Mad Shadows Read online

  Mad Shadows

  by Marie-Claire Blais

  Translated from the French by Merloyd Lawrence

  McClelland & Stewart • Toronto

  1959

  MARIE-CLAIRE BLAIS was born in Quebec City in 1939. The eldest of five children, she had to leave convent school at the age of fifteen because of her family’s financial difficulties. She found employment in a series of clerical jobs while devoting her remaining time to writing fiction, plays, and poetry.

  Blais’ first novel, Mad Shadows, amounted to a literary revolution in Quebec, going through two printings in its first six weeks of publication. The book ushered in a new era in Quebec fiction with its nightmarish depiction of the obsessions and evils of society. The violence of contemporary times, the lonely world of the isolated individual, and a brooding melancholy pervade Blais’ literary universe. Her writings, which have won international acclaim, have been translated into thirteen languages.

  Blais moved from Quebec City to Montreal in 1960, then travelled to France for a year in 1961. For much of the rest of the decade she lived in New England. She spent the early seventies, in Brittany, then returned to Canada and settled in the eastern townships of Quebec. Her many honours include two Governor General’s Awards, France’s Prix Medicis, and Quebec’s Prix David.

  Marie-Claire Blais currently resides in Kingsbury, Quebec.

  MARIE-CLAIRE BLAIS

  La Belle Bête (Original edition)

  Copyright © 1959 by Marie-Claire Blais

  Mad Shadows (This edition)

  With an Afterword by Daphne Marlatt

  Mad Shadows translated from the French by Merloyd Lawrence

  Copyright © 1960 by Marie-Claire Blais

  Afterword copyright © 1990 by Daphne Marlatt

  New Canadian Library edition 1990

  National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Blais, Marie-Claire, 1939-[Belle bete. English]

  Mad shadows

  (New Canadian library)

  Translation of La belle bête Includes bibliographical references. isbn 0-7710-9867-7

  I. Title II. Title: Belle bete. English. III. Series.

  PS8503.L35B4513 1990 0843'.54 C89-090758-7

  PQ3919.2.B53B4513 1990

  We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program for our publishing activities. We further acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program.

  Descend the way that leads to hell infernal;

  Plunge in a deep gulf where crime’s inevitable,

  Flagellated by a wind driven from the skies eternal,

  Where all your torments, and for all the ages,

  Mad shadows, never at the end of your desires,

  Shall never satisfy your furious rages,

  And your chastisement be born of loveless fires.

  BAUDELAIRE

  Flowers of Evil

  *

  ONE

  *

  1

  The

  train

  was

  leaving

  town.

  Lying back with his head against his mother’s shoulder, Patrice followed the dappled countryside with a melancholy expression. Behind his forehead everything grew confused, like a billowing stormcloud on a screen. He watch-rd in silence and did not understand, but his idiot face was so dazzling that it made one think of genius. His mother caressed the nape of his neck with the palm of her hand. With a gentle slip of her all-too-supple wrist she could lower Patrice’s head to her bosom and hear his breathing more easily.

  On the other side, aloof and motionless, her daughter Isabelle-Marie sat pressing her sharp features against the window. Louise often said to herself, ‘Isabelle-Marie never really had the face of a child . . . But Patrice . . . Oh, Patrice!’ Isabelle Marie was thirteen. She was tall and emaciated; her alarming eyes, so often full of anger, seemed glued to black bone. When she scowled, the lower part of her face twisted into a look of fierce contempt. It was almost frightening.

  Her mother Louise, who was rich and owned many farms, gave her daughter all the most menial chores in order to devote her life and her remaining youth to Patrice. One could see that Louise believed in herself and above all, to the point of obsession, in the beauty of Patrice.

  In the seats nearby, the passengers were looking at her son. Weary of having nothing to think about, the child yielded to sleep, gently, with a drop of perspiration on his brow. Louise wiped the drop away with the tip of her finger and smiled with pride at the thought that the beauty of her son was becoming ever more devastating, to even the coldest-onlooker.

  ‘Patrice . . . such a magnificent child!’

