by André Alexis
Days
by
Moon
light
A N D R É A L E X I S
W I T H I L LU ST R AT I O N S BY L I N DA WATS O N
Days
by
Moon
light
COAC H H O U S E B O O K S , TO R O N TO
copyright © André Alexis, 2019
first edition
Published with the generous assistance of the Canada Council for the
Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. Coach House Books also gratefully
acknowledges the support of the Government of Canada, and the
Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax
Credit and the Ontario Book Fund.
library and archives canada cataloguing in publication
Title: Days by moonlight / André Alexis.
Name: Alexis, André, 1957- author.
Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20189069295 | Canadiana (ebook)
20189069309 | isbn 9781552453797 (softcover) | isbn 9781770565791
(epub) | isbn 9781770565807 (pdf)
Classification: lcc ps8551.l474 d39 2019 | ddc c813/.54—dc23
Days by Moonlight is available as an ebook: isbn 978 1 77056 579 1
(epub), 978 1 77056 580 7 (pdf)
Purchase of the print version of this book entitles you to a free digital
copy. To claim your ebook of this title, please email [email protected]
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any time.)
For Alana Wilcox
and it was all true in a way only the way kept changing
– W. S. Merwin, The Folding Cliffs: A Narrative
1
TO EAST GWILLIMBURY
In August 2017, I was eating an egg and cress sandwich when
Professor Bruno called to ask if I’d help him in his travels
through Southern Ontario. I love watercress ( Nasturtium officinale).
It’s delicious and it reminds me of my mother’s garden. So, I was
already in a fair mood.
Professor Bruno had been a friend of my father’s. He was a
kind man, one I’d known since I was a child. It would have been
difficult to turn him down. The fact that his invitation came on
the anniversary of my parents’ death – a terrible accident on the
401 – made it doubly hard to refuse. I would take my yearly vaca-
tion from the lab and spend part of it with the professor, one of
the many mourners who’d wished me well at my parents’ funeral.
– I’m sure you find your parents’ friends beyond boring, he’d
said, but I hope you’ll look in on me from time to time. It’d be
lovely to keep in touch.
– Yes, I’d said.
And a year later, I was happy to show him that I’d meant it,
that I was glad to keep in touch.
Professor Bruno proposed that we spend two or three days
driving through the land on which the poet John Skennen had
lived, the land about which Skennen had written, the land that
had created the artist. The professor had spent years writing a
“literary account” of Skennen. He had all the basic facts, he said.
He knew enough about the man’s life to get a solid grip on the
poetry. What he wanted from our trip were “touches”: a few colour-
ful details, any anecdotes he might glean from people who’d
known Skennen at different stages of his life.
– You never know, he said, where you’ll find a detail, the
detail, that’ll illuminate a work.
– So, we’re looking for light, I said, teasing him.
– Not just any light, my boy, he answered. We’re looking for
the correct light.
My duties: I’d carry the professor’s bags, help him transcribe
any interviews he did, and serve as his driver. In exchange, he
insisted on paying my expenses – hotels, incidentals – and prom-
ised that I’d have time to do some botanical research. I wasn’t
happy about his paying my expenses. I make more than I can spend
at Alpha Labs. Besides, he was doing me a favour, giving me an
excuse to leave Toronto for a few days, a few days away from a city
that was, at times, oppressive because I knew it too well.
But I could tell he was disappointed when I said I’d pay for
myself. So, I relented.
– Thank you, I said. I’m grateful for the time away.
12
I was grateful for another reason, too: I’d recently heard about
a plant called five fingers ( Oniaten grandiflora) that was said to
have fantastic medicinal properties – the ability to cure jaundice,
for instance. Professor Bruno planned to visit Feversham, a town
on the outskirts of which there was a field of Oniaten. So a friend
of mine had heard tell anyway. I didn’t believe that a plant with
such qualities would be as little-known as Oniaten and I didn’t
quite believe my friend, a fellow lab tech with a strange sense of
humour. But the professor’s visit to Feversham would give me a
chance to wander around outdoors – something that always
makes me happy – while looking for a specimen of the plant.
Besides, I was sure Professor Bruno would be amusing company.
I’d be on vacation. I’d have an excuse to play at being the
botanist I trained to be. I’d be distracted from my grief – my
twin griefs – and we’d be visiting Southern Ontario, the coun-
tryside: the woods, fields, and farms I find calming and wonderful.
If I worried about anything, it was that I didn’t know the poet
Professor Bruno was writing about, John Skennen. The professor
didn’t mind my ignorance, though.
