Cormorant Books

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Étienne's Alphabet (Preview)

PREFACE

For the past six months I have tried to write an account of my life. This has been a thankless task. I have written five pages, not even a thousand words. There has to be more to me, I tell myself constantly, but I have found nothing to add. In fact, I subtracted almost two hundred words before I tore my miniature autobiography into tiny shreds. Today, on my thirty-fifth birthday, I have decided to make entries in the form of a dictionary in the hopes of capturing reflections of myself. Only in this way will I be able to bring my own life into focus.

A: Two converging lines firmly joined by a third. A nice solid beginning. A handsome yet unprepossessing shape. Ornate but subdued.

A knows everything there is about the importance of coming first. In its case, the first shall be first: A-1, A-okay. Despite its marked superiority in any kind of list, A carries its role well — it does not rub its pride of place into the faces of its colleagues. A very considerate citizen to its fellow letters.

AARDVARK: Charming-looking little creatures with built-in suits of armour. In the evolutionary scheme of things, human beings were deprived of this protection, although nothing, I suppose, could shelter us from our real predators — sorrow and misfortune.

ADENOIDS AND TONSILS: Removed when I was six years old. A grainy grey December rain streaked down over the playground from which seven of us were summarily removed by Mother Superior. “You seven, come with me. The doctor is in the infirmary to look at your throats. We’ve had too many sore throats this winter and so we’re going to do something about it. We’re going to the expense of having those two troublemakers removed.” I was startled. Who was being expelled? When she saw the look of confusion that filled my face, she laughed. “We’re having your tonsils and adenoids removed. It will take only a few seconds.” I was still perplexed, but I marched along at the front of the group that filed behind her.

Sister Nurse was there to welcome us. She indicated that we should strip to our underwear and then lie down in the six beds lined up in a row. It was only about dinnertime, but the windows in the room were covered to prevent light from entering. I could hardly see the nun and the other five children. “The doctor will visit you in turn. He is a nice man. Afterwards, there’ll be a special treat for each of you.” We dutifully followed her instructions to be still and awaited the arrival of the doctor. I was patient but anxious. I wondered if I would ever walk out of this shadow-filled room. Even at my tender age, I wondered if I was preparing to meet death.

That day I was especially frightened when I saw the usually genial Doctor Newman. He was dressed in what looked like green pyjamas. That did not bother me. What I did not like was the fact that his head was covered and that a white mask hid his nose and mouth. Sister then placed a white mask over her face.

The room was in darkness. The two shadowy figures walked over to me. I think I screamed, but Sister assured me I had nothing to be fearful of. “This is a humdrum procedure. You will be perfectly all right, Étienne.” I remember sucking in my stomach, my body’s preparation for uttering some sort of cry for help. While I was doing this, doctor and nurse moved quickly. She placed a cloth over my nose, and I remember a sickly sweet smell. When I looked up at my two tormentors, they seemed twice their usual size. Above their heads, the ceiling was as high and wide as the sky. Then darkness. The next thing I recall was being handed a huge bowl of chocolate ice cream as a reward for being a good boy. I greedily devoured the peace offering at the same time I was aware my throat was very sore. “You and the others will sleep here tonight, dear, and you will be yourselves in the morning.” This statement was issued as a command, not a peace offering for the mutilations we had just undergone.

ALCHEMY: Turning brass into gold. Alchemists were consummate tricksters who played upon human greed and credulousness. The oldest scam in the history of the world: something for nothing. An artist or writer can, if he is not cautious, become such a faker as he attempts to extract something precious from his inner chaos.

ALLURE: Well before I learned to read, the letters of the alphabet would appear as free-floating forms before my amazed eyes. For instance, the letter b would begin in lower case and then become a capital B; suddenly it would b or b. The letter might start as a bright yellow and then turn a deep purple and afterwards a hazy pink. As a child I did not know the names of the various typefaces, but I could see the letter B in what I later knew was sans serif, and then watch it transform itself into Times Roman. My dreams were also filled with the letters forming words in various fonts and colours.

When I was taught to read at the age of five, the black forms on the page would float mysteriously before me and whisper their meanings. The word chair would turn itself into the shape of that object and then whisper its meaning and pronunciation to me. “You learn very quickly, Étienne,” an astounded Sister Magdalena assured me. When I told her my secret, she did not seem startled: “You obviously have a very active imagination, my boy.” I did not divulge any more about my precociousness, nor did I inform her that my chair could become an overly stuffed Victorian, then a wooden object of the Bauhaus persuasion and then an elegant mahogany specimen of Chippendale. To my surprise, none of my classmates shared this facility.

ALPHABET: Letters obviously hold the entire world together. Otherwise, there is no order, no language, no significance. When I felt compelled to begin making my strange drawings, I decided to tie each of them to one of the twenty-six letters in the English language. I never gave a title to any of the pictures but all you have to do is look at the letter inscribed on a drawing to make an accurate guess as to its subject matter.

One of my peculiarities is my attachment to all kinds of lists: Lists of Things to Do, Lists of Books to Read, Lists of Appointments. If I did not make such compilations, my life would have no purpose or meaning. I would accomplish nothing. Once, at work, Maria, a fellow teller, advised me to let go. “Steve, be a free spirit. Go with the moment!” The astounded look on my face silenced her. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. Sometimes I think you’re too attached to unimportant things.” I did not bother to point out that she was always asking me to balance her till at the end of the day. In our work, careful attention to detail is the key to success.

