Serafim and Claire

by Mark Lavorato

  SERAFIM

  AND

  CLAIRE

  Mark Lavorato

  Copyright © 2014 Mark Lavorato

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This edition published in 2014 by

  House of Anansi Press Inc.

  110 Spadina Avenue, Suite 801

  Toronto, ON, M5V 2K4

  Tel. 416-363-4343

  Fax 416-363-1017

  www.houseofanansi.com

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Lavorato, Mark, 1975–, author

  Serafim and Claire / Mark Lavorato.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-77089-365-8 (pbk.).—ISBN 978-1-77089-366-5 (html)

  I. Title.

  PS8623.A866S47 2014 C813’.6 C2013-904539-2

  C2013-904540-6

  Cover design: Alysia Shewchuk

  Cover photographs : Upper © Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis;

  Lower © Luis Alvarez/Getty Images ; Ornaments and curtain © iStock

  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.

  For Montreal

  And for my family of friends there

  [ONE]

  BURNING-IN

  Ville de Québec, le 23 janvier 1928

  Ma chère petite sœur,

  It must be said that your last letter troubles me. I know you very well, Claire; well enough to understand when you’re keeping something from me. It pains me to think of you in some kind of adversity, while having convinced yourself, in that blindingly stubborn way of yours, that you must face whatever it is alone.

  I need not remind you of the things (and one set of precarious details in particular) that I bared to you, trusting, knowing, that you would not judge me. True to your word, I believe you never have. Is it so absurd to think I could reciprocate such clemency? As sisters, we share a bond that other members of a family can never know, a closeness in which only you and I can trust.

  You should know that I bring you up as an unruly topic every time I visit or write Maman and Papa. They came to spend Christmas here with Gilles and I last month, and I must report that they are, sadly, as traditionalist and pious as always. On a walk we took alone, Papa asked for news of you.

  At any rate, please, know that I am here if you need me, Claire. Montreal is only a brief train ride from Quebec City, and I would be on the next itinerary out should you wish it.

  Avec toute ma chaleureuse affection,

  Cécile

  1

  It was madness, and she knew it. Yet Claire Audette could not help needing to hear the song on the phonograph again, one last time, before she picked up the telephone. She watched the device (a second-hand Victrola) from her bed, where she shivered under a pile of duvets and blankets that she had wrapped tightly around herself, shuddering uncontrollably, her teeth clacking in her cheeks, a deafening woodpecker in a forest of dark thoughts. Thoughts, she was aware, that were drifting helplessly towards delirium. Her fever was on the rise; and she could be sure of this by the way the coldness in her muscles was sinking, deeper, into her bones, into the marrow beneath them, turning the jelly there into grating grains of frost. She felt like, even if the fever were to pass, she would never really warm up again. Not fully.

  But the record on the gramophone had come to its end, and was now blankly rising and falling as it spun, the needle tirelessly tracing the contours, seesawing with the wobble of its vinyl orbit. The single speaker awash with a scratching sea song, the record’s dust and blemishes lapping predictable waves against the shores of her tiny room. Claire drifted through it.

  Until, shaking her head in a sudden snap of clarity, she realized that she had to formulate some kind of plan before her faculty to do so had entirely slipped away. With great focus she managed to think of what she would do next, but the undertaking took its toll, and her eyes began to close. She struggled to hold them open, fought the growing urge to just succumb. It was as if her body were quicksilver, a dense weight flattening itself out, chrome puddles coagulating into her mattress, sinking, heavy, through the cushion of its fabric.

  Time passed — anywhere between a couple of seconds and a few hours — and she started awake, this time quickly rolling herself off the bed, where she called out from a pain that clenched her stomach. As it receded, she squatted, shivering over the bedpan with her skirts hiked up, finished urinating, replaced her Kotex from a box under the bed, and stood to make her way to the gramophone. She was stopped by another pain in her abdomen, which had her anchored there, motionless, until it passed. She was weaker than she’d been only hours ago, her legs fatigued and shaky. But she could still move them, thankfully, could still walk herself out of the apartment. She made it to the Victrola, replaced the needle, clutched the heavy phone, and sat on the floor, her back against the pot belly of the stove in the centre of the room, a bit of warmth already beginning to seep through the layers of blankets as the song, every note memorized, wound up into its first verse.

  Claire closed her eyes, picturing each movement, each spin and swirl that she had recently been choreographing to the music. She could see the dancers she’d envisioned on either side of her, supporting her at centre stage in the brighter light. The crescendo, two more dancers joining in from either side, the orchestra swelling, hands pointing in to Claire, her arms outstretched in return. The unpredictable dénouement, slow, subtle, the other dancers retreating, vanishing into the unlit extremities of the stage. Her graceful bow. The deafening applause. The flowers bouncing at her feet. She straightens, beaming, blows a kiss, another, just before bowing a final time.

  Claire opened her eyes to her cold, claustrophobic apartment. A phone stood erect beside her. In front of her, a yellow water stain leafed along the wall, sprouting down from the ceiling and fanning out like lichen. The snow-choked wind scratched at the window. All while the Victrola washed its static waves through the quiet once more.

