The expectation and the cunning of a woman, first novel inspired by Ithaca.
A Greek island, sun and shadows, freshness of a river, laurels, holm oaks and strawberry trees, vines, olive trees, a Mediterranean landscape that the reader will choose to bring to the fore or neglect, at will, in favor of other visions . Sylvie Durastanti’s first novel, known as a translator (William Burroughs, Virginia Woolf, Hunter S. Thompson…), is mysteriously open. You can let yourself be swept away by the sea. Or prefer to descend quietly into the cellar, which is full of jars, trunks and weapons. At the beginning of the text floats a scent of cleanliness, of myrtle, while a band of soldiers, each evening, feasts by bringing up the smell of wine, of meat. They are not barbarians from afar, but neighbors, an indistinct and threatening mass.
Two women take turns speaking. One, “The Mistress”, speaks in thought to her absent husband, who has gone to war unwillingly. The other, the servant Eri, already elderly, calls Eumos, originally a slave like her, to witness. She watches over the course of the days. He leads the herd, or what’s left of it. They are today, says Eri, “The invisible pillars of this house which threatens to collapse” and resists however.
Unarmed son
The house has been deprived of an owner for fifteen years, then twenty. The hostess has no real power, except that of preventing anyone from taking over this place which must remain vacant. Until now, the childhood of his son, Télem, has been a bulwark. Raised without a father, by women, which side will he choose on the threshold of adulthood? He himself is disarmed. When he speaks in turn, he recounts the temptation: “At the beginning, I was happy to be among them. They were men, young and strong men. And I was still just a child, a shy child. When one of them stroked my cheek, the others burst out laughing. So Eri called me to her. I quickly obeyed him. But they laughed at me so much that the next time, when she called me once more, I didn’t obey her anymore. “ This first name, Telem, and some of his toys, including a little wooden horse, should immediately get on the track. However, a long time will pass before the scene is fully revealed: we are in Ithaca, in the company of Penelope, surrounded by the suitors, “intruders” who camp within its walls, forcing it to take refuge on the maids’ floor. They prefer to think that Odysseus will never come back.
Ulysses will not be named until the end. In the end, the question will be whether violence, as usual, will have the last word. Thanks to an earthquake, older gods will make themselves known, an embarrassing revelation. But no need to anticipate. For now the beloved bridegroom is the cunning man, “octopus». Even in his way of conquering his wife and bringing her back to his island, he was cunning. The mistress, the wife: “I had always placed above all the truth, or at least the frankness. From your contact, I understood it: you have to know how to cunning, if necessary. In my naivety, I asked you: How is that necessary? You said : Necessary, that is, useful and political. […] But now I understand better what you meant by useful and Politics. You have to know how to be cunning, when you are playing for survival. ” Knowing that men cannot approach a woman when she has taken out her loom, the hostess gains three years making and undoing the same canvas. She found a way to “Slow down time”. And when she decides to reveal the ploy herself, she is free to invent another.
There is nonetheless a more interesting attitude than cunning. Let’s call it patience. The wife’s mother-in-law exhausted herself waiting, she died. His stepfather relieves himself of his property, as if absolute destitution were able to hasten the return of the absent one. The heroine of Without further ado refuses passivity, which is its strength, and that of the whole novel: “For a long time, I have measured my weakness and I fight once morest sadness. Everyone thinks I am doomed to wait. And they are seriously mistaken. I am not condemned to it. When you left, I chose to wait. I still choose it, day following day. “
Sylvie Durastanti, Without further ado, Tristram, 208 pp., 19€.
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