  At the same moment, Isabelle-Marie thought, Patrice, the Idiot!

  Patrice did not seem to worry about himself. He pressed even closer to his mother, his large green eyes empty as the night. Now and then his eyelashes and his cheeks would tremble, suddenly, and not in unison. His forehead was white, intact, and soft as the thigh of a swan. His bare lips curved without the slightest trace of tension. Never was there a sign of life on these lips. The lips of a corpse. Isabelle-Marie cast a sly look at him.

  ‘A Beautiful Beast!’ she muttered between her teeth.

  Louise did not question the intelligence of her ten-year-old Adonis. He spoke very little, but she attributed this speechlessness, like the silence of the gods, to unconcern.

  His extraordinary beauty satisfied her every wish. Nevertheless, Patrice was an idiot. Isabelle-Marie knew that behind his pale forehead was the deep stupor of an inactive mind, the lethargy of a dead brain. How cold it must be beneath his skin, she thought and was ashamed to see him sleeping peacefully, protected by his mother’s shoulder. She knew that the woman’s eyes, indeed her whole being, rested on this solitary and fragile beauty.

  The passengers never stopped looking at Patrice. Isabelle-Marie began to blush. She felt sick to her stomach. Soon she saw nothing outside the window. A strange desire to die came over her. She rose and pressed against the cold glass. Her bruised cheek shivered. In an awkward attempt to hide her trembling, Isabelle-Marie clawed at the pane with her nails, trying to hold onto it . . . Louise did not see her. Louise never really dared look at her. Finally Isabelle-Marie buried her face in her hands.

  ‘Mother, I have a fever.’

  Bewildered, physically terrified by the people around her, she heard a woman cry out, ‘What a handsome son you have!’

  And Louise, in her contented voice, answered, ‘Isn’t he, though?’

  Isabelle-Marie fainted.

  When she opened her eyes, they were drawing into the station. The other passengers, she was relieved to discover, had forgotten about the beauty of her brother. They walked hurriedly toward the station, paying no attention to one .mother. Isabelle-Marie began to breathe again. Blood warmed her legs and she felt a sense of release, a crazy desire to burst out laughing now that the torture had ceased.

  ‘What is it, Isabelle-Marie?’ asked Louise in a deceitful tone of voice.

  ‘Nothing at all, Mother. Only a slight dizziness . . .’

  Louise held her son’s hand nested in her own and the two of them slipped through the crowd, oblivious of the smoke that filled the air. The blond child followed indolently, his head resting against his mother’s elbow. Isabelle-Marie was sorry that the sun cast such an aura of innocence over Patrice’s hair. She followed her brother, awkward in her black dress . . . and more awkward still in the flesh.

  Convinced that Patrice had certain special gifts, Louise entrusted him to private tutors, but one by one they left, disappointed, aware of Patrice’s stupidity and of his mother’s grotesque illusion. Of course none of them would ever have been able to say, ‘Madame, your son is an idiot,’ or ‘This child has no intelligence,’ and with these few words to dampen Louise’s great passion, a passion which had begun with the birth of this spoiled creature, this body made to house a nonexistent mind. Louise went right on glorifying her son, as though in a dream, supplying, when necessary, the soul which was lacking. If Patrice was silent, it was because he was savoring some secret insight. If Patrice repeated the same meaningless gestures in all his games, it was because he was guided by an instinctive sense of his own beauty. She was his slave. She lent him her own intelligence. She treated him as an exceptional being and carefully spared him from failure. Her child-god! And so the Beautiful Beast wanted nothing; it ate, slept, smiled, and laughed when it saw others laughing, lire Beautiful Beast would soon be fifteen years old.

  Devoting herself more and more to the needs of her son, Louise prepared him the most delicious meals, helped him in the care of his body, and introduced him to Vanity by placing him in front of mirrors though in this, as in everything else, Patrice showed great lethargy. She sated him with walks, with horseback riding. He took to horses immediately, out of instinct. Patrice was obedient. He cried when he was told to, responded to her tenderness without knowing why. He had never discovered anything, not even his mother’s love, or Isabelle’s jealousy.

