are you stone ?

J'ai une économie de lecture tournée vers l'utilitaire en ce moment, je lis pas mal d'articles concernant le "blogging" et pas grand chose d'autre. Récemment pourtant j'ai repris le recueil de nouvelles de Cheever. 

Ci-dessous, un extrait dont j'aime l'étrangeté (impression renforcée par la façon dont l'auteur joue — ou se moque — des répétitions).

"[...] Some of the inescapable power of her beauty lay in the whiteness of her skin, some of it in the fact that, unlike the other women, who were at ease in bathing suits, Clarissa seemed humiliated and ashamed to find herself wearing so little. She walked down toward the water as if she were naked. When she first felt the water, she stopped short, for, again unlike the others, who were sporting around the pier like seals, Clarissa didn't like the cold. Then, caught for a second between nakedness and the cold, Clarissa waded in and swam a few feet. She came out of the water, hastily wrapped herself in the robe, and lay down in the sand. Then she spoke, for the first time that morning — for the first time in Baxter's experience — with warmth and feeling.

- You know those stones on the point have grown a lot since I was here last, she said.

- What? Baxter said.

- Those stones on the point, Clarissa said. They've grown a lot.

- Stones don't grow, Baxter said.

- Oh yes they do, Clarissa said. Didn't you know that ? Stones grow. There's a stone in Mother's rose garden that's grown a foot in the last few years.

- I didn't know that stones grew, Baxter said.

- Well, they do.[...]"

Extrait de The Chaste Clarissa, dans The Brigadier and the Golf Widow, John Cheever.