Blue Ravens: Historical Novel

by Gerald Vizenor

  Marie was a revolutionary and honored labor unions over the bourgeoisie, of course, and raised her voice to salute the mere mention of unions, and yet she was hesitant to favor the obscure communiqués of the communists, and would never stand with the fanatics or extremists of the Parti Communiste Français.

  Marie assumed that we had been active in communist labor movements and the Industrial Workers of the World, and anticipated our stories of the obvious proletarian maneuvers of natives on federal reservations. Naturally she was enthusiastic about native traditions and liberty, but not as au courant with the colonies and reservations as she was with political revolutions, visionary literature, and the great innovative artists of Paris.

  I described the situation of labor and radical movements on federal treaty reservations. Native politics and parties emerged from cultural bloodlines, not from the abstract ideologies of nationalism, and the sources of resistance were natural, personal, and complete. The seasons, a severe winter, could have been more serious than the revenge of an enemy.

  Honoré, our father, was a lumberjack, and we hawked the Tomahawk at the train station in the summer, but labor unions were never established on reservations. Augustus, our uncle, was an entrepreneur and publisher, Odysseus was a trader, Misaabe was a healer, and John Leecy was a hotel proprietor, neither laborers nor the bourgeoisie. Marie realized at once that natives and others were excluded because of culture and politics from many jobs and labor unions. She was agitated by the general discussions of natives and trade unions and denounced discrimination, bigotry, and the hatred of Jews in the country and in the Communist Party.

  Aloysius mentioned that he had once carried a banner and marched with the union outside of a movie theater in Minneapolis. He paused, smiled, and then revealed the ironic exaggeration that his protest against the unfair theater owner lasted only about an hour on a cold and windy day. I carried on the union stories that night and asked why communist men, dressed in dark bourgeois suits, ties, and fedoras, touted tiny bouquets of wild flowers at the entrances to the Paris Métro.

  Marie laughed and explained that the flowers were picked near Chaville, a commune southwest of Paris. Nathan had never thought much about the politics of flower vendors. So, the fierce communists and critics of the bourgeoisie were steady hawkers of primroses and violets, an irony of labor history.

  Nathan was hesitant to discuss political movements, and we had never heard him criticize a person or organization, but that night he denounced the fascist sentiments that promoted the primacy of the primitive, and the myths of peasants and savages. He respected our sense of native traditions and native aesthetics, and would never designate our creative work as primitive.

  Nathan was particularly critical of the political philosopher Georges Sorel for his pronouncement that science was a fiction, and for his crusade of the primitive, the proletariat, and the virtues of political violence. Sorel denounced the war and l’union sacrée, the sacred union, the necessary political truce and patriotic support of the French government in the course of the First World War.

  I entered the discussion and declared that traditional native stories, creative literature, aesthetics, natural reason, and artistic portrayals have always been reduced by romantic arguments and political assessments of savagism. Explorers and priests concocted the savage and primitivism as cultural entertainment. Nathan was convinced that natives had always been modernists, and the only savages were those who created the fascist models and categories of the primitive.

  Nathan had always demonstrated his critical and aesthetic appreciation of the native ledger artists, the sense of blue horses in natural motion, and he never consigned any native traditional or creative art or story to the romance of the primitive. We trusted his vision of native art at the very start, even before we met, because his father was a respected trader, and known by our friend Odysseus.

  Marie was an innovative painter and active in radical politics, and she was troubled by the chemins détrempés of fascism. Yes, she used the words mushy paths, in translation, for the first time that night to describe the ruses of racists, and the swampy machinations of the new fascists since the end of the war.

  Marie was easily provoked by the critics and nationalists who exploited the distinction of École de Paris, the brilliant and worldly cubist, abstract, and expressionist artists in Paris, with the new fascist notion of the École Française artists, a nasty political and racist cut and separation of creative artists and communities. The fascists censured avant-garde and abstract visual art and tried to elevate the secure pastoral scenes in portrayals.

  Marie delivered that passionate critique on art and politics as she served roasted chickens with vegetables. Naturally she had engaged in many serious and intense political discussions during the war at La Cantine des Artistes. The cheap meals attracted many hungry abstract artists, French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, and Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky.