  He was destined to know nothing but his own beauty. This he discovered.

  *

  2

  It was summertime. Isabelle-Marie worked in the fields, grimy with sweat, her hair across her cheeks, with callused fingers and a salty taste in her mouth. Ever since the beginning of the season she had felt a sharp ache in her chest. This ache drained her energy and her flesh clung to her bones like a hot s
hroud. Never had the sun been so strong; lethal and scorching, it tanned the farmers and dried up the earth. Isabelle-Marie’s nerves were taut, exposed. In the evening when she returned to the huge deserted house, she found Patrice wallowing in a life of indolence, and Louise living by her whims. Exasperated, she swallowed her fury, her heart crying out for justice. But rebellion gave her strength and her hands grew sharp as knives.

  One day, when Louise was in town, Isabelle-Marie took her brother for a swim. In spite of her appalling jealousy, she tried to feel a spark of sisterly affection. At the lake, she was able to forget about the scars that covered her back. When she swam, her limbs relaxed, one by one, and her body drank the bliss of adolescence. Was she capable of enjoying life, like Louise and Patrice? No. Crushed and humiliated for so long, Isabelle-Marie experienced pleasure as a kind of delirium, an emotion which consumed both flesh and blood: love of the earth, love in the face of ingratitude. As she surrendered her body to the cold water, she was almost happy to he so different from Patrice and Louise. She shook her head. The drops of water ran together, streaming down the side of her cheek.

  Then she cried out, ‘Patrice . . . are you coming, Patrice?’

  Half-naked, resplendent, Patrice was kneeling. He seemed to be trying to disappear into the depths of the lake.

  ‘Patrice, what are you doing there?’

  He did not answer and remained motionless. Isabelle swam quietly in his direction. She could not help but admire him, and his beauty made her blush.

  ‘Patrice . . .’

  His back was curved in a graceful arc, exposing the tender, inviolate nape which Louise so loved to caress and which gleamed, fresh and childlike, as though just removed from its original mould.

  He is contemplating himself! thought Isabelle-Marie.

  Yes, Patrice was contemplating his own body, floating and yet perfectly balanced in the water.

  ‘Patrice! Patrice!’

  She shouted, hoping to frighten him.

  But Patrice was not listening. Patrice was looking at himself, and for the first time his beauty meant something to him. Leaning over to look at his body, he trembled, feeling so contained, so handsome . . . The one quality which made him a man! Finally he raised his eyes, eternally confident in his own being. He began to walk in the sand, mysterious, virginal, his forehead glowing strangely. Isabelle-Marie fled, repelled. Patrice did not stop to notice the bird with one wing flying near him, nor the thin legs of his sister fluttering over the pebbles. He smiled; a warmth rose within him and his muscles cried out in triumph. From then on Patrice knew that he was beautiful, and beauty was to become the goal of his life. Patrice had become the god of Patrice. His soul was too feeble to ask for more.

  ‘Patrice, my darling Patrice . . . Where have you been?’

  He was sitting on the edge of his mother’s bed, empty-handed, staring into space. Instinct brought him into Louise’s room where everything somehow belonged to him, a room created for his ease and comfort. Louise would untangle his long hair, and her gestures were a way of enfolding him in tenderness. ‘Now then, what did my baby do today?’ she would ask. But he did not have to answer. Sometimes he could not remember what he had done. Louise asked other things: ‘Don’t you think the earth has a strange odor this year?’ Then, with her head thrown back, as though overwhelmed by the weight of her hair, she would wander back and forth in the room, explaining new plans to develop her farms. Patrice would give dull nods of agreement, which delighted her.

  This morning she asked him, ‘You are sad . . . What are you thinking about?’

  He smiled, shrugging his shoulders, and the smile that brightened his eyes dimmed the whiteness of his eyelids.

  ‘I’m not thinking about anything, Mother.’

  She laughed.

  ‘Oh, come now, my darling boy isn’t telling me the truth.’

  But he was telling the truth.

  He let his mother kiss him on the forehead, wished her good morning, and then left the room.

