I had a very reassuring father. The kind of father whose children think: "I
will tell him. Maybe he will find a solution." He helped me a lot in my
life. He gave me the desire to bequeath everything that he taught me.
The only title of nobility of an adult, I think, is to save the children
from sorrow. To protect them. To make them believe – just for a small period
of time - that life is a garden full of roses. Some people tell me: "That’s
stupid, that makes them more vulnerable." But I’m not sure if that’s true.
The vulnerability is a question of skin. The less skin one has, the more vulnerable
he is. The more covered you are with skin, with sun, with heat, the
less vulnerable you are. One has provisions for the future. Do you remember,
in The Sacrifice of Tarkovski, this kid who sprinkled a dead tree
with water in order to make it live again? Well, the children, they have to
be watered before their childhood dies. Water the children, water them! With security. With insolence. With joy.
My childhood, I see it like strict hands towards me. My parents had the
independence of mind that wasn’t liked by everyone. I didn’t speak but I
knew that if I did, they would have listened to me. As it was me who
decided to let me go or not, my parents have always regarded me as an adult.
It was up to me to understand everything! Eager, I was eager, to not
disappoint them.
One always speaks of the benefits of gymnastics, but a conversation with
someone intelligent, who loves you and who gives you this immense credit
that you believe you are of the same value, believe me, that excites me! I
would have liked to be a heroine of Françoise Sagan who would be
picked up with a convertible. Or a girl à la Finzi Contini, you know,
who wears white and playing tennis.
I played tennis, but like a nasty, spiteful little man, only to win. With
the intention to kill the other player, face to face. This kind of genre:
"Hello, a little drink after the set?", no that’s not enough for me. I
played tennis and I went to the concert. On the day of Christmas, my parents
always offered me a book and an opera. When I’m listening to an opera, today
all my childhood is engulfed. The first opera I saw was La Traviata,
I just couldn’t stop crying. I still have the odor of the curtain in mind
which opens at the beginning. And then the cold which arrives at the
beautiful theater of Monte-Carlo. I lived in
Monaco,
I don’t know if I already told you. I had a Teppaz, too. At that time, you
didn’t buy loads of discs, so I listened to them again and again
unceasingly. At the end of the thousandth time my family shouted: "Help, aiuto!" But that didn’t matter; nevertheless, I always listened to
"Retiens la nuit" by Johnny Hallyday, "Ma vie" by Allain Barrière, Adamo,
Georges Chelon. Do you remember this song "Tell me why"?
I also listened to rock: Jerry Lee Lewis.
When I did not play tennis and did not listen to music, I read in my corner.
I have a great memory of the large country house of my grandparents. The
smell. The stairs. The trees. The grass covered with ants and the sun above
our heads. The fear of the dragonflies because we didn’t know what this was.
This house was surrounded by a balcony. One day in the early morning, I
began to read "L’idiot" and the hours passed. At midday, my grandmum
asked me at least twenty times to cover my head because of the sun and hours
later to return indoors not to catch a cold.
There was no electricity in this old mansion, only the oil lamps. And I
still hear my grandmother saying in the evenings: "You will ruin your
eyes!"
L’idiot, I read it in one day, one night and in half of another day.
I can remember that very precisely. When I reread it again, which is not so
long ago, I was astonished that the motivations of the characters I had
found, the obscure moments, still remained there. Rogogine,
Muichkine were also as mysterious and exciting as they were before.
And then, there was
Racine.
At 15 years, when you have no friends, no loves and you hear suddenly the
words of Bérénice: "I wanted, Seigneur, I wanted to be loved…" the
shock of these words… And Claudel… My sister and I, we two shared the
same room. And I thought – and still think! - that the things that are
beautiful must be uttered. I am one of those boring people who say: "Listen,
I will tell you this phrase because it seems wonderful to me…" And the other
people who resign say: "Well, okay, if you want to…"
And I can still see myself standing in front of my bed, reciting Claudel
for my sister. Claudel, you have to recite him. You don’t read in
silence, only for yourself.