  The Pernod anise apéritif reminded me of the banquets at the Hotel Leecy. Nathan remembered my story about the precious and prohibited absinthe on the reservation and raised his glass to honor the trader Odysseus. We had already consumed two bottles of white wine with the entrée of pâté, sliced sausage, ham, and tiny pieces of toast, during the hearty discussions of art and politics. Marie served with the roasted chickens a special reserve of Pavillon Blanc, Château Margaux, from Bordeaux.

  I waited for the suitable moment and then related a traditional practice of native storiers. My story was a preamble to the necessary revision of the memorable Banquet Français at the Hotel Leecy. The warriors and traders on the trail once named a native in the morning to be the storier that night around the fire. In that way the nominated native could imagine and rehearse the best stories in silence on the trail, and the stories that night would be enhanced to amuse and astonish the other natives, and with an adept sense of irony. That, in fact, was my practice that night at dinner with Marie and Nathan.

  Aloysius presented ironic variations of the stories about the Banquet Français. We decided not to reveal the marvelous menu in celebration of native veterans that night at the Hotel Leecy. Instead we created stories of a traditional native menu because any abstract description of the actual French cuisine that Messy prepared would have been unbelievable on a reservation and a discourteous story in the company of our new friends. Our native stories that night about the dinner were double ironies.

  My reservation banquet stories mimicked the fantastic stories that Nathan had created in the alley three years earlier at Le Chemin du Montparnasse. John Leecy could have been Erik Satie, and Foamy the dopey agent could have been the pesky Amedeo Modigliani, but only in the artsy banquet game stories. Odysseus could have been Pablo Picasso, Misaabe could have been Fernand Léger, Doctor Mendor could have been Blaise Cendrars, Catherine Heady could have been Béatrice Hastings, and Messy could have been Marie Vassilieff at the banquet table in my stories that night.

  I related actual and imagined scenes. Messy raised a cleaver and chased the federal agent out of the hotel kitchen. Foamy had tracked down the scent of wine, and he was obsessed with another scent, the rose and linen aroma of the coy schoolteacher Catherine Heady. I pointed at chairs around the table and named the diners that night at the Hotel Leecy. Messy was indeed a famous chef and the dinner was underway in my imagination.

  Foamy rushed back to the hotel with his pistol drawn, shouted out his love for the schoolteacher, and then aimed at Doctor Mendor. Catherine ducked under the table, and took cover between the legs of the doctor. Odysseus disarmed the covetous lecher, and hogtied him in the corner of the room. Messy poured sweet birch bark moonshine on the agent, and then continued the dinner service.

  Messy prepared a traditional native feast of game, fish, and commodity fare, fatty and salty, to celebrate the native veterans who had returned from the war. We praised the heroic combat service of Lawrence Vizenor and honored the memory of our cousin Ignatius Vizenor. My creative and equivocal description
of the cuisine that night was an unusual concoction of wild game and ashandiwin, or commodity rations, delivered by the federal government.

  The first course of the traditional meal was giigoonhwaabo, a hearty fish soup with heads, eyes, and bones of sunfish, crappies, and northern pike. Messy prepared blue chicken, miinan baaka aakwenh, or chicken baked with blueberries, a signature main course, mashed pumpkin, rose hip wine, and pinch bean coffee. Baked potatoes were served with mounds of commodity peanut butter, and fatty salt pork was delivered in a wooden barrel. Salt pork was a manly meal, and some natives were convinced the grease healed wounds. Traditional healers once used bear fat, but hardly salty pork grease.

  I quickly turned from the meal stories to the intrigue of politics and lovers because the overstated commodity fare was not healthy or edible enough to hold an audience. Messy had her eye on Misaabe, and Catherine Heady, the schoolteacher, gulped white lightning and swooned over Doctor Mendor. Foamy the aloof federal agent was smitten with the schoolteacher.

