Les winters qui suivirent furent, en un sens, ceux que j'avais toujours attendus. The inédite d'une solitude radicale, le défi que je fixais désormais chaque année, avec un frisson de plaisir, quand tombaient les premiers flocons devant intensifier ma réclusion. The route is so low that it lasts until the evening after the intense froids make up the impregnable wall of my château. You need to go to the municipality of Monter just to have a hill for the route, the route is accessible, you can take me to the village for a fair amount of courses. Mais je ne le fis pas. I remember, secrètement, de transformer la Maison en palais de glace, me donnant l'impression d'être absolute seule au monde, in this campagne blanche et vide où craillait, de temps à autre, a corbeau solitaire. Le silence profond des bois enneigés, les plaines uniformes qui se déroulaient au pied de la colline, annihilaient complètement l'existence des other people. J'étais véritablement, durant ces hivers terribles, la seule maîtresse du monde qui m'entourait. The winter comes with a charm, and nous laissait seules, the Maison et moi.
J'étais an ombre, en winter. The ombre d'une goule, d'une harpie, d'une banshee, que sais-je, une creature qui ne sait plus si elle vit. Les repas pris seule, the grand silence of the Maison vide, the cliquetis des radiateurs, a gargouillis in mon ventre, all devenait et plus bruyant et plus silencieux. The bruits of the house me paraissant of the bruits organiques et mon souffle me semblait mécanique, calculé, artificiel. I don't have access to the outside, but I'm still listening, I'm talking stupidly, and I'm reading my words, and I'm monitoring my breathing. There is something to be said about the experience of esprit, without the aperture, but there is no noise in the inexistence. Je surprenais mon reflect dans les glaces et je me trouvais laide, affreuse, vieille. I don't think I'm in a small, small girl, I'm looking forward to a sorcerer, and I'm stupefied and palpable in my hands. My children creusées, my main froides, my bleuies bleuies me captivaient. C'était donc elle, this Isadora Aberfletch adulte, à laquelle j'avais songé parfois, enfant, allongée dans mon lit. Vieillir ne m'avait jamais fait peur, mais j'étais curieuse. À quoi ressemblerais-je, mes cheveux seraient-ils d'un gris sale ou d'un blanc lumineux ? Me voir, à present vieille, is always out of reach. Je me regarde et je ne retrouve plus comment j'étais, petite fille. I have a fair amount of mental work to achieve with my rides, to replay my games, to play with my eyes, to tent my souvenir of my avant-garde traits. It's all about mystification, it's a rosé flower, and it's a candour. The vérité c'est qu'on ne se souvient pas de notre visage. On the reconstituent imparfaitement tout comme, enfant, l'on s'amuse devant le miroir à s'imaginer plus vieux, et qu'on se fronce la peau. Mais je, je, je, je m'abrutis de moi-même, je me boursoufle. Depuis que je vis seule à la Maison et que le « nous » a cessé, et encore davantage maintenant que je suis dans cet institut, le je est omniprésent et je ne le supporte plus. J'étais tellement plus heureuse quand j'avais autre chose à observer que moi-même.
The winter approaches this hyper-conscience of my body, this altérité du corps, this étrangeté. La neige éblouissait comme le vertige des pensées trop profondes, des idées sans plaisir. Je me complaisais dans un état de solitude tellement intense que j'oubliais que la Maison était habitée, même par moi. Je riais de me voir vaciller aux bords de la raison, consciente du blanc perçant qui, tout autour, vrillait mes tempes, du silence opaque qui assourdissait mes tympans.
Je crois cependant que j'aimais être seule. Je pouvais explorer d'autres êtres à soi. Certains jours, j'étais pure. The house has an apartment all over the room, a great fire in the fireplace, and the conduits that are connected to the floors, with a strong heat, lively, piquante, with a good pint. Les parois vibraient d'une tiédeur intimate, j'allumais toutes les petites lumières, et c'était alors a grand ruissellement de jaunes dans les pièces tamisées. Les abat-jour laissaient filtrer une tranquille lumière orange et semblaient palpiter, mushrooms lumineux dressesés sur les guéridons. Les lustres, écaillés de champagne, brilliantly comme les gorges chaudes de dragons miniatures. Mon palais était rutilant, il y faisait bon vivre, tout chaud comme ça, un repaire universel contre le froid du ciel. J'étais seule survivante d'une nuit sans fin. Je me sentais fière, capable de vivre sans personne, sans ceux de mon espèce, juste avec le bois brun du parquet, les louds rideaux qui chauffaient les fenêtres, et les ampoules incandescentes. Je régnais sur tout ce petit mobilier with a majesté d'imperatrice, et j'empruntais the dernière des pelisses de la grand-aunt Babel pour m'en draper les épaules. The transformation is complete. Sur mon corps de quinquagénaire, sur mes hanches flasques déjà sans me avoir porté la vie, les pans d'hermine battaient comme un tambour. J'appréciais la pesanteur des bêtes mortes sur mon dos. Je marchais à pas lents de bout en bout dans la Maison, et la traîne de fourrure me suivait comme un lourd serpent louvoyant. Bêtes fauves, bois de camphre, pin qui brûle et pain qui fume, j'emplissais la Maison de chaleur et de lumières. This is the vital force, the palpitating organs in the thorax of the charpentes and the pignons.
