THE ODESSA TEAR
(The original French version was published via National Geographic France and La Règle du Jeu. Click here to read).
The man from Odessa had taken off neither his coat nor his cap, he was carrying his bag on his shoulder and inside was an umbrella, his hands were tucked in his pockets. He was standing next to a piano still covered with a thick purple cloth that protected it from the dust. We could hear a heavy, repetitive, dull sound, a constant background of hammers and flashlights coming from the scaffolding below. The long gallery we were in was plunged into an involuntary gloom. It didn’t matter to the old and mischievous pianist who was playing standing up. At that moment, nothing could disturb him. He too had kept his long black gabardine on. He was impatient and unquenchable. A thirst of flats and sharps, a musical emergency!
I was standing on the opposite side of the piano, carrying on my shoulder a camera, which I barely knew how to operate. The sound was hesitant, and the underexposed image, blurred and distant—on the screen as in time—has remained to this day a testimony of a brief and joyful moment, the crazy promise of a Ukrainian port on the Black Sea, a city of poets and musicians, Odessa, suddenly free of the Soviet bear hug.
Tag: Romain Gary
Jumai Victor
JUMAI VICTOR
Entretien avec Bernard-Henri Lévy, à l’occasion de la première américaine à New York de son film
Une Autre Idée du Monde—The Will to See à New York le 16 janvier 2022.
Jump to the English version of this post below: Click Here
À la fin de l’année 2019, Bernard-Henri Lévy rentre du Nigeria avec un reportage d’une force rare. Il décrit les actes meurtriers, odieux et terroristes d’un groupe « plus ou moins liés à Boko Haram », « des islamistes d’un genre nouveau » : les Fulanis. De village en village, ils attaquent, brulent et assassinent les Chrétiens du Nigeria. Bernard-Henri Lévy nous présente une de leurs récentes victimes, Jumai Victor. Cette femme, « une évangéliste », se recueille sur une tombe, celle de son mari et de ses quatre enfants assassinés. Elle survit à cette attaque. Enceinte, les Fulanis ont épargné sa vie, mais certains d’entre eux lui ont tranché, l’un après l’autre, les doigts, puis la main et l’avant-bras.
Are You Game?
ARE YOU GAME?
French Version of this post, click here.
Special thanks to Delphine Schrank for editing this story
They didn’t just want to give to their favorite foundations. Some New Yorkers wanted to have some fun while doing it, playfully bidding for things both secret or less than significant. In the end, the cost matters less than the price of elegance.
What about you? Would you take the gamble and surprise a gathering of bow tied, long-dressed revelers, the accoutrement of traditional New York galas whose ‘in-person’ season just wound down with the closing year? How much would you be willing to pay to blindly acquire the contents of an evening clutch or a surprise bag – to promote Franco-American friendship?
It all started with a challenge, “un pari” in French. Un jeu, a game.
At Your Home Without Me: Marc Levy Beyond the Walls
Marc Levy Beyond the Walls
There is a small bookstore on the corner of 10th Street in the West Village. In this little shop so reminiscent of the past, old and new books squeeze together on the shelves and give off that special scent of cracked ancient floors and living pages. Just a block away, if you look up, you can see through an open window that belongs to the most widely read French novelist and storyteller in the world.
A conversation with Marc Levy usually takes place over a good lunch on the terrace of Sant Ambroeus café. But Sant Ambroeus is closed now, as is the Three Lives & Company bookshop.
We could have also dined on a dish he would have cooked. But Marc Levy is currently a recluse in his haunt, sitting at his desk, among his books, computer screens and ancient typewriters. Surrounded by his characters, he gathers the letters of the alphabet and creates stories, like the one he just published in Des Mots Par La Fenêtre.