Tesseracts Seventeen:
Speculating Canada from Coast to Coast to Coast
Edited by Colleen Anderson and Steve Vernon
Copyright © 2013
All individual contributions copyright by their respective authors.
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INTRODUCTION
Colleen Anderson
What is a tesseract? You can google it and go a little nutso perusing Wikipedia or try to find a simple definition: a four-dimensional equivalent of a cube, or a hypercube, having sixteen corners. But why, back when the Tesseracts anthologies began some twenty-plus years ago with Judith Merril editing the first one, did they name it Tesseracts? I think it was a funky new shape discovered in mathematics and the advent of the computer age. A tesseract was more than what it seemed, had more surfaces than you first thought, and had a depth that changed depending on how you looked at it.
Now here we are at Tesseracts Seventeen, where Steve Vernon and I have spent buckets of time in the hypercube trying to pull out all those facets and surfaces, all those edges and corners, for you to look at and perceive. Tesseracts is somewhat like the Tardis— bigger on the inside than on the outside.
Every time we see an anthology with fiction by Canadian authors, the same question is asked: Is Canadian fiction different? It’s asked on panels, in magazines, on blogs. So…what, actually, is Canadian? A large landmass where the climate is diverse and often deadly, where the majority of the population lives along the southern border; where there is a rich myth and history from the first travellers (Plains, Coastal and Inuit cultures, not to mention those who moved farther south into Meso America) who traversed the Bering land mass over 40,000 years ago, where Norsemen sailed and Basque whalers settled, where French, English and Spanish landed and fought, where Irish, Italians, Scots and many more came for work or land or adventure. What is Canadian? Beavers and Smarties and poutine and Nanaimo Bars and tortière, as well as Wendigo and Sasquatch and Ogopogo. The Great Lakes and Banff and the Queen Charlotte Islands and Peggy’s Cove.
I could go on but determining what is Canadian is the same as asking what is Russian or Egyptian or Chilean. It is many things, and those who live here, whether born to the land or having taken root, become Canadian, affected by the culture, climate and geography that shape us and our land.
But is “Canadian” different from American or English or anywhere else in the world? Of course it is. The stories here are as individual as the people that wrote them as are all the events and places that have affected their lives and coloured their imaginations. While one story takes place in a Tuktoyaktuk blizzard and another in the cold, lonely streets of Winnipeg, there are those that transport us to the mythical streets of Venera, or a time before in a land of sand and sultans. And yet, we all span into worlds unknown, both fantastical and frightening, illuminating and surreal.
We could not gather all the types of stories and poems that fill the voids in our minds, but we tried to give a good representation of what it means to be in Tesseracts Seventeen: Speculating Canada from Coast to Coast to Coast. In reading the many submissions (around 450 from Canadians here and abroad, those born elsewhere but claiming Canada home, we found that there were tales of Wendigo, werewolves, vampires and a host of reanimated dead, though not all of them zombies. There were gentle tales of transformation and other terrors of madness and encountering the demons we know and fear. Character faced the trials of space and the spaces within.
And indeed, from our inland border with the US, to the warmer Pacific waters, to the chilly depths of the Maritime Atlantic, and the mysterious tundra of the North, these are the reaches of Canada’s geography. But the mindset of Canada’s writers stretches farther. Tesseracts Seventeen is rich with tales about people: there are housewives and men who find themselves in unusual and terrifying circumstances, children who deal with the transformations of their lives and their worlds, potters, keepers of light, wine reviewers, out-of-work graduates, pilots, apprentice chefs, writers, yak herders, dead actors, game leaders, and those who just have a job to do.
Steve and I, as editors, span from coast to coast. While he was shovelling snow in Halifax I was admiring daffodils in Vancouver, but our common ground was reading the cornucopia of stories and poetry that came in. And indeed we could have filled several anthologies with the amazing diversity of good tales we read.
While some of the yarns (as Steve likes to say) within these pages touch down on the land and streets of Canada’s provinces and towns, there are those that traverse the worlds we are familiar with and those that are truly alien. So… what is a tesseract— what is Tesseracts Seventeen? You’ll have to take a stroll within, and see the many corners and facets, the true depths of the hypercube. Enjoy the journey.
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COLLEEN ANDERSON grew up in Alberta, spent many a year looking for Sasquatch and Ogopogo and now lives on the West Coast. She has been poetry and slush editor for Chizine Publications and is host of the Vancouver branch of the Chiaroscuro Reading Series. She has been published in Evolve, OnSpec, Horror Library Vol. IV, and Deep Cuts as well as being twice nominated for an Aurora Award. New work is forthcoming in Chilling Tales 2, Bull Spec, Cemetery Dance, Read Short Fiction.com and others. Tesseracts Seventeen is the first anthology she has edited.
Vermilion Wine
Claude Lalumière
That autumn afternoon, the acqua alta took Venice by surprise. Monica had been snapping pictures of the pigeons at the Piazza San Marco, her camera set to black-and-white, when she felt dampness seep into her socks. Before she could react, the water nipped at her ankles. She didn’t so much run from the rising tide as she was swept by the rush of tourists scrambling to escape the calf-high flooding by scurrying to the north of the piazza.
