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117 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 1984
I see the war as like him, spreading everywhere, breaking in everywhere, stealing, imprisoning, always there, merged and mingled with everything, present in the body, in the mind, awake and asleep, all the time, a prey to the intoxicating passion of occupying that delightful territory, a child's body, the bodies of those less strong, of conquered peoples. Because evil is there, at the gates, against the skin.
"The bed is separated from the city by those slatted shutters, that cotton blind. There's nothing solid separating us from other people. They don't know of our existence. We glimpse something of theirs, the sum of their voices, of their movements, like the intermittent hoot of a siren, mournful, dim.
Whiffs of burnt sugar drift into the room, smell of roasted peanuts, Chinese soups, roast meat, herbs, jasmine, dust, incense, charcoal fires, they carry fire about in baskets here, it's sold in the street, the smell of the city is the smell of the villages upcountry, of the forest."
Suddenly I see myself as another, as another would be seen, outside myself, available to all, available to all eyes, in circulation for cities, journeys, desire.
The story of my life doesn’t exist. Does not exist. There’s never any center to it. No path, no line. There are great spaces where you pretend there used to be someone, but it’s not true, there was no one.
Never a hello, a good evening, a happy New Year. Never a thank you. Never any talk...It's a family of stone, petrified so deeply its impenetrable... We don't' even look at each other.
The story of my life doesn’t exist. Does not exist. There’s never any center to it. No path, no line. There are great spaces where you pretend there used to be someone, but it’s not true, there was no one.Throughout the narrative, which refuses to acknowledge traditional chronology and instead goes back and forth between the protagonist's present as a famous French writer and her childhood and youth in French Indochina, we catch glimpses at the young girl's harsh realities. The sudden death of her father impacted her family not only emotionally but financially, as they had to survive without him in Indochina. Consequently, the girl's mother – "she was desperate with despair" – owes numerous debts and often loses herself in the blackout despair of her manic depression. The girl also lives in constant fear of her brothers. Her older brother is violent, aggressive, selfish and vagrant and terrorises the whole family; her younger brother is his prime victim, a fact that distresses the girl greatly: "I tell him my elder brother's cold, insulting violence is there whatever happens to us, whatever comes our way. His first impulse is always to kill, to wipe out, to hold sway over life, to scorn, to hunt, to make suffer."
It was as if he loved the pain, loved it as he'd loved me, intensely, unto death perhaps, and as if he preferred it now to me.
امشب دیگر تحمل فکر کردن به مرد شولنی را در خود نمیبینم. تحمل فکر کردن به هلن را هم ندارم. بنظر میرسد که زندگی این دو از نوعی غنا برخوردار است، غنایی که بیرون از وجود آنهاست؛ من اما گویا از این چیزها مبرا هستم. به قول مادرم "این دخترک به چیزی دلخوش نیست". گویا زندگی دارد چهرهی واقعیاش را به من نشان میدهد. بنظرم حالا دیگر باید این چیزها را برای خودم بگویم، بگویم که میل گنگی به مردن دارم و این کلمه را دیگر از این پس جدا از خودم نمیدانم. میل گنگی به تنها بودن دارم، در عین حال میدانم از وقتی که کودکیام را پشت سر گذاشتم، بعد از ترک آن خانوادهی حیلهگر، دیگر تنها نیستم. نوشتن کتاب را به زودی شروع میکنم. آنچه در فراسوی اکنون میبینم همین است، در برهوتی بیانتها که در هرجایش گسترهی حیاتم برایم آشکار میشود
مدتهاست که میشناسمتان، همه میگویند که در سالهای جوانی قشنگ بودهاید، ولی من آمدهام اینجا تا به شما بگویم که چهرهی فعلیتان بهمراتب قشنگتر از دوران جوانیتان است. من این چهرهی شکسته را بیشتر از آن چهرهی جوان دوست دارم.