* * *
The movers have just left. Alice looks out the living-room window at the retreating truck. She has emptied most the house of most of its furniture. There’s nothing more in Jonathan’s room, or in her “aquarium.” But she has left intact their bedroom and the attic where Antoine has installed his own office. She doesn’t want to take anything that might remind her of her private life with her husband. For the last time, she closes behind her the door of this house where she has lived for twenty years. She will not return.
She goes to the columbarium, places a rose in front of her son’s urn, and waits motionless. In a few moments, Antoine will return from the college. He told her this morning that his course dealt with the mystery of being human.
“You’re going to talk to them about what?”
“Always the same thing. Reason, instinct, the difference between man and animal.”
“And in your opinion there is a difference?”
He shrugged his shoulders and left.
* * *
She would like to believe in God, in the immortality of souls. She cannot. She lights a candle in the columbarium chapel. She doesn’t cry. Her tears have dried up. All that’s left to her are memories. The beautiful, radiant ones. And those that tear her apart. She doesn’t know how she was able to close her eyes for so long to what truly mattered. There were hints, however, details that could have awakened suspicions before it was too late. She also is to blame, that she knows.
Nervous, she looks at her watch. Six o’clock. There, now he’s back from the college. He’s parking the car in front of the house, climbing the front steps, taking his key, opening the door, and immediately sensing that something is different. It’s the silence. Silence born from absence, from emptiness. He takes a few steps, enters the living room. There is no more furniture, no carpet, no paintings on the walls except for one, which is now immense. His heart is beating faster. She’s certain that in that moment his heart is beating faster. On the floor, he sees a book. He bends down to pick it up. On the cover is a reproduction of the same painting, a maelstrom of blotches that suddenly makes him afraid. He closes his eyes for a moment.
Then he opens Impurity.
Photo by Donald Winkler
Sheila Fischman is the award-winning translator of some two hundred works of contemporary fiction from Québec. Along with Larry Tremblay, her authors include Hubert Aquin, Anne Hébert, Gaétan Soucy, Marie-Claire Blais, François Gravel, Michel Tremblay, and Christine Eddie, among others. She has been a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for French-to-English Translation fifteen times, and she has received the Molson Prize in the Arts. A Member of the Order of Canada and a chevalière of the Ordre national du Québec, she lives in Montréal.
Photo by Bernard Préfontaine
Larry Tremblay is a writer, director, actor, and Kathakali specialist. He has published more than thirty books as a playwright, novelist, poet, and essayist. His acclaimed theatrical works have been produced around the world. In 2006, he was awarded Canada Council’s Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Prize for his contribution to theatre. The same year, Éditions Gallimard published Piercing, a collection of three of his short stories. In 2008, Abraham Lincoln Goes to the Theatre premiered at Espace Go in Montréal, and was nominated for Best Production 2007–2008 (Montréal) by the Association des critiques de théâtre du Québec. Tremblay was a finalist in 2008 and in 2011 for the Siminovitch Prize in Theatre. In 2010, Calgary’s Alberta Theatre Project produced Abraham Lincoln Goes to the Theatre, translated by Chantal Bilodeau; the same year, his play The Dragonfly of Chicoutimi was produced at Montréal’s Festival TransAmériques. In 2012, the Société des auteurs et compositeurs dramatiques, in partnership with France Culture, awarded his play, War Cantata, the Prix SACD for best world play written in French. It also won the Prix Michel-Tremblay for the best play written in Québec in 2012. His play Child Object was also staged in 2012 in Québec City by Christian Lapointe. His plays, The Dragonfly of Chicoutimi, The Ventriloquist, and Abraham Lincoln Goes to the Theatre are considered classics.
Tremblay has also published several highly acclaimed novels, including The Obese Christ (2012), The Second Husband (2019), and The Orange Grove (2013), which won the 2014 Prix des libraires and sixteen other prizes in Canada and Europe, and is now published in twenty countries. In 2017, he won the 2017 French-Language TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award for Même pas vrai with illustrator Guillaume Perreault.
Until 2019, Larry Tremblay taught acting and dramatic writing at Université du Québec à Montréal’s École supérieure de théâtre. His website is larrytremblay.ca.
Also by Larry Tremblay
NOVELS
The Bicycle Eater*
The Obese Christ*
The Orange Grove
Piercing*
PLAYS
Abraham Lincoln Goes to the Theatre*
Talking Bodies: Four Plays*
The Ventriloquist*
War Cantata / Child Object*
POETRY
158 Fragments of a Francis Bacon Exploded
* Published by Talonbooks
© 2016 Larry Tremblay
© 2016 Éditions Alto
Translation © 2020 Sheila Fischman
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from Access Copyright (The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency). For a copyright licence, visit accesscopyright.ca or call toll-free 1-800-893-5777.
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Cover photographs by Claudia Dea, Mystery Black White (CC BY 2.0) via Flickr; Ricardo Lago, Book 8 (CC BY-SA 2.0) via Flickr; Hajo Schatz, Caged by the Monsoon (CC BY-SA 2.0) via Flickr
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