Borduas stands and applauds.
You do the same.
The past is our master.
Father Groulx
We have to stop the assassination of the present and the future with unrelenting blows from the past.
Paul-Émile Borduas
You order two large beers. Claude looks gloomy. He came crashing down onto the floor of an empty room. No one caught his words, no one interrupted his fall.
Muriel is talking too much and too fast. It’s her form of resistance.
Her big eyes have receded into her head. Around them there is just her body, which continues to make gestures, unhinged.
Marcel tells her to be quiet, but she doesn’t hear him. Jean-Paul grabs the actress’s long hands in mid-flight and presses them to the table. He calmly tells her again to be quiet.
You down half your glass, practically in one gulp, and pass it to Marcel, who seems to have trailed the shadow with him and is now curled up in it.
The door opens, letting in a bit of a storm, followed by Borduas. He hardly ever comes here. He joins you.
He looks at everyone, taking in each person. He looks at you too. He talks to you too. To you.
He thanks Claude for his words. They may not have been good, but they were vivid. Disruptive, refreshing.
He orders seven beers, which are quickly handed around.
He tells you all you are right. Taking risks is what makes you grow. You can’t create with an intention in mind.
He takes two big swigs. You do the same.
That you can’t plot out the effect you want.
You want him to notice you. Even better: you want to possess him.
Borduas talks without looking at anyone but addressing each one of you directly. He tells you that making sure a work will get a good reception by conforming to established aesthetic norms is an act of cowardice. And that therefore tonight was an act of courage.
You don’t feel courageous. But being one of the ones he is looking at gives you strength.
You down the cold beer in one, staring at Borduas, who is wonderfully talkative. The foam runs down your throat, over your tongue, flooding it with bitter bubbles.
He is beautiful when he talks. He gets bigger, as if his body is stretching along with his ideas.
And in his silence, he grows small again, and naked. That’s when you would like to grab him and swallow him.
You are a little drunk, which gives you permission. Under the table, you press your thigh against his.
You mumble into your glass, for your ears only, but still at him.
‘Wine with fever goblet. Here I am, harquebus raised on the wire, like lace.’
You raise your voice, in an easy, amused flow of words.
‘Here is the breath!’
You grow bold. You plunge. Across from you, Claude catches you.
‘A man on the verge of dance. A condemned man with chains of sun. An elf with the mouth of the moon.’
Beside you, Marcelle, giggling with pleasure, encourages you to go on.
Your eyes hold those of Borduas, which have come alive, and will not let them go. Your voice is soft and precise.
‘I dance like the mad, joyful muslin acrobatics. Arms, legs, neck reaching for high hopes.’
Borduas responds, supports you; under the table he presses his body against yours.
Then Marcelle applauds, bursting into joyful laughter.
Someone else carries on. They dive into the words, bandying them back and forth, dirty and raw, volatile and mutilated. You swallow them and spit them back out. You send them up into the air, you wind them in coils, caress them and violate them.
Borduas orders again and drinks to all of you. He wants something wild to grow within you. He puts his hand on your thigh.
Marcel looks at you, and you know he thinks you are pretty. Finally, you are the queen.
Borduas raises his glass to glorious anarchy. It will force us to take our fate in hand.
The owner comes to tell you to quiet down. You’re crossing the line.
Borduas goes home to his family, but the rest of you keep the evening going, crowding into the studio.
The jute canvases cover the floor. Some are painting on them, others are writing on them. The place is cramped, and the warmth is welcome tonight.
You fall asleep, drifting off on a drone that is now familiar and reassuring to you.
When you wake up it is light. There are colours around you. It is like waking up in a fall forest with a strong wind. Only the swish of a paintbrush and the breath of a man inhabit the space, which, suddenly, seems immense.
