It's like that, she said nothing. Two words sometimes and a shy smile when everything goes really well. But not often. Most times it is silent, can remain silent for days.
In this small town where she has always lived his parents ran a delicatessen whose reputation was never challenged as its owners had the constant worry. She was born in the store, more precisely in this back room crowded with boxes and crates of fruit and vegetables waiting to display with the help of the midwife of the neighborhood that a client 's eager to go and tell. It is weighing beans that her mother felt the first contractions, one of which was so violent that the bag fell from his hands. Oh what a mess! The memory of a life these beans on the floor!
Mother never told anything else about the late birth of his only daughter. Nothing about his frail constitution, its small size and weight of flies too badly and too soon fell from the nest. Nothing about what followed his permanent state of weakness, her thinness, her pallor and her sad, furious his silence, his solitude. Nothing about his childhood, nothing on it.
She later unable to tell Mom, Mother stammering painfully when she could escape the trap of the daily trade. Acting alone in her tiny room, pronounced slowly in the dark: Ma .. man-man My Mom.
Growing up in his thinness and his pallor among the children restless and careless of his age, but always in the middle away. And one day, woman. By the blood flowing from any injury, these red tears at the strange odor coming, thought she that sorrow never admitted crying so much and for so long inside that it overflowed, now.
- It's clean! you'll change your sheets yourself and next time I hope that you will care!
- I'll be careful, Mother, I'll be careful.
How many nights after, standing before the mirror, the lamp between her legs, bending over her mouth pink velvet where the tears had flowed that it should now contain absolutely not to be angry Ma Man .. My Mom -man. Makes you wonder how to arrange a sorrow who does that 'at its head. What to do that ever, ever happening again this shame? So what did mother say the next time?
There was one, and many others where the sheets were cleaned in secret. In secret, too, she learned all of the machine body through books borrowed from the library and hidden under the mattress. Then came the time of love, loves another, which Line, the neighbor brazen, neglecting no detail, he recounted the events sulphurous, changing configurations, the vagaries of ordinary teenage relationships. She listened, unmoved. The fury would come in the night would mix mouths, tongues and bodies, oaths of mad love, caresses fiery ghosts of lovers throwing their lives at his feet. They had no faces, they all had the sarabande and would extend until the last haggard exhaustion plunging into sleep, if Ma .. man-man My Mom did not burst at the peak of his dreams screaming It's clean!
At twenty-one years, graduating, she entered the local branch of Credit Agricole through the intercession of his father with his manager. The two men share the same taste for hunting and weapons had met club clay pigeon shooting locally and quickly became good friends as any closer in a radically pragmatic world. His banking career was decided between two volleys of lead, a Sunday morning in February, where a discussion greatly performed on the futility of literary studies that wished to undertake the girl, who shyly it was open to his parents, led to the decision to pull it willy-nilly the deadlock that it had chosen. She obtained her baccalaureate at the end of the school year, was certain he had promptly provide the result of his studies that inform it in due course. Common sense should prevail over any other fad. The literature that was good for writers, he had to sit down faster on his life sound basis which would avoid an uncertain future uncertain. The bank would be great for her, he would choose a position unrelated to the clients, or as little as possible, and the matter would be made. Also
stoic that 'as usual, that evening she listened to the explanations for the proposition father. Without eyebrow or any visible sign of disagreement she buried her desires in the palm of his silence and consented to the will of Father and Mother as she had always done everything. When summer came, she was praised for his brilliantly bin obtained by providing a week of rest that it would go to her aunt's side Underground, full Basement, what a beautiful county! to enjoy the good country air. The calm of the place would be extremely beneficial. In return, it would help the store, as in past years, and in September it would integrate its training that would lead later to the bank. Everything was planned. For his own good. She no longer had that 'studiously applying the instructions. You see how we décarcasse for you, my daughter. But we trust you will have never disappointed us, we are sure you will succeed and that our sacrifices will be rewarded. What would we do not for you.
