Silence.
“Why?” asks Jeanne.
“They love everyone,” says Sabana.
Silence.
Jeanne says, “They want the world to end.”
“Yes,” says Sabana.
Silence.
“You want to say something more?” Sabana asks.
“Pay attention,” says Jeanne.
“Yes,” says the Jew.
“What else?” Sabana asks.
“The dogs.”
“David moved the kennels behind the garages yesterday,” says Sabana, “in the night.”
“That’s better,” says Jeanne.
She falls silent.
“What else?”
“Return to your life,” says Jeanne. “Don’t leave Staadt before nightfall. I won’t leave until your departure.” She pauses. “And above all. .”
“Yes?”
“STAY TOGETHER,” says Jeanne. “DON’T LEAVE ONE ANOTHER.”
“Yes,” says the Jew.
She falls silent. The Jew calls out:
“You cannot help but follow him?”
There is a long silence. Then: “No. I am Gringo as well. The female Gringo.”
She pauses and then:
“But I’m barren. I can’t bear children.”
She pauses again but speaks no more. They do not press her with any more questions.
She stands there still, silent, just like them.
Then in the silence they hear her body move. She is walking away from the door.
Then, light footsteps on the cobblestone, hers.
Sabana turns back to the field of the dead.
The Jew slowly straightens up. He does not try to make out through the window the form passing by. He does not move. He seems indifferent to everything around him. He has left once more, left again, now he is with her, the one walking away on the deserted road in the new day dawning on Staadt, once more anew in his life.
Acknowledgments
An excerpt appeared in Clockhouse.
Douglas A. Martin gave me encouragement and feedback at the right moment. Jeffrey Zuckerman read an earlier draft and gave invaluable feedback, corrections and suggestions. I am indebted to his keen eye. At every thorny moment when I could not bridge the gap between Duras’s extremely subtle poetic mind and her clean and spare prose style, Nathanaël was there, sometimes to salve, sometimes to scold, but always to guide me toward a deeper and more difficult relationship to the text.
I also thank Libby Murphy, who was my co-translator on L’Amour. Working with her on that project made me feel capable to tackle this one on my own. Certainly throughout this work I felt her influence and sensibility as a translator guiding me.
There is a sideways debt I offer to Ananda Devi, whose powerful book of poetry and prose When the Night Agrees to Speak to Me I was translating simultaneously. Her sensibility drew me through languages to find this book in English.
Finally, I want to thank Open Letter Books and Chad and Kaija, who are so devoted to literature in translation and to Duras in particular.
About the Author
Marguerite Duras was born in Giadinh, Vietnam (then Indochina) to French parents. During her lifetime she wrote dozens of plays, film scripts, and novels, including The Ravishing of Lol Stein, The Sea Wall, and Hiroshima, Mon Amour, and was associated with the nouveau roman (or new novel) French literary movement. Duras is probably most well known for The Lover, an autobiographical work that received the Goncourt prize in 1984 and was made into a film in 1992. She died in Paris in 1996 at the age of 81.
About the Translator
Kazim Ali is a poet, essayist, and novelist. In addition to his own writing, he has published a translation of Water’s Footfall by Sohrab Sepehri, and, along with Libby Murphy, he translated L’Amour by Margeurite Duras, which is also available from Open Letter.