The American Fiancee

by Eric Dupont

  “To hell with your Magda Goebbels! Get her to shut up!”

  “She’s not done. She says the most important thing—although it’s something that seems to be beyond your talent and abilities—would be to show your audience that we’re all Scarpia, we’re all Tosca, we’re all Cavaradossi. That’s what she thinks. The oppressor, the innocent victim, and the person who takes a stand. Anyone can be an executioner, anyone can be a victim. I can’t make out the rest. She’s talking too fast.”

  “Executioner? She should know all about that, being German and all! I’ve had enough of all this, Arnold! I don’t know who you are or how you managed to get in here, but I know how you’re going to leave.”

  If D’Ambrosio had bothered to ask, he would have found out just how secure the gate to Castel Sant’Angelo was. Times had changed since popes would take refuge there from invading armies. The castle gate was watched over by two security guards, that much is true. But for Madeleine and Solange, a single American hundred-dollar bill had been enough to have them look the other way. And for Gabriel, Magda’s menacing presence and his own imposing stature had sealed the deal. The guards had assumed they were relatives of one of the extras.

  Madeleine had been relegated to the sidelines of the conversation, but had no intention of staying there: she still hadn’t told D’Ambrosio what she was doing in Rome.

  “Mr. D’Ambrosio, I have some very bad news for you. Mado Group Inc. is withdrawing its funding for your movie. Don’t look at me like that. I don’t know the first thing about theater or the opera. All I know is that people like that kind of thing; they find it entertaining. I don’t know why everyone is getting so worked up over a few swastikas or the portrait of Adolf Hitler you hung up in the second act. I feel nothing but pity for those old men who don’t even understand why we’re all shouting at each other. I hope that when I get to their age I won’t be reduced to getting up at the crack of dawn to pretend to execute someone. And, by the way, I really would like you to take me to my son. Yes, I saw you, Gabriel. Hello. Sure, it’s nice to see you. I’d give you a kiss, but you know how much I hate that sort of thing. Now, about you, Bruno-Karl. Where’s Michel? And could you please get that dog to shut up? I can’t take it anymore. I’m a little cranky ’cause I didn’t sleep very well, you know? So yesterday morning I was in my office reading through a bundle of letters my son Michel sent me—letters he evidently meant to send to his brother Gabriel who lives in Berlin. He’d put the wrong address on the envelope and that got me worried, because my Michel doesn’t make that kind of mistake. That’s more like something his brother would do. But reading through the notebooks and the letters they’d exchanged over the past few months, I was reassured to see they’d been talking. Sometimes harshly, sometimes tenderly, but they were talking like two brothers. That did me the world of good to see that. And reading through Gabriel’s notebooks, I began to understand a ton of things. Just imagine that before coming here Solange and I took a little detour via New York City. Uh-huh. Around the world in one night. I’d something important to sort out. If I’d listened to myself, I’d have stayed in New York for a day longer, then left with Solange when I’d gotten some rest. But then didn’t the lovely Anamaria call to wish me a happy new year! ‘Madame Lamontagne, the place we’re staying costs twelve million lira a month.’ I beg your pardon? I said. $12,000? And then D’Ambrosio’s rent on top of that? For six months? Do you think I’m crazy? Do you know how many waitresses I can hire for that kind of money in Milwaukee alone? Girls with no other prospects? With babies to feed? You know, the kind of morons who’ve never even heard of your plays. Now you listen to me, sonny. When I go to New York, I don’t stay at the Waldorf Astoria, no siree. I stay at the Radisson. I travel economy class, like all my employees, even Solange. But numbers aren’t your strong suit, am I right? Too smart to worry about that kind of thing, aren’t you? Well, I’m not. Everything I have I got because I know how to run a business. Send me straight to hell if you can find a dollar wasted anywhere in my company. I’ve the reputation of running my ship like it’s a convent, and I’m proud of it. So when news reaches me that a little jerk is in Rome living it up like a prince on my dime, well, you’ll understand that my patience is being sorely tested, dammit!”

