'Numéro Six' ('Number Six') by Véronique Olmi (Review)

Looking back at my reading list recently, I noticed that the last few months have been totally devoid of any foreign-language reading - by which I mean reading books in a language other than English (reading books originally written in another language is a different story altogether).  While Women In Translation Month is all about promoting books others might like to read, I also felt it was time to stretch myself a little and try a couple which aren't available in English yet.  Who know?  After reading my reviews, maybe someone will decide to bring them out in English at some point.

I wouldn't hold my breath, though...

*****
Many readers will be aware of Véronique Olmi's Beside the Sea (translated by Adriana Hunter), which was Peirene Press' debut offering, but virtually none of her other works have made it into English thus far.  However, my French-language edition of Bord de Mer actually came with a companion story, the enigmatically-named Numéro Six (Number Six).  It's no coincidence that the two works are bundled together.  As well as being Olmi's first two published works of fiction, the stories complement each other nicely as they both look at parent-child relationships - just from differing viewpoints.

The story begins with a family on the beach, nicely lined up for a family picture, but this peaceful scene soon turns sour:

"Le père leur demande de ne plus bouger, de sourire à l'objectif.  Il regarde dans son Leica.  Quleques secondes, puis il relève la tête, inquiet.  Il les regarde tous.  Il les compte.  Il les recompte.  Son cœur s'emballe.  La dernière, Fanny, n'est pas sur la photo.  N'est pas dans la groupe.  N'est pas sur la plage."
p.87 (J'ai Lu, 2010)

"The father tells them to keep still, to smile for the camera.  He looks into his Leica.  A few seconds, and then he raises his head again, troubled.  He looks at them all.  He counts them.  He counts them again.  His heart races.  The youngest, Fanny, isn't in the photo.  Isn't in the group.  Isn't on the beach." (***My Translation)

We then switch to the point of view of the missing child and wade into the ocean with her, waves breaking over us as we slowly make our way into deeper waters.  If only someone could come and save us...

Decades later, Fanny Delbast, the child in the water, picks up the tale of her life as she watches over her father.  She is now fifty years old, and her father, a former doctor and war hero, has just reached his century, an old man enjoying the quiet of his final years.  What seems like a perfect father-daughter relationship has a darker side, however.  Fanny, 'numéro six' in the Delbast family, is a woman who has craved her father's attention all her life, and this book is the story of how she tried to get it - starting with her journey into the water.

One of the main themes Olmi looks at in Numéro Six is the fragile bond between a daughter who idolises, and idealises, her father and a man who doesn't really notice her much at all.  Her decision to take on the responsibility for his care in his twilight years is anything but altruistic, even if her brothers and sisters see it this way.  With the mother who monopolised her father's affection finally gone, it's Fanny's turn to sit by her father's side:

"J'ai mis toute mon énergie à trouver cet endroit.  Je te voulais près de moi.  Dépendant de moi.  Quel soulagement pour le aînés, ils n'y croyaient pas, ils ont dit qu'ils pouvaient payer, que le prix ne devait pas être un obstacle, surtout que rien ne m'arrête dans mes recherches.
 Rien ne m'a arrêtée." (p.90)

"I put all my energy into finding this place.  I wanted you close to me.  Dependent on me.  What a relief for the others, they couldn't believe it, they said that they'd pay, that price was no object, just as long as nothing got in the way of my research.
 Nothing got in my way." ***

As we travel through her early life, we see why she longs for her father's affection so much.  An afterthought, a late, unexpected addition to a large Catholic family, she is less Fanny than numéro six, just a number, the last of the children.  Any trick she thinks of to draw her father's attention seems to backfire, her efforts ignored or repulsed.  She even goes to the extreme of faking a debilitating illness in her childhood - one which renders her virtually bed bound for an entire year.
 
In truth, though, the more the story develops, the less Numéro Six is about the daughter and the more it becomes the story of the father.  While the man of the now is a hundred-year-old child waiting for his life to end, the narrator gradually shows us more of his roles.  He was a respected doctor, a feared family head, a loving young son and, perhaps most importantly, a soldier during the Great War, one of the sons of France who responded to the call to arms in 1914.

Learning about the war years through her father's letters, the only things Fanny received from the carving up of her parents' estate, she gains an insight into the emotions behind the paternal mask.  Much of her father's behaviour in later years (his fierce love for his wife, his need for silence) can be explained by what happened during the war years, his dreams haunted by memories of life in the trenches and those who were left behind on Flanders' fields.

For me, the lasting memory of the book is of the father, a man who fought for his country but suffered from the effects of the conflict for his whole life (it's a book which is particularly poignant in the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War...).  Fanny is very clear about what she wants from life, needing her father close to her - there's no room for anyone else:

"L'homme de ma vie, c'est toi." (p.107)

"The man of my life is you." ***

Sadly, as much as she tries to claim her father for herself, she never quite gets there.  By the time her mother has left the scene, the man she has waited for her whole life is no longer really there any more...

