Paul Willems, The Drowned Land and La Vita Breve, Trans. by Donald Flanell Friedman and Suzanne Burgoyne, Peter Lang International Academic Publishers, 1994.
This volume combines Paul Willems' 1990 novella, The Drowned Land, a haunting and magic transformation of the Atlantis legend, and his most recent play, La Vita Breve, which launches the reader upon a voyage into the dark night of the soul. Both novella and play explore the frontiers of dream and reality, investigating the relationship of guilt and innocence, memory and desire.
This first translation of a rare Belgian dream narrative in the symbolist mode by Paul Willems evokes the vision of a site where land, sea, air and their diverse populations of human and mythological figures intertwine in delirious dream and nightmare. øIn his translation of 'The Drowned Land',! Professor Donald Friedman preserves the poetic cadences and sensuality that give readers the flavor of the original. - Anna Balakian
Paul Willems, one of Belgium's foremost contemporary dramatists, who combines the fancifulness of Giradoux with the caustic edge of Ghelderode, is now becoming better known in the English-speaking world. With this new, limpid translation of Willems' masterpiece, 'La Vita Breve', Suzanne Burgoyne provides us with the welcome opportunity to plunge into a frothy, heady dreamworld, projected onto the realm of human experience. - David Willinger
Paul Willems, The Cathedral of Mist. Trans by Edward Gauvin. Wakefield Press, 2015.
Requiem for Bread - excerpt
First published in French in 1983, The Cathedral of Mist is a collection of short stories from the last of the great Francophone Belgian fantasists, distilled tales of distant journeys, buried memories, and impossible architecture. Described here are the emotionally disturbed architectural plan for a palace of emptiness; the experience of snowfall in a bed in the middle of a Finnish forest; the memory chambers that fuel the marvelous futility of the endeavor to write; and the beautiful woodland church, built of warm air currents and fog, scattering in storms and taking renewed shape at dusk, that gives this book its title. The Cathedral of Mist offers the sort of ethereal narratives that might have come from the pen of a sorrowful, distinctly Belgian Italo Calvino. It is accompanied by two meditative essays on reading and writing that fall in the tradition of Marcel Proust and Julien Gracq.
The Cathedral of Mist collects six short pieces of fiction, as well as two pieces reflecting on 'Reading' and 'Writing'.
Belgian author Paul Willems traveled widely in his day job, scouting entertainment productions across the world, and several of the pieces take the narrator (and/or author) to unusual spots: Bulgaria in 1954, Beijing shortly after the end of the Cultural Revolution. Locales figure prominently regardless of how close: in the first story, the haunting Requiem for Bread, it is just Ostend, yet in many ways this destination takes him as far as anywhere he travels.
Willem is extremely effective in just a short space: the first story begins impressively enough, in a scene closing with the narrator's cousin explaining to the young boy: "When a knife touches bread, the bread screams" -- and then immediately takes an even darker turn. There is no indulgent explanation here: Willems presents a variety of short scenes, from both child- and adult-hood, forming connections in a lovely but dark piece.
Willems is an evocative writer -- nowhere more obviously than in the title piece, in which he spins a story of what is literally a cathedral of mist, built by an architect after he: "renounced the use of stone". Yes, "construction was difficult" -- but Willems sketches just enough, and that very vividly, to make it all somehow plausible.
'An Archbishop's Flight' takes the narrator to Finland, where the purchase of a fur hat -- a 'kloopki' -- sets in motion a series of encounters and events that also allows him to fulfil his ambition of traveling: "To see the forests of the north, and spend a winter's night in the woods". Even as it feels like a light sort of story -- almost fairy-tale-like --, without all that much to it beyond the exoticness and oddity of how events proceed (which nevertheless feels entirely natural), there's a pleasing solidity to it, and the almost magical feel to it lingers agreeably.
The two pieces on 'Reading' and 'Writing' are more straightforward -- but also help suggest more about the man behind these writings, including his passion for reading:
Reading demands an almost religious attitude from us, since with each reading we celebrate a work, which is to say a creation, and since together, all the books in a library enact the creation of the world. The inner world. This is why it matters so much where we read, just as it matter where we enact a ritual.
There are powerful images in both the stories and the non-fiction pieces, including that of the tightrope walker about whom Willems writes:
He knew himself condemned to perfection. Death was the penalty for the slightest misstep.
