3
" Hong Kong, please watch over him, he saw that young man Lazaro in a dream and is convinced he’s a terrorist, always has been, and I should never have let him into the house that day with the tray of seafood I’d ordered; this anxiety gives him abominable, uncontrollable thoughts, but the analyst told me to look at it differently, he said I know the road he’s on, and even if it leads down into the abyss, yawning glaciers, he sees things we don’t, fresh tracks under a starlit night, for him brightly lit, so much so that even in the farthest depths he knows he can’t get lost, and you’ll see he’ll find his way back to us "
― Marie-Claire Blais , Rebecca, Born in the Maelstrom
4
" so many white roses whose names won’t survive either, resistance groups and newspapers now as forgotten as soldiers waiting for the enemy veiled in snow, unknowingly digging their own graves in the forests, an entire infantry on alert among the pines and spruce, France, Belgium, elsewhere young German soldiers seeming to sleep, half-opened lips on the snow which likewise moulds itself to their boots and helmets, every one of them forever forgotten, dying for what or whom in these ice fields, oblivion or Hitler, even those still breathing on stretchers, statues of ice, petrified flesh outfitted in frost, this is the story of winter glory, cold and misery, men and horses finished off in the frigid fog, the young in uniform, hands raised and crying, I give up, enough, enough "
― Marie-Claire Blais , Rebecca, Born in the Maelstrom
5
" what was it, oh if only this kind of delay wasn’t happening just when Mai, away at college and so far from them, was coming back for a visit, you can never be sure of course, not even sure she was still his daughter, what he did seem to know was the wild sparrow in Madrid, chirping in despair like the chick this morning, endless cries ignored by merchants, standing with cross-armed in front of their shops, and about to sweep it away with the street dust under its golden newborn feathers, when would all this stop drumming in Daniel’s ears like the sparrow he’d left to its fate among the cables of the Madrid station, and this is what we all do without a clue how it leads to our undoing, unknowingly building airports, stations, steel and concrete deserts, "
― Marie-Claire Blais , Le Jeune Homme sans avenir
6
" Mabel went on, and you Petites Cendres, you haven’t forgotten we’re throwing a party for your Doctor Dieudonné, oh yes, soon as he gets back, the entire Black Ancestral Choir’s going to celebrate Dieudonné, man of God taking care of the poor and never asking for one cent, why did he have to go away said Petites Cendres, carefree in the comfort of his bed, wasn’t his clinic enough, he mumbled into the dishevelled folds of his sloth, I mean why go volunteer there when we’re holding a party for him right here, Mabel’s singsong voice cut in, going from deep to nasal, he’s getting the town’s medal of honour for doctoring all you lazy layabouts and lost souls, and running two hospitals and a hospice, our very own choir director’s going to give him his plaque with those same fingers and long thin red nails of hers, the ideal man, says the doctor, is not one who piles up money but one who saves lives, why he’s even helped our Ancestral Choir a whole lot too, he’s going to need a nice black tuxedo, just what he hates, and Eureka, the head of the choir, will be so proud that day when Reverend Ézéchielle invites us all to sing in her church, "
― Marie-Claire Blais , Le Jeune Homme sans avenir
8
" any moment now that sun would burst into a ball of flame, a furnace to stifle the heart of Petites Cendres, his soul felt blood-raw, liquefied deep down inside him, in a pale, cold sea where the need that gnawed at him would break your heart, a fire burnt out, his heart, that dog should not have been there on Esmeralda or Bahama Street, hunger tottering on all fours, night-prowling around the Porte du Baiser Saloon where he just would not stop living despite all odds "
― Marie-Claire Blais , Augustino and the Choir of Destruction
9
" Fleur listened thoughtfully with his flute in his lap, one hand stroking his German shepherd, when I think how you used to be, Fleur, I really got to wonder, but Mabel couldn’t divert the boy’s gaze from under that overhang of hair, and just as well he thought, so she doesn’t see the anger in his eyes, the rage shaking his body, furious with himself, and though it was a warm autumn and hot at noon, he was glad to retreat deep inside the hoodie that hid his chin but couldn’t stop the piercing words that went straight to the young musician’s heart, Mabel’s voice was like his own, what exactly have you done, Child Prodigy Fleur, not to be that flower crushed in the street, just a raggedy stuffed hoodie, what, what, geez you reek of alcohol, the cocktails your ma serves in the pub by the ocean when the illegal families come out to dance on the beach on Saturday nights and your ma gives them free drinks that knock them out right there, while ever since the divorce, your pa and grandpa stayed on the land, poor land back in Alabama, and haven’t they all just driven you backwards, shrunk you down to their own size, you could have gone to study in Vienna, "
― Marie-Claire Blais , Le Jeune Homme sans avenir
10
" yes, I know, you wouldn’t get anything for your cello and flute and piano lessons, but at least you’d eat every day, child, Garçon Fleur, you remember that don’t you, that’s what they called you when people came from all around to hear you play a Bach sonata on the piano or conduct a jazz band that Garçon Fleur is dead though, just a fake, an illusion the boy murmured sombrely, or perhaps he didn’t and the words simply weighed on his lips and forehead without the strength to force them out of the unseeing shade inside the hood pulled all the way down to his brows; and soon night would fall, time for him to fall asleep like Petites Cendres, his dog stretched out beside him and the flute hidden in the folds of his coat, sleep, thought Fleur, just so I don’t hear or see them anymore, at least not till tomorrow, so even if I play well on any instrument, just a fake, an illusion, it’s because I love it that I can’t get free, now it’s become merely a mechanical longing for the loftiest sounds possible, "
― Marie-Claire Blais , Le Jeune Homme sans avenir
11
" I drink to the health of the child prodigy who finally met the gentleman with the golden ass. Vive little Sébastien, he’ll grow up. And the Schubert song that you said you only played for me, you little viper, you played it for him, your fingers melting on the notes like butter. You’re selling yourself. You’re giving yourself to a fur-trader, a man who’s going to kill seals on their sacred ground, who’s going to set traps for wolves in the wildest, most beautiful depths of the forests, who burns their territory — a merchant whom Jesus himself chased out of the temple! You’re the one who is riff-raff, not the man who kisses me on the mouth at the public pool! That’s what happens when you think you’re delicate, different from the others: you get yourself recognized by a pig. You’ve been recognized, now go lick his feet and anything else you want. "
― Marie-Claire Blais ,
14
" So this is how it would always be thought Daniel, this rush of painful sounds and images pouring through you, whether it was the fate of the sparrow, the chick swept by dust from the streets and calling for its mother, or anyone tiny and young in this distressed universe that laid claim to Daniel’s heart and even his failing breath, his futile, seemingly infinite patience in the face of suffering, no matter how small the creature that struggled, even in this airport they had just closed, nothing flying in or out till who knows when, yet Daniel, a man of his time, was accustomed to this, a lightweight in the balance of things he thought, even if it all seemed so ponderous to him, "
― Marie-Claire Blais , Le Jeune Homme sans avenir
15
" him the ordinary man whose Buddhist spirituality often flickered, really just questing for inner silence with not too much of an outer mess, although the sordid invasions of the everyday already defeated him like a spiderweb wound around his brain with at least one demon of political carnage cancelling out all his most joyous moments, even when he had his daughter Lou in his arms and kissed her, all these nasty little hominids squeezed his mental space chuckling and ridiculing, as if to say we’re the worst ones, the liars, the sneaks, and and we always come out on top, so your happiness is always going to be shaky at best, and the best he could do was push them away with the gradual torpor of silence and yoga practice "
― Marie-Claire Blais , Rebecca, Born in the Maelstrom
