For Sure (59 page)

“Wot would you say to the two of us goin' out to fetch a good-luck plant fer yer room? I thinks I know where there's some. An' after that, we can go fer a hot chocolate, if you like.”

Étienne's face brightened.

“Fer sure, I want to, Mum!”

Delighted, Carmen walked over to the wall where they hung their coats.

“Now isn't this fun! It's been a dog's age since we went out, just the two of us.”

“I knows it, Mum. You work too hard sometimes.”

“The Ideal Library of the Social Sciences” does not shrink from classifying some books as essential even though they do not exist in French. Most of these works — approximately 20 of them — were written in English. Economics, Political Science and Psychology are the disciplines that have been most marked by this absence of translation.

Having located the bamboo stalks they would plant in water and stones, Carmen and Étienne found themselves in a café, blowing softly on their steaming hot chocolates. The mother discretley directed her son's attention:

“Do you see the woman with the brown coat over there, de one's gettin' up from the table?”

Étienne spotted her.

“OK, OK, now look at me!”

Étienne was taken aback by this sudden change in tone. Carmen leaned across the table to explain in a low voice:

“'Twasn't meant to scold you, only I didn't want you to be starin' at 'er. On account of 'tisn't polite to talk about a person an' then to be lookin' over at them. You catch me drift?”

Once Étienne had grasped this lesson in étiquette, he was granted permission to glance over at the woman again. Then Carmen told him:

“She was me teacher when I's in grade four. Her name was Madame Rose-Marie, only we called 'er Madame Grosse-Marie behind 'er back.”

. . .

“'Twasn't very nice, eh?”

Étienne was tempted to look over at the erstwhile teacher again. Without moving his head, he tried to force his eyes as far to the right as he could, but that only made his eyes hurt.

The grammatical corrections evoked above are not obligatory. The Académie has stipulated that old spellings remain valid, which could lead to some confusion and, if this isn't already the case, more doubts, more questions. How could it be otherwise? A pitcher that goes to the well too often eventually breaks.

After reading for a long while, Terry's customer stood up and moved to another aisle of books, occasionally pulling volumes off the shelf, handling them all with equal care, as though they all deserved the same attention. Terry concluded that the man was the type who came to bookstores to read, but never bought anything, just as others might attend receptions purely in order to feed themselves on the snacks. He wondered if perhaps chairs were not particular conducive to sales. Because, beneath the ideal of a bookstore (to nourish the spirit) lay the commercial reality (to nourish sales), and though he loved almost everything about books, Terry was also concerned about his bottom line.

Since 1803, the Spanish alphabet has contained 29 letters. In addition to the 26 letters of the French or English alphabets, the Spanish includes the indivisible letters
ch
and
ll
, and the
ñ
. In alphabetical order, these follow the c, the
l
and the
n
; however, computers have problems reproducing the combined
ch
and
ll
, which has led to some confusion in Spanish dictionaries published after 1994.

After their afternoon chocolate, as they were walking toward the van in the large parking lot of the mall, a car alarm suddenly went off at the moment Étienne was brushing past. Étienne jumped, twisting his body in a way that made Carmen laugh.

“Bit of a surprise, eh?”

. . .

“Must be somebody fergot where they parked der car.”

Étienne's heart was still beating furiously. He only regained his speech in the van, on the way home:

“Do you 'ave a good name, Mum?”

“What do you mean, a good name?”

“De udder day, in de shop, de man said Dad had a good name.”

“Awh. Ee couldn't pay, I'll bet?”

“Naw! Ee wanted to pay, only ee 'ad no money!”

Terry was in the habit of leaving the house without cash or cards, which had always irritated Carmen, but she restrained herself:

“Awh!”

“An' de man in de shop told Dad ee didn't 'ave to pay on account of 'is good name.”

Carmen decided to accentuate the positive:

“Dat means yer dad's an honest fellow. The man in de shop knew ee could trust Dad to be payin' 'im later in the day, or maybe the next day. Ee could trust 'im.”

Étienne nodded.

“Do you 'ave a good name as well?”

“I think so. Only most times I've the money to pay in me purse, don't I. Eidder cash or cards. Terry, well, ee walks around wid nuttin' in 'is pockets.”

“Sometimes ee's got 'lastic bands.”

“Dat's troo, I suppose, only you can't buy nuttin' wid elastic bands, now can you.”

Étienne knew this, but the possibility made him laugh.

But before the novel
Clair de femme
(
The Light of a Woman
) by Romain Gary, the film by Constantin Costa-Gavras based on Gary's book, and starring Romy Schneider as Lydia and Yves Montand as Michel. The film, seen in the early '80s; the novel, read 20 years later, and steeped in memories of the film. Without a doubt the source of the characters of Alida and Rodriguez in
Real Life
. To the extent that an extension can stretch backwards as well as forwards.

“De worst progress trap I can tink of? Me girlfriend waters 'er plants wid bottled water she's buyin' at de store. Well, don't go tellin' 'er I said dis, only dat's our big disagreement. Could be dat's wot'll break us up in de end.”

Partial list of yellow words in French:
ananas
(pineapple),
carnaval
,
patate
,
banane
,
carnage
,
barrage
,
garage
,
camarade
,
bagatelle
,
papaye
,
canard
,
charade
,
parade
,
glas
(knell),
sac
,
flash
,
bazar
. Obviously, words not ending in
e
are yellower than others. Another difference: in words in which the
a
is followed by an
m
or an
n
, creating the sound
an
— panda, grange (barn), estampe — yellow takes on a brownish, orangey, or ocre tint. In a way, the sound
an
contaminates the yellow.

