He sets down his glass, rubs his face with his hands. The last months have weighed on his frail shoulders like so many decades. Tonight, sitting in the half-light with his weak tea, he might just as well be ninety years old.
He gets up and has a long stretch. And smiles, at last.
Side by side on the floor in front of the picture windows, Lærke and Lisa are asleep.
The traveller arrived in the late afternoon, tottering under her huge backpack, grungy and exhausted. Her trek across Eastern Europe had been an unexpectedly long and complicated expedition. She had declined Éric’s help, obviously, and along the way had run into all kinds of problems in Greece, then Serbia, then the Czech Republic. Her feet hurt, she hadn’t really slept for three days, and the last thing she’d eaten was a doner kebab in Berlin, some ten hours ago. Sitting at the big conference table, as she wolfed down three platefuls of spaghetti with butter, she recounted her recent adventures, while Lærke devoured her with her eyes.
When she was about to collapse for the night, Lisa insisted on installing herself at the foot of the picture windows. She didn’t care at all about the uncomfortable floor; she wanted to go to sleep with a view of the horizon. As for Lærke, she refused to leave her new idol. From that moment, they were friends for life.
The scene is perfect, like an Old Master, and when Éric finally turns off the light, the image lingers momentarily on his retina before it disappears.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to express my gratitude to the following people:
Martin Beaulieu for his advance reads, his advice and his encouragement, and for steering me toward Émile Zola. Céline Bourdages and Raymond Dickner for their precious writing retreat in the 3rd Range. Luis Ferre for his expertise on Spanish grammar. Saleema Hutchinson for convincing me to buy Sekula’s seminal book, back in Kassel. Martha Radice for her exotic documentary references. Antoine Tanguay for Alto. Hugo Tremblay for his advance reads and his technical recommendations. Marie Wright-Laflamme for her support, and for taking the risk of marrying a novelist.
Special thanks to my translator, Lazer Lederhendler, who gets even my most obscure allusions, and to Pamela Murray, my wonderful editor, for her confidence and support over ten years.
For those who wish to have a better understanding of the world of containers and modern maritime industries, I recommend the following:
Fish Story (1995), by Allan Sekula, sadly no longer with us; The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger (2006, revised 2016), by Marc Levinson; The Box (2008), a special report by the BBC: bbc.co.uk/thebox; Moby-Duck: The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea and of the Beachcombers, Oceanographers, Environmentalists, and Fools, Including the Author, Who Went in Search of Them (2011), by Donovan Hohn.
NICOLAS DICKNER is the author of multiple works. His first novel, Nikolski, was published in a dozen countries and was the winner of Canada Reads 2010. Six Degrees of Freedom won the French-language Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction in 2015.
LAZER LEDERHENDLER’S work as a literary translator has earned him distinctions in Canada and abroad, including the Governor General’s Literary Award in 2008 for Nikolski and in 2016 for The Party Wall, which was also shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize.
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