Wonder

by Dominique Fortier

  Most of the time she is alone on the mountain with the dogs, a few birds, some ever-present trees and the capricious winter sun, as if in a realm hidden from the city and that belongs only to her. Against the wash of the sky, the black branches seem traced in India ink. Veils of snow hide them for a moment before revealing them again, naked and petrified by the cold. Seen from the summit, the entire concrete structure of the Sanctuaire du Mont-Royal is a beige and bloated scar crushing the houses surrounding it with its mass, a gigantic cement creature winding through the trees, its curves reminiscent of some sea monster that haunts sailors’ legends.

  While Vladimir, Estragon, and Lili are pursuing one another in the scraggy bushes, stirring up plumes of snow, and the others are waiting calmly for her to give the signal for the descent, she finally bends towards the inukshuk, lifts away its little head – oblong that day – its broad neck, the flat stone that represents its arms and part of its torso, its legs, and even its one big foot. Rearranging those same stones, she erects a miniature statue with a wide skirt, a slender waist, and a long neck.

  The next day she finds a small man made of those stones in the shadow of the beech tree, but near him stands a mound of new ones, like an invitation. Mechanically piling them according to their size and the way they naturally fit together, she thinks about the tall, slim silhouettes by Giacometti she has seen in a book. They gave off, along with a faintly quivering fragility, a nearly magnetic force, inseparable from their obvious delicacy.

  At first she tries to assemble one of those willowy shapes that seem to be perched on the long legs of a wading bird, but she must abandon it almost at once: the stones won’t follow such a fractured line, and the flimsy structure collapses before it’s completed. She considers making instead a wooden man, using some of the broken branches strewn on the ground, ones that resemble the fleshless limbs she’s trying to reproduce. Then, taking one last look at the small mound of stones, she has an idea. She selects four of more or less the same size and arranges them two by two so that they rest against each other the way two playing cards are stood face-to-face to start a house. On these pairs of legs she sets a long flat stone, and atop one end she adds a final one, whose slightly pointed end suggests the muzzle of a dog.

  This novelty seems to be taken as an invitation to play because on the following days, she finds at the foot of the beech tree: a heavy turtle with a rounded shell; a ship with three smokestacks, the second one slightly wobbly; a long-necked animal that could be a fat giraffe or a thin dinosaur; and, one morning, a small silhouette of stones with slightly deformed wings that looks like the guardian of everything that came before.

  To the right of the path that she walks every day she finds three new metal posts equidistant from one another. Someone has begun to unroll an iron fence between them. Vladimir and Estragon, intrigued, stick their muzzles into the links, trying to see through with the stupefied gaze of animals in a zoo. Nearby, in black letters on a freshly planted white sign, can be read:

  This wooded area known as Saint-Jean-Baptiste is the property of Mount Royal Cemetery. It is strictly forbidden to build fires, ride mountain bikes, or walk outside the paths. Dogs must be leashed at all times. New works will connect this area with the rest of the network of paths on Mount Royal by 2011.

  At the bottom of the sign were a fire and a bike, each in its red circle with a line of the same colour through it; next to them, this time surrounded by a green circle, a dog and its master were joined, most appropriately by a black line supposed to represent the authorized accessory. Briefly, she pictures herself holding the leashes of six dogs capering around her and sees a maypole with peasants and shepherd girls in their Sunday best, skipping merrily around it, each holding the end of a long ribbon that they weave together to create a multicoloured braid.

  Damocles stops at the notice too, sniffing it cautiously with a suspicious air. He circles it slowly, lifts his leg, and begins to water the base with a powerful golden stream. She lets him finish before calling him softly and giving him a biscuit that he downs in one gulp, unflappable.

  “It’s cold enough to split nails, cold enough to freeze the balls of a brass monkey, cold as a witch’s tit, cold like there’s no tomorrow, cold as a penguin’s toes, cold as the heart of an iceberg,” she recites as she climbs the path under the downy flakes that give the dogs white coats.