Sir, unfortunately, had not the chance to witness its entry into active life. He died prematurely in a car accident in the early morning, during a delivery of supplies to one of its oldest customers into a restaurant a few miles away from the city. Bad luck continues honest men 's granted does one say at the funeral. For his final year before retirement is still sad, but that that is what you want is like this.
mother, unable to assume sole management of the store, soon not to sell the business and his apartment upstairs. She went to live in this modest house, which was acquired by the couple with their savings and some investments wisely advised by a banker friend. They sometimes spent weekends during the life of sir, a little bored as they did not know live outside their store.
Concerns caused by the move adding to the sadness of the loss of her husband, mother's health declined rapidly. Unable to meet their basic needs and maintain its housing, however, she refused categorically to engage any expense in the salary of a housemaid claiming that her late husband would have condemned the use of any external assistance, if expensive to boot. In Lepage we had always managed their own, with pride, would continue in memory of Marcel, who could rest in peace and honor of the family would be safe.
- that's what would have told your father, my daughter. Your studies you leave enough free time to take care of me. You never go out, anyway. We'll get both, it is the only solution.
She agreed that it was the only one, indeed. The Months passed, just out of her studies she joined the bank at any time and promised his life between his work was organized and Mother, especially Mother, demanding his presence at any time. Mother and her constant demands, his memories endlessly discussed but tattles his monologues, his obsession with death, his nightmares and screams at night, and his concern about the heritage, the papers do, the contents of the will, the address of the notary to check again. And you remember to bring me my magazine to call the painter for the shutters, my poor parts that we would have had to repaint more soon with all the rain in our country, I told you yet. Besides it will be your house someday. I wonder why you do not you worry more. Tell your father and me we worked all our lives to this house, and you have the air of not having anything to do. And how many times I told you to cut the finest vegetables for soup, don 'you hear not your poor mother? Ah, if your father was still there it would happen otherwise, you benefit from my weakness just to do that 'in your head, I see what happens. If you told me once that my own daughter would treat me this so ... my god as I have sorrow, as I grieve.
soon returned home, that is to say at Mother, she had that a haste to leave that quickly. Her life was slowly transformed into a torture unbearable that each day has risen one degree of pain. Lifted soon, she checked that everything was in order in the house, preparing breakfast for Mother opened the shutters of the kitchen and fled noiselessly to his work as we run out to sea, and quickly, to breathe lungs.
Life with Mother became every day more difficult. Everything was good his condemnation, and not a night passed without that it does awaken screaming and gesticulating against its beings from tormenting her, she claimed ruffled, hands flailing in all directions.
- You do not see them?! But there they are my daughter, they are there, and others will come! You have everything well closed the door and shutters? Will check back and tell me , go! And if the doctor comes, tell him I never want to see.
- Mother, nobody comes, nobody. I beg you, calm yourself .
- If so, it will come. It comes every afternoon with his dogs.
- Mother, not the afternoon, it is night.
- Ah ...? Are you sure? ... the night of what month?
She could rest until his mother, exhausted, slept a few hours. Rest illusory she did not know what to do. She remained there, sitting in this house where absurd madness already, and the eventual death had taken its place. Death, the death of Mother that it caught herself almost wish. Including the haunting evocation without that it would refuse now in the strange and soothing anticipation. At the funeral of his she was found worthy father in his grief, a remarkable restraint for a girl so devoted to his parents, a gentleman whose behavior would have been proud.
She watched his long bony hands resting on the armrests of the chair, motionless. No, it would have been proud, sir, if he could read his thoughts. His restraint was only coldness and distance. Nothing, no feelings of sadness do not disturb. She looked at the coffin as it looks on a plate, a chair, any object. She felt nothing. The death of his father was that a new data would change the course of his negative life since it would force it, she knew, to live with Mother. This perspective then was more painful than his father's disappearance. Of two evils she measured the worst, and this one would live. TODAY 'hui she lived.
