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Preferences: Bones, cupcakes, Jane Austen, Merlin, chai lattes, Glee, les langues (francais, chinois, vietnamois), knitting, The Killers, faire du shopping.
Etudes: anglais, francais, psychologie
Preferences: Grey's Anatomy, Gossip Girl, les langues (italien, francais, japonais), Sydney Swans, Twitter, les emissions de tele,
le the, bleu, faire du shopping, les films.
Etudes: francais, japonais, linguistiques
Preferences: Friends, NCIS, Heroes, les langues (francais, japonais), les emissions de tele, badminton, frisbee, faire du shopping
les film.
Etudes: francais, japonais, psychologie
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Designed & Illustration By: velvet-sky
Textures: sanami276
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| #22 regrets and wishful thinking |
| Friday, December 18, 2009, 6:50 PM |
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Je pleure, mes amies, je pleure!!
Ah stuff the French. But pretty much, I'm starting to wish I had submitted my stupid form for exchange or figured out the stupid sites. Several of my friends are going on exchange I think. At least one is going to the States, University of Penn. Sigh. But they all work so hard... I was reading the Honour Roll for 2009 and one of the quotes of the all-rounders was something about the HSC is only once so give it your everything - don't go out, study all the time, etc. I can't do that. I feel like I would miss out on so much. I'm the balance kindof person. I need a bit of everything.
Carminey and I agreed that we would not get marks below 60 for 2010. I think I can do that. I'll cry so hard if I don't. Not to mention, I have to save up for a whole year's worth of travelling pretty much in the hopes that I get exchange and for our trip around Europe in 2011!!
Btw I'm watching Desperate Housewives. Very trashy but enjoying it nevertheless.
Time for a layout change if possible? I'm starting to miss uni. Sad. But the stupid thing is during uni, I'll miss holidays. Love it. Always wanting what you can't have.
J.
PS Jennifer, je suis célibataire si tu ne vois pas sur Facebook! Is 'sur' even the right... conjunction thing to use lol. Yeah so gotta do some study...
Oh man! And one of the docs I work with was saying I have a really good ear and should ace languages. I WISH. I WISH I WISH I WISH!
LOVE YOU BOTH.
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| #21 C'est un bon longtemps. |
| Wednesday, December 2, 2009, 11:33 PM |
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L'autre jour, je décourve des abréviations français pour un conversation.
J'aime les suivantes:
- A+
à plus (=l8r) - AMHA
à mon humble avis (=in my honest opinion) - att
à toute à l'heure (=see you later)
- auj
aujourd'hui - bcp
beaucoup - biz
bisous (=kisses) - bjr, bsr
bonjour, bonsoir - c, cé
c'est - cad
c'est-à-dire - ché
chez - ct
c'était - d'ac
d'accord - dsl
désolée
- EDR
écroulée de rire (=lol) - je t'M
je t'aime
- jms
jamais - ke, ké, kel, kelle, keske, ki, kil, koi
- ksk t'fu
qu'est-ce que tu fous (=what the hell are you doing) - MDR
mort de rire (=rofl apparently) - now
maintenant LOL. - nsp
ne sais pas - oué
ouais
- p-ê
peut-être - PTDR
pété de rire (=roflmao) - pkoi
pourquoi - q-c-q
qu'est-ce que - tps
temps
Et aussi des argots:
- abruti(e) (=idiot, retard)
- accro (=addict)
- ado (=teen, abb. for adolescent)
- apéro (=abb. for apéritif)
- aprèm' (=abb. for après-midi)
- barj' or barjot (=crazy person)
- bander (=to get a hard-on lol)
- bite (=dick)
- blaireau (=loser)
- se branler (=to masturbate)
- ça a été (=it went well or as a question, did it go well)
- chaud lapin (=sex maniac) (lit. a hot rabbit lol)
- cinoche (=a night at the movies)
- con (=stupid)
- crevé(e) (=exhausted); la crève (=the cold, flu)
- débile (=stupid)
- enculer (=to fuck, to bugger) (e.g. va te faire enculer =fuck off or as I would interpret it, go and get fucked lol); enculé (=bastard, asshole)
- foutre n. (=sperm lol); v. (e.g. va te faire foutre =go get fucked, go fuck yourself'; j'en ai rien à foutre =I don't care)
- hyper (=very, really)
- génial (=genius, brilliant, awesome)
- grave adj. (=stupid); adv. (=really)
- gueule (=face) (e.g. ta gueule = shut up, shut your face lol. I can totally see Carminey using this)
- MacDo (=MACDONALDS!!!! PTDR!!!!)
