The American Fiancee

by Eric Dupont

  That’s right. Let him go, Madeleine. Let him become a brute like his grandfather. Poor Mom! She worked so hard to pull herself out of that mess, only to have her own son throw it all back in her face. It’s enough to make you think Suzuki was beginning to miss the days she’d spent packed in there with her brothers and sisters, the house teeming with lice, coming down with dirty laundry, reeking of that night’s broth. I hate her, Gabriel. For everything that leech did to us, and might still. She’s totally nuts!

  All this reminds me of an article I read in one of the Rome newspapers today. It was about an old woman in her nineties who lived not far from the Coliseum. She left her fortune to a cat she found there, at the foot of the tower where we live. It’s the talk of the town. That’s how I picture Suzuki forty years from now: old (viragos never die) and completely senile. It would be just like her to find a way to disinherit us and leave Mom’s fortune to a cat or, more likely, a snake, her genetic cousin. So please spare me any kind words you might have for Suzuki in future letters. For me, the matter is now closed and I’m looking to the future.

  Bruno-Karl D’Ambrosio will be here in fifteen minutes, Anamaria tells me. I’ll write more tomorrow.

  Ciao!

  M.

  P.S. My bass clef is about an inch below my left testicle. Does that answer your question?

  * * *

  Rome, October 2, 1999

  Dear Gabriel,

  I’m reading over the letter I wrote you yesterday. I owe you an apology. It’s difficult for me to accept how little Mom and I matter to you. Yesterday’s letter—so curt, so harsh—only goes to show how deeply hurt I was when you walked out of our lives. I’m enclosing it, all the same. I know you’ll be able to read between the lines. Don’t be angry with me. I know that I was Mom’s favorite. That’s never been a secret to anyone. You know that you were Suzuki’s favorite. That was an open secret, too. As for the nature of their relationship, I’m not sure they wish to dwell on it. Remember what things were like when they were growing up. They left the convent, but the convent never left them.

  I’ve been thinking a lot about this Magda woman you’ve been telling me all about. Are you sure it really was a bass clef you saw? You were in a sauna, after all. The lighting’s often not the best. If I could, I’d take the next flight to Berlin to have a look for myself. But I have to stay here for rehearsals. Besides, I don’t think that Magda of yours would be too keen on me pulling up her skirt. Her story is very touching. It inspires me, Gabriel. A memory has just resurfaced. I have to share it with you.

  We were seven years old, still living in the apartment on Saint-Hubert. We were old enough to be with Mom and Suzuki in the restaurant, but most of the time we were with the nanny Mr. Zucker had hired. One day, you came home with chicken pox. Mom insisted we sleep in the same bed, so I’d catch it too. You recovered much quicker than I did; you were back at school within days, while I was stuck at home, ill and alone. Mom and Suzuki took turns looking after me. The nanny—she lived on Avenue Christophe-Colomb; I can’t remember her first name, Francine? Lorraine?—had never had chicken pox and was terrified she might catch it. Chicken pox can be fatal if you’re old enough! Thank heavens Mom was smart enough to spare us that particular ordeal. Anyhow, Mom was in the living room with me. She was wearing her baby-blue uniform with the little white collar and the restaurant logo on it. You know the kind: shirtwaist dresses that were beginning to fall out of fashion. I was playing on the floor with my toy cars. Mom was lying asleep on the sofa, flat on her back. Her knees were bent and her skirt had slid up over her hips, revealing her inner thigh. What would you have done? I couldn’t help but notice the white rise of her panties. The little bass clef was just to the left. Exactly. The same one as I have you know where. Back then, I didn’t know it was a bass clef. I thought everyone had one. Mom snored her way through my anatomy lesson. I can still recall the creamy white of her underwear, the perfectly smooth mound.

  Of course, Mom wasn’t the type to take her bath with us. From that moment on, I began to believe that everyone but you had the birthmark, that you weren’t normal. The following day, I was still too ill to go to school. This time it was Suzuki who came upstairs to look after me. She too fell asleep on the sofa during her break, only she slept on her side, as though to better keep an eye on me. Don’t ask me why, but I decided to find out if Suzuki’s bass clef was on her left or her right side, genetics being a concept still as yet unknown to me. And so I went over to her. I slowly pulled her dress up as she dozed. First of all, I was surprised to discover that Suzuki’s underwear was black, then disappointed to see that the way she was lying meant I couldn’t see the spot where I imagined her bass clef to be. Far from delightful, her privates were slightly ovoid, like a nun’s chin, an ant’s ass.

