Copyright © 1986 by Marguerite Duras
Translation copyright © 1986 by Barbara Bray
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Any members of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or publishers who would like to obtain permission to include the work in an anthology, should send their inquiries to Grove / Atlantic, Inc., 154 West 14th Street, New York, NY 10011.
Originally published in 1982 by Les Editions de Minuit, Paris.
Published simultaneously in Canada
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Duras, Marguerite
The malady of death.
Translation of: La maladie de la morte.
1. Duras, Marguerite—Translations, English. 1. Title.
PQ2607.U8245A2 1986 843'912 83-49427
ISBN 0-8021-3036-4 (pbk.)
e-ISBN 978-0-8021-9058-1
Cover photography by David Hamilton
Cover design by Robert Anthony, Inc.
Design by Hannah Lerner
Grove Press
an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
154 West 14th Street
New York, NY 10011
13 14 15 16 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9
You wouldn't have known her, you'd have seen her everywhere at once, in a hotel, in a street, in a train, in a bar, in a book, in a film, in yourself, your inmost self, when your sex grew erect in the night, seeking somewhere to put itself, somewhere to shed its load of tears.
*
You may have paid her.
May have said: I want you to come every night for a few days.
She'd have given you a long look and said in that case it'd be expensive.
And then she says: What is it you want?
You say you want to try, try it, try to know, to get used to that body, those breasts, that scent. To beauty, to the risk of having children implicit in that body, to that hairless unmuscular body, that face, that naked skin, to the identity between that skin and the life it contains.
You say you want to try, for several days perhaps.
Perhaps for several weeks.
Perhaps even for your whole life.
Try what? she asks.
Loving, you answer.
She asks: Yes, but why?
You say so as to sleep with your sex at rest, somewhere unknown.
You say you want to try, to weep there, in that particular place.
She smiles and says: Do you want me, too?
You say: Yes. I don't know that yet and I want to penetrate there too, and with my usual force. They say it offers more resistance, it's smooth but it offers more resistance than emptiness does.
She says she has no opinion on the subject. How should she know?
She asks: What other conditions?
You say she mustn't speak, like the women of her ancestors, must yield completely to you and to your will, be entirely submissive like peasant women in the barns after the harvest when they're exhausted and let the men come to them while they're asleep. So that you may gra...