  In the next instant Gabriel had to restrain his mother as she tried to punch D’Ambrosio in the gut while Magda held him. She did manage to rough him up a little, though, Magda crushing his Adam’s apple with her cane. Gabriel grabbed him by the collar and freed him from their grip, only to mete out his own punishment, holding the man off the ground and shaking him hard.

  “So where’s Michel? Talk, asshole!”

  With emotions running high, Michel suddenly appeared above them. From the mezzanine floor with the huge statue of the archangel that shared his name, he had quietly and sardonically waited for the conversation to turn to him. Minutes earlier, upon hearing the voices of his mother and Solange, Michel had blown a fuse. He would later learn that his behavior had been caused partly by the amphetamine-based drugs D’Ambrosio had been giving him to speed up his weight loss and partly by shock. He’d wrapped himself in a white sheet that had been covering one of the cameras. Opening it slowly, like a butterfly spreading its wings, he walked forward and found it appropriate, given the circumstances, to deliver his lines stark naked.

  Michel’s nudity was as embarrassing as it was unexpected, and gave rise to a diverse and varied range of emotions from those party to it. You see, in half a year the man had lost as much weight as the average person weighs. He was unrecognizable. Even Madeleine couldn’t believe her eyes.

  “Michel, for the love of God, cover up that bass clef!” she told her son.

  “Michel, you’ll catch cold. Come down from there,” his brother told him.

  “Michel, my love, you’re scaring me. Come down and we’ll talk,” his lover wept.

  But the best line went to Solange. Michel, suddenly bereft of so many kilos, had become the spitting image of his father. His fat—proof of his mother’s affection for so many years—had hidden his origins. Now they were in no doubt.

  “My God, he looks just like Father Lecavalier, don’t you think, Madeleine? He even talks with the same stuck-up accent! It’s unbelievable!”

  Gabriel helped his brother down while Madeleine stared daggers at Solange. Clearly an enigma had just been resolved in Solange’s mind, and she didn’t stop chuckling to herself until the plane touched down in Montreal the following day. At the first hint of trouble, the extras had wisely opted for the most German of Irish good-byes. Everyone gathered around Michel as he sat on one of the ramparts. But D’Ambrosio demanded their attention.

  “Pardon me for interrupting this touching reunion, but I’ve got people waiting down below and an orchestra ready to play the final part of Act III tomorrow. I intend to finish this movie. And I’d like to remind you, Madame Lamontagne, that if you withdraw your financial support at this stage it will be deemed a breach of contract and I’ll take you to court to get my hands on what is rightfully mine. It’s important to respect one’s commitments in life, madame. As for you, you brute, the police will take care of you. Now I’m going downstairs for a cigarette. And if Brynhildr and her gorilla are still here when I get back, I’m calling the cops. Is that clear?”

  He disappeared down the stone staircase, his head high and proud. While he’d been speaking, Magda slowly wandered around the terrace, enthralled by the splendid views of Rome. Madeleine went over to her. While the others tried to get Michel to see reason, Madeleine slipped Magda Ludwig’s little cross without a word of explanation. Magda held it tight. It was the same little chain. It all flashed before her eyes: Berlin, the little sister who’d been gassed, Ludwig, Tosca, the amber barrette, Magda Goebbels’s earring, the bombs, the deaths, the freezing waters of the Baltic Sea, the German deaths piling up as if to try to make up for everyone else’s dead, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a bomb for a bomb, the overture of The Magic Flute, and the so
und a mad zebra makes galloping off into the night, its mane on fire.

  The cross was a little worn, like her memories. She motioned for Madeleine to fasten it around her neck.

  “So schön,” she said to herself. Then slowly, leaning on her cane, with the speed of a giraffe, she walked over to the edge of the terrace, looked down as though to gauge the distance, cleared her throat, pointed over at the dome of St. Peter’s, and sang at the top of her voice:

  “O Scarpiaaa, avanti a Diiiiio!”

  And jumped into the void.

