Blue Ravens: Historical Novel

by Gerald Vizenor

  Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler returned several times to consider Dreyfus in Natural Motion and Natchez Liberty. He told me that the references to French colonialism, the commerce in slavery of natives, and the biased and wrongful persecution and conviction of Alfred Dreyfus were subjects considered much too risky to present or even discuss at an art exhibition.

  Kahnweiler was born a Jew in Germany, and that became a double persecution during the Great War. France was his choice of residence, with absolute loyalty, and his primary language of art, literature, and culture, but he was persecuted and forced to leave his home and gallery in Paris. Kahnweiler confirmed once again that his collection of incomparable cubist and avant-garde art was seized and sold at auction by the police. Not an easy conversation that night at the gallery, but he was never hesitant or unclear about his critical sentiments on colonialism and empire slavery.

  Nathan raised his voice and announced my reading of sections from Le Retour à la France: Histoires de Guerre. He had translated my collection of stories and the Galerie Crémieux published the book in French. I was hesitant to practice my French, and instead read the short sections that night in English, and Nathan read the selected translations in French.

  The gallery was silent. I could hear my breath. Marie smiled and waited for me to read. Every person in the gallery waited for me to read, but the silence was a hindrance. I had never read to a crowd, and was very nervous.

  André bowed his head and touched his mask with one finger. That gesture of respect as a veteran relieved my anxiety, and that reminded me to begin the reading with the dedication of my stories to the mutilés de guerre and to the courage of André and Henri.

  I read three concise stories from the book. The first scene was written about my arrival on the Mount Vernon, a troop ship, at Brest, France. The second concise story was about the utter destruction of Château-Thierry, and the last story was a scene about camouflage and combat near the Vesle River at Fismette. I concluded with my recent imagistic poem, “Prefects of the River Seine.”

  Brest: The Mount Vernon and other troopships delivered newly trained soldiers and then immediately returned with the casualties, the badly wounded in the war. Suddenly the wave of red sails and excitement of our arrival had ended, and every soldier on the dock stared in silence at the wounded. Medical vehicles were loaded with wounded soldiers, hundreds of desolate soldiers with heads, hands, and faces bound in bloody bandages. Many of the soldiers had lost arms and legs.

  Château-Thierry: The Germans had bombed the bridge over the Marne River at Château-Thierry. The ruins of churches, farms, and entire communes became a common sight as the trucks moved in a column on the narrow roads west to Villiers-Saint-Denis and Château-Thierry.

  German artillery had exploded the roofs, collapsed the walls of houses and apartments, and cracked louvers exposed the private scenes of the heart, bedrooms, closets, kitchens, furniture, and abandoned laundry on a rack. Broken crockery, and the legacy of lace curtains set sail for liberty. Familiar shadows were disfigured at a primary school, and children searched for the seams of memory. The scent of ancient dust lingered in the favors of the country.

  Vesle River: Aloysius painted the blue wing feathers of abstract ravens on the cheeks of the infantry soldiers. The spread of primaries created the illusion of a face in flight. Yes, every painted soldier returned safely from combat that night. Blue was a secure color of peace, courage, and liberty. The soldiers saved the paint on their faces, and later my brother retouched the feathers.

  Aloysius lead the way through the forest muck in leaps and bounds with each burst of lightning and explosion to secure a natural mound in the center of huge cracked trees. Our strategy was to fall asleep there despite the weather and artillery, to become a native presence in the folly and deadly chaos of the war. My brother was a warrior beam, the face of malice in every flash of lightning.

  The artillery bombardment ended early in the morning. The trees around the mound emerged in the faint traces of light as black and splintered skeletons. We were native scouts in a nightmare, a curse of war duty to capture the enemy.

  The Boche reeked of trench culture, and we could easily sense by nose the very presence of the enemy. An actual presence detected by the cranks and throaty sounds, and by the very scent of porridge, cordite, moist earth, biscuits, and overrun latrines at a great distance. Some odors were much more prominent, urine, cigarettes, and cigars, that moist morning. Officers smoked cigars, so we knew we were close to a command bunker. The most obvious scent of the enemy was the discarded tins of Wurst and Schinkin, sausage and ham, and the particular rations of Heer und Flotte Zigaretten and Zigarren.

  The Great War could be described by the distinctive scent of mustard gas, chlorine, urine, putrefied bodies, cheesy feet, machine oil, and by cigarettes, Heer und Flotte, Gauloises Caporal, and Lucky Strike.

  I paused and turned toward the display window. Two children had pressed their faces against the glass. I waved and motioned with my hand to enter the gallery, but the children ran away.

