From below she stared up at the Cap 3000 swimming pool, a visual marvel that fascinated visitors when the mall first opened; she watched the bodies of children diving with soundless exhilaration; she watched people swimming at the surface of the water; she saw them getting out of the pool, hauling themselves out, bodies foreshortened then dissolving into air and light; she saw people throwing themselves into the water, some enthusiastic, others stoic, each effervescent, ghostly figure, fuliginous, vanishing into the dark waters; and she caught the eye of a woman who was swimming slowly along the bottom of the pool, right there, so close to her, gliding, feeling her way, staring through the huge portholes as if she had caught a glimpse from beyond the grave, watching, searching for something that was lost, and then swimming up to the surface, coming back, smiling, going back up, fleeing very fast, and going back.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
NATHALIE LÉGER is an award-winning French author, as well as an editor, archivist, and curator. Supplément à la vie de Barbara Loden won the prestigious Prix du livre Inter 2012, voted for by readers across France. Other works include L’Exposition (2008), a semi-fictionalized essay about the enigmatic Countess of Castiglione, the most-photographed woman in late 19th-century Paris, and Les Vies Silencieuses de Samuel Beckett (2006). She curated the 2002 exhibition on Roland Barthes and the 2007 exhibition on Samuel Beckett, both at the Pompidou. Since 2013 she has been the Director of the Institut Mémoires de l’Édition Contemporaine, a unique cultural institute dedicated to the archives of 20th-and 21st-century French writers.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATORS
Born in London, NATASHA LEHRER is a writer, translator, and critic. She has edited and contributed to several books, and is literary editor of the Jewish Quarterly. She read English at Oxford University and has an MPhil in Comparative Literature from the Université de Paris VIII. She lives in Paris.
CÉCILE MENON is a French translator living in London. She has translated drama and contemporary poetry into French. This is her first literary translation into English.
DOROTHY, A PUBLISHING PROJECT
1. Renee Gladman Event Factory
2. Barbara Comyns Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead
3. Renee Gladman The Ravickians
4. Manuela Draeger In the Time of the Blue Ball
5. Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi Fra Keeler
6. Suzanne Scanlon Promising Young Women
7. Renee Gladman Ana Patova Crosses a Bridge
8. Amina Cain Creature
9. Joanna Ruocco Dan
10. Nell Zink The Wallcreeper
11. Marianne Fritz The Weight of Things
12. Joanna Walsh Vertigo
13. Nathalie Léger Suite for Barbara Loden
14. Jen George The Babysitter at Rest
DOROTHYPROJECT.COM
Suite for Barbara Loden Page 8
