“Listen, I have something else to tell you...”
63
We returned home along the narrow tree-shaded trails that follow the Assiniboine River. The trees and bushes still had no leaves.
I’m very fond of fall, when the colours turn with the season. But I like the beginning of the Manitoba spring just as much. It takes up where the autumn left off, with everything stripped bare, at its loneliest, but to me without any sense of desolation. As if the trees have thinned out, so you can see more. You can see further. The migrant birds aren’t camouflaged. There’s a kind of huge emptiness waiting in suspense. The faint whisper of a breath about to begin. All the colours are more or less the same. There is a calm and natural simplicity that I find endlessly pleasing. The entire landscape seems made of lace, an elementary web of air and lines.
64
On the way home we rode single file because the trails were so narrow. We didn’t talk much.
I felt good, a bit pensive. My sister had dreamt that she was pregnant.
I asked her how her boyfriend would feel about it.
“Fine.”
“Have you told him?”
“No. I had the dream two nights ago. And I’m not sure yet. I still have to take the test.”
In fact her dream didn’t exactly say that she was pregnant. She had rather seen herself walking along carrying a papoose that looked like an Inuit sculpture in a backpack.
65
I have to admit that over the next few days I didn’t think about my sister very much.
On the days I was working the mornings were glorious, with the sky a darker shade of blue than usual. The air was sweet and clean. I may have seemed carefree, but I was just the opposite—very nervous, excited. I had only one idea in my head and I didn’t dare admit to myself how compelling it was: to go to Rinella’s Friday afternoon and watch Ueno Takami at work.
66
At my own work my boss found me somewhat absent-minded. I was creating some truly original floral arrangements, which in itself was not a bad thing. Still, they were a little too original for a hospital, where the standard order is for a large bouquet.
I was inventing new and different combinations, at least new for me. My boss, Mrs. Lydia, was pleasantly surprised and found them interesting, even if the customers didn’t and I had to start over.
67
I surprised myself with what I was producing. It wasn’t that I’d never tried anything unusual before, but I was surpassing myself.
I wasn’t even aware of it until Mrs. Lydia called my attention to the arrangement I had just assembled. I took a look at the bouquet; perhaps it was a little incongruous, but I found it attractive. I looked at Mrs. Lydia and we both started to laugh.
Ueno Takami once told me: You must work unconsciously. I didn’t even realize it at the time, but that’s what I was doing.
68
I’d been given this job at the florist’s shop of the Health Sciences Centre thanks to my mother, who was a good friend of Mrs. Lydia. My mother had worked at the hospital since she was a teenager, for a long time in the laundry. Now she supervised the work of other support staff.
When I took this job there were two things I liked about it. The first was Mrs. Lydia, since she had the name of a nearby street. And it gave me satisfaction to be working with natural things inside that very sterile building.
69
My mother told me that when she was a little girl, that corner of the neighbourhood had been a large wooded park with trails to walk along and great open green spaces for games. Little by little, concrete overtook the grass.
In the amoebic outgrowth of the hospital I most liked the recently constructed psychiatric wing, which was very refreshing, full of light and indoor gardens. I often went there to eat my lunch, sometimes with my mother. It was as if a part of the former park had been preserved there. And I got to talk with the patients.
70
I don’t know how I got through that week. I had quite a varied work schedule, but on Friday I was almost always free. When Mrs. Lydia asked me if I could fill in on Friday afternoon, I must have looked so pitiful that she simply said, “It’s okay. I’ll ask Karen.”
Feeling I owed her some kind of explanation, I said, “It’s just that I have a very important appointment.”
“I understand, dear. In any case, you’ve worked long hours this week, often without much to show for it.”
We both laughed at that.
“I mean, did you see the looks on the customers’ faces when you suggested putting a bird of paradise together with willow branches, or...”
I laughed so hard she didn’t go on. She was having a good time.
“You’d think you’d just arrived from another planet. Have you been taking courses in ikebana?”
“No...”
“You even managed to sell a bonsai!”
“It was going to be a very long convalescence.”
And we both started laughing again.
71
I hardly dare say what I did that evening. It wasn’t anything unspeakable, but it was uncharacteristic for me.
I took a long bath. I tried on different kinds of make-up, all kinds of outfits. I studied myself in the mirror as never before, dressed or naked. Even when I had started to go out with Aron, I hadn’t been so vainly self-conscious. It just wasn’t me. I like to look good and to dress with style, but I have an easy-going side to my nature that keeps me from caring too much about my appearance.
I finally decided on an outfit.
But the next morning I totally changed my mind. I put on my sneakers, a pair of tights and a little black dress. Very fashionable, after all, but casual.
72
Despite my excitement I slept in quite late. Once I finally awoke, I went into a kind of frenzy. At the time I was unconscious of it. Or rather, no, I knew it. It was all being recorded in a corner of my mind.
