Leslie Kaplan

Leslie Kaplan was born in New York in 1943. She has published L'Excès-l'usine (Paris: P.O.L., 1982; 2d ed., with an interview by Marguerite Duras, 1987), Le Livre des ciels (P.O.L., 1983), Le Criminel (P.O.L., 1985), Le Pont de Brooklyn (P.O.L., 1987), L'Epreuve du passeur (P.O.L., 1988), Le Silence du diable (P.O.L., 1989), and Les Mines de sel (P.O.L., 1993).

Selected Publications in English:

The Brooklyn Bridge . Translated by Thomas Spear. Barrytown, N.Y.: Station Hill Press, 1992.

Extract from The Brooklyn Bridge . Translated by Serge Gavronsky. In Serge Gavronsky, "Ecriture: The French Mind." New Observations , no. 54 (Jan.-Feb. 1988): 18–19.

Extracts from L'Excès-l'usine and Le Livre des ciels . Translated by Cole Swenson. In Violence of the White Page: Contemporary French Poetry , edited by Stacy Doris, Phillip Foss, and Emmanuel Hocquard. Special issue of Tyuonyi , no. 9/10 (1991): 123–29.

Serge Gavronsky: Among younger French writers, you're the only one born in the United States, that is, the only one to have learned English first, as your mother tongue, and now writing solely in French. How did you pass from one language to the other? From one culture into another? How did you become Leslie Kaplan (pronounced in French, of course!)?

Leslie Kaplan: In fact I was raised in France, but there has always been an American Leslie Kaplan as well as a French one. So the answer is that simple!

SG: Given this conjunction of identities, of nationalities, and the facility to decipher both an American and a French mode of writing, at least on the level of reading, can you spot an American trace in your French novels?

LK: I'm sure there's an American undercurrent in my French, but to tell the truth, in my own case, I don't want to take it any further. I'm persuaded it's there—no doubt it has something to do with rhythm, ways of articulating things, cutting them up—but I wouldn't want to look for elements beyond that, and I'd like to keep it a certain distance from my consciousness. I can also say that when I write I very much enjoy reading poetry and novels in English. English counts when I work.

SG: It is true that one rarely likes to characterize one's own poetics, but clearly in your work, and I'm thinking of your novel The Brooklyn Bridge , there are numerous links—bridges, in fact—that cross over language to a particular place, taking off from the quote, "Mary, Mary quite contrary . . ." and your literal translation into French, which doesn't pretend to be anything else but a reader's pony. What also interests me is the relation you maintain with reality, which I had already admired in L'Excès-l'usine , a reality that encompasses language as well. Would you care to talk about the "reality" question that has become significant in recent literary criticism, especially from a psychological/aesthetic point of view?

LK: I find it difficult to talk about, but all I can say is that indeed, it's true. I'm trying to write what I might call "the real," which has noth-

ing to do with "reality," that is, with a linearity that already contains the writer's ideas. I'd like to arrive at a moment that would be infinitely more direct, massive, with things coming simultaneously from every direction. That's why the image weighs heavily in my case;films, for example, stimulate me a lot, that's obvious, but only a certain type of film, in which the real is present. Perhaps the definition of that term can only be given by the work itself. I can't speak in clearer terms about that, but take, for instance, a scene in a café where people are holding serious discussions, and at the same time people are walking by, and at the same time the sky is visible, and at the same time there are feelings on the part of the people that may or may not come to the surface of the conversation, which nevertheless keeps going at the same serious level. All that at the same time. For me, that's important. And here I'm reminded of the definition André Bazin gave in reference to Rossellini's films. I think the Italian neorealists showed reality as a block, not as something dissociable, but a unity. And that's what I'd like to reach.

SG: In your work there is a strong scenographic sense, to the point where at times, one might even think of your writing as a series of subtitles for the images: "The blue sky. She sees him. Embraces. Playing." A staccato succession, for instance—flashes, spontaneous elements that render explicit the absent image. In so doing, language renders materially visible the invisible, and thus there is a relation between the nature of language and the image. Images wander in photography and in film, but in your work a sort of evocation is powerfully suggested in a style in which language refuses to become expansive, in which it remains contracted, refusing to fall into a lyrical trap.

