"Is she out on the reef right now?"
He nodded. "She never tells me, but I know. She comes back exhausted, often wounded, and sleeps entire days at a time."
"And you can't-"
"Can't what? Hold her back? What would be left of her then? She's barely tame. When she was younger, afraid of the dangers out there, I wanted to shut her in when the tides came. She threw herself headfirst against the door. I gave in, of course, and away she swam, her forehead still bleeding. That night I thought she'd never come back. But she did, silent, distant. So I promised I'd never do that again."
We went back to the party. Cindy/Christie was showing the Nobel laureate her latest rash, and the guitarist was talking with the tennis player about highs and which drugs went best together. In the wee hours, I ran into Laurencais again. He was beaming. Ligeia had returned home once more.
It was high time I started to drink in earnest if I wanted to get into that helicopter tomorrow with any semblance of composure-that is to say, dead drunk. To think that as a boy I'd dreamed of being a pilot! When I was ten, I lifted my gaze upward and thrilled to the blue above, seeing myself up there, free in the light… What is it that terrifies me now? The skies? The light? Freedom? Bah! I became myself by giving that all up. I managed to fall dead asleep at last on Cindy/ Christie's shoulder just as the helicopter flew over the reef.
Several years have passed since my visit to Laurencais Island. I hear people talking about him from time to time, in the paper or on TV: he lost a bundle of money in phosphates, he made a bunch in rare earths… I like to believe he still manages his empire from his rock at the far ends of the earth, and still trembles at spring tide, waiting for Ligeia to return.
I entrust these pages to my safe. Fifty years after I'm dead, Ligeia will be beyond reach… I leave it to anyone who reads this to decide if what they're holding is a true story, or another story, the one I promised Laurencais.
Paris-Bazas, Jul.-Nov. 1996
About the Authors
Georges-Olivier Chiteaureynaud is the author of nine novels, two young adult novels, and over one hundred short stories. Despite a lifelong fear of flying, he has been to Peru-his only time on a plane-and lived to pen a travel memoir about the experience. He is the recipient of the prestigious Prix Renaudot, Prix Goncourt de is nouvelle (for short stories), Prix Giono, Prix Valery Larbaud, and the Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire. His work has been translated into fourteen languages.
Born in Paris in 1947, Chateaureynaud was a solitary child who became a voracious and unprejudiced reader, ingesting Treasure Island as avidly, as Lady Chatterley's Lover. He studied English at the Sorbonne, discovering Stevenson, Shelley, Stoker, and Wells, and later took a degree in library science from the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Bibliotheques. In 1968, he embarked on a series of odd jobsincluding antiques dealer and auto assembly line laborer-that comprised, in his words, an "apprenticeship in human nature," cementing his sympathy for the marginal, outcast figures who would become his luckless, well-meaning, Everyman heroes and narrators. Grasset published his first collection in 1973, Le fou daps is chaloupe.
With novelist Hubert Haddad, and fellow Goncourt winners Frederic Tristan and sinologist jean Levi, Chateaureynaud is a founding member of the contemporary movement La Nouvelle Fiction: "New" because it rose tip against the prevailingly minimalist and confessional tendencies (autofiction) of recent French writing, seeking to rouse it from what critic jean-Luc Moreau called "the slumber of psychological realism," and to restore myth, fable, and fairy tale to a place of primacy in fiction.
In 1983 and 1990, Chateaureynaud was a representative of the Foreign Services Ministry to Quebec and then to Greece. He has been consistently involved with the Centre National du Livre and the SGDL (Societe des Gens de Lettres de France). He plays an active part in fostering new talent, serving on the juries of such diverse prizes as the Fondation BNP-Paribas Young Writers Award, the international Prix Promethee de la nouvelle, the Prix Renaudot, and the Prix Renaissance. Chateaureynaud sees his enthusiastic participation in these institutions as a way of repaying the literary community that has allowed him the luxury of dedication to his craft. An Officier des Arts et Lettres of France, he is currently the editorial director of foreign literature at Editions Dumerchez. In 2006, he was made a Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur.
Edward Gauvin has published George-Olivier Chateaureynaud's work in The Southern Review, Harvard Review, AGNI Online, Conjunctions, Words Without Borders, LCRW, Joyland, F&SF, Postscripts, Epiphany, The Cafe Irreal, Eleven Eleven, Postscripts, Sentence, and The Brooklyn Rail, among others. A graduate of the Iowa Workshop, he has received a Fulbright grant as well as fellowships from the Centre National du Livre, the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) and the Clarion Foundation and residencies from the Maison des Ecritures Midi-Pyrenees, Ledig House, and the Banff International Literary Translation Centre. Other translations of his have been featured or are forthcoming in PEN America, Tin House, Interfutions 2, Subtropics, Silk Road, Two Lines, and Absinthe. A consulting editor for graphic literature at Words Without Borders, he translates comics for Archaia, First Second, and Tokyopop. He has lived in Austin, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, New York, Taipei, and Amiens, France.
Translator's acknowledgments
Merci millefois d Paul and Sylviane Underwood, and the many readers and editors who've supported these tales along the way. Time to work on this manuscript was generously provided by the Banff International Literary Translation Centre, to whose director, Susan Ouriou, I owe special thanks. For his kindness, his generosity, and his stories, a debt of gratitude to G.-O. C.