Tuesday's books - Anaïs Sierro
After a mature project on belladonna and its intriguing duality: to heal or to kill, I was drawn to the title of this book. I'm familiar with the effects of atropine, its active ingredient. Theoretically. But here Hervé Bougel was proposing, through this simple but equivocal title, that I get to know them in human terms. The effects on those around me, experienced by and through the eyes of a child, the author. An author, incidentally, little known to the general public.
Self-taught and without «diplomas», the young Hervé Bougel subsequently trained himself both professionally and personally. A socio-cultural educator, librarian and trainer, these diplomas came to him later in life. Writing, on the other hand, has always followed him. The author of several collections of poetry and chronicles to date, and founder of the contemporary poetry publisher Pré#Carré, he has now signed with Belladonna, not his first novel, but the first with autobiographical overtones. As far as we know, Hervé Bougel's childhood was very similar to that of the anonymous main character. A sign of modesty? The hypothesis seems tangible to us.
Beautiful lady, this illusion
Let's be honest, reading this book isn't a healthy, birdsong-inducing stroll through the blossoming fields of spring. The title says it all: fear, abuse, agony and, above all, death. No surprise, then, but a slap in the face, even when warned.
Hervé Bougel recounts just one week in the childhood of a pre-teen. Perhaps the one that sums it all up, that tells it all. Certainly, the one that says it all. For the young child has learned a lot. A «to know life», but above all to keep quiet. So this book sounds like deliverance, a confession, the unleashed word, the very word so often repressed out of obligation. The confession of a child who has become an adult, but whose predecessor is still howling with indigestion.
I knew it was all true, but I couldn't say anything. I didn't know how to say it. I didn't know how to say it. I was afraid not to speak, but I was afraid, I was afraid of my brother, I was afraid to speak. I was afraid of my mother, of my mother's slaps. Not of the slaps she might give me, but of what those slaps were. They were slaps to kill words.
Active poison
Yes, because the poison is factual. The father's abuse of alcohol and belladonna pills, the mother's mental illness, the butcher's crimes behind the kitchen wall, the brother's anger or the sister's silent distress. It's there, present and omnipresent. It penetrates bodies and minds. It eats away at them, gradually taking full possession. It dominates and acts. It leads the father to numerous suicide attempts, the mother to destructive apathy, the brother to violence and the sister to deadly muteness. Nothing can counter such poison, when the victim has no choice but to accept it. Accept its effects, its ravages, accept its hold and its rape, accept its outcome. The only fatal outcome: the poison of life that suffocates her.
Passive poison
But the poison is just as vile when consumed passively. The poison of inheritance. It's the one we have no choice but to swallow, hear, learn and accept. The one we can't understand, the one we want to ignore, the one we're afraid of, the one that haunts our days and our dreadful insomnia. It's in the blood of enucleated animals, in the body of a corpse-like father on the sofa, in the murderous words and phrases of an overwhelmed mother, in the gestures of an enraged older brother and in the dull silence of an atrophied sister. It's all around a child who wants nothing more than to live, learn and grow. But how can you grow up serenely when you're taught to poison? How do you build yourself up when you have to fight against a powerful parasite? How do you simply be and remain a child?
Our father commits suicide; we're used to it, we know his habits. Last winter, he was in a nursing home. One Saturday, he came home with his left wrist bandaged. He had tried to slit his wrists in the shower. It goes faster with hot water," explained our mother, "it activates blood circulation.
Some books educate, others entertain, some sadden and others slam. Belladonna falls into the latter category. There's nothing new in reading it: the title says it all. But it's the awareness of an existence that touches. Another reality or the memory of parts of one's own, but a reality that undeniably leaves us with these words: endure and learn, learn to endure... only then tell me how to grow, how to go on living?
I remembered that she had wanted me dead, even before I was born: I did everything I could to get rid of you! I tried everything to get through to you, but you held on! You held on tight! I was proud to have resisted, to have held on, to be here, alive.
Write to the author: anais.sierro@leregardlibre.com
Photo Credit: Briana Swank - Pexels
Hervé Bougel
Belladonna
Editions Buchet-Chastel
2021
138 pages
French 
German 
English