- merde (=shit)
- n'importe quoi (=whatever (exp.), bullshit (n.))
- niquer (=to have sex) (e.g. nique ta mère which is sometimes reduced to ta mère)
- putain (=shit, fuck)
- super (=very, really)
- truc (=stuff)
- vachement (=very); la vache (=darn)
- zinzin (=crazy)
Dsl pour tt les blasphèmes!
-J.
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| XIX: Les Vacances! |
| Friday, November 20, 2009, 12:46 AM |
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Salut mes amies!
Je pense qu'il est le temps pour nous a ecrire encore sur notre blog! Peut-etre une fois chaque semaine pour les vacances? :) D'abord, je dois dire que je suis tres heureuse que les examens soient finis! Youpi pour nous!!! :D
Maintenant, je ne peux pas attendre pour aller en Hong Kong!!! :) Qu'est-ce que vous avez l'intention de faire pendant les vacances?? J'ai beaucoup choses de faire avant je pars, specialement la tele. J'ai beaucoup emissions de voir! Je me rende compte que maintenant, je regards 12 emissions, et j'ai encore la saison 1 de 'True Blood' et je dois finir 'Firefly'. J'ai aussi la saison 6 de 'Desperate Housewives' et mon amie me dit que 'Brothers and Sisters' cette saison, est bien! Soupir!
Je dois aussi completer de lire 'Heat Wave' et 'The Time Traveller's Wife'! Et j'ai promis que je vais finir des icons et un picspam de 'Castle' avant je pars aussi! Je dois aussi faire les bagages pour mon voyage! Oui, j'ai beaucoup choses de faire avant je pars! Peut-etre je devrais commencer les faire MAINTENANT? Lol, je pense que OUI! :P
Aussi, avant je termine mon poste, quand vous etes libre pour notre jour du francais?? Vous etes libre le mardi prochain?? Parce que je pense le mardi prochain est le jour seul que je suis libre. Le lundi, je dois recevoir la vaccination pour la 'swine flu'. Mercredi, je dois conduire ma mere a l'aeroport. Jeudi, je sais Carmen doit travailler. Vendredi, Jess doit travailler, et le weekend, Carmen doit travailler. Et le lundi apres, je pars pour Hong Kong... Autrement, peut-etre nous pouvons l'avoir quand je reviens en janvier?? Qu'est-ce que vous pensez??
Il est 1h29 maintenant. Je vais regarder Bones! Il est juste fini telecharger. :)
Jusqu'a la prochaine fois!
-Jen
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| page 146 onwards |
| Saturday, October 10, 2009, 10:39 PM |
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Summary:
Emile lashes out at Bernardin again. Benardin laughts. Emile realises he wants to die, and plans to kill him. He chooses the night of the Summer solstice, goes over and smothers him with a pillow. No one suspects it's a murder. Juliette looks after Bernadette, etc. She knows nothing about the murder. Emile concludes with saying that he doesn't know who he is- he says it in a way that's like, that's what life is about.
146
commissions: commissions
infame: infamous
gavarer: stuff/shove
bouffe: food
infecte: vile
aiguille: hands (on a clock)
epreuve: test, ordeal
sordides: sordid
porc: pig
gaz: gas
echappement: exhaust
calvaire: ordeal
brulantes: burning
147
tripes: guts
ecoeure: nausated
suivit: followed
tournure: turn
diable: devil
quant: as for
harangue: ranting
irrecevable: inadmissible
hein: sorry, sound made at the end of question
rater: fail
dur: hardest
gache: wasted
gene: self-consciousness
reellement: really
tuer: kill
racheter: redeem
148
lamentations: wailings
explores: explorers/scounts
supplique: petition
menacante: threatening
plainte: complaint
entourer: surround
grandiloquence: pomposity
hardi: bold
a poings fermes: like a log
double tour: double locked
149
vitre: window pane
coude: elbow
debarras: junk room
bourreau: execution
inconvent: inconvenient
soulagement: relief
defunt: former
enterrement: funeral
150
juge: judged
sort: other
autrui: other people
rebours: backwards
bonte: kindness
151
a la faveur: thanks to
trepas: demise
claire: light, clear
aeree: airy
fondra: melt
I will relate your day: after returning the commissions, you will collapse into your armchair and look at the four clocks which even have lunch hour. You will prepare infamous food and shove some of to Bernadette, before you stuff yourself with it even while you hate to eat it, particularly this vile food.