LK: In any case, as you said, I do want to establish a tension through this contracted form of writing. I would also want emotions to figure in—whether this is evident or not, and that's for each reader to gauge—but they shouldn't stop one from thinking. That's very important to me. I want simultaneously to hold my readers and to allow them to think, and as you can see with one of my characters, Julian,

a certain number of questions are put forth, which must entice readers while also making them want to elaborate the questions themselves.

SG: What you've just said plays into the very concept of reader response, in which the text, far from being closed and wholly determined by the author, allows the reader to participate, in fact act as a kind of co-creator, a translator of sorts! But in passing you also used a word that's almost taboo these days, that is, emotion. Do you feel that this interest is making a comeback? Whether it's muted or, on the contrary, flaunted, there are signs, if not of a massive return to an affective prose, at least of an admission of a need, especially after a long period of formalist writing, to recover that area of expressivity.

LK: I too believe that's true, but of course it doesn't indicate in the slightest a return to a psychological form, to psychologism. This development points to a return to realism not in its outdated forms but finally in its present dimension, and personally I don't think that should be excluded. Not at all.

SG: Let me turn to the way you phrase your thoughts: I don't mean to imply that all your sentences are similarly constructed, but there is a stylistic harmony in your writing that's founded, at least partially, on an abruptness, on what seems to me to recall a breath line, dependent on the body itself, a sort of corporeal expression.

LK: I guess both are present. What I can say is that I rework a lot when I write. Sometimes a piece remains in its original state—that can happen—but in any case, it takes me rather long to convince myself that that's what I wanted, even if it's the same thing I had written down originally! I don't know precisely how to say it, but no doubt this work is important.

SG: When I spoke to poets, one of the questions I asked myself, in reading contemporary writing in France, was what the relation might be between the aural, or oral, and written forms. Obviously everyone works over their writing, and yet in some way there seems to be a formal ban on communicating emotions of immediacy, as if feelings could only be described within metaphorical quotation marks! Thus,

while this work is necessary, shouldn't it allow an opening to sound itself, to the sound of voice?

LK: I think I understand what you're saying, and I'd say that on that score I'm rather in agreement with you. Perhaps you might amplify. Your point seems to me correct, but since I've not thought enough about the question, and especially not in those terms, it does take me a bit by surprise!

SG: Let me put it another way, then: To be a woman and a mother, to be American and Jewish, that is, to be many beings at the same time, doesn't that imply that "they" come to enrich that block you've called "the real"?

LK: Absolutely. Let's say that the block is always seen as lived and felt by someone . The block includes the subject. I don't want to formulate that in a theoretical manner, but once again if I take films, it's evident that that's what happens. Rossellini and Cassavetes, who are two of the greats for me, do not at all have the same way of seeing the world, and yet for me both produce a cinema of the real. Each does it in his own way, as someone has already mentioned to me! Maurice Blanchot wrote about that in his article on L'Excès-l'usine in Libération [February 24, 1987]. For him, the "one" [on ] in my work is in the feminine voice. Of course I hadn't thought about that in the beginning, but the factory [l'usine ] is real, as a thing, and it is quite clearly seen and felt by a woman. That's certain.

SG: That explains the dedication to Blanchot in your novel. He's there.

LK: He is in it . . .

SG: He's in the book as an exegetical figure, but his presence traverses the book itself, casting its light, rightly or wrongly; there every reader must reach his or her own conclusion. But it's impossible to read Blanchot's name and forget him! In reading the fiction that follows it, one thing remains unquestionable: your French defies easy translation into English! Perhaps in your French there's an echo of a certain type of virility, a certain verbal potency. The infinitives appear in a magisterial way, but there is also an elliptical procedure at work, a form of writing that draws back into itself, that interrupts

itself. Have you thought about this particularity in your work? Isn't there, in the long run, a risk of appearing baroque in emphasizing throughout a highly stylized voice, let's say, a very conscious presence of écriture? Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me that in the four novels I've read there is a corresponding stylistic register.

LK: What do you mean by baroque?