I had insane laughter at school. Especially with teachers who were angry
easily. "The first that I take to chatter." That, that appeared irresistible
for me. I had insane laughter "against". That kind of: "I will destroy you
with my insane laughter." And as I had very intelligent parents, the idiotic
authority put me into dealy rages.
One could believe that I remember my childhood very well. In fact, no,
almost nothing until I was 8 years old. The sounds, and nothing else: The
boats of the fishermen, the morning; their lapping in the water always had
waken me. Or the flashes, you know, like in "La Maison du docteur Edwards".
"The house of doctor Edwards". A man who says: "I passed between the drops".
And me, who looked at him asking myself how he could do that. This
expression, when someone uses it in front of me, that always reminds me
strangely of this man. He wore something in blue, out of plastic. Maybe a
gardener… No, I don’t remember…
I don’t think that someone really quits his childhood. One can reject it, of
course, but that’s the best proof that one is stuck in it. Childhood is like
a primeval forest. Often, when you live it, you have to put up with it. But,
one invents a series of obscure rooms, which you can’t fully explore later
on. The first 8 years which I can’t remember any more, I didn’t forget them.
They are here, in these rooms which open step by step.
For example, I adore the storms, but I hate that it recovers
to make sun on the wet macadam. That plunges me in an unimaginable fear.
Well, I’m sure that all our irrational fears come from these obscure rooms
which we have to visit! Because you are the sole master on board there. You
are - and be aware of that - your own actor, your own director, your own
choreographer.
To be able to order, like a lighting engineer: "Here, light up his
memory for me, even when it’s neither amusing, nor happy, just this memory and
nothing but this memory!" What a feeling! In the moments of doubt, of fear,
where one says to oneself: "Why should I do that?" What a happiness this is,
to visit the obscure rooms!
And it’s a voyage which you have to make on your own. Especially not with a
psychoanalyst. I don’t like when someone reduces your childhood to some well
arranged objects in a box of shoes. And I don’t like when someone helps me!
To eliminate nothing. I want to my own Christophe Colomb in my memory.
To get lost maybe, but only alone! And to invent, invent…
Because, one always invents his childhood. One paints it out of gold or out
of black, but it is always painted! Each one of us has a little Proust
in himself, who could tell us, without the talent of Marcel, the same
disasters, the same errors, the same failures, the same humiliations, the
same illusions.
You are sitting on a public bench, you see people passing, and all their
destinies become enthralling, moving and passionate when they are speaking
about their childhood. Or their first love. "Boy meets girl, and then?" some
will say. Yes, but then somebody says to you: "I met him/her in this bar" or
like Proust: "For a long time I lay down early", suddenly these details
become sublime. They illuminate you. Like in the cinema.
Did that never happen to you: You are sitting at a perfect dinner, with
good company, everything goes well, Madame la Marquise, and to
surprise, in a phrase, a flash in the eye of the others, a sparkling, the
desire to play the insane, to play the child…? And then, very fast, schlak!
The propriety, the career, the company, the taxes. You become aware of all
these small deaths which surround you, far away from the child who played in
the garden.
The moral, is inculcated into our heads with strikes of hammers. It became
our second nature. But it’s the second nature with which it is necessary to
travel! Not to lose to be free, indivisible or unique so that there can
exist each of us. The child in a savage state will get polished, will be
made enjoyable, will be calmed as time passes: "Cut your hair!", "Give a
good answer to the teacher", "Say hello to the dame!"
You know the phrase of Fitzgerald: "I understood very quickly that
life is a slow demolition process." Okay, it’s true! On the other hand, I
often say to myself: "Well, it’s up to us both, a slow
demolition process!" Life does not have taste – I did not say a reason - without this
dialogue between our childhood and us. Between us and us, in fact.
Everything we have lost and everything we’ve kept. Everything that we have
handed over and everything we have never handed over, even for not obtaining
something… It’s ridiculous, but only this is true. Only for that the game is
worth the candle.
©
FANNY ARDANT Online
Translated by Katherine
Edited by George Sand
