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Kafka greep iedere gelegenheid aan om Praag te ontvluchten. Hij voelde zich daar beklemd en hij hield van reizen. ‘De meeslepende kracht voelen van de trein,’ schrijft hij in zijn dagboek, ‘reiziger worden, de pet uit de koffer halen, een lieveling van de vrouwen worden, de voortdurende aantrekkingskracht van de raampjes ondergaan.’
Na het behalen van het gymnasiumdiploma mocht hij als beloning zijn vakantie doorbrengen op het Duitse Waddeneiland Norderney. Jaren later, op zijn sterfbed, noemde hij Norderney als een van de plekken waar hij gelukkig is geweest. Ook zijn verblijf van vijf dagen in Venetië, najaar 1913, krijgt een plaats in dat rijtje. Merkwaardig, want we weten van dat verblijf alleen dat hij diep ongelukkig aankwam en een relatie per brief verbrak. Wat maakte die dagen zo bijzonder? Zeven jaar later reisde Kafka, bij wie inmiddels tuberculose was vastgesteld, naar Merano in de oostelijke Alpen. Daar begon hij een correspondentie met de mooie Tsjechische vertaalster Milena Jesenská.
In Kafka op Norderney roept Sipko Melissen in drie essays een beeld op van Kafka als jongeman (Norderney), als gekwelde minnaar (Venetië) en als de verliefde briefschrijver (Merano). In de romans van Melissen zaten altijd al essayachtige elementen. Deze eerste essaybundel van zijn hand is dan ook een logische stap. Zijn essays zijn, net als zijn romans, een mengeling van fictie en essayistiek, en lezen daardoor als verhalen.
Sipko Melissen (1944) publiceerde gedichten (Gezicht op Sloten, 1985) en romans. Met Jongemannen aan zee (1997) won hij de Anton Wachterprijs voor het beste debuut. Daarna verschenen nog onder meer De vendelzwaaier en Spiegelpanden. Een kamer in Rome was zijn eerste boek dat bij Van Oorschot verscheen. De roman werd verscheidene malen herdrukt, genomineerd voor zowel de AKO als de Libris Literatuurprijs en kreeg lovende kritieken.
Sipko Melissen,
Kafka op Norderney,
Van Oorschot Amsterdam, 2017
ISBN 978-90-282-7016-9
Druk 1e, €19.99
Verschenen: 01-07-2017
Taal NL
Paperback, 256 p.
Genre Biografieen literair
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De moord op Commendatore is de nieuwe grote roman van Haruki Murakami: deel één verschijnt op 1 december 2017 en deel twee op 12 januari 2018. Het verschijnen van het tweede deel wordt groots gevierd op de SS Rotterdam met het Murakami Weekend op zaterdag 13 en zondag 14 januari 2018.
Haruki Murakami geldt wereldwijd als een van de meest gelezen en geliefde hedendaagse schrijvers. Zijn werk wordt in meer dan 40 landen uitgegeven en is bekroond met meerdere prijzen, waaronder de Welt Literatuurprijs en de Hans Christian Andersenprijs. Hij wordt regelmatig getipt als kandidaat voor de Nobelprijs.
De moord op Commendatore: Een zesendertigjarige pas gescheiden portretschilder neemt zijn intrek in een oud atelier in de bergachtige omgeving ten zuidwesten van Tokio. Behalve door liefdesperikelen wordt hij geplaagd door een painter’s block, een onvermogen om te schilderen.
Hij hoopt in het afgelegen atelier tot rust te komen, en zijn inspiratie terug te vinden, maar het zal anders gaan. Een mysterieus schilderij op de zolder van zijn verblijf lijkt tot leven te komen, vanuit een heuvel in het bos achter het huis klinkt ’s nachts het geluid van een bel.
Een meisje verdwijnt, en de hoofdpersoon gaat haar zoeken – een zoektocht die hem afvoert naar de wereld der metaforen, waar hij met zijn diepste angsten wordt geconfronteerd.
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The incredible true story of the women who fought America’s Undark danger.
The Curies’ newly discovered element of radium makes gleaming headlines across the nation as the fresh face of beauty, and wonder drug of the medical community. From body lotion to tonic water, the popular new element shines bright in the otherwise dark years of the First World War.
Meanwhile, hundreds of girls toil amidst the glowing dust of the radium-dial factories. The glittering chemical covers their bodies from head to toe; they light up the night like industrious fireflies. With such a coveted job, these “shining girls” are the luckiest alive ― until they begin to fall mysteriously ill.