– Alfie, he said, by the end of our trip you’ll know as much
about Skennen as anyone. He’s a bit of a mystery.
– How so? I asked.
– Actually, Professor Bruno answered, it might be better to
say he was a mystery. He stopped publishing twenty years ago.
No one’s seen him or heard from him since. Can you imagine?
The talent of an angel. Gone! Like that!
As I’m sure he knew it would, his enthusiasm encouraged me
from my torpor.
The professor was almost as tall as I am – six feet – but he
stooped slightly. He had a full head of hair but his hair was like a
contradiction: thick and youthful but white as cornstarch. He’d
kept himself in good shape. He would walk for blocks – briskly,
without stopping, despite his arthritis. And he looked debonair,
always smiling. Not one of those big, broad smiles. A small smile,
13
ironical. His smile made me feel as if we shared a secret. I’d felt
this way about him since I was a child. His only flaw – and it
wasn’t so much a flaw as an occasionally misguided effort to be
helpful – was that he would sometimes speak of things so learnèd
my mind would fog up while listening to him. I’d never stop listen-
ing, but the professor’s enthusiasm alone wasn’t enough to help
me with things like herme
neutics or the Freudian unconscious.
I had five days – from Wednesday to Sunday – to get ready.
This was relatively short notice for work, but more than enough
time to pack a few days’ clothes. Not that anyone at the lab
minded my going. In the year since my parents died and, yet
more grief, the months since Anne decided we should not grow
old together, I’d accumulated seven weeks’ worth of overtime.
Management at Alpha was probably relieved to grant me a few
workdays along with my regular vacation. It was more difficult
deciding what to do with the time before we left than it was
getting days off.
In so far as I know myself, I’d say I’m cheerful and even-
tempered. I like other people and I’ve always been sociable. The
death of my parents certainly changed me. Though I knew their
going would come – my father had often warned me that they
would not be with me always – I felt as if I’d had no time to prepare
for it. Anne’s leaving had been almost as difficult, and it was more
recent. I still turned to her side of the bed in the morning, antici-
pating her warmth, still found strands of her hair on my clothes.
The bewildering thing about grief, for me, is how difficult it
makes the world to navigate. Home itself becomes foreign terri-
tory, though everything around you is familiar. For some time,
none of the things I loved – trees, music, the novels of P. G.
Wodehouse – had had any meaning, as if all of them had flaws
through which darkness came. So, it really was a relief when
Professor Bruno asked me to accompany him through Southern
Ontario and a relief that I wanted to be around others again,
wanted to see past my shrunken world.
14
We’d leave Toronto on the twentieth and in the days that
followed the professor hoped to visit Whitchurch-Stouffville,
Concord, Nobleton, Coulson’s Hill, Feversham: places where
he’d arranged to meet people who’d known John Skennen, places
where John Skennen had been seen, places that were important
to Skennen’s poetry. I packed pants, shirts, underwear, and a
mustard-coloured jacket. I thought of my mother, as I took the
things she always reminded me to take: toothpaste, a toothbrush,
and deodorant. I also brought my pencils, a sharpener, a kneaded
eraser, and a sketchbook in which I planned to draw some of the
plants I saw on our way.
Professor Bruno was surprised by my drawings.
– I had no idea you were a Leonardo, Alfie! I welcome the
noble intrusions of Art!
– But I’m not an artist, I said.
It’s something else that compels me to draw. I’ve been doing
it since I was ten. Twenty-three years. I could not imagine a life
without pencils, pens, inks, erasers, and sketches.
My mother used to say
– The world doesn’t exist until you draw it, Alfie!
She was only teasing, but she was right, in a way. I feel as if
the books I’ve filled with drawings are my journals. They hold
my life and memories. The past rushes back whenever I open
one of my sketchbooks. I remember where I was, the sensations
I felt, the mood I was in – all at a glance. My first drawing was of
a four-leaf clover I saw in the schoolyard at Davisville. The clover,
which I’d heard brought good luck, was a kind of “mixed signal.”
I found it just before John Smith punched me in the face and I
punched him back. Then again, John and I have been close friends
since Grade 6, a year after I drew the clover. I’m not a mystical
person, but I think of it this way: I’m drawn to flowers, herbs,
and weeds, some of which I draw over and over. I feel a connection
to them and, in drawing them, I allow them the place in my life
they were meant to have. On the other hand, my love for plants
15
is fairly straightforward, too. I’m attracted to their lines and
curves, their structure and colour, their complex simplicity. These
were the things that inspired my studies in botany, for which
I’ve never had even a moment’s regret.
