Dominique Fortier is an editor and translator living in Montreal. She is the author of five books, including On the Proper Use of Stars and Wonder.
Rhonda Mullins is an award-winning translator and writer living in Montreal, Quebec.
Dominique Fortier is an editor and translator living in Montreal. She is the author of five books, including On the Proper Use of Stars and Wonder.
Rhonda Mullins is an award-winning translator and writer living in Montreal, Quebec.
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Overview
Dominique Fortier is an editor and translator living in Montreal. She is the author of five books, including On the Proper Use of Stars and Wonder.
Rhonda Mullins is an award-winning translator and writer living in Montreal, Quebec.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781552453384 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Coach House Books |
| Publication date: | 11/08/2016 |
| Pages: | 176 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.00(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.50(d) |
About the Author
Rhonda Mullins: Rhonda Mullins is a writer and translator living in Montréal. She received the 2015 Governor General's Literary Award for Twenty-One Cardinals, her translation of Jocelyne Saucier's Les héritiers de la mine. And the Birds Rained Down, her translation of Jocelyne Saucier’s Il pleuvait des oiseaux, was a CBC Canada Reads Selection. It was also shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award, as were her translations of Élise Turcotte’s Guyana and Hervé Fischer’s The Decline of the Hollywood Empire.
Read an Excerpt
The Island of Books
By Dominique Fortier, Rhonda Mullins
COACH HOUSE BOOKS
Copyright © 2015 Dominique FortierAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-55245-338-4
CHAPTER 1
The first time I saw it I was thirteen years old, that limbo of an age between childhood and adolescence when you already know who you are but don't yet know if that's who you will ever be. It was like love at first sight. I don't remember anything very specific, aside from a certainty, a wonder so deep it was like a stupor: I had found the place I had always been looking for, without realizing it, without even knowing it existed.
Twenty-five years would pass before I would see it again. When the time came to return, I suggested that we not go: we didn't have much time before we had to head back to Paris; they were calling for rain; it would probably be crawling with tourists. In truth, I was afraid, the way you're afraid any time you go back to the places of your childhood, afraid of finding them diminished, which means one of two things: either they appeared larger because your eyes were so small, or along the way you lost the knack for wonder, either of which is a devastating idea. But it hadn't changed, and neither had I.
* * *
No matter what angle you look at it from, you can't see exactly where the rock ends and the church begins. It's as if the mountain itself is narrowing, stretching, tapering to a point – without human intervention – to give the abbey its shape. It's as if the rock one morning decided to climb toward the heavens, stopping one thousand years later. But it didn't always look the way it does today: the familiar silhouette that has been captured in countless photographs, topped by the spire on which the archangel dances, dates only from the nineteenth century.
Before the seventh century, Mont Saint-Michel didn't even exist; the rocky isle where the abbey stands today was known as Mont Tombe – a mountain twice over, because it seems that the word tombe didn't mean a tomb or a grave, but a simple knoll.
Around the sixth century, two hermits living on Mont Tombe erected two small chapels, one dedicated to Saint Stephen (the first Christian martyr) and the other to Saint Symphorian (to whom we owe the strange and illuminating phrase, uttered as he was being tortured, The world passes like a shadow). They lived in complete isolation, devoting their days to prayer and their nights to holy visions. They lived with nothing: each one had a cowl, a coat and a blanket, and they had one knife between them. When they were short on food, they would light a fire of wet moss and grass; from the shore, residents would see the smoke and load up a donkey with food, and the beast would travel the island's road alone to deliver supplies to the holy men, who did not want to sully themselves with human contact. The men would unload the provisions a bit reluctantly; they would have preferred to need only their faith to sustain them. The donkey would return along the same path, empty baskets slapping against its flanks, its step light in the sand of the bay.
Legend, or a variation on the legend, has it that one day the donkey ran into a wolf, which devoured it. From that day on, the wolf brought food to the hermits.
* * *
During my daughter's first summer, we would go for a walk every morning. After a few minutes, she would nod off in her stroller, and I would stop at Joyce Park or Pratt Park to watch the ducks. It was a moment of peace, often the only one in the day. I would sit on a bench in the shade of a tree, pull a small Moleskine and a felt pen from the bag on the stroller, and as if in a dream I would follow the man who more than five centuries ago lived among the rocks of Mont Saint-Michel. His story would mix with the squawking of the ducklings, the wind blowing through the two ginkgos, male and female, the squirrels racing through the towering catalpa with leaves broad as faces, and the fluttering eyelids of my daughter, who had surrendered to sleep. I would jot all this down haphazardly on the page because it seemed to me that these moments were important and that unless they were recorded, they would slip from my grasp forever. My notebook was half novel, half field notes, an aide-mémoire.
In the evening, I often didn't have the energy to bring in the stroller before going to bed. One night, there was a big storm that soaked everything. In the morning, the notebook had doubled in volume and looked like a water-soaked sponge. Its pages were crinkled, and half the words had disappeared – specifically, the middle half: the right half of the left-hand pages and the left half of the right-hand pages. The rest could still be read clearly, but halfway along each line the words became blurred, faded, washed out to the point of disappearing. That may be how, with their ink running together, my story ended up merging with the story of Mont Saint-Michel. I couldn't unravel them.