Then, you'll collapse again into the armchair and stare as the time passes and the small and big hands move. New food test, next you will go to bed and this this will be the most bad moment of your day: I guess that, like me, you are an insomniac and if my insomnia is sordid, then so must be yours. Insomnia of a fat pig who annoys us and who never hopes to sleep, Palamde Bernardin! When one likes nothing, he wants to die. You don't go to speak to me that you don't have in your cupoard the medecines qhich could have helped you. It would have been the easiest thing, the exhaust gas.
Courage, Palamede! It suffered us to open your mouth, to swallow a tube of understanding with a glass of water, of you sleeping- and if it had finished, the boredome, the emptiness, the ordealof eating, the clockes, your wife and the insomnia. There won't be anything for you to realise. This is the bye, the bye! For eternity!
I had the games burning.
He did something monstrous, and that I had not believed possible: the neighbour burst into laughter. One has laughter/joy/hilarity when one can: his was poor and weak, but so attrocious. One would say that he had internalised the Parkinson's disease: one saw the trembles in his guts and mouth took the theories of small cries. (??) It was a repulsive spectacle. More so, the laughter that I saw in his eyes.
Defeated, humiliated, nauseated, I returned to my house.
The drumming in the night which followed my intention took a turn. M. Bernardin possessed laughter. None could have concluded that he was a man, others that he was the devil. For my part, I had interrogated myself above all as for the significance of the laughter. Had he found my ranting funny? It would suggest that he was a man of taste: a hypothesis inadmissible.
No, it should have been an ironic laughter. I interpreted his words: "That arranges well for you, that I commit suidide, huh? You stopped feeling guilty. All that you want to say is true, but you have failed in the sole chance to quit your life of shit. No, it's not easy, like with the medcine. You needed to have 70 years to have to have the courage to try. You will need more than 70 years to do it again. It's hardest when one knows how it is. And you, you who have wasted my escape, you have ruined my hope, you who has the boldness to come and speak to me! You don't have self-consciousness. Eh, well, my dear, if you really want me to die, kill me. If you want to redeem me, there's no other way: kill me!One is very mistaken in the language of the flowers. From then on, I understood the cry of the wisteria. All that she was was supplications, the manner of a wall hanging, to hang like the robe of a queen, for the blue clusters to fall like the wailings of explorers. I heard his threatening petition: life is a long complaint, an unfathomable torture that you can liberate for me.
None of these objections that I addressed to myself took hold: he didn't have the leastest reason to live, he didn't have the leastest reason to not die, i didn't have the least escuse to not kill him. I chose the date of the summer solstice: it was a little kitsch-like determination, but I missed much of the courage that I had needed to surround a certain soloemnity. The cereemony was to put a lead bomb in the brain. Without the pomposity of rites, one couldn't have the strenth for nothing.
That decision calmed me, when she changed the nature of my anguish it was a form of remission. I excused myself that night, since the nocturnal Emile Hazel was very sombre and very bold. I didn't speak to Juliette. I expected that he wouldn't have the memory anymore of the light in the sky. My wife slept like a log. I crossed the deck. The doors of my neighbour's house were all double locked. I cracked the window pane of the garage with my elbow, like I had done when I had been saving M. Bernardin. I climbed to the second flloor and I entered the junk room which served as the room of my execution. His light seemed to be an inconvenient monument. It was dark, but I could seel like a cat: I distinguished the open eyes of the fat man lying down. I had reason to believe he was an insomnic.
For the first time, he looked at me with an air of dissatisfaction. The depth of his indifference made a sort of relief: he knew why I had come. He didn't speak and I didn't speak. We weren't at the opera. Messenger of the grand woman, I didn't take a faux ?? but a pilow. I considered it an act of compassion.
No one could imagine how easy it was.