SG: A certain type of mannerism; a formulaic mode.

LK: I suppose a writer always faces that risk, the risk of repeating what was at one time a discovery and contained something true. However, there's no other way I can write. Later on it may even become a tic. I think everyone faces that threat. It's also a function of what goes on within oneself, the relation to oneself. Is one inside or outside of the real when writing? I don't think there are any guarantees. That may be why writing cannot be considered, in the strictest sense of the term, a profession: because there are no guarantees!

SG: Let me go back to the problem of translation, to this particular limpidity and abruptness to which at least the French reader is accustomed, in contemporary French prose, and which often depends on Duras-esque short sentences, even sentences where the verb has been omitted. Have you ever read yourself as an American reader of a French text, thereby introducing a critical or ironic distance?

LK: No, I can't say I have. What I can say that ties in with translation, however, has to do with one of my texts in a German magazine from Berlin: as they translated a considerable part of L'Excès-l'usine as well as Le Livre des ciels , something indeed of a different nature entered the language relation. But I don't know about English; since I feel close to English I don't think I can spot the difficulty. That may also be because I'm not used to writing in English.

SG: Have you ever been tempted to?

LK: It's not a question of being tempted. I've got a very powerful inhibition against it.

SG: I won't pursue that line! Tell me, isn't it rare for a young author like yourself to see a second edition of her work come out just a few years after the initial printing?

LK: It is, and I was surprised!

SG: From 1982 to 1987—that's quite astounding. How do you explain it?

LK: Well, it's a fact that the edition sold out. The first print run was six thousand copies. It didn't come out in paperback or anything like that. For that type of a book, it really did very well! When it sold out, Paul Otchakovsky-Laurens [Editions P.O.L.] thought it would be worth-while to put out a second edition, adding an interview by Marguerite Duras that had already been published in Banana Split , edited by Liliane Giraudon and Jean-Jacques Viton.^[*] I was very happy.

SG: When you read what others have written about your work, like Blanchot or Duras, do you recognize yourself? Do their perceptions coincide with yours? In other words, are you pleased with the "translation" of your work in French?

LK: If I understand your question, yes, I do find myself in others' responses! It has occurred to me that at times I'm in total disagreement with what's being said about the novel; at other times I fully agree. Things may come back to me and surprise me, and that's good. Obviously, Blanchot's writing about L'Excès-l'usine was very important for me. And in my interview with Duras in Libération I sometimes discovered things; at other times I didn't see it her way on a number of points, but that too interested me. We don't necessarily have the same vision of what I said in my novel.

SG: Isn't that in the very nature of the way you perceive things, in that block of the real to which you alluded?

LK: That's it, exactly.

SG: As you know, having lived and written in Paris for many years, there has been of late a pronounced concern for theory in the preparation of the literary product, both in its authorial aspects as well as in the presence of the reader. This same concern strongly marked the degree to which formalism influenced the writing of poetry for

a number of years—let's say, from the late fifties through the early eighties. Since you yourself have made use of a Lacanian distinction between the real and reality, could you evaluate the presence of psychoanalysis in your work?

LK: That's a complicated question; I do read a lot of theoretical texts, as distinct from fiction and poetry, but I can't say precisely what part that reading plays in my own writing. Psychoanalysis is very important for me on the level of thought, but as for spotting it in my work, if indeed it can be spotted there, I don't know what to say. Furthermore, I wouldn't want something of an explicitly theoretical nature to figure in my texts. That doesn't make any sense for me. Let's say—I'm not quite sure how to express this exactly—these sources may come up in terms of the question of ethics, but as far as style is concerned, I don't see them at all; perhaps they're there, but I can't follow that track.

SG: The characters whom you define in your work are apparently removed from this type of discourse. One would not expect them to speak in that way . . .

LK: That's certain but . . . No. What's important for me is the real, and at least one of the distinguishing aspects of an écriture of the real—as opposed to realism—is that in realism, despite everything, one can still clearly appreciate the author's theories, though it's never acknowledged. At least that's how it seems to me. A certain naturalist vision of the world, of things. I won't go into detail, but that doesn't interest me. I absolutely want an element of surprise in reading and thus . . . no theory!