Willems' precisely written pieces suggest he too felt 'condemned to perfection' -- even if he did not face death in failure. But he suggests it wouldn't be the worst thing if the stakes were higher, or considered higher:
A fearful and marvelous thing it would be, if poets fell from steel tightropes when they failed at their books. We'd know what to make of things. But that wouldn't last long. Mediocre poets would work with a net and land languidly, taking their bows.
The pieces in The Cathedral of Mist are beautifully crafted, and very evocative, taking unusual turns with a natural ease that separates Willem from writers who much more willfully embrace the strange.
A nice little discovery (and, in the pocket-sized Wakefield Press edition, a lovely little physical volume, too -- making it easier to take along to read in just the perfect surroundings and circumstances, as Willem would have wanted). - M.A.Orthofer
Two months after Rik’s death, a little girl was born in the little house. Marie called her Rika, in memory of her father. Rika grew. She always played alone in the dune and on the beach, for her mother spun from dawn till dusk to provide for them. One evening (Rika had just turned six), Marie began to weep. She wasn’t earning enough money spinning and there wasn’t anything left in the house to eat. She told Rika to go out the next day and keep watch over the sheep for the monks of the Abbey of the Dunes. The monks would surely give her a big jug of milk each day for her trouble.
But Rika replied that she would rather go to the beach. Sometimes the sea tossed up precious objects she would gather and sell.
And so it was decided.
Despite the storm, Rika left the next morning, taking with her a great sack. Day was breaking. Wind chased the sand low over the ground with such speed that it stung the girl’s legs like needles. Seagulls, carried on the gale, cried and turned their heads to see who dared venture onto the beach in such fearsome wind. But the gale swept the gulls away so quickly they hadn’t time to recognize Rika. She struggled against the wind. She could barely stand up straight and the waves made a vast roar.
Then Rika cried out in her clear voice: “Sea wind! Take me where I’ll find fish tossed up by the storm!”
She saw a shell that rolled along and then stopped, rolled some more and stopped again, as though to say: “This way! Follow me!”
Rika began to run, and the shell rolled along before her so quickly that she could barely keep up. Wind and rain buffeted her from behind, and she ran, ran. Gulls kept going by faster than arrows, seafoam flew about her, and the edges of the waves leapt at her feet.
Soon she reached a place where the beach was so broad she could hardly see the end of it. The tide, falling back, had left all sorts of wreckage. It was as though the sea had fled before having enough time to finish packing its bags, leaving hundreds of objects scattered on the sand. There were all sorts of shells (pink and black), crabs, starfish, planks and scraps of wood, wisps of straw and sweet-smelling masses of seaweed. And there were also ten big fish a wave had thrown up on the sand. As Rika filled her sack, the storm died down. The only roar left was the waves.
When Rika got home that night, Marie exclaimed that even Rik-the-Fisherman himself had never brought back such handsome fish. She made a fire, grilled one, and salted the others. Before they ate, she said, “Daughter mine, tell me where you found all these fish.”
“The shell showed me where to go.”
And Rika showed her the shell she hadn’t forgotten to bring back. They put it on the mantel by a bouquet of blue thistles, and when you brought it to your ear you could hear the sound of the ocean. That night, Marie couldn’t sleep. She feared that Rika would start to love the sea, as sometimes happens to the children of sailors who’ve perished in storms. She rose and gazed on her child. Rika was so pretty that Marie smiled and went back to her bed. Happily, she hadn’t seen that Rika’s fingernails were just like little pink shells in every way, which is a sign you are in love with the sea.
Now, two months later, the last salted fish had been eaten. Marie told Rika, “Go keep watch over the monk’s sheep. They’ll give you a pitcher of milk every night for your trouble.”
But Rika began to weep, and said that first she wanted to go down to the water’s edge.
Marie gazed at her daughter with her sad black eyes and said nothing. The next day, the girl left in such good spirits that Marie hadn’t the heart to hold her back.
It was the first day of spring. The sky was even bluer than the sea, and the sun looked like a great yellow flower. The gulls were flying every which way, all white and shining in the sun. Their wild cries rang out. When Rika reached the water’s edge, where the sand was hard, she cried out, “Sea-sun! Sea-sun! Lead me where I’ll find something to fill my sack!”
