Ravel
Praise for Jean Echenoz
“The most distinctive voice of his generation and the master magician of the contemporary French novel.”—The Washington Post
“Writing lives! Echenoz’s words are full of grace and surprises, and he has the ability to throw relationships among them just off-center enough to make the images or people they convey seem all the more compelling and fresh.”—The New York Times Book Review
“A gentle tending to perversity links Echenoz to that other master of the perverse detail, Vladimir Nabokov.”—Los Angeles Times
“Echenoz seduces his readers, making us smile, making us laugh, bewitching us with sentences as light as down.”—Le Monde
“Rarely has the difficult craft of storytelling been as well mastered.”—Times Literary Supplement
“A humanist rewriting Foucault with a satirist’s wit, Echenoz deftly and amusingly meditates on who we are and what defines us.”—Village Voice
Also by Jean Echenoz from The New Press
Big Blondes
I’m Gone
Piano
Ravel
A Novel
Jean Echenoz
Translated from the French
by Linda Coverdale
This work, published as part of a program providing publication assistance, received financial support from the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States and the French American Cultural Exchange.
The New Press also gratefully acknowledges the Florence Gould Foundation for supporting the publication of this book.
© 2005 by Les Éditions de Minuit
English translation © 2007 by The New Press
Foreword © 2007 by Adam Gopnik
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, in any form, without written permission from the publisher.
Requests for permission to reproduce selections from this book should be mailed to:
Permissions Department, The New Press,
120 Wall Street, 31st floor, New York, NY 10005.
Originally published in France by Les Éditions de Minuit, 7, rue Bernard-Palissy, 75006, Paris
Published in the United States by The New Press, New York, 2007
Distributed by Two Rivers Distribution
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Echenoz, Jean.
[Ravel. English]
Ravel : a novel / Jean Echenoz ; translated from the French by Linda Coverdale.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-62097-000-3 (e-book)
1. Ravel, Maurice, 1875–1937—Fiction. I. Coverdale, Linda. II. Title.
PQ2665.C5R3813 2007
843’.914—dc22 2006034778
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Composition by dix!
2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1
Contents
Foreword
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Notes from the Translator
FOREWORD
JEAN ECHENOZ’S Ravel is, on the surface, a book that seems to exist largely on the surface. A set of nine intricate, bas-relief cameos etched from the last years of the life of the French composer, it is written with a seemingly dispassionate, detail-obsessed Olympian loft that will recall for some American readers the experiments of the now-old nouveau roman with pure description: fiction made without theatrical motive or obvious moralizing. We meet Ravel in his bath and find out all about his bathing, and about his bathtub. We watch him get dressed and are told all about his clothes—the number of suits in his wardrobe, the styles of his cravats, and the color of his shirts. On board the ocean liner France on his way to America, we learn all about the luxury liners in their great last days, their fittings and their furnaces; and on a train in America, we learn more than an American reader is ever likely to have known about great American trains.
The “inner life” of Ravel is kept largely at arm’s, or finger’s, length: glimpses come to us of his struggle to sleep, of his frustrations at bad interpreters—there is a long and very funny section about his composition of the concerto for left hand for Paul Wittgenstein, which the one-armed and humorless pianist then over-elaborates—and of his shock at the success of his deliberately “unmusical” Boléro. Yet these are kept as mere mummified glimpses; the life of the book, like the life of the world as Echenoz seems to imagine it, consists less in the heroic struggle of an artistic temperament to assert itself against the things of the world than in the gentle, slapstick bumping-intos of minds and passions with the things of the world—boats and trains and suits and hotel rooms, and finally, with the exquisitely described surgical sutures that precede the composer’s death.
