by Anne Hébert
They have waited until the sky turns perfectly black. Raphaël on her arm, like a son who might have brought her out for a stroll. He’s tall enough to be seen from a distance. Close up, you can see his handsome face. Girls eye him as they pass. Their bright blouses, their mischievous eyes, their mouths, desirable and desiring.
“Hey, good-looking, where are you spending the night?”
Raphaël seems to want to melt into the crowd that is brushing against him. He says it’s like salt water, it holds him up. Amid the movement of the crowd he is like a fish in water. She exists without desire in a world that is only desire. Throbbing life rushes in around her on all sides.
IT IS A SUMMER DAY without radiance, the sun half-hidden behind layers of cloud, turning them white-hot. The sky weighs on our heads like a burning, chalky lid.
The lower town is baking, its freshly cleaned stones, its half-dressed tourists. The Théâtre de l’Emérillon stands behind the Place Royale. A shady opening, cool and dark. Like breathing the air of a cellar or a sacristy.
Flora Fontanges has been summoned by the director, for a bit of a tryout he says, half closing his myopic eyes. This bit of a tryout consists of placing Flora Fontanges on the stage, with no props or partner, no spotlight or curtain, after ascertaining that the theatre is totally deserted. A private meeting for the director and Flora Fontanges. To isolate Flora Fontanges in the void. Examine her from every angle like a living germ under a microscope. To capture her at the moment of her metamorphosis, this role must seep into her little by little. With no script or voice, no motion or makeup, in the utmost nudity, so that Winnie may emerge into the light and become visible on the face of Flora Fontanges and in her body, which will shrink and shrivel before our very eyes.
She calls upon a lifetime of experience, laden with age and lost illusions. She has access to things she does not yet know, that are only hinted at among the shadows of passing time. Flora Fontanges is already consumed by eternity, given over altogether to the role that inhabits her and possesses her.
Slight particles of dust are visible, stirring in the beam of light that comes through the open door.
The director has arranged for her to stand in the very centre of the beam, under a delicate sifting of dust. He adjusts his little gold-rimmed spectacles. He looks, as if through a magnifying lens, at the woman alone on the stage, in the wan light and the swirling dust. Seated now on a canvas folding stool, she bows her head and stares at the veins of her hands, spread flat on her knees. As Flora Fontanges concentrates, the veins swell and stand out more and more clearly and blue against her pale hands.
Soon there will be just a little old lady, wizened and mute, her presence revealed only by its dryness, like a heap of brittle bones.
Gilles Perrault pays close attention, as if life and death were being played out to his orders, here before him. He commands her in an exhausted voice, barely audible:
“Show your arms now. I want to see your bare arms raised and crossed above your head. Remember, you are old, very old . . .”
She sheds her linen jacket and raises her bare arms above her head. These are indeed Winnie’s arms as the director has dreamed of them. He swallows, sighs with satisfaction.
The time hangs heavy. A few seconds? Minutes? An old woman keeps her old arms raised endlessly above her head. The director standing motionless at her feet, in the front row of the theatre, takes great pleasure in the sight.
A few onlookers have gathered in the open door, blocking off the light from outside, surprised at how cool it is in the theatre. Gilles Perrault claps his hands. Flora Fontanges brings down her arms. Slowly comes back to herself. Lazarus emerging from the tomb may have experienced this, the extreme slowness of the entire being who must learn again how to live.
She dons her jacket again as if doing so were the hardest thing in the world.
Her daughter’s face chooses this very moment to appear, when Flora Fontanges, defenceless, seems to be struggling to extricate herself from a pile of dead wood. Here it is now, raised up to her, childish and pink, the little lost face. Moist black eyes, the whites nearly blue. She shrinks back. A line that is not in the play lingers in her.
“What an idea, to bring my daughter here at such a time. I’m drained, dead . . .”
She says again, aloud:
“I am drained, dead . . .”
