Kindness is what we give to those we don’t love. Can’t love.

Christophe Jacrot - Lénine Prospekt, Norilsk, Siberia, 2017    (source)
 

Is she the one who wants a kiddie?
We both do, said the man. That’s why we’ve come here.
You poor sod. You might as well cut your balls off. Would you believe me if I told you that the moment you have a kiddie your primal life is over?
No, said the man. I think that is when your life begins. Your true life. He took another bite of his stew. He was enjoying it, but the meat had a strange flavor and texture. He tried not to remember that what is meat in one country is offal in another.
(p. 62*)

I’ve got your supper here, Livia Pinheiro-Rima said, and pushed past the woman into the room. Where should I put it? Without waiting for an answer, she lowered the tray onto the bed and then wrung her hands together, as if they were sore from carrying it. Your husband’s gone out to dinner, she said, so I intercepted the swarthy youth they sent up because I thought you might like to see a friendly face, stuck up here all by yourself.
The woman remained standing by the open door. A friendly face? she asked.
Well, a familiar face, if nothing else. Or maybe not. Don’t you remember me? I’m the woman who saved you from freezing to death last night when you ran out of the hotel in your skivvies. If that’s not friendly, I don’t know what is.
(pp. 66-67*)

I’m sorry you think I’m skeptical. I do support you.
But equivocally, she said.
I’m sorry. I wish I could support you in the way you need, but it seems wrong to pretend what I don’t feel. Would it be better if I did?
Of course it would, said the woman. It means nothing to me, it doesn’t help me, your honesty. It hurts me.
Honesty again—the man did not understand it. I want to help you, he said. But I want to be honest with you too. Otherwise I don’t think I can be any help to you.
I suppose that’s the really sad thing, the woman said. The thing that really does separate us.
What?
That you want to be honest with me.
I don’t understand, said the man. If you don’t want me to be honest, tell me. And I won’t be.
No, said the woman. That’s what’s sad. I don’t want to have to tell you how to be, because then you aren’t being yourself, you’re being who I tell you to be, and that’s meaningless. I’d rather you be yourself and hurt me than pretend to be someone else.
The man said nothing. What could he say? He felt angry and tired and condemned. Her tenacity, which he had once admired, for he felt it made up for a strength he lacked, now overwhelmed him. She had sued the law firm where she worked when she was not made a partner, claiming discrimination based upon her health status, for her illness and its treatment had prevented her from working very much in the last year or two. The case was settled out of court and she had won a very large settlement, and now she seemed to battle everything in the same way.
He realized he wished she were dead.
(pp. 97-98*)

She wondered, Was it a mistake for me to come and see the baby? Not for him, but for me? I wish I still had my old body, my complete body. I understood that body. I fit perfectly inside it. Even if it is a mistake, I was right to come. Whatever happens, it will matter that I have held him like this.
She felt him fall asleep while she held him. She stopped patting his back. She lowered her mouth so that she could speak directly into his ear.
I’m sorry, she said, but you can’t be mine. But you will be his. All his. You must love him and take care of him. Many things he will do wrong but the important things he will do right. So try not to judge him, or blame him. As I have. If we are doing the wrong thing, a bad thing, a selfish thing, forgive us. It was my idea, so forgive me. I know how alone he is. He needs you.
(pp. 101-102*)

For a moment the man allowed the fragrant steam to rise up and warm his face. It was a dull khaki color and had an odd pungent odor he tried to find aromatic.
What kind of soup is it? he asked.
It’s a kind of soup that doesn’t have a name, said Livia Pinheiro-Rima. It’s soup made from whatever is at hand—drippings and dregs and peelings. Actually, it does have a name. It’s called garbage soup.
Garbage? The man put his spoon down.
Oh, don’t be so American! Garbage isn’t considered dirty here. We throw hardly anything away—it’s impossible to get rid of anything with the land frozen solid most of the year. So garbage is thought of differently here. It’s what remains, what waits to be reused. Literally. Isn’t it delicious?
It’s good, said the man. But it has a strange flavor.
And how could it not?
(p. 104*)