  Endeavouring not to fall asleep again, Claire reached for the phone. She had prepared a nuanced, underhanded threat for her family doctor, but exactly how she’d worded it, rehearsing it in her mind for what felt like days, was gone. She was far too exhausted to make another plan, so she drunkenly lifted the receiver, held the candlestick stand.

  She heard a woman’s voice, anonymous, abrupt. “Code and number, please.”

  “Uhm . . . Lorimier. Zero. Five. One-seven.”

  On the fourth ring, and likely just before the operator would have cut in to say there wasn’t anyone home, Dr. Bertrand answered. Claire slowly gave her name, and her old family doctor recognized her voice immediately. She told him that she was very, very ill, and needed to see him right away. The doctor, wasting no time, had grabbed a pencil and paper and asked for her address, promising that he would be over directly.

  “No,” she said, “no. I will come to your office instead.”

  “Unthinkable,” he replied, citing the snow, the storm, the high banks that were clogging the streets around the city, the fact that it was well after midnight, “absolutely not.”

  “Please,” she insisted, “you don’t understand. Be ready. I am coming immediately.” She hung up.

  Claire stood, and was temporarily paralyzed with another spasm of pain. It occurred to her that she didn’t have it in her
to get properly dressed, that she was about to go out in public in a way that might very well see her committed. She shuffled towards her front door with no other choice, wrestled her boots on, then a woollen toque (the kind only children wore), switched off the lights, and paused at the humming of the wind in the porch, where a letter from her sister still lay on the floorboards, unread. Being committed, going to jail, even dying in the storm before making it there — they were all just as likely, really. She felt herself begin to cry, half-heartedly, and heaving open the door, she stepped out into the blizzard. The storm hungrily pulled her forward and slammed the door behind her.

  Down the stairs, her blankets flapping, and out onto the snow-drifted sidewalk. The high banks rising to the road obscured both the street and the row of houses on the other side. It would not be possible to see carriages or vehicles as they passed. Above her, wild flakes swarmed the street lights like disturbed hives of albino wasps. The footprints of one or two previous pedestrians plodded out into the distance in front of her, soon vanishing into the abandoned night. She lumbered forward, following them, re-stamping them with her own wobbling footfalls.

  At the first intersection, she climbed instinctively over the bank and into the middle of the street, to the centre of the X, where a pain in her stomach suddenly brought her to her knees then eased her to the icy ground. She huddled there, buried in her blankets, convulsing with shivers. The wind moaned through the wires above the intersection, a low, haunting, apathetic hymn.

  After some time, she had the vague feeling of being lifted, carried, and placed into a small bit of warmth. The smell of animal furs. A man’s voice, asking her something. Claire answering weakly, a name and intersection — Dr. Bertrand, Mont-Royal and Chambord — sure that she couldn’t be heard above the wind. The weight of more furs, heavy on top of her, a horse snorting, nickering, movement, sleigh bells. Another man’s voice. The sensation of being carried again. A door being shut. Then, for some time, quiet.

  The next thing Claire remembered was the feeling of warm hands placing a cool circle onto her chest, fingers pressing at her breasts then her stomach, which had her biting her lip and wincing. The feeling of cold metal between her legs, questions from the doctor about when the fever began, what kind of pain she felt, where, for how long — none of which she could summon the energy to answer.

  After some time floating between awareness and a peaceful lack of consciousness, Claire sensed a bustle of irritated movement: drawers slamming, whispered curses, a teakettle squealing to a boil, a table shoved closer, tinkling instruments laid out on a cloth at her side. She realized that her clothes had somehow been removed, and felt soapy water and a sponge scrubbing at her belly, streams of water dripping around her waist and thighs. Then a high lamp with a harsh white light was adjusted over the centre of her body, a glass bottle and some gauze placed beside her right ear.

  Finally, there was a hand on her forehead. “Can you hear me, Claire?”

  Claire could only produce a weak hum before turning her head away.

  “Claire, I cannot actually see what is wrong. But it is clear that you have a very serious infection. To know more, to . . . find out what’s causing it, I will have to open you up.”

  Claire gave another meagre hum, slothful blink.

  The doctor let out a sigh, opened the bottle, and poured a cloyingly sweet liquid onto a square of gauze. He placed it over her mouth, where the tincture clung cold against her lips.

  Claire stared at the light bulb above her. A faint buzzing in her head began to grow louder, distending, lifting her, as if she were as weightless as the light in the bulb. Then darkness encroached, shadows tightening along the periphery of her vision, a blackness engulfing everything. Until only the bulb was left fighting it, stark and strident, a tiny coil of wire holding tight to its own heat, its light still managing to burn through the black, even through her eyelids. The light was hers now. The light was her. In the way it had always been. All her life. And she could feel it, still, burning in, searing through the dark.