For how long, when all this would end it ? She stared at his hands on the armrests. Mechanically, it compressed the foam beneath his fingers. It was soft, almost sensual. Like skin. On the sideboard in the kitchen Mother danced a waltz with the Father in the colors of the time, face raised to the that it had just married. She watched his hands on the velvet, Mother's face in the photograph, her neck stretched toward Father. This young woman, pretty, bright look at, what destiny we abyss? She looked at his bony hands, white. His fingers. Neck. Velvet. This stranger who danced. Night by the window in the house, her mother in the night around. She thought of tomorrow, the other day. Then the next, then another, all the days to come, in perpetuity. How long Mother, demanding drink, the called it, more and more low? She was not listening, was not receiving his words, heard more sense, only their music became plaintive murmur now. Mother's voice, slowly, had diminished. His calls were only murmurs, barely. And everything is soon changed into a strange lullaby.
When she awoke, curled up in the chair, silence reigned in the house. She was no longer that a stone could not move even a finger. The only sound was the wind around the house. She opened her eyes painfully, nothing stirred in the night as the clouds rolling over the moon. She no longer felt that the machinery of his body which every body seemed to him self and fragile. She thought that at least movement all its parts fall off, that it was better to stay still. And wait. Expect to meet, get together. She looked down at his hands as the moon shone for a moment and then turned toward the bedroom door. Mother? ... Mother? ... Only the wind whistled softly outside, Mother did not answer. Never again would not answer, she knew.
She got up, opened the door of the chamber, approached the bed in the dark. Mother lying there with his eyes open. She closed her in a slow caress that it lasted until her cheeks. She sat on the bed, took her hand in his Mother, and time stopped. Something in it, then, was resolved a long time.
the first rays of dawn she left the room and returned to his chair, crouched there like an animal exhausted income of nowhere. A red sun rose above the dark mass of trees in the garden. Surrendering to sleep, she looked at the woman on the sideboard in the kitchen, turning all smiles in waltz time. Mom.
In this small town where she has always lived his parents ran a delicatessen whose reputation was never challenged as its owners had the constant worry. She was born in the store, more precisely in this back room crowded with boxes and crates of fruit and vegetables waiting to display with the help of the midwife of the neighborhood that a client 's eager to go and tell. It is weighing beans that her mother felt the first contractions, one of which was so violent that the bag fell from his hands. Oh what a mess! The memory of a life these beans on the floor!
Mother never told anything else about the late birth of his only daughter. Nothing about his frail constitution, its small size and weight of flies too badly and too soon fell from the nest. Nothing about what followed his permanent state of weakness, her thinness, her pallor and her sad, furious his silence, his solitude. Nothing about his childhood, nothing on it.
She later unable to tell Mom, Mother stammering painfully when she could escape the trap of the daily trade. Acting alone in her tiny room, pronounced slowly in the dark: Ma .. man-man My Mom.
Growing up in his thinness and his pallor among the children restless and careless of his age, but always in the middle away. And one day, woman. By the blood flowing from any injury, these red tears at the strange odor coming, thought she that sorrow never admitted crying so much and for so long inside that it overflowed, now.
- It's clean! you'll change your sheets yourself and next time I hope that you will care!
- I'll be careful, Mother, I'll be careful.
How many nights after, standing before the mirror, the lamp between her legs, bending over her mouth pink velvet where the tears had flowed that it should now contain absolutely not to be angry Ma Man .. My Mom -man. Makes you wonder how to arrange a sorrow who does that 'at its head. What to do that ever, ever happening again this shame? So what did mother say the next time?