As soon as she reached dry terrain and recovered her balance, all Monica could feel was her soggy footwear, emphasizing her growing irritation with Venice, which, despite its undeniable architectural beauty, she had so far experienced as scarcely more than a cynical tourist trap. She removed her designer sneakers and ankle socks and, in disgust, abandoned them there on the street, venturing barefoot further north, away from the encroaching acqua alta.
Walking up the bustling Calle dei Fabbri, she thrilled at the sensation of her bare feet treading the Venetian ground. Through this fleshly connection, Monica was astonished to suddenly uncover a profound connection to an essentially seductive Venice, as if, with every step, intimate parts of herself seeped down into the city’s foundations and the ineffable secrets of the city welled up into her body through her naked soles. Every millimeter of her skin tingled, sensually charged. Other passersby strolled by her, and whether it was skin or fabric that brushed her bare arms every fleeting contact shot sparks of pleasure throughout her body. It was in that heightened state of sexual awareness that she stumbled onto the Museo d’Arte Erotica.
The entrance fee was merely a handful of
euros; inside, the exhibit snaked over four storeys in a labyrinthine manner that was as sensually intriguing as the items on display. The various types of flooring — wood, marble, rug — caressed her bare feet, accentuating the sensuousness of the visit. Here was the key, she realized, to truly understanding Venice. Forget the dull history books; forget the official, so-called “masterpieces” of art; forget the sanitized, Disneyland-like version of the city presented to tourists; forget the greedy entrepreneurs eager to milk every cent from those same tourists. Venice — the real Venice — was unabashed pleasure: the sensuous, otherworldly architecture; the intoxicating aroma of the Adriatic Sea; that palpable aura of relaxed decadence that descended upon the city at night; the nooks along the streets and alleys, where trysts demanded to be initiated, inviting stolen moments during which hands and lips took whatever they could; mischievous, decadent, provocative artwork that celebrated the ribald joy of the senses. Yes, Monica had glimpsed all these things in the past three days, but the ubiquitous and opportunistic mercantilism that had evolved to take advantage of the abundant tourism that the compact city could scarcely manage to contain obscured their significance.
Here in the erotica museum she was able to ignore the crass veneer that hid the true Venice. The parade of sexually charged objects from throughout Venice’s history — paintings, photographs, sculptures, curios, book pages, film clips — allowed her to find the primal wonderment she had initially hoped to discover in this legendary city. She scrutinized every item on display with hungry curiosity. On the third floor, she stopped in front of a glass case that contained an old book, bound in a reddish fibre that she could not identify. The tome was titled La storia segreta dei vini sacri (The Secret History of Sacred Wines), by an author with the unlikely name of Magus Amore.
Although Monica did not really want to think about work, her passion for wine went far beyond her weekly feature at the magazine. She could have used the connections she had amassed over her twelve years of writing the column to enhance her impulsive escape to Italy, but she had craved solitude and anonymity. She had just broken off an affair with her editor, Katherine, whose bullying bossiness she had at first mistaken for the masculine arrogance that she responded to, both viscerally and uncontrollably, in women. Honestly, she wasn’t entirely certain she would still have a job when she returned; something told her Katherine was spiteful enough to find some justification to let her go. Monica had more than two months’ worth of columns filed in advance, so she didn’t have to worry about any of that yet.
Her Italian was a cut or two above serviceable; she deciphered what she could of the text on the two-page spread displayed under the glass. Most of it dealt with the rites of minor, forgotten Catholic sects whose subtle blasphemies of the flesh were lost on her irreligious mind, but on the last line of the second page she encountered the words “il vino vermiglio di Venera” (“the vermilion wine of Venera”) and she was immediately consumed with the desire to turn the page and learn what that mysterious phrase could mean. She had never heard of a city or region, or even a vineyard, called Venera; and, despite all her years of investigating the wines of the world, she had no clue as to what “vermilion wine” could be. But the book was encased, out of reach. She tried to reassure herself that armed with the book’s title she could at any time satisfy this sudden obsession.
Still, her impatient need to understand that phrase nagged at her to distraction. She hadn’t yet seen the entire exhibit at the Museo d’Arte Erotica, but she could no longer focus. Nothing registered in her memory; every item was forgotten as soon as her eyes moved on to the next thing.
There were books in the boutique downstairs. Monica asked the clerk if they had for sale any reprint editions of Magus Amore’s La storia segreta dei vini sacri. The young woman — despite her aura of hipster chic, which in Monica’s experience signalled bad service, especially toward other women — was surprisingly solicitous. She took the time to carefully inspect the inventory, and even looked up the title on the store computer, but she came up blank and acted sincerely apologetic that she could not be of any help.
Monica inquired if it would be possible to consult the copy of the work on display. Irritation flashed on the young clerk’s face, and she replied with a curt “No.” The manner of the refusal irked Monica, sparking her to insist; she took out her press ID, which identified her as a “wine columnist,” and presented the card to the clerk. “I’m writing a piece on the ritual uses of wine,” she lied. “Perhaps if you passed my card on to the curator?”