The Brooklyn Bridge

The young woman and the little girl arrived early on in the park. The man saw them from a distance and watched them for a long time. Then he came closer.

The crowds haven't come yet. It's Sunday.

Start of the hot weather. Chance of mosquitoes.

A shuffle of clouds, moving fast. Blue mixed with green. Low hanging smoke in the way, coming from elsewhere, and one smells the ocean nearby hugging the city. Loading platforms and docks.

Anna walks through the park.

The park takes over the center of the city, an immense area, open. Inside, cars move, buses. Bicycles and roller skates circulate. Trucks, horses.

But vast, tree-lined alleys, too, corners of shrubbery. Bodies of water, hills. One can sit on the grass. Animals, leaves.

Benches everywhere, iron and wood. Sit down, read the paper. Listen to a neighbor. Once an emaciated, wrinkled black man spoke in whispers about the men who were walking by. Hollow like straws, he mumbled. Look. There's nobody under that hat.

Everybody can get into the park. Swings, families. Food stands.

At the other end, there's a zoo, an animal farm for the very young. Fowl. A bear.

Lots of swings. A simple wooden plank between two ropes. One gets on, feels the air, a happy connection between things. One swings, then gets off. During the week one can often see well-dressed men and women getting on the swings. It's free.

The city. It's overwhelming. Meetings and networks. Clouds. The presence of goods and bodies.

"Hello," says the man.

The little girl looks up.

"Hello," says the young woman.

"Can I sit down?" says the man.

"Of course," says the young woman.

The young woman has a book in her hands. She's not reading. The little girl has a doll. She's playing.

"She looks like you," says the man to the young woman.

The young woman smiles.

People arrive. Picnic baskets, portable radios. Music fills the park very early on.

You hear it, it gets louder. Groups and guitars.

Soon the sun, and the sky will be harsh and brilliant like a sheet of iron. Women will lie down beneath it. Legs and breasts, waists.

Children's games. Kites, balls. There are lawns set aside for sports.

Vendors selling ice cream, franks. Imported products, fresh juices. Vegetables in fashion.

Rowboats move around on the little lake. Water lilies, reeds. Urbanity.

Anna walks through the park.

A walk through the park, a walk through the city. One easily moves in and out of the park. No fences, no gates. At night, there are certain areas said to be dangerous. That's possible.

"Have you ever seen the Brooklyn Bridge?" asks the man. "It's the most beautiful one."

"Why?" asks the little girl.

The man smiles.

The sky, clear and blue. The smell of grass. The heat rises.

Trees in the light, and all the leaves touched. Here and there, little traffic circles, unkempt and handsome, wood sweating, rotten. Around there the air is hazy and mild. The folds of shadows.

In a hollow, a large carousel, wooden horses, stiff and colored, turning around, calmly, like an encrusted music, a floating souvenir.

The children. How they can surprise you.

The man and the young woman sit without saying a word. The little girl plays.

In the distance, a group of buildings made of glass, transparent and cold, seem to be coming out of the trees. Evidence of the image. The vegetal origin.

Anna passes by a young woman walking gracefully, blond and slender. Like a line drawing, a small victory in the making.

The music gets louder.

A group of sailors on a bench. Deeply tanned, really heavy and fragile. Take up a space, and for a while. Anna looks at them. Workers of the sea.

The man and the young woman begin to talk. The man wears jeans and sneakers. He wears an open jacket over his white T-shirt.

He's very handsome. Vigorous, the shoulders.

The young woman pays attention to him, she answers him. At the same time she remains undecided, preoccupied. Dispersion.

She's got long hair, a wide skirt, earrings. Her earrings move constantly.

The little girl plays.

"So you've never crossed the Brooklyn Bridge." The man asks.

The little girl looks up without answering.

The young woman interrupts. She's already crossed that bridge, perhaps she doesn't remember it.

The little girl listens, then continues to play.

The young woman and the man speak. Easy words. A few laughs.

The green rises from the trees.

Motion of the sky, of a single piece.