When the fat seventy-year old died in his bed, no one asked any questions. I demanded of a police officers if Juliette and I could take charge of the wife of the former. They didn't have any objections. One spoke to us like we were brave people. At the funeral, Bernadette was a very presentable widower. It was very slow (??) that s/he went to the cold hospital. At the end of Sept, a note arrived that said had received at the start of April, resulting in Suicide. It was me that had signed my name on the administrative formms and that they had sign, it was me that to go reclaim the money.I was paid with a smile. it seemed to me that it was justice: after all, if I hadn't committed the silliness to pulling him from his garage, he would not have been in the cold hospital (the morgue, perhaps??).
In addition to, singe the death, I felt amity for my neighbour. Known syndrome: one likes that who has done one well. In the night of the second or third April, I believed I had saved the life of M. Bernaardin- what an error! What a huge error!In revenge, the 21st June, I had dont been made a spectacle, I had not judged the other people with the proper criterion, I had not accomplished an act which brought me the esteem of normal people. In the contrary, I had gone backwards to my nature, I had passed the goodbye of the next before mine, without none of the chance to approve by my peers,
I had trampled my convictions that weren't grand things but also my passive nature, which was considerable, four exacting the desire of that poor man, to grant his will, and not mine. Finally, I had conucted myself in a manner generous: the true generosity was that which none ould understand. That the kindness between the domain of the admirable, it wasn't the most more than kindness.
Because it was since the night of the solsite where, in the profound sense of the expression, I had saved the life of Bernardin. Juliette knew nothing. I would never tell her. If she thought that the man who shared her bed was a murderer, she would die of the horror. Thanks to her ignorance, she estimated that the demise of the neighbour was a god thing. She went as she could to occupy Bernadette. The house of the Bernardns was becoming light, proper and airy. Every day, mmy wife would pass at least two hours with the cyst. She would bring her plates of food, flowers, books of pictures. She sometimes proposed that I accompany her- I refuced, because the idea of assisting Bernadette to bathe froze me.
She's my good friiend, Juliette told me sometimes.
The countesse of Segur would cry with emotion. (WTF)
Today, it snowed, like it had a year ago when we arrived here. I regarded the falling snowwflakes- when fond of the snow, who goes the white, demanded Shakespeare. It seemed to me that he didn't have any big questions.
My whiteness melted and no-one caught sight of it. When I had come to the house, twelve months ago, I knew who I was: an obscure little professor of greek and latin, whose life left no trail. At present, I looked at the snow. She melted without leaving a trace, she also. But I understood, now, that she was a mystery.
I didn't know anything of me.
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| XVIII: Les Catilinaires pp134-139 |
| Friday, October 9, 2009, 3:43 PM |
|
Translation
I surprise myself and shiver: what a life of nothingness Mr Bernardin has! If one considered that the senses are the door/gate of intelligence, of the soul and the heart, what remains of him?
Even the mysticism one learns by pleasure. (?) Not necessarily by his practice, but definitely his notion: the monks forbid flesh at least the foreknowledge of this which they were deprived. (?)
And the lack of training as much, if not more, than the plethora. (?) And yet, Palamede did not suffer any shortages; one does not miss anything when one loves nothing.
The life of saints had not proved that religious ecstasy is an orgasm. If there existed a trance of absolute frigidity, it would be known.
Alas, it was not necessary to arrive to similar extremities to conclude the nothingness of the neighbour: not by the grand emptiness that Hugo described, but the pathetic, pitiable, ridiculous and sordid emptiness. The grumpy emptiness of a poor type.
A poor type that, last but not lease, had never liked anyone, or dreamed that one could like. Certainly, I didn’t want to sink in the sentimentalism of the concierges: one can live without loving- it suffices for convincing oneself of looking at the common sort of man.
Only, the men who are strangers to love have other things: the horses, poker, football, the reformation of spelling – it doesn’t matter what, little importance, from the moment they can forget it.
Mr Bernardin didn’t have anything. It was a prison within himself. There was no window in his cell. And what a cell! The worst; that it was one of an old obese jackass.
Suddenly, I understand his obsession of clocks: the inverse of the living, Palamede blessed the escape of time. The only light, at the end of the slammer, it was death: and the 25 clocks of the house accentuated the slow rhythm and surety that it will lead him there. After the demise, he would not longer be present to his absence, he would no longer have flesh to contain his emptiness, he would become the nothingness in place of the living.
