Annie Ernaux - A Girls Story

A GIRLS STORY

ANNIE ERNAUX

Translated by Alison L. Strayer

SEVEN STORIES PRESS

New York Oakland London

Copyright 2016 by ditions Gallimard, Paris

English translation copyright 2020 by Alison L. Strayer

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, by any means, including mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Seven Stories Press
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Ernaux, Annie, 1940- author.
Title: A girl's story / Annie Ernaux ; translated by Alison Strayer.
Other titles: Mmoire de fille. English
Identifiers: LCCN 2019049327 (print) | LCCN 2019049328 (ebook) | ISBN 9781609809515 (paperback) | ISBN 9781609809522 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Ernaux, Annie, 1940- | Authors, French--20th
century--Biography. | Authors, French--21st century--Biography.
Classification: LCC PQ2665.R67 Z46 2019 (print) | LCC PQ2665.R67 (ebook)
| DDC 843/.914--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019049327
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019049328

This work received support from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States through their publishing assistance program.

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I know it sounds absurd

Please tell me who I am.

Supertramp

One thing more, she said. Im not ashamed of anything Ive done. Theres nothing to be ashamed of in loving a person and saying so.

It was not true. The shame of her surrender, her letter, her unrequited love would go on gnawing, burning, till the end of her life. [...]

After all, it did not seem to hurt much: certainly not more than could be borne in secret, without a sign. It had all been experience, and that was a salutary thing. You might write a book now, and make him one of the characters; or take up music seriously; or kill yourself.

Rosamond Lehmann, from Dusty Answer

One

There are beings who are overwhelmed by the reality of others, their way of speaking, of crossing their legs, of lighting a cigarette. They become mired in the presence of others. One day, or rather one night, they are swept away inside the desire and the will of a single Other. Everything they believed about themselves vanishes. They dissolve and watch a reflection of themselves act, obey, swept into a course of events unknown. They trail behind the will of the Other, which is always one step ahead. They never catch up.

There is no submission, no consent, only the stupefaction of the real. All one can do is repeat This cant be happening to me or It is me this is happening to, but in the event, me is no longer, has already changed. All that remains is the Other, master of the situation, of every gesture and the moment to follow, which only he foresees.

Then the Other goes away. You have ceased to interest him. He abandons you with the real, for example a stained pair of underwear. All he cares about is his own time now, and you are alone with your habit of obeying, already hard to shake: alone in a time bereft of a master.

And then it is childs play for others to get around you, leap into the emptiness you are, and you refuse them nothingyou barely feel their presence. You wait for the Master to grace you with his touch, if only one more time. One night he does, with the absolute supremacy youve begged him for with all your being. The next day he is gone, but little does it matter. The hope of seeing him again has become your reason for living, for putting on your clothes, improving your mind, and passing your exams. Hell be back, and this time youll be worthy, more than worthy, of him. Hell be dazzled by the change in your beauty, your knowledge and self-assurance, compared to those of the indistinct creature you were before.

Everything you do is for the Master you have secretly chosen for yourself. But as you work to improve your self-worth, imperceptibly, inexorably, you leave him behind. You realize where folly has taken you, and never want to see him again. You swear to forget the whole thing and speak of it to no one.

Two

It was a summer with no distinguishing meteorological features, the summer of de Gaulles return, the new franc and the new Republic, of Pel, soccer world champion, of Charly Gaul, winner of the Tour de France, and Dalidas Histoire dun amour.

A summer as immense as they all are until one is twenty-five, when they shrink into short summers that flit by more and more quickly, their order blurred in memory until all that remains are the ones that cause a sensation, the summers of drought and blazing heat.

The summer of 1958.

As in previous summers, a small percentage of young people, the most affluent, departed with their parents for the French Riviera, while others from the same group, schooled at lyces or the private college of Saint-Jean-Baptiste-de-la-Salle, took the boat from Dieppe to perfect their stammering English, studied for six years straight from the manual, but hardly spoken. Yet another groupschoolteachers, lyce and university students, possessed of long vacations and a little moneywent off to look after children at holiday camps located all over France, in mansions, even in castles. Wherever they went, girls packed a supply of disposable sanitary towels and wondered with mingled fear and desire if this would be the summer theyd sleep with a boy for the first time.

That summer, too, thousands of servicemen left France to restore order in Algeria. Many had never been away from home before. In dozens of letters, they wrote about the heat, the djebel, the douarstent villagesand the illiterate Arabs, who after one hundred years of occupation still did not speak French. They sent photos of themselves in shorts, grinning with friends in a dry and rocky landscape. They looked like Boy Scouts on an expedition, almost as if they were on holiday. The girls asked the boys no questions, as if the engagements and ambushes reported in the papers and on the radio involved others. They thought it was normal for the boys to perform their duty, and (as rumor had it) that they availed themselves of tethered goats to assuage their physical needs.

They came back on furlough, brought necklaces, hands of Fatima, copper trays, and then left again. They sang Le jour o la quille viendra Out of step with their surroundings, incapable of speech, they did not know if what they had done was good or bad, or whether they should feel pride or shame.

There are no photos of her from the summer of 1958.

Not even one of her eighteenth birthday, which she celebrated at the camp, the youngest of all the counselors. Because it was her day off, shed had time to go into town for bottles of sparkling wine, ladyfingers and Chamonix orange biscuits, but only a handful of people had stopped by her room for a drink and a snack, and quickly disappeared. Perhaps she was already considered unfit company or simply uninteresting, having brought neither records nor a phonograph to camp.

Of all the people she saw each day at the camp at S, in the Orne, in the summer of 58, does anyone remember that girl? Probably not.

They forgot her as they forgot each other when they disbanded at the end of September, returned to their lyces, teachers colleges, nursing and PE schools, or joined the squad in Algeria, most of them content to have spent their holidays in a manner both financially and morally rewarding by taking care of children. But she, no doubt, was forgotten more quickly, like an anomaly, a breach of common sense, a form of chaos or absurdity, something laughable it would be ridiculous to tax their memories with. She is absent from their memories of the summer of 58, which today may be reduced to blurry silhouettes in a formless setting, or to the painting Negroes Fighting in a Cellar at Night , their favorite joke of the summer, along with Closed Today (I passed the theater and saw a sign for a new play, called Closed Today).