Yann Andrea Steiner Read Online Free Page A

British
lady in an immaculate white outfit, waiting for the train to the cremation ovens.
    For the vast majority, the decent image of that white is what remained. And for others, it was her laugh that prevailed.
    â€œPerhaps she has no story at all.”
    â€œPerhaps. Maybe she went mad from a latent, lingering madness that took away her will to live, to know, to understand. A kind of madness of normalcy might have taken hold of her, of her mind and body. As for me, I’ve done all I could to see that the phenomenon of that station was disseminated. And it was.”
    You asked me if she was dead. I said yes. And that the ceremonial of the station had been disseminated. She didn’t wish to be seen in an unflattering light, owing to the cancer that had made her lose so much weight, that had triumphed over her pale beauty. So she asked to be brought to a large hotel near the hospital where she had stayed and there she took a room. She asked for her most beautiful dress, and to be made up. It was there that her friends saw her for the last time, in death as in life, in death.

I T’S raining.
    It’s raining on the sea.
    On the forests, on the empty beach.
    It’s been raining since nighttime. A fine, light rain.
    The summer umbrellas aren’t out yet. The only movement on those acres of sand are the holiday campers. This year they are small, it seems to me, very small. Now and then the counselors let them out onto the beach, so as not to be driven crazy.
    There they are:
    They shout.
    They love the rain.
    The sea.
    They shout louder and louder.
    After an hour they are good for nothing. Then they’re brought in under the tents. They are changed, their backs rubbed against the cold. They love that, they laugh and shout.

    They are made to sing “We’ll to the Woods No More.” They sing, but not in unison. It’s always the same with them: what they really want is to be told a story. Any story, as long as it’s told. Singing they want no part of.
    Â 
    Except for one. One who watches.
    The child. The one with the gray eyes. He came with the others.
    They ask him, Aren’t you going running?
    He shakes his head no. That child stays silent a lot, for hours he stays silent.
    They ask him, Why are you crying? He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t know.
    Â 
    One wishes everything could be graced by that tearful child. It’s the grace of the sea when the child looks at it.
    Â 
    Is he unhappy here? He doesn’t answer. He makes a sign meaning who knows what, like a minor problem he must apologize for, it’s not important, you see ... it’s nothing.
    And suddenly they see.
    They see that the splendor of the ocean is there, as well, in the eyes of the child watching it.

    Â 
    The child watches. He watches everything: the sea, the beaches, the emptiness. His eyes are gray. Gray . Like the storm, the stone, the Northern sky, the sea, the immanent intelligence of matter, of life. Gray like thought. Like time. The past and present centuries blended together. Gray .
    Â 
    Is the child aware that someone on the beach is looking after him? A dark young girl with eyes at once sad and gay. No one knows. Johanna is her name.
    Once he almost seemed to be turning back toward her. But no, he was looking behind him, back to where the wind came from; because that wind was so strong, a solid block, so strong that it was as if it had changed direction, come from the forests, from a place unknown; as if it had left this ocean sky for the unknown shores of another time.
    Yes, that is what he was looking at: the wind. The wind that had escaped to the sea, an entire shore of wind that flew above the sea.

T HE ONE looking after him is she, that Jeanne, a summer camp counselor, very young and gay. She asks him, What are you thinking about all the time? He says he doesn’t know. She says it’s the same thing for her, she never knows either. Then he looks at her.
    Today beneath the