Days by moonlight Read online

  working on them the way Prozac is supposed to work on humans.

  In the evening, when bats awaken, they seek the plant out, flying

  over the lake in a cluster and feasting on Asclepius’s pollen. When

  they’re sated, some of the bats will hang from the pistils like grey

  fruit. Or like grey fruit that hisses at you, if you get too close.)

  I thought, from the way Michael’s house looked and from the

  Asclepius that surrounded it, that Michael and Michael’s room-

  mate might be eccentric. But the woman who answered the door

  and let us in – Judith – was so unassuming and charming that

  our welcome was uncomplicated.

  – Michael told me you were coming, she said. And here you

  are. Would you like something to drink?

  She was in her late twenties, I thought. A few years younger

  than me. Her nose was crooked in an intriguing way. Her neck

  was elegant and her voice deep. She wore faded blue jeans and a

  white shirt under a pink sweater. I thought she resembled Carson

  Michaels, but, if so, the professor didn’t notice.

  – I’d love some tea, he said. Thank you very much.

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  What captured his interest were the many framed photographs

  on the walls of the house. There were some twenty or so, all eight

  by eleven, all black and white, all photographs of decaying fruit

  – their textures and parasites – looking like the sullen phases of

  a distant planet.

  – These are remarkable, said Professor Bruno.

  – Thank you, said Judith. They’re from my last show. They’re

  apples or pomegranates.

  The kitchen was a pleasant room, its walls a kind of pastel

  yellow, its floor a white linoleum with black harlequin diamonds,

  its two windows looking over the bat’s delight onto a green lawn.

  The room was large enough to accommodate a long wooden table.

  And at the table there was an older man – sixty or thereabouts –

  whose face looked familiar to me.

  – Did I hear you talking about the photographs? he asked.

  Aren’t they wonderful?

  Judith blushed, covering her face while straightening her

  eyebrows.

  – This is my father, she said. Of course he likes my work.

  – It shows he has excellent taste, said Professor Bruno.

  The professor and Judith’s father made a show of shaking

  hands and bowing to each other in a courtly way. And it was

  while watching them that I realized why the father seemed familiar.

  He resembled Professor Bruno – same eyes and ears, same height.

  But Judith’s father looked younger – more dark hair on his head

  – and his manner was completely different. You would not have

  taken him, at least not on first impression, for an academic.

  Professor Bruno must have seen the resemblance, too.

  – Have we met? he asked. You look familiar.

  – My name’s John, he said. I don’t think we’ve met. I’m sure

  I’d remember you.

  Then, as if carrying on a long-running conversation with his

  daughter that we’d interrupted, he mentioned Ansel Adams, whose

  work he disdained, and Josef Sudek, whose work he adored.

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  – Daddy, stop it, Judith said. You know Ansel Adams is great.

  – I do, he answered. I get it. But his work is arid. I prefer

  landscapes that are intimate, photos that makes you feel something

  strange is about to happen. Or something strange just happened

  and you’re dealing with the ghost of it. The ghost of an event or

  a premonition of it. That’s intimacy! And that’s why I like your

  work, sweetie.

  The conversation was, for me at least, instructive. I knew

  nothing at all about photography. In some ways, I dislike it,

  preferring the world as it’s caught by pen and ink. (The truth is,

  I find looking directly at “someone else’s looking” disorienting.)

  But whenever her father mentioned a photographer – Geneviève

  Cadieux was one, Jeff Wall another – Judith, who could see I

  wasn’t familiar with them, would show me their work and talk

  about their techniques and that would set her father and Professor

  Bruno going, so that, by the time Michael came home, the four

  of us were happily engaged in conversation.

  After a while, I felt a kind of hesitancy from the professor.

  We’d come to Marsville to see Michael. When Michael came

  home, it would have been right to stop what we were doing and

  pay attention to Michael. But Michael wouldn’t hear of it. Instead,

  Michael insisted that we carry on talking about photography and,

  while making supper, joined in on the conversation.

  After we’d drunk wine with our asparagus risotto, then grappa

  with our olive cake, then Four Roses bourbon with our coffee, I

  gave up wondering where we’d sleep. I could not drive, so we

  were bound to sleep in Marsville. And if we were sleeping in

  Marsville, there was nowhere else but chez Judith and Michael.

  The nearest hotel was miles away.

  To her father, Judith said

  – You’re not going anywhere tonight, Daddy. You can sleep

  in my room. Michael and I’ll sleep together.

  And that was it. We all relaxed and went on drinking and

  talking about Art.

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  It was Michael who changed the subject to poetry. Saying “Ut

  pictura poesis” – meaning: as goes painting, so goes poetry –

  Michael began talking about the way poets see versus the seeing

  of photographers. Here, John’s knowledge seemed unusually vast.

