copyright © André Alexis, 2019
first edition
Published with the generous assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. Coach House Books also gratefully acknowledges the support of the Government of Canada, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Ontario Book Fund.
LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION
Title: Days by moonlight / André Alexis.
Name: Alexis, André, 1957- author.
Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20189069295 | Canadiana (ebook) 20189069309 | ISBN 9781552453797 (softcover) | ISBN 9781770565791 (EPUB) | ISBN 9781770565807 (PDF)
Classification: LCC PS8551.L474 D39 2019 | DDC C813/.54—DC23
Days by Moonlight is available as an ebook: ISBN 978 1 77056 579 1 (EPUB), 978 1 77056 580 7 (PDF)
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For Alana Wilcox
and it was all true in a way only the way kept changing
– W. S. Merwin, The Folding Cliffs: A Narrative
1
TO EAST GWILLIMBURY
In August 2017, I was eating an egg and cress sandwich when Professor Bruno called to ask if I’d help him in his travels through Southern Ontario. I love watercress (Nasturtium officinale). It’s delicious and it reminds me of my mother’s garden. So, I was already in a fair mood.
Professor Bruno had been a friend of my father’s. He was a kind man, one I’d known since I was a child. It would have been difficult to turn him down. The fact that his invitation came on the anniversary of my parents’ death – a terrible accident on the 401 – made it doubly hard to refuse. I would take my yearly vacation from the lab and spend part of it with the professor, one of the many mourners who’d wished me well at my parents’ funeral.
– I’m sure you find your parents’ friends beyond boring, he’d said, but I hope you’ll look in on me from time to time. It’d be lovely to keep in touch.
– Yes, I’d said.
And a year later, I was happy to show him that I’d meant it, that I was glad to keep in touch.
Professor Bruno proposed that we spend two or three days driving through the land on which the poet John Skennen had lived, the land about which Skennen had written, the land that had created the artist. The professor had spent years writing a ‘literary account’ of Skennen. He had all the basic facts, he said. He knew enough about the man’s life to get a solid grip on the poetry. What he wanted from our trip were ‘touches’: a few colourful details, any anecdotes he might glean from people who’d known Skennen at different stages of his life.
– You never know, he said, where you’ll find a detail, the detail, that’ll illuminate a work.
– So, we’re looking for light, I said, teasing him.
– Not just any light, my boy, he answered. We’re looking for the correct light.
My duties: I’d carry the professor’s bags, help him transcribe any interviews he did, and serve as his driver. In exchange, he insisted on paying my expenses – hotels, incidentals – and promised that I’d have time to do some botanical research. I wasn’t happy about his paying my expenses. I make more than I can spend at Alpha Labs. Besides, he was doing me a favour, giving me an excuse to leave Toronto for a few days, a few days away from a city that was, at times, oppressive because I knew it too well.
But I could tell he was disappointed when I said I’d pay for myself. So, I relented.
– Thank you, I said. I’m grateful for the time away.
I was grateful for another reason, too: I’d recently heard about a plant called five fingers (Oniaten grandiflora) that was said to have fantastic medicinal properties – the ability to cure jaundice, for instance. Professor Bruno planned to visit Feversham, a town on the outskirts of which there was a field of Oniaten. So a friend of mine had heard tell anyway. I didn’t believe that a plant with such qualities would be as little-known as Oniaten and I didn’t quite believe my friend, a fellow lab tech with a strange sense of humour. But the professor’s visit to Feversham would give me a chance to wander around outdoors – something that always makes me happy – while looking for a specimen of the plant.
Besides, I was sure Professor Bruno would be amusing company.
I’d be on vacation. I’d have an excuse to play at being the botanist I trained to be. I’d be distracted from my grief – my twin griefs – and we’d be visiting Southern Ontario, the countryside: the woods, fields, and farms I find calming and wonderful. If I worried about anything, it was that I didn’t know the poet Professor Bruno was writing about, John Skennen. The professor didn’t mind my ignorance, though.
– Alfie, he said, by the end of our trip you’ll know as much about Skennen as anyone. He’s a bit of a mystery.
– How so? I asked.
– Actually, Professor Bruno answered, it might be better to say he was a mystery. He stopped publishing twenty years ago. No one’s seen him or heard from him since. Can you imagine? The talent of an angel. Gone! Like that!
As I’m sure he knew it would, his enthusiasm encouraged me from my torpor.
The professor was almost as tall as I am – six feet – but he stooped slightly. He had a full head of hair but his hair was like a contradiction: thick and youthful but white as cornstarch. He’d kept himself in good shape. He would walk for blocks – briskly, without stopping, despite his arthritis. And he looked debonair, always smiling. Not one of those big, broad smiles. A small smile, ironical. His smile made me feel as if we shared a secret. I’d felt this way about him since I was a child. His only flaw – and it wasn’t so much a flaw as an occasionally misguided effort to be helpful – was that he would sometimes speak of things so learnèd my mind would fog up while listening to him. I’d never stop listening, but the professor’s enthusiasm alone wasn’t enough to help me with things like hermeneutics or the Freudian unconscious.
I had five days – from Wednesday to Sunday – to get ready. This was relatively short notice for work, but more than enough time to pack a few days’ clothes. Not that anyone at the lab minded my going. In the year since my parents died and, yet more grief, the months since Anne decided we should not grow old together, I’d accumulated seven weeks’ worth of overtime. Management at Alpha was probably relieved to grant me a few workdays along with my regular vacation. It was more difficult deciding what to do with the time before we left than it was getting days off.
In so far as I know myself, I’d say I’m cheerful and even-tempered. I like other people and I’ve always been sociable. The death of my parents certainly changed me. Though I knew their going would come – my father had often warned me that they would not be with me always – I felt as if I’d had no time to prepare for it. Anne’s leaving had