Finally, I found her!
unfortunately died in 2007 at the age of 90. Angry against practices such as intensive cultivation, animal husbandry in battery ... Finally, the full horror of our present society ... Can give wrong? ... Certainly not!
I book an interview, which goes back 10 years, through the former mayor of his village who had known her regularly.
"The bike was in very good condition, Alain legs too. By setting a basket on the luggage rack he could go shopping at Auxon , five miles away because, Spirits Puiseaux , there was nothing, no grocer .... only the servant of the post office that sold cigarettes, candy, chewing gum, batteries, compost for pot plants begonia bulbs and ... "
Thus begins a fantastic new detective story of 220 pages long, published by Editions Black River, Paris, 1979.
author for his name, Mario Ropp. To be more precise name or nickname for this character because that took place in the range of publications in this brilliant collection called Maia Devillers. You read that right: the signature of Mario Ropp lurks a woman who has lived long in Bordes.
I wanted to know a little better than who wrote hundreds of manuscripts, especially novels and published over a hundred .... That a major newspaper defined and in the 1970s: "a quaint little woman, wisp in a perpetual state of frenzy, buzzing ball of energy, power, fierce and indomitable, armored kindness and simplicity."
was the Mario Ropp years of 1970-1980.
Today, she will not say anything. Maia writes more. It is true that she is happily more than 80 spring on his shoulders became frail it often covers a shawl close to the color of his hair, that is to say, silver.
So I went to the edges, which extends the hamlet town of Eaux- Puiseaux on the edge of the lower slopes of the forest Othe to try to interview our famous novelist.
Mario Ropp may be there, behind a wrought iron gate arabesque, grid blue rabbits, it seems ... Behind this gate, a green leafy identifies the field. The small house of the novelist lies just to the right, but we did not notice right away. When you cross the dam, all strikes the mind. He mingled smell fascinating.
Maia is there, planted under the tiny porch. She should expect. A little hesitant the ear, on the defensive ... She listens to the few sentences that I debit as an introduction. She immediately understood the purpose of my visit, and to my surprise, she seems willing to let soften.
We penetrate quickly into the mysterious cave, strange. I will not go inside his house because I want to respect the privacy of this great lady of writing police. Certainly impressed by what my eyes discovered, I asked the question whether the more banal:
- Maia, at what age did you start writing?
- I started to 13 years by worms, it often sharpens his pen through poems. Then I wrote romance novels. For me it was an outlet, but I quickly came to "police". I must have 20 years.
- Maia, what attracted you to this genre?
- The psychological, logical, surely excavated during the war, I lived with my parents. I wrote in my locked room, as they told me: "This is not writing that you will earn your crust." So, to prove and prove to me especially that I could do something else, I I worked for several months in Paris, in a workshop broaching, shipping newspapers. I packed all day "Valiant Heart" or " brave souls."
novelist's eye lights up ... Here it is fully within his universe, in his memoirs. I'm not there. It forage few moments with both hands through his hair silver and continues:
- Ouagadougou, Bobo Dioulassa : Africa! These two city names paraded before my eyes daily. One day, I could not resist the temptation. I had four years of artwork decorating under my belt, endorsed by certificate of graduation from the School Superior Decorative Arts. I was introduced to Theodore Monod , Director of the French Institute Black African who was looking for a designer. My test was enthusiastic and, in 1950, I sailed for Dakar where I stayed three years. Then, serving French Office of Scientific Research and Technology Overseas . I traveled up to 1958, the Ivory Coast to Senegal. I was drawing, but also wrote. One day at the end of a holiday spent in France, I was sitting in a bank waiting for the call my number, sitting next to a man reading "a publishing contract" from Black River home. The same evening, I rue Vercingetorix which I brought to the big boss of the "Box," a manuscript retyped and corrected by machine.
- It was agreed ? I murmured.
- No: "It is very well written, I he said, after having traveled, but it lacks a little something that we can consider its publication." I was furious. I relaunched offering him another manuscript, "game without joy, "which was accepted and published.
- But how did you write a novel?
She had an ample gesture to indicate his ignorance ....
- Hundreds ... but many are never out of the bottom of my drawers. A hundred was published in "Black River" and a dozen at " Ditis ," house for which I worked before it disappears. I also wrote a little for another house editions.
- But do you sometimes translated?
- Yes, of course, first in Italian, but also German, English as well as Finnish. In addition, some of my novels had the honor of newspapers Regional and radio through a program of Germaine Beaumont : "the hour of mystery." And then, a movie also "drugs, vice," but I will not go because the film has completely misrepresented my novel, as well as the telefilm for TV: "Isabel does not like it" with Anne Gaelle ...
- Maia, how do you write ?
- Every day, 365 days a year. The morning I blackened paper. Completely exhausted. In the afternoon, I tinker, I was treating my animals. I walked too ... I had 8 days 3 weeks to write a novel and about 15 days to rework it.
- Did you have your head in a frame accurate at the time of writing the first line?
Maia stared!
- Not! I had a vague idea of the plot, yes ... but nothing definite. Sometimes it was only in the last pages of a manuscript that I uncover my "guilty."
- Actually, you same survey you!
- Exactly, this allowed me, from a starting point to arrive at my discretion, to completely different outcomes, see opposite.
- And your characters, Maia?
- beings of normal size which, placed under conditions such that under any momentum, they are driven to murder. The names, I was fishing in the maps to avoid giving my characters real identities.
- But why do you write ?
Maia almost startled.
- This is THE QUESTION! It is difficult to answer ... perhaps to relax or entertain people, or just for fun.
- Maia, if you please , we know a lot about the novelist Mario Ropp but I want you to talk to you now. Your life as a woman after all ... your passion after writing ... I see, for example, that you are still surrounded by animals.
- Animals, I've always had, or almost. I had dogs, cats, a monkey, a rabbit as big as my fist Polish, more than 100 birds, a myriad of fish. I remember a Beagle Rebecca, who took the 1 st awards at dog show Troy ... a pony, Fritz, ducks, geese, etc. ... I forget and surely.
- But why all these animals? And people, men?
- I'm all alone and I need affection. You see, we never people when they want. The beasts, however, are still available. They are like children, helpless, with their big innocent eyes. The animals trust me and it would be abominable to betray that trust.
Franchise Maia sudden bursts in response. She almost apologizes for his selfishness and even his paranoia. Can we talk now about this and that. I learn from her mouth she rebelled against mass production, excessive current growers. She warned me: "The campaign will burst one time or another for trying to produce too ..." Or, she expressed her distress when she hears a chainsaw. She said: "Nothing makes me more unhappy than a fallen tree that has just been shot."
We maintain again and again. There's more plot, more stress. All subjects are good: politics, U.S., De Gaulle , Paris, his withdrawal here in this hamlet of Les Bordes, singers, especially flowers, music, wheats muris waving in the breeze she watches every morning push, turn yellow, but she does not like to see cut, eaten by the huge harvester ... and always, always, his novels.
When we parted, the sun is hidden behind the trees of his forest, forest Othe nearby. The hours are stalk without I once thought to check my watch, time mistress. I thank Mario Ropp, finally, Maia Devillers, for having conducted his life and often opened his heart ...
On the way home, I try to collect my thoughts and find a phrase to describe this little woman so endearing.
I would simply say, "Maia, child of the bourgeoisie Alsatian strange girl devoured by various passions: sculpture, drawing, trips. Without indulging in rose water to his first love, she chose the book to distract us ... THANK Mario Ropp and thank you Maia Devillers.
Courtesy former mayor of Waters Puiseaux . Roger Balesse
Photo: puisotin . com.
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