Collected French Translations: Prose

by Ashbery, John

  They went in through the grocery shop and immediately a strong odor of laundry soap mingled with an odor of rancid pork fat left M. Dudron with a disagreeable impression. Nonetheless, since the odor of soap reminded him that he had none at home, he immediately purchased a bar of toilet soap which he chose scented with eau de Cologne; he paid a derisory sum for this bar of soap. Despite the modest price and the insignificance of the purchase, the clerk waited on him with such eagerness, wrapped the soap in colored paper with so much care, tied it and offered it to M. Dudron with such deference and respectful courtesy that the latter suddenly experienced immense shame and at the same time enormous pity and great tenderness for the sales clerk; he would have liked to embrace him and weep with him, he would have liked to transform the humble shop into a vast and luxurious department store in which he could have purchased splendid and costly objects for large sums. But this was not possible: It was only a dream, and M. Dudron stopped imagining such unrealizable deeds; he passed on into the dining room of the inn, where a large rectangular table was already laid with a white cloth covered with glasses, plates, knives, and forks. Not far from the large table, like a colt keeping close to a mare, another, smaller table was laden with bottles of various sizes. There were also two-liter bottles containing local wine which, due to their size, dominated the others just as Achilles, son of Peleus, and Ajax, son of Telamon, dominated the other Greek heroes at the siege of Troy. This comforting view reassured M. Dudron; in spite of himself he felt his optimism born again. A new security, a kind of tranquil joy, blossomed within him. However, since fate never sends us happiness unalloyed, untinged with bitterness, M. Dudron suddenly noticed at the moment they were about to sit down at table that they were thirteen, while on a calendar on the wall the ill-omened date 17 was printed in red. It was too much. M. Dudron, having barely sat down, stood up, full of ferocious energy. No, a hundred times no, a thousand times no—amid such signs of calamity he refused categorically to take part in the dinner; he would rather have retraced on foot the fifty kilometers that separated him from his house; yes, he would have gone off alone in the profound night; alone on the rain-soaked highway; alone beneath the threat of the imminent storm; alone … but of a sudden a great remorse gripped the heart and the throat of M. Dudron; he had just caught sight, at the other end of the table, of the surprised and worried faces of the lady who had brought him there in her car and of the industrialist snail breeder. This spectacle made him hesitate; he was on the point of sitting down again when a providential servant who was more of a psychologist than he appeared to be saved the situation by bringing another, smaller table, where several place settings were hastily laid and where M. Dudron and two other guests who had joined him out of politeness, lest he assume the ridiculous appearance of someone sent to Coventry, took their places. The dinner was Homerically copious. A kind of small pincers suggesting obstetrical instruments was distributed to the snail fanciers: This produced a detestable sensation in M. Dudron. More than ever he felt doubt increasing within him concerning the intelligence and sensitivity of men in general and his contemporaries in particular. He refused to touch the snails, despite the inducements lavished on him by the other guests, who, not content with praising the extremely delicate flavor of these mollusks, spoke to him also of their valuable therapeutic qualities, especially with regard to respiratory ailments. The servants waiting on table mingled in the conversation, and one of them told how a young girl of the region, a consumptive who had tried all the remedies in vain, had finally been radically cured by eating nothing for two successive months but snails stuffed with chopped onion. But M. Dudron remained unshakable. He ate a leg of roast chicken after an hors d’oeuvre of ham and sardines in oil. Then he had himself served a plate of spinach with butter and, for dessert, an unsalted omelet filled abundantly with strawberry jam, the whole washed down with a glass of local wine. Having eaten, he took from his trouser pocket his pipe, his tobacco pouch, and a box of Swedish matches. He was thus readying himself to digest his meal calmly while savoring a well-deserved repose. But he hadn’t reckoned with the wishes and the activity, both untiring and pointless, of the others; all the guests were already on their feet and, led by the industrialist, were preparing to visit the breeding grounds. He had to resign himself: M. Dudron emptied his pipe into an ashtray and pocketed it along with the snuffbox and the matches, buttoned up his jacket, and, seeking to remain steadfast in the face of adversity, followed the other guests. Outdoors it was as dark as the inside of an oven. Lightning flashes streaked the sky and opened up cracks, breaches, and fissures of livid and blinding light. The guests, holding each other’s hands, advanced with difficulty, their feet sinking into the soggy ground as they stumbled against stones and tree roots, like the blind people in the famous Brueghel painting. The storm howled as it grew nearer; big tepid drops fell with a dull thud on the ground and on plants. Gusts of wind passed. M. Dudron raised his head and looked up at the clouds, which formed a kind of dark, low ceiling. He saw Aeolus and Boreas flying side by side, holding each other by the waist, like figures of Michelangelo; they puffed out their cheeks like the masks on fountains, to exhale their implacable wrath downward, on the earth and on men.

