by André Alexis
working on them the way Prozac is supposed to work on humans.
In the evening, when bats awaken, they seek the plant out, flying
over the lake in a cluster and feasting on Asclepius’s pollen. When
they’re sated, some of the bats will hang from the pistils like grey
fruit. Or like grey fruit that hisses at you, if you get too close.)
I thought, from the way Michael’s house looked and from the
Asclepius that surrounded it, that Michael and Michael’s room-
mate might be eccentric. But the woman who answered the door
and let us in – Judith – was so unassuming and charming that
our welcome was uncomplicated.
– Michael told me you were coming, she said. And here you
are. Would you like something to drink?
She was in her late twenties, I thought. A few years younger
than me. Her nose was crooked in an intriguing way. Her neck
was elegant and her voice deep. She wore faded blue jeans and a
white shirt under a pink sweater. I thought she resembled Carson
Michaels, but, if so, the professor didn’t notice.
– I’d love some tea, he said. Thank you very much.
135
What captured his interest were the many framed photographs
on the walls of the house. There were some twenty or so, all eight
by eleven, all black and white, all photographs of decaying fruit
– their textures and parasites – looking like the sullen phases of
a distant planet.
– These are remarkable, said Professor Bruno.
– Thank you, said Judith. They’re from my last show. They’re
apples or pomegranates.
The kitchen was a pleasant room, its walls a kind of pastel
yellow, its floor a white linoleum with black harlequin diamonds,
its two windows looking over the bat’s delight onto a green lawn.
The room was large enough to accommodate a long wooden table.
And at the table there was an older man – sixty or thereabouts –
whose face looked familiar to me.
– Did I hear you talking about the photographs? he asked.
Aren’t they wonderful?
Judith blushed, covering her face while straightening her
eyebrows.
– This is my father, she said. Of course he likes my work.
– It shows he has excellent taste, said Professor Bruno.
The professor and Judith’s father made a show of shaking
hands and bowing to each other in a courtly way. And it was
while watching them that I realized why the father seemed familiar.
He resembled Professor Bruno – same eyes and ears, same height.
But Judith’s father looked younger – more dark hair on his head
– and his manner was completely different. You would not have
taken him, at least not on first impression, for an academic.
Professor Bruno must have seen the resemblance, too.
– Have we met? he asked. You look familiar.
– My name’s John, he said. I don’t think we’ve met. I’m sure
I’d remember you.
Then, as if carrying on a long-running conversation with his
daughter that we’d interrupted, he mentioned Ansel Adams, whose
work he disdained, and Josef Sudek, whose work he adored.
136
– Daddy, stop it, Judith said. You know Ansel Adams is great.
– I do, he answered. I get it. But his work is arid. I prefer
landscapes that are intimate, photos that makes you feel something
strange is about to happen. Or something strange just happened
and you’re dealing with the ghost of it. The ghost of an event or
a premonition of it. That’s intimacy! And that’s why I like your
work, sweetie.
The conversation was, for me at least, instructive. I knew
nothing at all about photography. In some ways, I dislike it,
preferring the world as it’s caught by pen and ink. (The truth is,
I find looking directly at “someone else’s looking” disorienting.)
But whenever her father mentioned a photographer – Geneviève
Cadieux was one, Jeff Wall another – Judith, who could see I
wasn’t familiar with them, would show me their work and talk
about their techniques and that would set her father and Professor
Bruno going, so that, by the time Michael came home, the four
of us were happily engaged in conversation.
After a while, I felt a kind of hesitancy from the professor.
We’d come to Marsville to see Michael. When Michael came
home, it would have been right to stop what we were doing and
pay attention to Michael. But Michael wouldn’t hear of it. Instead,
Michael insisted that we carry on talking about photography and,
while making supper, joined in on the conversation.
After we’d drunk wine with our asparagus risotto, then grappa
with our olive cake, then Four Roses bourbon with our coffee, I
gave up wondering where we’d sleep. I could not drive, so we
were bound to sleep in Marsville. And if we were sleeping in
Marsville, there was nowhere else but chez Judith and Michael.
The nearest hotel was miles away.
To her father, Judith said
– You’re not going anywhere tonight, Daddy. You can sleep
in my room. Michael and I’ll sleep together.
And that was it. We all relaxed and went on drinking and
talking about Art.
137
It was Michael who changed the subject to poetry. Saying “Ut
pictura poesis” – meaning: as goes painting, so goes poetry –
Michael began talking about the way poets see versus the seeing
of photographers. Here, John’s knowledge seemed unusually vast.