  Vladimir and Estragon wear identical mittens, flame red, and they lift their feet good and high with every step, like circus horses. Doormat the basset hound, feet likewise covered but in blue, has legs so short the snow comes halfway up to his chest and he advances like a submarine, now and then sticking out his black nose to breathe. To scrape up the maximum of powdery snow, Damocles moves his nose just above the ground, mouth wide open like a whale snapping up plankton.

  When she has nearly reached the summit, still invisible in the screen of snow, a big bird, its white wings speckled in very pale beige, goes by in a velvet rustling above her head. It’s flying low, with a slow steady beating of wings nearly as wide as the path. She looks up to catch a glimpse of its light-coloured breast and tries to keep her eyes on it through the large wet snowflakes that fill the sky, but it soon disappears, a white form that dissolves into the white of the surrounding forest. For a long time, she searches the highest branches and those that provide the best view for glimpse of its silhouette. She finally spots it a little farther away, calm, unmoving, on a gravestone. She heads for it, stepping cautiously. The dogs follow her in silence, as if they understand that the bird is liable to take fright and fly away. When she finally reaches the stone where she thought she’d seen it, she realizes that it is the delicately carved statue of a granite angel with folded wings, face turned towards the ground and covered with a thin coat of snow as fine as down, like a veil that moulds its features, revealing more than concealing them.

  White masses break away from the treetops and collapse on the ground with a sound like a pillow. The spines of the blackthorns are covered with a padding that masks their points. Holding out her hand to brush one she slashes her thumb but only notices it later when she looks down, surprised to see on the white wool of her mitten a delicate flower of blood.

  At the top of the mountain she leaves behind a little woman, lame, lacking an arm, standing lop-sided on uneven legs. When she sees her again the next day, the woman is leaning against a new inukshuk that serves as a crutch.

  A few days later, near the summit, she spies a hooded figure from behind, busy attaching to the cemetery’s iron gate a new sign that shows a dog with a red line through it.

  “So you’re making the forest off-limits to dogs?” she can’t stop herself from yelling indignantly. “What will you do next? Track the foxes that dare to put a paw down on your precious ground? Set snares to trap the moles and hares that spoil your lawns? Wouldn’t it be easier to just pour concrete over everything?”

  She used the formal vous with him.

  The dogs, who have sensed the irritation in her voice, now add theirs and the end of her question is lost in a cacophony of yelping and growling. Eventually the figure turns around. Of his face only the eyes can be seen, blue slits. She couldn’t say why but she would swear that he’s much younger than she’d first thought.

  “Are you talking to me?” he asks through the scarf that covers his nose and mouth. “How come the vous? Do you think there’s more than one of me?”

  “I mean you and everybody like you.”

  Then, she can’t resist:

  “In case you didn’t learn this in school, the second person plural is used to show respect when one meets a stranger, or to establish a distance.”

  “So how come you’re saying tu now?”

  “I’m n … That’s not the point. This sign talks about a ‘mountain interpretive route,’ and those prohibitions, those markers – it’s ridiculous. What do you want to build here – a tiny little Disney World for hikers? Will you put a turnstile at the entrance and require hard hats on every
one who’s prepared – at his own risk, naturally! – to venture into the woods where you’ve already driven away anything that might be alive?”

  He looks at her, unblinking. Then, never taking his eyes off her, he observes:

  “I think your dogs are cold.”

  She looks down at Damocles and Doormat. Both look pitiful, standing on three legs, the fourth raised in a silent gesture of reproach. She whistles at them and is about to leave when he points out in the same tone:

  “You’re saying vous again. For respect or distance?”

  She shrugs and leaves, not looking back. He shouts after her:

  “Last month a dog ran away in the middle of the night and wound up here. He fell into a grave that had been dug in the autumn, broke a leg and couldn’t get out. He was found two days later, frozen to death.”