But the factories that once offered golden opportunities are now ignoring all claims of the gruesome side effects, and the women’s cries of corruption. And as the fatal poison of the radium takes hold, the brave shining girls find themselves embroiled in one of the biggest scandals of America’s early 20th century, and in a groundbreaking battle for workers’ rights that will echo for centuries to come.
Written with a sparkling voice and breakneck pace, The Radium Girls fully illuminates the inspiring young women exposed to the “wonder” substance of radium, and their awe-inspiring strength in the face of almost impossible circumstances. Their courage and tenacity led to life-changing regulations, research into nuclear bombing, and ultimately saved hundreds of thousands of lives…
Kate Moore
The Radium Girls:
The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women
May 2017
480 pages
ISBN 978-1-4926-4935-9
Edition Language English
Published by Sourcebooks
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Robert Desnos a vécu mille vies – écrivain, critique de cinéma, chroniqueur radio, résistant de la première heure –, sans jamais se départir de sa soif de liberté.
Pour raconter l’histoire extraordinaire de ce dormeur éveillé, Gaëlle Nohant épouse ses pas ; comme si elle avait écouté les battements de son cœur, s’était assise aux terrasses des cafés en compagnie d’Éluard ou de García Lorca, avait tressailli aux anathèmes d’André Breton, fumé l’opium avec Yvonne George, et dansé sur des rythmes endiablés au Bal Blomet aux côtés de Kiki et de Jean-Louis Barrault. S’identifiant à Youki, son grand amour, la romancière accompagne Desnos jusqu’au bout de la nuit.
Légende d’un dormeur éveillé révèle le héros irrésistible derrière le poète et ressuscite une époque incandescente et tumultueuse, des années folles à l’Occupation.
Gaëlle Nohant: Née à Paris en 1973, Gaëlle Nohant vit aujourd’hui à Lyon. Légende d’un dormeur éveillé est son troisième roman après L’Ancre des rêves (prix Encre Marine, 2007) et La Part des flammes (prix France Bleu/Page des libraires, 2015 et prix du Livre de Poche, 2016).
Gaëlle Nohant
Légende d’un dormeur éveillé
Roman
544 pages
23€
Paru le 17 août 2017
Illustration de couverture © Letizia Goffi
Éditions Héloïse d’Ormesson
ISBN : 978-2-35087-419-7
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Male literary friendships are the stuff of legend; think Byron and Shelley, Fitzgerald and Hemingway. 
But the world’s best-loved female authors are usually mythologized as solitary eccentrics or isolated geniuses.
Coauthors and real-life friends Emily Midorikawa and Emma Claire Sweeney prove this wrong, thanks to their discovery of a wealth of surprising collaborations: the friendship between Jane Austen and one of the family servants, playwright Anne Sharp; the daring feminist author Mary Taylor, who shaped the work of Charlotte Bronte; the transatlantic friendship of the seemingly aloof George Eliot and Harriet Beecher Stowe; and Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield, most often portrayed as bitter foes, but who, in fact, enjoyed a complex friendship fired by an underlying erotic charge.
Through letters and diaries that have never been published before, A Secret Sisterhood resurrects these forgotten stories of female friendships. They were sometimes scandalous and volatile, sometimes supportive and inspiring, but always–until now–tantalizingly consigned to the shadows.
Emily Midorikawa’s work has been published in the Daily Telegraph, the Independent on Sunday, and the Times. She is a winner of the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize and was a runner-up in the SI Leeds Literary Prize (judged by Margaret Busby) and the Yeovil Literary Prize (judged by Tracy Chevalier). She has a history degree from University College London, and is a graduate of the University of East Anglia’s creative writing masters program. She now teaches at New York University–London.
A Secret Sisterhood:
The Literary Friendships of Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, and Virginia Woolf
by Emily Midorikawa (Author), Emma Claire Sweeney (Author), Margaret Atwood (Foreword)
Hardcover, 352 pages
Publication: October 2017
by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN 054488373X
(ISBN13: 9780544883734)
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De Warme Winkel maakt al jaren furore met het zelf uitgevonden genre ‘oeuvre-stukken’ waarbij werk, leven en tijdgeest van een kunstenaar tegen het canvas van het heden worden gesmeten. 100 jaar na de Oktoberrevolutie gaan ze de belangrijkste literaire futurist van Rusland te lijf: Vladimir Majakovski.