Anna walks. The joy of walking. To know the earth and the sky at the same time. A pure mental activity, too. To think without words, believing one is doing it.

Anna passes by a group of black boys and girls. Soda bottles, radios. Adolescence, a tangle.

Brilliant black skin.

Large eyes, identifiable voices, a way of speaking.

It's a park within a city. The present time, easy. No roads here, but streets. The present moment which includes where one comes from, my God. Where one might have come from.

Rumors. Old-fashioned talk.

"You love me?"

"Yes."

Conversations.

Anna gets off the path to walk on the grass. The grass is cut short, elastic and firm. Various varieties of verdure. Sod.

A squirrel chews, refined. Small limbs.

Women's light skirts, T-shirts and shorts. A few bathing suits. Pants, sandals.

Anna walks on as the heat rises. The blue rises. Sky everywhere. A discrete unity.

The women. Anna watches them move. Each one creates a form, a call. It's aggressive and pleasant like laughter, a cutout.

Children arrive, accompanied by silent nannies, blue and white. A child has dropped his lollipop and cries all alone, ignored.

But the mothers, how to speak about them. Anna wonders if they make up a category, if one can ever speak about them.

"What's your name?" The little girl's voice stopped her.

"Anna," answered Anna.

She sat down. The young woman smiled at her. Anna immediately found the man very handsome, very somber. The young woman, ah! interesting. But the little girl. Her wide eyes, light skin, lively movements. Power. Absolute and also impersonal, as always with perfection.

Idea, one feels at the same time she's mean, too useful, of a miniature, an object. The word "small."

Moment of silence.

Anna doesn't know where she is.

All around, leaves, splashes of color. Forms lose themselves. Only the little girl, her neat outline.

Then things fall back into place. Trees, the green carpet. Familiar noises.

The man. He's very white, a deep white, severe. Violence, fatigue. A rigidity.

He looks at women with a steady eye and indifferently. It's not agreeable, and yet in that look, a woman can see herself, see her own beauty, her audacity.

Because of the man, one thinks about the city. Present tensions, skin-deep, and that modern demeanor, disconnected.

Farther away, a bus passes by, a large tube, closed and yellow. People sit in their places, lost in thought, packed in. Interior life.

There are mostly blacks, the bus is going to their neighborhood.

Isolated neighborhood with brick houses, old stores. Odd-looking bricks, old and red, they're elsewhere too, raising their quaint, childish walls right into the center of town. They're there, participating.

But where the streets end, the ocean, the ocean rough and green, its currents and waves. Boats move under the sky.

Now a man stands up on a box and talks in a lively manner. People stop and listen. Difficult to catch everything, but one can pick up specific elements, facts, an accumulation. Pedagogy.

A boy comes closer, he's poorly dressed, very dirty, a young drifter. When she sees him, Anna catches herself thinking, "Well!" in a definitive manner, punctuated. Afterward she's all the sadder.

"Are you rich?" asks the little girl. She looks at the man.

"Why ask?" says the young woman, smiling. "Money isn't everything."

"Yes it is," says the little girl. "I'll only marry a rich man."

Le Pont De Brooklyn

La jeune femme et la petite fille sont arrivées tôt dans le parc. L'homme les a vues de loin et les a longtemps regardées. Ensuite il s'est rapproché.

Les gens sont encore peu nombreux. C'est dimanche.

Début de chaleur. Possibilité d'insectes.

Le ciel est mélangé, rapide. Bleu avec parfois du vert. Des fumées basses, encombrantes, qui viennent d'ailleurs, et on sent la proximité de l'océan accroché à la ville. Embarcadères et docks.

Anna traverse le parc.

Le parc prend tout le centre de la ville, un immense morceau, sans démarcation. Dedans, les voitures roulent, les autobus. Circulation de bicyclettes et de patins. Camions, chevaux.

Mais grandes allées d'arbres, aussi, coins de buissons. Plans d'eau, hauteurs. On peut s'asseoir sur l'herbe. Les animaux, les feuilles.

