Excerpt chosen by Dawn Kidd

Have I shared my trials and tribulations in learning French, I really do try. Sometimes I think I’m getting there and can understand an advert or a notice and feel a real sense of achievement, bear with me I will get there. I therefore really felt an attachment to Violette in Fresh water for Flowers, a French book translated to English. in which  Violette picks up an English book translated to French, Cider House Rules by John Irving ( and her struggle with the language.) A book I read many years ago, in English obviously. Also, the attraction of losing herself in a book, the escape and opportunities it offered, something which I can definitely relate to. Maybe I can also relate to her disillusionment with men too, perhaps though that’s a bit too revealing.

FRESH WATER FOR FLOWERS
by Valerie Perrin.

I was about to push open the main door beneath our studio, when I saw a red apple in the shopwindow, on the cover of a book, L’Oeuvre de Dieu, la part du Diable, a French translation of John Irving’s The Cider House Rules. I couldn’t understand the title. It was too

complicated for me. In 1986, I was eighteen, with the educational level of a six-year-old. Tea-cher, sch-ool, I go, I have, you have, I am go-ing home, it is, good mor-ning Miss, Panzani, Babybel, Boursin, Skip, Oasis, Ballantine’s.

I bought that eight-hundred-and-twenty-one-page book, even though just reading one sentence and understanding it could take hours. As if I were a size 50 and had bought myself size-36 jeans. But buy it I did, because the apple made my mouth water. And for a few months, I had lost my desire. It started with Philippe Toussaint’s breath on the nape of my neck. That breath that meant he was ready, that he wanted me. Philippe Toussaint always wanted me, never desired me. I didn’t move. I pretended to be asleep. To breathe heavily.

It was the first time my body didn’t respond to the call of his. And then the lack of desire passed, once, twice. Then it returned, like the hoarfrost that reappears from time to time.

I’d always been at one with life, I’d always seen the fine side of things, rarely their darker side. Like those waterfront houses, facades gleaming in the sun. From the boat, you can see the bright color of the walls, the picket fences white as mirrors, and the verdant gardens. I rarely saw the back of these buildings, the side along the road, the shadowy side where trash cans and septic tanks are hidden.

Before Philippe Toussaint, despite the foster families and my bitten nails, I saw the sunlight on the facades, rarely the shadows. With him, I came to understand what disillusion means. That it wasn’t enough to derive pleasure from a man to love him. The gorgeous guy’s picture on glossy paper had become dog-eared. His laziness, his lack of courage when facing his parents, his latent violence, and the smell of other girls on his fingertips, had stolen something from me.

He’s the one who wanted a child from me. He’s the one who said, “We’re going to make babies.” The same man, ten years my senior, who whispered to his mother that he’d “picked me up,” that I was a “lost cause,” and that he was “so sorry.” And when his mother had turned her back after writing him the umpteenth check, had kissed me on the neck, explaining that he always told his “old folks” anything to get rid of them. But the words were cast, loaded.

I, too, pretended that day. I smiled, I said, “Fine, of course, I understand.” This disillusion produced something else inside of me. Something strong. As I saw my belly gradually expanding, I yearned to learn again. To know what “mouthwatering” really meant. Not through somebody, but through words. The ones that are in books, and that I’d run away from because they scared me.

I waited until Philippe Toussaint had left, on his bike, to read the back cover of L’Oeuvre de Dieu, la part du Diable. I had to read out loud: to understand the meaning of the words, I had to hear them. As though telling myself a story. I was my double: the one who wanted to learn and the one who would learn. My present and my future bent over the same book.

Why do books attract us the way people do? Why are we drawn to covers like we are to a look, a voice that seems familiar, heard before, a voice that diverts us from our path, makes us look up, attracts our attention, and could change the course of our life? After more than two hours, I was only on the tenth page and I’d managed to understand one word in five. I read and reread, out loud, the French translation of this sentence, “An orphan is simply more of a child than other children in that central appreciation of the things that happen daily, on schedule. For everything that promises to last, to stay the same, the orphan is a sucker.” In French, “sucker” had been translated as “avide.” What on earth could this word mean? I would buy a dictionary and learn how to use it.

Until then, I knew the words of the songs printed inside the covers of my LPs. I listened to them and attempted to read them at the same time, but I didn’t understand them. It was while thinking about buying my dictionary that I felt Léonine move for the first time. The words I’d read out loud must have woken her. I took her slow movements as encouragement.

The following day, we moved to Malgrange-sur-Nancy to become level-crossing keepers. But before that, I went down to buy a dictionary, to find the word “avide” inside it, “A person who desires something voraciously.”