Then she saw something shining very far away. She walked toward the light along the water’s edge. The waves were so small they barely made a murmur. Only by listening closely could you tell it was the breathing of the sea, asleep beside the beach. Rika had been walking for two hours when she reached the shining thing. It was a crate, fallen from a ship, that the sea had carried there. The crate contained butter and hardtack. It was so heavy Rika could barely drag it over the sand.
That night, when Rika reached the house exhausted, Marie was delighted to see so much food, but her black eyes were sad for she feared that Rika had started loving the sea. Happily, she didn’t see that the child’s eyes were the same color as the water. They were blue and clear like the sea on a spring day, and that was the sign that Rika was now passionately in love with the sea.
“I’ll teach her to spin and weave,” Marie promised herself, and that way she’ll never leave me. And she added loudly, “Just where did you find that crate?”
“The sea-sun showed it to me,” Rika replied.
Now, a few months later, when the last hardtack cracker had been eaten, Marie told Rika, “Tomorrow you’ll go and keep watch over the sheep.”
But Rika begged and pleaded so hard that she allowed her daughter to go down to the water’s edge one last time.
Rika left as soon as it was light. It was a summer’s day, so hot the air was dancing.
But that night, Rika did not come back to the house.
Around six, as the sun was already painting a golden pathway on the waters, Marie approached the window where she’d once kept watch for the Rik-the-Fisherman’s return. The sun was going down and soon only half of it could be seen. It was there, like someone peeping over a garden wall before going on his way.
The sun seemed to say, “How beautiful the garden of the world is! Everything there is green, everything fair, everything joyful. No one ever weeps there, there is no such thing as sorrow. Oh, happy world! How pleasant it is to gaze on your prairies and towns. I shall certainly return!”
And then the sun disappeared and soon the sky itself closed its doors. But then a thousand windows set to shining.
Marie saw none of these marvels. She awaited her daughter. The spinning wheel had fallen silent, the clock had stopped, and you could hear the gentle sounds of the sea. But for Marie they weren’t gentle. Nor did she see the moon there, like a friend who comes to bid you good evening and murmurs, “Can I sit down beside you for a bit? It’s so beautiful out we could sit on the doorstep without saying a word, just sitting side by side.”
But Marie didn’t hear, and her beautiful black eyes were even sadder than usual.
She left the house then and followed the trail of tiny footprints Rika had left in the sand. They led her onto the beach, and Marie followed the edge of the water for hours. She feared Rika had drowned, for the footprints disappeared into the water. The night was so clear and beautiful that no one could seriously believe in bad luck.
Marie searched for several days and nights without finding any trace of her child.
Now, on the ninth day, toward evening, as the sun was painting a splendid golden pathway on the waters, Marie heard a marvelous song in the distance and saw, where the golden pathway reached the edge of the waves, a mermaid lying at the water’s edge. She sang of her seaweed castle in the depths of the sea, and of the child playing in its largest hall.
“Mermaid, is that my little girl?”
“Yes, it is your little girl, she’s in my castle at the bottom of the sea.”
“Mermaid, take me there!”
She begged and pleaded so hard that the mermaid said, “Climb on my back!”
And the mermaid followed the golden pathway across the sea. Never once did Marie turn back to look at the shore.
When they’d reached the horizon, where sea touches sky, the mermaid dove down into the water and ushered Marie into the seaweed castle. They passed through a hundred rooms, opened a hndred doors, and at last the mermaid lifted a seaweed curtain and showed her a great hall. Marie saw her daughter playing with shells.
The mermaid told Marie that it was forbidden to enter the hall and speak to her child.
“Mermaid,” said Marie, “Let me live here. If you will have me, I will be your slave.”
She begged and pleaded so hard that the mermaid gave in and, from that day on, Marie worked night and day, and every day she was allowed to watch Rika from a distance.
Now Marie remembered the colors of the earth—green trees, golden sun, the dark sea on stormy days, white clouds, and the thousand hues light casts upon the world. She thought of these colors so much that her hair stayed blond at the bottom of the sea, and her lips red. And the mermaid often admired Marie’s hair, which seemed to remember the color of the world.
One day, Marie remembered a rainbow she’d seen over the ocean, recalling that all the colors shone in it, each in its place, in an exquisite order.
And she thought, “So does the spirit of God move over the waters.”
She went looking for the mermaid, and said, “Mermaid, let me take my child back to the little house on the dunes. True, I see Rika every day, and you never promised me any more than that, but Rika has become blue at the bottom of the sea. She almost no longer looks like a little girl. For a little girl has red lips and white teeth; she has a face tanned by the sun and eyes whose brown it brightens. Here, she will forget that colors exist.”