Naast dichter was Majakovski tekenaar, zelfmoordenaar, jaloerse minnaar en vernieuwer op vele vlakken. Een schrijvende bonk spieren met het gezicht naar de toekomst. Niet alleen zijn poëzie was nieuw, ook zijn bladspiegel, gedachtes, samenlevingsvormen en de manier waarop hij dat alles naar buiten bracht waren gloednieuw. Met weemoed bekijkt De Warme Winkel het geloof in de grote verhalen en de tijd waarin liefde politiek was, kunst een politieke daad en de politiek nog kunst. Want waar zijn de vuisten, de vernieuwing, de honger, de glanzend futuristische, meedogenloze overtuiging en het grote hart van Majakovski?
“Het hart kreeg een lijf aan,
het lijf weer een hemd.
En kon het daarbij nou maar blijven!”
Vladimir Majakovski
concept en spel Dik Boutkan, Lois Brochez (stage), Annelinde Bruijs, Sara Lâm (stage), Martijn Nieuwerf, Vincent Rietveld, Mara van Vlijmen
eindregie Marien Jongewaard
regie assistentie Rebekka Nilsson (stage)
muziek Bo Koek, Rik Elstgeest
scenografie en licht ontwerp Julian Maiwald
geluidstechniek Miguel Rodriguez
techniekassistentie Martijn van Nunen (stage)
kostuums Bernadette Corstens, Elisabeth Ruijgrok (stage)
productie coördinatie Carry Hendriks
productie Floortje Halters
technische coördinatie Hans-Peter Hulscher
interim zakelijke leiding George Knops
planning en verkoop Marloes Marinussen
bureaumanagement Thomas Vandewalle
marketing en publiciteit Sanne van de Kraats
met dank aan Marc Wortel
Theatergezelschap Warme Winkel met: Majakovski/ Oktober
Een coproductie van De Warme Winkel met deSingel Antwerpen en Stadsschouwburg Amsterdam.
Theateragenda:
31/10/2017 Majakovski / Oktober Schouwburg, Rotterdam Aanvang: 20:15 nog kaarten
04/11/2017 Majakovski / Oktober Stadsschouwburg De Harmonie, Leeuwarden Aanvang: 20:30 nog kaarten
07/11/2017 Majakovski / Oktober deSingel, Antwerpen (BE) Aanvang: 20:00 nog kaarten
08/11/2017 Majakovski / Oktober deSingel, Antwerpen (BE) Aanvang: 20:00 nog kaarten
09/11/2017 Majakovski / Oktober Stadsschouwburg, Utrecht Aanvang: 20:00 nog kaarten
10/11/2017 Majakovski / Oktober Theater de Veste, Delft Aanvang: 20:15 nog kaarten
21/11/2017 Majakovski / Oktober Schouwburg, Amstelveen Aanvang: 20:00 nog kaarten
23/11/2017 Majakovski / Oktober Leidse Schouwburg, Leiden Aanvang: 20:15 nog kaarten
24/11/2017 Majakovski / Oktober Koninklijke Schouwburg, Den Haag Aanvang: 20:15 nog kaarten
30/11/2017 Majakovski / Oktober TAQA Theater de Vest, Alkmaar Aanvang: 20:15 nog kaarten
02/12/2017 Majakovski / Oktober 30 CC, Leuven (BE) Aanvang: 20:30 nog kaarten
06/12/2017 Majakovski / Oktober Stadsschouwburg, Amsterdam Aanvang: 20:30 nog kaarten
07/12/2017 Majakovski / Oktober Stadsschouwburg, Amsterdam Aanvang: 20:30 nog kaarten
08/12/2017 Majakovski / Oktober Stadsschouwburg, Amsterdam Aanvang: 20:30 nog kaarten
09/12/2017 Majakovski / Oktober Schouwburg Kunstmin, Dordrecht Aanvang: 20:30 nog kaarten
12/12/2017 Majakovski / Oktober Theater aan het Vrijthof, Maastricht Aanvang: 20:00 nog kaarten
13/12/2017 Majakovski / Oktober cultuurcentrum, Hasselt Aanvang: 20:00 nog kaarten
19/12/2017 Majakovski / Oktober Stadsshouwburg, Groningen Aanvang: 20:15 nog kaarten
20/12/2017 Majakovski / Oktober Stadsschouwburg, Haarlem Aanvang: 20:15
# meer info website dewarmewinkel.nl
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The breathtaking new novel from Eimear McBride, about an extraordinary, all-consuming love affair
Eimear McBride’s debut novel A Girl is a half-formed thing was published in 2013 to an avalanche of praise: nominated for a host of literary awards, winner of the Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction and the inaugural Goldsmith’s Prize, declared by Vanity Fair to be “One of the most groundbreaking pieces of literature to come from Ireland, or anywhere, in recent years,” McBride’s bold, wholly original prose immediately established her as a literary force. Now, she brings her singular voice to an unlikely love story.
