elle figure avec la mention « durée illimitée ».

"Girls ! & a boy" de Claudine CARPENTER, texte écrit en anglais et lu-traduit à l'oral en français lors de la séance

When I arrived at that small Scottish town for university, I was like a bat, terrified, with my dark wings (in those days they took the form of a black woollen coat) wrapped around me tightly for protection, my eyes peeked out from the top of a dark scarf that was wound up to the very top of my nose. I looked at everything around me avidly but quickly dove back under my wings whenever someone paid too much attention to me, sometimes baring my small sharp teeth if they persisted. However, University taught this young bat many things, few of which were learnt In the lecture hall. Firstly, friends. I met A and B in hall shortly after Fresher's week and we became inseparable in a matter of days, sitting together for meals and chatting, sitting in one another's rooms with mugs of hot tea and chatting, sitting in the library to study together and hardly chatting at all. In second year, we decided to share a house together and our chats moved to the two barred electric radiator in the living room as it was the only reliable source of heating in the tiny seaside cottage we had rented. There, huddled under blankets and drinking what now seems like bottomless cups of tea in the semi-darkness, we talked until the late hours of the night about books, about politics and Tony Blair's rise in the Labour Party, about Allende, Pinochet, Chile and magical realism, about Franco and what influence his dictatorship and its end had had on Pedro Almodovar's films. I opened my bat wings for them, first a crack and then more widely as I learned to trust them, and our conversations haltingly moved on to our childhoods and teen years. With them, I learned that I was likeable, and that the world, even in this cold Scottish seaside town, was not as harsh as I had been led to believe and that I could open my wings and show my face to others. And then, I met Her. One of Her English literature modules had aroused her curiosity about Latin American literature and it so happens that I was available and delighted to show her around the shelves of the Spanish department library. Her build was slight but Her smile was huge, Her green eyes sparkled behind a pair of metal rimmed glasses and I couldn't help but engage in a conversation with her. Her major was (her Honours were) English Language and Literature and her minor was (because it was actually Joint Honours) in the Classics. Her curiosity, quick wits, long dark hair worn in a plat and her (only semi-) ironic blue stockings were enough to make me realise she was my kind of person and to invite her for a coffee. I spent the coffee gazing at Her dimples, Her wrists and Her adorable hands and was awed by the extent of her literary culture and her passion for books. My heart was beating so hard that my wings fell wide open for Her and I was head over heels in love in a matter of hours. The next few months were spent in a blissful and literary blur. Unfortunately, Her Ivy League College's degree program only had one semester in Scotland, and our paths parted on a cold tearful January morning at Edinburgh airport. After a short mourning period, we got back in touch, using a new technology called email to write to each other. I saw how Her love of books and all things literary led Her to a career in publishing, working for (what was at first) a small publisher specialising in feminist writers. It started selling books like hot cakes after Me Too. With Her, I learned that I could be loved, I learned to open my wings wide to receive this love and to give love back. Unfortunately, I also learned that love when it is taken away causes a pain that must be similar to losing a limb. I was a wreck. The pain floored me, regularly engulfed me and I swore that never again would I let myself be burned so hard. Luckily, She bumped into me in a pub, in the first week of third year. She was tall and athletic and blonde. She was originally from Amsterdam and had come to my small university to pursue a PHD in biochemistry although she wasn't sure that she didn't want to switch to pyrotechnics. As she used to say, she didn't know if she would rather use chemical products to melt things down or blow them up. She cycled everywhere before it was fashionable to do so, as she was from a very flat country she got very excited about the Scottish hills and insisted that we go on long hill walks which made me sweat pints despite the freezing wind. She was quick witted, a voluble talker and an amusing one at that, and she often had me laughing until my ribs hurt. Our time together, was happy, fast paced and often hilarious. However, it all came to an end when I realised that She was carrying out biochemistry experiments in the digs She was renting, under her bed, in six half-eaten cereal bowls. The bowls were removed and sterilised by yours truly and all could have been forgiven. It was only when I found three more beneath her sitting room table that I decided that enough was enough and that She was no longer relationship material and that She would be kept in the friend zone. She went on to have a brilliant career in biosciences. She specialises in fungi and mould and actually recently won an award for a new