Winner – Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction
Winner – Prix Littéraire France-Québec
Winner – Prix Ringuet
Winner – Prix Littéraire des Collégiens
A badly injured man. A nationwide power failure. A village buried in snow. A desperate struggle for survival. These are the ingredients of The Weight of Snow, Christian Guay-Poliquin’s riveting new novel. After surviving a major accident, the book’s protagonist is entrusted to Matthias, a taciturn old man who agrees to heal his wounds in exchange for supplies and a chance of escape. The two men become prisoners of the elements and of their own rough confrontation as the centimetres of snow accumulate relentlessly. Surrounded by a nature both hostile and sublime, their relationship oscillates between commiseration, mistrust, and mutual aid. Will they manage to hold out against external threats and intimate pitfalls?
“A dark and mesmerizing story, attentive to the dramatic and cold beauty of the landscape, the dislocating social bonds, the disarray and the dormant violence, choked by winter but ready to be reborn at the first signs of thawing … One of the strongest novels this season.”
—Christian Desmeules, Le Devoir
“A hypnotic, claustrophobic story … Guay-Poliquin manages to keep us on our heels until the very end. A book that shines like snow melting under a winter sun.”
—Josée Lapointe, La Presse+
“The novel’s dramatic force is perfectly mastered, and results in one of the biggest successes of the year.”
—LesLibraires.ca
Table of Contents
I. LABYRINTH THIRTY-EIGHT
THIRTY-NINE
FORTY-ONE
FORTY-TWO
FORTY-TWO
FORTY-TWO
FORTY-FIVE
FORTY-FIVE
FORTY-FIVE
FORTY-SEVEN
FIFTY-SIX
FIFTY-SIX
FIFTY-SIX
II. MAZE SIXTY-TWO
SIXTY-THREE
SEVENTY-ONE
SEVENTY-SEVEN
SEVENTY-SEVEN
EIGHTY-ONE
EIGHTY-ONE
EIGHTY-ONE
III. ICARUS EIGHTY-FOUR
EIGHTY-EIGHT
EIGHTY-EIGHT
NINETY-SIX
ONE HUNDRED NINE
ONE HUNDRED NINE
ONE HUNDRED NINE
ONE HUNDRED NINE
ONE HUNDRED THIRTEEN
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEEN
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEEN
ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-SIX
ONE HUNDRED THIRTY-FOUR
ONE HUNDRED THIRTY-FOUR
ONE HUNDRED THIRTY-EIGHT
ONE HUNDRED FORTY-SEVEN
ONE HUNDRED FIFTY-ONE
ONE HUNDRED FIFTY-ONE
ONE HUNDRED FIFTY-ONE
ONE HUNDRED FIFTY-ONE
ONE HUNDRED SIXTY-SEVEN
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTY-FOUR
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTY-FOUR
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTY-FOUR
ONE HUNDRED NINETY-TWO
TWO HUNDRED SIX
IV. WINGS TWO HUNDRED SIX
TWO HUNDRED EIGHT
TWO HUNDRED TWO
TWO HUNDRED FIVE
V. MAZE TWO HUNDRED FIVE
TWO HUNDRED FIVE
TWO HUNDRED SIXTEEN
TWO HUNDRED SEVENTEEN
TWO HUNDRED FORTY-TWO
TWO HUNDRED FORTY-SEVEN
TWO HUNDRED FORTY-SEVEN
TWO HUNDRED FORTY-SEVEN
TWO HUNDRED FORTY-EIGHT
TWO HUNDRED FIFTY-TWO
TWO HUNDRED FIFTY-THREE
VI. ICARUS TWO HUNDRED SEVENTY-THREE
TWO HUNDRED FIFTY-TWO
TWO HUNDRED THIRTY-NINE
TWO HUNDRED FOUR
ONE HUNDRED FIFTY-NINE
ONE HUNDRED FIFTY-THREE
ONE HUNDRED ELEVEN
EIGHTY-NINE
FIFTY-THREE
FORTY-EIGHT
FORTY-SIX
THIRTY-NINE
THIRTY-THREE
THIRTY
THIRTY
TWENTY-NINE
TWENTY-EIGHT
VII. SUN ELEVEN
SEVEN
Landmarks
Cover
Frontmatter
Contents
Part 1: Labyrinth
Part 2: Maze
Part 3: Icarus
Part 4: Wings
Part 5: Maze
Part 6: Icarus
Part 7: Sun
Backmatter
For André B. Thomas
today
time turned the snow to metal
and the silence rejoiced
to form a perfect union
the white strokes rush groundward
mountains grab onto
the bark of trees and on
spiny arms
the greens disappear
the blues become opalescent
the edges of the browns and russets
fade
at times