Before we left, I bought the McClelland & Stewart edition
of John Skennen’s collected poems. I thought it might be helpful
to Professor Bruno if I knew at least a little about Skennen’s
work. I was surprised by what I found. There were any number
of love poems, some of them difficult for me to read without
thinking about Anne. And there were more philosophical poems,
some of which you could call light. But, overall, the poetry was
gloomier than I’d expected. I couldn’t see Professor Bruno in it.
Of course, this could be because the first poem I read, the one
that made the deepest impression, “Rabbit and the Rabbits,’ was
from what the professor called Skennen’s “melancholy period,’
just before he stopped publishing. In fact, it was the last poem
in his final collection:
Strange to see struggle but not what’s struggled with –
wire round your throat, head caught like a wintry
birth. White as your mother’s haunches, bloody specks
when the rifle butt breaks your neck – a careless
wind busy sweeping. Trees in rumpled linens.
We who’ve killed you talk rosemary and onions
while somewhere underground your family scarpers,
running from the lumpish beings above.
Scarpering still, they’re carrying their jitters
through my nights – along narrows, around dungeon
corners – whiskering my dreams, their endless warrens,
coming on like regret, vicious and remorseless –
quick, quicker than memory in some respects.
Caught but uncatchable, they rise unpredictably –
digging up strange lands, hard soil, dark pitch.
16
The poem was well done, I guess, but I felt like I understood
why he’d abandoned poetry: Skennen’s talent hadn’t brought him
much happiness at all.
– Ah! said Professor Bruno. Now, there you’re wrong, Alfie!
To begin with, the object of poetry isn’t the happiness or sadness
of the poet. Artists do what they do because they’re compelled.
It’s therapy that makes the patient feel much worse before it makes
them feel better. If they ever manage to feel better at all! But the
other thing to remember, Alfie, is that the psyche wants what it
wants. You and I, untalented mortals as we are, live for sunshine.
We live for the light! But the true Artist is different. For all we
know, darkness may have been what Skennen needed. It may have
been the very thing to bring him relief. Then again, it’s damned
hard to tell with poets. I’ve met my fair share, Alfie, and I wonder
if any of them can distinguish between happy and unhappy.
The first town we visited was Whitchurch-Stouffville. We left
early Monday morning, sun up and bright, the sky a light blue,
the land its late-summer self: hot but forgiving. I’ve always loved
driving in Southern Ontario, and as, that first day, we’d planned
to visit two towns that are close to each other – Whitchurch-
Sto
uffville and Concord – we were not pressed for time. I avoided
the highways (the 400s) and drove instead along country roads
(38, 29, etc.) that go up and down and take you past farm fields,
villages, and towns.
So many things made our setting out pleasant: the smell of
the land, the way cows or horses will sometimes stare at you as
you pass, the farmhouses that look like broken old faces. Then,
too, Professor Bruno seemed to know everything about every
inch of countryside. As we drove, it was like the past and the
present intertwined. He’d point out this place where, for instance,
a farmer’s cow had drowned in a pool of oil (1865) or that one
where a bishop had taken a tumble down a hill (1903) which
thereafter was known as Collar Bone Mound.
17
I loved the professor’s stories, but then, I find it comforting
to know that others have been somewhere before me. I’m not a
Speke or a Bartram, not an intrepid explorer. But I do have a
sense of adventure. I like to imagine I’m seeing things that those
before me missed. I cherish little details. I’ve always been this
way. My father, Doctor of Divinity as he was, liked to say that
paying attention is a way of being devout. God had taken the
trouble to put a spur on the ant’s tibia. It was right to notice and
admire His delicate work.
– Why, my mother used to say, are you giving your son
excuses to be idle?
But we never considered attention idleness, my father and I,
and it seemed to me, as I travelled with Professor Bruno, that the
stories he told, coming as they did from paying attention – listen-
ing, not looking – were proof of devoutness, and I took great
pleasure in them.
– I love hearing the old stories, I said.
– Yes, Professor Bruno said, it’s good to remember that a
place is more than earth and ground. It’s all that earth and ground
make possible! All the stories and imaginings. Goethe says: ‘Wer
den Dichter will verstehen muss in Dichters Lande gehen!’ If
you want to understand the poet, you’ve got to go to the poet’s
country. He’s not wrong, not wrong at all! But I say if you want to
understand a country, then you’ve got to go to the poets and
artists, to the ones who refashion the world and make it live for
their fellows. And where do these poets draw their inspiration?
