The flesh is sad, alas! And you have read all the books. We may have a solution for you. In partnership with Rocambole, the app for reading differently, we are offering a new episode of Tina Bartoli's literary soap L'Ancre Noire every day at 5 p.m. We leave it to Mallarmé to launch the adventure:
I leave ! Steamer swinging your mast,
Lift the anchor (Black) for an exotic nature!
Summary of previous episodes: this is the first, don't panic ... You haven't missed anything.
EPISODE 1 - Working Girl Blues
“There is a place in me where I live alone. This is where the sources that never dry up are renewed. - Pearl Buck
I work too much. Very good. Constantly on the roads, between two trains, two planes. I make my phone calls behind the wheel, I prepare my presentations on the trembling tablet of a TGV, I refine them alone in the evening in the impersonal bed of a hotel room. I dream my speeches during my five hours of statutory sleep. When I wake up, I throw myself on my computer to burn them somewhere other than in my memory. When I set up my organization management consultant box ten years ago, I did not expect such success. My concrete but original positioning in the teeming world of consulting, added to a limited but effective address book got me started. A pinch of luck also allowed me to gain confidence in my project, in myself.
So I started putting up my interventions like shows. It was from there that everything accelerated: my concept exploded, and me with it. I started running behind my agenda, tyrannized by the hours of the day that pass by, the nights too short. I tried to hire to relieve myself, but contrary to what I teach my groupies, I have a serious flaw: I can't delegate. I am so demanding with myself that I do not tolerate the slightest weakness in others. And then who better than me to galvanize these packs of sup executives who take themselves for the elite, when they are only a flock of sheep who are only asking to follow a shepherd? I am the best of the shepherds: for this reason, one asks only me. So none of the first kids I tried to hire lasted more than six months.
Only my faithful assistant, Josette was able to resist. It's a hard-hitting, Josette, but it's my precious pearl. Old girl, she does not count her hours and, without her support, I could never have defied the laws of time as I did. No one can, like her, level the ground for me, remove all the stones so that I can pass like a hurricane. Such professional proximity borders on intimacy. She is the only one who can stand up to me and that is perhaps why we became friends.
But now, for some time now, a nagging idea has been bothering me. It can't be seen, the show continues. Nobody knows, not even Josette. It is my personal secret, well kept, unsuspected. The truth is that I am tired, exhausted from clowning for these bastards who are so happy with them when they are useless. They are not the ones who produce wealth, they are the ones below in the organization chart. Whatever the sector of activity of their company, whatever its organization, its size, it is an immutable rule. And believe me, I know what I'm talking about, it's my job to dissect their modes of operation: we pay with gold prices those who parade in suit and tie while the lowest salary goes to the one who turns the box. I have known this for a long time, but until then I managed to ignore it. Lack of luck, I have built my entire career by focusing on the first. But today their arrogance supports me and I cannot come to terms with this arrogant fauna.
I wish it would stop. I would like to ask myself. Sit on the lawn of a garden and listen to the song of the wind in the leaves, the cry of swallows in the sky, the incessant trampling of laboring ants. I would like to drink tea under a veranda and count the drops of rain that crash against the windows, drown in the dark sky of the storm, warm myself before a fireplace. I would like time, I would like to go into exile, I would like to return home, to myself, to this friendly and sweet place that I have long forgotten. And above all, I would like to write. It's my childhood dream. As soon as I knew how to read fluently, I devoured all the books that came to hand. As soon as I could write fluently, I did it. They were, I remember, small naive scenes, then tales. As a teenager, I filled whole notebooks with news sometimes, funny, sometimes dramatic, romantic, bloody or fantastic. School essays were child's play for me, so much so that I ended up selling my talent to my classmates: five francs for a writing ordered a week before returning it, 10 francs for a production in 72 hours , 15 francs when it was the day before for the next day. I had my loyal customers, so I had invented a style for each of them, including spelling and syntax errors. So much so that our French teachers never knew that half of the editorial staff in their class had only one author. One day, I realized that the publishing world was merciless: many candidates and piston, few chosen and true stories. Also for fear of losing my illusions, I have never tried anything in this direction. And then came the time for bruises, studies, entry into working life, professional success. Now that the machine is started, how do I stop it?
One morning, while I was waiting for my embarkation on a flight to Brussels and I was waiting while consulting my Instagram, my attention was drawn to a publication by L'Ancre Noire. I subscribe to the account of this publishing house because I have a lot of admiration for the writings of its director: Jean De Saint Geores. Well beyond a model, this man has always been for me a sacred monster (and devoted to the look of literary prizes that have not failed to win each of his works, but that is not for me the most important). Beyond these awards, his rhythmic writing, his poetic style, his effective intrigue have always moved me. His ability to reinvent himself in each of his books impresses me most. I read with delight all his work and I take pleasure in skilfully forgetting each of his stories to better rediscover them then weathered by time, to taste them a few years later, as if it were the first time. At the top, he created his own publishing house to promote his work, but also to bring out some new talented feathers.
And this morning, the house L'Ancre Noire announced that it was organizing a literary competition, the winner of which would win three weeks of coaching by Jean De Saint Geores, in total immersion in his private house located somewhere in the Vosges, with a view to publishing a first novel. For that, it was necessary to produce a news. Reading this information, I felt something in my belly drop, as if an unleashed beast was pushing the walls out.
At the same time, the nasal voice of a hostess sputtered into the loudspeakers that passengers bound for Brussels were asked to present themselves for immediate boarding. Stunned, I jumped up and it was trembling that I presented my travel documents to the flight attendant.
Impossible that day to think of anything other than this competition. The more the hours passed, the more I lived this information as evidence, a call of destiny, the starting point of my real life. Once my show ended, I rushed to the hotel and, without even getting rid of my working girl suit, I feverishly started writing my text. In the early hours of the morning, I finally pressed the "send" button of the email intended for L'Ancre Noire. This message contained all the hope, for so long repressed, to be read and appreciated.
Then came the time of waiting. Until the day when Josette placidly declared to me:
- You got a weird guy call. Communication was poor, he had to call from his cell while driving. I did not understand everything, so I sent him for a walk. He says his name is L'Ancre Noire. Do you think we should warn the cops?
(…)
Check out the next episode right here on March 25 at 5 p.m. or on the Rocambole app for iOS and Android.
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