A Fine Passage

A FINE PASSAGE

FRANCE DAIGLE

a novel

Translated by Robert Majzels

Copyright © 2001 Les Éditions du Boréal
English translation copyright © 2002 House of Anansi Press Inc.

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First published as
Un Fin Passage
in 2001 by Les Éditions du Boréal

This edition published in 2012 by
House of Anansi Press Inc.
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National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Daigle, France
[Fin passage. English]
A fine passage / France Daigle. — 1st ed.

Translation of: Un fin passage.
ISBN 978-1-77089-130-2 (ePub)

I. Title. II. Title: Fin passage. English.

PS8557.A423F5613 2002        C843'.54        C2002-904128-7
PQ3919.2.D225F5613 2002

We acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing
program the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the
Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund.

THURSDAY
Organization

CLAUDIA GAZES OUT
the airplane's window at the sea of undulating white clouds below. The entire mechanism of the world seems, at this moment, smooth to her. The sun shines unimpeded over a brilliant white ocean, and the sky is nothing but the pure expression of its essential immensity.

A priest of sorts is seated next to Claudia. He rummages, for the hundredth time, through his worn travelling bag, produces a chocolate bar. He peels back the wrapping and waves the bar beneath Claudia's nose.

“Would you care for some?”

“No, thank you.”

The large and abundantly bearded man pulls the bar away and snaps off a small piece.

“Sixteen?”

“Fifteen.”

The generic priest, a Greek pope with a touch of something rabbinical — or is it the other way around? — bites into the chocolate. He breathes deeply as he chews. Grey hairs protrude from his small, squarish round hat. His black suit is equally grey with age.

“My name is Shimon. How about you?”

Though she would have preferred to stare out at the clouds and daydream, Claudia resigns herself to conversation.

“Claudia.”

Again, the pope-rabbi offers her the bared square of chocolate.

“You're sure you don't want any, Claudia?”

“I'm sure, thank you.”

He pulls the bar away and breaks off another piece.

“I certainly didn't travel alone at your age.”

He ruminates, chewing.

“Although my parents and grandparents travelled quite a bit.”

He leans closer, confiding: “You see, I'm Jewish.”

And leaning closer, whispers: “I bear a secret.”

Claudia nods politely, but she has no desire to continue this conversation. Discreetly, she shifts her head back towards the porthole.

“He is called Yahweh.”

The pope-rabbi pronounces God's name as though his lungs were collapsing. Claudia, thinking perhaps he's taken ill, turns her head to look.

Shimon, content with his exhalation, continues.

“He is our God. Do you believe in God?”

Claudia shrugs. She doesn't know.

“Yahweh. You have to breathe it.”

The pope-rabbi exhales the name of Yahweh a third time.

“Because God is breath. Almost nothing more than that. This is your first time on an airplane, maybe?”

“No.”

The man folds the wrapper back over the remains of his chocolate bar.

“All right, I'm going to read now. I won't bother you any more.”

He opens the book on his lap and begins to read. But not a minute passes before he turns again to his neighbour.

“Wisdom — this means something to you?”

Fearing what may follow, Claudia offers a hesitant yes in reply.

“Well! Well, believe it or not, I am a wise man. Have you ever seen one before?”

Claudia is on the verge of concluding that the man is slightly deranged. But how to bring an end to this conversation?

“No, I don't think so.”

“Good! So now you have.”

The man named Shimon casts a global eye around the cabin.

“People are beginning to sigh. This is a good sign.”

And he adds, in the same confiding tone: “They are beginning to show fatigue. Sometimes, fatigue can be very beautiful, you know.”

Two women are having lunch together in a crowded restaurant.

“Every Thursday, he'd throw out his used Kleenex.”

She says this without looking up from her plate; she is working hard with her fork to retrieve a piece of sodden lettuce stubbornly entrenched in the dregs of vinaigrette. The other woman does not look up either; having harpooned a chunk of meat, she is busy enveloping it in sauce.

“Only on Thursdays? Who threw them out the other days? You?”

The leafy green yields at last and is taken. Clearly, her friend will never change.

“I mean, on Thursdays, he's more sure of himself. More confident. Optimistic.”

“Ah! You mean he bounces back.”

Silence permeates the restaurant.

“He wouldn't be a bit depressed, by any chance?”

“Depressed? No. At least, I don't think so.”

Claudia is astonished to find that she's been sleeping, and she notices with equal surprise that the pope-rabbi has also dozed off. She remembers straining to stay awake while he chattered away about one thing and another. For what seemed like the longest time, she had struggled to keep up with the speaking face, but to no avail: the pope-rabbi's face faded, slipped into slow motion, or broke into jump-cuts, like in those old Hollywood movies that her parents occasionally suspend their social conscience to indulge in. In the end, the man suggested she yield to slumber.