One night, in a jolt of will, this man had wanted to evade his prison: he had to have courage to make this decision. And me, the horrid convict guard, I had recaptured the unhappy escape. Proud like a canary, I lead him back to his prison.
Everything explained itself: since the beginning, his attitude was that of a convict. At the beginning, when he imposed himself at my house for 2 hours every day, it was the poor tolard(?) that didn’t have anything to do but invade the cell of another. His gluttony, since he didn’t like to eat, was typical of those that had achieved the climax of boredom. His sadism towards his wife, was again the behaviour of the imprisoned: the pathetic need of imposing his own suffering to a victim. His sloppiness, his dirtiness, his physical decline found himself in a condemned permanence.
It was so clear! How did I not understand earlier?
One night, I woke with a start with this unworthy thought: “Why didn’t he do it again? It seemed that suicidals are repeaters. What was he waiting for to try again?”
Perhaps he feared that I would prevent him from it again. How do I inform him that this time, I would not put the spoke in the wheel again?
This reposes the question of mode of suicide: why did he choose the escape of gas? Was it in the hope that he could be saved? No, the chances were too restrained. He had to have chosen it by masochism: again, the attitude of a prisoner. Or a symbolic act: this man that lived suppressed in himself, wanted to die with lack of air. It was 100 times more simple and less painful than injecting a poison, but would it exclude this brute who had, in the manner of all suicides, the need to leave a message? The others left a letter, that he did not have the capability of writing. His signature to him, was the death so barbaric that it contained his epitaph in watermark: “I die like I lived.”
The night of 2-3 April, without my curse of insomnia, Mr Bernardin had found the greeting. At present, we were at the beginning of June. A dreadful project tempted me: and if I sent him a word? “Dear Palamede, now I understand. You can try again, I will no longer disturb you.” I push my mouth in the pillow to not laugh loudly.
Then, this idea seemed to be less monstrous to me. I finish it by considering with seriousness. At first sight, such a letter seemed cynical and criminal, but, at reflection, it was what my neighbour needed. He needed help.
Suddenly, I could no longer wait. This letter was of capital urgency! I had to write it instantly. I got up, went downstairs to the lounge room, took a piece of paper and wrote those two liberating sentences. I crossed the bridge and I slipped the fold under the door of the Bernardins.
A feeling of blessedness and reliefe invaded me. I had accomplished my task. I returned to bed and slept with the idyllic impression of having been the messenger of diving love. The seraphs sang in my head.
The next day, while waking, it seemed to have been a dream. Little by little, I realise the reality of my act: I had well and truly written this despicable letter! And I had just slipped in under their door! I had lost reason!Under the stupefied regard of Juliette, I took her plucking pliers and went out in a run. Lying by the ground in front of the door of the neighbour, I introduced the plier in the groove blindly to recuperate the paper. Me attempts were unsuccessful, the sheet was too far, or, Palamede had already read it.
Horrified, I returned home.
“Can you explain to me why you were sprawled in front of their door with my plucking pliers?”
“I slipped him a letter this night. I regret it. But I didn’t succeed to getting it back.”
“What did you write?”
I didn’t have the courage of admitting the truth.
“Insults. Of the genre: “you are filthy for lucking up you wife, etc.””
The eyes of Juliette sparkled.
“Bravo. I am happy that you didn’t get the letter back. I am proud of you.”
She takes me in her arms.
I spend the day hating myself. The night, I slept early and slept like I had searched to flee myself. At 2 in the morning, I woke up: no longer closing my eye.
It was therefore that I understood one frightening thing on my own count: there was another Emile Hazel. In fact, during this insomnia, I gave myself reason of writing this letter. I felt more the lesser shame. On the contrary, I was happy of my act.
Was I the new Dr Jekyll? I refused this romantic hypothesis. In revenge, I understand that the night has a gigantic influence on me. My nocturnal thoughts envisage always the worst and never leaves me in a place of possible improvement, hope or even inoffensive indifferent. During my insomnias, everything was always tragic and everything was my fault!
This poses then, the single question: which of the two Emile Hazels had reason? The daily one, a little cowardly that took off his pin in the game? Or the nocturnal, the nauseated, the revolted, ready to take the more daring actions to help the others – to live or to die?
I resolved to waiting for the next day to know. Yet, the morning, I thought the opposite of my insomniac regurgitations. I was again ready to surrender everything.