At one point, he mentioned Arnaut Daniel and Giotto. I had no
idea who these people were, but Professor Bruno was almost
speechless with pleasure. As Michael showed me reproductions
of Giotto’s paintings, the professor began a poem by Daniel:
– “When I see leaves, flowers and fruit blooming on the
boughs and hear the song frogs make in the stream …”
Which was then finished by John himself.
– “Go to her, song, go to my beloved’s heart and tell her that
Arnaut forsakes all other loves and turns to her alone.”
Again, Professor Bruno seemed delighted. After days spent
with me – someone who knows so little about literature – it
must have been like an oasis in the desert to find a fellow devotee,
one who could recite the end of such a little-known poem. But it
was clear John did not feel relief or gratitude. He seemed unhappy,
as if reciting a poem were like hearing bad news. He poured
himself more bourbon and drank it down. Just as surprising were
the reactions of Judith and Michael. Both seemed stunned that
Judith’s father had recited anything at all.
– Dad, are you all right? Judith asked.
– I’m fine, he said. The bourbon’s a little strong, that’s all.
Michael tried to change the subject. But Professor Bruno
asked John how’d he’d come to know of Arnaut Daniel. It’s not
everyone, after all, who knows the poetry – the music – of the
twelfth century.
Though the subject obviously made him uncomfortable, John
answered.
– I’ve translated the poems myself, he s
aid. I used to know
the language well.
– Do you write poetry?
– In the past, a long time ago, when I was younger.
138
– Ah, said Professor Bruno, and now you’re through at last
with all kinds of knowing!
As if reluctant to acknowledge it, John took a moment before
he said
– Yes.
At which Professor Bruno, staring at him, said
– I wonder if you know the poet I’m researching? He came
from these parts. I’m sure you’ve heard of him. His name is John
Skennen.
And Judith’s father – Mr. Stephens, as it turned out –
resignedly said
– I’m John Skennen.
– You’re who? asked Professor Bruno.
– Well, I was, he said. I was John Skennen.
And he looked at his watch.
139
4
A VISION IN FEVERSHAM
– Abreakfast with bards!MMMMMMMMMMMMM,
Those were Professor Bruno’s first words to me the
following morning. Though the two of us had slept on a narrow,
spine-jangly couch, he woke early, excited by the possibility of
talking to a John Skennen he could admire. And to Skennen’s
daughter – another poet, though her medium was photography.
I had barely slept. I’d had a recursive dream, one of those that
comes back to the same incident and place, endlessly. In the
dream, I could not escape from a charging white lion whose terri-
fying roar woke me time and again only for me to discover I was
listening to Professor Bruno’s snoring. By eight in the morning I
was still sleepy, but I was caught up in the professor’s excitement.
Having heard so much about John Skennen, I wondered which
of the versions of him was real, which of the tales true.
I’d eaten a slice of toast off a plate from which I’d brushed
what had looked like insect legs. Then, when I was given a mug
for tea, Judith warned me about finding pieces of ants at the
bottom. The dishwasher worked well enough, it seemed, but a
colony of ants had established itself within. Inevitably, some
were trapped in the machine while it was on. The poor things
would be tossed about, broken, and then dried on cutlery, plates,
pots, and pans. Michael said that, having been thoroughly washed,
the insect parts were probably safe to consume. But it was dismay-
ing to discover the ants’ beadlike torsos, twiglike legs, or minute
heads stuck to a plate or lying at the bottom of a cup.
Except for Professor Bruno, those around the table were more
sombre than they’d been the night before, when the man who once
was John Skennen had promised to tell us his story. Judith, in
particular, seemed wary. She was, after all, meeting a new version of
a man she loved, her father. Michael took quick, regular sips from
a mug on which there was a picture of Measha Brueggergosman.
Then Mr. Stephens said
– Do you know? I haven’t told anybody my story.
How to describe the devastation of a lost love? As Petrarch wrote:
whoever can say the flame is painful is in a small fire. And as
Montaigne said after him: the biggest emotions breed only silence.
It wasn’t just the shock he felt at the loss of his beloved. It
was the revelation that this disappearance could affect every atom
of his being. For years, he couldn’t speak of Carson Michaels.
(Yes, that much of the story was true. He’d loved Carson
Michaels.
– A beautiful woman, said Professor Bruno.
– I wonder if you know her well enough to say, answered Mr.
Stephens.)
That is, he couldn’t speak of her unless he was out of his
mind on drugs or alcohol. For years, all he did was wander and
drink, poisoned by the humiliation that came from knowing he
would do anything to be with Carson. There was no shame he
could not imagine himself suffering for love of her. His soul was
hers, what did it matter about the rest of him?
