Watched Hiroshima, Mon Amour last night and it made me think of some of my favorite parts from The Lover. Here is one:
There are no panes in the windows, just shutters and blinds. On the blinds you can see the shadows of people going by in the sunlight on the sidewalks….Outside it’s the end of the day, you can tell by the sound of the voices, the sound of more and more passersby, more and more miscellaneous. It’s a city of pleasure that reaches its peak at night. And night is beginning now, with the setting sun. The bed is separated from the city by those slatted shutters, that cotton blind. There’s nothing solid separating us from other people. They don’t know of our existence. We glimpse something of theirs, the sum of their voices, of their movements, like the intermittent hoot of a siren, mournful, dim. Whiffs of burnt sugar drift into the room, the smell of roasted peanuts, Chinese soups, roast meat, herbs, jasmine, dust, incense, charcoal fires, they carry fire about in baskets here, it’s sold in the street, the smell of the city is the smell of the villages upcountry, of the forest.
The Lover, Marguerite Duras