“Say wot you will, dey doesn't work all dat hard. Not so hard as dey'd like youse to believe, anyhow.”

Anonymous #2 was fed up with certain people's artistic pretentions, and especially Pomme's and Zablonski's. I felt I was ideally placed to defend them.

“Sometimes it takes time fer these things to mature.”

He or she pulled a pouty face. I'd broke the camel's back.

“You means to tell me dat you doesn't even know wot sex I am?!”

I explained that I hadn't felt the need to decide one way or the other.

“When I think of one, it works fine, an' when I think of t'other, it works just as well. Could be either one.”

“An' I suppose dat's why I's got no name neidder?”

“No, not really. I could've given you a name that works with both, like Majella, Aldoria, Doris, Flavie, Wilma, Césaire, Bélonie . . .”

“Aren't you de hilarious one . . .”

. . .

. . .

“I wanted somebody neutral, somebody I see from time to time. I don't know you by name. An' yer sex, well, 'tisn't really relevant is it? Don't go takin' it personal.”

“Somebody neutral. You ask me, dat's plain insultin'.”

“Alright, I suppose I was insensitive.”

“By de way, don't it require some kind o' permissions to be talkin' 'bout us in yer books?”

“Not if you're not clearly identified. Take you, for example, with no name an' no sex, you wouldn't have much of a legal leg to stand on . . .”

“Well, dat's exactly wot I's sayin'! You artists, youse tink you can bloody well do wotever you like!”

Really! I was thinking I had better things to do but, at the same time, I was desperate to make progress in my novel. I tried another approach.

“Look, we meet a whole lot of people in this life, folks we talk to an' folks we doesn't. An' even if we talk to them, doesn't mean we know der names. Anyways, makes absolutely no difference. We can have good relations with them, even doh we don't know them by name. An' no one takes dat as an insult, now do dey?”

“Alright, dat's fine an' dandy up to a point. Once you's in a book, seems to me, you oughtta 'ave a name. Or a sex, at de very least. When you sees a person in de street, you sees der gender.”

“Dat's troo. Most of the time, anyway. Well alright, I can be givin' you one, if that's wot you want. Do you 'ave a preference?”

“No, dat's yer job, now isn't it? You's de one dat's gotta decide.”

“Alright then. 'Tis done.”

“I'll wager I's a women.”

“You win.”

“I knowed it! I knowed it!”

“How come?”

“In yer books, de men has de better parts dan de women.”

“Fer real?”

“You doesn't see it, but yer borderline chauvinistic.”

“Fer real?!

Terry can remember finding it strange to see the name of a character in the title of a poetry collection. Strange too that a poet would create a character who's a poet, write that character's poems and then publish the whole thing under his real name, as seemed to be the case with Larbaud's
Poems of A. O. Barnabooth
. One thing leading to another, Terry had ordered the collection, convinced that these layers of identity were bound to pique the curiosity of other poets. So far, no one had taken the bait.

The plates with wide yellow borders arrived:

“I like de plates, Mum. 'Tis like eatin' bits of sun.”

Along the lines of thinking the glass is half full or half empty, some people who believe they're in danger of dying are in fact in danger of living.

In the end, the man stepped up to the cash with three books. Terry was pleasantly surprised. And among them was Larbaud's
Barnabooth
.

“I am not knowing zis poet. ‘Go tell Shame zat I am dying of louve for herr' . . . It iz lovely, iz it not?”

It was only with this last comment that Terry realized the man had just quoted a line from memory.

“I haven't read dis one yet. Barnabooth, dat's a weird name . . . fer a book o' poems, I mean to say.”

The man seemed to agree. Then he picked up his coat and pulled out a book from the inside pocket.

“I myself alzo am a poet.”

Terry was immediately wary, thinking here was another case of someone offering him a trade.

“It iz de sole one I have brought wiz me.”

Terry marshalled his courage, decided to be firm, but the man did not give him time to say a word:

“I leave here it. Only for ze reading however. Not to zell.”

And the man took out his wallet. Terry was dumbfounded.

Hans enjoys reading the words in the dictionary in the order in which they appear, allowing himself to be interpellated as much by the referencing as by the enigma of a koan.

Terry concluded the sale coolly, but inside he felt anxious, relieved and vaguely guilty. Then he took the time to open the poet's book, very slowly, somewhat the way the poet himself might have done, leafing through a few pages, as though he were testing the mechanism of the book. The poems were short, which pleased him. He read one, glimpsed something, reread it. What he thought he'd discovered was sketched somewhere in between the black and white of the words and letters.

“Hun!”

Here was something extraordinary. He read another, which meandered similarly in his thoughts. Now he pulled out his bag from the drawer under the cash and put the book carefully inside:

“Tanks, I tinks I'll be enjoyin' readin' dis.”

The poet appreciated Terry's smile and honest face.

“It iz a genre I am invented. I calling zem
shadow poems
. I don't sure how to zay in French.
Poèmes de l'ombre
?
I do not know.”

“Yes, you could say it dat way.”

“Yes, perhaps. Boot, zomezing iz mizzing, do you not think? A nouance?”

Terry didn't know, and didn't want to commit himself so quickly:

“I'd have to be readin' a few more . . .”

“Yes, yes. I perfectly understanding.”

The family of Latin languages includes Italian, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Rumanian, and Catalan.