One night an eighteen-year-old Irish girl, recently arrived in London to attend drama school, meets an older man – a well-regarded actor in his own right. While she is naive and thrilled by life in the big city, he is haunted by more than a few demons, and the clamorous relationship that ensues risks undoing them both.
A captivating story of passion and innocence, joy and discovery set against the vibrant atmosphere of 1990s London over the course of a single year, The lesser Bohemians glows with the eddies and anxieties of growing up, and the transformative intensity of a powerful new love.
Winner of the James Tait Black Prize for Fiction
Shortlisted for the 2016 Goldsmiths Prize
Shortlisted for the 2016 Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards Eason Novel of the Year
Eimear McBride was born in 1976 and grew up in Ireland. She currently lives in Norwich with her family. The Lesser Bohemians is her second novel.
“The confidence and the capacity are as good as anyone’s…there’s an openness, an inclusivity, a distinct lack of God-almightyness, that makes reading [McBride] such a pleasure.” – Jeannette Winterson, New York Times Book Review
The Lesser Bohemians
A Novel
By Eimear McBride
Literary Fiction
Paperback, 2017
336 Pages
Publisher Penguin Random House
new books
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Once a year, on All Souls Day, it is said that the dead may return; Solar Bones tells the story of one such visit.
Set in the west of Ireland as the recession is about to strike, this novel is a portrait of one man’s experience when his world threatens to fall apart.
Wry and poignant, Solar Bones is an intimate portrayal of one family, capturing how careless decisions ripple out into waves, and how our morals are challenged in small ways every day.
A book written in a single novel-length sentence has won the Goldsmiths Prize 2016. Solar Bones, published by Tramp Press, was named the winner of the £10,000 award which recognises fiction at its most novel.
The work was praised for its remarkable narrative which unfolds in one unbroken sentence and as a formally innovative novel which is also a moving and compelling read.
It follows the stream-of-consciousness recollections of a man named Marcus Conway, a middle-aged engineer from the west of Ireland briefly returned from the dead on All Soul’s Day, November 2008.
The work was praised for its remarkable narrative which unfolds in one unbroken sentence and as a formally innovative novel which is also a moving and compelling read.
McCormack is the fourth winner of the prize founded in 2013 by Goldsmiths, University of London and held in partnership with the New Statesman. He is the third Irish writer to win since the prize began.
Solar Bones was picked from a shortlist of six works – after an initial 111 works were submitted for the 2016 prize.
Longlistes for the Man Booker Prize
Winner of the Goldsmiths Prize
BGE Irish Book of the Year
Solar Bones
by Mike McCormack
ISBN101786891298
ISBN139781786891297
2017
Paperback
€ 12,99
Publ. Canongate
… … …
From: Solar Bones
the Angelus bell
ringing out over its villages and townlands,
over the fields and hills and bogs in between,
six chimes of three across a minute and a half,
a summons struck
on the lip of the void
Once a year, on All Souls’ Day, it is said in Ireland that the dead may return. Solar Bones is the story of one such visit. Marcus Conway, a middle-aged engineer, turns up one afternoon at his kitchen table and considers the events that took him away and then brought him home again.
Funny and strange, McCormack’s ambitious and other-worldly novel plays with form and defies convention. This is profound new work is by one of Ireland’s most important contemporary novelists. A beautiful and haunting elegy, this story of order and chaos, love and loss captures how minor decisions ripple into waves and test our integrity every day.
Mike McCormack
… … …
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As global warming accelerates, droughts last longer, floods rise higher, and super-storms become more frequent. With increasing numbers of people on the move as a result, the business of containing them––border fortification––is booming.