She begged and pleaded so hard that the mermaid promised to give her back her child if Marie would weave her a cloak of her hair.
Marie set to work right away. She spun for days and days on end, and when she’d used up all her hair weaving, a third of the cloak was finished.
She had to wait two years for her hair to grow back. Then she wove the second part of the cloak. She waited another two years, and then she wove the final third of the cloak.
Now one day the cloak was done. The mermaid was delighted with it, for it was very fine and very long and there were three colors to it—something quite rare under the sea. The top was blond, the middle gray (a gray sown with white strands), and the bottom was completely white.
The mermaid was quite happy.
“Leave now, since it is your wish,” she said, and opened the door of the great hall where Rika was imprisoned. She put Marie’s hand in Rika’s.
The next day, the fishermen found the bodies of two women at the water’s edge.
One was old, with white hair. On her face was a smile as though she’d seen a rainbow.
The other was a young girl so beautiful that no one had ever seen the like. Her face was bright as the most radiant colors but—a curious thing—her hair was blue, which only added to her strange beauty. Soon she woke, as though from a long slumber, and smiled.
But no one managed to revive the old woman. An aged fisherman recognized Marie, who’d disappeared long ago. She was buried before the little house on the dunes, and soon a white blossom called cottongrass grew on her grave.
Rika-of-the-Blue-Hair went there every day, and when the sky was gray, the dunes blonde, and the blossom white, Rika wept for she remembered vaguely, as from the bottom of a dream, that Marie had saved her.
Later, Rika lived a very happy life, and it was said that she brought happiness to all who knew her. Everyone admired her blue hair. She never went back to the water’s edge, for she was afraid.
Paul Willems (1912-1997) belongs to the final generation of great Francophone Belgian fantasists of Flemish descent. He published his first novel, Everything Here is Real, in 1941. Three more novels and toward the end of his life, two collections of short stories bracket his career as a playwright, for which he was best known in his lifetime. Donald Friedman’s translation of his late novella The Drowned Land was nominated for the Dublin IMPAC Literary Award and published with Suzanne Burgoyne’s translation of his play La Vita Brève (Peter Lang, 1994).
The winner of the John Dryden Translation prize, Edward Gauvin has received fellowships and residencies from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Centre National du Livre, and the American Literary Translators’ Association. His volume of Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud’s selected stories, A Life on Paper (Small Beer, 2010) won the Science Fiction & Fantasy Translation Award and was shortlisted for the Best Translated Book Award. Other publications have appeared in F&SF, Podcastle, LCRW, Postscripts, Tin House, PEN America, and Pseudopod. The contributing editor for Francophone comics at Words Without Borders, he is currently a Fulbright scholar studying Belgian literature in Brussels. He translates comics for BOOM! Studios and Archaia.
The Cathedral of Mist collects six short pieces of fiction, as well as two pieces reflecting on 'Reading' and 'Writing'.
Belgian author Paul Willems traveled widely in his day job, scouting entertainment productions across the world, and several of the pieces take the narrator (and/or author) to unusual spots: Bulgaria in 1954, Beijing shortly after the end of the Cultural Revolution. Locales figure prominently regardless of how close: in the first story, the haunting Requiem for Bread, it is just Ostend, yet in many ways this destination takes him as far as anywhere he travels.
Willem is extremely effective in just a short space: the first story begins impressively enough, in a scene closing with the narrator's cousin explaining to the young boy: "When a knife touches bread, the bread screams" -- and then immediately takes an even darker turn. There is no indulgent explanation here: Willems presents a variety of short scenes, from both child- and adult-hood, forming connections in a lovely but dark piece.
Willems is an evocative writer -- nowhere more obviously than in the title piece, in which he spins a story of what is literally a cathedral of mist, built by an architect after he: "renounced the use of stone". Yes, "construction was difficult" -- but Willems sketches just enough, and that very vividly, to make it all somehow plausible.
'An Archbishop's Flight' takes the narrator to Finland, where the purchase of a fur hat -- a 'kloopki' -- sets in motion a series of encounters and events that also allows him to fulfil his ambition of traveling: "To see the forests of the north, and spend a winter's night in the woods". Even as it feels like a light sort of story -- almost fairy-tale-like --, without all that much to it beyond the exoticness and oddity of how events proceed (which nevertheless feels entirely natural), there's a pleasing solidity to it, and the almost magical feel to it lingers agreeably.
