Days by moonlight

  Days

  by

  Moon

  light

  A N D R É A L E X I S

  W I T H I L LU ST R AT I O N S BY L I N DA WATS O N

  Days

  by

  Moon

  light

  COAC H H O U S E B O O K S , TO R O N TO

  copyright © André Alexis, 2019

  first edition

  Published with the generous assistance of the Canada Council for the

  Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. Coach House Books also gratefully

  acknowledges the support of the Government of Canada, and the

  Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax

  Credit and the Ontario Book Fund.

  library and archives canada cataloguing in publication

  Title: Days by moonlight / André Alexis.

  Name: Alexis, André, 1957- author.

  Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20189069295 | Canadiana (ebook)

  20189069309 | isbn 9781552453797 (softcover) | isbn 9781770565791

  (epub) | isbn 9781770565807 (pdf)

  Classification: lcc ps8551.l474 d39 2019 | ddc c813/.54—dc23

  Days by Moonlight is available as an ebook: isbn 978 1 77056 579 1

  (epub), 978 1 77056 580 7 (pdf)

  Purchase of the print version of this book entitles you to a free digital

  copy. To claim your ebook of this title, please email sales@chbooks.com

  with proof of purchase or visit chbooks.com/digital. (Coach House

  Books reserves the right to terminate the free digital download offer at

  any time.)

  For Alana Wilcox

  and it was all true in a way only the way kept changing

  – W. S. Merwin, The Folding Cliffs: A Narrative

  1

  TO EAST GWILLIMBURY

  In August 2017, I was eating an egg and cress sandwich when

  Professor Bruno called to ask if I’d help him in his travels

  through Southern Ontario. I love watercress ( Nasturtium officinale).

  It’s delicious and it reminds me of my mother’s garden. So, I was

  already in a fair mood.

  Professor Bruno had been a friend of my father’s. He was a

  kind man, one I’d known since I was a child. It would have been

  difficult to turn him down. The fact that his invitation came on

  the anniversary of my parents’ death – a terrible accident on the

  401 – made it doubly hard to refuse. I would take my yearly vaca-

  tion from the lab and spend part of it with the professor, one of

  the many mourners who’d wished me well at my parents’ funeral.

  – I’m sure you find your parents’ friends beyond boring, he’d

  said, but I hope you’ll look in on me from time to time. It’d be

  lovely to keep in touch.

  – Yes, I’d said.

  And a year later, I was happy to show him that I’d meant it,

  that I was glad to keep in touch.

  Professor Bruno proposed that we spend two or three days

  driving through the land on which the poet John Skennen had

  lived, the land about which Skennen had written, the land that

  had created the artist. The professor had spent years writing a

  “literary account” of Skennen. He had all the basic facts, he said.

  He knew enough about the man’s life to get a solid grip on the

  poetry. What he wanted from our trip were “touches”: a few colour-

  ful details, any anecdotes he might glean from people who’d

  known Skennen at different stages of his life.

  – You never know, he said, where you’ll find a detail, the

  detail, that’ll illuminate a work.

  – So, we’re looking for light, I said, teasing him.

  – Not just any light, my boy, he answered. We’re looking for

  the correct light.

  My duties: I’d carry the professor’s bags, help him transcribe

  any interviews he did, and serve as his driver. In exchange, he

  insisted on paying my expenses – hotels, incidentals – and prom-

  ised that I’d have time to do some botanical research. I wasn’t

  happy about his paying my expenses. I make more than I can spend

  at Alpha Labs. Besides, he was doing me a favour, giving me an

  excuse to leave Toronto for a few days, a few days away from a city

  that was, at times, oppressive because I knew it too well.

  But I could tell he was disappointed when I said I’d pay for

  myself. So, I relented.

  – Thank you, I said. I’m grateful for the time away.

  12

  I was grateful for another reason, too: I’d recently heard about

  a plant called five fingers ( Oniaten grandiflora) that was said to

  have fantastic medicinal properties – the ability to cure jaundice,

  for instance. Professor Bruno planned to visit Feversham, a town

  on the outskirts of which there was a field of Oniaten. So a friend

  of mine had heard tell anyway. I didn’t believe that a plant with

  such qualities would be as little-known as Oniaten and I didn’t

  quite believe my friend, a fellow lab tech with a strange sense of

  humour. But the professor’s visit to Feversham would give me a

  chance to wander around outdoors – something that always

  makes me happy – while looking for a specimen of the plant.

  Besides, I was sure Professor Bruno would be amusing company.

  I’d be on vacation. I’d have an excuse to play at being the

  botanist I trained to be. I’d be distracted from my grief – my

  twin griefs – and we’d be visiting Southern Ontario, the coun-

  tryside: the woods, fields, and farms I find calming and wonderful.