  “Here we are!” cried someone at one end of the human caterpillar.

  They had at last arrived at the famous breeding grounds. Some called for flashlights, others contented themselves with rubbing matches; but the matches went out as soon as they were lit, while as for flashlights, no one had any.

  “There’s one!” cried a guest who had seen or thought he saw a snail.

  “There are two!” exclaimed another.

  M. Dudron, despite the laudable effort he was making, didn’t succeed in catching sight of a single snail.

  Meanwhile it had begun to rain in earnest. The retreat was sounded; the chain came apart, each member seeking to reach the inn as fast as possible; they slogged through puddles; it was worse than a retreat, it was a debacle. Suddenly M. Dudron found himself next to the Valkyrie, near the car; the lady climbed in behind the steering wheel; M. Dudron settled himself in the vehicle as well as he could and they took off at top speed. The skies had opened; the wind had fallen; long, luminous cables, perfectly perpendicular, joined sky to earth; the rain fell without ceasing; the ground bubbled up. When they crossed anew the little lakeside town, the streets had been transformed into torrents. The wheels of the car sank into the water up to the axles. Not a single passerby. The lady driver had lost her way; she no longer knew which road to take; in vain did she draw up before houses with blinds hermetically shut, ringing the bell and calling out like a knight-errant demanding hospitality on a stormy night before a castle with a raised drawbridge. No one replied. Only the continuous roar of the storm, the sound of water flowing from all directions. Anxiety again overtook M. Dudron; he thought of catastrophes; memories of terrifying floods in California or China, awesome scenes of which he had seen long ago in illustrated newspapers, came to mind; he imagined the little town carried off by the waters and drowned in the lake; quadrupeds, oxen, horses struggling against the currents; women in nightgowns, their hair undone, gripping a child with one arm and, with the other, clinging to the shutters, the balconies of partly submerged houses; half-naked men on the roofs coming to the rescue, throwing out ropes to the unfortunates struggling in the water, and then the lake overflowing, unfurling on the plain and going to meet, in that other city in the distance, the house in which he jealously sequestered his pictures, his books, his keepsakes, all the things he loved and without which he could not have lived. A real horror, that!

  Suddenly the lady uttered a whoop of joy; she had just noticed a directional sign; one must turn left, then right, then left again, and at last one would arrive on the great open road. They left the town behind. The speed increased. M. Dudron noticed with pleasure that as they moved away from the lake and the mountains the intensity of the rain diminished. After a few kilometers he had the impression that it was no longer rainin
g; he looked out and saw the stars overhead. “It’s probably the mountains and especially the one they call the Great Saw, which is higher than the others, that give rise to and develop the storms,” thought M. Dudron. Now he felt completely reassured; in spite of the speed of the car, everything seemed to breathe security and tranquility; that made him think again of the relativity of all things. They passed again through the small town with the monument commemorating the assassination of the king; but this time it was something else which was to awaken strong, deep, and strange emotions in M. Dudron. As they crossed a square surrounded by porticos topped by houses whose windows were all shut, the car’s headlights violently illuminated for a moment a large ornamental pond at whose center a spurting fountain made a large white spot. The appearance of this fountain which, in the middle of the deserted square, in the small town plunged in deep sleep, continued to play, to toss into the air a profusion of watery sheaves, to raise its song in the profound night, awoke in M. Dudron strange and highly metaphysical feelings; he suddenly felt an immense pity for the fountain and also a kind of shame at having to flee and abandon it again to the silence, solitude, and darkness. Yes, the car should be stopped at once; they should run and knock on the doors of houses; awaken everybody; ring the bells; bring torches; light all the lights; hang Venetian lanterns under the porticos, place carpets and festoons on the balconies and the windows; weave garlands; summon musicians with their instruments; organize dances; open casks of wine; fill the square with rejoicing people; in a word, do something so that the poor fountain wouldn’t be left alone to spurt and sing in the midst of the great desert and the silence of the night. But the car passed quickly by and with a pang M. Dudron saw the fountain sink and disappear in darkness.