Maria, like most of my fellow employees, was insensitive to the fact that my name is Étienne, not Stephen. On my second day on the job, someone remarked, “Étienne is French for Steve, right?” I explained that this was both true and untrue. In French there is also the name Stéphan. That information was ignored. Ever since then I have — despite my requests to the contrary — been Steve at the Bank.

I have a penchant for facts. No doubt about that. Once, during the middle of an examination by a physician, I noticed the acronym “ocd” in large red capital letters next to my name. At first, I thought this was some sort of classification system by which patient records were filed. A few days later I looked up the anagram at the library and discovered that it stood for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Sufferers from this ailment, according to the reports I read, often wash their hands twenty times a day, so convinced are they that lurking germs are constantly jumping on them. I resolved to confront this doctor during my next visit, but was too cowardly to do so when the occasion presented itself.

ANIMALS and BIRDS: In my drawings these creatures are exhibitionists. Bears drunk with grapes reeling on the branches of elm trees; caribou bathing in dark, sombre lakes; black, red and grey squirrels frolicking in thick foliage; mockingbirds flying down to feed on strawberry patches; green parrots showing off their yellow heads; crimson-tinged woodpeckers and fire-bright cardinals competing for the tops of cypresses; hummingbirds feasting on blue and purple flowers.

ANGELS: I admire the majestic strength and austere beauty of archangels and seraphim. They are worthy companions of God. However, my heart has always been drawn to the cherubim and, especially, the putti, those winged toddler-like beings who hover near and protect the baby Christ.

ANNA: Such a beautiful, simple name, perhaps the perfect name for a putti.

APPEARANCES: They are not really deceiving. When I was tiny — six or seven years old — I conceived of every person I encountered as a list. For example,

1. female
2. tall
3. brown eyes
4. no hair visible
5. wimple
6. black skirt
7. black shoes
8. red face
9. no smile

In that way I knew this was Sister Mary Elizabeth, the bad-tempered nun who taught me in Grade Three. Even as a teenager, I thought this way all the time. In recent years I have managed to move away from the construction of these lists. “Étienne, you must avoid thinking this way,” I admonish myself.

ASSISI, ST. FRANCIS OF: At the Orphanage, he was not much reckoned in comparison to St. Francis Xavier, one of the seven original Jesuits, who searched for converts in India, Malacca, the Moluccas, Sri Lanka and Japan. The nuns and priests taught us to emulate this man of enormous energy and great courage. They wanted us to be tough in confronting all the vexations with which life would present us.

One day, I confessed to Sister Marguerite that I preferred the animal-loving St. Francis to his namesake, the rugged missionary. I was afraid that this revelation might anger her. Instead, she smiled. “There are two things about you that I shall never forget, Étienne. First: your eyes cannot be described as blue. They are a deep violet. I have never seen such a wonderful colour in anyone’s eyes. Second: you are both a gentle and generous creature. Never forget that.”

ASYLUM, as in INSANE ASYLUM: My word for the two orphanages in which I was incarcerated. Actually, I am being a bit unfair. The one in Montreal was a large — some would say spacious — Gothic monument. Not an ornate example of that architectural style. The wood around the large portal and the windows was a pale blue, giving the building a slightly friendly look. I think it had four — possibly five — storeys.

In Toronto everything was different. That monstrous structure I remember all too well. St. Bernadette’s was newly and badly built in what I would term “Art Deco Institution” style. The dining room, the school, and the nuns’ residence comprised the front of the building, whereas there was a wing on each side, one for the boys, the other for the girls. The windows — trimmed in a kind of red plastic — and roof leaked badly for the ten years I lived there. The corridors were filled with noxious fumes — ones I could both see and smell. The rooms were low-ceilinged and vast: twelve children crammed into each dormitory.

I have another memory: the reception room in Montreal was crowded with armoires and other antiques, while the one in Toronto contained black filing cabinets. In Montreal, the two large sofas where visitors could sit were badly frayed, their stuffings tumbling out on to the ground; in Toronto, there was nowhere to sit, a reflection of the fact that few outsiders ever ventured inside the doors.

Hate is a strong adjective to describe one’s attitude to a building, but I retain resentful feelings about my first home in Toronto.

ATTENTION: Something I evidently lacked as a teenager. I was an outstanding student in grades One through Eight. For instance, I was a wiz at memorizing the multiplication tables, and I had instant recall of any fact imparted by a teacher. I was the joy of most of my teachers but was considered a “browner” by most of my classmates because my hand was always waving in the air to answer any question posed by a teacher. If a fellow student got something wrong, I did not hesitate to yell out the correct response. One particularly gratifying day, the usually kindly Sister Mary Gregory, with a hint of a macabre smile, attempted to demonstrate to my peers that my talents were finite. “I bet you can’t do this one, little smarty pants! Write it down if you need to: one hundred plus one forty-eight, minus one forty-two, plus ten million, minus three, times twenty, times ten.” She was not pleased when I calmly and instantly informed her that the answer was 2,000,020,600.

In Grade Nine I fell apart. Algebra and geometry were realms completely closed to me. I somehow managed — despite considerable effort — to get every problem with which I was presented wrong. Latin was another foreign land. I could do simple tasks, like decline agricola — the word for farmer — but the conjugating of verbs, especially the irregular ones, was beyond me. At first, my teachers accused me of sitting on my laurels and not “applying” myself.

This was untrue.

Students whom I had previously surpassed went ahead of me. I heard one teacher say to another: “We don’t know anything about the origins of most of those entrusted to us. I fear Étienne’s bad seeds have now come to fruition.”

I remained a good student of literature and art, but I was a miserable dunce in everything else. At the age of eighteen, the principal — Father Callaghan — informed me that I would be “retired” from further study.