  Medium:Gelatin silver print

  Description:Women loading boat with stores

  Location:Oporto, Portugal

  Date:c. 1919

  The ship in focus is in the foreground and mid-sized, having both a diesel engine and masts to sail by, from which rigging droops like barbwire against the sheen of the river behind. A thin gangplank stretches up from the bow and reaches the heights of a rocky shore, where seven women have stepped onto it, and are now carrying their loads of foodstuffs and provisions in large wicker baskets, balanced, with the help of one casual hand each, on top of their heads.

  There are other boats in the frame, both larger and smaller (and slightly out of focus), anchored along the opposite bank in the background, in front of the cellars of the English-run port wine industry, likely being stocked with crates and bottles for transport that same moment.

  A sturdy cable, bolted to a slab of rock, extends its rusty yarn out to another unseen vessel on the left.

  The blurry dots of two seabirds perforate the sky at the top.

  The women loading the boat are almost certainly the wives of the fishermen, or of the merchants — seamen — who earn their living from its deck. The delicate balance of the heavy baskets on their heads, as they walk along a teetering slat of wood onto a listing ship, which chances the temperamental seas daily, is so practised that it appears ordinary, sure, unprecarious.

  Yet one can feel, in their posture and resolve, that they understand, and better than most, that this is not the case.

  2

  Serafim Vieira stepped hesitantly from the glaring sun of the street and into a doorway that was dark with musty shade. He took off his hat, hung it on one of the pegs at the entrance, and peered into the gloom until his eyes adjusted, revealing that there was indeed a barman inside. The barman was standing behind a zinc counter, either drying a glass or running a grey rag over its milky sides as a means of cleaning it. Considering the type of establishment this was, a commoners’ tasco, Serafim assumed it to be the latter. He advanced, surveying the murky interior as he walked, wooden tables arranged without any order, some without chairs, their surfaces pitted and stained. It would suit his purposes just fine. The barman turned his back to Serafim and placed the glass on a shelf, mumbling, “Boa-tarde.”

  He stepped meekly up to the bar, but didn’t know what to do with the hand that wasn’t holding his camera, experimenting with putting it in his pocket then resting it on the counter, and finally just letting it hang at his side. There was a leg of presunto on the bar, dry-cured ham, elevated on a wooden crutch, which had already been shaven down to the pink of its bone. A fly was sponging up the rind of its gristle.

  “I would” — Serafim cleared his throat — “like a glass of bagaço. Please.”

  The barman reached for the bottle with automated efficiency, then paused, looking Serafim over for a moment, his eyes resting on his stylish vest and jacket, his beige tie in a Windsor knot, his well-trimmed moustache. Serafim feared the barman would ask if he was sure he wanted such a hard, unrefined, workingman’s drink. But the barkeeper said nothing.

  Shot glass poured to the rim, Serafim took it, watching it in his hand as he walked lest it spill over and make a mess, and sat at a table near the doorway, adjusting his uneven chair so he could look out into the bright afternoon street.

  The taste was sharp, stung his eyes, scorched his gullet. He put the glass down, surprised to see it empty. Noticing that he’d placed his camera on some crumbs of bread that had been spilled during someone’s slapdash breakfast, he lifted it, wiped the morsels away, and placed it gently back onto the wood again. As he did so, and out of nowhere, a swell of tears surged into the back of his throat and he had to lean forward, fighting to swallow them down. When he regained his composure, he lifted the glass to the barman behind him. “Sir?”

  The second glass went
down more easily. Serafim relaxed in his chair as it click-clacked between two of its legs. Across the narrow street, there was a corridor entrance to a set of apartments, shafting deep into the building, ceramic tiles woven together with azure and yellow designs that faded down the hallway into an aquamarine dark. Eventually a woman in the frills of a white dress emerged from it, her hemline dangerously close to the ground, sleeves to her wrists, a satin ruffled hat. Holding a black umbrella to guard against the sun, she stepped down into the street, tussled gauchely to open it, and strode away with all the grace of a peacock.

  Once she was out of sight, Serafim turned around abruptly, lifted his glass. “Sir?”

  When the barman filled it this time, the meniscus mushrooming from the rim of the shooter like bread dough after the second kneading, he placed the bottle onto the table in front of Serafim and returned to the bar. It then occurred to Serafim that the barman might already know. Though, if he didn’t, he would soon enough. Oporto was a small, staunchly conservative city that festered in the rumours of its own crestfallen inhabitants. He would be made to live out his humiliation gradually, stoically, wearing it off in piecemeal degrees; the painstaking attrition of disgrace.

  Serafim downed the glass, poured another, and listened to an ox cart approach from the right. You could always hear the sounds of an ox cart before you saw it: the huffs and grunts of the bulls, the sluggish wooden wheels slipping on the paving stones. A boy in threadbare pants and an oversized leather hat was leading the team, walking them as slowly as he could in order to keep the stacks of rusty terracotta bowls, separated by tufts of grass, from breaking. It reminded him of the child labour restrictions the anarchists were trying to establish; which of course made him think of Álvaro. Serafim wondered where his closest friend was at that moment. Far away and happily engaged in his work, no doubt. In the hills with the libertarian syndicalists, or in Lisbon, taking photos of every rally and protest, recording history so it would be history.