RENTRÉE LITTÉRAIRE 

"En librairie depuis une semaine, #rougewestern fait des émules ‼️
On en parle dans @lesoirbe, @lecho.be, @actualitte et même sur la chaîne Instagram de @livraisondemots.

La vengeance de Vanina vous attend, et elle va faire pétiller tous vos sens !

#RentreeLitteraire23 Actualitté– Elle a mille ans, comme en attestent les sillons par centaines comme autant d’ornières sur sa peau.

Dans ce nouveau roman, Isabelle Wéry nous transporte dans les paysages désertiques autant que cinématographiques de l’Andalousie. Une femme, partie en vacances, se retrouve embarquée dans une quête initiatique, à la recherche d’elle-même…

"Oui, la Chine, ça te creuse aussi la tête. Comme la pelle mécanique crève le tarmac de Pékin. Ça te met à cru, ça te déchiquète. Et ça t'abandonne hagarde et désossée sur le bord du clavier, étrangère à toi-même et totale solitaire, tatouée d'idéogrammes rouges, le cerveau enivré d'images aussi fiévreuses qu'une bande de chiens enragés."

Isabelle Wéry est partie écrire en Chine. Elle envoie un selfie qui excède la taille d’un smartphone. En long et en large, elle fait part de son expérience chinoise : sons, odeurs, couleurs et affects frictionnent, fusionnent, tournent autour de motifs comme autant d’instantanés qui s’emparent du corps et de la langue.

Qu’est-ce qu’écrire dans un pays à la fois étranger à soi et proche de soi?
Qu’est-ce voir son propre alphabet déstabilisé par une succession de traits ?
Qu’est-ce qu’entendre ses propres phonèmes changer de ton ?
Qu’est-ce que vivre la Chine ?
Voyage en Chine, trip dans l’univers stratifié de la sensorialité, superposition de dispositifs, de temps et de lieux – l’autrice livre dans ce Selfie de Chine une exploration protéiforme, à l’image du trouble qu’infuse la Chine jusqu’au cœur de l’écriture.

Sweetie Horn, a successful writer, regains consciousness in a coma.

Unable to communicate with the outside world, she starts mentally writing the story of her early years. She remembers being ten years old and living on the family farm in England. Very full of her little self, she demands a horse for her birthday. That is when her body decides to stop growing. She is given the nickname Pony. That really gets on her nerves! She plots her revenge... Poney flottant (“Floating Pony”) is a coming-of-age story and a novel which is every bit as audacious and captivating as its heroine.

It was shortlisted for the Prix Rossel 2019 (French-speaking Belgium’s most prestigious literary prize).

“Poney flottant is a gem which beguiles us, reveals to us another world, snaps us out of our everyday reality, and wrenches us from our civilised and sterile comfort zone. It is an exceptional novel, a poetic bomb which explodes language and foretells of another literature.”

Jean-Claude Van Troyen

About the author

Isabelle Wéry is a Belgian actor, director and author. Born in Liège, she studied theatre in Brussels. Alongside her work as an actor, she makes her own shows. Her distinctive voice truly came into its own with her second novel, Marilyn Désossée (“Marilyn in Pieces”, published in 2013 by Maelström) which was shortlisted for the Prix Rossel and won the European Union Prize for Literature. It was translated in many countries (Italy, Albania, Macedonia, Georgia, Poland, Hungary, Slovenia, Serbia, Croatia).

Poney flottant (“Floating Pony”) was adapted by the author into a performed reading of the same name in 2020.

In the beginning, inside my mother’s body, it must have been great. I’d like to have held onto a few conscious memories - sensations, smells, images.

At the age of eighteen, my Mother and Father were ‘active’ before marriage. Her belly swelled, and they had to dash to a church. Their Parents were NOT AT ALL pleased; that much is clear from their flustered, sheepish faces in the wedding photos. My Mother’s Father called her a ‘little cow’ (well, it’s true that she was marrying a farmboy – from a big farm maybe, but still a farmboy). And my Mother, ashamed of the round sprout that made her tummy stick out, skulked about in the shadows in her small neighbourhood in the big city, baggy cast-offs concealing the protuberant product of her sinful frolics.

That moves me, it does, to think about my Mother in that state of shame, afraid of being judged by her neighbours, wanting to disappear underground. At eighteen, you’re still a child; it’s also clear from the photos that my Parents, before the great transgression, were the picture of youth, childhood, joy, physicality, and so on and so forth. It was only natural that these two stunners should get the urge to roll in the hay.

