They answered on another from village to village, until the time and space of the night were utterly consumed.‘Je suis quelqu’un qui ne sera jamais revenu dans son pays natal’, Duras stated in 1987, so simultaneously defining herself in relation to the place of her birth and as eternally displaced from it. Their sound was that of the dogs, the country dogs baying at mystery. Every night was different, each one had a name as long as it lasted. The night lit up everything, all the country on either bank of the river as far as the eye could reach. The sky was the continual throbbing of the brilliance of the light. The air was blue, you could hold it in your hand. The light fell from the sky in cataracts of pure transparency, in torrents of silence and immobility. I had that good fortune- those nights, that mother. Sometimes, it was in Vinh Long, when my mother was sad she'd order the gig and we'd drive out into the country to see the nighta s it was in the dry season. The sky, for me, was the stretch of pure brilliance crossing the blue, that cold coalescence beyond all color. The blue was more distant than the sky, beyond all depths, covering the bounds of the world. The light of the sun blurred and annihilated all color. It’s via Hélène Lagonelle’s body, through it, that the ultimate pleasure would pass from him to me.

I want it to happen in my presence, I want her to do it as I wish, I want her to give herself where I give myself. I’d like to give Hélène Lagonelle to the man who does that to me, so he may do it in turn to her. I want to take Hélène Lagonelle with me to where every evening, my eyes shut, I have imparted to me the pleasure that makes you cry out. I am worn out with desire for Hélène Lagonelle. I’d like to devour and be devoured by those flour-white breasts of hers. I’d like to eat Hélène Lagonelle’s breasts as he eats mine in the room in the Chinese town where I go every night to increase my knowledge of God.

Those flour-white shapes, she bears them unknowingly, and offers them for hands to knead, for lips to eat, without holding them back, without any knowledge of them and without any knowledge of their fabulous power. She makes you want to kill her, she conjures up a marvelous dream of putting her to death with your own hands. “Hélène Lagonelle’s body is heavy, innocent still, her skin’s as soft as that of certain fruits, you almost can’t grasp her, she’s almost illusory, it’s too much.

The lover by marguerite duras