The Years

THE YEARS
ANNIE ERNAUX
Translated by
Alison L. Strayer
SEVEN STORIES PRESS
New York • Oakland • London

of phrase that others used without a thought and which we doubted
—turns
ever be able to use, il est indéniable que, force est de constater
we’d
sentences one should have forgotten, more tenacious than others
—dreadful
to the e ort expended to suppress them, you look like a decrepit whore
due
words of men in bed at night, Do with me what you will, I am your
—the
thing
words forever bound to certain people, like catchwords, or to a speci c
—the
on the N14 because a passenger happened to say them just as we were
spot
by, and we cannot pass that place again without the words leaping up
driving
the buried water jets at the Summer Palace of Peter the Great, which spray
like
grammar book examples, quotes, insults, songs, sentences copied into
—the
when we were teens
notebooks
with their meanings so you didn’t need to look them up each time
—to exist is to drink oneself without thirst
—what were you doing on September 11, 2001?
—in illo tempore at Mass on Sunday
kroumir, faire du chambard, ça valait mille! tu es un petit ballot, 1
—vieux
expressions, heard again by chance, suddenly precious as objects lost
outdated
and found again, and you wonder how they’ve been saved from oblivion
when you walk across them
—l’abbé Trublet compilait, compilait, compilait
—glory for a woman can only be the dazzling mourning of happiness
—our memory is outside us, in a rainy breath of time
—Perfection for a nun is to spend her life as a virgin and to die as a saint
—Saucy spoonerisms: the acrobats displayed some cunning stunts, the explorer

capable of the best and the worst, but at being the worst I’m the best! so if
(I’m
gay, why don’t you laugh? I’ll be brief, said King Pepin the Short and
you’re
out of the monster’s belly, Jonas declared, you don’t need to be a
climbing
sturgeon to know that’s dolphinitely no minnow—the puns heard a
brain
times, which had ceased to amuse or amaze us long ago; hackneyed,
thousand
irritating, they served no purpose but to consolidate the family esprit de
only
and disappeared when the couple blew apart though still sprang to mind
corps,
incongruous, inappropriate outside of the former tribe—basically,
sometimes,
that we are astonished ever existed—mastoc, hefty (Flaubert in a letter
—words
Louise Colet), pioncer, to kip down (George Sand to Flaubert)!
to
and English. Russian learned in six months for a Soviet—nothing left
—Latin
it now—da svidania, ya tebia lioubliou kharacho
of
so tired, we were astonished when others dared to utter them, the
—metaphors
on the cake
icing
à côté du vélo, to pedal next to the bicycle (wasted e ort) became
—pédaler
dans la choucroûte, to pedal in sauerkraut (go nowhere fast), then in
pédaler
puts his mess in the cashbox
was a lucky charm, a little pig with a heart / that she bought at the market for
—it
hundred sous / a hundred sous is a pittance, between me and you
a
—mon histoire c’est l’histoire d’un amour
—can you tirlipote with a fork? Can you put a schmilblick in a baby bottle?
all that remained of it, after years of separation)
—what is marriage? A con-promise
—O Mother buried outside the rst garden
semolina (go in circles, spin one’s wheels), then nothing—obsolete expressions
—the men’s words we didn’t like, come, jerk o