This anecdote is a lot like the final scene in On the Proper Use of Stars, in which Lady Jane knocks her cup of tea over the maps she has spent hours drawing, the colours running as she watches. If I had invented it, I would have written it differently. But there you have it, every day words drown in the rain, tears, tea, stories get tangled up, the past and the present come together, the rocks and the trees talk to each other above our heads.
How these 2 men who never existed but whom I try To invent at same time nt where they live will they do to reach the shore Pratt Park I know they to write I dreamed that night that the abbey was drifting on a stormy sea, brushing against riding out waves as high as
* * *
In the year of our Lord 14**, Mont Saint-Michel towered in the middle of the bay; the abbey stood tall at its centre. In the middle of the abbey, the church was nestled around its choir. A man was lying in the middle of the transept. The heart of this man held a sorrow so deep that the bay wasn't enough to contain it.
He didn't have faith, but the church didn't hold that against him. There is suffering so great that it exempts you from believing. Sprawled on the flagstones, arms spread wide, Éloi was himself a cross.
At certain hours, the abbey is silent and the rooms deserted. Between matins and lauds, a blue light descends, time stops to catch its breath. This hour is not for ordinary mortals, snoring quietly: it belongs to the sick, the insane and the lovers. It is the hour when I would wake up at Anna's side as she dozed, to listen to her light breath. She would sleep in the most unlikely positions: arms folded, legs crossed, as if sleep were amusing itself by having her pose for me in her dreams. Through the window, I would see the sea-blue sky grow darker again. A few minutes later it would grow brighter and day would begin for everyone, but this moment belonged to me.
I still wake up at that nebulous hour between night and day, and, over a year later, I still reach for her sleeping body near mine. Every time, it takes me a few seconds to recall the simple fact: she is no longer. I lose her again every morning before sunrise. One would think that feeling the same pain over and over every day would help it subside, like the blade of a knife losing its bite as it slices further into flesh, but that's not what happens. Every day, I lose her for the first time. She never stops dying.
I am not a man of God, I am not a man of science. I was an artist and I am no longer. The little that I know of the world, I owe to accounts of those more learned than me. Here is what I know: I loved a woman and she is dead.
The woman in question was not mine. She was married to another, but she belonged to no one. She had jet-black hair and eyes of a colour I have never seen anywhere else, neither before nor since. Now she is in the ground, being eaten by worms. Robert answers grudgingly when I ask him where the dead dwell. I would like to believe, as he does, that she is with God the Father in his kingdom, surrounded by the just. I don't know how to reconcile these two ideas. Is it possible that the kingdom of God is overrun with worms and that everyone just fumbles along, disfigured, eye sockets hollow? These questions are beyond me, and I try not to think about them, but they come to haunt me in my dreams. And then lauds is rung, the monks get up and head in a long line to the chapel, where they sing the dawn of the new day.
She was the daughter of a rich merchant, and I was the son of no one at all.
I have a middling talent as a painter: I apprenticed at an atelier where I was first assigned to filling in background landscapes on which those more seasoned sketched portraits of the rich and powerful, and then later I was allowed to create their likenesses. After a few years, I had built a large enough clientele to leave the atelier and receive buyers at my home. I quickly understood the advantage of giving the bourgeois the nobility that was lacking in their faces. They found themselves more pleasing in my paintings than in their mirrors, blamed the mirrors, and came back to see me when they wanted a portrait of their wives or mistresses.
I soon acquired a reputation, and it had become good form for notables to have their portrait painted by Éloi Leroux. I say this without vanity: the town had few portrait artists and none who worked as quickly as I did, so I was never short of commissions. For a while I could even afford the luxury of turning down work. Of the work I was offered, I preferred the sort that paid well and that gave me an opportunity for amusement. I had long since stopped painting notaries and bishops in their depressing robes. For pleasure, I instead did sketches of birds – in flight, pecking, building their nests or feeding their young. I liked their colours, and the fact that they didn't stay still. I particularly liked that they were absolutely indifferent to my presence. I started drawing eggs, which gave me respite from the rest of it.
One particular week I had agreed, as a favour to a friend who in turn owed a favour to her family, to do the portrait of a young girl who was getting married. I had nevertheless taken pains to inquire as to whether she was pretty.
'I don't know,' my friend replied. 'But I know she is young.'
'Well, that's something at least,' I answered, imagining one of those pale damsels whose likeness needed to be captured once it had been decided she would be given to a seigneur who was far away and far from convinced, and who wanted to get a look before committing.