There was one, and many others where the sheets were cleaned in secret. In secret, too, she learned all of the machine body through books borrowed from the library and hidden under the mattress. Then came the time of love, loves another, which Line, the neighbor brazen, neglecting no detail, he recounted the events sulphurous, changing configurations, the vagaries of ordinary teenage relationships. She listened, unmoved. The fury would come in the night would mix mouths, tongues and bodies, oaths of mad love, caresses fiery ghosts of lovers throwing their lives at his feet. They had no faces, they all had the sarabande and would extend until the last haggard exhaustion plunging into sleep, if Ma .. man-man My Mom did not burst at the peak of his dreams screaming It's clean!
At twenty-one years, graduating, she entered the local branch of Credit Agricole through the intercession of his father with his manager. The two men share the same taste for hunting and weapons had met club clay pigeon shooting locally and quickly became good friends as any closer in a radically pragmatic world. His banking career was decided between two volleys of lead, a Sunday morning in February, where a discussion greatly performed on the futility of literary studies that wished to undertake the girl, who shyly it was open to his parents, led to the decision to pull it willy-nilly the deadlock that it had chosen. She obtained her baccalaureate at the end of the school year, was certain he had promptly provide the result of his studies that inform it in due course. Common sense should prevail over any other fad. The literature that was good for writers, he had to sit down faster on his life sound basis which would avoid an uncertain future uncertain. The bank would be great for her, he would choose a position unrelated to the clients, or as little as possible, and the matter would be made. Also
stoic that 'as usual, that evening she listened to the explanations for the proposition father. Without eyebrow or any visible sign of disagreement she buried her desires in the palm of his silence and consented to the will of Father and Mother as she had always done everything. When summer came, she was praised for his brilliantly bin obtained by providing a week of rest that it would go to her aunt's side Underground, full Basement, what a beautiful county! to enjoy the good country air. The calm of the place would be extremely beneficial. In return, it would help the store, as in past years, and in September it would integrate its training that would lead later to the bank. Everything was planned. For his own good. She no longer had that 'studiously applying the instructions. You see how we décarcasse for you, my daughter. But we trust you will have never disappointed us, we are sure you will succeed and that our sacrifices will be rewarded. What would we do not for you.
Sir, unfortunately, had not the chance to witness its entry into active life. He died prematurely in a car accident in the early morning, during a delivery of supplies to one of its oldest customers into a restaurant a few miles away from the city. Bad luck continues honest men 's granted does one say at the funeral. For his final year before retirement is still sad, but that that is what you want is like this.
mother, unable to assume sole management of the store, soon not to sell the business and his apartment upstairs. She went to live in this modest house, which was acquired by the couple with their savings and some investments wisely advised by a banker friend. They sometimes spent weekends during the life of sir, a little bored as they did not know live outside their store.
Concerns caused by the move adding to the sadness of the loss of her husband, mother's health declined rapidly. Unable to meet their basic needs and maintain its housing, however, she refused categorically to engage any expense in the salary of a housemaid claiming that her late husband would have condemned the use of any external assistance, if expensive to boot. In Lepage we had always managed their own, with pride, would continue in memory of Marcel, who could rest in peace and honor of the family would be safe.
- that's what would have told your father, my daughter. Your studies you leave enough free time to take care of me. You never go out, anyway. We'll get both, it is the only solution.
She agreed that it was the only one, indeed. The Months passed, just out of her studies she joined the bank at any time and promised his life between his work was organized and Mother, especially Mother, demanding his presence at any time. Mother and her constant demands, his memories endlessly discussed but tattles his monologues, his obsession with death, his nightmares and screams at night, and his concern about the heritage, the papers do, the contents of the will, the address of the notary to check again. And you remember to bring me my magazine to call the painter for the shutters, my poor parts that we would have had to repaint more soon with all the rain in our country, I told you yet. Besides it will be your house someday. I wonder why you do not you worry more. Tell your father and me we worked all our lives to this house, and you have the air of not having anything to do. And how many times I told you to cut the finest vegetables for soup, don 'you hear not your poor mother? Ah, if your father was still there it would happen otherwise, you benefit from my weakness just to do that 'in your head, I see what happens. If you told me once that my own daughter would treat me this so ... my god as I have sorrow, as I grieve.
soon returned home, that is to say at Mother, she had that a haste to leave that quickly. Her life was slowly transformed into a torture unbearable that each day has risen one degree of pain. Lifted soon, she checked that everything was in order in the house, preparing breakfast for Mother opened the shutters of the kitchen and fled noiselessly to his work as we run out to sea, and quickly, to breathe lungs.