  After walking around the garden for several hours, he stopped to listen . . . His sister was sobbing. He listened again. Isabelle-Marie’s sobs were not those of a woman; they were like the moans of a stricken animal. But Patrice did not care. I lie air rushed into his chest; the cool earth swelled beneath his feet. He started running, moist at the temples. When he arrived at the edge of the lake, like a child looking for a sequel to an endless game of make-believe, he grew quiet again, watching his face, his arms, and his neck, miraculously reflected in the water. Comforted, he fell asleep.

  Isabelle-Marie was cutting the bread with a feverish hand. She did not tear it apart as a child would but cut straight through with cold dispatch. Louise saw anger gleam in the corners of her eyes and her mouth and press her cheeks into hollows of discontent.

  ‘Why are you hiding the bread in your apron, Isabelle?’

  Isabelle-Marie pinched her lips and held out the bread, all the while staring at Louise.

  ‘Here, Mother,’ she said, then added scornfully, ‘I made this bread myself so I know that it’s good.’

  Louise had learned to endure the sting of her glances, their piercing hatred; only in the eyes of her daughter could a glance be so cutting. She resigned herself to this bit by bit, as though to a private, unmentionable agony.

  ‘Another piece for Patrice,’ she said.

  Meals were a time of naked exposure. Hands reached out, revealing trembling fingers. Faces met in grave collisions. Isabelle-Marie saw her mother and her mother’s son radiant with health, and felt herself becoming uglier as Patrice grew in adolescent beauty.

  ‘My children,’ said Louise, though she looked only at Patrice when she spoke, ‘I have decided to take a trip. I would like to discuss the latest farm equipment with some friends. You see, with fewer workers and more . . .’

  Isabelle-Marie listened, frigid and unresponsive.

  Louise spoke more quickly, ‘Will you come with me, Patrice?’

  When he did not answer, she said, ‘Oh, I understand, it wouldn’t be much fun for a boy of your age . . .’

  She was trying brazenly and yet skilfully to guide the responses of this Beautiful Beast, this bewitching creature whom people pointed out in the streets. The dazzling beauty of her child filled everyone with wonder, and she savored this, voluptuously.

  Patrice muttered ‘No’ in a kind of wistful pout that only Louise understood. Then he dug his teeth into a piece of bread. The way he ate had a charming, slightly untamed quality. His eyes sparkled, his cheekbones glowed with vitality.

  ‘The idea doesn’t appeal to you, does it, my dearest? Well then, I will go alone. You can rest at home.’

  Rest. He did nothing else. He lived by resting, at the expense of other people. He sucked their blood . . . in order to rest.

  'Isabelle-Marie will take care of you. She is a real woman now, you know. She can bake excellent bread when she wants to.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Isabelle-Marie. Her reply was much too abrupt, loo final.

  She bit her lip. Something was shrieking inside of her . . . an evil desire.

  'Isabelle-Marie, what is the matter, Isabelle-Marie?’

  The anguish which she had felt that day on the train was coming over her again. She held her hand against her mouth and grew purple with rage.

  ‘That is an excellent idea, Mother. We need some good ploughs. The soil is hard to work these days.’

  Louise saw that she was trembling, though she did not understand why.

  *

  3

  Louise set off by herself. She would miss her child. Without him she was lost, shorn of both roots and flowers. At forty, Louise was still a frivolous doll, empty and excessively concerned with her slender body. Patrice’s beauty was to her but a reflection of her own.

  She also needed the false security of luxury'. Luxury! She craved it. Her pleasures were those of someone who had grown neither wiser nor stronger through suffering. Though she was not intelligent and had the soul of a mannequin, in her veins ran a streak of foresight and cunning. Her daughter exasperated her. ‘Can you expect anything but trouble from someone so ugly?’ And yet Isabelle-Marie took after her father, that gallant dreamer and poet who used to speak of his land as though of a virgin consecrated to God. How could such a man have felt passionate about Louise, with her flighty, skin-deep beauty? Because Louise knew how to pounce on vulnerable spirits, taken by her charms. She used her body with the single-minded determination of a prostitute, and had the same obsession with money.