I put on some music I loved, pieces for the piano by Scarlatti. My mother was an excellent pianist, as I’ve mentioned, although she had never made a career of it, and a taste for music remained with me. I bounced about like the rhythm of the notes. I tried to do too many things at once. Brush my teeth, toast the bread, choose which clothes to wear, make the coffee, telephone, find my watch.
It was in the midst of this whirlwind that I finally got dressed as I did.
Would I take my bicycle or the bus over to Rinella’s? I eventually managed to summon enough presence of mind to decide to walk and calm myself down a little.
It was a magnificent day. It was like walking through velvet. Spring was exceptionally beautiful that year.
73
Despite my late start, I still arrived at Rinella’s early, well before noon. I felt a little shy, but wild horses couldn’t have prevented me from going in. I hoped that once I was inside I wouldn’t look too scattered. I wanted to appear completely composed.
I went in by the rear entrance, like a regular, close to Sara’s station. She wasn’t there. All the other employees were going about their work. It was buzzing with activity. The place smelled of ink.
Then Frank spotted me.
“Angela! Come and have a cappuccino with me. We’re up front in the office.”
I felt like I was floating as I crossed the shop. In that instant, I saw only the huge field of machines, strange and fantastic devices distinguishable only by virtue of their noise and by the extraordinary smell of ink they threw off.
I had one regret: It would be impossible to smell the perfume I’d chosen.
74
As I entered Frank’s office I saw Ueno and Sara huddled over the proofs of illustrations and text. They raised their eyes when they felt us come in and simultaneously turned their heads to us.
“Ah, Angèle!” said Sara, quite simply.
“What a wonderful surprise,” said Ueno. “Frank told me there would be a visitor today, but I never imagined... You look good with your hair in a ponytail. And I like your sh
oes.”
Ueno had on a reddish-brown T-shirt, a jacket of faded khaki linen, jeans and his work boots.
He shook my hand in a way that left me breathless.
75
I said hello, timidly, but with a pleasure that must have been plain for all to see. I kissed Sara and Frank prepared a cappuccino for me.
“How are you?” Ueno asked. Turning back to the work table, he continued, “We’ll just finish up this one little thing and then we’ll take a break.”
“Don’t stop on my account,” I said.
“Not at all,” is what I expected to hear—a mere politeness—but instead he said, “On the contrary.”
I don’t know why, but I blurted out a platitude, something like, “Are those your poems?”
“Yes. And you’re going to translate them.”
76
Frank looked at me in wonder and made a small Italian gesture that I suppose means, Hey, hey!
As for me, I was dumbfounded, with no idea what to say. I heard the voices of Ueno and Sara run on like a distant hum. I could see a welter of sheets the colour of India paper, and letters swarming like black fireflies.
I would be exaggerating if I said I thought I would faint. But I suddenly found myself engulfed in a kind of darkness, with a small lantern shining out before me.
77
Then it passed. They did actually take a break. Ueno went out on the street to buy hot dogs from a vendor’s wagon.
We ate them in the office. Frank brought us one of his jugs of wine.
“Rice wine?” Ueno asked him jokingly.
“Almost,” replied Frank.
I was looking at the two or three poems of which proofs had been printed. The lettering was at once simple and stylized, that was clear. But it produced a somewhat primitive look, of something handmade. Frank explained that they had used old-fashioned lead type of a kind that was no longer manufactured. As a result, there were slight variations from letter to letter in the opening and the body. Ueno told him, “There is beauty in imperfection.”
Then he leaned over to me and gently repeated, “You’re going to translate them.” He said it with the same certainty as the first time I met him when he said, “You’re Métis, aren’t you?” Not an exclamation, nor really a question. With the confidence of one who knows. A sort of innate knowledge.
“Oh, no. I’ve never done that kind of thing. I have no talent for it. I couldn’t.”
“Yes, you can.”
“What makes you say that?”
“It’s because of your dual nature.”
“You can speak French. You should do it yourself.”
“You know—” When he addressed me, he would go freely from “vous” to “tu” and back again, formal to informal, sometimes in the same sentence. I don’t know if he was doing it consciously or whether, as he said, “—my mastery of the language is not that good.”
“Neither is mine. I don’t have any particular skills and...”
“No, no. I have a feeling you can do it. You are interested in the arts, in literature, in architecture, and translation is a form of construction.”
I turned to the proofs. “I like this one very much.”
“Ah, the poem about the geese and the frogs. Why?”
“Because it’s like me.”
78
“It’s a bit sad,” I added, after a pause.
“A bit, in a way.”
“Not completely.”
“No, not altogether.”
“At the same time it’s joyful.”
“That’s natural. You see, you already have a great sensitivity for the work.”
“I don’t know...”
“Of course! On the other hand, there’s nothing wrong with failure. The translation will be for you alone. And it will give me great pleasure,” he whispered with the gentlest smile in the world. Then he added, “The geese, that’s me. The frogs, that’s you.”
