Excerpt: 'The War'

I found this diary in a couple of exercise books in the blue cupboards at Neauphle-le-Chateau.

I have no recollection of having written it.

I know I did, I know it was I who wrote it. I recognize my own handwriting and the details of the story. I can see the place, the Gare d' Orsay, and the various comings and goings. But I can't see myself writing the diary. When would I have done so, in what year, at what times of day, in what house? I can't remember.

One thing is certain: it is inconceivable to me that I could have written it while I was actually awaiting Robert L.'s return.

How could I have written this thing I still can't put a name to, and that appalls me when I reread it? And how could I have left it lying for years in a house in the country that's regularly flooded in winter?

The first time I thought about it was when the magazine Sorcieres asked me for a text I'd written when I was young.

The War is one of the most important things in my life. It can't really be called "writing." I found myself looking at pages regularly filled with small, calm, extraordinarily even handwriting. I found myself confronted with a tremendous chaos of thought and feeling that I couldn't bring myself to tamper with, and beside which literature was something of which I felt ashamed.

April

Opposite the fireplace and beside me, the telephone. To the right, the sitting-room door and the passage. At the end of the passage, the front door. He might come straight here and ring at the front door. "Who's there?" "Me." Or he might phone from a transit center as soon as he got here. "I'm back — I'm at the Lutetia to go through the formalities." There wouldn't be any warning. He'd phone. He'd arrive. Such things are possible. He's coming back, anyway. He's not a special case. There's no particular reason why he shouldn't come back. There's no reason why he should. But it's possible. He'd ring. "Who's there?" "Me." Lots of other things like this do happen. In the end they broke through at Avranches and in the end the Germans withdrew. In the end I survived till the end of the war. I must be careful; it wouldn't be so very extraordinary if he did come back — it would be normal. I must be careful not to turn it into something extraordinary. The extraordinary is unexpected. I must be sensible: I'm waiting for Robert L., expecting him, and he's coming back.

The phone rings. "Hello? Any news?" I must remind myself the phone's used for that sort of thing, too. I mustn't hang up, I must answer. Mustn't yell at them to leave me alone. "No, no news." "Nothing? Not a sign?" "Nothing." "You know Belsen's been liberated? Yes, yesterday afternoon..." "I know." Silence. "You mustn't get disheartened, you must hold on, you're not the only one, alas — I know a mother with four children..." "I know, I'm sorry, I haven't moved from where I was. It's wrong to move too much, a waste of energy, you have to save all your strength to suffer.

She said, "You know Belsen's been liberated?" I didn't know. One more camp liberated. She said, "Yesterday afternoon." She didn't say so, but I know the lists of names will arrive tomorrow morning. I must go down and buy a paper and read the list. No. I can hear a throbbing in my temples getting louder and louder. No, I won't read the list.

Excerpted from The War by Marguerite Duras. Copyright 1985 by P.O.L. Eduteur. Translation copyright 1986 by Barbara Brany. Excerpted by permission of The New Press.

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