  Soon they had arrived. M. Dudron, most content to find himself back among his lares and penates, bade the lady good night, thanked her, and entered his home. Despite his fatigue, he felt no need of sleep. He opened the window and rested his elbows on the sill. Numerous stars shone in the depths of a sky black as ink. Some shone in groups, some in rows or else alone, at a great distance from the others. M. Dudron thought of the vanity of his sacrifices, of his unpaid debts, of his compromised position. Instead of pitying himself and wallowing in pessimistic reflections on destiny and man, he remembered his youth when the idea had come to him of the means of renewing not only his painting but painting itself. A formidable pride mingled with memories of the sweetest sort arose within him. He saw again the places of his first experiments and his first works in the new vein. Yes, he saw those places again; the valley stretching into the distance under the soft light of the September sun. Blocks of red sandstone rose up here and there and in the distance larger rocks formed a kind of cliff looming over the open country, which was covered with ripe wheat wherein poppies made red spots. Opposite him, on a hill, the greenery was so abundant and the trees so bushy that they almost hid the houses and villas. To his right, the whole of an estate appeared to be painted on canvas. Tile roofs indicated a farm. The castle, its façade decorated with columns, was situated in the midst of a wood farther on, and a lawn came down as far as the river where a line of poplars was reflected in the water. “Memories!” thought M. Dudron, and completely lost in reveries he continued to gaze at the stars. A zone of luminous dust extending from the Septentrion to the south bifurcated above his head. Among these zones of light were vast empty spaces, and the firmament resembled a great sea of a very deep and dark azure, with archipelagoes, islands, and islets. He remembered what he had read or heard: Behind the Milky Way are the nebulae; beyond the nebulae, stars and more stars without number; the closest is separated from us by three hundred billion myriameters! He turned toward the Great Bear, which he had always loved, looked for the polestar and then Cassiopeia and its constellation. At the same time M. Dudron continued to reflect and talk to himself: “For that,” he said “it would be necessary to reevoke a past which, to all evidence, should not have reappeared on memory’s stage. It would be necessary, through actions which have already gone on for several years and have allowed the real culprits to indulge in scurrilous operations, to proceed to divers verifications, either in the milieux of the Law, or in the direction of that other shore where we seek the reward of an exhausting if not downright dangerous labor.”

  Suddenly M. Dudron felt a strong shudder penetrate his whole body. “Pneumonia,” he thought with anguish; he saw himself laid low by the disease, looked after by indifferent attendants. He was frightened. He came back inside, shut the window, and drew the curtains. He lay down after taking the precaution of placing on his bed, so as to be warmer, all his suits and his overcoat, adding to these an old rug spotted with ink, which happened to be on a table and whereon one could see embroidery depicting Hindu warriors brandishing torches and herding elephants before them. He further added some old newspapers he found at the back of a closet. He stretched out and soon the heat of the bed comforted him. He began to contemplate a picture on an easel that he had finished several days ago, which was faintly lit by the candle he had placed on his bedside table. The sky was an orange-yellow and was reflected in the sea. The horizon was indicated by a flaming red line. In the sky a few small clouds, whose rotundity was modeled by purple shadows, were sailing, scattered like sheep in a pasture. On the top of a cliff overhanging the sea, a sanctuary made a white blur. In front of it, on the shore among some fragments of broken columns which testified to the decrepitude of human constructions, stood a group of people; a young warrior was holding by the bridle a large white horse whose disproportionately large tail trailed on the ground like a solid, curly avalanche. On the other side an athletic old man, a sort of Hercules in repose, was leaning on a boulder, gazing at the distant sea with a pensive air.

