Below is an excerpt from my translation of Pierre Bellanger’s genre-defying tour de force, the unforgettable novel Legacy.

Séléna Verdier

The sun beats down, stinging the skin. The temperature in Iceland is just over fifteen degrees, on this early afternoon in the summertime. The sky is a deep blue. The volcanic plain of Rangárþing eystra stretches toward the ocean in a desert of ash, rocks and shrubs. The majesty of this mineral landscape brings on a contemplative mood. Yet there are certain features on which the gaze can rest. Here, an imposing rock, hewn into the shape of a human face with a somber expression. There, some tenacious seedlings clinging fast to the pebbles. One can hear the murmur of the sea, or is it perhaps the wind, bringing with it the dull roar of a waterfall tumbling over a cliff, in the distance. Two women are lying down beside their sleeping bags, like blocks of lava from the beginning of time.

The first has a rugged face. She wears her red hair in a crew cut and is decked out in a black leather onesie; she’s rolling a joint. She is forty years old. She is a member of one of the hordes of biker-Goths who crisscross the country, women-only gangs who camp out in the wild by night then get back astride their roaring bikes in the morning, leaving not a single piece of trash, nor any other trace of their presence, behind them. At the rest stops, they settle down on the terraces of the grocery stores with built-in cafés, still strapped up, and show off, sitting around wooden tables and nursing large beer glasses. Descended from the skjaldmö, the legendary Viking warriors from medieval times, they bear the proud hardiness of a gender that seeks to please itself and no one else. Ariadne rolls her joint with delicate precision, delighted with her new romantic conquest. The grass in Iceland, which grows out of the volcanic soil and in greenhouses heated by geothermal energy, is considered among the most mystical kinds of grass on the planet.

The second woman is gazing up at the sky. Séléna is blonde and stunning, as if taken right off the cover of a magazine. It is completely by chance that she is here. She had wanted to get away from France, to be somewhere else. She is going with the flow.

Their two motorcycles are waiting beside the road, glinting in the sunlight.

Ariadne Princen is the owner of a small restaurant adjoining a gas station where Séléna stopped to fill up her rented 4x4. Iceland’s gas stations are little islands of urban life amid the vastness of nature.  Huddled together through wintry necessity, there is a convenience store, a butcher’s, a café-restaurant, a garage, and a general store, of the kind seen all over the Western world. Ariadne is a do-it-all kind of manager: dealing with suppliers, waiting tables...she doesn't shy away from doing the housework either.

Cupid’s arrow had struck while Séléna was on her first coffee.

When she was on her second, Ariadne had sat down across from her at the table. That had prompted the Frenchwoman to start talking in English - to talk too much - whilst the Icelander remained silent. She had watched her run out of things to say, and then Séléna had said:

”Something happened between us.”

Ariadne had smiled and put Expand your Mind by The Vintage Caravan on the sound system. The mutual attraction was so strong that all caution was thrown to the wind.

Ariadne lives above the restaurant, in a poorly lit two-bed apartment with clutter everywhere. Amid the mess was a big bed, like a raft, where they couldn’t tear themselves away from one another. And where, each time they make love, they can’t get enough of each other.

Ariadne has a tattoo on her wrist: it is a star with eight points, each one topped with an angular geometrical shape. It is a Vegvísir, a symbol that serves as a wayfinder for the bearer. It can be found in a ‘grimoire’ known as The Galdrabók, the Icelanders’ magic book. Here, as elsewhere, religion and reason have tried to kill off the world that is not visible to the human eye. But in these wild lands, their corrosive force came up against the might of nature. The cold, the ice and the wind have retained their power. They remain forever untamed. This inviolate vibration moves from the soil into the body, into the rocks, then up to the sky. Humans are tolerated guests here, but they are not at home. This island in the North Sea, where primordial spirits ramble, belongs to no one but itself. The Icelanders look for signs of the spirits, for their words and rules. They can sense these mysterious presences. They serve as witnesses to them and tell their stories. Ariadne gave Séléna an initiation into the telluric forces, first by sharing with her the deafening trance of her favorite hard-rock, and then, gladly letting her use her spare motorcycle, by taking her up to the cliffs of lava, basalt monsters that look as if they have just drifted off to sleep, and are dotted with lichen. And finally, through love, through the heady delights of their kissing and embracing in front of the mirror...until Séléna could hear, like the beating of her own blood, the subterranean pulse of the magma.    