  She has stopped to listen to him; now she whirls around, beside herself:

  “Do you think I’m an idiot with your lost dog stories! Do you think every puppy dog that sees your sign will turn around and go home? That’s ludicrous!”

  “No, but if their owners stop bringing them here to run maybe they won’t try to come back by themselves in the middle of the night … Don’t you think?”

  Inexplicably, she doesn’t know what to reply. She walks away, dignified, the pack of hounds at her heels.

  WHAT DOES SHE DO WHEN SHE ISN’T PACING the mountain? Tries to read. Draws from memory or from life her trees and her dogs in a few quick pencil strokes that are never altogether satisfactory. Forces herself to eat a piece of fruit. Takes short naps, wakes up with her fatigue and anxiety intact. Swears approximately once a month that she’s going to put some order into her house and into her life. Starts by arranging her books in alphabetical order. Invariably stops at B, exhausted. Spends whole nights watching without seeing them old black-and-white films or infomercials vaunting an exercise machine or a rotisserie – once, under a weird impulse, even ordering the object in question by telephone, throwing it in the garbage still wrapped when it arrived two weeks later. Spends hours looking silently at colour photos, chases away the images that have been tormenting her like a swarm of flies for months, hears the same music again and again, in a loop that suddenly ends, listens in the dark to her own irregular heartbeat, like the wings of a distraught bird, rests her head against Damocles’ warm flank.

  She feels as if she is suffocating, suddenly dizzy inside the brick walls of her house with its too few windows, and only starts breathing again once she’s outside, under the enamel sky, on the mountain of ice, surrounded by dogs, hurrying towards a little man made of stones.

  She had never lived with a dog till Damocles. As a child she’d briefly had two mice that disappeared under mysterious circumstances – one morning the cage was found open and empty – and a series of goldfish all named Bubulle that had the unfortunate habit of jumping out of their bowl, drawing graceful and merciless arcs that landed them right on the carpet. But no cat or dog that left messes all over, besides demanding constant care, as her mother kept saying; for good measure she claimed to be allergic to hair, fur, and all woollen materials, aside from soft cashmere, which curiously didn’t set off the terrible attacks of sneezing that the mere sight of a poodle would provoke. None had ever entered the house and it wouldn’t have occurred to her that she was missing anything.

  She had spotted him for the first time on the street leading to the SPCA, at the end of a leash held by an exasperated-looking young man. With his head thrown back, firmly planted on his long legs, the dog refused to move forward. He sat down, moaned, then got up again to take three steps and resume his game. The man struggled in vain to cajole him with a biscuit, but the dog stiffened, tried again to sit down, breathing noisily. Pink muzzle, velvet eyes: he resembled a young calf.

  When she approached him, the animal had raised his nose slightly and stared at her with brown eyes holding a nameless sorrow. She’d stopped, gently petted the black-and-white head that came almost up to her hips. He relaxed, agreed to take a few steps at her side, then pulled back again when she’d gone by. The man was growing impatient, pulling harder on the leash, which tautened, upsetting the dog without persuading him to advance. He muttered something between his teeth, kicked the ground a few times, and finally fastened the leash around a stop sign before moving on without turning around. Incredulous, she watched him get into his car and drive away at top speed.

  The dog had stopped pulling on the leash and had lain down, hind legs unfolded on either side of his flanks, front legs forward like the Sphinx. His chin was on the ground and he watched the car until it disappeared, then closed his eyes, gave a long moan. For a moment she’d thought he was dead. She approached him and sat down at his side. He slowly lifted his neck and rested his enormous head on her elbow.

  “What’s your name?” she asked him.

  The dog didn’t answer but turned his eyes her way, as if he were the one waiting for an answer.

  “Marmaduke? Scooby-Doo?”

  No reaction.

  “Poochie?”

  Raised eyebrows.

  “Fido? Médor? Zeus?”