In Storming the Wall, Todd Miller travels around the world to connect the dots between climate-ravaged communities, the corporations cashing in on border militarization, and emerging movements for environmental justice and sustainability. Reporting from the flashpoints of climate clashes, and from likely sites of futures battles, Miller chronicles a growing system of militarized divisions between the rich and the poor, the environmentally secure and the environmentally exposed. Stories of crisis, greed and violence are juxtaposed with powerful examples of solidarity and hope in this urgent and timely message from the frontlines of the post-Paris Agreement era.
Todd Miller’s writings about the border have appeared in the New York Times, Tom Dispatch, and many other places.
“Scathing and deeply reported . . . quite possibly the right book at the right time”—Los Angeles Times
For the past fifteen years Todd Miller has researched, written about, and worked on immigration and border issues from both sides of the U.S. Mexico divide for organizations such as BorderLinks, Witness for Peace, and NACLA. He did the brunt of this work in Tucson, Arizona and Oaxaca, Mexico, with stints in New York City sprinkled in. Between Tucson and the Buffalo/Niagara Falls region of New York state where he grew up, he has spent the majority of his life close to the U.S. international boundary, south and north. He is the author of Border Patrol Nation (City Lights, 2014), his writings about the border have appeared in the New York Times, TomDispatch, Mother Jones, The Nation, Al Jazeera English, and Salon among other places.
“As Todd Miller shows in this important and harrowing book, climate-driven migration is set to become one of the defining issues of our time. We are at a political crossroads: continue hardening under the steadily creeping politics of xenophobia and the repressive militarization of border and immigration policy, or change course and plan for a just adaption to a hotter world. At stake is not only the well-being of immigrants but also the integrity and feasibility of democratic government itself. This is a must-read book.”––Christian Parenti, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, author of Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence
Title Storming the Wall
Subtitle Climate Change, Migration, and Homeland Security
Author Todd Miller
Collection City Lights Open Media
Publisher City Lights Publishers San Francisco USA
Paperback
ISBN-10 0872867153
ISBN-13 9780872867154
Publ. 12 September 2017
Pages 272 – $16.95
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Romandebuut van Lieke Marsman:
Het tegenovergestelde van een mens
Waar het op neerkomt is dat de mensheid als geheel ook eenzaam is. We kunnen er niet tegen dat er niemand iets terugzegt, dat we nog altijd geen dieren hebben horen praten – ja, misschien zo nu en dan in de vorm van het schrille gegil dat onze slachthuizen vult, maar niet met woorden, niet met een oplossing voor de dingen waar we al tijden mee zitten. Zelfs de hemel is leeg. En dus zetten we ons af door al die zwijgende natuur om ons heen te vernietigen, als een wanhopige geliefde die maar niet wordt terug ge-sms’t en het in het café op een zuipen zet.
Nog nooit verscheen er een roman als Het tegenovergestelde van een mens. Lieke Marsman kantelt onze ideeën over klimaatverandering en identiteit op een manier die duizelig maakt.
Lieke Marsman (’s-Hertogenbosch, 1990) is filosoof en een van de populairste en meest gelauwerde dichters van haar generatie. Ze is een graag geziene gast op podia als Lowlands en De Nacht van de Poëzie en haar gedichten en essays verschenen onder meer in De Gids, Tirade en Vrij Nederland. Voor haar meermaals herdrukte debuutbundel Wat ik mijzelf graag voorhoud ontving Marsman in 2011 onder meer de C. Buddingh’-prijs en de Lucy B. en C.W. van der Hoogtprijs. In 2014 verscheen haar tweede bundel De eerste letter. Met Het tegenovergestelde van een mens maakt Marsman haar debuut als prozaschrijver.
Lieke Marsman
Het tegenovergestelde van een mens
Roman, pag. 176
Gepubliceerd 22-06-2017
Uitgeverij Atlas-Contact
Paperback, 19,99
ISBN 9789025446345
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Perdu Programma — vrijdag 16 dec 2016 – 20:00 – N30x31 /// I.M. Jeroen Mettes
Een avond over het werk van Jeroen Mettes
Aanvang: 20.00 uur, deur open: 19.30 uur – Entree: 7 / 5 euro (korting geldt voor studenten, stadspashouders, vrienden van Perdu, VvL-leden). Met Alfred Schaffer, Samuel Vriezen, Rozalie Hirs, Hannah van Binsbergen, Fiep van Bodegom, Max Urai, Tonnus Oosterhoff, Johan Herrenberg, Roelof ten Napel, Frans-Willem Korsten, Anne van de Wetering, Lieke Marsman, Maarten van der Graaff, Lara Staal, Saskia de Jong, Çağlar Köseoğlu, Zohra Beldman, Mathijs Tratsaert, Arno van Vlierberghe, Dominique de Groen, Nadia de Vries, Bram Ieven, Geert Buelens, Aafke Romeijn, Siebe Bluijs, Sophie van den Bergh, Maartje Smits, Frank Keizer, Daniël Rovers, Obe Alkema & Dean Bowen.
