Reading
Marguerite Duras, The War: A Memoir. (translated 1986, Barbara Brey). A short collecton of pieces by Duras about the period between Liberation and VE Day. The first piece, “The War”, is a journal from spring 1945 when Duras awaited the return of her husband, Robert L., from a camp. Robert L. had been arrested and deported about a year previously and was feared dead; the statistics showed that only 1 in 50 detainees ever returned from Dachau. Then, he’s back, picked up in Germany by Resistance associates with forged papers, and driven to Paris. He lies near death with a 106 degree F fever for nearly 17 days. He recovers, but is weakened for years. Duras divorces him and marries another Resistance veteran. Plent of tough and simple writing about what the war did to people. “Monsieur X, Here Called Pierre Rabier”, is a memoir of an odd Gestapo agent who had a personal interest in Duras and her husband. He’s not a good officer, and has strange ideas about opening an art bookship in Paris after the War, as if the war would have meant nothing. Duras is encouraged by her Resistance colleagues to maintain a personal relation with Rabier, which is a rather frightening thing to do. After Liberation, he’s shot by the Resistance. Duras refers to his “illusion that a person may exist solely as a dispenser of reward and punishment”. Four short pieces follow. “Albert of the Capitals” describes an incident where Duras tortures a collaborationist. “Ter of the Militia” is about the fate of another collaborationist who joined a pro-German militia simply because it made him a big man. “The Crushed Nettle” may be about Ter after he escaped detention. The very short “Aurelia Paris”, about an abandoned Jewish girl, is slightly fantastic and deserves to be read twice.