The two pieces on 'Reading' and 'Writing' are more straightforward -- but also help suggest more about the man behind these writings, including his passion for reading:
Reading demands an almost religious attitude from us, since with each reading we celebrate a work, which is to say a creation, and since together, all the books in a library enact the creation of the world. The inner world. This is why it matters so much where we read, just as it matter where we enact a ritual.
There are powerful images in both the stories and the non-fiction pieces, including that of the tightrope walker about whom Willems writes:
He knew himself condemned to perfection. Death was the penalty for the slightest misstep.
Willems' precisely written pieces suggest he too felt 'condemned to perfection' -- even if he did not face death in failure. But he suggests it wouldn't be the worst thing if the stakes were higher, or considered higher:
A fearful and marvelous thing it would be, if poets fell from steel tightropes when they failed at their books. We'd know what to make of things. But that wouldn't last long. Mediocre poets would work with a net and land languidly, taking their bows.
The pieces in The Cathedral of Mist are beautifully crafted, and very evocative, taking unusual turns with a natural ease that separates Willem from writers who much more willfully embrace the strange.
A nice little discovery (and, in the pocket-sized Wakefield Press edition, a lovely little physical volume, too -- making it easier to take along to read in just the perfect surroundings and circumstances, as Willem would have wanted). - M.A.Orthofer
The Colors of the World by Paul Willems
translated by Edward Gauvin
from The Delft Vase
translated by Edward Gauvin
from The Delft Vase
A story as it was told a hundred years ago
Many years ago there was a small fisherman’s house on the dunes of La
Panne. Rik-the-Fisherman’s wife Marie sat at the window all day long,
spinning thread as she watched the sea. She was tall and thin with a
tanned face and blond hair, and her eyes, from watching the sea, took on
the color of the waters: blue when it was fair, green when it was
cloudy, and black when there was a storm. Now, one day when Marie’s eyes
were black, one stormy day, the fishing boat sank and Rik was never
seen again. Marie was so sad that her eyes stayed black. As the sea
reminded her of her husband, she changed places and sat at the other
window, which looked out on the Abbey of the Dunes.Two months after Rik’s death, a little girl was born in the little house. Marie called her Rika, in memory of her father. Rika grew. She always played alone in the dune and on the beach, for her mother spun from dawn till dusk to provide for them. One evening (Rika had just turned six), Marie began to weep. She wasn’t earning enough money spinning and there wasn’t anything left in the house to eat. She told Rika to go out the next day and keep watch over the sheep for the monks of the Abbey of the Dunes. The monks would surely give her a big jug of milk each day for her trouble.
But Rika replied that she would rather go to the beach. Sometimes the sea tossed up precious objects she would gather and sell.
And so it was decided.
Despite the storm, Rika left the next morning, taking with her a great sack. Day was breaking. Wind chased the sand low over the ground with such speed that it stung the girl’s legs like needles. Seagulls, carried on the gale, cried and turned their heads to see who dared venture onto the beach in such fearsome wind. But the gale swept the gulls away so quickly they hadn’t time to recognize Rika. She struggled against the wind. She could barely stand up straight and the waves made a vast roar.
Then Rika cried out in her clear voice: “Sea wind! Take me where I’ll find fish tossed up by the storm!”
She saw a shell that rolled along and then stopped, rolled some more and stopped again, as though to say: “This way! Follow me!”
Rika began to run, and the shell rolled along before her so quickly that she could barely keep up. Wind and rain buffeted her from behind, and she ran, ran. Gulls kept going by faster than arrows, seafoam flew about her, and the edges of the waves leapt at her feet.
Soon she reached a place where the beach was so broad she could hardly see the end of it. The tide, falling back, had left all sorts of wreckage. It was as though the sea had fled before having enough time to finish packing its bags, leaving hundreds of objects scattered on the sand. There were all sorts of shells (pink and black), crabs, starfish, planks and scraps of wood, wisps of straw and sweet-smelling masses of seaweed. And there were also ten big fish a wave had thrown up on the sand. As Rika filled her sack, the storm died down. The only roar left was the waves.
When Rika got home that night, Marie exclaimed that even Rik-the-Fisherman himself had never brought back such handsome fish. She made a fire, grilled one, and salted the others. Before they ate, she said, “Daughter mine, tell me where you found all these fish.”