Yet two cheering things soon strike the reader. One is that, while Echenoz is a fanatic miniaturist, he is no minimalist. There is a wonderful (and wonderfully well-researched) generosity in his concentration on worldly surfaces, an appetite to fill in all the blanks around the central figure—a love of facts and functions, of the way things work and sound in all their intractable specificity, that for an American reader will recall to mind Nicholson Baker or the Nabokov of Pnin. This expansiveness keeps Echenoz’s fictions, for all their haiku-like slenderness, from ever seeming pinched or mean; there is a gentle and understated respect for what in other hands might seem the mere decor and cliché of life, a relish for obvious things that becomes a sober respect for them. And then Echenoz has, despite the evasion of obvious dramatic (or, perhaps he would think, melodramatic) moments, a real gift for human psychology. Echenoz’s Ravel is a perfect portrait of the artist-as-an-aging-man, recalling one of Rodin’s plasters of the wild-bearded George Bernard Shaw—a thing that touches the edge of cartoon and caricature but is all the more moving for that. The aging artist—overloaded with honors, limited in action, and full of a secret sense of having been, if not misunderstood, then at least more of a failure than the people around him suspect—has never been better drawn. An historical novel in petit point, Ravel is also a very large-limbed portrait of an artist approaching death with his own odd kind of confused dignity.
Though Echenoz’s material here is historical, rather than contemporary, as in his earlier novels, his small-scale but resonant pictures of near misses and lost men have already made a resonant contribution to contemporary French literature. The historically minded critic might see in Echenoz’s diamond-pen-on-glass etchings of a lost time and a now-distant high period of French cultural achievement a sign of the current French cultural predicament, with so much of the good stuff seemingly all behind. A more literary minded American reader might find, in its mix of the pensive and precise, parallels with the work of Donald Bartheleme—and a Francophile reader might find as well echoes of Jacques Tati’s style of sober-minded extended comedy, where the dignity of the central figure is all that there is to keep him from the absurd encroachments of the modern world. Whichever reading one chooses to make, Echenoz’s work is also a reminder of the still almost inexhaustible resources of the French humanist tradition to make writing come alive through a loving rendition of the skin of things.
Adam Gopnik
April 2007
ONE
LEAVING THE BATHTUB is sometimes quite annoying. First of all, it’s a shame to abandon the soapy lukewarm water, where stray hairs wind around bubbles among the scrubbed-off skin cells, for the chill atmosphere of a poorly heated house. Then, if one is the least bit short, and the side of that claw-footed tub the least bit high, it’s always a challenge to swing a leg over the edge to feel around, with a hesitant toe, for the slippery tile floor. Caution is advised, to avoid bumping one’s crotch or risking a nasty fall. The solution to this predicament would be of course to order a custom-made bathtub, but that entails expenses, perhaps even exceeding the cost of the recently installed but still inadequate central heating. Better to remain submerged up to the neck in the bath for hours, if not forever, using one’s right foot to periodically manipulate the hot-water faucet, thus adjusting the thermostat to maintain a comfortable amniotic ambience.
But that cannot last: time presses, as always, and Hélène Jourdan-Morhange1 will arrive within the hour. So Ravel climbs out of his bathtub and, when dry, slips into a dressing gown of a refined pearl-gray to clean his teeth with his angle-headed toothbrush; shave without missing one whisker; comb every hair straight back; pluck a stubborn eyebrow bristle that has grown overnight into an antenna. Next, selecting an elegant satin-lined manicure case of finest “lizard-grained” kid from among the hairbrushes, ivory combs, and scent bottles on the dressing table, he takes advantage of the hot water’s softening effect on his fingernails to cut them painlessly to the correct length. He glances out the window of the tastefully arranged bathroom: beneath the bare trees, the garden is black and white, the short grass dead, the fountain paralyzed by frost. It is early on one of the last days of 1927. Having slept little and poorly, as he does every night, Ravel is in a bad mood, as he is every morning, without even an inkling of what to wear, which increases his ill humor.
