entered them with your guts in a knot and left them a little less of a child, until you left them for good when there were other places to feel guilty in.
Her mother joins her by the fire, hypnotized for a moment. She has few memories in the rubble. It is the place where one enters a different age, from time to time. Women wore hats when she first came here, now they go bareheaded and soon her daughter was to be married there. The square outside the church is black with soot where confetti should have fallen. It is cement, it will survive, with enough room for the entire wedding party.
She sees Marie in the satin dress theyâve chosen, straight, short, with no lace. Only the back is to be bare and there will be no veil. A simple cap on her pulled-back hair, and pearls at the ears. A dress for a still-warm autumn, but able to defy the rain. It sleeps in plastic, it is perfect, it will always be.
Ervant will be upset. He rather liked this tacky church with its faint smell of northern mildew instead of old stones, wrapped in pastels instead of running, as it would have done in his country, into shadows propitious for womenâs moans. He had chosen the angle for the photo heâll send home, on the left where it would show the street and cars, including the rented convertible.
But now on the right a charred ruin stands, like a hotel that went up in flames one night because a drink was refused or a woman turned down. The steeple is a thousand pieces now and some people are gathering them up, already relics. Afterwards, next Sunday and on other Sundays still to come, the church will move into the old boysâ school, so rumour has it.
Rumour has it, too, the following day, that the organist did not set the fire. That she had been in the sacristy, smoothing surplices. That the fire had been smouldering since the day before, that around midnight a neighbour had seen two shadows run away, shadows of a boy and perhaps a girl in a long beige car like the one that belongs to the sect with the crescent flag, which survives precariously somewhere near Bellecombe. Their children are brought to school by force and they refuse to kneel for prayer. In her class, Marie left them to their own people. She saw the mystery elsewhere, in their drawings of serpents and huts from which inner suns emerged. They came from the East.
Until the end of August, she goes by the Portage; every day a little more of its ruin has gone, leaving very little else. The ground is turning grey. Ervant is consoled, he studies the new houses. She goes to her appointments by way of the close-cropped knoll, she feels drained, she no longer knows how to come down.
Ten
T HE DAYS ARE GROWING SHORTER FROM the middle. Marieâs reason is restored from ten a.m. till noon, in the classroom where stuffy summer air lies stagnant despite wide-open windows. Traces of paste have been washed from the walls, the desks smell of bleach that never dries, textbooks are stacked in a corner, some will be left, there will be fewer children this fall. Thereâs no exodus, says the principal who amends lists, refashions groups, and gossips from one class to the next. But the springs are drying up. The mine will soon shut down its underground development, nothing will be seen, the blast furnaces will continue to feed the chimneys. The men will no longer come. And the women who were born here will no longer provide. It will be September tomorrow, none of her colleagues is pregnant, they say that children are expensive but Marie hears summer creaking in their words. Sheâs not the only one who merges with the rock, the crumbling clay, who goes by way of the dwarf aspens. Fate has brought them together.
And thereâs no other place to go. School, home, the park. If only there were a tavern where a woman could be alone in the dimness, to quench her thirst, to laugh softly at her ghosts, dispatch them in alcohol that really does dissolve them. What she knows about
Her mother joins her by the fire, hypnotized for a moment. She has few memories in the rubble. It is the place where one enters a different age, from time to time. Women wore hats when she first came here, now they go bareheaded and soon her daughter was to be married there. The square outside the church is black with soot where confetti should have fallen. It is cement, it will survive, with enough room for the entire wedding party.
She sees Marie in the satin dress theyâve chosen, straight, short, with no lace. Only the back is to be bare and there will be no veil. A simple cap on her pulled-back hair, and pearls at the ears. A dress for a still-warm autumn, but able to defy the rain. It sleeps in plastic, it is perfect, it will always be.
Ervant will be upset. He rather liked this tacky church with its faint smell of northern mildew instead of old stones, wrapped in pastels instead of running, as it would have done in his country, into shadows propitious for womenâs moans. He had chosen the angle for the photo heâll send home, on the left where it would show the street and cars, including the rented convertible.
But now on the right a charred ruin stands, like a hotel that went up in flames one night because a drink was refused or a woman turned down. The steeple is a thousand pieces now and some people are gathering them up, already relics. Afterwards, next Sunday and on other Sundays still to come, the church will move into the old boysâ school, so rumour has it.
Rumour has it, too, the following day, that the organist did not set the fire. That she had been in the sacristy, smoothing surplices. That the fire had been smouldering since the day before, that around midnight a neighbour had seen two shadows run away, shadows of a boy and perhaps a girl in a long beige car like the one that belongs to the sect with the crescent flag, which survives precariously somewhere near Bellecombe. Their children are brought to school by force and they refuse to kneel for prayer. In her class, Marie left them to their own people. She saw the mystery elsewhere, in their drawings of serpents and huts from which inner suns emerged. They came from the East.
Until the end of August, she goes by the Portage; every day a little more of its ruin has gone, leaving very little else. The ground is turning grey. Ervant is consoled, he studies the new houses. She goes to her appointments by way of the close-cropped knoll, she feels drained, she no longer knows how to come down.
Ten
T HE DAYS ARE GROWING SHORTER FROM the middle. Marieâs reason is restored from ten a.m. till noon, in the classroom where stuffy summer air lies stagnant despite wide-open windows. Traces of paste have been washed from the walls, the desks smell of bleach that never dries, textbooks are stacked in a corner, some will be left, there will be fewer children this fall. Thereâs no exodus, says the principal who amends lists, refashions groups, and gossips from one class to the next. But the springs are drying up. The mine will soon shut down its underground development, nothing will be seen, the blast furnaces will continue to feed the chimneys. The men will no longer come. And the women who were born here will no longer provide. It will be September tomorrow, none of her colleagues is pregnant, they say that children are expensive but Marie hears summer creaking in their words. Sheâs not the only one who merges with the rock, the crumbling clay, who goes by way of the dwarf aspens. Fate has brought them together.
And thereâs no other place to go. School, home, the park. If only there were a tavern where a woman could be alone in the dimness, to quench her thirst, to laugh softly at her ghosts, dispatch them in alcohol that really does dissolve them. What she knows about
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