Whole Days in the Trees by Marguerite Duras is a collection of short stories originally published in 1954 and translated by Anita Burrows in 1984. Duras was only forty in 1954 yet three out of the four stories concern characters who are older. In the title story Jacques is visited by his mother, a rich factory owner, in Paris where he lives with his lover, Marcelle, working as hosts in a nightclub. ‘The Boa’ features a young girl growing up in a French colony more typical of Duras’ writing, but the relationship described is with a female teacher who has never married, and it is filled with the regrets of age as well as the desires of youth. ‘Madame Dodin’ is perhaps the most unusual of the four stories, telling of the affection between the eponymous concierge and a dustman in a generally comedic manner. Finally, in ‘The Building Site’ the relationship, between an older man and a young girl, is resonant of Duras’ most famous work, The Lover, though in this story the couple have very little contact.
In ‘Whole Days in the Trees’ we immediately sense the distance between Jacques and his mother. Her wealth is displayed in the seventeen gold bracelets she wears on her arms and in her appetite – the food Jacques and Marcelle have to offer is not enough and she soon insists on buying more:
“They had this in common, all three: that they were blessed with a hearty appetite. The son and Marcelle because they lived in state of continual semi-starvation. The mother because, as a young woman, she had had appetites for power and strength that had gone unsatisfied…”
The mother wishes Jacques to take on the management of the factory, regarding his present life as wasteful – “there is gold there, do you hear!” she tells him, “Gold to be earned.” Her faith is fuelled by a belief that (as she tells Marcelle) “if he’d chosen to work he would have moved mountains.” Jacques, however, has always chosen the easiest path:
“I can’t work, I don’t want to work. I don’t want to work.”
Even in his relationship with Marcelle he is open in admitting that he does not love her and will soon move on. As she tells his mother, “the moment he has one woman, he goes after another. It never ends.” His mother believes these attitudes originate in childhood (“That’s how it began”) as he never wanted to go to school. The story’s title, ‘whole days in the trees’, is a reference to how he spent his schooldays:
“…once you’d awakened me, instead of going to school I would go around routing out birds’ nests.”
The story captures the way in which both mother and son are trapped in roles they both loathe but are unable to change through their repetitive conversations and the tension of their competing desires, with Marcelle as a meek chorus.
In ‘The Boa’ youth and age also coexist with differing needs. The narrator is a schoolgirl whose family owes a debt to Mlle Barbet for having accepted her into the school. For this reason, she cannot object to regularly accompanying her teacher to the zoo, where, among the other animals, they watch a boa eat a chicken (the boa is a fairly obvious phallic symbol). This visit is followed by Mlle Barbet showing the girl her “lovely linen”:
“She stood very straight so that I could admire her, looking at herself lovingly, half naked.”
Mlle Barbet is in her sixties and, as the narrator expresses it, in a state of “very advanced virginity.” She goes no further than exposing herself, and the girl learns a lesson typical of Duras – that desire should not be repressed. Desire is also the subject of ‘The Building Site’ where a man watches a young girl walk into the woods. Time passes and, when she does not return, he follows her and finds her looking at a building site – the focus of her having ‘discovered’ it suggests that what is also being ‘built’ is her awareness of her own desire. They have a brief conversation, but he does not follow this up, merely watches her from a distance over the days that follow until:
“…she had at least understood the slow power of his waiting and the imminent dawning it contained.”
The story ends with them meeting in the woods for the second time.
‘Madame Dodin’ features a much more comical love story between the title character, a concierge, and the local dustman, Gaston. She has various ways of tormenting those who live in her building – insisting they bring out their rubbish daily, stealing their parcels, and retrieving objects fallen out of windows claiming never to have seen them. Only Gaston is treated kindly but, as the years pass, their friendship fails to go further. Although gentler, it also feels like a warning against repressed desire.
Whole Days in the Trees demonstrate a remarkable range in Duras’ writing, and, in particular, a sympathy for older women of all classes. It reasserts her abilities as a writer who has been rather marginalised as telling only one story. Though in some ways her fame persists, it would be better if her work was also more easily available.