Octave Paraneau

Octave Paraneau ne supportait aucun regard, pas même le sien.

Il lui arrivait parfois de jeter un coup d’œil distrait dans une glace pour se détourner aussitôt. Il le savait, il avait un œil trop critique et craignait de s’anéantir complètement, victime de son propre reflet. D’ailleurs chez lui, les miroirs brillaient par leur absence et seule une psyché en verre teinté et à moitié délabrée traînait dans un recoin où la lumière ne s’aventurait jamais.

Octave ne souffrait pourtant d’aucune infirmité disgracieuse mais il n’aimait pas se sentir observé. Depuis sa prime enfance, il avait toujours l’impression qu’on l’étudiait, qu’on l’épiait, et cela lui donnait la nausée. On pouvait à la rigueur l’examiner de loin, mais de près!… Il haïssait tous ces regards posés sur sa personne souvent aggravés par de lourds et terribles silences.

Bien entendu Octave fuyait les tête à tête comme la peste et, peut-être en partie à cause de cela, sa vie amoureuse se comparait à une interminable traversée du désert! Demain, il fêterait ses 35 ans. Déjà! Oh, bien sûr, il avait eu l’occasion de goûter aux pseudo-délices de l’amour tarifé distillés au hasard de ses égarements nocturnes. Était-ce vraiment la peine d’en faire mention? Pour sûr, ces moments de liesse trompeuse avaient tout de même compté pour lui, car si les marchandes de l’amour ne lui avaient offert qu’une extase dérisoire, le plaisir incomparable qu’il avait ressenti en n’étant pour ainsi dire jamais contemplé valait bien tous les orgasmes de la terre. Il se souvenait avec amusement de cette blonde fadasse qui ne lui avait pratiquement accordé aucun regard et préférait admirer, l’air béat, des mouches courant sur le plafond. Et cette rousse à la chair si moelleuse, adepte du Kâma-Sûtra, qui avait passé son temps à lui présenter le dos…

Que d’instants merveilleux! La vie n’était toutefois pas aussi rose. Il changeait souvent de métier depuis 15 ans et n’en trouvait aucun à son goût. Diable, comment dénicher un emploi où vous n’aurait pas à affronter l’œil d’autrui sans compter que, trop fréquemment, hélas, l’employeur a un droit de regard sur vous. Quel cauchemar! Une fois cependant, Octave avait cru découvrir un métier à sa convenance : un poste de veilleur de nuit, dans un immense entrepôt. Ah! l’heureuse époque où il déambulait dans une obscurité complice et euphorisante ne rencontrant personne, hormis son collègue de jour qui arrivait au moment où il s’éclipsait. Las! la maison fit faillite.

Octave avait également été chauffeur de maître et lorsqu’ il songeait à ce monde d’aristocrates dédaigneux qui vous confinaient dans le plus adorable anonymat, il en frissonnait de joie. Comme il se sentait à l’abri sous l’énorme visière de sa casquette quand il conduisait Monsieur le marquis de S… Ce bon maître qui agissait éternellement comme si lui, Octave Paraneau, n’existait pas. En outre, ravissement suprême, monsieur de S… lui adressait régulièrement la parole en regardant ailleurs. Tout a malheureusement une fin et, un beau jour, on le congédia pour un futile motif : on l’aurait vu faire les yeux doux à la gouvernante. Lui qui ne regardait jamais les gens en face. Un comble!!! Il eut beau essayer de s’expliquer par lettre ou au téléphone – il redoutait par-dessus tout les explications franches et autres face à face – en vain! Octave connut alors les affres du chômage. Toutefois, dans son for intérieur, il pensait que la chance finirait par lui sourire.  Ce qui advint. Un matin qu’il consultait pour la énième fois, et sans conviction, la rubrique des annonces classées, il tomba en arrêt devant une affriolante offre d’emploi :

                            Institut de jeunes aveugles recherche personne de 25 à
                            40 ans très dévouée pour encadrer aveugles de naissance.
                            Emploi permanent. Salaire à débattre. Communiquer avec
                            l’Institut.

Octave dut se pincer pour être sûr qu’il ne rêvait pas. Cet emploi lui allait comme un gant. Il fallait qu’il l’ait. Et merveille des merveilles, il l’eut!

Autre miracle, il n’y eut pas d’entrevue, le directeur de l’établissement étant lui-même aveugle. Et comme un bonheur ne vient jamais seul, Octave tomba éperdument amoureux d’une jeune et jolie pensionnaire de l’Institut qui accepta avec une joie infinie de l’épouser. Car elle aussi, l’aimait intensément et lui prodiguait une félicité que peu de femmes étaient capables de lui offrir : une admiration aveugle…

Octave Paraneau could not bear anyone’s gaze, not even his own.

Sometimes he would glance absentmindedly into a mirror, and then promptly turn away. He knew he had an overly critical eye and feared utterly destroying himself, a victim of his own reflection. Indeed, mirrors were conspicuous in their absence in his home. Only a half-ruined tinted cheval glass languished in a corner where the light never ventured. 

