Jean-Philippe Toussaint: The Truth about Marie

The equestrian club was deserted, spectral, the firemen had left, and the hill loomed, lunar, in the morning’s gray light, blackened trees showed their skeletal profiles, their limbs splayed, smoking, with here and there a last dying flame wrapping around a charred branch, curling back and dying for lack of combustible material. A thick layer of ash covered the ground, more white than gray, still hot, with, in various places, incandescent embers still smoking. The fire hadn’t been completely put out, it was spreading over the ground at the foot of a demolished stable, stray strands of straw burning slowly. Nothing remained of the club’s facilities, barns, cottages, all had burned, consumed on the spot, all was leveled, only charred debris remained, scattered mounds, piles of sheet metal and wood crumbling on the ground. We’d gotten out of the truck and were passing through the smoky ruins, grief-stricken, heading toward the small stone reception house, the only building spared by the fire, when Marie let out a cry and grabbed my arm, she covered her eyes after seeing three long white sheets spread on the ground in front of the door, three makeshift shrouds covering forms whose dimensions were unclear in the silent gray light of dawn, not human forms but clearly dead bodies of some sort, charred carcasses of animals.

We entered the small stone reception house, all the lights were off, and we didn’t notice right away that someone was there. Peppino was there, in the dark, lying on his back on a stone bench, one knee bent, wet compresses over his eyes, just rubber gloves, one over each eye. I wasn’t sure if he’d realized we’d come in, but he remained motionless for a moment, then, without moving the rest of his body, still lying supine, he took off the compresses, one by one, and looked at us, considered us in silence. His face was black, covered in soot, his shirt, his clothes were black — that is, they hadn’t been black initially, but had become so soaked in soot and smoke that they’d turned black. Without speaking a word, he put his legs down and sat up, and he stared at us blankly. His squinting eyes were red, irritated, even his eyebrows had been burned, the hairs of which had curled into tiny balls. After a long moment of silence, in a loud and grave voice, he asked, faltering and failing to hide his grief, if we’d seen his daughter, who’d just left to take the rescued horses to a pasture he owned in La Guardia. Marie told him no, we hadn’t, we hadn’t seen anyone. Then, not without some difficulty, he stood up, took a step forward, dejected, defeated, and, without a word, hugged Marie, what a nightmare, he told her, three horses were dead and Nocciola was severely burned, we’ll probably have to put her down, and, together, in sync, they began to cry, they cried in each other’s arms, white tears streamed down Peppino’s black cheeks, which he wiped away clumsily with his sooty hands, but to no effect, adding black to black.

After returning to La Rivercina, we’d gone to bed. The fire had destroyed a large part of the yard but had spared the house. Lying in my bed, I was motionless in my room, my eyes open in the dark, and I heard Marie moving around on the second floor, I heard the patter of her feet on the ceiling above me. I heard as usual the door of the armoire creak faintly as she opened it, and I knew she was choosing a T-shirt for the night, and then I heard her leave her room, I heard her steps moving down the hallway, I thought she was going to stop at the bathroom, but her steps continued and began coming down the stairs, Marie was coming down the stairs and she reached the first floor, I heard her cross the living room, I heard her steps getting closer and I saw the door in my room open and Marie appear in front of me in the dark, shedding her imaginary dimensions to materialize in reality, the limbs of my imagined creation now materializing in front of me in real flesh and blood. Marie crossed the room barefoot and slid into my bed, snuggled up against me. I felt the heat of her skin against my body. The sun had hardly begun to rise at La Rivercina, and we held each other in bed, we cuddled together in the half-light to comfort each other, the final distance separating our bodies was giving way, and we made love, we made love gently in the morning’s gray light — and your skin and hair, my love, smelled strongly of fire.

JEAN-PHILIPPE TOUSSAINT is the author of nine novels. His writing has been compared to the work of Samuel Beckett, Jacques Tati, and Jim Jarmusch.

MATTHEW B. SMITH has translated Jean-Philippe Toussaint’s Camera as well as Running Away for Dalkey Archive Press.