He climbs the stairs of his small, complicated house: three stories, viewed from the garden, but only one is visible from the front. On the third floor, which is level with the street, he examines the latter from a hall window to estimate the number of layers enveloping passers-by, hoping to get some idea of what to put on. But it is much too early for the town of Montfort-l’Amaury. There is nobody and nothing but a little Peugeot 201, all gray and showing its age, already parked in front of his house with Hélène at the wheel. There is nothing else at all to see. A pale sun sits in the overcast sky.
There is nothing to be heard anywhere, either. Silence reigns in the kitchen, Ravel having told Mme. Révelot not to come in while he is away. He is running late as usual, grumbling as he lights a cigarette, forced to dress too quickly at the same time, snatching up whatever clothing comes to hand. Then it’s his packing that exasperates him, even though he has only an overnight bag to fill; his squadron of suitcases was transferred to Paris two days ago. Once he is ready, Ravel checks his house, verifying that all the windows are closed, the back door locked, the gas in the kitchen and the electric meter in the front hall turned off. It really is a small place and the inspection doesn’t last long, but one can never be too careful. Ravel confirms for the last time that he has indeed turned off the boiler before he leaves, muttering furiously again when he opens the door and icy air suddenly buffets his backswept and still-damp white hair.
So: at the bottom of the flight of eight narrow steps, the 201 sits parked, its brakes gripping the sloping street, with Hélène shivering at the wheel, which she drums on with fingers left bare by her buttercup-yellow knit driving gloves. Hélène is a rather attractive woman who might look somewhat like Orane Demazis,2 to those who remember that actress, but at that time quite a few women had something of Orane Demazis about them. Hélène has turned up the collar of her skunk-fur coat, beneath which she wears a crêpe dress of a delicate peach color with a vegetal motif and a waistline dropped so low that the bodice seems more like a jacket, while the skirt sports a decorative belt with a horn buckle. Very pretty. She has been waiting patiently. For what is beginning to feel like a long time.
For more than half an hour, on this frigid morning between two holidays, Hélène has been waiting for Ravel, who appears at last, carrying his overnight case. As for his ensemble, he is wearing a slate-gray suit beneath his short, chocolate-brown overcoat: not bad either, although old-fashioned and perhaps a touch lightweight for the season. Cane hooked over his forearm, gloves folded back at the wrist, he looks like a stylish punter or even an owner in the stands for the running of the Prix de Diane or the weighing-in at Enghien, but a breeder less interested in his yearling than in dissociating himself from the classic gray cutaways or linen blazers. He climbs briskly into the Peugeot, sits back with a sigh and, pinching the pleats of his trousers at the knees, tugs gently to keep them from bagging. Well, he says, undoing the top button of his overcoat, I believe we can get going. Turned toward him, Hélène swiftly inspects Ravel from head to toe: his lisle socks and silk pocket handkerchief, as always, nicely match his tie.
You might perhaps have had me wait in your house rather than in the car, she ventures, starting the engine. You could see how cold it is. With quite a dry smile, Ravel points out that he had to do a little straightening up before his departure, it was quite a chore, he was dashing all over. On top of not getting a wink of sleep, as usual, he also had to rise at dawn and he hates that, she knows how he hates that. And besides she knows perfectly well how tiny his place is, they would have been in each other’s way. All the same, observes Hélène, you’ve made me catch my death. Nonsense, Hélène, he says, lighting a Gauloise. Really . . . And when does it leave, exactly, this train?
Twelve past eleven, replies Hélène, letting in the clutch, and in next to no time they drive across a Montfort-l’Amaury as frozen and deserted as an ice floe in the steely light. Near the church, before they leave Montfort, they pass in front of a large bourgeois mansion where the yellow rectangle of one upstairs window leads Ravel to remark that his friend Zogheb3 seems to be already awake, after which they press on to Versailles, where they take the Avenue de Paris. When Hélène hesitates at an intersection, letting the car drift for a moment, Ravel frets briefly. But you’re such a bad driver! he exclaims. My brother Édouard is much better at this. I don’t think you’ll ever get there. As they approach Sèvres, Hélène again brakes suddenly when she spots a man on the sidewalk wearing a felt hat and carrying under one arm what looks like a large painting tied up in newspaper. Since the man seems to be waiting, she stops to let him cross but above all to study Ravel, whose face is more lean, pale, and drawn than ever: when he closes his eyes for a second, he resembles his own death mask. Aren’t you feeling well?