biomaterial that harnesses the powers of a tiny mushrooms and uses them to turn waste and into construction materials. She taught me to open my wings just enough let some love in and to give enough back but to always keep the deepest darkest and most sensitive parts well protected from pain. Then came the eco activist who was quickly replaced by the human rights defender who dumped me for the thespian whom I stole away from her in retaliation. I also dated a show jumper, a divinity student (yes… there are gay divines, would you believe it? We had a hellishly fun time together), the daughter of a city investment fund banker (she left me when she realised that my family house in France was in Normandy and not the Cote d'Azur), a computer scientist (who taught me how to download films on my computer using E-mule), and a DJ with whom I bopped to "Boys and Girls" and who gave me the soundtrack to that period of my life. (There was also a brief fling with Them which was quite an experience) They all taught me that my dark wings, if polished to perfection, would reflect what they most loved about themselves. They taught me that I could be charming, bright and amusing and that I could have a nice time if I stepped into the light and kept the dark painful bits pushed down in my heart for safe keeping. My relationship with Them had made me realise that I had to take a boyfriend home at some point. Maman had been badgering me about meeting someone nice for a while now. As she said "Your friends are all going to get married and forget you and you, you are going to end up all alone in a house with five cats". That perspective worried me far less than it did her but I realised that she needed some reassurance. Luckily, this was the point where I met Alistair. Alistair was perfect. He was tall, his sandy hair flopped curlily onto his forehead and occasionally fell into his eyes. He was gangly like so many upper British upper class boys are at that age and he owned an enviable collection of tweed jackets and corduroy trousers. He had been schooled in Fettes College. His manners were impeccable. He was kind, considerate, intelligent, sensitive and he had a terrible taste in men that often left him heart broken and sobbing on my bed. The rumours about the British Upper class and their openness on the topic of homosexuality are, despite the general misconception, only rumours. His family was Church of Scotland through and through and wouldn't have accepted his deviances any more than mine would. We thus decided that, for appearance's sake, we ought to hitch our wagons together for a while. I hit it off with his family right away. Mother was delighted at the idea of bringing a French element into the family and was constantly asking me for traditional French recipes (may Maman forgive me, when I begged her to give me her tarte tatin recipe, it was to give it to Mother, not to make it myself). Father told me all about the Auld Alliance and he loved that I knew my way around a horse and dogs. My many eccentricities were put down to my French origins and honestly, any member of that family would have been treading on very perilous terrain if they had criticised me for my occasional unconventionalities. It went well with my parents, Maman loved that he was a peer (he was the third son of a Baron and was never going to inherit the family title or even the family pile but a peer nonetheless) and that he knew his Monet from his Manets. Daddy was a little more circumspect, because he found him rather soft and he was rather concerned at Alistair's tendency to go out to formal events in a skirt (the skirt was a kilt in the Macpherson tartan but a skirt nonetheless) but he agreed that he was a nice chap and he was tall which was good. My brother called him "a fucking arse bandit and poofter". We had honed our act well enough and I am certain that he suspected absolutely nothing… it was just that any man capable of loving me had to be a faggot. Our relationship lasted several years. After graduation, we moved to Paris together and bought a small two bedroom flat in the Marais. We had separate rooms and only slept in the same bed when family came over. We used a bolster nicknamed "La Dueña" as a chaperone for those occasions. He cooked, I pretended to clean and made sure that the bookshelves were always well stocked. He landed his dream job in an antique gallery, I taught English and started thinking about what I really wanted to do with my life. I had thought it would last forever with Alistair, that I had found the man for me. Obviously, our relationship was not exclusive, that would just have been weird. There were many "Mister Wrongs" and "Miss-not-quite-rights" and many late night discussions about them. But it just felt right. One day, however I got up and went to the kitchen and found Alistair and Sasha having breakfast together. Sasha was Russian, from Kaliningrad, he was beautiful and sweet and kind. When I saw them on that fateful day, when I saw how Sasha was looking at Alistair, and how Alistair was looking at Sasha, I understood this essential fact: our beautiful friendship was just friendship despite its beauty and that that was good. And slowly, as if I were unclenching a fist, I unfurled my wings. Supported by my memories and protected by the love of my friends, I decided to fly.