The features of Maud as a child fade away to make room for the director’s stooped figure.
“Amazing! You’re absolutely amazing!”
He has taken off his glasses. His blue eyes are misted with tears. He cannot see two steps ahead of him. While she begins to smile, without his seeing. The transfiguring smile pushes away the role of Winnie, makes her resemble a beaming actress bowing slightly, after escaping once again the danger of death.
“It’s so wonderful to act!”
And she knows no other words, seeks no other words to express her plenitude and her bliss.
SHE TOOK HER LEAVE OF the director of the Emérillon after he reminded her of the date, July third, for the first reading of Happy Days. She is free until the third of July.
Now she is wandering through the streets with their old restored houses. She sets Winnie aside. Cleanses herself of Winnie’s unattractive face and ravaged body, which cling to her skin. She is once more no one in particular. She is neither young nor old. No longer fully alive. Except for an insistent desire for a cool shower and an icy drink.
She is alone by the side of the river in the lower part of the city, where everything began three centuries ago. It resembles a theatre set. She is looking for a street name which is also the name of a woman, one that Raphaël told her about.
Barbe Abbadie, she repeats to herself, as if she were calling someone in the dark. She is seeking a woman’s name to inhabit. To shine forth anew in the light.
She seeks and does not find. Raphaël must have been mistaken.
“I am drained, dead . . .”
Her daughter Maud shows herself again. A centre part and heavy black hair on either side of round cheeks.
Maud’s voice says that numbers are alive. She is a mathematics student and a runaway.
Flora Fontanges wishes she could chase away the image of her daughter. Asks for mercy. Settles into her fatigue. Begs for time to recover from Winnie’s despair. Is already in search of another role.
The damp heavy heat makes her clothes stick to her skin. Her mouth is dry as if she has a fever.
None of the streets near Place Royale bears the name of Barbe Abbadie. Raphaël has probably been dreaming.
Starting with a name that has scarcely emerged from Raphaël’s dream then, why cannot Flora Fontanges in turn discover a living creature named Barbe Abbadie, decked out in just her name, as in a brilliant skin, at the beginning of the world?
So many times already, throughout her career, she has let herself be seduced by the titles of plays that are women’s names before she knew anything about the script. Names to dream on, to ripen a role in secret, before the lines burst out, sharp and precise.
Hedda Gabler, Adrienne Lecouvreur, Mary Tudor, Yerma, Phaedra, Miss Julie.
A name, just a name, that already exists powerfully within her.
Barbe Abbadie, she repeats to herself, when the sky abruptly turns black.
You can trace the first drops of rain as they fall slowly, one by one, widely spaced like dark stains on the fieldstones and the rubble-stones of the old houses that line the Place Royale.
All the patina of life on the walls and on the roofs has been carefully scraped off and wiped away. These are dwellings from another time, as fresh as brand-new toys.
The river is there, sputtering with rain against the wharfs.
Soon, torrents of dark water lash the city.
A café crowded with people dripping rain, their hair plastered down, faces like the drowned.
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br /> Raphaël has joined Flora Fontanges. They talk about Barbe Abbadie. Wonder what good deeds Barbe Abbadie might have done, to have been given a street, and what evil she might have done to have the street taken from her almost immediately. Together they decide on Barbe Abbadie’s age, her marital status, her life and her death.
Thirty years old, a merchant husband who owns two ships and a large shop on the rue Sault-au-Matelot, four children with a fifth due shortly, an account book impeccably maintained, a shop filled with the good smells of woollen cloth, of silk, muslin, and canvas. There is talk of ells, of sols and gold louis, in the cool half-light of the shop. Barbe Abbadie reigns over the shop and the house. With every step her magnificent legs set aswirl a full rigging of petticoats and skirts. Her deep frills are recognizable from afar. Gripped by fear and respect, servants and shop-girls listen to her move from bedroom to corridor, from corridor to staircase, all the day long.