He says that he’s all right, that he should be fine but that he still feels quite run-down. After ordering a battery of tests for him, his doctor, upset by Ravel’s refusal of the prescribed year of complete rest, wanted to put him on stimulants to prepare him for this trip. Which meant that he had to undergo massive injections of cytoserum, natrum cacodylate, and extracts of pituitary and adrenal glands—it was one shot after another, not much fun. And in spite of everything he’s still not really feeling like his old self. When Hélène suggests that he change treatments, he replies that a colleague has just written him with the same advice, urging him to try homeopathy: some people simply swear by it, homeopathy. Well, fine, he’ll look into it when he returns. Then he falls silent to watch Sèvres slip past for a moment but in fact there’s nothing much to see this morning in Sèvres either, except gray locked-up buildings, black shut-up cars, dark buttoned-up clothing, somber hunched-up shoulders. He’s not all that sure anymore that he feels like leaving, now. It’s always the same story, isn’t it: he accepts these offers without thinking about them and at the last moment they drive him to despair. And what about the cigarettes—is Hélène quite certain that his cigarettes will be delivered to him throughout the trip? Hélène replies that it has all been arranged. And the tickets? She does have the tickets? Everything is here, says Hélène, pointing to her purse.<
br />
They enter Paris by the Porte de Saint-Cloud, find the Seine, and follow its embankments to Concorde, where they turn north to speed through the city toward the Gare Saint-Lazare. Things are livelier than in the western suburbs, obviously, but not really by much. They see men on bicycles, women without hats, posters on walls, quite a few automobiles, including the occasional luxury model from Panhard-Levasseur or Rosengart. Coming to the end of the Rue de la Pépinière, for example, they notice, heading down the Rue de Rome, a long, two-toned Salmson VAL3, as sleek as a pimp’s pumps.
Shortly before ten o’clock, Hélène parks her humble Peugeot in front of the Hôtel Terminus, whence they proceed to the Criterion, a bar on the Cour du Havre where Ravel is a regular and two singers of the kind known in those days as chanteuses intelligentes, Marcelle Gérar and Madeleine Grey,4 are waiting patiently with their hot drinks. Ravel takes his sweet time ordering a coffee, then another that he drinks even more slowly while the three young women, exchanging questioning looks, consult the clock on the wall with increasing frequency. Growing worried, they finally move things along, escorting Ravel resolutely across the street to the station, which they enter a good half-hour before the departure of the train. The special isn’t even at the platform when they arrive, Ravel leading the way, trailed by his friends who are helping, more or less, two porters from the Terminus drag along his four bulky suitcases plus a trunk. This luggage is quite heavy, but these young women are so very fond of music.
Leaning out over the tracks, Ravel lights a Gauloise before pulling from his overcoat pocket a copy of L’Intransigeant, which he has just bought at a kiosk after failing to find his customary Le Populaire. Since the year is almost over, the newspaper sums it up in time-honored fashion, recalling the reestablishment of constituency polls, the launching of the ocean liner Cap Arcona,5 the electrocution of Sacco and Vanzetti, the production of the first talking picture, and the invention of television. Although unable to include everything that has happened worldwide this year in the field of music (the birth of Gerry Mulligan,6 for example), L’Intransigeant does mention the recent inauguration of the concert hall Salle Pleyel, over which Ravel lingers, seeking and finding his name, then shrugs his shoulders. When the breathless young women rejoin him, leaving the factotums of the Terminus to pile the baggage into a pyramidion on the edge of the platform, Hélène inquires timidly about the latest news, gesturing toward the paper. Nothing much, he replies, nothing much. In any case, it’s a right-wing paper, isn’t it.