The Fata Morgana Books by Jonathan Littell, Charlotte Mandell Page B

nearby, in another pool, bold, graceful children were attempting acrobatic dives from high diving boards of various heights. They always dove in groups, the girls with the girls and the boys with the boys; their temerity filled me with wonder: never would I have been capable of such beautiful, precise, courageous movements. When I climbed out of the water, I sat down still dripping at a little round table and ordered a dish of lime sorbet; I let the sun dry me as I ate the ice and watched the children dive. Two little girls had placed themselves at the edge of the highest diving board, a dozen meters above the water, with their backs to the pool, their arms alongside their body, their little muscles distinct and taut: as if on cue, they simultaneously let themselves topple backward into the void, stiff as boards; suspended in mid-air, they slowly unfolded their arms to form a point above their heads, just in time to break the surface of the water like a powerful arrow. Already other laughing kids were taking their place, I happily finished my sorbet, with each little spoonful savoring the wait before returning to the sweetness of the water.
* * *
My friend had invited me to celebrate his birthday. Reaching the foot of his building, I rang several times at the number I had been told: finally, an oldish-sounding lady replied, in a reedy, almost inaudible voice: “It’s not here.”—“But this is the address I was given!” I said indignantly.—“I know, you’re not the first one. But it’s not here.”—“Where is it, then?”— “I don’t know.” In fact, it was the apartment right across the landing; shrewdly, I waited in the street, smoking, until other people arrived to show me the way. “Ah, you brought something to drink, excellent!” my friend exclaimed, brushing off my complaints about his mistake: “It’s nothing, it’s nothing.” The apartment was small, the crowd dense, noisy; people were drinking, talking, there was no music. I didn’t know many people here, no one actually, aside from my friend. But the people were drunk and excited and it wasn’t difficult to strike up a conversation with them. I found myself talking with a young woman, a Russian. She was drinking a lot and laughing, a brittle laugh, but an agreeable one; one of her white arms had a series of scars on it, thick uneven strokes, which she told me she had inflicted herself, without really explaining either how or why in a way I could make sense of. But maybe she didn’t really want to say. A fat blond woman, rather vulgar, had come in and was kissing her; this was her mother, already drunk, accompanied by a much younger man, his goatee carefully trimmed. “My stepfather,” the Russian girl smirked; I went on drinking. In the hallway, another woman, the mistress of the house I think, caught me by the neck and greedily kissed my mouth. I gently pushed her away. “No? You don’t want to?” She gave me a startled, frightened look.—“No,” I replied, smiling kindly, “I don’t want to.”—“It’s nothing,” she snapped, continuing heavily toward the kitchen. In the living room, the Russian girl’s mother was emitting loud, guttural laughter and shaking her full breasts in front of her companion’s dazzled gaze. Her daughter was sitting at a low table; together with two of her friends (twins, seemingly identical, but who revealed surprisingly contrary characters as soon as you talked to them—one gentle, attentive, and patient, the other harsh, almost enraged, nursing a secret resentment that cast a shadow over all her words), she was taking cocaine, indifferent to her mother who was toying with her lover’s curly hair and drinking. She was drinking too, methodically, she must have already been completely drunk yet she remained lucid, clear, friendly. I too was probably very drunk, like her. She spoke to me a lot; yet she didn’t seem especially interested in me, she would disappear suddenly in the middle of a