Déborah Levy _ Things I Don’t Want to Know

Déborah Levy _ Things I Don’t Want to Know

Déborah Levy _ Things I Don’t Want to Know

 

 

Many years ago he had left Shanghai nineteen on a ship heading for Paris where he worked in a fish shop. His bedsit in the 13th arrondissement always smelt of the crab and shrimp he cooked most days. This perplexed his landlord who said the room usually smelt of urine - as if that was what was required in Paris. Europe was mysterious and crazed. He had to learn a new language and earn his rent, but it was the start of another way of living and he was exited every day. Now he sold calzone and bratwurst to tourists and he was richer, but he wondered what else there was to look forward to? I think he was asking me a question but i did not want to answer it. p.25

 

The only black people allowed onto the beach were the ice cream sellers who walked barefoot across the hot sand, ringing a belle, shouting, ‘Eskimo pie, choc-ice, eskimo pie. p.45

 

I watched Melissa make herself up in awed. humble silence. p.48

 

I began to listen to how Edward Charles William spoke English, which was the language we all spoke. When he wanted his socks, he yelled at a servant to get them for him. When he wanted a towel for his evening shower he yelled again. He didn’t say the words socks or towel, he just yelled the name of the servant. The name of his servant meant get me my socks, get me a towel.

When his shoes needed polishing, the man who did the garden polished them for him. Edward Charles William called him ‘boy’ even though he had four children and nine grand-children and had silver hair. His name was joseph and he called Edward Charles William ‘Master’. The language Edward Charles William spoke to joseph was the English language but his tone was like a whole separate language. For a start (and i never knew where to start) i could hear that Edward Charles William’s tone was enjoying something too much. I could hear that Edward Charles William needed to be less happy. This thought made me laugh, and every time i laughed i felt a bit happier, which was confusing my new idea about happiness not always being a good thing but there was nothing i could do about it. p.51

 

Writing made me feel wiser than i actually was. Wise and sad. That was what i thought writers should be. I was sad anyway, much sadder than the sentences I wrote. I was a sad girl impersonating a sad girl. p.88

 

Later, when the Chinese shopkeeper walked me up the invisible mountain path to the hotel, he said again, ‘Sometimes in life, it’s not about knowing where to start, it’s knowing where to stop.’ He told me that when he was living in Paris all those years ago, he was lonely at the weekends, so he decided to take the train to Marseilles. He was walking near the port and the mistral was blowing and he hardly spoke any French, but when he saw two cops stop a North African boy, probably no more than ten years old, he stopped too. The boy was wearing a childish white cotton vest. It probably smelt of the soap powder his mother had washed it in. The cops lifted up the vest of a child so as to hurt him more accurately. He found himself working over to the boy who was tough and taking the punches, and he shouted to the cops in his funny Chinese French accent, ‘stop, stop, stop, stop, stop.’ It was not exatly heroic but it was what he wanted them to do. They did stop. They stopped and walked away. p.106