IMAGE & TEXTE ©SYBILLE TDLC
CONCEPTION ©PTOMA MARTIAL
La version Française, ainsi que cette image paraîtront dans le magazine "CYPRINE 3.3" en Septembre 2011.
Je remercie vivement Karin Milliet-Besson pour la traduction Anglaise.
"THE AVIATOR"
Of course , it's a chance and I would say that it's just a miracle if I found it in Grand Ma's things - that heap of useless and dusty things of which you must even search for the meaning- questioning her while she answers imprecisely with an air of contempt in her eyes- a real miracle.
It 's about one year since I own it but it's nearly two years ago that I began at the rate of one night every month.
When the full moon approaches, everybody begins becoming nervous, for example , my brother wrings his hands in a ridiculous way and my sister begins to stock up with sweeties exactly as if they were to disappear next days.
At last , it happens , night comes and imperceptibly we hear them until it becomes so intolerable that you almost wish to burst your ears with knitting needles :
the screams of the trees during the new moon nights... and I prefer to tell you now , deathly screams .
Previously I was like anybody here : I heard them very clearly and I even kept a diary in which I related , in order of arrival , each scream and its origin.
It looked like this :
12.07 am The husband of Sophia K
12.12 am The small twins of Alice B
( because the twins of Alice B died misteriously at the age of three months.
Mistery is the official version but I know without a doubt what happened . )
12.54 am The very young Magda L whom I deeply hated .
01.18 am My father ...
01.35 am The alcoholic cousin of my mother , who was crazy about lizards.
and so on ...
But it was before I owned my helmet : this one belonged to one of the members of my familyat a distant time which almost nobody can remember.
Of course , I had to repair it, I sewed some rabbit skin inside and I added cotton wool at the ears as I do in my bras. Its efficiency is perfect and I'm absolutely alone to have one in the whole village , therefore it goes without saying that everybody is envious of mine.
This summer , the town council published an order which forbids to bury the dead near the trees then they decided to dig up all that jumble of bones from the cemetaries around and now the dead must be burnt like ordinary sausages for barbecue.
But it doesn't change anything.
Anything.
Trees are what they are , aren't they ?
Hundreds of years of roots and beating sap which always rise a little more towards the sky. And the living can't do anything with that. So, even in the plastic world where I'm living, people from the past keep on screaming for not to be forgotten. They shout their small life , their human griefs, their desires , they claim justice and even sometimes love...
Those nights , my mother and my sister go down to the cellar, shaking their hands with an air of detachment, pitifully clinging to the pathetic organization of the next hours . My sister holds the picnic basket and my mother a bag full of socks to be mended, of fashion magazines which they never feel up to leaf,earplugs given by the town council (which are strictly useless ) and all kinds of essential oils for the massage of the face or the feet.
Me , I do nothing , I stay in my bedroom lying on my bed, my head in the animal heat of the aviator's helmet and I think to him:
this ghost of the past who protects me from all these disgusting screams.
My family has a grudge against me and thinks I am selfish.
Moreover, the other day , while I was coming out of the library, Claudio and his stupid friend who has a squirrel face , came to me to intimidate me, adopting a threatening air which they saw in movies :
" One day, you're gonna be killed, pretentious bloody idiot,
there's a lot of people in town who want your helmet,
you really should take cover ! "
I don't care.
My stupid brother says I could be the richest girl in these regions...
I just have to sell the helmet and bear the screams like anybody else.
But it will never happen because I prefer to die than to hear the voices.
When the moon becomes full again , everything stops.
Then I can go out again in the former night to hear the small frogs.
Maybe you know that ?
They make noises which sound like the songs of human who live in Amazonia.
A sound which echoes like wood, between animal and vegetable.
The sound of the living.