Numéro Six is fairly short, even shorter than Bord de Mer, but it provides the reader with a lot to think about.  While I've focused more on the father, another review could easily concentrate on the daughter, looking at the dangers of her intense desire to appropriate her father's love.  It'd be nice to think that it'll make its way into English eventually (I actually preferred it to the earlier story), but I suspect that it's unlikely to happen.  It's an awkward length, too long for a short-story collection, and too short to be published as a stand-alone publication.  Still, if your French is up to it, it's well worth a read - and if there's any publisher out there who wants to prove me wrong... ;)

Oh, I Don't Like To Be Beside The Seaside

Although I've been busy recently with review copies and Spanish Literature Month, I wanted to read at least one French book to take part in Paris in July, and I recently received a little work I'd been after for a while, one which gave me the perfect opportunity to do so.  Véronique Olmi's Bord de Mer is a novella which tells the tale of a French single mother who takes her kids on a trip to the seaside - with a rather shadowy motive behind the impromptu journey.  Wait a minute...

*****
If you think that the story sounds familiar, then you're probably right.  Bord de Mer is the original title of Peirene Press' first offering Beside the Sea, the English-language version being translated by Anthea Bell.  It's a dark book, both in its themes and its setting, with a large chunk of the novella happening at night and the rest during an overcast, rain-sodden day.  Meike Ziervogel, the person behind Peirene, has been very vocal in her belief that knowing what happens at the end of the book adds to the pleasure of reading it.  I can see where she's coming from, but I think I'll leave it up to the reader to work that out for themself - all I will say is that you shouldn't read this if you're expecting a happy ending.

The anonymous mother narrates the tale, dragging nine-year-old Stan and five-year-old Kevin away from school for an unexpected trip to a small, out-of-season seaside town.  It is an attempt to bring them a little pleasure in an otherwise bleak existence, but nothing goes to plan.  The hotel is dark, the room is cramped, the streets are full of mud - and the rain falls constantly, soaking the family whenever they emerge from their bolthole, seeping into their clothes, their bones and their souls.

The first impression of the town warns the mother (and the reader) of the type of story to come:

"Il devait pleuvoir depuis longtemps dans cette ville, on avait l'impression d'avancer sur un chantier, pas sur un trottoir, à moins que ce soit une ville sans trottoirs." p.14, (J'ai Lu, 2010)

"It must have been raining for a long time in this town, it was like walking on a building site, not a pavement, perhaps it was a town without pavements." #

The rain comes to symbolise the struggle the mother faces in her everyday life.  Alone, raising two young boys, there is never a break in the metaphorical clouds; her life is spent under a constant drizzle, which gradually breaks her spirit.

A more pressing and literal concern though is a lack of money.  We are told that she uses her last hundred-franc note to pay for the bus tickets, and when she pours her spare change onto the hotel bed in front of her children, Stan soon discovers that the total is very meagre indeed.  More than the amount though, it is the form the money takes, piles of small metal coins jingling in purse and pocket, that reinforces her social status, leading to scornful looks whenever she wants to buy anything for her children.  This humiliation is just one more part of the narrative that has led her - and us - to the (literal) end of the story...

Bord de Mer is an interesting story, one which can be read in little over an hour, but it's not one of my favourite Peirene titles, and I've spent a long time trying to work out why.  One reason for my doubts have to do with the voice of the mother, a very simple, colloquial voice, one which makes the book easy to read.  While the voice is accurate and extremely well done, it doesn't really suit my reading tastes.  It's too plain and pales beside the writing in some of the other books I've been reading recently.

The major reason for not loving this book though is that I found it extremely difficult to empathise with the main character, and I simply couldn't understand why she did what she did.  In many ways, Olmi has constructed the situation beautifully, avoiding any mawkish sentimentality by sparing the reader the details of any brutality or tragedy in the mother's life.  The flip-side of this though is that there are no excuses, no mitigating circumstances for what occurs, leaving the reader to judge based on the evidence of the text - and pretty damning evidence it is too.

Beside the Sea is a book close to Meike's heart, and picking holes in it does feel a bit like kicking someone's puppy.  It is a good book - I just suspect that I'm not the right reader for it.  Which is not to say that I didn't like it, because I did.  Knowing what was to come (and most readers figure it out pretty quickly anyway), I felt the tension gradually build up, hoping in vain that everything would turn out alright, and then...  The last ten pages or so, the release of all the pent-up tension, the horrific, clinical, detached culmination of all that has come before...  That is what makes reading the book worthwhile.

Towards the end of the tale, as the mother looks out of her hotel window on the top floor of the window, watching the rain fall to the ground, she says:

"La pluie, ça tombe pour ceux d'en bas, moi je suis au dernier étage." p.73

"The rain is falling for the people below, me, I'm above all that". #

As luck would have it, on the night I finished Bord de Mer, the rain was lashing down here in Melbourne, and as I finished the book, my five-year-old daughter came in asking to be tucked in.  Before putting her to bed, I gave her a big, big hug.

*****
# The English translations are my own efforts, not those from the Peirene edition.