Souvenirs de la marée basse

de Chantal Thomas

Swim. Swim to escape constraints, to escape imposed lives, reduced fates. Swim to invent his sensuality, preserve his fantasy. This is what Jackie had probably felt all her life, begun in 1919 and carried out according to a secret, obstinate freedom, which made her, in a very advanced age, travel miles to go swimming on her favorite beach, Villefranche sur mer. Meanwhile, she had married, had left Lyons for Arcachon, and then, having become a young widow, had exchanged Cape Ferret for Cap Ferrat, with her warmer sea, her great summer. What did she leave to her daughter Chantal? Something indomitable, or discreetly rejected, and this intuition that swimming, this practice that leaves no trace, is the occasion of an elusive freedom, as when young girl, in the early 1930s, Jackie had, in a casual way, chained some lengths in the Grand Canal of the Palace of Versailles under the bewildered eye of the gardeners.--Translation of page 4 of cover by Editions du Seuil.