout in a brothel so as to be heard, he was soon forced to leave accompanied by boos.

  But after a few steps he heard these words:

  “Fircine Démil is now one of yours.”

  One of the brothel girls had followed him—and confessed her sins.

  A matron, Mémelle Partar,1 notorious as a procuress of adolescent girls, had enrolled her, while still little more than a child, in her troop—whose doyenne she had become at the age of fifteen.

  To call attention to the rapidity, striking at the time, of her rate of growth, Mémelle was fond of repeating the phrase “The doyenne grows taller,” finding in the antithesis supplied by these words a useful reminder of the immaturity of her brood.

  An ingenious businesswoman, Mémelle had been able to increase her revenue thanks to the universal human foible of gambling.

  One could, if one chose, pay only half price—then lose the sum or be served as one desired, according to the decision of fate, consulted, given the special nature of the case, by means of an object reeking of love.

  Mémelle in her youth had received a pledge of sincere passion: a heart cut from a plaque of gold. The name Gorlodo, engraved on one of its two sides, indicated whose heart was in question—a heart made from inexhaustible treasures of love, as the chosen metal additionally testified.

  It was this heart, furnished on one side with the name, which, tossed high in the air and spinning as it came down, favored the customer or not in falling heads or tails—while the young heroine of the moment, selected in advance, followed it with impassive eyes.

  Often had the heart been wagered for Fircine, who, scrupulous, believed that having been shamefully played rendered her unworthy of redemption.

  So that she might detest less the image of chance as arbiter, Romé told her about Cacitaine.

  Cacitaine, a young Galilean woman of good family, having been abandoned in an advanced state of pregnancy by her secret lover, was unable to hide her condition for long.

  After a furious “Get out!” her father had added mockingly, pointing to the beast that would carry her away:

  “—I’ll forgive you when that donkey ambles home!”

  An hour later, Cacitaine reached a shady grove where Jesus and his disciples had just finished their midday meal—and was obliged to reply to the questions prompted by her tears.

  The others looked at the Master. Which would he choose, for a guilty woman redeemed by a trial: clemency or rigor?

  Choosing to resort to the impartiality of chance, Jesus caused the water contained in an amphora to be thrown on the embers of the culinary hearth, saying to Cacitaine:

  “The fire’s victory shall mark thine own.”

  After a moment of uncertainty, the fire took.

  Soon only a black spot remained at the center of the invading red flames; its disappearance caused Jesus to point toward Cacitaine—and then toward the place whence she had come.

  And Cacitaine felt her mount turn of its own accord and, ambling now, return to the fold—where her father, realizing the miracle that had occurred, welcomed her with open arms.

  Fircine’s serenity was restored.

  And soon after, two Gray Crosses were seen setting off together: Romé and Fircine, bound by the purest sibling tenderness.

  Passing one day through Murleau, they wished to meet the renowned and reverend hermit Danecteur.

  Extremely feeble, the wise Danecteur could tolerate a visit only when exposed to the invigorating stimulus of fresh air and sunshine.

  Those who wished recourse to his sanctifying words knew that entry into his tiny garden was allowed only when a rainbow was visible in the spray of its fountain.

  One fine morning, the rainbow being present, Romé and Fircine ventured in.

  At the sound of their footsteps, Danecteur came out of his cottage, showed them to a semicircular bench—and proceeded to recount the Relapse of Bahol de Jic.

  Young and rich, Bahol de Jic was descended from an illustrious family—indeed from its iron branch, which owed its name to the rigidity of its members’ morals.

  One beautiful day, during a clement autumn when the leaves had barely turned yellow, Bahol overheard a chorus of youthful voices in the wood. Soon a group of maidens appeared, who, without interrupting their song, invited him civilly to join them.

  Bahol took the arm of Farvette—and succeeded in dropping behind the others.

  Pleasant hours ensued.

  Already night was getting on and, since Farvette was fearful of tarrying too long:

  —“Let’s go and find out what time it is by the stars,” said Bahol.

  And Farvette added:

  —“We’ll see if Clarcée hasn’t slipped away again.”

  There was much talk at the time of the star Clarcée, which had abruptly reappeared after an absence of half a century—a few hours after the death of old Colas, who had once become fabulously rich—in a curious manner.

  At twenty, having sold all but his shirt for love of wine, Colas had cried: “Now I have nothing left but to sell my soul to the devil.”

  That very day, walking beside a field, he saw a brilliant solar glint in a freshly made furrow—and understood that Satan had accepted the bargain.

  In courteous terms he confirmed to him the abandonment of his soul, fearing that, for want of this precaution, the glimpsed treasure might vanish at his touch.

  It was indeed a treasure—which Colas jealously covered up again, after having taken what was sufficient to buy the field in cash.

  The next night Clarcée was missing from the celestial sphere, Satan having succeeded in stealing it from God as a hostage lest his soul be disputed him.

  Rich, the drunkard Colas had fifty years of opulent debauchery and, dying unrepentant, went straight to Satan’s dwelling, and the latter was thus enabled to return Clarcée to its place.