As she sips her iced tea, Flora Fontanges imagines the hands and eyes of Barbe Abbadie. Dark blue eyes, soft strong hands. She tries to capture Barbe Abbadie, full face and in profile. Small nose, round chin. She tries to imagine the sound of her voice, swallowed up long ago by the air of time. Flora Fontanges pays no attention now to Raphaël sitting opposite her. She dreams of taking over Barbe Abbadie’s desiccated heart, of hanging it between her own ribs, of bringing it back to life again, an extra heart, the vermilion blood pumped into it from her own chest.
Raphaël enters into the game. He says they must pin down the time when Barbe Abbadie lived. Why not the mid-seventeenth century, say 1640 for example?
Flora Fontanges thinks of the odour of Barbe Abbadie, which must have been powerful, at a time when people didn’t wash much. Under Barbe Abbadie’s arms and skirts, her cloth-merchant husband must have choked in savage ecstasy.
They must dress her, this woman, offer her fine linen and lace, gowns and fichus, headdresses and bonnets, and a set of keys complete with the one to the salt and the wine, the one for the sheets and towels, and the tiny golden key to the jewel casket.
Raphaël talks about the museum just next to them, that has many objects and utensils used by the country’s first settlers. As soon as the rain has stopped they must go and look for Barbe Abbadie’s vanished household: a pestle for salt in its mortar, a wheel for spinning wool, perhaps even the set of keys that provided access to her whole life.
It’s a matter of getting your hands on the right key, and Flora Fontanges appropriates for herself straightaway the soul and the body of Barbe Abbadie. She takes from it words and gestures, she causes Barbe Abbadie to hear, see, listen, laugh and cry, eat and drink, make love every night, tumbling happily with her husband in unbleached linen sheets.
Flora Fontanges grows sad. She catches a glimpse of the end of Barbe Abbadie, dead in childbirth in 1640, in the big bed made for feasts of love, in the master bedroom on the first floor of a fine stone house at 6, rue Sault-auMatelot. Now that house is filled with the screams of a woman in labour and the cries of a child, and with the rumble of raucous sobbing by a man who believes he has lost everything.
Flora Fontanges beams with the life and death of Barbe Abbadie. She is powerful now, inescapable, at the height of her confidence. Glows with all her fire. She leans across the table to Raphaël.
She is and is not Flora Fontanges.
“Raphaël dear, how you’re staring at me, how you listen! I am Barbe Abbadie and I’m looking at you too, and listening to you. How old are you, Raphaël dear?” He says he’s just twenty.
Flora Fontanges laughs.
He murmurs:
“You’re marvellous.”
His whole body moves abruptly. He brings his face down close to Flora Fontanges’s hand. Tries to kiss it. A slight movement of the wrist, barely perceptible, and her hand turns over, palm up, soft and warm under Raphaël’s caress.
She says that’s called “faire larirette” and that it’s always the first step in love between Barbe Abbadie and her husband. A tiny little kiss on the palm of the hand.
She laughs.
“Don’t worry, Raphaël dear, it’s only theatre.”
A few drops of rain lengthen and trail on the windowpane. Conversations in the café rise a notch, as if everyone, freed now of watching the rain fall, were suddenly starting to talk at once.
Flora Fontanges gradually calms down, withdraws into herself. Plays with the strap of her bag. Says she wants to go home. Raphaël wonders if he has dreamed. An ordinary woman is standing and waiting for him to finish his orange juice.
He sips it slowly. Forgets Barbe Abbadie. Accepts only the present. He is content and pleased with it. The acid, sugary taste of orange. He sees on the table before him a big fly that seems to be tirelessly polishing its legs.
During the storm the light has dwindled, so much that now it is almost dark. All the day seems to have been swallowed by the river water, which glows now from within before the harbour lights come on.