  At one point, he mentioned Arnaut Daniel and Giotto. I had no

  idea who these people were, but Professor Bruno was almost

  speechless with pleasure. As Michael showed me reproductions

  of Giotto’s paintings, the professor began a poem by Daniel:

  – “When I see leaves, flowers and fruit blooming on the

  boughs and hear the song frogs make in the stream …”

  Which was then finished by John himself.

  – “Go to her, song, go to my beloved’s heart and tell her that

  Arnaut forsakes all other loves and turns to her alone.”

  Again, Professor Bruno seemed delighted. After days spent

  with me – someone who knows so little about literature – it

  must have been like an oasis in the desert to find a fellow devotee,

  one who could recite the end of such a little-known poem. But it

  was clear John did not feel relief or gratitude. He seemed unhappy,

  as if reciting a poem were like hearing bad news. He poured

  himself more bourbon and drank it down. Just as surprising were

  the reactions of Judith and Michael. Both seemed stunned that

  Judith’s father had recited anything at all.

  – Dad, are you all right? Judith asked.

  – I’m fine, he said. The bourbon’s a little strong, that’s all.

  Michael tried to change the subject. But Professor Bruno

  asked John how’d he’d come to know of Arnaut Daniel. It’s not

  everyone, after all, who knows the poetry – the music – of the

  twelfth century.

  Though the subject obviously made him uncomfortable, John

  answered.

  – I’ve translated the poems myself, he s
aid. I used to know

  the language well.

  – Do you write poetry?

  – In the past, a long time ago, when I was younger.

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  – Ah, said Professor Bruno, and now you’re through at last

  with all kinds of knowing!

  As if reluctant to acknowledge it, John took a moment before

  he said

  – Yes.

  At which Professor Bruno, staring at him, said

  – I wonder if you know the poet I’m researching? He came

  from these parts. I’m sure you’ve heard of him. His name is John

  Skennen.

  And Judith’s father – Mr. Stephens, as it turned out –

  resignedly said

  – I’m John Skennen.

  – You’re who? asked Professor Bruno.

  – Well, I was, he said. I was John Skennen.

  And he looked at his watch.

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  4

  A VISION IN FEVERSHAM

  – Abreakfast with bards!MMMMMMMMMMMMM,

  Those were Professor Bruno’s first words to me the

  following morning. Though the two of us had slept on a narrow,

  spine-jangly couch, he woke early, excited by the possibility of

  talking to a John Skennen he could admire. And to Skennen’s

  daughter – another poet, though her medium was photography.

  I had barely slept. I’d had a recursive dream, one of those that

  comes back to the same incident and place, endlessly. In the

  dream, I could not escape from a charging white lion whose terri-

  fying roar woke me time and again only for me to discover I was

  listening to Professor Bruno’s snoring. By eight in the morning I

  was still sleepy, but I was caught up in the professor’s excitement.

  Having heard so much about John Skennen, I wondered which

  of the versions of him was real, which of the tales true.

  I’d eaten a slice of toast off a plate from which I’d brushed

  what had looked like insect legs. Then, when I was given a mug

  for tea, Judith warned me about finding pieces of ants at the

  bottom. The dishwasher worked well enough, it seemed, but a

  colony of ants had established itself within. Inevitably, some

  were trapped in the machine while it was on. The poor things

  would be tossed about, broken, and then dried on cutlery, plates,

  pots, and pans. Michael said that, having been thoroughly washed,

  the insect parts were probably safe to consume. But it was dismay-

  ing to discover the ants’ beadlike torsos, twiglike legs, or minute

  heads stuck to a plate or lying at the bottom of a cup.

  Except for Professor Bruno, those around the table were more

  sombre than they’d been the night before, when the man who once

  was John Skennen had promised to tell us his story. Judith, in

  particular, seemed wary. She was, after all, meeting a new version of

  a man she loved, her father. Michael took quick, regular sips from

  a mug on which there was a picture of Measha Brueggergosman.

  Then Mr. Stephens said

  – Do you know? I haven’t told anybody my story.

  How to describe the devastation of a lost love? As Petrarch wrote:

  whoever can say the flame is painful is in a small fire. And as

  Montaigne said after him: the biggest emotions breed only silence.

  It wasn’t just the shock he felt at the loss of his beloved. It

  was the revelation that this disappearance could affect every atom

  of his being. For years, he couldn’t speak of Carson Michaels.

  (Yes, that much of the story was true. He’d loved Carson

  Michaels.

  – A beautiful woman, said Professor Bruno.

  – I wonder if you know her well enough to say, answered Mr.

  Stephens.)

  That is, he couldn’t speak of her unless he was out of his

  mind on drugs or alcohol. For years, all he did was wander and

  drink, poisoned by the humiliation that came from knowing he

  would do anything to be with Carson. There was no shame he

  could not imagine himself suffering for love of her. His soul was

  hers, what did it matter about the rest of him?

