A Fine Passage

by France Daigle

  A FINE PASSAGE

  FRANCE DAIGLE

  a novel

  Translated by Robert Majzels

  Copyright © 2001 Les Éditions du Boréal

  English translation copyright © 2002 House of Anansi Press Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

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  First published as Un Fin Passage in 2001 by Les Éditions du Boréal

  This edition published in 2012 by

  House of Anansi Press Inc.

  110 Spadina Avenue, Suite 801

  Toronto, ON, M5V 2K4

  Tel. 416-363-4343

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  National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Daigle, France

  [Fin passage. English]

  A fine passage / France Daigle. — 1st ed.

  Translation of: Un fin passage.

  ISBN 978-1-77089-130-2 (ePub)

  I. Title. II. Title: Fin passage. English.

  PS8557.A423F5613 2002 C843’.54 C2002-904128-7

  PQ3919.2.D225F5613 2002

  We acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing program the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund.

  THURSDAY

  Organization

  CLAUDIA GAZES OUT the airplane’s window at the sea of undulating white clouds below. The entire mechanism of the world seems, at this moment, smooth to her. The sun shines unimpeded over a brilliant white ocean, and the sky is nothing but the pure expression of its essential immensity.

  A priest of sorts is seated next to Claudia. He rummages, for the hundredth time, through his worn travelling bag, produces a chocolate bar. He peels back the wrapping and waves the bar beneath Claudia’s nose.

  “Would you care for some?”

  “No, thank you.”

  The large and abundantly bearded man pulls the bar away and snaps off a small piece.

  “Sixteen?”

  “Fifteen.”

  The generic priest, a Greek pope with a touch of something rabbinical — or is it the other way around? — bites into the chocolate. He breathes deeply as he chews. Grey hairs protrude from his small, squarish round hat. His black suit is equally grey with age.

  “My name is Shimon. How about you?”

  Though she would have preferred to stare out at the clouds and daydream, Claudia resigns herself to conversation.

  “Claudia.”

  Again, the pope-rabbi offers her the bared square of chocolate.

  “You’re sure you don’t want any, Claudia?”

  “I’m sure, thank you.”

  He pulls the bar away and breaks off another piece.

  “I certainly didn’t travel alone at your age.”

  He ruminates, chewing.

  “Although my parents and grandparents travelled quite a bit.”

  He leans closer, confiding: “You see, I’m Jewish.”

  And leaning closer, whispers: “I bear a secret.”

  Claudia nods politely, but she has no desire to continue this conversation. Discreetly, she shifts her head back towards the porthole.

  “He is called Yahweh.”

  The pope-rabbi pronounces God’s name as though his lungs were collapsing. Claudia, thinking perhaps he’s taken ill, turns her head to look.

  Shimon, content with his exhalation, continues.

  “He is our God. Do you believe in God?”

  Claudia shrugs. She doesn’t know.

  “Yahweh. You have to breathe it.”

  The pope-rabbi exhales the name of Yahweh a third time.

  “Because God is breath. Almost nothing more than that. This is your first time on an airplane, maybe?”

  “No.”

  The man folds the wrapper back over the remains of his chocolate bar.

  “All right, I’m going to read now. I won’t bother you any more.”

  He opens the book on his lap and begins to read. But not a minute passes before he turns again to his neighbour.

  “Wisdom — this means something to you?”

  Fearing what may follow, Claudia offers a hesitant yes in reply.

  “Well! Well, believe it or not, I am a wise man. Have you ever seen one before?”

  Claudia is on the verge of concluding that the man is slightly deranged. But how to bring an end to this conversation?

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Good! So now you have.”

  The man named Shimon casts a global eye around the cabin.

  “People are beginning to sigh. This is a good sign.”

  And he adds, in the same confiding tone: “They are beginning to show fatigue. Sometimes, fatigue can be very beautiful, you know.”

  Two women are having lunch together in a crowded restaurant.

  “Every Thursday, he’d throw out his used Kleenex.”

  She says this without looking up from her plate; she is working hard with her fork to retrieve a piece of sodden lettuce stubbornly entrenched in the dregs of vinaigrette. The other woman does not look up either; having harpooned a chunk of meat, she is busy enveloping it in sauce.

  “Only on Thursdays? Who threw them out the other days? You?”

  The leafy green yields at last and is taken. Clearly, her friend will never change.

  “I mean, on Thursdays, he’s more sure of himself. More confident. Optimistic.”

  “Ah! You mean he bounces back.”

  Silence permeates the restaurant.

  “He wouldn’t be a bit depressed, by any chance?”

  “Depressed? No. At least, I don’t think so.”

