It is still befitting to erect on the horizon of black humour what Dalí called the ‘imperial monument to the child-woman.’ I’d bet fourteen of my teeth, as Shakespeare’s nurse would say, that she was not yet fourteen years old the first time we were given the chance to hear her read, and she was also Queen Mab, ‘the fairies’ midwife’; she was therefore of no specific age, even though she seemed to be a generation younger than the authors who immediately precede her in these pages. Queen Mab hasn’t changed much since Shakespeare’s day, and it’s still her role to flit athwart men’s noses as they lie asleep. She is the ‘young chimera’ of Max Ernst or the ambiguous school-girl who, under the title ‘Automatic Writing,’ adorns one cover of La Révolution surréaliste. Since pity has definitively packed up and gone, the ‘little old lady’ on whom Salvador Dalí’s ‘moral aerodynamism’ likes to exert itself is in for a rough time. ‘There she is, naked. Her body is shot through with violet knitting needles that she has intentionally stuck there because they look good; and to each needle she has tied a small green ribbon. She has no thighs, only empty space between her groin and her knees. To hold everything up, she has her legs hanging from bits of string. Finally, she gets back into bed; her eyes, out of their sockets, fall at her feet. She has turned off the little kitty’s belly. So it’s very dark.’ Very dark: she’s a child laughing, scared in the night; she is all the primitive peoples who look up to see if their ancestors, who appear a bit tired, and whom they’ve just made climb up a tree that they’re about to shake after having removed the ladder, are going to fall. It’s permanent revolution in beautiful, coloured one penny images – they no longer exist – but Gisèle Prassinos’s tone is unique: all the poets are jealous of it. Swift lowers his eyes, Sade shuts his candy box.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: La Sauterelle arthritique, 1935. Une demande en mariage, 1935. Le Feu maniaque, 1936. Quand le bruit travaille, 1936. Calamités des origines, 1937. La Lutte double, 1938. Une belle famille, 1938, etc.
In a wheatfield,
The man is wearing an ochre lace tunic stained with red.
The horse is naked. Hanging from its tail is a matchbox, from which a grasshopper’s antennae are jutting.
The man is sitting on a white cushion with green designs.
The horse is on the man.
THE MAN: Have we scorned the green diamond?
THE HORSE: I believe we were forced to by law. Now that the law has been diminished, my mind requires that the candles be lowered.
THE MAN: Remember, old seal, that man does not have the right to satisfy employees and that even the telephone refuses to pay taxes.
THE HORSE: To understand is to diminish.
THE MAN: Not so, since we haven’t yet tried our luck. We could do it: it’s easier.
THE HORSE: No, no, don’t believe in those concrete things, for despite their dignity they must exhaust their chatter. Outrage them, feed them cowardly stupidities, and you’ll see how they follow us.
THE MAN: Why should I? Don’t I already have enough crudeness to keep me busy with that millionaire’s tail?
THE HORSE: The love I’ve loved has always appreciated me!
THE MAN: Yes, me too.
THE HORSE: We have reached the same summits.
* * *
‘He absolutely wants to walk,’ said a woman to her neighbour. ‘He says that he’s already learned to walk and that you can go three miles an hour with feet like his. The other day, while I was cooking my peas, he escaped from my hands and began running all over the house. I was afraid he’d slip under the rugs; but since his feet don’t reach the ground, I didn’t try to stop him. It made me happy to see my child standing for the first time.’ The woman let herself go on endlessly about the gait of her child, whom she found admirable.
‘But he’s still too little to walk,’ the neighbour answered with a loud laugh. ‘Mine was running much later than that and he’s walked on stones twice since then.
‘He really is too little, too little,’ the neighbour repeated, and the mother nodded her head and often glanced over at the kitchen, to keep an eye on something. ‘He’s not at the age,’ the neighbour continued, ‘when you can put a child on the ground. His legs could split apart, and I don’t know if the surgeon could come. He’s still so young!’
‘He’s still so little and young, Madam,’ the mother said. ‘But he told me that if I didn’t put him on the ground this afternoon, he would go rolling all by himself in the Botanical Gardens. He even threatened to take money from the box to buy bread for the geese. This morning he woke me up before seven o’clock to remind me to wash his white beret, and I couldn’t get back to sleep. But I won’t put him down until next week. Besides, it’ll be Easter Sunday and I’ll send him to mass. It will be good to walk to church for the first time.’
‘Oh, Madam!’ said her neighbour. ‘There are too many stones at the church entrance. Mine has only walked on stones twice. I’m warning you, Madam, you’re trying to make him perform miracles, but you won’t succeed: your child is still much too little.’
And with that the neighbour slammed her door, cracking two panes. Tiny shards of glass scattered across to the facing kitchen, into which the woman had disappeared, crying. She busied herself in the kitchen, cooked her peas, and watched the time. Her husband would come home exactly at noon. It was eleven o’clock: ‘Still an hour to wait,’ the woman told herself, blushing. Finally, when the clock struck noon, a fat man dressed in red flannel entered the kitchen. He went to kiss his wife and, out of negligence, leaned her against the stove, which was burning hot. Still she said nothing. He sat at the table and she served him:
‘You’re not eating,’ said the man.
‘No, no,’ cried the woman. ‘Our boy will be walking soon. What do you think about … I mean, do you think we should send him to church for Easter?’
The man suddenly became ridiculous: ‘In three weeks,’ he said, ‘he’ll come help me on the site. I can let him cut holes in the doors where the locks go.’ No one answered, and the man went away happy.
That evening he returned, ate the same way, and they went to bed.
The woman could not sleep. She got up often and tried to catch the mosquitoes that were buzzing around the room, then went to the kitchen. She came back sobbing to shake her husband’s shoulders. He answered her with a kiss, and so she got back into bed.
On the day before Easter, the woman went to the cobbler’s to order green shoes, size 9. ‘Your husband must have grown,’ said the store clerk, looking at the order slip.
‘Yes, yes,’ the woman said. ‘So I’ve been told.’
That night, she again slept very poorly. In the morning she got up earlier than usual to lay out some clothes and the palms for blessing. At eight o’clock she went to wake her husband. He got up and the two of them went into the kitchen together. Moving the stove, they uncovered a small white-pine crate pleasantly decorated with artistic decals. From two wide holes in the lid protruded two enormous shapes wrapped in striped socks.
They lifted the crate together and set it on the sofa. Then the woman took a pair of yellow shoes and put them on over the striped socks. She took the crate tenderly into her arms, set it down at her doorstep; then, as she was not strong enough, she called to her husband, who came in his suspenders.
He took a running start and gave the little crate a swift kick, sending it flying down the stairs.