everything, casting off on a new adventure. They dreamed of starting up again from scratch, of having another go, differently. They were dreaming of a clean break, of saying farewell.
The idea, all the same, was working away and taking root inside them. By mid-September 1962, on their return from a gloomy holiday spoiled by rain and running short of money, they seemed to have made up their minds. An advertisement in Le Monde in the first days of October offered teaching jobs in Tunisia. It was not the ideal opportunity - they had dreamed of India, America, Mexico. It was an unglittering, down-to-earth offer, promising neither great fortune nor great adventure. They felt un- tempted. But they had a few friends in Tunis, old friends from school and college, and then there was the sun, the blue Mediterranean Sea, the promise of a different life, of a real departure, of a different kind of work. They agreed to apply. They were accepted.
Real departures are prepared long in advance. This one was messy. It was more like running away. They spent a fortnight rushing from office to office for medical certificates, for passports, for visas, for tickets, for luggage. Then four days before they were due to leave they learned that Sylvie, who had completed two years of her degree course, had been appointed to the Technical College at Sfax, one hundred and seventy miles from Tunis, whereas Jérôme, who had only a first-year pass by way of qualification, had been given a primary-school job at Mahares, twenty-three miles in the other direction.
It was bad news. They wanted to back out. Tunis, where accommodation had been booked for them, where they were expected, was where they had wanted to go, where they thought they were going. But it was too late. They had sub-let their flat, booked their seats, given their farewell party. They had been getting ready to go for a long time. And then Sfax, of which they had barely heard the name before, was at the end of the world, a desert, and, with their pronounced inclination for extremes, they even began to take pleasure in thinking that they were going to be cut off from everything, remote from everything, isolated as they never had been before. However, they agreed that a primary school post was, if not too much of a slide, at least too heavy a burden: Jérôme succeeded in having his contract cancelled: one salary would be enough to live on until he could find some sort of work on the spot.
And so they left. They were seen to the station, and, on the morning of 23 October, with four trunks full of books and a camp bed, they boarded the Commandant-Crubellier at Marseilles, bound for Tunis. The crossing was bad and the dinner was not good. They were sea-sick, took pills and slept soundly. In the morning Tunisia was in sight. It was a fine day. They smiled to each other. They saw an island which they were told was called lie Plane , then great long and narrow beaches, and, after they had passed La Goulette and entered the Lake of Tunis, flocks of migrating birds.
They were happy to have left. They felt they were emerging from a hell of crowded metro carriages, insufficient sleep, aching teeth and uncertainty. Their minds were clouded. Their life had been only a kind of endless tightrope walk leading nowhere: empty appetite, naked desire without bounds or props. They felt exhausted. They had left to go to ground, to forget, to wind down.
The sun shone. The boat moved slowly, silently, along the narrow channel. On the road quite close to them, people stood in open-topped cars and waved vigorously at them. In the sky there were little white clouds standing still. It was already hot. The panels beneath the handrail were warm to the touch. On the deck below them, sailors were stacking up deckchairs, rolling up the long tarpaulins which covered the holds. Queues lined up at the gangways for disembarkation.
They got to Sfax two days later, towards two in the afternoon, after a seven-hour train
The idea, all the same, was working away and taking root inside them. By mid-September 1962, on their return from a gloomy holiday spoiled by rain and running short of money, they seemed to have made up their minds. An advertisement in Le Monde in the first days of October offered teaching jobs in Tunisia. It was not the ideal opportunity - they had dreamed of India, America, Mexico. It was an unglittering, down-to-earth offer, promising neither great fortune nor great adventure. They felt un- tempted. But they had a few friends in Tunis, old friends from school and college, and then there was the sun, the blue Mediterranean Sea, the promise of a different life, of a real departure, of a different kind of work. They agreed to apply. They were accepted.
Real departures are prepared long in advance. This one was messy. It was more like running away. They spent a fortnight rushing from office to office for medical certificates, for passports, for visas, for tickets, for luggage. Then four days before they were due to leave they learned that Sylvie, who had completed two years of her degree course, had been appointed to the Technical College at Sfax, one hundred and seventy miles from Tunis, whereas Jérôme, who had only a first-year pass by way of qualification, had been given a primary-school job at Mahares, twenty-three miles in the other direction.
It was bad news. They wanted to back out. Tunis, where accommodation had been booked for them, where they were expected, was where they had wanted to go, where they thought they were going. But it was too late. They had sub-let their flat, booked their seats, given their farewell party. They had been getting ready to go for a long time. And then Sfax, of which they had barely heard the name before, was at the end of the world, a desert, and, with their pronounced inclination for extremes, they even began to take pleasure in thinking that they were going to be cut off from everything, remote from everything, isolated as they never had been before. However, they agreed that a primary school post was, if not too much of a slide, at least too heavy a burden: Jérôme succeeded in having his contract cancelled: one salary would be enough to live on until he could find some sort of work on the spot.
And so they left. They were seen to the station, and, on the morning of 23 October, with four trunks full of books and a camp bed, they boarded the Commandant-Crubellier at Marseilles, bound for Tunis. The crossing was bad and the dinner was not good. They were sea-sick, took pills and slept soundly. In the morning Tunisia was in sight. It was a fine day. They smiled to each other. They saw an island which they were told was called lie Plane , then great long and narrow beaches, and, after they had passed La Goulette and entered the Lake of Tunis, flocks of migrating birds.
They were happy to have left. They felt they were emerging from a hell of crowded metro carriages, insufficient sleep, aching teeth and uncertainty. Their minds were clouded. Their life had been only a kind of endless tightrope walk leading nowhere: empty appetite, naked desire without bounds or props. They felt exhausted. They had left to go to ground, to forget, to wind down.
The sun shone. The boat moved slowly, silently, along the narrow channel. On the road quite close to them, people stood in open-topped cars and waved vigorously at them. In the sky there were little white clouds standing still. It was already hot. The panels beneath the handrail were warm to the touch. On the deck below them, sailors were stacking up deckchairs, rolling up the long tarpaulins which covered the holds. Queues lined up at the gangways for disembarkation.
They got to Sfax two days later, towards two in the afternoon, after a seven-hour train
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