En l'absence des hommes

Firstly, you will be and will remain very calm. You will hold your nerve, you will not go about the streets howling your despair; your grief shall be calm and dignified.

Does one ever tell a tale other than one’s own?

People of standing do not waste much time contemplating young men who are no one.

Perhaps I was a little taken aback by the grandeur of the place, when only a moment ago we saw German zeppelins fly over our heads. Perhaps it is a little surreal to meet you here when the shelling is getting ever closer. You say: though it may surprise you, one has an excellent view of the war from the windows at the Ritz.

You must imagine the magnificent madness of two men’s faces, so close to one another, that intense sensuality. The kiss is simply a logical extension of this proximity.

You surge into the space between my arms, and the first thing that I embrace is your pain. I hug the war to me, the smell of war, its rigidity like a block of cold granite, like a corpse.

You say: in fact I write books about bedrooms. My novels are filled with bedrooms. They are my memory. It is in bedrooms that everything begins. I listen. I say nothing. You have decided to speak. I follow you through your bedrooms. I learn that it is here that one talks, here one rests, here one sleeps, here one dies, here that one finds oneself alone, or with another, here one dreams.

This too is what attracts you to my sixteen years: I am your last connection with youth just as life seems suddenly, dangerously short.

Марселю, мені подобається безтурботність яку ви мені дозволяєте