  PREFECTS OF THE RIVER SEINE

  Mighty blue ravens

  prefects of wounded memories

  seasons of war

  and the mutilés de guerre

  mustered on the ancient tributaries

  down to the River Seine

  Soldiers gather overnight

  ghostly camps on the zone rouge

  warn the successors

  and search for the strays

  The early sunrise broken

  stream of bodies

  shards of country bones

  crushed cheeks

  noses sheared

  bloated hands and shoulders

  come ashore in uniform

  The Somme and Meuse

  Marne and Aisne

  Oise and the Seine River

  headwaters of the mutilés de guerre

  generations of blue bones

  blurred forever on the waves

  out to the stormy sea

  No one in the gallery that night dared to applaud the images of war, wounded soldiers, or the mutilés de guerre at the end of the reading. My brother saluted me, and repeated some of the images of wounded soldiers, children, and the river, shoulders come ashore in uniform, seams of memory, streams of bodies, generations of blue bones, and out to the stormy sea.

  Marie was teary.

  André touched his mask with a finger and bowed a second time to me. Henri came forward and touched my cheeks, a gesture of respect. Kahnweiler silently clapped his hands together. Moïse, the soldier and painter, aimed his pipe at me, and then he poured another glass of wine. Augustus, my uncle, came to mind that night in every word and gesture.

  The German art collector had closely examined each portrayal several times, and yet he never said a word about the blue ravens, the composition, or the style. Once or twice he touched his right ear, and rubbed the bristly white hair on his chin, but never uttered a word to suggest his mood, assessment, appreciation, or critique.

  Nathan was about to negotiate the sale of the two vertical portrayals, Totemic Wounds and Blue Horses at the Senate, when the German collector rushed forward and shouted that he would buy the entire collection of blue ravens, twenty paintings. Conversations in the gallery were hushed, almost a ghostly silence. Suddenly the private negotiations over two portrayals became a public transaction of the entire exhibition of blue ravens.

  Nathan directed the mysterious German to discuss the unusual declaration at the back of the gallery. The collector had not revealed his name to anyone that night. Aloysius was summoned later to the discussion, and then the sensational announcement was made that the Corbeaux Bleus: Les Mutilés de Guerre, the entire twenty blue raven portrayals, had been sold to a single collector.

  Aloysius announced that he would accept commissions to paint similar scenes in the series. He had already agreed to paint two more vertical totems, and that was the necessary condition to negotiate the sale of the entire collection
of blue raven portrayals.

  Nathan was surprised only because the portrayals sold on the night of the exhibition. He was convinced that the entire blue raven series would have sold in a few weeks time. The German collector paid in cash that night, and actually had the series packed the next day for immediate shipment to a gallery in Berlin, Germany.

  Nathan invited friends and veterans to a celebration of drinks and dinner at the Café du Dôme. André and Henri were grateful to be invited, but they could not face the curious spectators, and they could not eat or drink with a mask. André tried to explain that the sight of their broken faces would distract the company.

  Aloysius rightly refused to accept the defense of a grotesque wounded face as a reason to avoid dinner with friends. He insisted that André and Henri show their wounded faces, then and there, and that would resolve any concern about spectator avoidance. Everyone consented to circle the veterans at the Café du Dôme.

  We told the story of the blue ravens sale over and over with variations, and each story became more elaborate and ironic. The German, in the last stories, was a spy for the exiled emperor, and would secure and destroy avant-garde savage art and especially the scene with Saint Michel and the Kaiser, or the art collector was a metis native and veteran of the war, or the collector was a secret buyer for the British Museum. That story was quickly shouted down as arrogant and elitist, but the story that lasted the longest that night, and had the most convoluted variations, was the art collector as colorblind gallery owner who had no idea what he had actually acquired in the name of blue ravens. Aloysius was teased in every story, and he deserved to be teased for several days about the sale of mutilés de guerre and blue ravens.

  André and Henri raised the metal masks and used a fork to eat sausage and mashed potatoes, and sipped wine from a large spoon. My brother teased the veterans that there was not much chance to overdrink with a spoon of wine at a time. André raised the mask and laughed, and everyone at our circle of tables drank wine with a large spoon that night.

  Nathan told another story about the collector, that he was so eager and concerned about acquiring the entire series that he paid three thousand francs more than the actual cost of the entire series, and my brother was paid seventy percent of the total amount. The money news generated many teases, slight tributes, and some ironic envy.

  Marie toasted my brother, toasted the veterans, praised the compassion and integrity of great gallery owners, and then turned directly to Nathan. She touched his gentle face, and he blushed, so the others reached out and touched his face even more. The circle of veterans raised spoons of wine to honor his dedication to native art. Nathan turned rouge, more than the slight touch of rouge in the portrayals of blue ravens by my brother.

  Aloysius told the veterans that he was not a schooled artist, but a native visionary painter, and he would not have been recognized as widely without the interest and support of the gallery, and my stories would not have been published in translation without the generous and direct assistance of Nathan Crémieux.

  Marie insisted that the stories be continued at her atelier at Le Chemin du Montparnasse. Nathan paid for the dinners and ordered a case of wine delivered to the atelier. The stories were in natural motion that night at the Café du Dôme, and resumed at the atelier with even greater character and irony.