De zon gaat onder en in de vijver drijven zwanen, alsof ze van hout zijn, stil tussen de oevers. Terwijl m’n browser ’n applet laadt, laat ik de jaloezieën neer. Ik zag een man – een mens met een gezicht en een geslacht en een manier van kleden en fietsen – en ik dacht: daar gaat een zin! (J.M.)
Jeroen Mettes (Eindhoven 1978 – Den Haag 2006) was een Nederlandse dichter, essayist en blogger.
Jeroen Mettes groeide op in Valkenswaard, studeerde filosofie in Utrecht en literatuurwetenschap aan de Universiteit Leiden, waar hij tot 2006 aan een proefschrift werkte over poëtisch ritme.
In 1999 begon hij aan een lang prozagedicht dat hij de naam N30 gaf. Dat was de codenaam van de anti- of andersglobalistische protesten in Seattle tijdens de onderhandelingen van de WTO. De betogers eisten een wereldwijde erkenning van eerlijke handel, vakbonden en milieuwetgeving. Zeven jaar later, in 2006, was er een gedicht ontstaan van zo’n 60.000 woorden lang.
In 2005 startte Jeroen Mettes het blog Poëzienotities. Belangrijk onderdeel van dat blog werd het Dichtersalfabet. Mettes besprak – in alfabetische volgorde – op zijn blog de poëziebundels die hij aantrof in boekhandel Verwijs in zijn woonplaats Den Haag. Hij begon met de A van Anne van Amstel, en zou eindigen bij de G van Goudeseune. Als dichter debuteerde Jeroen Mettes in het tijdschrift Parmentier met de reeks van vier gedichten getiteld ‘In de sfeer van het gestelde’. Als jonge twintiger had hij al prozabijdragen geleverd aan onder meer de tijdschriften Zoetermeer en Passionate.
Eind 2005 trad Mettes toe tot de redactie van het tijdschrift yang (nu nY). Hij was ook vast medewerker van het tijdschrift Parmentier.
Op 21 september 2006 plaatste hij een lege post op zijn blog. Diezelfde dag maakte hij thuis in Den Haag een einde aan zijn leven. Hij liet naast zijn gedichten, essays en zijn blog, een ver gevorderd proefschrift na, met als werktitel The Poetry of the Formless.
# Meer info op website n30.nl blog
Een zekere gerichte vernietiging laat groeven en kraters achter die een kaart schetsen voor een volgend avontuur. Pounds periplum: varend de kusten in kaart brengen, immanente plaatsbepaling. En met de kaart verandert het terrein, met het gedicht verandert de geschiedenis. (J.M.)
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Feuille d’Album
by Katherine Mansfield
He really was an impossible person. Too shy altogether. With absolutely nothing to say for himself. And such a weight. Once he was in your studio he never knew when to go, but would sit on and on until you nearly screamed, and burned to throw something enormous after him when he did finally blush his way out-something like the tortoise stove. The strange thing was that at first sight he looked most interesting. Everybody agreed about that.
You would drift into the café one evening and there you would see, sitting in a corner, with a glass of coffee in front of him, a thin dark boy, wearing a blue jersey with a little grey flannel jacket buttoned over it. And somehow that blue jersey and the grey jacket with the sleeves that were too short gave him the air of a boy that has made up his mind to run away to sea. Who has run away, in fact, and will get up in a moment and sling a knotted handkerchief containing his nightshirt and his mother’s picture on the end of a stick, and walk out into the night and be drowned. . . . Stumble over the wharf edge on his way to the ship, even. . . . He had black close-cropped hair, grey eyes with long lashes, white cheeks and a mouth pouting as though he were determined not to cry. . . . How could one resist him? Oh, one’s heart was wrung at sight. And, as if that were not enough, there was his trick of blushing. . . . Whenever the waiter came near him he turned crimson-he might have been just out of prison and the waiter in the know . . . .
“Who is he, my dear? Do you know?”