  Father Aloysius turned down the invitation to the raucous banquet because he had declared in a recent sermon that commodity food was an extermination cuisine. More natives had vanished on a commodity diet of federal fat, salt, and sugar than by love, politics, war, weather, or any other cause. Fry bread was the most pernicious eradication fare on the reservation, a nasty concoction of bleached white flour, processed white animal fat, white salt, and white sugar, and the greasy doughnut of death was promoted as a native tradition at ceremonies.

  Marie was moved and pained by the perception of native death by federal doughnuts, and the commodity warrant encouraged me to continue the double ironies of a rations revolution. I raised my voice and declared that the first radical act of a native revolutionary on the reservation was to change diets, and then to capture and serve fry bread to the romantics and federal agents, the same extermination fare that had endangered the health of natives. The second act was total sedition, a just and ironic reversal of the reservation. Close the borders of the reservation and establish a new frontier minstrel, a vaudeville show of federal agents and elected politicians with rouge face paint. Yes, the Funny Federal Minstrel of the Wild West.

  My dinner stories were a union of sentiments, characters and cuisine, and the stories brought together the contradictions and ironies of radical politics and aesthetics between the White Earth Reservation and Le Chemin du Montparnasse in Paris.

  Aloysius rescued my satirical scenes of doughnut death with descriptive stories about his outlines of blue ravens and bridges over the River Seine. Nathan was certain the paintings would be viewed as a new native school of art, École Indienne, and once again he promised to arrange a major exhibition of the series at the Galerie Crémieux.

  Marie was ecstatic about the new series of blue ravens, and loaned my brother an extraordinary book of original art from her library, Les Trente-Six Vues de la Tour Eiffel, or Thirty-Six Views of the Eiffel Tower, by the painter Henri Rivière. The handcrafted book was printed in a limited edition of five hundred copies, and signed by the artist in 1902. The color lithographs were thirty-six marvelous views of the Eiffel Tower, and the obvious inspiration was Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji by Katsushika Hokusai.

  Aloysius studied each of the thirty-six images of the Eiffel Tower, and counted sixteen scenes near the River Seine. The colors were muted, tan, gray, and white. The puffy clouds were abstract outlines, and the autumn leaves were enormous. The tower was set in the clouds, pictured with an umbrella in the snow, and in another scene the tower was next to vents on a rooftop.

  The Eiffel Tower was painted near a man and his dog on a beach, by a railroad track, in view on a river ferry, and in some scenes the great tower was barely a gray silhouette on the horizon. The Eiffel Tower was ironic in one scene, a slight dark spire obscured behind the silhouette of the Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris.

  Japonisme, the tradition, manner, and practice of woodblock prints and the sumi-e, or ink painting, was once a distinctive art movement in France. The aesthetic pleasure of natural motion, an image of bright plum blossoms on a black stone, or the scene of blue ravens on a winter bough, stimulated many impressionist painters, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Édouard Manet, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh were similarly aroused by the art of the Japanese.

  Aloysius decided then and there that he would paint thirty-six views of blue ravens and bridges over the River Seine. He told Marie about the Japanese artist and teacher Yamada Baske who encouraged him to use traces of rouge in his portrayals. Nathan only imagined the proposed paintings and yet he hailed the new series of blue ravens and bridges as masterful impressionistic scenes, and with an original composition of familiar views.

  The Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji by Hokusai had inspired many painters and artists in France. Hokusai, an ukiyo-e master of woodblock art prints, created ordinary evanescent and transient scenes of geishas, kabuki actors, samurai, and mountains in bright colors, an ukiyo, or aesthetic “floating world.” Rivière created the same number of aesthetic scenes of

  the Eiffel Tower. Aloysius would continue the artistic practice and perception of scenes in a “floating world,” a double homage to Hokusai and Rivière.

  Nathan located an apartment for us to rent at 12 Rue Pecquay in Le Marais, about a mile from the gallery on the Rive Droite, or Right Bank of the River Seine. The rooms were bright, and the furniture was old, worn, but tidy. The apartment was cold and fuel was rationed, but the front windows faced the sun and provided some heat by day. Aloysius painted near the large front windows over the street, and sometimes in the parks and cafés. He was dedicated to the creation of thirty-six views of the bridges in time for an exhibition that early summer at the gallery.

