Translations from the French
3 pieces from: Les mots endormis (ii)
THE BIG CHECK
A little girl had a big check in her pocket. She was running down a long street lined with different vegetables which the passers by were gathering after fighting a while with their neighbors.
The street was full of people as far as the middle of the road. There was only a narrow, stony, slippery and twisted strip of ground, planted with gigantic candelabra, where the little girl, armed with her check, walked laboriously. From time to time she felt a look upon her and she half opened her eyes. But most often it was a new tomato or onion, pushed by the others as they were retreating.
She suddenly felt very much like having a wash. She went in through a carriage gate, under the sign "Flea Market", ascended one story and found herself in front of a closed iron gate. A spider with a woman's head opened it for her. She had large, piercing eyes, black hair tied together at the top of her head in a miniscule chignon and held a broom of soft hair in her hand. She pushed the little one inside and showed her brusquely, without speaking, an empty bath-tub at the end of the silent room. In order to get there you had to pass in front of other bath-tubs where men dried themselves fearfully with as little noise as possible and with an extraordinary sluggishness.
The little one closed her eyes because she didn't want to look but her eyelids had become transparent and she was obliged to see that most of the clients were dead. Those who were not received constant beatings from the spider-woman.
The little girl undressed and went into the water. She instantly lost consciousness because of the heat, and when she woke up again she saw an unknown object floating in front of her, perhaps made of rubber, which disgusted her. She met the look of the spider-woman who was already coming towards her. Fortunately an old man had thrown some water on the floor and the animal stopped to hit him.
Without waiting a second the little girl tried to dispose of the object in the drain-hole of the tub. The spider-woman came closer and the object would not go in.
It always came up again.
She had to sit on it.
- "What is that?" said the menacing spider-woman, without opening her mouth.
- "Nothing ..."
The little girl had such an enormous voice that she was frightened and fainted again.
. . . . . . .
When she awoke everybody had gone. Only cadavers remained. The iron gate was closed. In the distance one could hear the comforting noise of the market cut sometimes by a strident trumpet sound.
The child took hold of the bars of the railing and shook hard. The house crumbled.
Once outside she began to run again, she slipped on a rotten vegetable and was torn in two, along with the big check.
(1946)
Translated by Ellen Nations
Page(s) 58-60
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The