  One ear half-cocked.

  “Elvis? Victor Hugo? Disaster? Dumbo?”

  The animal had leaned his head to one side and let out something that could pass for trumpeting.

  “Dumbo, really? I suggest Victor Hugo and you pick the elephant?”

  She carefully untied the leash and stood up, hoping the dog would do the same. He didn’t, staying obstinately supine, head turned towards where the car had disappeared a few minutes earlier, like a compass needle that refuses to change course. Resigned, she sat down beside him again, rested her head on his shoulder and waited.

  A mother and her young son emerged from the brick building of the SPCA. The boy was holding a brand new leash attached to a rumpled little white dog that kept leaping into the air. Child and dog were making shrill cries while the mother glanced back as though wondering if it was too late to change her mind. A couple was leaving, carrying a small cardboard box pierced with holes that contained a furiously meowing cat.

  People brought dogs, kittens, hamsters, rabbits. There was even a pigeon with a broken wing, carried cautiously by a white-gloved policeman. Some were crying on their way inside and dry-eyed when they reappeared, going away with a lighter tread. Others were stoical when they pushed open the door but emerged shattered. Most appeared simply indifferent. As for the animals, they seemed to know where they were being taken and a few steps from the entrance, the cats bristled, tails up, spitting and trying to get away, while the dogs kept moving but with their heads down, looking defeated.

  They spent the morning and part of the afternoon sitting in the grass at the foot of the sign. At one point she’d gone to buy a bottle of water, hurrying in spite of herself for fear of returning to discover that the dog had disappeared. But he was still there, enormous, silent, motionless, and when she offered him the bottle he drained it in two gulps, then thanked her with a lick. Evening was approaching when the dog finally got up and, with what seemed like an enormous effort, turned his head away from where he’d last seen the car he had arrived in. She had started walking and he’d followed with no trouble, politely adjusting his long strides to her steps.

  Then, unwisely, she said: “We’re going home now.”

  The dog seemed to leave the earth, pulling her along in a gliding leap and she was only able to regain her balance thanks to years of experience on a trapeze. Then he was galloping, floppy ears beating the air, and even though she pulled on the leash with all her might, she couldn’t slow him down.

  “Dumbo, I’m giving you a new name: Damocles,” she announced, laughing and running at his side.

  “And I’ll have to find a way to slow you down,” she added almost at once.

  THIS MORNING THE FOREST IS CREAKING, grating, cracking in the wind like a boat in a storm. The wind floats above the woods, coming from all sides at once as if it were the breathing of the thousand
trees that sway, stiff, in the gusts, with a hiss like what one hears when pressing an ear against a shell that still holds a memory of the sea.

  The sun is a pale disk, its light struggling to pierce a hole in the white veil of the sky. As soon as the church bell of Saint-Germain has sounded noon, the shadows on the mountain lengthen. Trunks and branches draw a tangle of bluish lines on the ground, the light falls at an angle and already there is a sense of the approach of evening. On a tree trunk struck by lightning a few months earlier, now lying by the path, a pileated woodpecker is jabbing away with its beak. Curious, he turns his automaton’s head when he hears the dogs arrive, but doesn’t fuss over such a little thing, merely fans his red crest, perhaps as a warning. His long, strangely disarticulated neck reminds her of Audubon’s drawings, those winged creatures shot down then suspended from wires in grotesque positions as if the painter, unable to bring himself to choose, had wanted to reveal all in one image the birds’ particularities seen full face, in profile, from the back. The bird continues to hit the trunk from which he doesn’t seem to pull the tiniest worm. Though without much hope, she is waiting until the dogs are busy elsewhere – Doormat has decided to dig a hole into which he disappears almost completely and the others watch, intrigued, as the snow flies up between his paws – to throw a few cookie crumbs at the woodpecker. He turns around slowly and stares at her with contempt, then bends his neck to snatch them up.