I have to say, My Father’s side of the family are real horndogs. I just love that image! ‘Chaud lapin’ as the French say: ‘hot rabbit’, ‘at it like rabbits’, ‘horndog’, ‘hot dog’, ‘horny devil’, and all that. The males on my Father’s side certainly had lively libidos. In a way, I quite like knowing that I come from a line of ‘hot rabbits’. It comforts me to know that religion failed to shackle my Ancestors’ bodies. I love listening to now-legendary family anecdotes. How my Uncles (flies undone, I wonder?) used to chase my panic-stricken Aunts (poor things, all the same!) around the great oak dining-room table. And the one who was struck down by a heart attack in the arms of a prozzie in a hovel down by London’s docks. Oh! So many highly charged halos floating around those Ancestral faces! George, my Father’s Father, was supposedly the best behaved. Even so, I’ve often seen Grandpa George sweating at the sight of Madooonna in her spangly shorts on the TV. And my Grandmother freaking out with pure jealousy. As if Madooonna could have burst out of the TV set and gone straight for my Grandpa’s groin. I’m not going to lie, my Grandpa is really really really good-looking. He has magnetic blue eyes, an effortlessly charming smile, and isn’t too hairy. He’s a world away from those half-man, half-wolf excuses for farmers that haunt the countryside around here. No. My Grandpa has a lot of class (he even learnt the violin when he was a boy), a Brrritttish sort of bearing, the stiff upper lip of a Lord. He loves me to distraction. At ten years old, I’m his Princess, his Queen of the cowshed, the cream of the crop. And he makes sure I know it and feel it. Just by looking at me, with super sweetness and unconditional love in his eyes. I’ll never forget the power of that look. Its significance. Love with a capital L.

So I take full advantage. Test the limits of my power over him. I tease, throw tantrums, make outrageous demands. And, one day, he’ll give me a real horse. There we are. I’m still just a little tiny child, and of all the people who inhabit this farm, I’m the one with the greatest power over my Grandpa. That’s way more exciting than all my video games where you’re lord and master of some virtual celestial crust. I’m the ruler of a real world, in which the slightest flicker of my eyelashes sets off spiralling ripples of unrest on our great big Welsh farm.

I have to say, judging by where we live, we must have Henry XXVIII’s blood in our veins, all Willy Shakespeare’s heroes in miniature too. We’ve got battles and wars, we’ve got Vikings, black crows and severed heads. And it’s I, I who reigns supreme over my Grandpa, and that means over the farm too. If I want French toast, Grandmother HAS TO make me French toast. I want fish & chips in bed? I get it in bed. I want a horse? I’ll have one soon. Grandpa said so. It’s just a matter of time, days, of when my birthday falls. I’ll have that horse for my twelfth birthday. Everyone’s against it – they say I won’t look after it, that at the end of the day all the slog will land on Grandmother’s ancient withers but if I want it then my Grandpa wants it, so I will have the animal. I MUST have it. Every conqueror of a Kingdomhas a horse. Only two years to go. But the wait is sooooo loooooooong and painful. So I drag myself from one destructive activity to the next: drop my buttered toast and jam on the floor so that Grandmother has to pick it up and kowtow before me; watch her miserable back, humped like a Loch Ness monster, her back that’s milked too many cows, spent its life bent double beneath the massive mammals. I can’t understand how my Grandpa, so handsome, can have one day married such an ugly thing as Grandmother. She looks old, she’s got whiskers. But he, he’s a dandy, there’s a touch of the Oscar Wilde about him. That slattern that wrinkle glued to the ovens and the slurry sweating her stench at the table she doesn’t eat next to Grandpa I’ve insisted she eats in the kitchen the skivvy she should eat in the sink she should bleed in it she should melt in it she should she should. I eat next to Grandpa. ME.

OK, if I think about it, I know I’m living in an old, rather macho sort of world, and all things considered I prefer to associate with the power of men and enjoy their privileged status rather than commiserating with the fate of the female sex, my so-called sisters. Because, on balance, I think I hate women. I want to be feared by them, terrifying and dictatorial. And their ultimate representative, the mother of all mothers, Mother Nature: I loathe her. I cack in her face, I twist and choke all her paraphernalia. Kill her. That bitch Mother Nature. That stinking whore, stubborn as a dim-witted mule, forces her fickle moods on my Grandpa and me every day of our life on the farm. The ancient rhythm of the seasons, sunless days, hail followed by thunder followed by brass-monkey cold, thaws, showers of locusts, deluges of frogs. Bitch Nature gives Grandpa the run-around every single day. Sometimes I see a flash of old man’s despair in his eyes; their azure blue turns to doctored gin, and I’m scared. He mustn’t die, he is. He is The One who Is. But, suddenly, his back starts to hunch, the skin of his neck sags, his fine features blur at the edges. You can’t die, Grandpa. So I stare at him intently. I offer him the blue of my eyes – we have the same eyes, the same purity, the same cut-glass potency – and he is filled with my gaze, filled with the vital force of ten-year-old me, and the poor old thing drinks me in, like the old men in the House of the Sleeping Beauties, he guzzles me down in one, his lifeblood, and Grandpa’s body is racked with convulsions, feverish gestures.