  My face, paying no heed to my brain, came within an inch or two of her crotch, eager to make out the slightest trace of her bass clef. That’s how she found me when she opened an eye. A monumental slap. I can still feel the aftershocks today.

  “What do you think you’re doing, you filthy little pig?”

  My head must have spun around at least three times; I fell over backward. My tears and cries barely had any effect. She didn’t apologize.

  “Do that again and you’ll be sorry, you little pervert!”

  Hysterical, she was. How can anyone hit a child? That woman is dangerous, Gabriel. It’s just as well she didn’t do any permanent damage, mental or physical. It took me years to realize Mom and I were the only ones to have the birthmark. She never dared raise a hand to me again. I’d have gone straight to Mom! I told myself I’d get over it sooner or later, but here I am, still consumed by bitterness, all these years later. What are we made of, dear brother, if not bitterness?

  I swore I’d take that story to the grave, but I was too intrigued by what you told me. Telling Magda about my birthmark might get her to confide in you . . . But I don’t recommend telling her you were checking it out in the sauna. She might not take it well.

  I’m pleased you’ve found a place that suits you, despite your romantic setbacks. You seem to be enjoying Germany, a country I barely know. Its music is sublime. And you’re quite right: if I’d been thinking more about you and less about myself, I would have given you some Bach or Wagner for our birthday. Something to go with your new life. Instead, I weigh you down with my Puccinian preoccupations. To answer your question, it’s quite normal for Magda to have sung that piece of Tosca in German. The Germans performed Puccini in their own language up until the 1950s.

  Yes, I’m delighted to hear you’re enjoying Germany, that you’ve found a passion for something that doesn’t involve working out a deltoid or your triceps. But must you really criticize France in every sentence? You’d think it was Suzuki talking. The worst of it is that the venom that oozes from her narrow, hateful little mind has ended up polluting your own thoughts. Nothing puts her nose more squarely out of joint than that French accent and the ways of the “old country,” as she puts it. Rise above the swamplands of xenophobia, dear brother!

  If there’s one thing Magda’s stories should have taught you, it’s the dangers that come with that line of thinking. Mom never reduced herself to such pettiness. Far from it. You’ll recall the number of black waitresses employed by Mado’s in the 1970s. Apparently Mom asked no questions. They were hired on the spot and respected while they went about their work.

  “For me, what counts is a willingness to work.”

  Her first commandment, you no doubt remember. Hating the French because they’re French, you got that from Suzuki. That creature of the shadows. And it’s in the same perfidious spirit that you suggest Mom played a hand in me getting the Cavaradossi role. You’re right: Mom, or rather Mado Group Inc., funded part of D’Ambrosio’s film. But she insists on remaining an anonymous sponsor, proof of the purity of her intentions. What you don’t know, poor Gabriel, is that I was selected at the end of a long and drawn-out audition process. The selection committee comprised
solely D’Ambrosio and members of the Kinopera Group, which is co-producing the film. Mom would never be so pretentious—or impertinent—as to impose her will when she knows it’s not her place. As for Bruno-Karl D’Ambrosio, the man’s a genius. Quebec has never known a more extraordinary creative mind. He is, as surely you must know, our finest cultural ambassador. Every play he’s put on, every film he’s directed, is nothing short of a masterpiece. I know he has his eccentricities, his pseudonym being first among them. Yes, his real name is Marcel Truchon and he comes from La Malbaie. But, just like Mom, he has worked to succeed; he hasn’t let his humble origins condemn him to a life of insignificance in a provincial backwater. Do you know the first project he worked on? It was entirely original and completely free of charge, gaining him a following around the world. Let me explain how genius is born.