a bird will draw a black line
across this accelerated space
—J.-N. POLIQUIN, WINTER 1984
I. LABYRINTH
Look. This place is vaster than any human life. Anyone who would try to flee will be forced to retrace his steps. Anyone who thinks he is moving in a straight line is describing great concentric circles. Here, everything slips away from your hands and your eyes. Here, forgetfulness of the world outside is stronger than any memory. Look again. This labyrinth offers no way out. Wherever our eyes fall, it is there. Look closer. No monster, no famished beast crouches in its corridors. But we are caught in the trap. Either we wait until the days and nights defeat us. Or we fashion ourselves wings and escape.
THIRTY-EIGHT
This is the land of snow, and it does not share its domain. It dominates the landscape, it weighs upon the mountains. The trees bow, they reach for the earth, their backs bent. Only the great spruce refuse to give in. They take their punishment, straight and black. They trace the end of the village and the beginning of the forest.
By my window, the birds come and go, quarrel, and scratch for food. From time to time, one of them will observe the quiet house with a worried eye.
On the frame outside, a thin branch stripped bare has been attached horizontally as a kind of barometer. If it points upward, the weather will be clear and dry. If it points down, there will be snow. Right now the weather is uncertain; the branch is in mid-journey of its trajectory.
It must be late. The grey sky is opaque and without nuance. The sun could be anywhere. A few snowflakes dance in the air and hang onto every second. A hundred steps from the house, in the clearing, Matthias is pushing a long stick into the snow. It looks like the mast of a ship, but without sails or flags.
Drops of water shiver on the roofline and slip down to the tips of the icicles. When the sun comes out, they sparkle like sharpened blades. From time to time, one of them will pull away, fall, and stab the snow. A dagger thrust into immensity. But the snow is invincible. Soon it will reach the bottom of my window. Then the top. Then I will be blind.
This is winter. The days are short and frigid. The snow shows its teeth. The great expanse of space shrinks.
THIRTY-NINE
The window frame is damp. The wood stained by spongy, tinted circles. When it gets very cold, they are covered with crystals of frost. A little like lichen.
Logs crackle in the woodstove. From my bed, I can see the glittering coals through the air vent. The stove is ancient, a massive piece. Its doors creak when they open. This heap of black, burning cast iron is the centr
e of our lives.
I am alone on the porch. Everything is motionless. Everything in its place. The stool by the entrance, the rocking chair, the kitchen utensils, everything. A strange golden cylinder sits on the table. It was not there this morning. Matthias must have gone to the other side. But I noticed nothing.
Pain leaves me no respite. It holds me, it grips me, it possesses me. To tolerate it, I close my eyes and imagine I am at the wheel of my car. If I concentrate, I can hear the motor roaring. And see the landscapes go by, dazzled by the vanishing point of the road. But when I open my eyes, reality crushes me. I am bound to this bed, my legs imprisoned by two heavy splints. My car a heap of twisted metal somewhere beneath the snow. I am no longer the master of my fate.
My stomach breaks the silence. I am hungry. I feel weak and stiff. On the bedside table, some crumbs of black bread and the remains of oily coffee. Matthias will be back any time now.
