"When are you going to die?" the child asked.
And Grandmother answered, "Soon. But that is not the least concern of yours."
"Why?" her grandchild asked.
She didn't answer. She walked out on the rock and on toward the ravine.
"We're not allowed out there!" Sophia screamed.
"I know," the old woman answered disdainfully. "Your father won't let either one of us go out to the ravine, but we're going anyway, because your father is asleep and he won't know."
They walked across the granite. The moss was slippery. The sun had come up a good way now, and everything was steaming. The whole island was covered with a bright haze. It was very pretty.
"Will they dig a hole?" asked the child amiably.
"Yes," she said. "A big hole." And she added, insidiously, "Big enough for all of us."
--From The Summer Book, a novel by Tove Jansson, translated from the Swedish by Thomas Teal (New York Review Books, 2008). First published in Swedish as Sommarboken (Schildts Förlags AB: Finland, 1972).
And Grandmother answered, "Soon. But that is not the least concern of yours."
"Why?" her grandchild asked.
She didn't answer. She walked out on the rock and on toward the ravine.
"We're not allowed out there!" Sophia screamed.
"I know," the old woman answered disdainfully. "Your father won't let either one of us go out to the ravine, but we're going anyway, because your father is asleep and he won't know."
They walked across the granite. The moss was slippery. The sun had come up a good way now, and everything was steaming. The whole island was covered with a bright haze. It was very pretty.
"Will they dig a hole?" asked the child amiably.
"Yes," she said. "A big hole." And she added, insidiously, "Big enough for all of us."
--From The Summer Book, a novel by Tove Jansson, translated from the Swedish by Thomas Teal (New York Review Books, 2008). First published in Swedish as Sommarboken (Schildts Förlags AB: Finland, 1972).
As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold white wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture, and as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy and to make plans.
Now that the bad weather had come, we could leave Paris for a while for a place where this rain would be snow coming down through the pines and covering the road and the high hillsides and at an altitude where we would hear it creak as we walked home at night. Below Les Avants there was a chalet where the pension was wonderful and where we would be together and have our books and at night be warm in bed together with the windows open and the stars bright. That was where we could go. Traveling third class on the train was not expensive. The pension cost very little more than we spent in Paris.
--From A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway's memoir of his life as a young writer in Paris between 1921 and 1926. He finished the book in 1960 in Cuba. I was reading the Vintage Classics version (Random House: London, 2000). It was first published posthumously in Great Britain (Jonathan Cape: London, 1964). As I understand the story, his fourth wife, Mary Hemingway, edited his manuscripts and notes after his death to create that particular version of the book. There is also a "restored edition," which contains additional stories left out of the original published book (Scribner, 2009).
Now that the bad weather had come, we could leave Paris for a while for a place where this rain would be snow coming down through the pines and covering the road and the high hillsides and at an altitude where we would hear it creak as we walked home at night. Below Les Avants there was a chalet where the pension was wonderful and where we would be together and have our books and at night be warm in bed together with the windows open and the stars bright. That was where we could go. Traveling third class on the train was not expensive. The pension cost very little more than we spent in Paris.
--From A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway's memoir of his life as a young writer in Paris between 1921 and 1926. He finished the book in 1960 in Cuba. I was reading the Vintage Classics version (Random House: London, 2000). It was first published posthumously in Great Britain (Jonathan Cape: London, 1964). As I understand the story, his fourth wife, Mary Hemingway, edited his manuscripts and notes after his death to create that particular version of the book. There is also a "restored edition," which contains additional stories left out of the original published book (Scribner, 2009).
I met M. some months after I moved to Paris from Istanbul. I arrived in the city without a job or a place to live. I was enrolled in a literature program in order to obtain a visa, but I knew even before I came that I would not attend any of the classes.
I had enrolled in the same program once before, a few years after I graduated from university in England. I had a different vision of myself then, and I worked steadily to achieve it. I was living in London with my boyfriend, Luke, and putting together my life piece by piece. I imagined that Luke and I would move to Paris, become its natives, and lead the kind of creative life attributed to the residents of the city. We even spoke to each other in French while we cooked dinner, in preparation for our new life.
--From Walking on the Ceiling, a novel by Ayşegül Savaş (Riverhead Books, 2019).
I had enrolled in the same program once before, a few years after I graduated from university in England. I had a different vision of myself then, and I worked steadily to achieve it. I was living in London with my boyfriend, Luke, and putting together my life piece by piece. I imagined that Luke and I would move to Paris, become its natives, and lead the kind of creative life attributed to the residents of the city. We even spoke to each other in French while we cooked dinner, in preparation for our new life.
--From Walking on the Ceiling, a novel by Ayşegül Savaş (Riverhead Books, 2019).
In 1971 there was little to distinguish us two--one the son of a pulmonary specialist, the other the son of a notorious class enemy who had enjoyed the privilege of touching Mao's teeth--from the hundred-odd "young intellectuals" who were banished to the mountain known as as the Phoenix of the Sky. The name was a poetic way of suggesting its terrifying altitude . . .
The Phoenix of the Sky comprised some twenty villages scattered along the single serpentine footpath or hidden in the depths of gloomy valleys. Usually each village took in five or six young people from the city. But our village, perched on the summit and the poorest of them all, could only afford two: Luo and me.
--From Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, a novel by Dai Sijie, translated from the French by Ina Rilke (Anchor Books/Random House, 2001). Originally published in France as Balzac et la petite tailleuse chinoise (Gallimard: Paris, 2000).
The Phoenix of the Sky comprised some twenty villages scattered along the single serpentine footpath or hidden in the depths of gloomy valleys. Usually each village took in five or six young people from the city. But our village, perched on the summit and the poorest of them all, could only afford two: Luo and me.
--From Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, a novel by Dai Sijie, translated from the French by Ina Rilke (Anchor Books/Random House, 2001). Originally published in France as Balzac et la petite tailleuse chinoise (Gallimard: Paris, 2000).
Love is made not to last, I said. A contestable statement, though he chose not to argue. Love was the word we had used at his leave-taking, he knowing it was final, I sensing it was the case. But between sensing and knowing there were seven hours and four states. Only today did I register that people often in their condolence letters called the loss unfathomable. The distance at the moment of loss could be calculated: 189,200 fathoms. (What does it matter that fathom is no longer used to measure from here to there? To obsolete is to let age, from which death is exempted.)
Not clear, though, is how to fathom time: from a moment to . . . Can forever be the other end point?
But why does it bother you if you insist time does not apply to us anymore? Nikolai said.
--From Where Reasons End, a novel by Yiyun Li (Random House, 2019). The book is a series of imagined conversations between a mother and her sixteen-year-old son in a suspended, timeless state following his death by suicide. Li wrote the book after the death of her own teenage son. It's an unusual, affecting meditation on life, death, and the limitations of language.
Not clear, though, is how to fathom time: from a moment to . . . Can forever be the other end point?
But why does it bother you if you insist time does not apply to us anymore? Nikolai said.
--From Where Reasons End, a novel by Yiyun Li (Random House, 2019). The book is a series of imagined conversations between a mother and her sixteen-year-old son in a suspended, timeless state following his death by suicide. Li wrote the book after the death of her own teenage son. It's an unusual, affecting meditation on life, death, and the limitations of language.