  Claudia is astonished to find that she’s been sleeping, and she notices with equal surprise that the pope-rabbi has also dozed off. She remembers straining to stay awake while he chattered away about one thing and another. For what seemed like the longest time, she had struggled to keep up with the speaking face, but to no avail: the pope-rabbi’s face faded, slipped into slow motion, or broke into jump-cuts, like in those old Hollywood movies that her parents occasionally suspend their social conscience to indulge in. In the end, the man suggested she yield to slumber.

  “Go ahead. Don’t worry about me. Sleep is a gift from God.”

  Claudia glances at her sleeping neighbour’s delicate white hands. One of his fingers is clenched within the pages of a book with a nondescript black cover.

  A stewardess comes down the aisle, pausing here and there to ask if everything is all right. Watching her walk away, Claudia notices, diagonally across the aisle, a man, approximately fifty years old, shift in his seat and uncross his legs. He shows no sign of reading.

  In the restaurant, the two women have finished eating. A few scraps litter their plates, which they have pushed delicately aside.

  “You really have no idea where he is?”

  “He called twice. To see how I was doing.”

  “Where was he calling from?”

  �
��I asked, but he wouldn’t say. He said it made no difference.”

  “My God! Is he mixed up in something shady, or what?”

  The woman who’d struggled with her lettuce laughs.

  “Don’t be silly. Of course not! That’s just how he is.”

  Her friend sighs.

  “And when is he supposed to come back?”

  “I have no idea.” She hesitates for a moment before speaking her mind. “Assuming he comes back at all.”

  And tossing her napkin on the table, the friend concludes: “I don’t know how you manage.”

  Having uncrossed his legs, thereby slightly modifying his view, the man who shows no sign of reading continues to reflect on the fact that the names of the major planetary winds do not require capitals. Why not Trade Winds? Foehn? Sirocco? It seems to him that air currents ought to have the right to their proper identities, as do deserts, mountain ranges, and water currents. Why, indeed, should air currents deserve less recognition than those of water? Why not a Mistral and a Chinook, since we have the Agulhas and South Equatorial streams? Undeniable evidence that we treat wind with contempt: the monsoon stream — the only aquatic current not capitalized — is named after a wind current. Surely this can’t be right? The man who shows no sign of reading adjusts his seat back, but without closing his eyes to sleep. At most, he hopes to be able to think differently.

  Just how many major wind currents sweep across the surface of the globe? Four? Eight? A dozen? And why refuse the jet stream — a unique natural phenomenon, as far he knows — its capital letters? The man who shows no sign of reading glances up the aisle towards the front of the airplane. The passengers are quiet, and there are no on-flight personnel in sight. He toys with the idea of making his way up to the cockpit to ask the pilots if airplanes fly above or below the wind currents, but considering the surrounding torpor, this or any other sort of initiative seems impossible. A real Wednesday. Not quite death, but almost.

  Knocking on the door, Hans felt something odd, a sort of premonition. “Of course. I’m sorry. I thought it was Friday. My mistake.”

  The woman looked him up and down.

  “No, don’t apologize. There’s no mistake. The study of weekdays and their passage is an inexact science. As far as you’re concerned, it’s obviously Friday. I can see that. But what can I do? I have no choice but to follow the human timetable. Though, I admit, it doesn’t always suit me either.”

  Hans was not expecting such a thorough explanation for what he considered merely absent-mindedness on his part.

  “What people refer to as absent-mindedness doesn’t exist.”

  Could this woman also read his mind? Hans wanted to be rid of this bizarre feeling, but, off balance, he wasn’t even sure how to raise the subject of tomorrow.

  “Fine. In any case, I’ll come back . . . uh, tomorrow?”

  “That’s right. Tomorrow.”

  And without further ado, the woman closed the door.

  Once, when they were famished after making love, the man who showed no sign of reading made sandwiches, which they began to eat in silence. Probably it was an ambiguous silence. And though she hesitated, in the end she had not been able to resist asking.

  “What are you thinking?”

  At the time, she still expected his answers to be tinged with sweetness.

  “I was thinking of salt. I’m sure I put enough, but I don’t taste it at all. I wonder if salt loses its taste, goes stale over time.”

  She was stunned; they finished their snack in silence.

  Several rows behind, in a seat by the other side of the sky, Carmen is also looking through the porthole. Beside her, Terry is engrossed in an American bestseller he picked up at the airport.

  “The thing I enjoyed about smoking was that feeling you got, maybe twenty-odd times a day, that you were coming to the end of something.”

  Terry stops reading.

  “Hmm . . . I’m sure I know just what you mean, I do.”

  Carmen and Terry quit smoking two weeks ago.

  “It’s not so bad, though, eh?”

  “It’s bad enough.”