shouting later you’ll spit in our faces, boys wheeling around on Vespas
mother
Mass, herself with the curly perm (as in the photo taken in the school
after
or with her homework spread out on the greasy oilcloth-covered table,
garden),
her father liked to “rustle up a snack” (words return too, like a forgotten
where
and the things she read (Con dences, romances by Delly), the songs
language),
Mariano, memories of academic excellence and social inferiority (the part of
of
photos that cannot be seen), all the things she has buried as shameful and
the
are now worthy of retrieval, unfolding, in the light of intelligence. As
which
memory is gradually freed of humiliation, the future again becomes a eld
her
action. Fighting for women’s rights to abortion, against social injustice, and
of
how she has become the woman she is today, are all part of the
understanding
endeavor.
same
her memories of the years that have just gone by, she nds none she
Among
to be an image of happiness:
considers
winter of 1969–70, black and white because of the livid sky, and the
—the
snow that clung to the sidewalks in gray patches until April; she
abundant
them down on purpose and smashed them with her boots to help
hunted
that endless winter, which she associates with the re at the Saint-
destroy
dance hall in Isère, only partly consumed that year and
Laurent-du-Pont
to the ground the following winter
burned
the square of Saint-Paul-de-Vence, Yves Montand playing pétanque in a
—in
shirt, with a bit of a potbelly, pacing around after every shot, pleased and
pink
and eyeing the tourists herded behind barriers, at a safe distance; it was
smug,
summer that Gabrielle Russier was thrown in prison and killed herself on
the
to her apartment
returning
thermal park of Saint-Honoré-les-Bains, the pool where the children
—the
toy boats; the Hôtel du Parc, where she lived with them for three weeks,
sailed
later confused with the boardinghouse in Robert Pinget’s book Someone.
and
the unbearable part of memory, the image of her father dying, of his
In
in the suit he’d worn only once, to her wedding, carried down from the
corpse
bedroom in a plastic dustcover because the stairs were too narrow for a co n.
Political events remain as details only: on TV, during the presidential

hotel room on the rue Beauvoisine in Rouen, not far from the Lepouzé
—the
where Cayatte lmed a scene for To Die of Love
bookstore,
leaned against the beauty of the world / And I held the smell of the seasons in
—I
hands my
very young woman in a red coat walking down the sidewalk next to a
—the
man she had gone to fetch at the Café Le Duguesclin, in the winter,
staggering
half-torn poster for the dating site 3615 Ulla at the bottom of the hill in
—the
Fleury-sur-Andelle
house at the very back of a garden, 35 avenue Edmond Rostand in
—a
Villiers-le-Bel
man in pajamas and slippers who wept every afternoon in the lobby of
—the
old folks’ home in Pontoise, and asked visitors to call his son, holding up a
the
woman of the Bentalha massacre in Algeria in the photo by Hocine that
—the
a Pietà
resembles
dazzling sun on the walls of San Michele Cemetery, seen from the shade
—the
the Fondamenta Nuove
of
—the little village fête at Bazoches-sur-Hoëne with the bumper cars
—the wine tap at the Carrefour on rue du Parmelan, Annecy
—the merry-go-round at the spa park, in Saint-Honoré-les Bains
in La Roche-Posay
—the lm People of No Importance
—a bar and a jukebox that played Apache at Tally Ho Corner, Finchley
—the gaze of the black-and-white cat the moment the needle put her to sleep
piece of soiled paper on which a phone number was written
Save something from the time where we will never be again.

status to same-sex couples.
legal
chain of hypermarkets.
A

STORIES PRESS is an independent book publisher based in New
SEVEN
City. We publish works of the imagination by such writers as Nelson
York
Russell Banks, Octavia E. Butler, Ani DiFranco, Assia Djebar, Ariel
Algren,
Coco Fusco, Barry Gi ord, Martha Long, Luis Negrón, Hwang
Dorfman,
Lee Stringer, and Kurt Vonnegut, to name a few, together with
Sok-yong,
titles by voices of conscience, including Subhankar Banerjee, the
political
Women’s Health Collective, Noam Chomsky, Angela Y. Davis, Human
Boston
Watch, Derrick Jensen, Ralph Nader, Loretta Napoleoni, Gary Null,
Rights
Palast, Project Censored, Barbara Seaman, Alice Walker, Gary Webb, and
Greg
Zinn, among many others. Seven Stories Press believes publishers have
Howard
special responsibility to defend free speech and human rights, and to
a
the gifts of the human imagination, wherever we can. In 2012 we
celebrate
Triangle Square books for young readers with strong social justice
launched
narrative components, telling personal stories of courage and
and
About Seven Stories Press
commitment. For additional information, visit www.sevenstories.com.