Fragments of Place: A World Where Human Folly Exceeds the Limits of Fanaticism, Greed, Barbarity and Indifference

By Aude

The goal is not to stay alive, but to stay human. —George Orwell, 1984 These stories draw us into the intimacy of what makes us human. Some are marked by war, social instability, totalitarianism, while others are peaceful and reassuring, but each emphasizes that great social movements call out for improvements to the common good. Fragments of Place asks all of us to be aware of the new pages of global history as they are written.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Exile Editions
• Release date: May 27, 2016
• ISBN: 9781550964950

Book preview

FRAGMENTS OF PLACE

AUDE

Translated from French by David Homel

Formatting note:

In the electronic versions of this book

blank pages that appear in the paperback

have been removed.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Aude, 1947-

[Éclats de lieux. English]

Fragments of place / Aude ; translated from French by David Homel.

Short stories.

Translation of: Éclats de lieux.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 978-1-55096-494-3 (paperback).--ISBN 978-1-55096-495-0 (epub).--

ISBN 978-1-55096-496-7 (mobi).--ISBN 978-1-55096-497-4 (pdf)

I. Homel, David translator II. Title. III. Title: Éclats de lieux. English.

PS8589.I77E4213 2016 C843'.54 C2015-906550-X/ C2015-906551-8

Translation Copyright © Exile Editions and David Homel, 2015.

First published in French as Éclats de lieux © 2012, Lévesque éditeur.

The publishers have used this English edition to make certain changes to the original French book. All rights reserved.

Published by Exile Editions Ltd ~ www.ExileEditions.com

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PDF, ePUB and MOBI versions by Melissa Campos Mendivil

Publication Copyright © Exile Editions, 2015. All rights reserved

We gratefully acknowledge, for their support toward our publishing activities, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.

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To all the women and men I have loved, and they are numerous.

To all my readers, past, present, and future.

To all women and men of good will; they are the majority on this planet.

Contents

A Foreword to My Readers

The Spinners

Taking Shelter

Playing Knucklebones

The Girls’ Room

The Jackals

Exile

Other People’s Blood

Indelible Virginia

The Woman in the River

The Wait

A Living Soul

Beyond Reproach

A Drowning

A Recurring Pattern

Heart of Ice

The Perfume of Ylang-Ylang

Sapping

The Woman in the Alley

The Ultimate

The Spinners (What Came Next)

The goal is not to stay alive, but to stay human.

—GEORGE ORWELL, 1984

The goal is not to build great temples on the outside, but to create temples of goodness and compassion on the inside, within our hearts.

—THE DALAI LAMA

A Foreword to my Readers: Past, Present, and Future

All of it was written in a spirit of joy, in a time of catastrophe.

—JEAN-YVES LELOUP, L’absurde et la grâce

All books by all authors are written at a specific time in their lives, in their personal histories, and at a particular moment in the history of the world.

Sometimes it is difficult to detect what was happening in an author’s life when she was writing the book, unless she – or he – gives us clues in the lines, or through interviews, or in some other way. In some cases, the date of publication will tell us about the historical period in which it was written.

Several of the stories in Fragments of Place were published long ago in literary magazines, especially in XYZ: La revue de la nouvelle.

Yet most were written over the course of the last five years, when great waves of violence and deep conflicts wracked the planet. In 2011, hope suddenly reappeared with the Arab Spring and other crucial events. Great social movements based on indignation have come forward around the world. In different ways and different contexts, they have called for improvements to the common good, for true democracy without violence and with justice for all citizens, including those of the future. The protection of our Earth, which has become urgent and vital, is of course part of these demands. Certainly today, before any future can be radiant, there is an enormous amount of work to do, complex and delicate and with the capacity to reconcile the many opposing forces, while extremely powerful economic, political, and religious factions try to maintain their domination and seize the upper hand and impose their vision.

Fragments of Place bears the mark of these pages of history.

This collection does not, however, reflect – except, perhaps, in one story – what I was going through in my personal life as I was writing. In my own small history, major upsets occurred that turned everything upside down.

I was writing my most recent novel Chrysalide, published in 2006, when everything began to change. Yet in this novel, there are no echoes of my private upheaval.

For me, writing is the perfect way to travel through the vast and virtual expanse of my humanity, far beyond the limits of my identity. This turned out to be a saving grace in these circumstances, as it had been, previously, in others.

Seven years ago in June, I was informed that I had blood cancer; it was deadly and incurable. The prediction, including chemotherapy and stem-cell treatment, was two years at best.

Despite my death foretold, I decided to throw myself into the Chrysalide project that I had been intending to write before I received the fateful news. No matter what, that novel was inside me and I wanted to write it.

Writing is always very demanding, and it was even more so with my more than precarious health. But the book let me turn away from the world of sickness and death.

With the help of words, I built a character called Catherine (Catou for her intimates), a young woman of twenty-two, and then I slipped into her skin. I had to inhabit her fully, and blend into her and her reality. Catou, the narrator, is writing a sort of personal journal. I, Aude, couldn’t write it for her, with my vocabulary, my style, and