  * * *

  Having reached a clearing, Bahol and Farvette gazed at Clarcée, whose position indicated an hour already late—and allowed their lips to join in a farewell.

  The next day Bahol was summoned before his father, who, having had wind of the escapade, warned him that as a member of the iron branch he would be punished with death in the event of a relapse.

  Often Bahol would go to visit his nurse and foster sister in their hut, accepting some humble courtesy from the two women, who, eager to entertain him, heaped the table with fruits and delicacies from the dairy.

  —I would like a dear story, nurse, Bahol would say, purposely using an expression familiar to his lips from childhood.

  And an old tale heard in days gone by would again charm his hearing.

  One day—a fatal day—the door was opened to him by a terrified Nine, who gestured toward her mother, deathly pale on her bed where since morning death had been at work.

  Bahol was forced to control himself, for the dying woman had raised her eyelids.

  —Do you want a dear story?

  —Yes, nurse.

  —Well, then! Trillat was pining away ever since his fiancée drowned while bathing; her body had never been found. He had a tiny skiff made so that after his
death his heart could be placed in it—and consigned to the current of the murderous river. He well knew that there where his beloved lay, his heart would plunge of its own accord to rejoin her forever. Finally he passed away—and was obeyed. Rudderless and faced with a thousand dangers, the heart, reclining in its skiff, drifted away. Now, Princess Dramieuse was traveling through the country then. Such was her beauty that, wherever she stopped, a working day officially became a holiday in order that all eyes might be favored. She sang with a voice so pure that, begged by all to do so, she expressed herself with gestures in order to spare her voice. Enamored of the unexpected, she would at the beginning of each stage of the journey open the cage of a trained bird which, having alighted on a distant perch and thus shown the direction to be taken, voluntarily returned to its prison, and the journey would continue. One morning, troubled by the bird’s unaccustomed celerity, Dramieuse, followed by her retinue, hastened her horse’s gait. While fording a stream she stopped suddenly at the sight of a heart ensconced in a skiff moving directly toward her on the current. At that, Dramieuse …

  These words were the last.

  Nine closed the dead woman’s eyes—then fell into Bahol’s outstretched arms.

  Now, from their long sibling embrace a sudden vertigo was born … and their lips joined of themselves.

  Bahol, coming to his senses, cried out: “The relapse!”—then anticipated paternal justice by stabbing himself.

  * * *

  Danecteur having risen to his feet, Romé and Fircine thanked him and took their leave.

  They realized that the perspicacious hermit had chosen a tale designed to put them on guard against any deviation of their sibling intimacy.

  Soon afterward Romé was struck dead by a crazed avenger who had been deprived of his lover by Romé’s preaching, which had converted her.

  Alone henceforth, Fircine journeyed onward in a single direction so as to fulfill a mission that the dying Romé had time to confide to her.

  Arriving at Vigelal, she was able to find Eda and return to her, along with revelations concerning her, the famous bluebells whose stems were bound with a hair.

  When news of this had spread, Lord de Courty was ashamed on comparing his own reactions with Romé’s in regard to the beauty of Eda—who regained her abode.

  Second Document

  In 1880 the poet Pérot, known as Pérou,2 the acclaimed bard of sailors and the sea, was still living in Saint-Nazaire.

  Having straddled Pegasus at the age of twenty, Pérot had replaced the t in his name with its alphabetical successor, finding the pseudonym Pérou gratifyingly suggestive of a richness of ideas and veins of golden rhyme.

  Sixteen lustra passed without bowing him.

  At his hundredth birthday party he danced the hornpipe—and during the following days chiseled a witty Proud Sonnet relating his prowess.

  One morning he did not awake.

  The sonnet still lacked its final line.

  A statue was erected in his memory and placed facing the sea, depicting him shading his eyes with one hand and gazing adoringly at his booming muse. His Proud Sonnet, engraved on the pedestal, assumed due to its lack of a final line the touching prestige of a swan song.

  Now, the thirteen-line statue came to be considered unlucky—and passersby made horns at it.

  * * *

  Ten years afterward the shipowner Boulien dismissed a servant for theft; furious, the latter, arming himself with a paperweight, broke a mirror from a distance while shouting before running away: “Misfortune on your house!”

  Quicksilver flowed, revealing the corner of a piece of paper—on which Boulien recognized his father’s handwriting.

  Intrigued, he augmented the damage—and read:

  “Lean back against the thirteen lines and look at Friday.”

  Out in the ocean off Saint-Nazaire can be seen two profiles formed by two cliffs on Hurga—an uninhabited island where no one sets foot—called Robinson and Friday.

  Friday, the more thick-lipped of the two, brings misfortune due to its name, and the rash viewer who glances at it accidentally must make horns.

  Boulien obeyed—then, having reached the islet of Kirdrec, withdrew from a certain tumulus that his line of sight had grazed during the operation, a casket filled with gold coins that made him understand everything.