  But the man who shows no sign of reading is not always preoccupied by such superficial considerations as the freshness of salt or the status of air currents in the minds of professors of geography and orthography. Often he thinks of nothing in particular, finds himself unable to take hold of any specific thing in life’s continuous flow of events. In his life’s flow, that is. Of these past few months in particular, he has retained very little. Except for that Gabriel Pierné score, Prelude and Fughetta for Wind Septet, which fell into his hands . . . by chance. What was it that had moved him, at that instant, about two flutes, an oboe, a clarinet, an English horn, and two bassoons? Were he a musician, which he is not, the question would not have arisen. Perhaps it was the visual graphic of the score that enticed him — a painter’s old reflex — but what were the chances he would undertake another painting in this life? That question was left unanswered.

  “Many people pray without knowing it.”

  Now that Claudia understands that the pope-rabbi is not the least bit embarrassed about talking to himself, she leaves him to his monologue and continues to drift among the gentle clouds.

  “Joy is the most beautiful prayer, don’t you think?”

  Unable to pretend any longer that she doesn’t hear him, Claudia turns to her neighbour.

  “Simple joys are already luminous in and by themselves, so imagine boundless joy.”

  To paint. What a joke! It had all begun with a ludicrous idea. Apparently, one day an uncle of his mother’s, an old uncle he’d never met — sometimes he wonders if there really was such an uncle — abandoned wife, kids, and worldly goods and exiled himself to Vancouver, Canada. He was a child when they told him this family epic, neglecting to specify that the name of the tale’s mythic land was spelled V-a-n-c-o-u-v-e-r, and not V-e-n-t C-o-u-v-e-r-t, meaning “covered wind” in French, as he had imagined. How many times had he tried to picture what a covered wind was like, not to mention a city of that name? Only effects of colour came to mind, the kind of effects that seemed increasingly to occur to him whenever he found himself confronted by concepts that were relatively abstract or downright unfathomable.

  To paint. To this day, he cannot quite believe that this way of apprehending the world — this way of spending, or wasting, one’s time — has actually allowed him to earn a living. What luck, and what a scandal! And what a relief to think that all that is more or less finished. A few traces of that past continue to tinge the edges of the life of the man who shows no sign of reading, but they do not weigh heavily in the balance. That Pierné score, for example. So tenuous, almost completely incorporeal.

  Strange how, even in death, I seem to be swimming against life’s current. Here, in the suicides’ wing, no one is trying to come back to life. They are all precise suicides. They have nothing more to do with the living. Oh, from time to time, I may come across a faint ray of melancholy, an evanescent memory in a glance, but none of that lasts long. Precise suicides don’t struggle with such things. They’re done with struggling.

  The man who shows no sign of reading is well aware that his desire to give proper names to the warm, caressing winds of the planet springs from his dislike for the cold. To tell the truth, the man who shows no sign of reading has a kind of aversion to all things that appear difficult.

  “. . . so imagine boundless joy.”

  In this fragment of a phrase, the man who shows no sign of reading recognizes the voice he heard earlier coming from one or two rows behind. Until now, he’d paid it no mind; it was merely part of the general murmur of the flight. The voice continues:

  “Can you imagine boundless joy?”

  The man who shows no sign of reading hears a younger voice reply in the negative.

  “Of course, it
’s not easy to imagine. But at times, we get a taste of it. You’ll see.”

  The man who shows no sign of reading is tempted to turn around. At last, some entertainment. To make the most of it, he decides to make his way to the washroom. By chance, he gets up at the same moment as the girl who is seated next to the pope — or rabbi, he can’t tell which — to whom he attributes the inspired phrase. The man who’d shown no sign of reading allows the girl to go first. They proceed in single file towards the rear of the airplane, both of them feeling they are going against the current.

  You’ve taken up your model cars again. A fine idea. But it does worry your mother to see you re-enacting the sort of collision in which I died. Of course, you can’t help it. You’re not sure what happened exactly, but you’ve heard things. You suspect — maybe it’s something you overheard — that I may have done it on purpose, that I caused the accident as a way of getting out of life. How can I make you understand, my son, that I’m not a suicide? Or only to a very limited degree.

  Like everyone else, I had wanted once or twice to die. Well, perhaps more than once or twice. Dying, after all, is also part of life. Sometimes I suffered terribly from a lack — a lack of perspective that would have allowed me to get out of myself, to escape my limits. I experienced this as a kind of imprisonment, as though I was enclosed inside an airplane in mid-flight. I accepted to live my life this way, though I occasionally deplored it. But how to explain to you, my son, that I am an involuntary suicide, an imprecise suicide? That the intention to die that has been attributed to me is a mistake? In any case, I would never have chosen to die on a Thursday.

  All the washrooms are taken when Claudia, followed by the man who’d shown no sign of reading, arrives. But no one else is waiting, aside from, perhaps, a young man standing there, his head lowered, with an ear almost glued to one of the doors.

  Claudia and the man who’d shown no sign of reading can hear someone throwing up in the washroom. The young man seems anxious.

  “Carmen?”

  In reply, he is greeted with another heave.