The morning of the first sitting, as I was running my hand over a panel of poplar to make sure there were no splinters or slivers, I was already preparing to even out a ruddy complexion, soften the line of the chin or trim a long nose, and then she walked in, escorted by a governess. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that she was thin and dark-haired, but I didn't turn right away, letting her examine the sheet she was to sit in front of, which depicted a roughly sketched winding country road. Over the years, I had noticed that people who were about to be captured in paint almost always felt awkward. In their embarrassment, they revealed something that they then tried to hide from me during the long hours of sitting and that in spite of them found its way into their portraits. The discomfort that made them unintentionally reveal something was like the background of the painting, invisible but there, and it coloured the rest. But when I finally turned, she was leaning on the faldstool I had set out for her, studying me calmly. Still today, I could not tell you what colour her eyes were. In my shock, I dropped the brush and, in moving to catch it, knocked over a bowl of water.
'Don't be nervous. It'll be fine,' she said, smiling a little.
If my life had depended on it, I would not have been able to say in that moment whether she was sincerely trying to put me at ease or mocking me.
The first day, I did only the shape of her face: drawn straight-on; three-quarters; bathed in the midday light streaming in through the window; in profile; curtains half-drawn, in the light of a candle that left part in shadow.
The second day, I drew the simple hairstyle that held back her black curls, sketched her high forehead and the arch of her eyebrows on her pale skin. The third day I spent sitting, watching her and examining my still virtually untouched wood panel, as if to measure the distance between one and the other. I drew closer to her, I held out my hand to arrange a strand of hair, but the governess stopped me and tucked the wayward curl behind her ear, while Anna remained immobile, staring straight ahead. The fourth day, I had to explain to her that it would take me at least another week to complete the portrait. As I said the words, I thought: one month, at the very least one month, maybe two.
'You realize you won't be paid any more,' pointed out my friend, who had come at the family's request to see how the portrait was progressing.
He seemed a little worried about the turn events were taking. I clicked my tongue to let him know it was of no importance.
She would arrive at my atelier mid-morning every day and stay until the light began to fade. The entire time, she remained seated, as still as a statue, a trace of a smile on her lips and in her eyes. She watched me with quiet curiosity, asking no questions. The first few days, she would not speak either, and all that could be heard in the room was the whish of the brush on the wood panel and the loud breathing of the governess.
When she left, I would remain seated in front of the unfinished painting, unable to leave her. The idea that she would stop coming to my atelier in a few days had become unbearable, as if I had been told that I would now have to live without the sun or my hands. I found comfort in the painting, which was like an imperfect little sister to her. But I would have to give up the portrait as well.
One evening, I set a second easel beside the one that held the painting I was working on. On this second easel I placed a smaller oak panel, which, when I ran my fingers over it, was as soft as a woman's cheek. In the half-light, I started to paint a second Anna on it, drawn half from the first portrait and half from my imagination.
The face was a pale mask, framed by loose hair floating in dark waves. Lips slightly parted (had I ever seen her teeth?), forming a pout I had invented for her, between smile and malice. For the eyes, I mixed my most precious powders to create a thick, almost colourless paste, which, lacking anything better, I spread so thinly on the silver leaf that there was still a muted shine under the egg tempera.
The two portraits were progressing at approximately the same pace; unlike Penelope, who, in the night, undid the work accomplished during the day, I used the first one as a guide to finish the second piece, devoting to it all the hours from sundown to sun-up. Wracked with fatigue, I would fall asleep at the first glimmer of dawn. Before Anna arrived, I would make sure I hid any evidence of this nighttime portrait, but one morning my exhaustion got the better of me. I collapsed fully dressed on a pile of blankets that I had thrown in a corner, and I dreamed of dunes slowly engulfed by the sea.
When I awoke, she was standing in front of the second portrait. Seeing them side by side like that, my first thought was that my painting did not do her justice, and my heart clenched. But then I realized I would never see her again, and the tightness in my chest became a fist.
As I rose and tried to straighten my clothing and my hair to compose myself, she turned to me and said in a clear voice, pointing to the smaller of the two portraits, 'I want that one.'
I mustered the courage to answer, with a hoarse voice, 'I doubt it would please your future husband,' but before reaching my lips, the words future husband became a ball of thorns in my throat.
From that day on, we started to have unwieldy triangular conversations, the governess serving as an interpreter, as if we weren't speaking the same language.
'Is this the first time you have had your portrait painted?' I asked her, not finding anything more interesting to say.
She didn't answer, or did so by shrugging her shoulders, almost imperceptibly. The woman in black started talking.
'Great artists have captured Mademoiselle's likeness, names you are no doubt familiar with, such as ...'
In a haughty tone, she listed some of the most celebrated portrait artists in the county.
'The first portrait was painted when Mademoiselle was just one year old. It was so perfect that her father long refused to part with it, and he took it with him when he travelled. A number of others were painted over the years. The most recent was last summer.'
'No doubt it is also a masterpiece. But then, tell me, why call on my services this time?'
The governess opened her mouth and closed it immediately, as if suddenly realizing that there was no answer to that question. She glanced quickly at Anna.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Island of Books by Dominique Fortier, Rhonda Mullins. Copyright © 2015 Dominique Fortier. Excerpted by permission of COACH HOUSE BOOKS.
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