intenções não chegam

 um livro que quero fazer há que tempos oscilou um instante à beira do possível. crash.

respirar fundo et on recommence

...

Pouco aventureiro, nunca tinha dobrado o Cabo dos Trabalhos.

arturo z. fleming

he stood there, very fetching with his shamelit face, promising things he wouldn't keep.





...

lying, if ever

Arturo R. Fleming. Third-born. The family clown. Psychological psychology says that's the last born's role, but everybody is the last born for some time. So what the heck, Arturo makes them laugh. Good nights for Arturo R. end in tears and belly aches. You know which ones. The good ones.

a mother can tell

Arturo I Fleming, the first born.
Age 19

age 63

Lucilla had no inkling he was to be the first of seventeen. Plumber, dentist, or rocket-engineer, that's what she thought he would become. At 8, a boy's war gone wild left him deaf of the left ear. He turned into a musicolinguist. He actually invented the branch.  When asked (it happened once), he explained his theory sprouted in the always different ways his many brothers learned to speak. He helped them a lot. (Truth be told, he taught them, Lucilla worked too much to be very present). His method, a strange sing-song that made his mother suspicious of brain damage, got so efficient that almost all of his brothers spoke before they walked. Yep. He himself, Arturo I ( that's an I, not a 1 ) almost stopped talking after the last of his brothers had entererd his first important extra-familial relationship. He'd achieved the practical part of his work, now he embraced theory.
Lucía, on the other hand.... Lucilla pretends her only daughter made herself heard before being born. Not by way of words of course but with a soft rustling, like a girl-cricket rubbing her feet against the fleshy vault. She's Arturo I's weak spot, his one interlocutor. She opens his dams, she lets him flow.
These days, they meet twice a year. Once for Lucilla's birthday, with every Fleming still alive, and once in private. Over clam chowder.

les machins du monde

c'est Louis ( Arturo l.) qui les avait appelés comme ça, les trois gros blocs erratiques derrière le bois. Celui de droite était facile à escalader, le plus petit difficile, et le troisième nous résistait. Trop lisse, trop en surplomb. On essayait régulièrement, pourtant, avec l'espoir que le centimètre que nous avions poussé depuis la dernière fois nous permettrait une nouvelle prise et la victoire. Mais non. A la longue, le nom ne désigna plus que celui-là, l'invaincu. Le machin du monde.

clipped wings

Do you remember as a child flapping your arms to be a birdie? Well that's what he did. I suppose he was afraid i wouldn't understand who he was. But we were in a closed garden and i was, after all, a virgin.

Friedrick Paulson (suite) : un if, un homme

Arturo m Fleming alias Friedrick Paulson ne prend l'avion qu'une fois, pour se rendre au Seminario Literario de Viña del Mar en février 2007. On le voit ici devant le célèbre Reloj de Flores, sur une photo prise un quart d'heure avant que, passant sous un araucaria de toute beauté, il ne soit écervelé par la chute d'une pive de plus de 10 kgs. La photo parvient à sa mère avec les deux seuls exemplaires invendus des "Sauvages Jérémiades", la fin tragique de Friedrick ayant fait exploser les ventes au-delà de toute espérance. Si on se réjouit à Paimpol, on pleure beaucoup à La Rochelle. Lucille vit une espèce de double deuil. C'est que de tous ses fils, Arturo m, homme secret, était celui qui ressemblait le plus à leur père.

Ce qui fait apparaître la question. Les 17 Arturos et Lucia ont-ils tous le même père? Lucille répond oui et non.

F.Paulson (1971-2007)

De son vrai nom Arturo m. Fleming,  Friedrick Paulson est né à La Rochelle, de Lucille Fleming, couturière, et père inconnu. Après une scolarité erratique, il se lance dans un tour d'Europe à pied en longeant les bords de mer. Il choisit de commencer par la Scandinavie, imaginant que suivre la dentelure des fjords sans perdre patience n'est possible qu'à celui dont les pieds sont encore frais. Il marche sans se presser, après deux ans arrive au mont Athos d'où on manque le chasser car sa douceur et ses longs cheveux le font prendre pour une fille. (Faut-il rappeler que Arturo m., comme presque tous ses frères, est totalement imberbe?) Ayant fait preuve de masculinité, et par la même occasion d'un talent rare pour l'apiculture, on l'héberge avec bienveillance dans l'un des ces monastères où dieu ne peut faire autrement que de sentir la figue et l'olive. Il y apprend le verbe. Enfin, les verbes. Ça prend longtemps. Le grec a plus de temps qu'il n'en a jamais cru nécessaire, ou même possible. Ce surplus l'affole de terreur, puis de plaisir, et il se lance. Le soir à la bougie naissent les "Sauvages Jérémiades". Il en délaisse les hyménoptères. On lui fait comprendre qu'il doit choisir. Il va finir son épopée à la Rochelle. Pour tenter d'oublier et la figue et l'olive ( qui pervasent son oeuvre bien à son insu) il se choisit un pseudonyme nordique sorti d'une berceuse sami que Lucille lui chantait, à lui et à tous ses frères. (On peut se demander s'il sut jamais que dans cette berceuse, Friedrick Paulson est le nom de celui qui vient dévorer les enfants qui ne veulent pas s'endormir, bien au chaud dans les peaux de rennes).
"Sauvages Jérémiades" sort en 2005. Douze mois plus tard, par l'entremise de sa maison d'édition, à Paimpol, lui parvient une lettre du Mont Athos, qui ne contient que deux phrases lapidaires. " Tu confonds encore Job et Jérémie. Les abeilles sont mortes". Bien qu'elles soient toutes deux au présent, il a besoin d'un dictionnaire pour les traduire.

