Place
Hors-série 2 - septembre 2019 /

Special issue 2 - September 2019

Jan Baetens

MY LIFE TO LIVE

XIV.

 

WHERE WE SEE

THAT IT CAN ONLY BE THE END.

NANA IS SOLD AND DIES.

 

 

 

 

Before that car turns the corner

of similar streets

identical streets, we have time

to say it,

like it no longer exists under heaven

in the studio-world

so true, so truly Parisian: a wall

a gas pipe,

Suze, a colored box

in a thousand grays

the pulp of life where nothing moves

anymore (or again) :

asphalt waits, the faded shadows

unstained

the decisive instant slips and hisses, will say

before his finger

 of Pernod the poet illuminated by

street lights.

He himself is silent when those arrive

who will settle

Nana’s fate, two black cars.

It was time.

The cars that humans are aging

faster now

first with Nana and right

away another.

This place is really a filming location.

She wants Him 2.

Him 1 no longer wants her but her price

obviously

interests him. A solution would be,

of course, substitution, Him 3 (whom

we see in the other

car). But not for her, who is

too much in love.

Men turn their cars around

the motor isn’t

cut and for a long time that is the only

noise you hear.

Everything turns around Nana’s price, im-

peccable cut

of sixties hair that endows her with the age

of the car

of Him 1 and of Him 3. Then (finally!)

gunfire.

One and the other, indistinctly

at the end of a

dialogue put together precisely

whose tone rises

gradually and in proportion as the object

of their exchange

empties red and blood and all

use value

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