Please don’t say these things. We have . . . we have always been kind to each other. Can’t we at least keep that?
She turned back toward him. Exactly! she exclaimed. Kindness! How I hate it! I never wanted kindness. Especially not from you.
What did you want from me?
What a question! How can you ask it?
The man said nothing.
Love! said the woman. I wanted love! She began to cry.
Of course I loved you. Love you. Kindness is a part of love.
It’s got nothing to do with love, the woman said. Kindness—what a horrible word!—is what we give to those we don’t love. Can’t love. We’re kind to those we don’t love for that very reason. That’s where kindness comes in—when there isn’t love.
(pp. 132-133*)

When I was young, she said, when I was just beginning—my circus days, I suppose—and even after that, when I was a not very young, for most of my life, in fact, I have wanted to make love with just about everyone I met. I mean, not everyone of course, but with so very many. Men and women. In some way it seemed a crime to me to be alive, to be on this earth, and not make love to everyone. It wasn’t nymphomania. No. It was that I could see too clearly, too devastatingly, the thing, things, about people that were hurt and therefore loveable, the beautiful sacred space in them that needed touching. And once you’ve seen that in someone, it’s difficult not to love him. Or her. At least it was for me. (pp. 143-144*)

He had loved the dog but had also hated him, because he was always running away. Usually he would reappear, but once he did not and the man saw him the next day from the window of the school bus, lying by the side of the road, crushed. He had wanted to tell the bus driver to stop but could not, for the school bus was a ruthless place where any sort of emotional behavior was violently ridiculed. When he got home from school that afternoon he rode his bike to the place where the dog lay and brought him home, holding the dog against his chest with one hand and the handlebar with the other. The crushed dog leaked blood and guts onto his school shirt and he was punished by his mother because he had not changed into his play clothes before going to fetch the dog.
(p. 150*)
 
I expect I shall be the type of parent you hate.
I’ve no doubt you will be. You’ll ruin this poor lovely child faster than you can say Cornelia Otis Skinner. But don’t abandon your own life. Don’t conflate it with his. Don’t conflate it with anyone’s. That’s my real advice.
Is it really? asked the man. It sounds lonely.
Oh, I don’t mean that you should be lonely. Or necessarily alone. I mean you shouldn’t do anything out of a fear of being alone. That’s when the trouble starts.
(p. 154*)

Sometimes I think you’re not really listening to me. I know that’s the price one pays for talking too much—people stop listening. But I’d rather talk and not be listened to than not talk at all. At least then you’ve gotten it out there.
What do you mean?
I mean your words, your thoughts, your ideas. If you don’t utter them, what’s the point? They die with you. But when you utter something, it’s in the world. Who knows what happens to sounds? We think they disappear but it’s just as likely they continue vibrating and float out into the universe and perhaps someone or something will feel that vibration a hundred million years from now. Perhaps they’ll hear exactly what I’m saying to you now.
That’s a horrible thought, said the man. Imagine the din!
I think it would be a lovely sound. Like an orchestra, tuning up. I so enjoy that part of a concert. It’s so hopeful. Music itself can be so predictable
. (p. 161*)

The man thought about everything that was buried beneath the snow and realized that a year is like a day here—half of it in darkness and half of it in light, and so the winter is really nothing more than a single night. A long night followed by a long day. Perhaps that was a better pace for life, and his own ceaseless and inescapable revolution of days and nights, being yanked from the depths of sleep and slammed into a new day every twenty-four hours, was all wrong. It was certainly brutal and exhausting. (p. 167*)

 * as indicated on my e-book reader
Peter Cameron - What Happens at Night (Catapult, 2020)

Commentaires

  1. Des livres dont tu présentes les extraits aujourd'hui, celui-ci m'intrigue et me tente... le thème me rappelle un peu La vie parfaite de Silvia Avallone. Je ne connais pas Peter Cameron, et j'espère que ce roman sera traduit.

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    Réponses
    1. Je suis allé voir de quoi parlait La Vie parfaite, que je n'ai pas lu, et si la thématique de la maternité et de l'abandon/adoption est commune aux deux romans, le roman de Peter Cameron me semble plus onirique dans son atmosphère et moins ancré dans une certaine forme de réalisme (si je m'en tiens à l'idée que je me fais de la 4e de couv. du roman de Silvia Avallone).
      What Happens at Night devrait être traduit prochainement chez Rivages qui a publié jusqu'ici tous les romans de P. Cameron en France.

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    2. Hé, merci pour l'info, je suivrai ça !

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    3. Y'a pas de quoi. Faut bien que ce blog serve un peu à quelque chose de temps en temps 😉

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