Self-Portrait in Green. Marie NDiaye

      

      OTHER TITLES BY MARIE NDIAYE AVAILABLE FROM TWO LINES PRESS:

       All My Friends

      Two Lines Press

      Autoportrait en vert by Marie NDiaye

      © Mercure de France, 2005.

      Translation © 2014 by Jordan Stump

      Published by Two Lines Press

      582 Market Street, Suite 700, San Francisco, CA 94104

       www.twolinespress.com

      ISBN 978-1-931883-42-9

      Library of Congress Control Number: 2014934781

      Cover and interior design by Sloane | Samuel

      Cover photo by Robert Schlatter/Gallery Stock

      An excerpt from Self-Portrait in Green was first published in A Public Space.

      This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

      Contents

       Self-Portrait in Green

      December 2003 – Evening has come, and the Garonne is rising hour after hour in the dark.

      We all know the river can rise nine meters above its banks before it overflows, thanks to the levees surrounding the village.

      That much we know. It’s the first thing you learn when you make up your mind to settle in this place, eternally under threat from the floodwaters of the Garonne. What we don’t know this evening is what’s coming tonight, or tomorrow—if, like last time, ten months ago, the water will stop at the top of the levees, or, as it did twenty-two years ago, spill over, submerge the streets, invade the ground floor of the houses, sometimes the second floor, sometimes the whole house.

      We can only wait and watch. Once the level nears eight and a half meters, we’ll be told to park our various vehicles on the plateau, just outside the next village. That hasn’t happened yet.

      We can only keep waiting and watching. No sign, for the moment, of the long, slow column of trucks, cars, tractors, campers, and combines rolling through the night, crossing the canal, making for a place the Garonne will never reach.

      We wait, we watch. The object of our vigilance is not some Old Man, it’s not le Mississippi, it’s not le Danube or le Rhône; no one here doubts for a moment that la Garonne’s essence is feminine. She’s brown tonight, heavy, almost bulging.