  Augustus, my uncle, convinced me that the best stories were created and revealed in the most spirited situations and natural places. Natives continued the stories of our ancestors in natural motion at the headwaters of the Great River. The stories continued at the livery stable, government school, reservation hospital, Orpheum Theatre, Château-Thierry, Square du Vert-Galant, Café du Dôme, and Le Chemin du Montparnasse.

  I imagined the presence of my uncle that night and we anticipated the sites of our best stories. Most of my stories had been published, and the site of memory was the Galerie Crémieux. Misaabe told stories in his cabin on Bad Boy Lake, and even the mongrels were enchanted. Odysseus was a great singer on the road, and his stories on a summer porch, at the livery stable with his horses, and over dinner and absinthe were truly

  memorable.

  I presented signed copies, with a dedication to the memory of Augustus Hudon Beaulieu, to the veterans and friends that night at the Café du Dôme.

  Marie told marvelous ironic stories about expatriate artists and sculptors, and the stories were always captivating and memorable in her atelier. The banquet stories of Amedeo Modigliani, Juan Gris, Fernand Léger, Blaise Cendrars, Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Béatrice Hastings, and others were not only visual memories, but opera scenes and singable. I told many versions of native stories by visual memory, and the atelier was a spirited site of art and trader stories that night.

  André must have been inspired with the mood and sprightly humor, the natural irony, and liberty in the beams of the atelier, because the stories he told that night were poignant, momentous, and catchy. He had created a character named the Façade Man, and his stories were forever connected to the sites of ateliers, cafés, art galleries, and the River Seine.

  Façade Man covered the caverns on his face with a metal mask. He could not remember the origins of his face, the curve of his jaw, the natural pucker, tease, and gestures were only faces created in stories, not by memory.

  Façade Man had no sense of age by the natural wrinkles of his face. The grafted skin was lumpy and hard, ageless. He had no visual memory of his own face, no favor of form or natural color in the morning light. Only some animals and birds were aroused with his sense of magic in a metal mask.

  Façade Man collected masks, and wore a different mask every day, masks of countenance, and he imagined the stories of the mask, the presence of the mask in public. He wore the masks of shamans, carnival dancers, ceremonial masks, tragic and comic theater masks, and even various gas masks. The many masks of demons and the demented, and with sprouts of wild hair, were not as sinister or as ominous as the ordinary military gas masks.

  Façade Man never found a trace or memory of his face in a mask, but he found a profound sense of presence in some masks. Gas masks brought him comfort when he could not bear the mirror image of the hideous cavity on his face. The gas mask tormented more people than his own broken face. The mask that saved his memory, and became a connection to the world was a twisted wooden mask, a false face, and a mask similar to the masks of the False Face Society of the Iroquois.

  Façade Man served in the military with a native soldier, and learned how to carve masks. The spiritual power of the false face masks was derived from the way the masks were carved from a live tree, and the tree continued to live after the release of the mask. The mask was the memory of the tree, and the mask became the memory of his original face. The carved mask was his spiritual liberty. The mask scared some people, mostly children, but most people were more curious than scared. The wooden mask created a sense of age, motion, and liberty for the Façade Man.

  Marie invited me to stay for the night. I was ecstatic, of course, to be intimate once again, and to touch her sensuous body. The stories never seemed to really end that night, as most of the veterans and our friends had just wandered away. André and Henri removed their masks and slept overnight on the floor of the atelier, and with a secure sense of presence.

  Marie moved closer, rested on my chest, and our breath was natural, a secret union. We heard the laughter in the room below, the murmur over wine and the last stories, and that human sound created a natural sense of solace.

  ››› ‹‹‹

  I read book twenty-four of The Odyssey, the last in the book of adventures by Homer. I was at the window in the early morning light. Marie was asleep, a gentle spirit nearby, her face radiant in the rouge light. Paris was my best story, and no other place would ever be the same.

  I should have said that you were one of those who should wash well, eat well, and lie soft at night as old men have a right to do; but tell me, and tell me true, whose bondman are you, and in whose gard
en are you working? Tell me also about another matter. Is this place that I have come to really Ithaca? I met a man just now who said so, but he was a dull fellow, and had not the patience to hear my story out when I was asking him about an old friend of mine, whether he was still living, or was already dead and in the house of Hades.

  Believe me when I tell you that this man came to my house once when I was in my own country and never yet did any stranger come to me whom I liked better.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Gerald Vizenor is a prolific writer and

  literary critic, and a citizen of the White Earth

  Nation of the Anishinaabeg in Minnesota. He is

  Professor Emeritus of American Studies at the

  University of California, Berkeley. Vizenor is

  the author of several novels, books of poetry,

  and critical studies of Native American

  culture, identity, politics,

  and literature.