The Colonial Exhibition, Erik Orsenna

My name is Gabriel.

I was born in 1883 in Levallois, the capital of horses. Louis was my father, very fond of marriages. For over half a century, I have loved two sisters: Clara, the tall one, a shtetl photographer, and Ann, the blonde, a businesswoman who only gives herself standing up.

Thanks to them, my life will have resembled a colonial exhibition: a fake empire, dreams too big, a show for families…

Thanks to them, I will have known the Amazon, Belem do Para, positivism, the port of London, car racing, the secret life of Clermont-Ferrand, Freud's beautiful friends, the hideous face of the Vélodrome d'Hiver, old Hue, the capital of tombs… And so many other curiosities.

Ann and Clara will have taught me unsuspected truths, for example, that rubber is like democracy, it prevents civil wars between things, that without bicycles we would never have lost Dien Bien Phu, or that heartbreaks are sweeter in the jungle…