A few days later, I was reassured. Mr Bernardin acted like a charm and I found myself ridiculous of having thought that my letter influenced him.
I imagined Palamede collected my paper, read it and shook his head with the realisation of mistake that he had came to my place since the beginning. I sigh with relief.
He was finally given the understanding of the myth of Penelope, of which I was far from being the only victim: nothing ruined us, the night, the characters that we made up in the day, and in return? The wife of Ulysses played the game of candidates in weaving their clothes and becoming again, the favour of obscurity, the haughty heroine of negation. The light favoured the soft comedy of the civility, the darkness left the humans in their destructive rage (?).
“In your opinion, Juliette, why did he not attempt suicide again? It seems that suicidals are repeaters. So, why doesn’t he try again?”
“I don’t know. I suppose he has learned his lesson.”
“What lesson?”
“That one is not free to do it.”
“To supposed that we have the means of keeping watch on him!”
“He has perhaps retaken the taste of life.”
VOCAB
134
forcement - necessarily
a coup sur - definitely
moines - monks
interdits - forbid
prescience - foreknowledge
privent - deprive
manque - lack (of)
instruit - training
extase - ecstasy
pareilles - similar
minable - pathetic
bougon - grumpy
tiercee - horses (betting)
importe - matter
135
cachot - prison cell
abruti - jackass
benissait - blessed
geole - slammer (jail)
scandaient - accentuated
trepas - demise
sursaut - jolt/start
volonte - will
penitencier - prison
ignoble - horrid
garde-chiourme - convict guard
rattrape - recaptured
cavale - escape
delateur - canary
ramene - lead back
bagnard - convict
tolard - ??
gloutonnerie - gluttony
atteint - reach
paroxysme - climax
incarcere - imprisoned
laisser-aller - sloppiness
salete - dirtiness
dechaeance - decline
perpetuite - permanence
136
avouable - worthy
recidivistes - repeaters
avertir - warn/inform
batons dans les roues - spoke in the wheel
echappement -escape
tenues - restrained
etouffe - suppressed
asphyxie - lack of air
douloureux - painful
exclure - exclude
filigraine - watermark
maudite - curse
atroce - dreadful
tenta - tempt
derangerai - disturb
enfoncai - push in
oreiller - pillow
esclaffer - laugh loudly
137
envisager - consider
missive - letter
rediger - write
glissai - slipped
pli - fold
beatitude - blessedness
infame - despicable
pince - plier
epiler - pluck/wax
rainure - groove
a aveuglette - blindly
infructueuse - unsuccessful
vautres - sprawled on
138
avouer - admit
injures - insults
immonde - filthy
enfermer - locking up
etincelerent - sparkled
effrayante - frightening
compte - count
moindre - lesser
revanche - revenge
amelioration - improvement
diurne - diurnal
lache - coward
retirait - take off
epingle - pin
ecoeure - nauseated
hardies - daring
139
ruminations - regurgitation
compromissions - surrender/compromise
ramassant - collect
secouant - shake
soulagement - relief
aneantissions - ruin
composons - made up
pretendants - candidates
tissant - weaving
toile - cloth
hautaine - haughty
laissera - free
surveiller - keep watch on
|
| #20 LES CATILINAIRES p.140-145 |
| Thursday, October 8, 2009, 11:25 PM |
|
TRANSLATION
"You find that there is some kind of air?"
"How do you know that?"
"Look at it."
"Impossible: He's locked himself in his house."
"Precisely. He lives on the land of Paradise, it is pretter in spring of the world and he's locked himself in."
"There are people that aren't sensible to these kinds of things."
"And what is it that is sensible, in your opinion?"
"At his clocks", she smiles.
"Indeed. He likes the clocks like the Lady of Death likes her fake. So, I ask again my question: will she wait for his second attempt of suicide?"
"Someone coudl swear that you wanted it."
"No. I try only to understand it."
"All that I can say to you, Emile, is this: it seems to me that even if one desired to die, to kill oneself must be a dreadful ordeal. I read the story of a parachutist: he said that it was the second jump into the emptiness that terrified him even more."
"Therefore, in your opinion, if he doesn't start again, is it because he's afraid to?"
"That's being human, no?"
"In this case, you realise despair of this poor type? He wants to die and he no longer manages to find the courage to kill himself."
"It is good that I thought of this: you want him to start again!"