Perrine Tripier Les guerres précieuses (Gallimard, 2023).
The following winters were, in a way, the winters I had always been waiting for. The new experience of radical solitude, a challenge I would face each year from then on with a thrill of anticipation as the first snowflakes fell, further intensifying my seclusion. The road, suffocated under the snow, hardened night after night by the extreme cold, formed the impenetrable wall of my castle. I could have asked the town council to drive up my hill to salt the road, making it passable so I could drive down to the village and do my shopping. But I didn't. Secretly, I looked forward to transforming the house into an ice palace, making myself feel utterly alone in the world, in this white, empty landscape where, now and then, a lone raven croaked. The profound silence of the snow-covered woods and the uniform plains stretching out at the foot of the hill completely negated the existence of other people. During those terrible winters, I was truly the only mistress of the world around me. Winter worked like a spell, leaving the house and me completely alone.
In winter, I was a shadow. The shadow of a ghoul, a harpy, a banshee, who knows what, a creature no longer knowing if it was alive. The meals I ate alone, the great silence in the empty house, the clanking of the radiators, a gurgling in my stomach—everything grew louder and softer. The sounds in the house seemed organic to me, and my breathing felt mechanical, calculated, artificial. I had no one to listen to, so sometimes, gripped by foolish doubt, I would stop and take my pulse, monitor my breathing. I was suddenly afraid that I had become a ghost unnoticed, that I had silently slipped into non-existence. I caught my reflection in the mirror and found myself ugly, terrible, old. I thought that if I had seen myself like this as a little girl, I would have thought I was seeing a witch, and I laughed in astonishment as I felt my stiff skin. My sunken cheeks, cold hands, and bluish lips captivated me. So this was her, the grown-up Isadora Aberfletch I'd sometimes thought of as a child, lying in bed. Growing old had never frightened me; rather, I'd been curious. What would I look like? Would my hair be dirty gray or brilliant white? Seeing myself now as an old woman is still strange. I look at myself and can no longer recognize who I was as a little girl. I can, of course, make the mental effort by wiping away my wrinkles, plumping my cheeks, brightening my eyes, and trying to recall my former features. But that's always a mystification; there's only a rosy blur, a shameless lie. The truth is, we can't remember our faces. We only reconstruct them imperfectly, the way we, as children, imagined ourselves older in front of the mirror, wrinkling our skin. But I, I, I, I'm numbing myself, puffing myself up. Since I've been living alone at home and the "we" has ceased, and even more so now that I'm at this institute, the "I" is omnipresent and I can no longer bear it. I was so much happier when I had something other than myself to observe.
Winter brought me this heightened awareness of my being, this otherness of my body, this alienation. The snow blinded me like the vertigo of overly deep thoughts, of listless ideas. I reveled in a state of solitude so intense that I forgot the house was inhabited, if only by me. I laughed at myself teetering on the brink of reason, aware of the piercing whiteness tugging at my temples and the impenetrable silence numbing my eardrums.
I think, though, that I enjoyed being alone. I could explore other beings that were mine. Some days I was queen. The house was all mine, a beautiful fire burned in the fireplace, and the shafts that crisscrossed the floors provided a strong, vibrant, stinging, pine-flavored heat. The walls vibrated with a homely warmth. I switched on all the little lights, and then a great torrent of yellow flooded the hushed rooms. The lampshades let a calm orange light seep through and seemed to pulse, glowing mushrooms perched on the side tables. The chandeliers, peeling champagne-colored, gleamed like the warm throats of miniature dragons. My palace was gleaming; it was cozy, as warm as it was, a universal refuge from the chill of the sky. I was the sole survivor of an endless night. I felt proud that I could live without people, without my own kind, only with the brown wood of the floor, the heavy curtains that warmed the windows, and the glowing lightbulbs. I reigned over all these little pieces of furniture with the majesty of an empress and borrowed the last of Great-Aunt Babel's furs to drape over my shoulders. The transformation was complete. On my fifties body, on my hips already slack without having borne life, the ermine trails beat like a drum. I reveled in the weight of the dead animals on my back. I walked slowly through the house, the fur train following me like a heavy, slithering snake. With wild animals, camphor wood, burning pine, and smoking bread, I filled the house with warmth and light. I was the life force, the pulsating organ in a ribcage of beams and gables. 1
This article is written in German and can be found at https://rentree.de. Automatic translations into English and French are available. English, French.
Notes- "A woman haunted by a golden age of family happiness decides to spend her entire life in the large house of her childhood, once so full of joy. Yet, at some point, she must face the outside world. Before finally choosing peace, she leads us into the labyrinth of her memory, arranging her recollections by season, like a watercolor painter. What remains of the spring, summer, autumn, and winter of a life?" (Translation of the publisher's announcement.)>>>