  If I worried about anything, it was that I didn’t know the poet

  Professor Bruno was writing about, John Skennen. The professor

  didn’t mind my ignorance, though.

  – Alfie, he said, by the end of our trip you’ll know as much

  about Skennen as anyone. He’s a bit of a mystery.

  – How so? I asked.

  – Actually, Professor Bruno answered, it might be better to

  say he was a mystery. He stopped publishing twenty years ago.

  No one’s seen him or heard from him since. Can you imagine?

  The talent of an angel. Gone! Like that!

  As I’m sure he knew it would, his enthusiasm encouraged me

  from my torpor.

  The professor was almost as tall as I am – six feet – but he

  stooped slightly. He had a full head of hair but his hair was like a

  contradiction: thick and youthful but white as cornstarch. He’d

  kept himself in good shape. He would walk for blocks – briskly,

  without stopping, despite his arthritis. And he looked debonair,

  always smiling. Not one of those big, broad smiles. A small smile,

  13

  ironical. His smile made me feel as if we shared a secret. I’d felt

  this way about him since I was a child. His only flaw – and it

  wasn’t so much a flaw as an occasionally misguided effort to be

  helpful – was that he would sometimes speak of things so learnèd

  my mind would fog up while listening to him. I’d never stop listen-

  ing, but the professor’s enthusiasm alone wasn’t enough to help

  me with things like herme
neutics or the Freudian unconscious.

  I had five days – from Wednesday to Sunday – to get ready.

  This was relatively short notice for work, but more than enough

  time to pack a few days’ clothes. Not that anyone at the lab

  minded my going. In the year since my parents died and, yet

  more grief, the months since Anne decided we should not grow

  old together, I’d accumulated seven weeks’ worth of overtime.

  Management at Alpha was probably relieved to grant me a few

  workdays along with my regular vacation. It was more difficult

  deciding what to do with the time before we left than it was

  getting days off.

  In so far as I know myself, I’d say I’m cheerful and even-

  tempered. I like other people and I’ve always been sociable. The

  death of my parents certainly changed me. Though I knew their

  going would come – my father had often warned me that they

  would not be with me always – I felt as if I’d had no time to prepare

  for it. Anne’s leaving had been almost as difficult, and it was more

  recent. I still turned to her side of the bed in the morning, antici-

  pating her warmth, still found strands of her hair on my clothes.

  The bewildering thing about grief, for me, is how difficult it

  makes the world to navigate. Home itself becomes foreign terri-

  tory, though everything around you is familiar. For some time,

  none of the things I loved – trees, music, the novels of P. G.

  Wodehouse – had had any meaning, as if all of them had flaws

  through which darkness came. So, it really was a relief when

  Professor Bruno asked me to accompany him through Southern

  Ontario and a relief that I wanted to be around others again,

  wanted to see past my shrunken world.

  14

  We’d leave Toronto on the twentieth and in the days that

  followed the professor hoped to visit Whitchurch-Stouffville,

  Concord, Nobleton, Coulson’s Hill, Feversham: places where

  he’d arranged to meet people who’d known John Skennen, places

  where John Skennen had been seen, places that were important

  to Skennen’s poetry. I packed pants, shirts, underwear, and a

  mustard-coloured jacket. I thought of my mother, as I took the

  things she always reminded me to take: toothpaste, a toothbrush,

  and deodorant. I also brought my pencils, a sharpener, a kneaded

  eraser, and a sketchbook in which I planned to draw some of the

  plants I saw on our way.

  Professor Bruno was surprised by my drawings.

  – I had no idea you were a Leonardo, Alfie! I welcome the

  noble intrusions of Art!

  – But I’m not an artist, I said.

  It’s something else that compels me to draw. I’ve been doing

  it since I was ten. Twenty-three years. I could not imagine a life

  without pencils, pens, inks, erasers, and sketches.

  My mother used to say

  – The world doesn’t exist until you draw it, Alfie!

  She was only teasing, but she was right, in a way. I feel as if

  the books I’ve filled with drawings are my journals. They hold

  my life and memories. The past rushes back whenever I open

  one of my sketchbooks. I remember where I was, the sensations

  I felt, the mood I was in – all at a glance. My first drawing was of

  a four-leaf clover I saw in the schoolyard at Davisville. The clover,

  which I’d heard brought good luck, was a kind of “mixed signal.”

  I found it just before John Smith punched me in the face and I

  punched him back. Then again, John and I have been close friends

  since Grade 6, a year after I drew the clover. I’m not a mystical

  person, but I think of it this way: I’m drawn to flowers, herbs,

  and weeds, some of which I draw over and over. I feel a connection

  to them and, in drawing them, I allow them the place in my life

  they were meant to have. On the other hand, my love for plants

  15

  is fairly straightforward, too. I’m attracted to their lines and

  curves, their structure and colour, their complex simplicity. These

  were the things that inspired my studies in botany, for which

  I’ve never had even a moment’s regret.