Live, my King,
Be strong, my King,
Draw your power from me,
And ride off to battle once more, My King.
Crush that stinking whore Nature for me,
That shameful dalliance,
That she-dog with her ancient teats.
And Grandpa, slumped in the sludge, picks himself up, a sequoia of flesh, his cut-glass blue eyes blazing from his face, his hand grasps the three-pronged fork and the blunt object sinks deep into Nature’s yawning maw and she lies like a hara-kiri’d gecko in the dung on the farmyard flagstones. You’re dead, Nature. I know, until tomorrow.
Grandpa, I will bandage your bruises.
I will lick your wounds.
I will be gentle, like a young horse.
You are my King.
My Rocky, My King Kong, My Viking.
And if you please, Majesty, look at me.
If only from time to time.
Lay your iridescent eyes on me,
Turn that regal gaze on me, which
makes me glow.
Keep me throbbing.
Free me from my oh-so-female condition.
Just one non-look from you, and I die;
I’m nothing more than prey to the absence of Thou.
My King, you hold me.
That night,
Grandpa tells me that the time has come.
It’s time to get undressed.
Put on the innocent flannelette nightdress.
Take off the sheepskin slippers.
He opens his bed, wide.
(The Old Woman is asleep on her mat in the kitchen, among the logs)
He opens his arms, wide.
I place a timid little foot onto the bedsheet; it’s white too.
I snuggle up against your chest.
The skin of your neck isn’t sagging now,
Nor are your chops. You close your limbs.
I feel things.

In the early hours of the morning, I’m thirsty; I go down to the living room. The Old Woman is already busy with the day’s cleaning. When I appear, she stops in her tracks. Looks at me. Her face is puffy, her eyes orange. Piercing, withering. She drenches me with hate. I front it out; I’m not afraid. All through this night, in my King’s bedsheets, I am THE Queen. And I’ve decided to be a Queen Cruelllla from hell, pushing its every boundary of decency.

The Old Woman’s glare falters. (Is she really going to flop to the ground, her musty duster stifling her sobs???). Her eyes swivel, unseeing… she takes a shaky step to the left… Then to the right… Loses her balance… Then rushes off to the kitchen like a good little skivvy I like that a lot. I don’t know why, but I like that a lot. Getting my Father’s Mother into that state. I really like that a lot. And I run back to Grandpa’s pit.

A few hours later, I’m woken by a commotion. Grandpa is no longer beside me. Ah yes, that’s it… Today is the great annual flurry on the farm: at noon sharp, all my Grandmother’s Brothers and Sisters will gather for the traditional feast of the Blessed Mary. They’ll drink sherry, eat fish & chips, and finish with a chocolate-mint cake. It’s THE not-to-be-missed event of the summer, peppered with everyone’s reports on their investments, speculations, profits and losses, lands conquered, etcetera; all mixed in with family memories, tributes to heroes fallen in war, bawdy anecdotes, innuendo, preludes to improper conduct. Because, you see, all these Brothers and Sisters are great big fat farmers with numerous estates covering all of Wales, and even far beyond. And usually, at the feast of the Blessed Mary, Grandmother parades around like the supreme queen of the house how I hate her.

But I have a plan.
I will make her die.
I loathe the Dracucucula whiskers in her ears.
I loathe her mangey-mongrel brown teeth.
I loathe her gnarled stumps, contorted by all that manual labour.
Such ugliness is not worthy of Grandpa.

My plan:

1. I don’t get up, I stay in Grandpa’s bed until the guests arrive. That will annoy the Old Woman; she’d want me dressed in navy and white, a model child, ready to bow and scrape to all her shrivelled, hairy little Sisters. She wants to use me like a ceremonial object, for her own glory. It’s true, of course, that I’m a very pretty child, red-haired and pale-skinned, my upper and lower limbs in perfect proportion, my delicate features lightly sprinkled with freckles, a cherub mouth, and legs like a young lamb. Well, no, Grandmother! I’m not getting up, I’m staying put in Grandpa’s bed, wallowing like a pig in muck. I know you’ll moan about it to Grandpa, the two of you will rattle off a few fraught words in your archaic local dialect and your conversation will end with my Grandpa’s command to “Leave the Child alone” (‘Child’ with a great big capital C, got it?).