“The shell showed me where to go.”
And Rika showed her the shell she hadn’t forgotten to bring back. They put it on the mantel by a bouquet of blue thistles, and when you brought it to your ear you could hear the sound of the ocean. That night, Marie couldn’t sleep. She feared that Rika would start to love the sea, as sometimes happens to the children of sailors who’ve perished in storms. She rose and gazed on her child. Rika was so pretty that Marie smiled and went back to her bed. Happily, she hadn’t seen that Rika’s fingernails were just like little pink shells in every way, which is a sign you are in love with the sea.
Now, two months later, the last salted fish had been eaten. Marie told Rika, “Go keep watch over the monk’s sheep. They’ll give you a pitcher of milk every night for your trouble.”
But Rika began to weep, and said that first she wanted to go down to the water’s edge.
Marie gazed at her daughter with her sad black eyes and said nothing. The next day, the girl left in such good spirits that Marie hadn’t the heart to hold her back.
It was the first day of spring. The sky was even bluer than the sea, and the sun looked like a great yellow flower. The gulls were flying every which way, all white and shining in the sun. Their wild cries rang out. When Rika reached the water’s edge, where the sand was hard, she cried out, “Sea-sun! Sea-sun! Lead me where I’ll find something to fill my sack!”
Then she saw something shining very far away. She walked toward the light along the water’s edge. The waves were so small they barely made a murmur. Only by listening closely could you tell it was the breathing of the sea, asleep beside the beach. Rika had been walking for two hours when she reached the shining thing. It was a crate, fallen from a ship, that the sea had carried there. The crate contained butter and hardtack. It was so heavy Rika could barely drag it over the sand.
That night, when Rika reached the house exhausted, Marie was delighted to see so much food, but her black eyes were sad for she feared that Rika had started loving the sea. Happily, she didn’t see that the child’s eyes were the same color as the water. They were blue and clear like the sea on a spring day, and that was the sign that Rika was now passionately in love with the sea.
“I’ll teach her to spin and weave,” Marie promised herself, and that way she’ll never leave me. And she added loudly, “Just where did you find that crate?”
“The sea-sun showed it to me,” Rika replied.
Now, a few months later, when the last hardtack cracker had been eaten, Marie told Rika, “Tomorrow you’ll go and keep watch over the sheep.”
But Rika begged and pleaded so hard that she allowed her daughter to go down to the water’s edge one last time.
Rika left as soon as it was light. It was a summer’s day, so hot the air was dancing.
But that night, Rika did not come back to the house.
Around six, as the sun was already painting a golden pathway on the waters, Marie approached the window where she’d once kept watch for the Rik-the-Fisherman’s return. The sun was going down and soon only half of it could be seen. It was there, like someone peeping over a garden wall before going on his way.
The sun seemed to say, “How beautiful the garden of the world is! Everything there is green, everything fair, everything joyful. No one ever weeps there, there is no such thing as sorrow. Oh, happy world! How pleasant it is to gaze on your prairies and towns. I shall certainly return!”
And then the sun disappeared and soon the sky itself closed its doors. But then a thousand windows set to shining.
Marie saw none of these marvels. She awaited her daughter. The spinning wheel had fallen silent, the clock had stopped, and you could hear the gentle sounds of the sea. But for Marie they weren’t gentle. Nor did she see the moon there, like a friend who comes to bid you good evening and murmurs, “Can I sit down beside you for a bit? It’s so beautiful out we could sit on the doorstep without saying a word, just sitting side by side.”
But Marie didn’t hear, and her beautiful black eyes were even sadder than usual.
She left the house then and followed the trail of tiny footprints Rika had left in the sand. They led her onto the beach, and Marie followed the edge of the water for hours. She feared Rika had drowned, for the footprints disappeared into the water. The night was so clear and beautiful that no one could seriously believe in bad luck.
Marie searched for several days and nights without finding any trace of her child.
Now, on the ninth day, toward evening, as the sun was painting a splendid golden pathway on the waters, Marie heard a marvelous song in the distance and saw, where the golden pathway reached the edge of the waves, a mermaid lying at the water’s edge. She sang of her seaweed castle in the depths of the sea, and of the child playing in its largest hall.
“Mermaid, is that my little girl?”
“Yes, it is your little girl, she’s in my castle at the bottom of the sea.”
