The Man who Walked Through Walls E-Book

Marcel Aymé

• Herausgeber: Pushkin Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

A collection of funny and fantastical short stories, Marcel Aymé's The Man Who Walked through Walls (Le Passe-muraille), is a classic of French literature, loved by children and adults alike. Monsieur Dutilleul has always been able to walk through walls but has never bothered using his gift, given the general availability of doors. One day, however, his bullying boss drives him to desperate measures, and he develops a taste for intramural travel... The titular tale sets the tone for this collection of ten stories from the great French humourist, novelist and children's writer Marcel Aymé. Elements of science-fiction and fantasy are present throughout this volume, written under Nazi occupation during the Second World War, which pokes fun at the occupiers and occupied alike. Set in Paris's Montmartre district, these stories have spawned a number of films, including Jean Boyer's 1951 classic Garou Garou, le passe-muraille and Yvan Attal's Les Sabines starring Charlotte Gainsbourg, as well as a musical, Amour, which won the Prix Molière in France before an English version conquered Broadway. Today in Montmartre a sculpture of The Man Who Walked through Walls, created by the legendary actor Jean Marais, can be found in the Place Marcel Aymé, paying tribute to the great author and his work. Contents: - The Man Who Walked through Walls (Le Passe-muraille) - Sabine Women (Les Sabines) - Tickets on Time (La Carte) - The Problem of Summertime (Le Décret) - The Proverb (Le Proverbe) - Poldevian Legend (Légende Poldève) - The Wife Collector (Le Percepteur d'épouses) - The Seven-League Boots (Les Bottes de sept lieues) - The Bailiff (L'Huissier) - While Waiting (En attendant) 'The greatest French writer of the day' — Georges Simenon 'I have fallen utterly, completely and eternally in love with this writer. And, as with all true love, I am neither ashamed nor afraid to declare it to the world.' — Nick Lezard, Guardian 'The book I would most like to thrust on people is Marcel Aymé's The Man Who Walked Through Walls, stories which have now become some of my all-time favourites.' — Nick Lezard, Guardian Books of the Year 2012 Marcel Aymé (1902-67) was one of the great French writers of the twentieth century. Born in the Franche-Comté of Eastern France, he never lost touch with his rural origins, which influenced much of his work. Initially perceived as a man of the left, throughout his life Aymé espoused causes from across the political spectrum, for example apparently supporting Mussolini's colonialism in Africa whilst also campaigning for the abolition of the death penalty. He attracted much controversy for his writings for collaborationist magazines during the Second World War, and his defence of Nazi-sympathising friends including Louis-Ferdinand Céline and Robert Brasillach in the post-war years. Nevertheless Aymé retains an important place in French culture. He championed Serge Gainsbourg in his early career, writing the liner notes for his debut album Du chant à la une!. This collection of stories is particularly famous, and a dozen of his novels have been turned into films, among them the classics of French cinema La Traversée de Paris, La Vouivre and Uranus.

Leseprobe

MARCEL AYMÉ

THE MAN WHO WALKED THROUGH WALLS

Translated from the French by Sophie Lewis

PUSHKIN PRESSLONDON

CONTENTS

Title PageThe Man Who Walked through Walls Sabine Women Tickets on Time The Problem of Summertime The Proverb Poldevian Legend The Wife Collector The Seven-League Boots The Bailiff While Waiting Translator’s Thanks Copyright

THE MAN WHO WALKED THROUGH WALLS

IN MONTMARTRE, on the third floor of 75b Rue d’Orchampt, there lived an excellent gentleman called Dutilleul, who possessed the singular gift of passing through walls without any trouble at all. He wore pince-nez and a small black goatee, and was a lowly clerk in the Ministry of Records. In winter he would take the bus to work, and in fine weather he would make the journey on foot, in his bowler hat.

Dutilleul had just entered his forty-third year when he discovered his power. One evening, a brief electricity cut caught him in the hallway of his small bachelor’s apartment. He groped for a while in the darkness and, when the lights came back on, found himself outside on the third-floor landing. Since his front door was locked from the inside, the incident gave him food for thought and, despite the objections of common sense, he decided to go back inside just as he had come out, by passing through the wall. This peculiar skill, apparently unrelated to any aspiration of his, rather disturbed him. So, the next day being Saturday, he took advantage of his English-style five-day week to visit a local doctor and explain his case. The doctor was soon persuaded that Dutilleul was telling the truth and, following a full examination, located the cause of the problem in a helicoid hardening of the strangulary wall in the thyroid gland. He prescribed sustained over-exertion and a twice-yearly dose of one powdered tetravalent pirette pill, a mixture of rice flour and centaur hormones.

Having taken the first pill, Dutilleul put the medicine away in a drawer and forgot about it. As for the intensive over-exertion, as a civil servant his rate of work was governed by practices that permitted no excess, nor did his leisure time, divided between reading the newspapers and tending his stamp collection, involve him in any excessive expenditure of energy either. A year later, therefore, his ability to walk through walls remained intact, but he never used it, apart from inadvertently, being uninterested in adventure and resistant towards the seductions of his imagination. He never even thought of entering his home by any route other than the front door and then only after having opened it by means of key and lock. Perhaps he would have grown old in the comfort of his habits, never tempted to put his gift to the test, had an extraordinary event not suddenly turned his life upside down. Being called to other duties, his deputy chief clerk Monsieur Mouron was replaced by a certain Monsieur Lécuyer, a man of abrupt speech who wore a nailbrush moustache. From his first day, the new deputy chief clerk looked unfavourably on Dutilleul’s wearing of pince-nez with a chain and a black goatee, and made a show of treating him like an irritating, shabby old thing. But the worst of it was that he intended to introduce reforms of considerable scope into his department—just the thing to disturb his subordinate’s peace. For twenty years now, Dutilleul had commenced his official letters with the following formula: “With reference to your esteemed of the nth of this month and, for the record, to all previous exchange of letters, I have the honour to inform you that …” A formula for which Monsieur Lécuyer intended to substitute another, much more American in tone: “In reply to your letter of n, I inform you that …” Dutilleul could not get used to these new epistolary fashions. In spite of himself, he would go back to his traditional ways, with a machine-like obstinacy that earned him the deputy clerk’s growing hostility. The atmosphere inside the Ministry of Records became almost oppressive. In the morning he would come in to work full of apprehension, and in bed in the evenings, it often happened that he stayed awake thinking for a whole fifteen minutes before falling asleep.