2. When the slamming of car doors announces the guests, I leap into action! Grandmother, you know that precious crystal sculpture you so adore??? Yes, the one your Godmother gave you on your wedding day… Carefully, I crack it, extracting a small piece from the wing of the angel on the right, the sweetest-looking one that’s holding a candle. With this sliver of crystal, I make a nick in my knee. The purple blood that gushes out is so beautiful, so fresh, pure, strong. Blood of Grandpa’s blood, flowing from a noble line, enough to bring tears to my eyes. And I take this opaque elixir and smear it on the back of my flannelette nightdress. Scarlet streaks, unambiguous, maybe. Methodically, I set out my little stall. Wash my hands. Put a dressing on my split knee. And take a final look at my reflection in the wardrobe mirror: I’m fabulous. Like the angel in your crystal figurine, Grandmother. Except for those red stains on the back of my nightdress, like drips from some no man’s land in my body.

3. I start down the great staircase. Barefoot. Like an Afffrrrican Queen. Every stair sings out its own distinctive note – an Elizabethhhan Chorus in a carpet. I reach the door that separates me from the living room where the guests are jabbering away; I hear sherry glasses clink against their heavy signet rings. I have a perfect image of the scene that’s being played out behind the door: fat, floury farmers’ wives, fat farmers with wild-boar whiskers, playing their provincial game of ‘Dukes’ Luncheon at the Royal Court’.

4. And me, me, me, at that moment I open the door. I hear conversations fall silent as faces turn towards me. I stand facing them. I smile, like the little tots in the adverts for baby soap. I wait patiently until all the guests are looking at me, gushing syrupy cries of “Owwwh, looks who’s coming… Owwwh Sweetie, sweetheart, owwwh she’s so cute… How are you?” And then, in that precise second, I turn around to close the door, and display the blood-streaked back of my nightdress to them all. The effect is immediate. Not one fat farmer flinches. The air in the living room grows dense, unbreathable. You can hear the sherry swilling in the glasses.

5. I turn around again. I move towards the Ladies and Gentlemen; I launch into the round of greetings, kissing cheeks and shaking hands. None of these people are pretty: they’re wrinkled, with tough, leathery skin tanned by the inclement Welsh weather, Captain Hook nails indelibly blackened from working the land, stiff bristles on their cheeks, and most of all, most of all that clinging stench of the cowshed that wafts around them, seeping into their very marrow, the stench they attempt to drown out with heady fragrances from Harrods. Grandpa and me, we don’t smell of the cowshed. We smell of sulphur, debauchery, luxury. But not the cowshed.

6. I glance furtively at Grandmother who, I would hazard a guess, doesn’t seem to be feeling too well she seems to be puking up her guts at every swish of my bloodied flannelette nightie. Then I climb onto Grand-Daddy’s knees. Grandmother protests nervously. Grand-Daddy berates her, still in his old dialect: “Leave the Child alone” (still with a capital C). And, sitting astride my King, I proclaim to the assembled gathering: “Grandpa’s giving me a horse on my twelfth birthday.” Jumbled exclamations stream thick and fast from the old gits: “Wonderful Sweetie, She’s so cute!!!” And I make my escape. Leaving behind me a tribal-lunch-turned-war zone, my Grandmother practically molten, and Grandpa, totally crazy about me.

今天放学时，祖父开着他的路虎卫士越野车来接我。祖父是个很有品味的人（他幼年时甚至学过小提琴），身上有一种英伦气质，一种上帝般的隐忍。他爱我至深。十岁的我是他的公主，是他的马棚王后，是他干草堆上的小蛋糕。他时常对我如此这般说，我也是如此这般感受到的。当他注视着我的时候，他的眼中只有对我的无条件的爱和无限的柔情。这种爱的力量我永生难忘。这样的眼神。这样深沉的爱。

我把这份爱充分的利用了起来。我尽情施展我对祖父的权力。在经过了无数次的戏弄、任性和无理取闹的请求后，终于有一天，爷爷答应送我一匹真正的马！你看，我不过只是一个丁点儿的小女孩，但是在我们家的牧场上所有的生物中，我最能够左右爷爷的想法。在我所有的电子游戏中成为虚拟的星际主宰当然很刺激，但也比不上做真实世界的主人，在这里，连我睫毛的轻微颤动都能够在我们的威尔士大农场上引发一场革命。需要提一句，我们这边的人，血管里都流淌着亨利二十八世的血，我们每个人的骨子里都有莎士比亚笔下的主人公们的缩影。我们经历过大大小小的战争和战役，我们有维京人，有黑乌鸦，有斩首之刑……而我，则是我祖父的绝对主宰，因而也是这座农场的主宰。