"Juliette, I don't want any of that importance. What it is that counts, is what he wants.
"And you are happy to help him, at heart?"
"But no!"
"So, why are you telling me this?"
"So that you can judge his fate with your eyes. You, one could put you in the skull of a life with worth."
"Even if one didn't have to put me in it in the mind, I would have thought of it. I like to live."
"Is it that you are incapable of conceiving that there were people that didn't like to live?"
"Is it that you incapable of conceiving that there were people that could change their opinions? He could learn to like life."
"At sixty years of age?"
"It is never too late."
"You are a hopeless optimist."
"You said that the suiciders were second offenders. You didn't believe that all human beings were second offenders?"
"'The human beings are second offenders.' : poetic, but I don't understand."
"There is onthing that a human being does a single time. If a human being made a thing one day, it is that it is in their nature. Each person spends their time reproducing the same actions. The suicide isn't a particular case. The assassins make themselves kill, the love fall in love again."
"I don't know if that's true."
"Me, I believe in it."
"You believe therefore that he's going to attempt once again to kill himself?"
"It was because of you that I thought of it, Emile. You saved him. You weren't content with yourself to save him just once."
"How do you want that I saved him?"
"I don't know.
She added with a radiant smile:
"It isn't my affair. The saviour, it is you, not me."
Since I had lied to him on the subject of the false letters of abuse, Juliette looked at me like a sort of Messie. It was irritating.
"At heart, Juliette, we are idiots. Why did we give help a man who hates us? Same with the Christians who didn't do much."
"We like Bernadette. Also a long time that Palamede was sick, he venged himself on his wife. The only way to help this unfortunate, it is to save her husband."
"Save him of what?"
The fire of the broom ended. It made the turn of a wisteria.
To be unfortunate in Juine is also inconvenient than to be happy listening to Schubert. It is that which makes this month intolerable: during thirty days, the least state of soul convinced of its own rudeness. The forced happiness is a nightmare.
The wisteria aggravates the situation. I didn't know the more agonising vision that a wisteria in flower: the blue clusters rained long curves of 'tronc-liane' which caused a bit of my phlegm and transformed me into a ridiculous 'lamartinien' excess. When I was little, I spent my Sundays at my grand-mother's. A wisteria climbed the wall of her house. In June, this blue rain slashed me in the heart. Already, I didn't understand any of it: I burst into sobs of which the ridicule escaped me.
The antidote of wisteria is asparagus, another tribute to the month of June. I noticed that it was impossible to feel grief while eating it. The problem is that someone couldn't swallow it 24h in 24.
It had made me well some bottles of asparagus in early June to evacuate my anguish. The night, I contemplated the sleep of Juliette like Christ in Oliviers watching his disciples sleep: she had received the birth of peace and trust, she counted in me in order to look after these two gifts that I had been refused.
The insomnia became easier to manage outside of bed. I went to the garden. The night coolness overwhelmed me, the wisteria ended me. The Japanese politeness being written in lettesr where there wasn't question that the flowers of the moment; the others made fun of this ritual that one said was insignificant.
If I was Japanese, I would without doubt be a great letter writer: the formality would permit me to flaunt the sentiments of a soppy young girl without anyone taking notice of her.
The equation didn't hold: Juliette demanded that I save Monsieur Bernardin. And yet, my private conviction was that only death could tire him of his prison. But my wife didn't want him to die. And even if she had wanted it, he no longer seemed disposed to suicide.
Looking at the wisteria, I made a decision that seemed terrible to me: from then on, I accepted that Juliette no longer understood me.
This resolution had some effects the following day. I saw the neighbour's car return from the village. I rusjed to meet him.
"Palamede, I must talk to you."
Without a word, he slid his key into the lock of his chest, but he didn't open it. He stayed there, immobile after the car.
"You received my letter?"
15s of silence.
"Yes."
"What did you think?"
"Nothing."
Eloquent response.
"Me, I thought about it a lot again. And I came to say to you that I confirm: if you start again, I won't stop you anymore."
Silence. I resume:
"I thought about it: I understand you, Palamede. Now, I know that it is the only solution for you. I was wrong to admit it, so finally it is the contrary of what it was that I had always learned. ou know that it is: 'Life is of supreme worth, the respect of human life...'. Thanks to you, I know that it is crap: that depends on an individual or the other, like it doesn't matter on this earth. And life, it doesn't suit you: that's clear. I swear to you that I wanted you to: I egreat that I had pulled you out of the garage."