“Go ahead. Don't worry about me. Sleep is a gift from God.”

Claudia glances at her sleeping neighbour's delicate white hands. One of his fingers is clenched within the pages of a book with a nondescript black cover.

A stewardess comes down the aisle, pausing here and there to ask if everything is all right. Watching her walk away, Claudia notices, diagonally across the aisle, a man, approximately fifty years old, shift in his seat and uncross his legs. He shows no sign of reading.

In the restaurant, the two women have finished eating. A few scraps litter their plates, which they have pushed delicately aside.

“You really have no idea where he is?”

“He called twice. To see how I was doing.”

“Where was he calling from?”

“I asked, but he wouldn't say. He said it made no difference.”

“My God! Is he mixed up in something shady, or what?”

The woman who'd struggled with her lettuce laughs.

“Don't be silly. Of course not! That's just how he is.”

Her friend sighs.

“And when is he supposed to come back?”

“I have no idea.” She hesitates for a moment before speaking her mind. “Assuming he comes back at all.”

And tossing her napkin on the table, the friend concludes: “I don't know how you manage.”

Having uncrossed his legs, thereby slightly modifying his view, the man who shows no sign of reading continues to reflect on the fact that the names of the major planetary winds do not require capitals. Why not Trade Winds? Foehn? Sirocco? It seems to him that air currents ought to have the right to their proper identities, as do deserts, mountain ranges, and water currents. Why, indeed, should air currents deserve less recognition than those of water? Why not a Mistral and a Chinook, since we have the Agulhas and South Equatorial streams? Undeniable evidence that we treat wind with contempt: the monsoon stream — the only aquatic current not capitalized — is named after a wind current. Surely this can't be right? The man who shows no sign of reading adjusts his seat back, but without closing his eyes to sleep. At most, he hopes to be able to think differently.

Just how many major wind currents sweep across the surface of the globe? Four? Eight? A dozen? And why refuse the jet stream — a unique natural phenomenon, as far he knows — its capital letters? The man who shows no sign of reading glances up the aisle towards the front of the airplane. The passengers are quiet, and there are no on-flight personnel in sight. He toys with the idea of making his way up to the cockpit to ask the pilots if airplanes fly above or below the wind currents, but considering the surrounding torpor, this or any other sort of initiative seems impossible. A real Wednesday. Not quite death, but almost.

Knocking on the door, Hans felt something odd, a sort of premonition. “Of course. I'm sorry. I thought it was Friday. My mistake.”

The woman looked him up and down.

“No, don't apologize. There's no mistake. The study of weekdays and their passage is an inexact science. As far as you're concerned, it's obviously Friday. I can see that. But what can I do? I have no choice but to follow the human timetable. Though, I admit, it doesn't always suit me either.”

Hans was not expecting such a thorough explanation for what he considered merely absent-mindedness on his part.

“What people refer to as absent-mindedness doesn't exist.”

Could this woman also read his mind? Hans wanted to be rid of this bizarre feeling, but, off balance, he wasn't even sure how to raise the subject of tomorrow.

“Fine. In any case, I'll come back . . . uh, tomorrow?”

“That's right. Tomorrow.”

And without further ado, the woman closed the door.

Once, when they were famished after making love, the man who showed no sign of reading made sandwiches, which they began to eat in silence. Probably it was an ambiguous silence. And though she hesitated, in the end she had not been able to resist asking.

“What are you thinking?”

At the time, she still expected his answers to be tinged with sweetness.

“I was thinking of salt. I'm sure I put enough, but I don't taste it at all. I wonder if salt loses its taste, goes stale over time.”

She was stunned; they finished their snack in silence.

Several rows behind, in a seat by the other side of the sky, Carmen is also looking through the porthole. Beside her, Terry is engrossed in an American bestseller he picked up at the airport.

“The thing I enjoyed about smoking was that feeling you got, maybe twenty-odd times a day, that you were coming to the end of something.”

Terry stops reading.

“Hmm . . . I'm sure I know just what you mean, I do.”

Carmen and Terry quit smoking two weeks ago.

“It's not so bad, though, eh?”

“It's bad enough.”

But the man who shows no sign of reading is not always preoccupied by such superficial considerations as the freshness of salt or the status of air currents in the minds of professors of geography and orthography. Often he thinks of nothing in particular, finds himself unable to take hold of any specific thing in life's continuous flow of events. In his life's flow, that is. Of these past few months in particular, he has retained very little. Except for that Gabriel Pierné score,
Prelude and Fughetta for Wind Septet
, which fell into his hands . . . by chance. What was it that had moved him, at that instant, about two flutes, an oboe, a clarinet, an English horn, and two bassoons? Were he a musician, which he is not, the question would not have arisen. Perhaps it was the visual graphic of the score that enticed him — a painter's old reflex — but what were the chances he would undertake another painting in this life? That question was left unanswered.