142
The thing that saved his life was his inheritance – not the
inheritance itself but the fact that it was shared with his brother.
The two of them received five hundred dollars a month, thanks
to their great-grandfather’s invention of a spring mechanism used
to open and close umbrellas. His share was not quite enough to
drink himself to death. It fed him on most days and kept him
drunk. So, at his lowest, he spent his days drinking or passing
out in bars, while at night he wandered between small towns.
For a year and a half, he walked the province from Windsor to
Owen Sound, Sarnia to Niagara-on-the-Lake; from Chatham to
Barrie and Stratford to Peterborough.
It was strange to remember how far he’d travelled in that time.
Stranger still to think how little of the province he’d seen: the
insides of countless bars and taverns, most of them interchange-
able. When he was woken and kicked out of these places, it was
usually night and he would walk in the direction of the next
town or the town after that, getting sober as dawn approached.
What he saw of Southern Ontario he saw by aurora.
Mind you, if there was any beauty in his despair, it came from
this sobering up as the world woke: the way a stealthy vein of
light would come, gradually chasing shadows and creating silhou-
ettes, silhouettes first seen against the indigo sky, then against
the blue sky with dark clouds, then against the light-blue firma-
ment with white clouds, until the dark silhouettes disappeared,
the buildings and landscape reacquainted by sunlight.
He had memories of walking into Glencoe and being startled
by a rabbit hopping out of a cornfield beside him. How massive
they sound – like deer! – moving in the undergrowth. The Glen-
coe rabbit looked at him, watching him approach and watching
him pass, each aware of the other, because both happened to be
awake at dawn.
Or hurrying out of Dresden, over by the racetrack. He had
no sentimental attachment to racing or horses. He remembered
Dresden because he was being chased by dogs.
143
Or sleeping in a barren field near Listowel (cold, tired, and
hungry) and waking because the rain was suddenly torrential
and the sky was like a black door through which cracks of light
came, the land around him flat and endless and unpeopled.
– How old were you? asked Professor Bruno.
– Early thirties, answered Mr. Stephens.
– Ah, said Professor Bruno. That is the age when love desolates,
isn’t it?
Mr. Stephens didn’t mean to suggest, though, that these memo-
ries of the province at dawn were his deepest or most significant.
Though they were less visually striking, his memories of the world
by night were more profound. For one thing, he usually entered
night while drunk, open to the suggestions of night itself and
vulnerable to the creatures who made it their home.
One night, after closing time at a bar in Ingersoll, he was
walking along a county road, the n th Line somewhere, when he
was startled by a pig walking not far from him along the border
of a field. In the moonlight, he could clearly see the pig to the
right of him. And though he was drunk, he crossed to the other
side of road, it being strange to walk with the animal. Moments
later, there was another pig – or was it the same one? – again on
his side of the road, to his left. When he looked to see where the
“first” pig had gone, there was only darkness. He was suddenly
sober, frightened by the grunting and flatulent creature beside
him. It was as if the pig were playing a game. It moved toward
him. And when it began to trot, John Stephens began to run.
The pig kept up with him. Stephens ran faster and faster
until, nearly spent, he turned to see where the pig had gone and
found himself alone and unfollowed, still on the n th Line, some-
where between Ingersoll and Woodstock, the sky filled with stars
and a platinum moon whose light bathed the stalks of whatever
it was in the fields. He could laugh then, having left the pig
behind. At least, he tried to see the amusing side of things. He’d
144
been chased by a pig on a moonlit night. A good story. Something
to dine out on, even.
But then he looked up and the pig was in front of him, now in
the middle of the road. And it was difficult for Mr. Stephens to
describe the texture of his fear or the reason for it. It wasn’t as if
he was afraid of death. And he wasn’t afraid of pigs, but he was
afraid of the thing in front of him. He was afraid the thing in
front of him was not a pig, though he had no idea what it was if
it wasn’t. Was he afraid of the unknown? Yes, but what a strange
thing to say when he was surrounded by the familiar. He had
been on countless country roads on nights exactly like this. His
fear entirely transcended reason. It was a feeling he ever after
associated with the land, as the land was the only thing that had
ever provoked it.
All very odd, but the important thing was the creature in the
road. It began to run at him and, exhausted, he could not decide
what to do: run, dodge, kick. He imagined pushing his fingers
through the pig’s eyes. It was huge, though. It looked even more
ferocious as it came close, and it was mesmerizing. He thought
he recognized his death as it approached and he was almost
amused that this was his fate, that all the years of a life led to this