Life with Mother became every day more difficult. Everything was good his condemnation, and not a night passed without that it does awaken screaming and gesticulating against its beings from tormenting her, she claimed ruffled, hands flailing in all directions.
- You do not see them?! But there they are my daughter, they are there, and others will come! You have everything well closed the door and shutters? Will check back and tell me , go! And if the doctor comes, tell him I never want to see.
- Mother, nobody comes, nobody. I beg you, calm yourself .
- If so, it will come. It comes every afternoon with his dogs.
- Mother, not the afternoon, it is night.
- Ah ...? Are you sure? ... the night of what month?
She could rest until his mother, exhausted, slept a few hours. Rest illusory she did not know what to do. She remained there, sitting in this house where absurd madness already, and the eventual death had taken its place. Death, the death of Mother that it caught herself almost wish. Including the haunting evocation without that it would refuse now in the strange and soothing anticipation. At the funeral of his she was found worthy father in his grief, a remarkable restraint for a girl so devoted to his parents, a gentleman whose behavior would have been proud.
She watched his long bony hands resting on the armrests of the chair, motionless. No, it would have been proud, sir, if he could read his thoughts. His restraint was only coldness and distance. Nothing, no feelings of sadness do not disturb. She looked at the coffin as it looks on a plate, a chair, any object. She felt nothing. The death of his father was that a new data would change the course of his negative life since it would force it, she knew, to live with Mother. This perspective then was more painful than his father's disappearance. Of two evils she measured the worst, and this one would live. TODAY 'hui she lived.
For how long, when all this would end it ? She stared at his hands on the armrests. Mechanically, it compressed the foam beneath his fingers. It was soft, almost sensual. Like skin. On the sideboard in the kitchen Mother danced a waltz with the Father in the colors of the time, face raised to the that it had just married. She watched his hands on the velvet, Mother's face in the photograph, her neck stretched toward Father. This young woman, pretty, bright look at, what destiny we abyss? She looked at his bony hands, white. His fingers. Neck. Velvet. This stranger who danced. Night by the window in the house, her mother in the night around. She thought of tomorrow, the other day. Then the next, then another, all the days to come, in perpetuity. How long Mother, demanding drink, the called it, more and more low? She was not listening, was not receiving his words, heard more sense, only their music became plaintive murmur now. Mother's voice, slowly, had diminished. His calls were only murmurs, barely. And everything is soon changed into a strange lullaby.
When she awoke, curled up in the chair, silence reigned in the house. She was no longer that a stone could not move even a finger. The only sound was the wind around the house. She opened her eyes painfully, nothing stirred in the night as the clouds rolling over the moon. She no longer felt that the machinery of his body which every body seemed to him self and fragile. She thought that at least movement all its parts fall off, that it was better to stay still. And wait. Expect to meet, get together. She looked down at his hands as the moon shone for a moment and then turned toward the bedroom door. Mother? ... Mother? ... Only the wind whistled softly outside, Mother did not answer. Never again would not answer, she knew.
She got up, opened the door of the chamber, approached the bed in the dark. Mother lying there with his eyes open. She closed her in a slow caress that it lasted until her cheeks. She sat on the bed, took her hand in his Mother, and time stopped. Something in it, then, was resolved a long time.
the first rays of dawn she left the room and returned to his chair, crouched there like an animal exhausted income of nowhere. A red sun rose above the dark mass of trees in the garden. Surrendering to sleep, she looked at the woman on the sideboard in the kitchen, turning all smiles in waltz time. Mom.
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