Partout des bancs, fer et bois. Se poser, lire le journal. Ecouter le voisin. Une fois, un vieux monsieur noir trop maigre et ridé avait parlé tout bas des hommes qui passaient. Creux comme la paille, avait-il chu-choté. Regardez. Il n'y a personne sous le chapeau.

Le parc reçoit tout le monde. Balançoires, familles. Stands de nourriture.

Au fond, il y a un zoo, une ferme d'animaux pour les très petits. Volaille. Un ours.

Les balançoires sont nombreuses. Une planche, simple, entre deux cordes. On monte, on sent l'air, la liaison heureuse des choses. On se balance, on se retire. En semaine on voit souvent des hommes et des femmes dans leurs habits de ville bien élaborés venir faire un tour. C'est gratuit.

La ville. Elle est si forte. Rencontres et réseaux. Nuages. Présence des marchandises et des corps.

—Bonjour, dit l'homme.

La petite fille lève les yeux.

—Bonjour, dit la jeune femme.

—Je peux m'asseoir, dit l'homme.

—Bien sûr, dit la jeune femme.

La jeune femme a un livre à la main. Elle ne lit pas. La petite fille a une poupée. Elle joue.

—Elle vous ressemble, dit l'homme à la jeune femme.

La jeune femme sourit.

Des gens arrivent. Paniers à pique-nique, transistors. La musique commence très tôt dans le parc.

Elle commence, elle grandit. Groupes et guitares.

Tout à l'heure le soleil, et le ciel sera dur et brillant comme une tôle. Les femmes s'allongeront dessous. Les jambes et les seins, les tailles.

Activité des enfants. Cerfs-volants, ballons. Il y a des pelouses réservées au sport.

Vendeurs de glaces, de saucisses. Produits importés, jus naturels. Légumes à la mode.

Des barques circulent sur le petit lac. Nénuphars, roseaux. Urbanité.

Anna traverse le parc.

Traverser le parc, traverser la ville. On entre et on sort du parc facilement. Il n'y a pas de grilles ni de portes. La nuit, certains coins sont réputés dangereux. C'est possible.

—Vous connaissez le pont de Brooklyn? dit l'homme. C'est le plus beau.

—Pourquoi, demande la petite fille.

L'homme sourit.

Le ciel dégagé et bleu. Odeur de l'herbe. La chaleur monte.

Les arbres dans la lumière, et toutes les feuilles traversées. Par-ci par-là des petits ronds-points délabrés et beaux, bois suintant, pourri. Autour l'air est flou, relâché. Les plis de l'ombre.

Dans un creux un grand manège, des chevaux de bois raides et colorés qui tournent, tranquilles, comme une musique incrustée, un souvenir flottant.

Les enfants. Comment ils peuvent vous prendre.

L'homme et la jeune femme sont assis sans rien dire. La petite fille joue.

Au loin un ensemble d'immeubles en verre transparent et froid qui semble sortir des arbres. Evidence de l'image. L'origine végétal.

Anna croise une jeune femme blonde et légère qui marche souplement. C'est un trait de dessin, une petite victoire qui se déroule.

Les musiques augmentent.

Un groupe de marins sur un banc. Ils sont très bronzés, bien lourds et fragiles. Occuper une place, et pour un temps. Anna les regarde. Ouvriers de la mer.

L'homme et la jeune femme commencent à se parler. L'homme a un jean, des baskets. Il porte une veste ouverte sur un T-shirt blanc.

Il est très beau. Vigueur, les épaules.

La jeune femme fait attention à lui, elle lui répond. En même temps elle reste vague, préoccupée. Dispersion.

Elle a de grands cheveux, une jupe qui s'étale, des boucles d'oreille. Les boucles d'oreille bougent sans arrêt.

La petite fille joue.

—Alors tu n'as jamais traversé le pont de Brooklyn. L'homme demande.

La petite fille lève les yeux sans répondre.

La jeune femme intervient. Elle a déjà traversé ce pont, peut-être elle ne se souvient pas.

La petite fille écoute, ensuite elle continue son jeu.

La jeune femme et l'homme se parlent. Paroles faciles, un peu de rire.

Le vert sourd des arbres.

Mouvement du ciel, d'une seule pièce.

