Oscar
Page 14
During his last years, despite his precarious health and his obesity, Oscar continued to perform, although rarely, despite the condescending reviews, which he apparently didn’t read because he was persuaded that he’d never played better, even if no one else could see it. When he no longer felt up to playing in public, he turned to his piano in the basement, contented, it was said, to see his music vanish like smoke, since it was not recorded. Whatever piece he attacked, a breeze always rose up, he said to anyone who asked, becoming a stiff wind that strengthened bit by bit, transforming itself into a fearsome tempest, which rapidly turned into a cyclone that swept back over all the periods of his life, scattering like toys the seats of Carnegie Hall where his American career began, emptying the canal of all its polluted water while he was contemplating suicide, setting in motion as if they were possessed the sheets between each child’s bed during the sun baths in the hospital courtyard, and irrevocably leading him on to those blessed days when he raced home to hear, from the living room doorway, Brad’s magic fingers which, assailed by the wind’s blasts, played at an ever more reckless speed. But why was he always returning to that moment in time? That’s what he asked himself as a light snow fell, two days before Christmas, an hour at the most before he died, knowing that his kidneys were failing just like those of Art T., a coincidence that amused him, only surely not a coincidence at all, and he was obsessed by the following question, according to his detractors: Was this Norman G.’s revenge from beyond the grave? His admirers don’t believe that for an instant, and claim on the contrary that a few seconds before leaving this world, he had just enough time to ask if he’d be able to play the piano in the beyond. Oh, he did better than that in the land of the dead, says old Jackson, when people come to quiz her. I say he was able at last to greet himself at the door of his house, and to say welcome, sit, just like his mother had told him so rightly to do long ago, bloodseed.
About the Author
Born in Chile, Mauricio Segura grew up in Montreal and studied at Université de Montréal and McGill University. He is a well-known journalist, scriptwriter, and documentary filmmaker. An editor of the literary journal L’Inconvénient and a regular contributor to the Montreal public affairs magazine L’Actualité, he has taught at Concordia University, McGill University, and Université de Montréal.
Segura is the author of four novels and a study of Western depictions of Latin America. His novels Black Alley and Eucalyptus were published in English by Biblioasis. Black Alley is widely studied in Quebec’s junior college system. Eucalyptus was named one of Amazon’s 100 best books of 2013. The Montreal newspaper La Presse chose Oscar as one of the 40 best books of 2016.
About the Translator
Donald Winkler’s previous translations for the Biblioasis International Translation Series include Mauricio Segura’s Eucalyptus, Samuel Archibald’s Giller-nominated Arvida, and Andrée A. Michaud’s Giller-longlisted Boundary: The Last Summer. A Montreal-based literary translator and documentary filmmaker, he is a three-time winner of the Governor General’s Award for French-to-English Translation, most recently in 2013 for Pierre Nepveu’s poetry collection The Major Verbs.