FORTY-ONE
The door opens and a gust of cold air blows into the room. Matthias comes in and drops an armful of wood next to the stove. The logs crash to the floor and shards of bark go flying.
Matthias pulls off his coat, kneels down, and stirs the fire with a poker. Behind him, the snow from his boots begins melting and seeks its level on the uneven floor.
It’s not very cold, he tells me, holding his hands toward the source of heat, but it’s damp. It chills you to the bone.
When the flames begin to growl and lick the iron frame, Matthias closes the stove doors, puts the soup pot on to warm, and turns in my direction. His bushy eyebrows and white hair, and the deep wrinkles criss-crossing his forehead make him look like a mad scientist.
I have something for you.
I give him a questioning look. Matthias picks up the gold cylinder from the table and hands it to me. He gives me a big smile. The cylinder is heavy and telescopic. Its ends are covered in glass. I examine it from all angles. It is a spyglass. Like the ones sailors used long ago to pick out the thin line of the coast, or the enemy’s ships.
Look outside.
I sit up in bed, extend the sliding tube, and place it against my eye. Everything moves toward me and each object takes on precise dimensions. As if I were on the other side of the window. The black flight of the birds, the footsteps in the snow, the unreal calm of the village, the edge of the forest.
Keep looking.
I know this landscape by heart. I have been watching it for some time now. I do not really remember the summer because of the fever and the drugs, but I did see the slow movement of the landscape, the grey autumn sky, the reddening light of the trees. I saw the ferns devoured by frost, the tall grass breaking when a breeze rose up, the first flakes landing upon the frozen ground. I saw the tracks of the animals that inspected the area after the first snow. The sky has swallowed everything up ever since. The landscape is in waiting. Everything has been put off until spring.
Nature with no respite. The mountains cut off the horizon, the forest hems us in on all sides, and the snow blinds us.
Look harder, Matthias tells me.
I examine the long stick that Matthias set up in the clearing. He has added minute graduation marks on it.
It’s for measuring snow, he announces, triumphant.
With the spyglass, I can see the snow has reached forty-one centimetres. I consider the whiteness of the landscape a moment, then slump back on my bed and close my eyes.
Great, I tell myself. Now we can put numbers to our distress.
FORTY-TWO
Matthias is preparing black bread. A kind of brick made of buckwheat flower and molasses. According to him, it’s filling and nutritious. And the best thing, since we have to ration our supplies as we wait for the next delivery.
Like an old shaman, he mixes, kneads, and shapes the dough with a striking economy of effort. When he finishes, he shakes off his clothes in a cloud of flour and cooks the cakes of black bread directly on the stovetop.
The weather has cleared. I observe the houses in the village, among the trees, at the foot of the hill. Most of them show no signs of life, though a few chimneys send up generous plumes of smoke. The grey columns rise straight into the sky as if refusing to melt into the vastness. There are twelve houses. Thirteen with ours. With the spyglass the village seems close by, but that is an illusion. I would need more than an hour to walk there. And I still can’t get out of bed.
I believe the solstice has passed. The sun’s path through the sky is still short, but the days have grown longer without us really noticing. New Year’s Day must be behind us. Though I am not really sure. It makes no difference. I lost all notion of time long ago. Along with the desire to speak. No one can resist the silence, chained to broken legs, in the winter, in a village without electricity.
We still have a good supply of wood, but it is going down fast. We live in a porch made of drafts, and several times a night Matthias wakes up to feed the stove. When the wind blows, we can feel the cold holding us in the palm of its hand.
They will be sending us wood and supplies in a few days. In the meantime, I keep repeating that even if I survived a terrible car wreck, I still can’t do anything for myself.
FORTY-TWO
A crescent moon embraces the black sky. A thick, shiny crust has formed on the snow. In the glow of the night, it is like a calm, shimmering sea.