There are ten freshly painted pieces around Marcel, who is still kneeling. He is absorbed by his movements, engrossed in the new piece. Muted sounds intersperse with the sweep of his brush. Guttural sounds, coming from a long way off, from his very own forest, where he likes to lose himself. Still half-asleep, you enjoy watching this willowy animal of a man, his hair tousled and his hand light. He is like a bird. There is something infinitely vast and tender in him, which you notice for the first time.
You close your eyes, leaving him to this flight, because you suspect it is important.
This time it’s Claude’s voice that wakes you. He is standing beside you, in pyjamas, boots still on his feet. He is holding a steaming coffee pot in his hands. He is amazed by what he sees. The painted pieces of canvas are now hung on the walls, and Claude is pacing the cramped space, taking in each one, impressed by the spontaneous movement. He has never seen anything like it. Marcel is calm, his features relaxed; he has enjoyed the ride. He is smiling, looking at you. He says he has never painted with such unadulterated joy.
You point to one that you find particularly moving. You say you didn’t know that an explosion could be reassuring, and yet that is what that painting makes you feel. Marcel mumbles that it’s sort of how you make him feel. He isn’t looking at you – it’s too much for him – but he knows that his words have landed.
The three of you sit down in the temperate zone drawn around the stove and share a cup of coffee.
Automatism was never figurative. Its world is the inner world. An outward projection of the inner world. Surrealism is based on a representation of the inner world, automatism on a non-representation of the inner world.
Claude Gauvreau
You spend the morning at the Tranquille bookstore. It opens early, and they don’t mind people hanging around, drifting book to book, page to page. Henri Tranquille is almost always in his office where his correspondence piles up. He is keeping up ties with France and England, to avoid losing touch with what is being written there. To preserve the cracks, allowing words to slip through in spite of the bans.
Tranquille has Sade, Rimbaud, Hugo, Lamartine, Voltaire, and Balzac stashed under his desk. Even Lautréamont. All put on the Index by the clergy, some for heresy or immorality, others for sexual licence or subversive political theories.
Henri Tranquille has read every book in his store, and he can discuss them.
You like touching the books, feeling the paper nip your fingertips. You gather words like nectar, going author to author. When the coast is clear, you approach Mr. Tranquille, and he slips his hand under his chair, ceremoniously offering you a banned copy to look at in the store.
That day, in a corner, Marcel, Claude, and you are quietly reading passages of Balzac. Henri keeps watch, glancing occasionally at the door, accustomed to the risk he enjoys taking.
You would like your words to singe the page too. You would like to have a book that lives on a shelf, somewhere, with your name on it, a book that is alive enough to upset people. Marcel tells you that you should publish your poems. Claude agrees.
‘You should publish your poems, Suzanne.’
Duel.
Claude: ‘The beggars of Ginglan have stabulary stomatas. On threadbare, concave Duzéates the slight bit of ponterbury proclaims the strapping castucla.
Suzanne: ‘The catastrophic gaze of mi
roben destiny. Road of eripoles! Goodbye, crocophiles, sampolucas, mirconsoles. Goodbye, swollen carlipods, jagged tumours, stained varnish.
Suzanne Meloche was the first woman to engage in automatist writing, similar to that of Gauvreau.
François-Marc Gagnon, Chroniques du movement automatiste
Marcel has laid a tablecloth on the floor. You are sharing cured sausage and a glass of wine. Steps echo in the staircase. Claude opens the door. He is excited and apologizes for not having been able to resist. He is with Borduas. He wanted him to see.
Marcel gets up, timidly greets his professor, who is wrapped in a long scarf. You get up too. Borduas glances at you without saying hello. He already has his eyes glued to the paintings on the wall. Marcel asks if he can take his coat. Borduas doesn’t answer. He is looking at the paintings. His tensed body relaxes like a bullfighter trying to soothe the beast. He steps in to a painting, takes it in his hands, pulls it toward him. Meets it halfway.
‘This is shit.’
Then in a professional tone, trying to make up for his remark, he adds, ‘It should be an object on a background that extends to infinity.’