“Yes. His name is Ian French. Painter. Awfully clever, they say. Someone started by giving him a mother’s tender care. She asked him how often he heard from home, whether he had enough blankets on his bed, how much milk he drank a day. But when she went round to his studio to give an eye to his socks, she rang and rang, and though she could have sworn she heard someone breathing inside, the door was not answered. . . . Hopeless!”
Someone else decided that he ought to fall in love. She summoned him to her side, called him “boy,” leaned over him so that he might smell the enchanting perfume of her hair, took his arm, told him how marvellous life could be if one only had the courage, and went round to his studio one evening and rang and rang. . . . Hopeless.
“What the poor boy really wants is thoroughly rousing,” said a third. So off they went to café’s and cabarets, little dances, places where you drank something that tasted like tinned apricot juice, but cost twenty-seven shillings a bottle and was called champagne, other places, too thrilling for words, where you sat in the most awful gloom, and where someone had always been shot the night before. But he did not turn a hair. Only once he got very drunk, but instead of blossoming forth, there he sat, stony, with two spots of red on his cheeks, like, my dear, yes, the dead image of that rag-time thing they were playing, like a “Broken Doll.” But when she took him back to his studio he had quite recovered, and said “good night” to her in the street below, as though they had walked home from church together. . . . Hopeless.
After heaven knows how many more attempts-for the spirit of kindness dies very hard in women-they gave him up. Of course, they were still perfectly charming, and asked him to their shows, and spoke to him in the café but that was all. When one is an artist one has no time simply for people who won’t respond. Has one?
“And besides I really think there must be something rather fishy somewhere . . . don’t you? It can’t all be as innocent as it looks! Why come to Paris if you want to be a daisy in the field? No, I’m not suspicious. But –”
He lived at the top of a tall mournful building overlooking the river. One of those buildings that look so romantic on rainy nights and moonlight nights, when the shutters are shut, and the heavy door, and the sign advertising “a little apartment to let immediately” gleams forlorn beyond words. One of those buildings that smell so unromantic all the year round, and where the concierge lives in a glass cage on the ground floor, wrapped up in a filthy shawl, stirring something in a saucepan and ladling out tit-bits to the swollen old dog lolling on a bead cushion. . . . Perched up in the air the studio had a wonderful view. The two big windows faced the water; he could see the boats and the barges swinging up and down, and the fringe of an island planted with trees, like a round bouquet. The side window looked across to another house, shabbier still and smaller, and down below there was a flower market. You could see the tops of huge umbrellas, with frills of bright flowers escaping from them, booths covered with striped awning where they sold plants in boxes and clumps of wet gleaming palms in terra-cotta jars. Among the flowers the old women scuttled from side to side, like crabs. Really there was no need for him to go out. If he sat at the window until his white beard fell over the sill he still would have found something to draw . . . .
How surprised those tender women would have been if they had managed to force the door. For he kept his studio as neat as a pin. Everything was arranged to form a pattern, a little “still life” as it were-the saucepans with their lids on the wall behind the gas stove, the bowl of eggs, milk jug and teapot on the shelf, the books and the lamp with the crinkly paper shade on the table. An Indian curtain that had a fringe of red leopards marching round it covered his bed by day, and on the wall beside the bed on a level with your eyes when you were lying down there was a small neatly printed notice: GET UP AT ONCE.
Every day was much the same. While the light was good he slaved at his painting, then cooked his meals and tidied up the place. And in the evenings he went off to the café, or sat at home reading or making out the most complicated list of expenses headed: “What I ought to be able to do it on,” and ending with a sworn statement . . . “I swear not to exceed this amount for next month. Signed, Ian French.”
Nothing very fishy about this; but those far-seeing women were quite right. It wasn’t all.
One evening he was sitting at the side window eating some prunes and throwing the stones on to the tops of the huge umbrellas in the deserted flower market. It had been raining – the first real spring rain of the year had fallen-a bright spangle hung on everything, and the air smelled of buds and moist earth. Many voices sounding languid and content rang out in the dusky air, and the people who had come to close their windows and fasten the shutters leaned out instead. Down below in the market the trees were peppered with new green. What kind of trees were they? he wondered. And now came the lamplighter. He stared at the house across the way, the small, shabby house, and suddenly, as if in answer to his gaze, two wings of windows opened and a girl came out on to the tiny balcony carrying a pot of daffodils. She was a strangely thin girl in a dark pinafore, with a pink handkerchief tied over her hair. Her sleeves were rolled up almost to her shoulders and her slender arms shone against the dark stuff.