  “Here,” thought M. Dudron, “is what is most pleasing to the people who concern themselves with painting today, to intellectuals and homosexuals. For them, painting is nothing more than a question of images. Our epoch will surely remain celebrated in the history of art for the ignorance of those who will have concerned themselves with painting. They don’t understand that the image means nothing at all and that the only thing that saves painting from oblivion, valorizes it, is its quality. But let’s put aside,” he continued, “those thorny questions that time alone will be able to resolve and immerse ourselves anew in metaphysical questions, not to give pleasure to a certain category of our contemporaries, but because that side of painting attracts as much as the other. This picture, is it the memory of a past life which now, in the eternal present, attaches itself to my life? Memories of what was and expectation of what will be; idle or laborious vigils and you, my excellent sleep, who each night cuddles me gently in your arms! You, my excellent sleep, heavy and slow as a great river! The wave where I shall sleep definitively approaches from age to age…!”

  M. Dudron’s eyelids grew heavy; he had to make an effort to keep his eyes open. Then he blew out the candle, stretched out voluptuously under the covers, and, after turning over two or three times on his couch, finally fell into a deep sleep; and he dreamed.

  It was still night but the stars had disappeared. M. Dudron found himself in a kind of park or public garden of an unparalleled romanticism and banality. One could see monuments in marble or bronze representing scholars, politicians, and generals who had rendered services to science or to their country. The scholars and the politicians were almost always represented seated in an armchair with a pensive expression, holding in one hand a scroll or a book; the military men were standing, sword in hand, gazing into the distance; at their feet one saw shattered cannons and cannonballs arranged in pyramids. Ivy grew everywhere; one also saw everlastings, ruins, sanctuaries, moss, and grottoes. Here and there tiny rustic bridges had been thrown across brooks which murmured gently among the plants and the pebbles. A kind of Rialto bridge spanned an ornamental pond whose edges were incrusted with mussel shells. Along the dim and deserted walks of this park M. Dudron was strolling slowly as he held by the shoulders a l
ittle girl with a melancholy and intelligent expression, pressing her to him. It was the daughter of the woman he loved. “It’s her daughter!” thought M. Dudron in his dream, and this thought flooded his heart with infinite sweetness. The landscapes he had loved reappeared in memory, in the dream. Dream or reality, everything was there, everything. Toys taken out of cardboard boxes, varnished and shiny toys spread out on the dining room table on winter evenings, while outside the snow places white hoods everywhere and bells announce the approaching holidays. Warriors of colored lead; tiny houses of unexcelled cleanness; crèches and boats on wheels. All palpable joy, joy one can take home with one, all the guarantees of happiness that even the gods, yes, even those very gentle gods with silky blond beards who squint ineffably, those same gods with distant expressions who smile without understanding anything, those gods who basically know nothing for the simple reason that there is nothing to know, yes, even those gods who hesitate to sign and who, before affixing their absolutely illegible signatures at the bottom of the solemn sheets of paper witnessed by Fate and stamped by Eternity, squirm and chew their mustaches and scratch their jaws under their beards with a preoccupied air. But once one has obtained it, that sheet of paper, one can be tranquil, and that for a long time. M. Dudron knew it as he knew that he dreamed. Consequently he was by no means astonished when he perceived that the little girl had disappeared and the décor had changed completely. Box trees whose bitter perfume the heat exacerbated were the sole adornment of a dark and dank gorge where the impetuous water of cold torrents murmured sonorously. And, suddenly, an oasis. The horizon had broadened. Tall trees joined their leafy fronds together and danced in a circle around green lawns where the river, calmed at last, unrolled its silver garlands. Above this unexpected landscape, near a small waterfall which seemed to spring from a rock, an altar, a block of white marble with drapery of a very tender orange-yellow hue thrown on top of it and falling to the ground in classical folds, and, at the base of the altar, roses and branches of laurel. M. Dudron’s mother was there, looking as she did when she was young; she was there, seated on the tender sward in a tranquil and resigned pose of prayer and meditation; she was very beautiful; she had the look of a woman in the Bible. In the sky, a brilliant dawn lit up the world with a diffuse light from which the shadows had disappeared. M. Dudron, advancing slowly as though his feet were chained, wanted to approach his mother, but the décor changed once again. It was noon. The sun shone on the countryside, blanketed with yellow wheat. The canvas hood of a wagon slipped away far in the distance. Torpor hung in the air. No bird called, no insect hummed.