Octave did not suffer from any unsightly infirmities, but he disliked feeling watched. Since early childhood, he had always sensed that others were studying him and spying on him. It nauseated him. They could look at him from a distance if necessary, but up close!? He hated having all those eyes on him and often, terrible, heavy silences made things worse.

Naturally, Octave avoided one-on-one encounters like the plague. Perhaps partly because of that, his love life was like an endless trek through the desert! Tomorrow would be his 35th birthday. Already! Of course, he’d had opportunities to sample the ersatz delights of love for sale, distilled at random from his nocturnal wanderings. Were they even worth mentioning? Yet those moments of deceptive jubilation had nonetheless meant something to him. Even though the merchants of love had provided only a hollow ecstasy, the incomparable pleasure he’d felt in never being seen, so to speak, was worth all the orgasms in the world. He laughed when he recalled the bland blonde who had barely favoured him with a glance, preferring instead to marvel blissfully at the flies darting across the ceiling. And the redhead with the supple flesh, the Kama Sutra enthusiast who had spent all her time turning her back to him. 

What wonderful moments! But life was not all rosy. Over the past 15 years he had changed jobs often, finding none to his liking. How on earth was a person supposed to find a job where he wouldn’t have to deal with anyone else’s gaze? Not to mention that all too often, alas, employers had the right to look at you. What a nightmare! Yet at one point, Octave thought he’d found an occupation that suited him: a night watchman position in a vast warehouse. Ah, those happy days when he’d strolled in the complicit, euphoria-inducing darkness, encountering no one other than his daytime colleague, who would arrive just as he was slipping out. Sadly, the company went bankrupt.

Octave had also worked as a chauffeur. When he thought back to that world of dismissive aristocrats who confined him to the most delicious anonymity, he shivered with joy. How safe he’d felt under the enormous visor of his cap as he drove that wonderful boss, the Marquis of S, who always behaved as though Octave Paraneau didn’t exist. The ultimate delight was that Mr. S always looked away when addressing him. Unfortunately, all good things come to an end, and one fine day Octave was fired on frivolous grounds: he had allegedly been seen making eyes at the governess. But he never looked anyone in the face. Incredible! Try as he might to explain himself by letter or over the phone—more than anything, he dreaded frank explanations and other face-to-face interactions—it was no use! Octave then suffered the trials and tribulations of unemployment. But in his heart of hearts, he believed that Lady Luck would ultimately smile on him. And so she did. One morning, as he was half-heartedly perusing the classifieds for the umpteenth time, he stumbled on an alluring employment ad:

                Institute for Blind Youth seeks dedicated person between 25 and 45 

                to supervise individuals who were born blind. 

                Permanent employment. Salary negotiable. Contact the Institute.

Octave had to pinch himself to be certain he wasn’t dreaming. The job fit him like a glove. He had to have it. Wonder of wonders, he got it! 

Another miracle: there was no interview, because the director of the establishment was himself blind. And since good things often come in threes, Octave fell madly in love with a pretty young resident of the institute, who agreed with boundless joy to marry him. She loved him deeply too and brought him a kind of bliss that few women could provide: blind admiration.

Commentary

The desire for invisibility generally stems from perceived threats, whether they are objectively real or imagined. 

The bullied long to be invisible so they can escape the attention of their tormenters. In downtown Ottawa, from late January 2022 on, citizens who were not straight, maskless white males hoped not to attract the malicious notice of roving bands of arracheurs de masques. 

Louis Der Boghossian’s protagonist, Octave Paraneau, reminds us that the desire for invisibility can also be provoked by nonexistent threats that are created out of whole cloth. When the mind assigns risk to being looked at, even when the gaze is benign, it can drive a person to all manner of odd behaviours.

Octave Paraneau craves anonymity to the point of wanting to evade even his own notice. His is far more than a desire for privacy in an age when public surveillance has become the norm. For a shy loner like Octave, being seen feels excruciating and he squirms under others’ gaze. Happiest when ignored and when faces are turned away from him, Octave searches for years for the perfect job that will shield him from others’ eyes. 

Der Boghossian’s story presented multiple technical and writing challenges for the translator. These included the use of unfamiliar nouns and idioms, and the need to find terminology that was consistent with the register of the original, while varying the terms to avoid repetition and maintain the flow of the story. The goal was to find precisely the right English terms and phrasing that captured the author’s tone, style and intent. 

In the second paragraph, I debated between cheval glass and swing mirror. I felt that “cheval glass” was a better fit for the overall level of vocabulary of the piece. Also, I decided to personify the cheval glass, using languished (instead of slumped or lay forgotten) in the corner to evoke the loneliness of a disused object. 

Finding an equivalent for the term l’amour tarifé was difficult, until I recalled the Cole Porter song “Love for Sale,” performed by Ella Fitzgerald.  It seemed to work in this context. 

Through humour and exaggeration, Der Boghossian offers us a window into the inner life of a painfully timid individual. In Octave’s amusing compensatory contortions, readers may recognize at least a hint of their own desire to avoid public notice.