3 Plaisirs de Delerm
Matthew Warren
Traduction de 3 plaisirs de Delerm (Delerm, P. 1997.). La Première gorgée de bière et autres plaisirs minuscules. Paris : L´Arpenteur.
« Le Croissant du trottoir » (20-21).
The Pavement Croissant.
First we woke up. With all the care of an Indian scout, we got dressed, slipping in and out of our respective items of clothing. We opened and closed the front door, meticulous as a watchmaker. There we go. We are outside, under the blue of the morning, lined with pink: a marriage in bad taste, were it not for the cold which purifies everything. We exhale a cloud of smoke with each breath: we exist, light and free on the early-morning pavement. So much the better if the bakery is a little far. Kerouac-hands in pockets, we have outdistanced everything: each step is a celebration. We surprise ourselves by walking on the edge of the sidewalk as we did when we were children, as though it were the fringes which counted, the edge of things. It is a pure time, this roaming which we nick from the day while all the others sleep.
Nearly all. Over there, that should of course be the light of the bakery – it is a neon sign, in fact, but the idea of heat gives it an amber sheen. What is needed is the mist on the windows when we approach, and the cheerfulness of this greeting which the bakery reserves only for the first clients – complicit in the dawn.
“Five croissants, one moulded baguette not over-baked!”
The baker, in a vest covered in flour, points to the back of the store, and greets you in the manner that brave warriors are saluted at the hour of combat.
We find ourselves on the road. We can feel it: the walk home will not be the same. The pavement is less free, a bit gentrified by this baguette jammed under an elbow, by this packet of croissants held in the other hand. But we have a croissant in our bag. The pastry is warm, almost soft. This little treat in the cold, while walking: it is as though winter mornings get an inner croissant, as though we ourselves become an oven, a house, a refuge. We advance more slowly, full of the pale light to cross the blue, the grey, the pink which is disappearing. The day begins, and the best of it has already been seized.
« Aller aux mûres » (29-30).
Blackberry-picking.
It is an outing to go for with old friends, at the end of summer. It is almost time to go back to school, in a few days everything with begin once more; and so it is good, this final stroll which smells already of September. We did not have to invite one another, to have lunch together. Just a brief phone call, at the beginning of the Sunday afternoon:
“Would you like to come and pick blackberries?”
“Funnily enough, we were just about to suggest it to you!”
We always return to the same location, along the little path, on the fringes of the wood. Every year, the brambles become denser, more impenetrable. The leaves are a deep, matte green, the stems and thorns that shade of wine-dregs, which look like the colours of the orchard-paper which is used to cover notebooks.
Each one of us is equipped with a plastic box, wherein the berries will not get squashed. We begin to collect without much urgency, without much discipline. Two or three pots of jam will be enough, immediately savoured at breakfast in the autumn. But the greatest pleasure is the sorbet. A blackberry sorbet consumed that very evening, an icey sweet in which sleeps all of the last rays of sunlight stuffed with dark freshness.
Blackberries are small, a brilliant black. But while picking, we prefer to eat those which still contain a few seeds of red, a sour taste. Our hands are soon stained black. We wipe them – after a fashion – on the pale grass. At the edge of the wood, the ferns are turning red, and they rain on the bent sticks beneath the lilac pearls of the bramble. We speak of everything and of nothing. The children get serious, bringing up their fear or their hope of having this or that teacher. Because it is the children who lead the return, and the blackberry path tastes of school. The way is easy, hardly a bump along it: it is a path for chatting. Between two showers, the brightened light still warms. We have picked the blackberries, we have picked the summer. On the little turn to the hazel trees, we slip towards autumn.
« La première gorgée de bière » (31-32).
The first mouthful of beer.
It is the only one which counts. The others, which get longer and longer, more and more insignificant, produce only lukewarm bloating, a botched prosperity. The last one, perhaps, finds in the sadness of the end an element of this power…
But the first mouthful! Mouthful? It begins before the mouth. Already at the lips this frothy gold, freshness magnified by the foam, and then slowly over the palate happiness subdued by bitterness. How long it seems, the first mouthful. We drink it right away, with a falsely instinctive avidity. In fact, it is all written: the quantity, neither too much nor too little makes for the ideal beginning; the immediate wellness punctuated by a breath, a clicking of the tongue, or a silence if they are valued; the misleading sensation of a pleasure which opens to infinity… at the same time, we already know. All the best has been taken. We rest our glass, and we even put it a little further away on the little square of blotting paper. We savour the colour, false honey, cold sunlight. Through a ritual of wisdom and of patience, we would master the miracle which at the same time manifests and disappears. We read with satisfaction the specific name of the beer which we have ordered on the face of the glass. But container and content can be questioned, can be answered in emptiness, nothing will increase. We would like to have the secret of pure gold, and to lock it up in formulae. But before this little white table, worn by the sun, the disappointed alchemist saves nothing but appearances, and drinks more and more beer, with less and less joy. It is a bitter happiness: we drink to forget the first mouthful.