The Event [1]
(2.1)
Annie Ernaux
Translated by xia23
In Rouen in October, 1963, I expected my periods for more than a week. It was a sunny and warm month. I felt clumsy and sweaty in my coat which went out very early, especially inside the department stores where I was strolling, buying some stockings, while waiting for the courses to take. When I entered my room, in the university dormitories for girls on Herbouville street, I always hoped to see one stain over my underwear. I started to write NOTHING, in capital letters and underline in my agenda every evening. At night I woke up, I knew immediately it was “nothing”. Last year at the same period, I had started to write a novel, this seemed to me a quite distant and just like it never recurred.
One afternoon I went to a movie theater to watch a black and white Italian movie, Il posto ("The Place" in Italian) [2]. It was slow-moving and sad, the life of a young boy in his first job, a place of office. The hall was almost empty. On watching the frail silhouette, in a rain coat, of the small employee, his humiliations in front of the hopeless desolation in the film, I knew my period would not come back.
One evening I let myself be dragged to a theater by some dorm girls who had one extra ticket. It was “Huis clos” (“No exit”in French) [3] and I had never watched this contemporary piece. It was a full house. I travelled with the scene, distant and well-informed violence, thinking continuously that I did not have my period. I only recollected the character of Estelle, the blonde in a blue dress, and the character of Garçon dressed as a flunkey with red eyes without eyelids. I wrote “formidable. If only that I never had such REALITY in my kidneys” in my agenda.
At the end of October I stopped believing the periods would come again. I made an appointment with a gynecologist, the doctor N., for November 8.
In the weekend of all Saints’ day [4], I returned to my parents’ house as usual. I had a fear that my mother would not be interested in my period arriving so late. I was sure that every month she would check my underwear from my dirty linen I brought her for wash.
One Monday, I got up feeling queasy in my stomach and had a strange taste in my mouth. In a pharmacy, they gave me Hepatoum [5], a thick and green liquid which made me sick even more.
[1]. p. 274-278. L’Événement. Annie Ernaux. Écrire la vie, QuartoGallimard. 2011
Annie Ernaux: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_Ernaux
Born 9/1/1940 - , Nobel Laureate in literature in 2022.
[2]. Il posto:
In wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Il_Posto
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WLfcVz3l10
[3]. Huis clos:
In wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Exit_(1954_film)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tq23YQSE4-s&t=70s?
[4]. All Saints’ day:
In wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Saints'_Day
[5]. Hepatoum:
Drug family: herbal medicine aiming digestive; this drug is used for facilitation of the bile secretion in intestine (translated from French).