In the room, the oil lamp casts its light on the walls, sketching out golden shadows. Matthias comes to me with a bowl of soup and a piece of black bread. It is all we eat. The end of one soup is the beginning of the next. When we reach the bottom of the kettle, Matthias adds water and anything else he can get his hands on. When we have meat, he boils the bones and gristle to make broth. Vegetables, dry bread, it all ends up in the soup. Every day, at every meal, we eat that bottomless soup.
Matthias sits at the table, hands clasped carefully, in an attitude of contemplation, as I swallow down as much as I can. Often I finish my meal before he has started his.
At the beginning, Matthias had to force me to eat so I would recuperate and get my strength back. He would help me sit up and feed me patiently, one spoonful at a time, like a child. Now I can lean back on the pillows by myself. The pain and fatigue persist, but my appetite has returned. When he gets his hands on a few litres of milk, he makes cheese with the rennet he found in the creamery in the stable. Sometimes he gives cheese to the villagers, but often it is so good we devour all of it in a few days, right out of the cloth it has drained in.
Getting over my injuries takes a lot of energy. So does evaluating the passage of time. Maybe I should be like Matthias and just say before the snow or since the snow. But that would be too easy.
There has not been electricity for months. At the beginning, I was told, there were blackouts in the village. Nothing too worrisome. People practically got used to it. It would last a few hours, then the power would return. One morning, it did not come back. Not here, and not anywhere else. It was summer. People looked on the bright side. But when autumn came, they had to think about what to do next. As if they had been taken by surprise. It is winter now, and no one can do anything about it. In the houses, everyone gathers around the woodstove and a few blackened kettles.
Matthias finishes his bowl of soup and pushes it toward the centre of the table.
For a moment, nothing happens. I have a particular affection for these time outs that follow our meals.
They do not last long.
Matthias stands, picks up the dishes, and scours them in the sink. Then he wraps the pieces of bread in a plastic bag, folds the clothes that were drying on the line above the stove, extends the wick on the oil lamp, takes out the first aid kit, and brings over a chair.
FORTY-TWO
Matthias clears his throat as if he was preparing to read aloud. But he says nothing, and turns his neck right and left to get rid of the tension. Then he pulls away the quilt that cov
ers my legs.
I look away. Maybe Matthias thinks I am looking outside, but I can see his reflection perfectly in the dark window. One by one, he unties the straps from my right side. He slips his hand under my heel and raises my leg.
My heart beats faster. The pain roars and stares me down like a powerful, graceful beast.
Patiently, Matthias unwraps my bandages. He is slow and methodical. When he reaches the last layers of gauze, I feel the cloth sticking to my skin because of the humidity and the blood, and the infection too. He cuts off the rest of the bandage with scissors and pulls it away with calculated care. I breathe in deeply and concentrate on the air that fills my rib cage. Matthias moves his head back. I picture him evaluating the redness, the swelling, the bony callus, the shape of the tibia and the knee.
Pretty soon it will be time to take out the stitches, he says, disinfecting the wound.
The burning sensation is intense. I feel like my flesh is melting off my bones.
Don’t move! Matthias thunders. Let me do my work.
I try to look away as far as possible from my legs, toward the back of the room and the two doors. The front door and the one that leads the other way. I look at the heavy, squatting woodstove, the objects on the shelves, the ceiling with its beams squared off with an axe. Two light bulbs hang there like dinosaur skeletons in a museum.
Matthias takes a tube out of the first aid kit and tries to decipher the label. With a sigh, he slips his glasses from his shirt pocket and sets them on the end of his nose.
This should do.
Before rewrapping my bandages, he applies a thick layer of ointment to my wound. It is cold, and offers some relief for a few seconds. Until he tightens the straps around the splint that keeps my leg in place and my pulse starts beating at my temples. I grab at the sheets and curse my fate. Matthias starts talking. His lips move, but I hear nothing. I think he is trying to tell me that it’s over now. After a few seconds the pain subsides a little and then, as if we were at a great distance from each other, his voice reaches me, barely audible.
The Weight of Snow Page 1