  An emancipated thinker and highly militant member of the Anti-Superstition League, his father had wished to combat the fear produced by the breaking of a mirror, the number thirteen, and Friday, by causing a treasure to be revealed by them.

  Informed by Boulien, the league published the event to advance the good cause—and Claude Migrel, the son of Annette Migrel, saw it one morning in his newspaper.

  At twenty, already mother of a bastard son, Annette Migrel, a shepherdess with miraculous vocal gifts, caused pedestrians to gather round when, guarding her sheep, she would sing near a highway.

  Discovered and launched, she became a great star and, ambitiously prodigal mother that she was, provided her son with the finest teachers.

  Forced, after a hundred vain efforts, to recognize himself a cipher, he withdrew timidly into his shell, allowed the nuptial season to pass, and, when his mother died, remained alone contemplating his misanthropy, until the day when a letter from home informed him of the death of a widowed cousin, father of a three-year-old child destined for an orphanage.

  He adopted the orphan—but, remembering his own distress, decided to make of his atavistic counterpart a peaceful illiterate.

  Carefully he chose as governess a silly girl on whose ignorance he could rely.

  And Jacques, under Eveline’s guidance, grew up far from the alphabet.

  One summer found all three at Verca, a pretty Piedmontese resort whose proximity to Marengo naturally suggests a visit to the battlefield and the famous Bossenelle tower, last vestige of a fortified castle.

  It has been said that at 5 p.m. on June 14, 1800, as the French defeat was drawing to a close, Time, suddenly grown torpid in its flight, fell through the ruined roof into the Bossenelle tower and was overcome by sleep, stopping the course of events until Desaix arrived to change it.3

  Later, amused at the thought of having imprisoned not only the pope and kings but Time itself, the emperor commissioned the great sculptor Varly to immortalize the event in situ.

  Around 1778, after having tasted the carefree happiness of childhood and first youth, Varly, impoverished, attempted with difficulty to inaugurate a career, while François Varly, his rich younger half brother on the mother’s side, was unable to overcome his pride in order to help him.

  One of Varly’s neighbors was a working girl with an invalid mother.

  During periods of unemployment, frequent alas, Lucette would come to pose for the Dryad Coaxing a Faun—adorned with a sylvan crown from which a leaf, at the end of the first sitting, had slipped inside a book.

  Now, the sight of the Dryad overwhelmed François—who married the model soon after.

  Fifteen years later he died childless, dividing his estate between his widow and his brother.

  Varly at last declared his sentiments.

  —I knew it all along, said Lucette. One day, arriving early for the sitting, I was idly flipping through your books, found the leaf, and understood. I loved you too—and sacrificed myself to pamper my mother’s declining years.

  And Varly, after so much suffering in silence, tasted for long years the joys of a husband and father—until the day when the sudden death of his only son deprived his wife of her reason.

  Having grown old amid grief, Varly, inspired by the contrast offered by the various phases of his life, caused wide bands of pink and black marble to alternate in the drapery of his Time—meanwhile scattering raised dots of the contrasting color throughout, so as to dispel the idea of the absolute and demonstrate that two moods could complement each other, as was demonstrated by the keenness of his memory with regard to the slight cares that beset his happy moments and the rare fel
icities of his somber periods: sisterly attentions of Lucette; smiles of the poor mad creature prompted by the sight of him.

  And this bicolored raiment of time caught Napoleon’s fancy.

  One morning soon after Migrel’s return, as Jacques, the eternal fainéant, having just studied the engraved illustrations in a book, was placing the bookmark between the last page of the preface and the first page of the text, and noticed, vexed at being unable to read them, here a word in roman characters contrasting strongly with one in italics, there an italic word contrasting with a roman one—he remembered, thanks to this reciprocal highlighting, what the guide had said concerning certain pink and black dots as they stood contemplating the drowsy reclining statue of Time in the Bossenelle tower.

  That evening, as they looked at the two pages, he explained his parallel to Migrel, who, alarmed, henceforth kept him away from even picturebooks.

  Forced to nurture himself elsewhere, Jacques fell back on the photographs accompanying the text of the newspaper Eveline read, demanding her commentaries.

  Sensational news items quickly became his preference—and the Crime of the rue Barel fascinated him.

  The empirical Sableux and the down-at-heels actress and singer Doumuse, one cuckolded, the other beaten, lived abjectly in the rue Barel.

  A doctor without diploma destined for handcuffs, Sableux owed a sort of reputation to a stroke of luck.

  One stormy morning toward the end of July in the Avenue Fortas, Prince Norius, a conspirator exiled by his brother the king of Ixtan, was working at his open window, a partial map of Asia before him. Clinging to the idea of seizing the crown and full of plans for his future reign, he was that day examining a sort of fissure in the coast of Ixtan which he dreamed of widening so as to make an anchorage of it.

  Sableux was passing along the Avenue Fortas at that moment, on his way to a certain scientifico-medical club founded by a philanthropist, which he had succeeded in joining by dint of intrigue. He knew that at noon, at the close of the meeting, each member, after drawing lots, would be given a reconnoitering trail to follow, baited with an interesting prize.