THE THIRD MONK VIII

A story in purportedly weekly instalments. The rest is here.

Oh crumbs, I haven't been near this for a month; completely lost the feel of it, not to mention the impetus and motivation! Okay, just get back in there and write something, however bad, however false a note it strikes. Write it on the bus, where there's no escape, nothing else to do. On the bus, where my pen jiggles and my notebook rocks, filling up the spaces and doubts between words.

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The light and atmosphere of that old stone house are a vivid memory. The sitting room, a long, bare room with white walls, many bookshelves, bare creaking floorboards and an open hearth in one corner, with its wide windows onto the sunny hills, was the first room, I suppose, that was more than a shell to me, that I found beautiful. Interior decor, aesthetic taste, were not something I'd grown up with. I came to love that room - a big, uncluttered space for sunshine and for feelings. A space for children's games. A space for conversations that twined and intertwined and rippled out in circles. A space for music, pure and strong, from massive hi-fi speakers. A space for gathering around the fire, cheering but not stifling, on the occasional chilly evening. A space for air alive with dancing dust, and thoughts and voices taking up the dance. A space for being still and for encountering songs, ideas, so much that was new to me. A space for unfreezing and expanding, slowly, tentatively, into myself, whoever I might be. It was nothing special, that rather bare, modest room, but so special to me.

I can see us sitting there, Marianne and myself, on the first of many mornings, lingering over coffee. Endless legs curled under her, hands tightly wrapped around her cup, head down, blowing on her coffee, she was a corkscrew of nervous tension, flashing warmth and interest then curling back into herself. She fired questions about what brought me there and I squirmed a little before a piercing attention I was unused to, mumbled a story I hadn't really told, even to myself, astonished to be heard with interest and sympathy and emboldened to ask questions in my turn.

My story was common enough. I was too innocent to know if hers was - looking back, it was - and it shocked me. A mother twice within a year, sunk in care for a toddler and a new baby, a miasma of milk and crying and sleepless nights, in love with the babies, but losing herself, and losing her husband.

'I stopped seeing Jean-Paul, I think. I was floating in my own separate space with the girls, just barely aware of him on the edge of us. So tired. All my senses dimmed.' And this was the 1970s, all around them young people in a frenzy of challenging monogamy, experimenting with 'unpossessive' relationships. 'So one day I didn't see him, and realised he hadn't been around much for a while - and started screaming.'

It came out bit by bit, over the first few days. Her favourite chair was the battered bentwood rocker by the window. The morning sun streamed through the cloud of red frizzy hair that obscured her face. 'Irène was a patient. Older than us, and well off. An affluent, trendy open marriage. She took a fancy to Jean-Paul, and there he was, feeling excluded and bereft.' Marianne showed me a photo one day, rifling through Jean-Paul's sock drawer to find it ineffectually hidden in a corner. I saw a voluptuous blond madonna with long, glossy hair, fashionably hippy long skirts and shawls, a mature, pretty face full of gentle irony.

Marianne and Jean-Paul had been passionately close for ten years, since the first day an impoverished student and hitch-hiking holiday-maker from Paris met in a Marseille café. 'I felt we were one.', Marianne said, 'Not good, I realise now. I fell apart when I found out, screamed and shook and completely stopped coping. Louise came to take care of the girls and I... I don't know, I stopped existing, fragmented, you can't describe a nervous breakdown. I was half-way there already, I suppose - we'd never heard of post-partum depression.'

She leapt up after she'd told me this and busied herself with sautéing rabbit joints for lunch, banging about and creating sublime smells. I wondered if she'd told me more than she intended and would regret it. But it must have helped to talk because the next day she went on, painfully detailing the day they found her unconscious, full of pills and alcohol, the subsequent stay in a clinic and the painfully slow, not yet completed, journey back to herself.

Comments

[marja-leena]

Oh, this is powerful writing, Jean - you are being too modest! It makes me crave more, like a good novel...

[Zinnia Cyclamen]

Yes, yes, yes, always dive back in, you can see it works. It's good, it's fine, you may want to edit it later, no matter, it's there, it's atmospheric, it's another step on the way.

[Teju]

Hmm.

I read the first four a long while back. But today I read all eight, at once, without the chapter breaks (I created a cut-&-paste word document for myself, and read it there). So I had no idea what began and ended where, and I also missed out on all your self-deprecating nonsense.

It's a strong, compelling story, Jean. Starts out slow, as befits a monastery, then all the crap of samsara starts creeping in, persuasively, just enough of it at a time, the cancer, the affair, etc.

A quibble: there was just one section, I don't know on what page, that was a long paragraph of breathing and circular thoughts--it slowed things down too much, I thought, felt a bit too much like "blogging."

But all the rest, particularly the bits in JP and M's house were pitch perfect. You evoke the space so ideally, I have a hard time believing it's not a version of some reality.

It's as if you're tugging at something with this story, and more and more of it is emerging. I look forward to more of this very convincing fiction.

[Jean]

Thank you for the comments - really, thanks a lot. I know I never know what to say about fiction myself.

Zinnia, yes, you see, I have the opposite syndrome to you - I find description easier than dialogue! I'm playing with how much dialogue I actually need in order to bring the characters and story to life and how much I can convey indirectly, and am far from having a handle on it yet.

Teju, you actually took the trouble to cut and paste it into one document and then write that long comment? - I can't tell you how much I appreciate and value that. Interesting what you say about the 'meanwhile back at the monastery' bit seeming out of place. You don't surprise me. I often don't like flashbacks in novels myself. I can only hold one story/scene/mood at a time, and any diversion from that bores me. So why did I start doing it myself here? Well, I liked the linkage back from the present to the past - a reason to be telling a story from the 1970s - and will probably keep that, but may end up with very little toing and froing, if any, between past and present - something else to play with.

As for the 'self-depracating nonsense', well it's just a note of how I felt, a reminder to myself of what was difficult and uncomfortable and what I did about it, and, um, it's blogging?

I have got my head back into it, I think, and have written brief outlines for several chapters, as well as a synopsis of the whole story (though it may change).

'hard time believing it's not a version of some reality': well, um, like many first-time attempts at fiction, this is heavily autobiographical, in outline if not in detail - such a cliche, I know, but got to start somewhere...

[Teju]

"this is heavily autobiographical--such a cliche, I know, but got to start somewhere"

Heh heh. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone!

[Zinnia Cyclamen]

Jean, is there any chance you could email me? There are a couple of writing-related things I would like to share, but not in public, and I can't find an email address on your blog.

[MB]

Whatever it is, Jean, write on.