Anna marche. Joie de marcher. Connaître le sol et l'air en même temps. Pure activité de la tête, aussi. Penser sans mots, croire qu'on le fait.

Anna passe à côté d'un groupe de garçons et de filles noirs. Bouteilles de soda, un transistor. Jeunesse, fouillis.

L'éclatante peau noire.

Les grands yeux, les voix si particulières, l'accent.

C'est un parc dans une ville. Temps présent et large. Pas de routes, ici, des rues. Le moment actuel qui inclut d'où l'on vient, mon Dieu. D'où l'on a pu venir.

Rumeurs. Le vieux langage.

—Tu m'aimes ?

—Oui.

Conversations.

Anna quitte l'allée pour marcher sur l'herbe. L'herbe est bien courte, élastique et ferme. Valeurs variées des verts. Plaques.

Un écureuil mâchonnant, raffiné. Les petits membres.

Jupes légères des femmes, T-shirts et shorts. Quelques maillots de bain. Pantalons, sandales.

Anna avance dans la chaleur commençante, le bleu qui se lève. Le ciel partout. Unité discrète.

Les femmes. Anna les regarde bouger. Elles créent chacune une forme, un appel. C'est agressif et plaisant comme un rire, un découpage.

Des enfants arrivent, accompagnés par des nourrices silencieuses, bleu et blanc. Un enfant a laissé tomber une sucette et pleure tout seul, ignoré.

Mais les mères, comment en parler. Anna se demande si elles font une catégorie, si on peut jamais parler d'elles.

—Comment tu t'appelles? La voix de la petite fille l'a arrêtée.

—Anna, a répondu Anna.

Elle s'est assise. La jeune femme lui a souri. Tout de suite Anna a trouvé l'homme très beau, très sombre. La jeune femme, ah, intéressante. Mais la petite fille. Les grands yeux écartés, la peau claire, les formes si vivantes. Une force. C'est absolu, et impersonnel, aussi, comme toujours la perfection.

Idée, on sent en même temps qu'elle est mauvaise, trop utile, d'une miniature, d'un objet. Le mot «petit».

Moment de silence.

Anna ne sait pas où elle est.

Autour, des feuilles, des taches de couleur. Les formes se perdent. Seule la petite fille, ses lignes nettes.

Ensuite les choses se rétablissent. Les arbres, le tapis vert. Les bruits familiers.

L'homme. Il est très blanc, d'une blancheur profonde, sévère. Violence, fatigue. Une rigidité.

Il regarde les femmes d'une façon appuyée et indifférente. Ce n'est pas agréable, et pourtant, dans ce regard, une femme peut se rencontrer, rencontrer sa propre beauté, son audace.

A cause de l'homme, on pense à la ville. Tension présente, à fleur de peau, et cette allure moderne, cassée.

Plus loin, un autobus passe, un gros tube fermé et jaune. Les gens sont à leur place, recueillis, serrés. Vie intérieure.

Il y a surtout des noirs, l'autobus va dans leur quartier.

Quartier isolé avec des maisons en brique, des vieux magasins. Etrangeté de ces briques anciennes et rouges, on les voit ailleurs, aussi, élevant leurs murs désuets, enfantins, jusque dans le centre de la ville. Elles sont là, elles participent.

Mais au bout des rues c'est l'océan, l'océan houleux et vert, ses courants et ses vagues. Les bateaux qui avancent sous le ciel.

Maintenant un homme est monté sur une caisse et parle énergiquement. Quelques personnes se sont arrêtées, l'écoutent. On n'entend pas très bien mais on peut reconnaître des données exactes, des faits, une accumulation. Pédagogie.

Un garçon s'approche, il est mal habillé, très sale, un jeune clochard. Quand elle le voit, Anna se surprend à penser «Eh bien» d'une façon définitive, ponctuée. Après elle est d'autant plus triste.

—Est-ce que tu es riche, demande la petite fille. Elle s'est tournée vers l'homme.

—Quelle importance, dit la jeune femme en souriant. Ce n'est pas l'argent qui compte.

—Si, dit la petite fille. Je me marierai seulement avec un homme qui a de l'argent.