Silence of a million tonnes.
"I well suspect that a second attempt must be insurmountable. And however, if strange as it could appear, I came to encourage you. Yes, Palamede. I guess that such an act requires a strength of soul of which I would be incapable: but you, I like life, it is different. You, I motivate you to have this determination."
Without noticing it, I made myself speak with enthousiasm: I lost my temper like Ciceron pronouncing the first Catilinaire.
"Think especially about what it is that would have happened if you hadn't done it. You didn't think to continue like that. Look at your existence: your life isn't a life! You are a mass of suffering and boredom. More serious: you are nothingness. And nothingness suffers, we know it since Bernanos. Of course, you haven't read it, you never read, besides you never do anything. You are nothing and without doubt you will never be anything. It is this that you don't put yourself out if you were alone, but it isn't the case: you revenge yourself of your fate on your wife that, eve nif she hadn't the appearance of a woman, is a hundred times more human than you. You hold her hostage, you want her to submit to your nothingness. It is despicable. If somebody was incapable of living without oppressing someone else, they are better off not living."
I started to feel better. The fire of my oratory art was filling me with energy.
"What did you do today that counts, Palamede? I'm going to tell you your day..."
VOCABULARY
p.140
s'enferme: locked in
horloges: clocks
en effet: indeed
faux: fake
épreuve: ordeal, test
effrayante: dreadful, frightening
témoignage: story
saut: jump
désespoir: despair
parvient: manage
p.141
au fond: at heart
juger: judge
sort: fate
crâne: skull
valeur: worth
indécrottable: hopeless
récidivistes: second offender
tenter: attempt
à nouveau: (once) again
p.142
sauvé: saved
menti: lied
injures: abuse
crispant: irritating
incendie: fire
genêts: broom
glycine: wisteria
impolitesse: rudeness
déchirante: agonising
grappes: cluster
courbes: curves
grotesque: ridiculous
débordement: excess
p.143
pluie: rain
lacérait: slash
m'échappait: escape
eprouver: feel
chagrin: grief
avaler: swallow
naissance: birth
calme: peace
confiance: trust
entretenir: look after
cadeaux: gifts
fraîcheur: coolness
chavirait: overwhelm
m'achevait: end
s'écrivent: be written
se moquent: make fun of
épistolier: letter writer
étaler: flaunt
mièvre: soppy
exigeait: demand
intime: private
p.144
parut: seemed
me précipitai: rushed
serrure: lock
coffre: chest
repris: resume
foutaise: crap, garbage
p.145
me doute: suspect
devine: guess
exige: require
exhorte: motivate
fougue: enthousiasm
m'emportais: lost my temper
songez: think
souffrance: suffering
néant: nothingness
me dérangerait: put oneself out
séquestrez: hold (hostage)
plier: submit
abject: despicable
opprimer: oppress
remplissait: filled
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Finally, you reproach me from having prevented the suicide. She replied in a small, closed voice: No, not at all. He failed to prevent it. She had to luck to be convinced of it. Me, I was not anymore. I bit myself on the fingers to have saved it (???). I had given it 100 percent.
Besides,was it the first time I was reprached? It had been expressed to me with a rare eloquence on the day I had bought him to the hospital.
The worst thing is that I approved at the present. I put myself in his skin and I arrived at the frightful conclusioon: he had a thousand reasons to want to die.
For his life, this had to be Hell. He did not test the pleasures of existence. I began at least to understand that this was not his fault. This wasn't that he had chosen to be frigid of the five senses: he had been born like this.
I tried to imagine it: to not feel anything visionary in the beauty of the forest, while listening to the arias that distress the others, smelling the perfume of a ??, while eating or drinking, caressing or being caressed. That came back to say that he had never touched. And that he ignored sexual desire.
There are people quite stupid for employing the expression 'being blind to their senses'. Did they think the blindness of those don't light up? I was surprised by my shiver: how empty was the life of Bernardin!
empecher: prevent
pire: worst
peau: skin
enfer: hell
arias?
bouleversent: distress
tubereuse: ??
caressant: caress
sexuel: sexual
songe: think
frissonner: shiver
neant: empty/void
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