  When he moved to Montreal to study at the National Theatre School in 1982, D’Ambrosio—that was already his name!—lived in a modest apartment at the end of the No. 27 bus line, at the corner of Saint-Joseph and Pie-IX. His first week of school wasn’t yet behind him when, one evening, sitting on the bus home, he began reading À la recherche du temps perdu aloud. “Longtemps je me suis couché de bonne heure . . .” not stopping until he got off the bus. Apparently people called him every name under the sun at the start, told him to shut up. Can you imagine? Proust in east-end Montreal in the 1980s? Pearls before swine! But he persevered, and some of the swine began to develop a taste for pearls. Journalists picked up on his initiative and began reporting from the No. 27 bus. Venise Van Veen, who did so much for Mom, was among them. Little by little, Bruno-Karl D’Ambrosio attracted an audience that was eager to hear Proust read out loud to them—and with the correct accent—with the result that the passengers who had at first resisted this incursion of culture into their daily lives came to accept it. There were even, it seems, people who’d take the 27 just to hear Proust. Now that’s what I call passion! Within days, his idea was being copied all over the city. Someone began reading Voltaire on the No. 51. The city’s English-speaking population, not wanting to be left behind, decided to subject passengers on the No. 144 to John Updike. People began reading on buses all over Montreal. Soon, the idea was picked up in Toronto and the United States. Just remember that I work on a daily basis with the man who started that cultural movement. He even looks like Marcel Proust. There’s the same elegance, the same sophistication in how he holds his head. Bruno-Karl is one of the greats. Working under his guiding hand is a gift from heaven.

  What’s more, he found us an apartment fit for royalty in Rome, equal to the production’s means and to our talents. I’m enclosing a photo of Anamaria and me outside Palazzo del Grillo, which D’Ambrosio rented for us for the four months we’ll be in Rome. It’s no doubt cozier than a socialist apartment block on the outskirts of East Berlin . . . The shoot should be over by mid-December. The final shots will be filmed on the ramparts of Castel Sant’Angelo, overlooking the Tiber. From our spacious two-floor apartment, Anamaria and I enjoy views of the archaeological site of the imperial forums. To the far left stand the Coliseum, then the monument to Victor Emmanuel that Romans call “the typewriter,” then three eternal cupolas that fill me with inspiration: Sant’Andrea della Valle, St. Peter’s Basilica, and St. Mark’s. We spend our nights contemplating the lights of the city until it’s time to go to bed. There is no finer spectacle. Since we have only a few days until the start of rehearsals, until we get down to “brass tacks,” as D’Ambrosio likes to say, Anamaria and I went on a tour of Rome today. My sole regret was not having you and Mom by my side. In the meantime, Anamaria and I are visiting Rome like tourists. No one recognizes us here.

  Which reminds me, I simply must tell you what I saw at the Vatican Pinacoteca. You won’t believe it. You’ll have to come to Rome to see it with me. But hurry! I’ll only be here until January! I’ll pay for your ticket if need be.

  I must tell you all about the painting I mean, it’s a revelation that has tormented me since this morning. Upon leaving Palazzo del Grillo, we immediately crossed the Tiber, away from the big squares and the bustling shopping streets. Anamaria was desperate for another glimpse of the Sistine Chapel, which she had seen as a child on a rare visit to Rome with her father. Even though it was October and classes had started, we still had to stand in line for an hour to get into the Vatican museums. But what we saw there was worth every minute of the wait in that motley crowd. Evidently, the Church has always favored quantity . . . We are all equal before God and the Vatican museums. And so we were almost trampled underfoot by a group of—staggeringly vulgar—Asian pilgrims, then forced to endure the noisy chatter of the Americans in front of us. It’s difficult to keep a straight face when that lot open their mouths. That American accent is like a cross between a hooting owl and a quacking duck. No class whatsoever. The whole world is waiting for the day America will finally shut its trap and take a breath.

  Inside, Anamaria insisted on making a beeline for the Sistine Chapel, which she’ll never tire of admiring. We agreed to meet beneath a huge green pine cone, some type of sculpture, two hours later.