outer hebrides

Gravement, elle le fit asseoir à une table près de la fenêtre. Celle, disait-elle, où Paulson avait rédigé les plus beaux chapitres des "Sauvages Jérémiades". Elle commanda du whisky de Skye, au goût d'embruns. Il aurait préféré un chocolat.

some days Lucia's lost brothers appear to her as swans. mostly not, though.

(in the brain connections made over and over again will  find the shortest possible way : the circle)

You know how sometimes, when you drive long-distance listening to the radio, the program you're hearing gets like contaminated by another? First a few notes, half a phrase,  back and forth amidst crackling, then for a moment the intruder takes over and you can hear it clear and precise, without any interferences.
Then you pass the mountain, or the road winds out of the valley and here it is again, the original tune.

Well, yesterday Lucia's whole life went astray for exactly seven minutes, turning into somebody else's.

Lisboa feita em água

Arthur Y. Fleming devant son verre de muscat pense à son premier parapluie, un chinois à 11 baleines, tendu de crême et bordeau. Acheté à midi pour se protéger du déluge provoqué -il en est sûr- par l'enterrement sordide de son ami A., et perdu le soir même presque exprès, pour n'avoir pas à s'en souvenir.
C'est dire s'il pleut.

mars 1949

Lucille Fleming, l'irrésistible, à 15 ans, déguisée en Trompes de Fallope pour le Bal des Débutantes.
( Oui, Fleming. Ça vous rappelle quelque chose? C'est elle qui devait plus tard donner le jour aux 17 Arturos et à leur seule soeur, Lúcia, fileuse d'orties)

getting up

Arturo T. Fleming looking down at Arturo A. Fleming. To his despair, their mother never believed in any order other then entropical.

all the arturos

and this is, well, arturo.b. Born in June of 1967. The stammerer of the family, the silent one. But the best singer too. Over the years B has stood for:
blue bunny (due to his colour when he got home from the hospital, and his long ears)
blood bunny (due to his colour when furious,and his long ears)
be-be-beagle (due to his stammering and budding long-ears complex)

The boys didn't know yet of the love of long ears common in very beautiful women. Later, many a one would invent her own name for him. But none stuck, as hadn't stuck any of his brother's.
He lives alone. Says it's better for his singing.

Maryann's

By day and by night. Yes, and owls have special feathers to fly silently.

all the arturos

that is arturo p. fleming. is or was. He was last seen by his brother arturo o, some 3 years ago, packing a light bag for "the week-end at Maryann's" He left a number, and disappeared. Maryann turned out to be a highway dinner out in the bushes. Its male owner answered the phone, and in a soft voice redolent of all kind of detours - if you cared to listen- he said he'd never heard of Arturo P.
Arturo P. was the first of five of them to be born left-handed. But his receiving foot was the right one. So much so, it broke twice. Arturo P. used to jump high and hard.

all the arturos

Drawing a list of all her brothers being of course Lúcia's idea, we had to begin with the benjamin, arturo d. fleming, born 1977. To any of them, ever, no matter how much they coaxed her, their mother was to reveal what the middle letters of their names stood for, but it was obvious to everybody that not only did SHE know, but that it was momentous. There was a meaning to each small letter, a sense far more important then just a plain initial to a plain name. An oracle maybe, something worth hiding. So the boys took turns guessing, inventing nicknames petnames, sweetnames, according to scars or fashions, haircuts or illnesses. In this Arturo's case, for the longest time, it was easy: D. was for De baby.

Where are the boys now? Sometimes Lúcia sees them everywhere, even in the clouds. Never all 17 of them together, and only when she's looking pretty hard. Technically that would be cheating, she guesses. Shouldn't brothers appear to you? So, well, what is there to say? she has completed the 17 shirts for some time now and the summer,this year, is slow in the coming