Séléna Verdier is a former model whose beauty is of the fresh and outdoorsy kind, a Germanic beauty. Her blond hair cascades down about her face, which is lit up by her grey-blue eyes. Her body is slender, her chest that of an adolescent. There is a predictability to the way she moves, but it is transcended by a cheeky grace - a purely French quality, a je ne sais quoi. It is the perfect cocktail for winning over every casting director on the planet. Now aged 36, Séléna has gone as far as she could in her craft, right down to her last mail order catalog, her last fashion retail website. She was probably involved in some of the last photoshoots before human models are phased out and replaced by digital simulations.

The average model is considered old at 30. They already have fifteen years in the industry by that time, they’ve flown first class, been ferried around in chauffeur-driven limousines, and stayed in hotel suites where magnificent bouquets of flowers await them. The end of their working lives comes with the realization that their low-cost airline ticket to a twilit shoot does not include baggage, and that they’re going to have to fight to get the thirty euro charge refunded. Former models are wilted flowers that don’t die. Deeply wounded by a life of luxury, their readjustment to normal life can be painful. Some pass the test and, having retained the influence that their beauty gave them, use their extraordinary and precocious experience, and the money they have accumulated, to make a success of their second act. Sometimes, it is with a spouse and a family that they rebuild their world. Others fail the test. Séléna was in this latter category.

She had first made a name for herself at age 16, by writing a blog about her anorexia and how she had overcome it. Dazzling in the selfies she posted online, she had been spotted by an agency, and before long she had been jet-setting around the world. Tokyo, New York, London, Berlin, Milan, Singapore, Cape Town... By the time she turned 20, she had already travelled several times around the world.

A mega-bucks contract with a South American hair-dye company brought her hundreds of thousands of dollars in royalties, which she spent in a few short months, showering gifts on her family and indulging her every whim. She had another success, a year later, with a TV ad extolling the virtues of the face cream Clarins – the biggest deal she ever signed – and saw her total earnings pass the one million mark, with the worldwide royalties. This treasure chest helped to cushion the blow of the fallow periods, which started to get longer and longer, until eventually there was no work at all. During her rise, she had dated male models and stayed with one or other of them - an Italian, a Brit - for three days, in hotels in Johannesburg, LA or Rio. Between two hugs and trips in a nightclub, the Apollo she happened to be crossing paths with would be learning his lines for a Nescafé  ad, whilst she would be concentrating on a major shoot for Vogue.

Séléna had felt that she could indulge in flings - and she had done so - but that she ought not to fall in love. This lifestyle as part of the jet-setting gilded youth didn’t allow for it. Later, she had had to survive. The sense of failure at no longer being able to walk into a store on the avenue Montaigne with her head held high, or to be able to afford the latest bag by Yves Saint-Laurent, was not acceptable, nor could she bear to see her wardrobe looking so last year. She had resolved to let herself be taken out, then hosted, by single men who had hit the big time, who were often fairly seductive, and who appreciated having an angel just past her best to show off at dinners and soirées, like a trophy. Between the sheets, they were intimidated by her body, with its goddess-like quality. She found them likable and gauche. Their presence in her life - even in a long-term relationship - was one that she could wash off her skin in the shower. Contented, bejeweled and nicely dressed up - in order to then be undressed - she had been through several of the kind of relationships that were handy when it came to maintaining her lifestyle.

But she had realized that she lacked the mental strength to remain inured to these kinds of compromises, and they were eating away at her. What she was involuntarily handing over to these men, who saw nothing in it at all, was the whole of her being. It was in order to rediscover herself, to reinject some meaning into her life, that she had taken off for Reykjavik.

Ariadne was her first true love.