Even if we believe in ghosts, our deceased will never return. This is the greatest tragedy of all. Marie-Claire Blais wrote: “ [l]”Death affects not only the one who must close his eyes forever but also the others, all the others who will share the horror and the absence.” Those who survive must cling to the remains of these vanished existences, which can become oracles for a better life: a photo, a pair of shoes, a scarf still scented… Pray that the smell never escapes.
The books of Nelly Arcan, which we remembered on the 15th anniversary of her tragic disappearance last Tuesday, are part of this material life which survives her. Yes, of course, there are all the ones she wrote that I often return to. It gives me the impression of continuing the dialogue with her, who was close to me. Then, there are those of his many heirs, his little sisters who anchor his thoughts in today’s world; thought still and so relevant, ahead of the present, proving to what extent she was a soothsayer, a member in good standing of a line of geniuses like Margaret Atwood whose just visions will not make us, I hope, Scarlet Handmaids… Would Nelly follow the TV series? Would she still have Siamese twins? Would she have become a mother? What would she have thought of rape culture, Incels, the rise of masculinism? Would she have been worried that no less than 20% of young Quebecers believe that feminism is a strategy to allow women to control society? Would she still believe in the existence of what she called Burqa of flesh ? Or would she say that these uninhibited faces and bodies on social networks, often retouched by technology, demonstrate a reappropriation of our rights and freedoms?
Would she be addicted to her Instagram account or just a dilettante in following fitness trainers? In her Plateau living room, she would imitate Trump, and it would be tasty. Unless it is in an ancestral house in the countryside to tend a garden and prepare soups. Would she know the names of the birds? People change… It seems that as we get older, we watch them and scrutinize them with more interest than ever. The same goes for flowers. There is no age limit for playing in the dirt, gardening, or preparing colorful bouquets.
Would she have become a mother? Protective, severe or devoted to the point of forgetting yourself, to the point of putting aside the pen before returning to it one day? She wasn’t just writing. But I would have seen her writing albums for children.
Would she take bioidentical hormones? Would she have run the Montreal half-marathon last weekend or would she have made fun of it? How would she take care of the memory of her dead, those she loved and who, if she had remained among us, would have preceded her to the grave? I would have liked to read it about grief. Would she often return to Mégantic, where it all began? What corpses would she hide behind the beautiful dresses in her closet: secret desires, impossible loves, the missteps of repentant married men?
Doubts? Of course. The infamous. It wouldn’t have changed. Even after honors, successes, thousands of books sold, TV shows, tons of emails from desperate lovers, such beautiful reflections in the mirror… Nothing ever succeeds in appeasing those who doubt. All the psychoanalysis in the world won’t change anything. Insecurities, the convictions of not being good enough are silenced only in the afterlife, where the dead bring them as a shroud. For the bereaved, all these traces of material life remain as a small consolation. In the specific case of Nelly Arcan, pages and pages of reflections in all languages will also resist the passage of time. And the hope of seeing others just like her use it as a trampoline to bounce back in life. Who will read and reread it. Because down here, everything always has to be redone.