IT’S NO USE TRYING TO explain to American tourists why so many anachronistic cannons are aimed at them, here and there in the city. Raphaël talks about the fortifications that took a hundred years to build and have never been used. Ever since the English conquest, history has been filled with false alarms, and it makes a fine Tartarean desert, an awesome Syrtic shore for the soldiers at the Citadel perched high above. In their red coats and fur bonnets, they guard the beauty of the landscape and watch over the river and the clouds, awaiting a prodigious attack that has been delayed for two centuries now.
Sometimes Raphaël, the scrupulous guide, recalls that the birth of the city was a misunderstanding, the founders believing they were on the path to the Orient, with its wealth of gold and spices.
AN ELONGATED FACE, HAIR SMOOTHED down on either side of his hollow cheeks, eyes deep-set beneath the brow, and some vague powers that let him hold sway over a group of four boys and four girls. Since Eric left the church, all his attention in this base world is concentrated on seeking a secular moral code that will satisfy him and bring peace to his heart.
He has sworn that he will start afresh as if he had never lived. To take eloquence and wring its neck seems to have become the main concern of this former preaching brother. One thing only is necessary, he keeps telling himself. If he could just discover that primary necessity, all the rest would be organized around it, like a planet wrapping itself about its fiery nucleus. He thinks he has laid aside all principles and all his former ways of doing things. He imagines himself breathing like a newborn in the absolute new. Yet he has maintained an outmoded sense of charity that outstrips him and leads him where he doesn’t want to go. He believes that the supreme virtue is to be detached from everything, come what may, yet compassion is still alive in him and it gives him no rest. He has not said to anyone, “Follow me and be perfect as my heavenly Father is perfect,” but still they come after him and will not rest until he has told them how to become meek and lowly of heart. He has done nothing but talk to them about infinite peace and about the arbitrary nature of all power. His hoarse voice sometimes stumbles over words which he then retracts, confused. They listen and follow even his most stumbling utterance, so profound is the spell they are under, so urgent their desire for a new law. Where is life? they have been asking themselves for some time now, tired of the political intolerance in which their parents have brought them up. Hundreds of voices used to be raised in this city inhabited only by descendants of the founders, but now hearts are secretly questioning the propriety of living anywhere on the earth, that stretches as far as the eye can see, open and offered, without war or violence. What dream is this? they asked each other. To follow Eric they have abandoned father and mother, home, education and all certainty of being on this world’s straight and narrow path. They have begun to grope, to search for peace with all their might. Sometimes Eric seemed to precede them along the path, sometimes he was very weary, even questioning his reason fo
r living.
For a year now they have been sharing three rooms and a kitchen on rue Mont-Carmel.
They have pooled everything they possess, books, savings, jeans and T-shirts, sunflower seeds and millet, even their slender bodies, blithely changing partners according to the desire of the moment.
Eric likes to repeat that individual love, possessive passion, devastating jealousy, and all dual relationships must vanish from the peaceful city of their dreams.
A girl’s high-pitched voice under a dark mass of curls states that Maud and Raphaël began very early to cheat, spending every night together.
They are all there, the friends of Maud and Raphaël, boys and girls on cushions or on the dark, varnished hardwood floor. They are meticulously shelling sunflower seeds, pecking at them in their palms.
They have offered Flora Fontanges a kitchen chair. She prefers to join them on the floor, using the chair as a backrest, remaining a little off to one side, against the wall.
They begin talking among themselves, in low whining voices, talking about acid rain and the acid fog that is worse than the rain, then suddenly they fall silent as if they have exhausted any desire, any reason to speak.
The voice of the girl, under her dark mass of curly hair, rises again, addressing Flora Fontanges:
“I was the one who found Maud. At the airport in Lorette. She’d been there for three days, sleeping on a bench in her sleeping bag, wandering through the airport all day like a ghost. She asked me for a light. She was smoking Gauloises. She said she couldn’t stay there because the police insisted she keep moving. I brought her to rue Mont-Carmel. She had a French accent.”