The young woman glanced sneeringly at the business card on the counter. Defiantly, Monica left it there anyway and hurried outside without another word. A sense of defeat overwhelmed her as she neared her hotel. Up in the room, she collapsed instantly, fully clothed on the tiny single bed.
She woke up in darkness. She checked her watch; it was a few minutes past midnight, but soft, muted sounds wafted in through the open window: the murmur of conversations, the slow clickety-clack of heels on cobblestone, the subtle vibrations of live acoustic music. Without giving it any thought, without changing her clothes or putting on shoes, Monica followed the siren call of nighttime Venice. Out she went. Around her, people walked unhurriedly, talking in calm tones, leaning into each other with complicit intimacy; faint music echoed on the masonry of the city. At this hour, Italian reasserted itself as the language of the city: the tourists had gone to bed and the Venetians had come out to play. The sounds and smells of the Adriatic Sea filtered and tuned all of this tranquil festivity into a surreal urban lullaby. From the soles of her naked feet, Monica felt her entire body vibrate in harmony with her surroundings. As she wandered, humming, along the rios and calles, she, too, became part of this Venetian nocturne.
She located a table in a restaurant that overlooked the water. Groups of Venetians supped relaxedly, the evidence of several courses littering their tables. Monica hadn’t eaten all day but had no desire for food. She ordered a liter of the house red, and quickly, perhaps too quickly, another liter. And yet another.
She woke in a luxurious bed, in a room at least three times larger than her hotel accommodations. She called out a drowsy, tentative “Hello?” Then, in Italian, “Salve?” But there was no answer. Despite the potentially alarming circumstance of waking up naked in an unknown bed, Monica had to struggle to keep from succumbing to sleep again. The bedsheets were soft as clouds. Her insides felt gooey, as if her bones had lost all solidity. And then the smell hit her: the musk of sex with a man. Her skin reeked of it. The sheets reeked of it. The air of the room was permeated with it.
On the floor next to the bed were her clothes and her purse. A soupçon of anxiety nibbled at her as she rifled through her handbag, but nothing was missing. She had no memory of having had sex, nor of the man she’d presumably had sex with. She did remember downing at least three bottles of wine by herself, though. Whatever. She did feel good inside, and her skin still tingled pleasantly. This trip was supposed to be all about escape and adventure. She got dressed and pulled open the thick, opulent curtains. She recoiled at the glare of the early afternoon sun and was also instantly hit with ravenous hunger: how long had it been since she’d last eaten anything? More than a day, for certain; perhaps as long as two days.
She wandered through the empty rooms of the three-floor dwelling, intending to find the kitchen. Whoever the man was, he was unconcerned enough to have left her alone in this fabulous, high-ceilinged house, outfitted with ornate, antique furniture and vintage objets d’art. Beyond those treasures, everywhere were cabinets of curiosities, all under lock and key, as if this were a museum.
Inside the cabinets: figurines, coins, books, portfolios, papers, notebooks, bottles, posters, cases, jewelry, toys, relics, and curios of all kinds. But nothing she had ever seen before. Nearly always there was a detail or an elusive aura that marked the items as strange. Some of the text was in Italian, but most of the language was merely close
to Italian; even to her less-than-fluent eyes, it was clearly a dialect, tinged with French and Arabic. The crests, the logos, the designs… they were almost familiar but not quite, as if they belonged in dreams. And then she saw it stamped on a gold coin; she saw the word: Venera.
She inspected the other items in her mystery man’s collection. The word did not appear on every item, but it could still be found on many. The collection became a puzzle to Monica. If only she could figure out how to assemble all these objects, all this information, then she would understand. She wasn’t exactly sure what she was trying to understand, but the compulsion was too strong, too fundamental, somehow, to her sense of self to be ignored.
A florid symbol on a spoon was also reproduced as a wax seal on a letter addressed to a Venera location. An unnamed building on architectural blueprints was also the centerpiece of paper currency issued by the Instituzione de Credit dia Venera (a name in that not-quite-Italian found on most of the currency on display). A bronze figurine of some weird bipedal beast looking vaguely like a cross between an iguana and a wolf was pictured along with two other bizarre animals on the cover of a book entitled, again in that not-quite-Italian, Creaturas Fantastica dia Venera.
Books. Books!
She searched frantically but thoroughly through the items inside the locked cabinets. She examined every book, everything that might be a book, until, having lost count of the number of cabinets, she found it: La storia segreta dei vini sacri, by Magus Amore. Unlike the edition in the Museo d’Arte Erotica, this was a paperback, from a press called — and she did not believe this to be coincidence — Vermiglio Editore. Then she noticed the item next to the book: the true object of her obsession; not the book, but a bottle of wine. Unusually for wine, the bottle was clear; the liquid within was of a sanguine shade of red, both dark and bright. Vino vermiglio di Venera. Vermilion wine of Venera.
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