  The Pinacoteca doesn’t get the attention it deserves compared to the rest of Vatican City. Most visitors do what Anamaria did and don’t linger in a museum they deem to be of little interest. Big mistake. They remind me of those tourists at the Louvre who line up for hours, only to race off to the Mona Lisa as soon as they get through the doors. There, they swoon before a painting they’ve seen a thousand times, without paying the slightest attention to any of the other works, before returning to their hotels, utterly exhausted, to keep the bedbugs company. They’ve installed a replica of Michelangelo’s Pietà at the entrance to the Pinacoteca, and visitors frustrated at being unable to get a close-up of the original can photograph it to their heart’s content. There is a fascinating history behind the Pinacoteca and the works it is home to. Today’s building actually dates back no further than 1932. In the seventeenth century, works were exhibited in the Capitoline Museums. Then, around 1795, the French occupied the Papal States, forcing Pius VI to give up hundreds of artworks and manuscripts. Bonaparte ended up looting the lot of it, bringing it back to France to fill the new Louvre. It was Pius VII who sent an emissary to France to recover the paintings Napoleon had stolen. The emissary managed to recover 249 of the 506 paintings, while the French kept 248 for themselves. What happened to the other nine, I hear you ask? It’s quite simple: no one knows. They were declared lost. With time, and thanks to the generosity of the popes who succeeded Pius VII, the Pinacoteca collection continued to grow. It even boasts a Leonardo da Vinci painting of St. Jerome removing a thorn from a lion’s paw. But the painting that intrigued me most—I was practically rooted to the spot—was a small piece by a painter I hadn’t heard of, a certain Masolino da Panicale, who died in 1440. It’s eight by twenty inches at the very most. Death of the Virgin, it’s called. It shows the Virgin Mary lying on what appears to be a casket. She’s draped in navy blue, her hands crossed over her pubis. Standing around her are the apostles and Jesus with a child in his arms. An angel stands at either end of the casket. Michael and Gabriel, no doubt about it. Each holding a long candle, I imagine, to light up the funeral scene. I asked the nun keeping watch over the room why Jesus had a child in his arms. What could the baby possibly represent? She told me it symbolized the Virgin’s soul. I was fascinated by the painting, so much so that I was late getting back to meet Anamaria. Caught up in a mystery. Get this, Gabriel: At the entrance to the museum, there’s a replica of Michelangelo’s Pietà. Need I remind you that the sculpture shows the Virgin holding the dying Christ in her arms, just after he’s been taken down from the cross? Barely twenty yards away, the Church offers up the same individuals in an entirely different scene: the son presiding over his mother’s funeral. And they say opera’s hard to follow!

  My Italian is good, but not good enough to strike up a conversation with a nun over the paradoxes of religious art. The enigma continues to
swirl around my head, refusing to let up. I fear I may lose sleep over it. The picture upsets me in so many ways. First off, I’d always believed the Gospels said the Virgin ascended into Heaven, body and soul, aboard some sort of virginal elevator. Am I mistaken? Isn’t that the version defended by the Church? But if only that were all! I’m asked to accept that the mother buries her son, only for, twenty yards further on, the son to carry his mother to her tomb!

  As I left the Pinacoteca, the scene remained imprinted on my mind, the figures sprang to life, imposing their will. It was unbearable, Gabriel! The image of that entombment struck the very core of my being, the place where I harbor my darkest fears. Does this Death of the Virgin not propel the two of us, Gabriel, you and me, into the future? Those angels holding a candle over the dead mother, aren’t they you and me standing over Mom’s grave? The painting allowed me to glimpse the scene that awaits us. I find it at once odious and unbearable. I fear I won’t be able to get through it.

  I know you’re mad at her for all sorts of reasons, but the day will come when it is our turn to light up Madeleine Lamontagne’s funeral, dear brother. The scene gave me such chills that neither the October sunshine nor Anamaria’s anger at my tardiness managed to dissipate. I’m worried. The thought of it has frozen the very depths of my soul, like ten Montreal winters, like the snow you write about in your letters, like the sound of the German railway. To my mind, the thought of Mom’s passing is now inseparable from a terrible, everlasting winter descending over us all.

  We returned home in the late afternoon. It was only eleven o’clock in Montreal, I thought to myself. I just wanted to hear Mom’s voice, wanted to hear her reassure me. She picked up, began telling me off for calling her from Rome.

  “It’s going to cost you a fortune!”

  I didn’t know how to explain the state I found myself in. The painting had left me traumatized. I think she must have heard the despair in my voice. She asked me how Anamaria was doing. And also if I’d heard from you. Your silence is causing a world of hurt.