Finally, Borduas looks at his student. You can see from the teacher’s eyes that he is shaken. You are sure that Borduas doesn’t mean what he is saying. And that he is afraid of the man he is looking at. Like a father realizing that his child has grown up too fast.
Claude tries to step in, says in an offhand way that Borduas is trying to impose a form and that that’s unfair.
But Marcel tells him to keep quiet.
Borduas scans the walls of paintings one last time, troubled. He is getting ready to leave, stops abruptly in front of a small square of jute cut out and pinned to the wooden wall. You scratched a few words on it before falling asleep.
He turns surreptitiously toward you, stares at you for a thousandth of a second, and then leaves.
Light with the infiltrated prism under the virulent moon.
Ruby seals bloom on my lip like a thundering spark.
A wisp of loving vein on the tongue.
The door is barely closed, the echo of Borduas’s steps still resonating in the space, when Marcel grabs a brush and dunks it furiously in the thick, white enamel. The placid white becomes a warrior. It spits on the barely dried canvases. Claude holds Marcel back, begs him not to do it. But nothing can stop his thundering flight, and Marcel gradually obliterates his inspired autumns, lost forever.
Claude leaves the studio defeated.
You undress and stand in front of the passionate work. You stand naked and straight in front of this piece that moves you, your recently awakened skin a shield.
‘Paint me.’
Marcel receives you completely. He doesn’t shrink from what you’re asking. His arm stretches toward the ceiling, frozen in this piece of eternity your body is offering him.
Then, gently, he trails the brush over your breast, down to your hip. It’s warm and creamy. His eyes follow the slow movement and the shiver of the paintbrush as it touches your body. He is trembling.
He puts his paintbrush down and continues his slow caress, colonizing your skin with his long, feminine hands.
You slide your hands over his stomach, gently at first, reading it like a rare book. Then you settle in, you press your body against anything you can absorb. With your arms, your stomach, your loins, and your mouth, you wrap yourself around this broken man, this brilliant bird that you make yours, surrounded by the pained white of the obliterated canvases.
You make love under the Tumulte à la mâchoire crispée, a magnificent survivor.
It’s almost the end of the year, and Marcel isn’t painting anymore. A diligent student, he submits his thesis project, earning him his diploma as a cabinetmaker.
Gentlemen,
Here is my thesis project: a house for a painter. It can accommodate four people. A couple and two children.
1st Living room
2nd Dining room
3rd Chairs for the patio
4th Kitchen (standard plan)
5th Bedrooms
6th Studio
The furniture is simple and functional.
Marcel has disengaged, and his wounds aren’t healing. At the School of Furniture, the warmth between him and Borduas has returned. As if nothing ever happened. But Marcel won’t paint, turning to sculpture instead. He makes his first sculptures, slashing wood and kneading clay. His desire to put his hands on things comes from you.
Marcel no longer paints, except at night, on your body. In the overheated studio, he tames you with drawn-out, opaque gestures.
The two of you inhabit the studio’s hot zone, where he skims and teases, spreading the colour over your burning skin. His hand trembles as soon as it approaches you. He forgets his pain, his pride seeping into the surface of your flesh. You make it fragile and volatile.
The night his hand stops trembling, when the brush lands on your skin without a tremor, you ask him to move in with you.
On June 7, 1948, you marry Marcel Barbeau in the parish of Saint-Philippe. You are twenty-two and you become Suzanne Barbeau.
It is raining that day, and you show up at the ceremony wet. Only your witnesses have been invited: Georges, Marcel’s uncle the butcher, and Claude, who is disgusted to be setting foot in a church. You have to beg him to be your witness. He arrives wearing a tie, a copy of Lautréamont tucked under his arm, which he doesn’t put down once during the ceremony.
The smell of wood and mothballs moves you. The sound of your union bounces off the high ceiling. You suck in your stomach in your little mauve dress. You want to look beautiful. You want to be worthy of this moment.