坐他的路虎车时，我总爱坐在被称为“死亡之座”的副驾驶位置上。我还不到能坐在那的年龄，但是祖父总会允许我。他跟我说我们要一起去村子里广场上吃午饭。哇！我最喜欢跟祖父一起出门啦！我们去了一家很美的酒吧吃了饭。我点了我的最爱：猪油卷鲟鱼——一种大胆的海陆结合。苏格兰这个村庄里的广场特别像祖母看的一部电视连续剧《唐顿庄园》。老旧的砖房，不规则的石子路，小空地上的一棵树。我们想象着在这能看到玛丽或者安娜1，甚至贝恩斯2。

祖父表现得很亲切，温柔地跟我说话，微笑着听我讲一些无厘头的淘气想法。然而我感到事情有些蹊跷……祖父要等我吃完胡萝卜蛋糕后才告诉我是什么事。他点燃了一支本森•赫奇斯牌浓香烟（是的，这里允许室内吸烟），猛吸了一口，一阵长时间的沉默，他揉搓着他漂亮的黑色皮夹，上面刻着一只小鹿，好可爱。好了，你要跟我说什么，祖父？（应该是关于在我12岁时送我小马的事）。是的，肯定是的。只听他对我说：

“我的甜心，我得了不太妙的癌症，可以说非常糟糕。没办法治愈，没有任何治疗措施能有效。医生说我还有四个星期的时间，但也同时告诉我，我的身体将面临可怕的痛苦和快速的恶化。（一阵沉默）我已经做好决定了，一周后我将接受安乐死。我不想受罪，也不想看着自己的身体完全衰弱下去。我不能强加给你们这场可怕的经历，尤其是你。”

我的脑袋里响起了大规模的弗拉明戈音乐，而且是从未有过的振聋发聩。在巨大的声响中混杂着猪油卷鲟鱼的臭味和骷髅的面容……我的四肢都动弹不得。迷走神经又出问题了，肯定是的。我必须坚强，超级坚强。自控，英式沉着冷静。但是我的脑袋仿佛掉进了那个胡萝卜蛋糕的碎屑里。醒来的时候，我正躺在祖父的膝头，他轻拍着我的脸颊，低声唤着我的名字。就这样，我品尝到了一种全新的痛苦……好了，检查一下心理状况。把痛苦放置好。调整一下呼吸。要有所反应？该作何反应呢？？？不能哭，不能哭，得想其它的法子。看啊。看看我眼前的这个人。我的祖父。他的蓝眼睛。想象他面对死亡的恐惧。爱他。比以往更强烈地爱他。理解他的选择。欣赏他的选择。他是为了保护我们啊，我们。同样于他而言，作为一个维京人的后代，他无法承受自己的身体变成一堆无用的东西。我要坚强。非常坚强。非常非常坚强。像我们所有的祖先一样。我要像一个男人一样坚强（？？？）“祖父，我们还有一个礼拜的时间，你要教我打理农场，教给我所有农场的事务。所有的动作。所有的工具。等到你离开以后，我就继续你的工作。我不去上学了。”祖父开心地微笑了。他的所有子女都离开了农场，没有人愿意永远当农民或者接手这项有几世纪古老的家族产业。我知道祖父很伤心，他疏远了自己的子女们也主要是因为这个原因……是的，我很坚强，我感到自己很坚强。是的，我就是《唐顿庄园》里家族的长女玛丽，为了家业的延续而奉献自己的生命。如果我不这样做，谁来做呢？？？

——祖父，我们走吧，还有好多事要做呢。

——宝贝儿，想不想再来一块胡萝卜蛋糕？

——不要了祖父，咱们走吧。农场还等着我们呢。只有一星期时间了！

——那就听你的，宝贝儿。

故事梗概

甜心霍恩是一名知名女作家。在经历了一场昏迷之后，虽恢复了知觉，但因此无法与外界交流。她开始在心里写她幼年的故事，回忆起十岁时住在英国的家庭农场上的经历。她人虽小却无比任性，要求在生日时得到一匹马。但突然间，她的身体停止了生长。人们为她起外号叫“小马”。而这深深地刺痛了她！她开始计划着复仇……

《漂浮的小马》（《恶化的昏迷》）是一部很有启发性的小说，写法大胆，并且传神地刻画了书中女主人公的形象。

1二人均为《唐顿庄园》中的角色。——译者注

2著有《唐顿庄园非官方烹调书》（The Unofficial Downton Abbey Cookbook）一书。——译者注