  I wrote my stories and drank wine at the nearby cafés on Rue Rambuteau, Rue des Francs-Bourgeois, and Rue des Archives. The cafés were heated, and naturally crowded. We bought used clothes for the winter and most of our food at the bustling markets at Les Halles. Our French vocabulary was greatly increased with the names of bread, cheese, fruit, and vegetables. Some food was rationed, but we bought as much food as we could eat, an absolute visual delight. My brother was even tempted to paint blue ravens over the colorful baskets of fruit and vegetables. Messy would have praised the daily markets as a paradise.

  The Goldenberg Delicatessen on Rue des Rosiers became our favorite place to dine, and mostly we ordered goulash, or herring and latkes. The busy restaurant and kosher butcher shop nearby were new and established by Jo Goldenberg and his brothers, Jews from Eastern Europe. The more we ate there the more we were teased by the owner, an ironic gesture of native acceptance, and the restaurant became our reservation without a federal agent.

  I read three books of The Odyssey one morning at a café on Rue du Temple, and was moved by a scene in book twenty-two. Then Ulysses searched the whole court carefully over, to see if anyone had managed to hide himself and was still living, but he found them all lying in the dust and weltering in their blood. They were like fishes which fishermen have netted out of the sea, and thrown upon the beach to lie gasping for water till the heat of the sun makes an end of them. Even so were the suitors lying all huddled up one against the other.

  The Métro at Place de la Concorde became the touchstone of my new imagistic prose and poetry. Ezra Pound conceived of his perfect poem, “In a Station of the Metro,” at that very station near the Jardin des Tuileries and the Musée de l’Orangerie. The scene of faces and spirits in the crowd was a trace of native motion and reason. The fourteen words of the poem, and without a verb, created a sense of presence, and at the same time, a perception of impermanence in the precise metaphor of petals on a wet black bough.

  The apparition of these faces in the crowd;

  Petals on a wet, black bough.

  I would have composed “blue petals on a wet, black bough,” a necessary imagistic motion of color in the poem. Pound created an image of a black bough. Why not blue petals? The natural motion
of the concise images was an inspiration, and that poem carried on in my memory and imagination. Ezra Pound published “In a Station of the Metro” in Lustra, a collection of poems, in 1916. I walked slowly down the stairs of every entrance to the Place de la Concorde station and recited the poem with each access. Later, the images of that poem came to mind in every crowded station in Paris.

  I borrowed copies of Ripostes and Lustra, recent collections of imagistic poems by Ezra Pound, from Shakespeare and Company, an English language bookstore and lending library. The new bookstore moved from 8 Rue Dupuytren to 12 Rue de l’Odéon, a more spacious storefront near the Boulevard Saint-Germain. Yes, the famous French language bookstore, La Maison des Amis des Livres, established by the lovely Adrienne Monnier, was across the street.

  Shakespeare and Company was near the Place de l’Odéon. A music store, nose spray maker, corset maker, orthopedic shoemaker, and book appraiser were located on the same street. Nearby were the great Théâtre de l’Odéon and Café Voltaire, and the Jardin du Luxembourg. I had walked with my brother many times on the same streets, and compared the Orpheum Theatre in Minneapolis to the Théâtre de l’Odéon in Paris. Not a respectable comparison of theaters, of course, but we practiced the stories and similarities of two personal experiences.

  Sylvia Beach smiled and told me that the great Ezra Pound had built the bookshelves in her bookstore. The poet as the builder of bookcases was not common, but at the time the practice seemed rather natural. Pound was a precise imagist poet, but not a precious poser. I learned later than he built furniture, and doubly associated with the poet as an imagist and builder. Ezra Pound created poetic images with a natural sense of presence.

  Sylvia always read the books she sold and lent, and she was pleased to mention the names of many famous authors, André Gide, the novelist, Valéry Larbaud, the poet and translator, George Antheil, the pianist and music composer, James Joyce, the poet and novelist, and many other authors and musicians who bought and borrowed books at Shakespeare and Company.