Fermina Marquez (1911) by Valery Larbaud Read Free Book Online Page A

Marquez. There is a proverb which says that the women of Lima are the most tender of all; there are also the popular lovesongs   of  the   Argentine   Republic,   like   Vidalita   for example,  which  are  so  despairing  of love!   ...   At  this moment, as Joanny is coldly calculating his chances, merely the idea that you exist, Fermina, is enough to console every little boy who has gone to bed with a heavy heart because he has been punished for the first time or because a fellow pupil, stronger than he is, is tyrannizing over him . . . And it is certain as well that all the words of Argentinian ballads and habaneras have been written for you.
On the next day during the first break, as little Marquez came up to him, Leniot experienced all the feelings a young man can, when a boy, his friend, bestows upon him all the natural affection of his heart. But this was a role he was playing after all and he was not going to allow himself to be touched by this. A few blows dispensed at the right moment deterred Marquez' persecutors. Two weeks later, following the events narrated above, he found himself the possessor of all the affection and trust which Mama Dolore was able to give to a stranger; he became the family's only companion during its walks in the grounds of Saint Augustine's and almost straight away the sole confidant of Fermina Marquez.

 
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    Mama Dolore soon left the young people alone together; she was tired of them. She would walk slowly between Pilar and her nephew, smoking and hardly talking at all. She had said to Joanny and Fermina: "You will speak French together, won't you? La Chica absolutely must learn to speak faultlessly."
Joanny gladly assented to this wish. Speaking his own language, he had two advantages over his partner in conversation: he could nuance his remarks to an infinite degree and he could pull her up if she made mistakes. And, confined to a more limited vocabulary, she would express her thoughts more ingenuously.
The first day alone had the magic of an adventure and it was so feverish and gay, above all so gay, that in the evening Joanny was overpowered by that deep and ill-defined sadness which comes at the end of a holiday or a day in the country, when for a whole afternoon there has been too much joking and laughter. He had come out of himself for a few dazzling hours and now he was once again crossing the threshold of his soul like a man returning from the theatre to his dark, deserted home at night. The place he had come from was so brilliant that he could no longer make anything out in his everyday life. He had a moment's hesitation; he could not remember any more what only a short while before was binding him so intensely to his life; his concerns were of no further interest to him.
He wanted to go back to the Greek unseen he had started; it was a poem of Tyrtaeus and so beautiful that the alexandrines materialized  in French,  without prompting,   to match the Greek verse. Greek unseens, indeed exercises in general, have their own particular features; the difficulty lies not so much in the text itself as in the way it is presented and the style in which it is to be translated. Joanny took a hard look at his Greek unseen and no longer found it intelligible. How could he   have   been   fascinated   by   this   gibberish?   These   very alterations had been lovingly done. And now it was a worthless piece  of scrap  paper.   The pointlessness  of these  exercises suddenly   struck  Joanny:   rough   drafts,   corrected   copies! Without cease, they vanished into nothingness. So many hours spent doing them and so much care lavished! Was it possible that there was nothing to show for it all? For the first time, Joanny perceived the futility of his labour. He understood the superior wisdom of the idler. His ambition seemed to him so far away that evening! He resumed the translation of Tyrtaeus but without enthusiasm, like a chore to