“Yes, it is quite warm enough. It will do them good,” she said, puffing down the pot and turning to someone in the room inside. As she turned she put her hands up to the handkerchief and tucked away some wisps of hair. She looked down at the deserted market and up at the sky, but where he sat there might have been a hollow in the air. She simply did not see the house opposite. And then she disappeared.
His heart fell out of the side window of his studio, and down to the balcony of the house opposite-buried itself in the pot of daffodils under the half-opened buds and spears of green. . . . That room with the balcony was the sitting-room, and the one next door to it was the kitchen. He heard the clatter of the dishes as she washed up after supper, and then she came to the window, knocked a little mop against the ledge, and hung it on a nail to dry. She never sang or unbraided her hair, or held out her arms to the moon as young girls are supposed to do. And she always wore the same dark pinafore and the pink handkerchief over her hair. . . . Whom did she live with? Nobody else came to those two windows, and yet she was always talking to someone in the room. Her mother, he decided, was an invalid. They took in sewing. The father was dead. . . . He had been a journalist-very pale, with long moustaches, and a piece of black hair falling over his forehead.
By working all day they just made enough money to live on, but they never went out and they had no friends. Now when he sat down at his table he had to make an entirely new set of sworn statements. . . . Not to go to the side window before a certain hour: signed, Ian French. Not to think about her until he had put away his painting things for the day: signed, Ian French.
It was quite simple. She was the only person he really wanted to know, because she was, he decided, the only other person alive who was just his age. He couldn’t stand giggling girls, and he had no use for grown-up women. . . . She was his age, she was-well, just like him. He sat in his dusky studio, tired, with one arm hanging over the back of his chair, staring in at her window and seeing himself in there with her. She had a violent temper; they quarrelled terribly at times, he and she. She had a way of stamping her foot and twisting her hands in her pinafore . . . furious. And she very rarely laughed. Only when she told him about an absurd little kitten she once had who used to roar and pretend to be a lion when it was given meat to eat. Things like that made her laugh. . . . But as a rule they sat together very quietly; he, just as he was sitting now, and she with her hands folded in her lap and her feet tucked under, talking in low tones, or silent and tired after the day’s work. Of course, she never asked him about his pictures, and of course he made the most wonderful drawings of her which she hated, because he made her so thin and so dark. . . . But how could he get to know her? This might go on for years . . . .
Then he discovered that once a week, in the evenings, she went out shopping. On two successive Thursdays she came to the window wearing an old-fashioned cape over the pinafore, and carrying a basket. From where he sat he could not see the door of her house, but on the next Thursday evening at the same time he snatched up his cap and ran down the stairs. There was a lovely pink light over everything. He saw it glowing in the river, and the people walking towards him had pink faces and pink hands.
He leaned against the side of his house waiting for her and he had no idea of what he was going to do or say. “Here she comes,” said a voice in his head. She walked very quickly, with small, light steps; with one hand she carried the basket, with the other she kept the cape together. . . . What could he do? He could only follow. . . . First she went into the grocer’s and spent a long time in there, and then she went into the butcher’s where she had to wait her turn. Then she was an age at the draper’s matching something, and then she went to the fruit shop and bought a lemon. As he watched her he knew more surely than ever he must get to know her, now. Her composure, her seriousness and her loneliness, the very way she walked as though she was eager to be done with this world of grown-ups all was so natural to him and so inevitable.
“Yes, she is always like that,” he thought proudly. “We have nothing to do with-these people.”
But now she was on her way home and he was as far off as ever. . . . She suddenly turned into the dairy and he saw her through the window buying an egg. She picked it out of the basket with such care-a brown one, a beautifully shaped one, the one he would have chosen. And when she came out of the dairy he went in after her. In a moment he was out again, and following her past his house across the flower market, dodging among the huge umbrellas and treading on the fallen flowers and the round marks where the pots had stood. . . . Through her door he crept, and up the stairs after, taking care to tread in time with her so that she should not notice. Finally, she stopped on the landing, and took the key out of her purse. As she put it into the door he ran up and faced her.
Blushing more crimson than ever, but looking at her severely he said, almost angrily: “Excuse me, Mademoiselle, you dropped this.”
And he handed her an egg.
Feuille d’Album
by Katherine Mansfield (1888 – 1923)
From: Bliss, and other stories
fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive M-N, DRUGS & MEDICINE & LITERATURE, Katherine Mansfield, Mansfield, Katherine
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