  Epilogue

  THE SANTO SPIRITO Hospital is just a stone’s skip along the Tiber from Castel Sant’Angelo. If ever someone feels unwell while visiting the castle, if a tourist is suddenly in urgent need of medical attention after gazing out over Rome from the terrace, they invariably wind up at Santo Spirito. The Italian capital is no stranger to cases of severe emotional trauma, a phenomenon known to some hospital staff as “Puccini syndrome.” For every man, three women are affected.

  To get to the emergency room at Santo Spirito, you come in through the main door on Lungotevere in Sassia, a busy avenue that runs along the Tiber, walk past the gift shop on your right and continue straight ahead, looking for signs to the Pronto Soccorso. Prompt assistance. At the bottom of the stairs, turn right and you’ll find yourself in a little waiting room, where you’ll stay until someone decides whether you’re sick or not. The little room, painted turquoise for reasons patients have never understood, is furnished just as horribly as the waiting room at the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal. The cries of pain are the same. Solange, Gabriel, Michel (clothed, but now silent), Madeleine, Anamaria, and a handful of technicians had followed the ambulance to the hospital, a trip that took just long enough to turn the engine on and off again. Dr. Ruscito came in, plunging the room into almost complete silence. Anamaria was tasked with translating the doctor’s sad news. He was very sorry to have to inform the singers that Bruno-Karl D’Ambrosio and Magda Berg were both dead.

  “He must have died instantly. He didn’t suffer at all. Your German friend was alive when she got here, but I regret to inform you that she succumbed to her injuries. It’s quite amazing to think she landed right on Mr. D’Ambrosio’s head. She couldn’t have aimed better if she’d tried.”

  “I know. We heard Magda shout out, then nothing. It’s just awful,” said Anamaria.

  “She’s at the end of the hallway. We’ve informed the Canadian embassy about Mr. D’Ambrosio. As for Mrs. Berg, we’re waiting for a German diplomat. He should be here soon.”

  “May I see her?”

  No one could refuse Gabriel the chance to pay his respects. He stood there alone, looking at Magda’s body. Her head had struck the stone pavement at about ear height. Blood had poured out of her mouth, great gushes of it, drowning the chain and the little gold cross. He managed to undo the clasp, wiped the remaining blood on the sheet, and pocketed it. His mother looked on behind him.

  “You’ll head home via Bavaria, Gabriel.”

  “That was the plan. But I’d reserved two seats.”

  “Will you come back to Montreal after that?”

  “I’ll have to think it over. I have to get Magda back to Berlin, too. Then I’ll have to go to Kaliningrad.”

  “Where?”

  “It’s in Russia now. It used to be called Königsberg.”

  “What will you do there?”

  “Look at the beaches.”

  “Do you need money?”

  “I don’t need anything.”

  “Solange says you’re to keep an eye out for something important in the mail soon.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I don’t know. I think she sent you a gift.”

  There were no tears. That wouldn’t have been very German.

  Little Wotan, the yappy, high-strung chihuahua, stopped eating and died of hunger following the death of his owner. D’Ambrosio’s ashes were, according to his wishes, scattered in the St. Lawrence River just off La Malbaie, federal regulations be damned. The movie was never released and so Floria Tosca was spared the humiliation of having her real age on everyone’s lips. She was still out to seduce, after all.

  Madeleine decided to bring Michel and Anamaria home with her. Michel eventually emerged from his torpor somewhere over the Atlantic. His voice changed once his son was born. The anxiety that had always been there was gone, as though having a Louis Lamontagne in his Outremont home had brought the singer the peace he’d sought for so long. Madeleine and Solange went on opening restaurants. When Anamaria announced that her son would be called Louis, Madeleine pursed her lips, then, drawing on The New England Cookbook, went about creating a new brioche with Solange. They called it the Holy Angels Brioche, and it was only available Saint-Jean-Baptiste weekend. With relish, Anamaria put back on all the weight she’d lost, to everyone’s great delight.

  Gabriel stayed a day longer than planned in Munich so that he could take a second trip through the pleasant Bavarian countryside. Berta was dressed in black when she opened the villa door to him.