79
That afternoon they spent a lot of time discussing inks and their different mixtures. They made multiple proofs of particular woodcuts, trying to find just the right intensity of black. Black, said Ueno, is to the Japanese calligrapher what snow is to the Inuk. White is a universe, and so is black.
I told them I’d read somewhere that the artist Henri Matisse had declared black a colour.
“That proves it,” concluded Ueno.
80
Studying the proofs of the woodcuts, I found myself agreeing with Sara that they looked like scribblings. But only at first glance—at the same time, I thought them fabulous. They had a kind of contagious spirit, a little like Ueno himself. He explained to Frank that in general, woodcuts are used for representations, while he was trying to create...
“Abstractions,” I said.
“Not quite. Natural images. The objective of art is not to represent nature, or even to symbolize it, but to make form appear by pulling it out of the Void. That’s the essence.”
81
“Is that why you like black?”
“Clever.”
“But the right black,” Frank pointed out.
“Why not use different blacks for different woodcuts?” asked Sara.
“That’s not a bad thought. I still think the black we use for the woodcuts should be the same throughout, but you’ve given me an idea. Perhaps the black we use for the text should be slightly deeper. The poems are short and the letters are surrounded by white space; they may seem pale or insubstantial next to the illustrated pages, which will be dominated by the black areas.”
82
“The Night Pond... So,” I spoke up with a hint of boldness, “if I understand correctly, the woodcuts will be like a pond at night and the poems like constellations of stars in the sky. A reversed sky.”
“Exactly. It’s all in the proportions.” Turning to Frank, Ueno added, “Someone who can connect the earth and the sky like that must be a budding architect.”
They broke up laughing. So did I, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the expression “budding architect.”
83
“And what’s more, quite able to translate my poems... Now, let’s get back to work.”
84
As usual on Fridays, work stopped early. Since there was little left for him to do that day, Ueno agreed to join the others for a drink. He mingled with the workers, and each paused on the way out to say goodbye.
Frank told me that the first thing Ueno Takami had done on setting foot in his shop was to “sniff around.” He made the rounds of the workstations, asked questions, spent time chatting with some of the workers, and nodded his head as he observed the proceedings. “Like garlic in a sauce,” said Frank. But to me, the image that sprang to mind was “like a fish in water.”
85
That day I carefully studied the poet’s face, his greying head, his close-cut, unruly hair. And those coal-black eyes. It seemed to me that everything was measured against the blackness of those eyes, even the colour of the printer’s ink. And age was beautifully etched in his face. It was a face with a history. The Japanese features were worn by the wind, like those of a sailor on the high seas.
86
I believe it was Sara who asked him whether he had felt out of place when he first arrived in Canada. I was just surfacing from a dream. I remember hearing him mention his cabin up north and say that it somewhat resembled the houses of his native country, particularly that of his parents.
“It was a traditional dwelling of many rooms, with what you would call sliding walls. The wind would pass right through. Here it passes through the pines.”
87
I ran into Ueno a few weeks later near the bus station. He had just come down from the north on a Grey Goose bus.
We walked up to each other and shook hands. The first thing he said to me was: “You’ve got good hips.”
This remark stunned me, it was so unexpected. He quickly added, “It shows in the way you walk. Your Indian side,” he whispered, smili
ng at me.
And once again I started to laugh.
88
That day I probably looked even more “Japanese” than he did. I was wearing black leggings, a black turtleneck sweater, and mustard-coloured sneakers. With my straight black hair I might, from a distance, have looked like a modern Japanese girl.
Ueno invited me to Edohei, a traditional Japanese restaurant located downtown. A marvellous little place. It was the first time I’d ever eaten sushi. Right off I was surprised by the variety of dishes, while refusing to believe that I could swallow pieces of raw fish with any pleasure. But I was delighted and since then I’ve been wild about them. I go back there for inspiration. Sushi, it’s always seemed to me, are like little architectural modules. The rice is shaped by hand into a footing that supports an array of domes and rooflines.
There’s the red tobiko, with sea-green armour and a yellow dome; torigai, with its roof in the style of Ronchamp; the canopy of the brilliant yellow kazunoko, ringed with metallic algae; ikura, that little geodesic structure with its cucumber buttresses.
And the textures, velvety, rubbery; substances that melt, or gently resist your bite; and the finishing touches, the colours, so lively, sake, sake.
89
On the day I had agreed to travel up north with Ueno, I dressed myself in a slightly zany get-up that made me feel playful. I was wearing striped tights with little booties, a lumberjack shirt, a beige skirt held up by suspenders with an East Indian pattern, and a beige hat. My hair was in braids. It gave me a little-girl look, slightly hippie, and I felt great.
I’d also gone to the Salvation Army Thrift Store to buy myself a pair of used construction boots. That’s what Ueno usually wore and I didn’t want mine to look too new. I’d brought them along with the rest of my things in my backpack. I’d convinced myself that up North, in the muskeg, in the mud, in the big woods, you had to have something sturdy on your feet.
The Setting Lake Sun Page 3