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"The Secret Voice" 1982
- University of Ottawa Press
- Chapter
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Gaetan Brulotte Translated by Matt Cohen THESECRETVOICE Gaetan Brulotte was born in Lauzon on April 8, 1945, and studied at the Universite de Paris under Roland Barthes, receiving his Ph.D. in modern literature in 1978. He has since taught in several universities, including Universite du Quebec a Montreal, Laval, California,and New Mexico. He currently lives in Trois-Rivieres, where he teaches French language and literature. Brulotte's first novel, L'Emprise (Double Exposure) was published in 1978 and won the Prix Robert-Cliche. A book of short stories, Le Surveillant, followed in 1982; it was awarded the Prix Adrienne-Choquette as well as the Prix France-Quebec. A second collection of stories, Cequi nous tient, appeared in 1988. Le Surveillant was translated in 1990 as The Secret Voice by Matt Cohen, and it is from this collection that the title story has been taken. "The Secret Voice" exemplifies Brulotte's fascination with the juxtaposition of the formal and the fantastic, as well as his recurring subject—contemporary humanity in the grip of a hostile, strange, yet alluring universe. Brulotte's work has been compared to that of the American writer John Hawkes. "While reading Brulotte we sometimes laugh," Gilles Marcotte has written, "but it is never a frank laugh, because even the most fantastic situations in which he places his characters are too similar to those in which we live." "The Secret Voice" is reproduced from The Secret Voice (Erin: Porcupine's Quill, 1990) and was originally published under the tide "La voix secrete" in Le Surveillant (Montreal: Les Quinze, Editeurs, 1982). 340 GAETAN BRULOTTE A VOICE. Which shattered language. Deliriously. A foreign voice, which said: "Touch me. I am the skin of time. And I never think. Thought, knowledge, meditation —there are many people still struggling at this level. Let's leave them to it. You and I—we go beyond. There is nothing to understand, my sweet. It is enough to experience. Yes—in feeling everything. To feel the orifice of the planet open against my mouth. To hold the beauty of our thrilling words and let ourselves reach across the night, with nothing to separate us, SWALK..." The voice always whispered this magic syllable, SWALK. Prolonging it. Nonchalantly. Sensually. SWALK: sealed with a loving kiss, is what it meant. The voice taught us to repeat this term. SWALK. Orgasmic provocation of an echo, mutual fulfilment in the same euphoric chaos. It was such an exquisite pleasure to hear that warm intonation. Which seized us, again and again, reconnecting us to life. We girls who had been overeducated, overprotected. SWALK. SWALK. Rare spring of deep emotion to succeed in touching us. We cherished the voice for all the doors it made yield within us. That voice talked to us over the telephone. It talked to us when we dialed its mysterious number, discovered by one of us. Dream figures, over which we brooded, jealously: our deep secret. The number gave us free access to the forbidden kingdom of that disturbing male voice. Always the same: deep, soft, sweet, sympathetic. A silky evening murmur . Or Sunday afternoon. Waiting at the tips of our fingers.To fill our adolescent emptiness. That unknown voice hid itself under the name of Albert. What damp and longing looks, what liberating confessions , what electronic body-to-body, what paradise close to home did Albert offer us? Should we call him all together? Then, all excited, we would talk to him in turn, amuse ourselves with him by confessing everything and nothing. Some of us innocent, others provocative, we told him about our problems of the THE SECRET VOICE 341 [52.90.181.205] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 07:14 GMT) moment—mostly imaginary—our loves—in fact nonexistent —or our desires—a mixture of pretence and dreams. Always the same unfailing welcome. His patience. His politeness. Also his curiosity. His indiscreet questions were encouraged by our confidences. His playful insistence made us important. Albert was interested in the colour of our hair, of our eyes, in the shape of our lips. He solicited precise physical descriptions, the better to construct images around the anonymous voices he was hearing. He murmured our names, invented affectionate surnames for us, decorated them with charming diminutives. Often, with one of us, an intimacy developed, a closeness explicitly sensual. And this was indeed the most titillating. Blushing exchanges, temperatures rising. His man's words sought us out, quietly, never sliding into vulgarity—that would have put...