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  The thing that saved his life was his inheritance – not the

  inheritance itself but the fact that it was shared with his brother.

  The two of them received five hundred dollars a month, thanks

  to their great-grandfather’s invention of a spring mechanism used

  to open and close umbrellas. His share was not quite enough to

  drink himself to death. It fed him on most days and kept him

  drunk. So, at his lowest, he spent his days drinking or passing

  out in bars, while at night he wandered between small towns.

  For a year and a half, he walked the province from Windsor to

  Owen Sound, Sarnia to Niagara-on-the-Lake; from Chatham to

  Barrie and Stratford to Peterborough.

  It was strange to remember how far he’d travelled in that time.

  Stranger still to think how little of the province he’d seen: the

  insides of countless bars and taverns, most of them interchange-

  able. When he was woken and kicked out of these places, it was

  usually night and he would walk in the direction of the next

  town or the town after that, getting sober as dawn approached.

  What he saw of Southern Ontario he saw by aurora.

  Mind you, if there was any beauty in his despair, it came from

  this sobering up as the world woke: the way a stealthy vein of

  light would come, gradually chasing shadows and creating silhou-

  ettes, silhouettes first seen against the indigo sky, then against

  the blue sky with dark clouds, then against the light-blue firma-

  ment with white clouds, until the dark silhouettes disappeared,

  the buildings and landscape reacquainted by sunlight.

  He had memories of walking into Glencoe and being startled

  by a rabbit hopping out of a cornfield beside him. How massive

  they sound – like deer! – moving in the undergrowth. The Glen-

  coe rabbit looked at him, watching him approach and watching

  him pass, each aware of the other, because both happened to be

  awake at dawn.

  Or hurrying out of Dresden, over by the racetrack. He had

  no sentimental attachment to racing or horses. He remembered

  Dresden because he was being chased by dogs.

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  Or sleeping in a barren field near Listowel (cold, tired, and

  hungry) and waking because the rain was suddenly torrential

  and the sky was like a black door through which cracks of light

  came, the land around him flat and endless and unpeopled.

  – How old were you? asked Professor Bruno.

  – Early thirties, answered Mr. Stephens.

  – Ah, said Professor Bruno. That is the age when love desolates,

  isn’t it?

  Mr. Stephens didn’t mean to suggest, though, that these memo-

  ries of the province at dawn were his deepest or most significant.

  Though they were less visually striking, his memories of the world

  by night were more profound. For one thing, he usually entered

  night while drunk, open to the suggestions of night itself and

  vulnerable to the creatures who made it their home.

  One night, after closing time at a bar in Ingersoll, he was

  walking along a county road, the n th Line somewhere, when he


  was startled by a pig walking not far from him along the border

  of a field. In the moonlight, he could clearly see the pig to the

  right of him. And though he was drunk, he crossed to the other

  side of road, it being strange to walk with the animal. Moments

  later, there was another pig – or was it the same one? – again on

  his side of the road, to his left. When he looked to see where the

  “first” pig had gone, there was only darkness. He was suddenly

  sober, frightened by the grunting and flatulent creature beside

  him. It was as if the pig were playing a game. It moved toward

  him. And when it began to trot, John Stephens began to run.

  The pig kept up with him. Stephens ran faster and faster

  until, nearly spent, he turned to see where the pig had gone and

  found himself alone and unfollowed, still on the n th Line, some-

  where between Ingersoll and Woodstock, the sky filled with stars

  and a platinum moon whose light bathed the stalks of whatever

  it was in the fields. He could laugh then, having left the pig

  behind. At least, he tried to see the amusing side of things. He’d

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  been chased by a pig on a moonlit night. A good story. Something

  to dine out on, even.

  But then he looked up and the pig was in front of him, now in

  the middle of the road. And it was difficult for Mr. Stephens to

  describe the texture of his fear or the reason for it. It wasn’t as if

  he was afraid of death. And he wasn’t afraid of pigs, but he was

  afraid of the thing in front of him. He was afraid the thing in

  front of him was not a pig, though he had no idea what it was if

  it wasn’t. Was he afraid of the unknown? Yes, but what a strange

  thing to say when he was surrounded by the familiar. He had

  been on countless country roads on nights exactly like this. His

  fear entirely transcended reason. It was a feeling he ever after

  associated with the land, as the land was the only thing that had

  ever provoked it.

  All very odd, but the important thing was the creature in the

  road. It began to run at him and, exhausted, he could not decide

  what to do: run, dodge, kick. He imagined pushing his fingers

  through the pig’s eyes. It was huge, though. It looked even more

  ferocious as it came close, and it was mesmerizing. He thought

  he recognized his death as it approached and he was almost

  amused that this was his fate, that all the years of a life led to this