An immortal love

The narrator evokes his childhood and adolescence in Saigon during the thirties. She goes to school in Saigon by bus every morning to the point of the ferry boat, reserved for "crossing a Mekong arm. "

At fifteen and a half, the girl paints itself, begins "the Tokadon cream" to try to "hide freckles" she "on the top of the cheeks, under the eyes. "Yet they say that" she has a beautiful look. The smile also, not bad. "

So one morning while she is on the tray, that he met: "On the tray, next to the car, there is a large black limousine with a chauffeur in livery cotton white [...] In the limo there is a very elegant man who looks at me. "

A love was born between the man and the girl, a very different love of the one she dedicated to her mother or her little brother died too soon, "in three days of bronchial pneumonia," a love that it wants to keep secret: the elegant man is "Chinese" ("He says he is Chinese, his family comes from China Northern, Fu-Chen"), it is a white girl and represents " colonization. "

The fatum therefore is needed, she and her know that they can not marry, subjected to both misunderstanding and, thereby, to the refusal of their respective families. Love will have to live underground, without the knowledge of all: "The image before it starts has addressed the white child near the railing, when he descended from the black limousine when he began to approach her, and that she knew, knew he was afraid. "

Nevertheless, she will "never travels by bus for natives. "It will now run away with him," the horror of family Sadec, its awesome silence. "He will accompany him in high school (" He came every day to look for in high school to take her pension. He took her to the black car. ")

In the afternoons, the days will therefore be placed under the sign of love ("He says he loves her like crazy, he whispered. Then he is silent. She does not answer ") in the elegant Human apartment, Cholon, located near Saigon City (" The place is modern, furnished in a hurry would be said, with modern style furniture principle [...] It's dark in the studio, she did not demand he opens the shutters. ")

However, both know that this relationship will end soon. The rumor amplifying, lovers will soon have to separate ("It happens in the rough neighborhood of Cholon every evening. Every evening this little vicious will be caressed the body through a dirty Chinese millionaire.") She will leave and leave for France with his mother, "it embraces. He tells her that it is the boat of France come soon and take him and separates. "

After the war, years after, the girl became a woman writes books, lives in Paris and one day receives a phone call: "It's me. She had recognized from the voice. "

"The Lover" is an autobiographical work in which Marguerite Duras evokes the love that unites him with "Man of Cholen" with remarkable restraint. Alternating signs saying "I" and "she" is the narrator and the main character demonstrates its extreme sensitivity vis-à-vis the dramatic context in which form and dissolve the bonds, where feelings are expressed with great modesty.