– I've known you for so long, said Avery, and still you surprise me. I remember feeling I knew the essence of you almost from the very first moment, and I think I did. But I wasn't listening to you, Jean, even though you were whispering right in my ear.
– When I saw the flowers, said Avery, I knew you'd been there.
– The flowers won't last, said Jean. It's too cold. But I planted something else. Seeds from the plants I collected on the riverbank, the day we met.
For a moment Avery thought he would have to pull over to the side of the highway. But he drove on.
– Very early this morning, said Avery, I stopped along the St. Lawrence, just past Morrisburg. I walked down to the river. In the sand, glinting in the moonlight, there was a baby's bottle. It had only been dropped and forgotten, yet the sense of violence was overwhelming. I knew there was nothing but innocence there, yet still I felt it. It was a scene my mother might have painted.
We want to leave something behind, thought Jean, a message on the kitchen table saying we'll be back soon. A suit jacket on a roof.
What does a child leave behind? Marina had asked, long ago. We cling to the children's paintings from Thieresenstadt, to a Dutch girl's diary, because we need them to speak for every war child's loss.
Some days are possible, Jean thought, only because of love.
In the long silence surrounding them, in the low noise of the car heater, Avery touched her cheek. Jean bent her head into his hand.
He had never truly believed he would feel this again, the response of her body to his touch. He dared not stop the car nor speak a word.
White patches of snow floated, icebergs, clouds, in the black fields. But nothing shone white in the blackness of the river, as it flowed past them, driving past.
Avery and Jean stood in the lobby on Clarendon Avenue. It was almost 2 a.m. In the Great Temple at Abu Simbel there had been stars on the painted ceiling and now, five thousand years and half a globe apart, Avery realized how ancient this desire. To replicate the sky. To hold beyond reach.
– At the cemetery, said Jean, nearby to Elisabeth's grave was the grave of another child. There someone had left a magnificent garden of plastic flowers. Ferns grew lush out of a thick square of florists' foam, and in the foliage stood two painted china dogs. Each plastic flower had been carefully chosen; roses, hyacinths, tulips, lily of the valley. There was love in each moulded crevice of leaves and petals.
I remember when I was young looking at plastic flowers in a shop. I heard someone say, ‘They're not real’ and I couldn't understand what they meant – I was holding one in my hand, of course they were real.
The child's garden rested on its thick green foam above the cold spring ground. It was as real as anything. A child would have thought that garden beautiful.
Everything that has been made from love is alive.
Avery spread a blanket on Jean's bedroom floor. He sat with his back to her. The desert was almost completely gone from his skin.
Beside Jean was a cup of water and Avery's paintbox. She drew the brush across his pale, thin back.
Regret is not the end of the story; it is the middle of the story.
When Jean was done, she knew how careful she had to be. Not to erase, but to wash away.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
“As pines keep the shape of the wind … so words guard the shape of a man.” – George Seferis
Many histories of Egypt, Sudan, Abu Simbel, Poland, and the St. Lawrence Seaway were consulted during the writing of this novel, but I wish to acknowledge two sources above all: The Salvage of the Abu Simbel Temples: Concluding Report (Arab Republic of Egypt and Ministry of Culture, Vattenbyggnadsbyran [VBB] Sweden) and Hassan Dafalla's The Nubian Exodus. It is my hope especially that Hassan Dafalla's memory is honoured by the account I have made here. I am grateful to the Lost Villages Museum near Cornwall, Ontario; to Marian Wenzel's House Decoration in Nubia for the poem written on the wall; to David Crowley's Warsaw; and to the Guardian Weekly, where I came across the term “petrichor.”
Especial, long-standing thanks to John Berger, Joe McBride, Janis Freedman Bellow, Sam Solecki, and Gareth Evans.
Many thanks to Ellen Seligman, as always as deeply astute and generous an editor as one could wish. To Marilyn Biderman for her acuity and kindness. To Liz Calder, Sonny Mehta, Robbert Ammerlaan, Roberta Mazzanti, Arnulf Conradi, and Elisabeth Ruge. To Helen Garnons-Williams, Diana Coglianese, Deborah Garrison, Anita Chong, and Heather Sangster.
Thanks to Dr. Elaine Gordon and Dr. S.J. Batarseh for confirming details regarding treatment of a still-birth in late pregnancy, in the time and place in which this event is set in the novel. And to Dr. Lorraine Chrisomalis Valasiadis for her advice.
Thanks to Margaret and Chris Cochran for the extraordinary tour of Wellington, New Zealand. Thanks to Andrew Wylie, Simon McBurney, Stephen and Mary Camarata, Mark Strand, Wallace Shawn and Deborah Eisenberg, Dan Gretton, Jack Diamond, David Sereda, Eve Egoyan. Thanks to Rebecca and Evan. Thanks to Zbysiu, Marzena, Dennis, Jeff, Luigi and Nan, the entire Freedman family, Arlen and Jan, Jane and Andrew. Special thanks to Sheila and Robin for invaluable gifts of time.
The beginning scenes of the book, set on the houseboat, were first read publicly at various venues in Canada and the United States in 1997. My thanks to these book-sellers and festivals. And special thanks to the Elliott Bay Book Shop, A Different Drummer Books, and The Flying Dragon Bookshop.
This book remembers Rose Kornblum, Rubye Halpern, Ida Rosen, Robert Mirvish, Robert Muma, Professor Michael Dixon, and Connie Rooke. This Warsaw honours Isaiah Michaels. This seaway, the dear lost. And these pages are an embrace for the daughters: dearest Rebecca; Naomi Rose; Gemma; Mary; Jaymes; Viva. May you fare forward with strength and love.
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
Copyright © 2009 by Anne Michaels
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by
Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.
www.aaknopf.com
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon
are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Originally published in Canada by McClelland & Stewart Ltd., Toronto, in 2009.
All rights reserved. International copyright secured.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Michaels, Anne, [date]
The winter vault / by Anne Michaels.—1st U.S. ed.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-27153-2
1. Canadians—Egypt—Fiction. 2. Engineers—Canada—Fiction. 3. Abu
Sunbul (Egypt)—Fiction. 4. Aswan Dam (Egypt)—Fiction. 5. Saint
Lawrence Seaway—Fiction. 6. Engineering—Social aspects—Fiction. 7.
Psychological fiction. I. Title.
PR9199.3.M453W56 2009 813′.54—dc22
2009003801
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the
product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to
actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
v3.0
The Winter Vault Page 27
