The First Garden Read Online Free PDF Page A

her arms. Slowly comes back to herself. Lazarus emerging from the tomb may have experienced this, the extreme slowness of the entire being who must learn again how to live.
    She dons her jacket again as if doing so were the hardest thing in the world.
    Her daughter’s face chooses this very moment to appear, when Flora Fontanges, defenceless, seems to be struggling to extricate herself from a pile of dead wood. Here it is now, raised up to her, childish and pink, the little lost face. Moist black eyes, the whites nearly blue. She shrinks back. A line that is not in the play lingers in her.
    â€œWhat an idea, to bring my daughter here at such a time. I’m drained, dead . . .”
    She says again, aloud:
    â€œI am drained, dead . . .”
    The features of Maud as a child fade away to make room for the director’s stooped figure.
    â€œAmazing! You’re absolutely amazing!”
    He has taken off his glasses. His blue eyes are misted with tears. He cannot see two steps ahead of him. While she begins to smile, without his seeing. The transfiguring smile pushes away the role of Winnie, makes her resemble a beaming actress bowing slightly, after escaping once again the danger of death.
    â€œIt’s so wonderful to act!”
    And she knows no other words, seeks no other words to express her plenitude and her bliss.

S HE TOOK HER LEAVE OF the director of the Emérillon after he reminded her of the date, July third, for the first reading of Happy Days. She is free until the third of July.
    Now she is wandering through the streets with their old restored houses. She sets Winnie aside. Cleanses herself of Winnie’s unattractive face and ravaged body, which cling to her skin. She is once more no one in particular. She is neither young nor old. No longer fully alive. Except for an insistent desire for a cool shower and an icy drink.
    She is alone by the side of the river in the lower part of the city, where everything began three centuries ago. It resembles a theatre set. She is looking for a street name which is also the name of a woman, one that Raphaël told her about.
    Barbe Abbadie, she repeats to herself, as if she were calling someone in the dark. She is seeking a woman’s name to inhabit. To shine forth anew in the light.
    She seeks and does not find. Raphaël must have been mistaken.
    â€œI am drained, dead . . .”
    Her daughter Maud shows herself again. A centre part and heavy black hair on either side of round cheeks.
    Maud’s voice says that numbers are alive. She is a mathematics student and a runaway.
    Flora Fontanges wishes she could chase away the image of her daughter. Asks for mercy. Settles into her fatigue. Begs for time to recover from Winnie’s despair. Is already in search of another role.
    The damp heavy heat makes her clothes stick to her skin. Her mouth is dry as if she has a fever.
    None of the streets near Place Royale bears the name of Barbe Abbadie. Raphaël has probably been dreaming.
    Starting with a name that has scarcely emerged from Raphaël’s dream then, why cannot Flora Fontanges in turn discover a living creature named Barbe Abbadie, decked out in just her name, as in a brilliant skin, at the beginning of the world?
    So many times already, throughout her career, she has let herself be seduced by the titles of plays that are women’s names before she knew anything about the script. Names to dream on, to ripen a role in secret, before the lines burst out, sharp and precise.
    Hedda Gabler, Adrienne Lecouvreur, Mary Tudor, Yerma, Phaedra, Miss Julie.
    A name, just a name, that already exists powerfully within her.
    Barbe Abbadie, she repeats to herself, when the sky abruptly turns black.
    You can trace the first drops of rain as they fall slowly, one by one, widely spaced like dark stains on the fieldstones and the rubble-stones of the old houses that line the Place Royale.
    All the patina of life on the walls and on the roofs has been