  Before we left, I bought the McClelland & Stewart edition

  of John Skennen’s collected poems. I thought it might be helpful

  to Professor Bruno if I knew at least a little about Skennen’s

  work. I was surprised by what I found. There were any number

  of love poems, some of them difficult for me to read without

  thinking about Anne. And there were more philosophical poems,

  some of which you could call light. But, overall, the poetry was

  gloomier than I’d expected. I couldn’t see Professor Bruno in it.

  Of course, this could be because the first poem I read, the one

  that made the deepest impression, “Rabbit and the Rabbits,’ was

  from what the professor called Skennen’s “melancholy period,’

  just before he stopped publishing. In fact, it was the last poem

  in his final collection:

  Strange to see struggle but not what’s struggled with –

  wire round your throat, head caught like a wintry

  birth. White as your mother’s haunches, bloody specks

  when the rifle butt breaks your neck – a careless

  wind busy sweeping. Trees in rumpled linens.

  We who’ve killed you talk rosemary and onions

  while somewhere underground your family scarpers,

  running from the lumpish beings above.

  Scarpering still, they’re carrying their jitters

  through my nights – along narrows, around dungeon

  corners – whiskering my dreams, their endless warrens,

  coming on like regret, vicious and remorseless –

  quick, quicker than memory in some respects.

  Caught but uncatchable, they rise unpredictably –

  digging up strange lands, hard soil, dark pitch.

  16

  The poem was well done, I guess, but I felt like I understood

  why he’d abandoned poetry: Skennen’s talent hadn’t brought him

  much happiness at all.

  – Ah! said Professor Bruno. Now, there you’re wrong, Alfie!

  To begin with, the object of poetry isn’t the happiness or sadness

  of the poet. Artists do what they do because they’re compelled.

  It’s therapy that makes the patient feel much worse before it makes

  them feel better. If they ever manage to feel better at all! But the

  other thing to remember, Alfie, is that the psyche wants what it

  wants. You and I, untalented mortals as we are, live for sunshine.

  We live for the light! But the true Artist is different. For all we

  know, darkness may have been what Skennen needed. It may have

  been the very thing to bring him relief. Then again, it’s damned

  hard to tell with poets. I’ve met my fair share, Alfie, and I wonder

  if any of them can distinguish between happy and unhappy.

  The first town we visited was Whitchurch-Stouffville. We left

  early Monday morning, sun up and bright, the sky a light blue,

  the land its late-summer self: hot but forgiving. I’ve always loved

  driving in Southern Ontario, and as, that first day, we’d planned

  to visit two towns that are close to each other – Whitchurch-

  Sto
uffville and Concord – we were not pressed for time. I avoided

  the highways (the 400s) and drove instead along country roads

  (38, 29, etc.) that go up and down and take you past farm fields,

  villages, and towns.

  So many things made our setting out pleasant: the smell of

  the land, the way cows or horses will sometimes stare at you as

  you pass, the farmhouses that look like broken old faces. Then,

  too, Professor Bruno seemed to know everything about every

  inch of countryside. As we drove, it was like the past and the

  present intertwined. He’d point out this place where, for instance,

  a farmer’s cow had drowned in a pool of oil (1865) or that one

  where a bishop had taken a tumble down a hill (1903) which

  thereafter was known as Collar Bone Mound.

  17

  I loved the professor’s stories, but then, I find it comforting

  to know that others have been somewhere before me. I’m not a

  Speke or a Bartram, not an intrepid explorer. But I do have a

  sense of adventure. I like to imagine I’m seeing things that those

  before me missed. I cherish little details. I’ve always been this

  way. My father, Doctor of Divinity as he was, liked to say that

  paying attention is a way of being devout. God had taken the

  trouble to put a spur on the ant’s tibia. It was right to notice and

  admire His delicate work.

  – Why, my mother used to say, are you giving your son

  excuses to be idle?

  But we never considered attention idleness, my father and I,

  and it seemed to me, as I travelled with Professor Bruno, that the

  stories he told, coming as they did from paying attention – listen-

  ing, not looking – were proof of devoutness, and I took great

  pleasure in them.

  – I love hearing the old stories, I said.

  – Yes, Professor Bruno said, it’s good to remember that a

  place is more than earth and ground. It’s all that earth and ground

  make possible! All the stories and imaginings. Goethe says: ‘Wer

  den Dichter will verstehen muss in Dichters Lande gehen!’ If

  you want to understand the poet, you’ve got to go to the poet’s

  country. He’s not wrong, not wrong at all! But I say if you want to

  understand a country, then you’ve got to go to the poets and

  artists, to the ones who refashion the world and make it live for

  their fellows. And where do these poets draw their inspiration?