“Mermaid, take me there!”
She begged and pleaded so hard that the mermaid said, “Climb on my back!”
And the mermaid followed the golden pathway across the sea. Never once did Marie turn back to look at the shore.
When they’d reached the horizon, where sea touches sky, the mermaid dove down into the water and ushered Marie into the seaweed castle. They passed through a hundred rooms, opened a hndred doors, and at last the mermaid lifted a seaweed curtain and showed her a great hall. Marie saw her daughter playing with shells.
The mermaid told Marie that it was forbidden to enter the hall and speak to her child.
“Mermaid,” said Marie, “Let me live here. If you will have me, I will be your slave.”
She begged and pleaded so hard that the mermaid gave in and, from that day on, Marie worked night and day, and every day she was allowed to watch Rika from a distance.
Now Marie remembered the colors of the earth—green trees, golden sun, the dark sea on stormy days, white clouds, and the thousand hues light casts upon the world. She thought of these colors so much that her hair stayed blond at the bottom of the sea, and her lips red. And the mermaid often admired Marie’s hair, which seemed to remember the color of the world.
One day, Marie remembered a rainbow she’d seen over the ocean, recalling that all the colors shone in it, each in its place, in an exquisite order.
And she thought, “So does the spirit of God move over the waters.”
She went looking for the mermaid, and said, “Mermaid, let me take my child back to the little house on the dunes. True, I see Rika every day, and you never promised me any more than that, but Rika has become blue at the bottom of the sea. She almost no longer looks like a little girl. For a little girl has red lips and white teeth; she has a face tanned by the sun and eyes whose brown it brightens. Here, she will forget that colors exist.”
She begged and pleaded so hard that the mermaid promised to give her back her child if Marie would weave her a cloak of her hair.
Marie set to work right away. She spun for days and days on end, and when she’d used up all her hair weaving, a third of the cloak was finished.
She had to wait two years for her hair to grow back. Then she wove the second part of the cloak. She waited another two years, and then she wove the final third of the cloak.
Now one day the cloak was done. The mermaid was delighted with it, for it was very fine and very long and there were three colors to it—something quite rare under the sea. The top was blond, the middle gray (a gray sown with white strands), and the bottom was completely white.
The mermaid was quite happy.
“Leave now, since it is your wish,” she said, and opened the door of the great hall where Rika was imprisoned. She put Marie’s hand in Rika’s.
The next day, the fishermen found the bodies of two women at the water’s edge.
One was old, with white hair. On her face was a smile as though she’d seen a rainbow.
The other was a young girl so beautiful that no one had ever seen the like. Her face was bright as the most radiant colors but—a curious thing—her hair was blue, which only added to her strange beauty. Soon she woke, as though from a long slumber, and smiled.
But no one managed to revive the old woman. An aged fisherman recognized Marie, who’d disappeared long ago. She was buried before the little house on the dunes, and soon a white blossom called cottongrass grew on her grave.
Rika-of-the-Blue-Hair went there every day, and when the sky was gray, the dunes blonde, and the blossom white, Rika wept for she remembered vaguely, as from the bottom of a dream, that Marie had saved her.
Later, Rika lived a very happy life, and it was said that she brought happiness to all who knew her. Everyone admired her blue hair. She never went back to the water’s edge, for she was afraid.
Paul Willems (1912-1997) belongs to the final generation of great Francophone Belgian fantasists of Flemish descent. He published his first novel, Everything Here is Real, in 1941. Three more novels and toward the end of his life, two collections of short stories bracket his career as a playwright, for which he was best known in his lifetime. Donald Friedman’s translation of his late novella The Drowned Land was nominated for the Dublin IMPAC Literary Award and published with Suzanne Burgoyne’s translation of his play La Vita Brève (Peter Lang, 1994).
The winner of the John Dryden Translation prize, Edward Gauvin has received fellowships and residencies from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Centre National du Livre, and the American Literary Translators’ Association. His volume of Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud’s selected stories, A Life on Paper (Small Beer, 2010) won the Science Fiction & Fantasy Translation Award and was shortlisted for the Best Translated Book Award. Other publications have appeared in F&SF, Podcastle, LCRW, Postscripts, Tin House, PEN America, and Pseudopod. The contributing editor for Francophone comics at Words Without Borders, he is currently a Fulbright scholar studying Belgian literature in Brussels. He translates comics for BOOM! Studios and Archaia.
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