  “You? Who told you?”

  “Told me what?”

  “About Terese. She’s being buried this afternoon.”

  “My God . . . I wanted to give her her brother’s cross. If only you knew, Berta . . .”

  Berta smiled, then, holding the door open, stuck her head outside in the cold air to confide in him.

  “Now that she’s dead, I can tell you. The undertaker told me this morning. It’s the talk of the village.”

  “What is?”

  “Imagine his surprise when he was getting Terese’s body ready.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She had us all fooled all these years. They also found her real papers in a safe she kept hidden away. Before she came to live here in Bavaria, Terese’s name was Ludwig! Imagine that! Although with those Berliners, I suppose you can’t be too surprised. The Nambergers think she must have been a Nazi and it was her way of disappearing without leaving Germany. But that wasn’t it . . . I always knew something was up. Did you know she was sent to the camps? That’s where they . . . well . . .”

  “Is the casket already closed?”

  “No, you can go see her. I’ll drive you. We just need to wait for the Nambergers.”

  In the almost-deserted funeral parlor, Berta thought Gabriel terribly ill-mannered when she opened her eyes after a prayer to find him smiling as he put a little gold cross into the deceased’s hands. Berta closed her teal-colored eyes again.

  And far from there, in the land of the cherry blossoms, on that first day of January 2000, people out for a stroll through the cemetery in Nagasaki happened upon something most unusual: an arrow planted in the ground. It lay in front of a white tombstone that belonged to a Canadian nun who’d been killed by the atomic bomb in 1945. No one could explain how the wooden arrow got there. It seemed to have fallen from the sky on New Year’s Eve. The blame was laid on a group of children playing nearby. And the arrow eventually disappeared into the ground, as though drawn in by some inexplicable force.

  A Note from the Translator

  I realized just the other day that I’ve been championing this novel since before it was even published in French. I think sometimes it can seem as though literary translators like me are tooting our own horn when we ask others to read our books. But the truth is, this isn’t my book; it’s Éric Dupont’s. And I don’t think it’s great because I translated it; I translated it because I think it’s great.

  I was already in love with Éric’s work. As chance would have it, the first book I picked up when I moved to Quebec City from Ireland in 2003 was Bestiaire, which I would later translate as Life in the Court of Matane. Reading that was enough to convince me that I wanted to drop everything and become a literary translator. I like to think that I’m a good fit for Éric’s voice, that if I were to sit down and write a novel, then my voice would sound like Éric’s. I don’t think prose is best served tight. I like my sen
tences long and sprawling, stuffed full of asides and memorable images. For me, it’s all about the storytelling. For Éric, too, I think.

  I have fond memories of first reading The American Fiancée on my tiny iPhone 3. I started it on the three-hour train journey from meeting Éric in Montreal back up to Quebec City. I kept going as I boarded the bus from the train station out to the suburb where I live. And I wandered around the mall that afternoon, sleep-deprived, following my wife and daughter and newborn son, having to scroll and expand the text as I read. I remember thinking to myself, “I don’t mind if I have to wake up in the middle of the night and work on this while the rest of the house is asleep, all I want to do is translate The American Fiancée.”

  Here ends Éric Dupont’s

  The American Fiancée.

  The first edition of this book was printed and bound at LSC Communications in Harrisonburg, Virginia, February 2020.

  A NOTE ON THE TYPE

  The text of this novel was set in Fournier, a typeface first developed by French engraver and type designer Pierre Simon Fournier (1712–1768), who was particularly noted for his decorative typographic ornaments in the Rococo style and his development of a new musical type that made reading music easier. Interest in Fournier’s work was rekindled in the 1920s, and Stanley Morison of Monotype released the version of Fournier seen on this page in 1924. Fournier has a greater contrast between thick and thin strokes with little bracketing on the serifs that produces a clean and friendly look on the pages that is distinguished yet imaginative.

  An imprint dedicated to publishing international voices, offering readers a chance to encounter other lives and other points of view via the language of the imagination.

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.