The priest’s deep voice has its place in your story. ‘On the seventh of June, nineteen forty-eight, the dispensation of the publication of the three marriage banns having been granted by the ordinary of the Archdiocese of Montreal between Marcel Barbeau, adult son of the deceased Philippe Barbeau and of Éliza Saint-Antoine; and Suzanne Meloche, adult daughter of Achilles Meloche and Claudia Hudon, not having found any reason why they should not be wed, we the undersigned have received their mutual consent and have given them the nuptial blessing in the presence of Georges Saint-Antoine, uncle and witness for the groom, and Claude Gauvreau, friend and witness for the bride.’
He asks you to kneel. Claude ignores him, making for an uncomfortable moment, which, luckily, the priest doesn’t attach much importance to.
Marcel waits until he is outside to kiss you full on the lips. He tastes like white pine, and you want to love him.
A few months later, Marcel gets a job as a cabinetmaker in a small store on Rue Notre-Dame. He makes pretty furniture from rough lumber, and his neck smells like the forest from his long days.
You move to 3195 Rue Evelyn, in Verdun.
You wander along the canal and break up your days with writing. You like writing on the ground. Stretched out or crouching. That way the words can’t escape.
In the evening, Marcel comes home, and you make love before you eat. He smells of sawdust and has rough hands.
He wants you to read to him what you write. You do. He likes it.
‘Show it to Borduas.’
But no, you’re not ready.
The notebooks scribbled dark with words accumulate in your drawers. You want this avalanche to remain yours. At least a while longer.
I gather the frenzied sounds at a country pace. I cultivate trembling like pearls. I live candid expectations about to tip. Heavy weight that the crushing freshness of my echo, like a shattering plate. Promising free thought in fragile china. The tablecloth offers me its corner laid out with fruit. I spread my fingers like lace. The brush of the gallop makes me drop my leaves. Caressing depth, so white.
Marcel takes out a paintbrush. He wants to paint. It’s been a long time since he’s felt like it. You help him roll out a canvas on the floor. He cuts a small square, the size of a sheet of paper. He wants to illustrate your poem.
That’s the day
he starts to paint again.
Quebec has become a field of ruins. French Canadians have become a small people whose destiny is decided by others.
Paul-Émile Borduas
At the end of the summer, you are summoned to Borduas’s studio. Surprise guests are not allowed.
This clandestine, official appointment pleases you.
When you arrive, hand-in-hand with Marcel, Borduas opens the door himself. Dark circles seem to be propping up his eyes, which are more clouded than usual.
You join the others in the living room. Claude and Muriel are already there; Pierre, Marcelle, and Jean-Paul, too. You all sit, awaiting the others. There is the silence of things brewing, which you don’t dare break. Even Claude is quiet.
Borduas is looking out the window. One does not arrive late to such a meeting. A few minutes later, everyone is there. Borduas locks the door and draws the curtains.
He thanks you for coming and hands you a small stack of paper, which he asks you to read. He has waited long enough. He wants to publish, and he wants to do it with you. It hurts him to see you all excluded from the general evolution of thought, and ignorant of important historical facts.
There is pain in his voice. A slight quiver, even, which is not like him. Jitters before a big leap. Casting a shadow over convictions.
You, on the other hand, feel that history is opening up to you like never before in your life. That you are finally leaving behind the muddy shores of your working-class neighbourhood. That Quebec is very much alive. And a work in progress.
Between two verbal outpourings, Borduas seems to choke back the beginnings of a sob. You would like to see him cry. His shell gone.
He turns and tells you to take the time to read his text. And to decide whether you want to sign it. He closes the door behind him and goes out for a walk in the night.
You have only one typed copy between you. There are nineteen of you. Claude offers to read it out loud. But some don’t agree and want a first, more intimate contact with the text.
Suzanne Page 6