Rising Abruptly Read online

  Published by

  The University of Alberta Press

  Ring House 2

  Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T6G 2E1

  www.uap.ualberta.ca

  Copyright © 2016 Gisèle Villeneuve

  LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

  Villeneuve, Gisèle, 1950–, author

  Rising abruptly : stories / Gisèle Villeneuve.

  (Robert Kroetsch series)

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978–1–77212–261–9 (paperback).—ISBN 978–1–77212–281–7 (EPUB).—ISBN 978–1–77212–282–4 (mobipocket).—ISBN 978–1–77212–283–1 (PDF)

  I. Title. II. Series: Robert Kroetsch series

  PS8593.I415R57 2016 C813’.54

  C2016–901630–7

  C2016–901631–5

  First edition, first printing, 2016.

  First electronic edition, 2016.

  Digital conversion by Transforma. Pvt. Ltd.

  Copyediting and proofreading by Maya Fowler-Sutherland.

  Cover design by Alan Brownoff.

  A volume in the Robert Kroetsch Series.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be produced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without prior written consent. Contact the University of Alberta Press for further details.

  The University of Alberta Press supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with the copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing University of Alberta Press to continue to publish books for every reader.

  The University of Alberta Press gratefully acknowledges the support received for its publishing program from the Government of Canada, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Government of Alberta through the Alberta Media Fund.

  For Tom Back,

  my partner in life and in the mountains,

  always.

  MOUNTAIN

  A natural elevation of the earth’s surface rising more or less abruptly from the surrounding level, and attaining an altitude which, relatively to adjacent elevations, is impressive or notable.

  —The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary

  Contents

  Nuit Blanche with Gendarme

  Jagged Little Peak

  Benighted on Mighty Mount Royal

  Kinabalu Realm of the Cold

  Onion

  Nepal High

  Assiniboine Crossroads

  Acknowledgements

  Nuit Blanche with Gendarme

  MY SISTER, a whirlwind inside my Calgary apartment. My sister taking me by storm. I prefer storms to stay outside. And I love my sister despite…Here she is. In my yellow kitchen. Arms scratched, fingernails broken, knuckles raw. And in her khaki shorts, legs black and blue.

  What the hell happened to you? Come, sit down.

  She won’t sit. Stares at me with eyes so wild. So very wild. The dark eyes of Medea after she dispatched her children to the other world.

  My sister says: It’s because of my night with the gendarme.

  Gendarme?

  My sister has no children to drown in bathtubs or to strangle in the night and she is not given to having trouble with the law. I stare at her bruised legs. I keep my gaze there, because I simply cannot look at her burning eyes.

  Gendarme, Sis? What gendarme?

  We’re in Calgary, not Paris. There are no gendarmes operating in this city. Why would she use that term?

  What gendarme? Talk to me.

  She asks for water. Her voice calm as a morning lake despite the storm that must be raging in her body. And I must resist looking at her eyes. So primal and wild, her Medea eyes.

  She says: I’m thirsty, my dear brother. I can’t tell you how perfectly thirsty I am.

  I run the tap. Present her with a tall glass of cool water. She drinks and drinks and drinks. Such ecstasy over tap water. I’m a voyeur in spite of myself. Witnessing something unnamed. Can’t begin to imagine her night at the hands of that gendarme. A visiting Frenchman? An exchange program with our city police? Maybe she met him in a bar after his shift. What did he trigger in her?

  After quenching her thirst, if she has quenched it at all, my agitated sister paces up and down the kitchen. Gets set to tell me her story. Don’t want to hear it. Yet, I must. I swallow hard, and the storm is unleashed.

  That day, an impulse leads her to the mountains.

  Mountains?

  Instead of driving to Banff like everyone else, and where we had been just days before, she veers off toward Kananaskis.

  Kananaskis, a region she could not possibly know. She, who not only has never expressed the slightest interest in orography, but, more importantly, has been scoffing at mountains ever since arriving in Calgary a few days ago, can’t explain what brought her there.

  Yes, yes, Sis, that’s all very well, but, please, stay focused. What about the gendarme?

  One mountain in particular draws her attention. Fascinates her. Galvanizes her into action. The attraction of one single mountain in a jumble of mountains, the same way that one man in a crowd would stand out for her alone.

  She says: Believe it or not, I didn’t believe it myself, but it hit me hard. What I felt was nothing short of a lightning strike of the heart.

  That’s it. The encounter in the bar. The one-night stand. She was using the parable of mountains to soften the blow. A lightning strike of the heart? Trust me. My skeptic sister is not given to love at first sight. Certainly not to long-term commitment.

  She says: I was contemplating that mountain and, tout de suite, I knew. I knew I needed the vertical line not to fall. I knew the vertical line was the place to quiet your mind. There, in the silence among stones, I knew, I simply knew that I would find peace of mind at last. Please, more water.

  I set a pitcher on the table. I sit down, she stands. And resumes pacing up and down the kitchen. She may seek a quiet mind, but her body will not relinquish frenzy. She drinks and can’t quench her thirst.

  Watching her, I try to understand without truly grasping what she is telling me. Ever since she was a little girl, she has been queen of the malcontents. Annoyed at everybody and anybody. Bristling with irritation, as if she did not belong in her own skin and had to shed it. Tonight, is she shedding? Sloughing off, to emerge as what? All her life, she has been a wanderer, running away from the noises and vexations of the world. Craving for, and failing to find, her elusive quiet centre.

  I’ve had lots of time to think things through. I might as well tell you I’ve thought of precious little else, and, in stages, I developed a theory. First, I realized that, when she saw her mountain, my troubled sister identified a deeply rooted malaise. Later, it seemed, she discovered she was suffering from genuine vertigo on flat ground. What I ended up understanding most of all is that my disoriented sister belongs in the Rockies.

  Elated, scratched, black and blue, she goes on: The search is over, brother. I’ve found myself at last. That’s what I discovered during my night with the gendarme.

  I look at her hard. Take the glass from her. Forbid her to drink until she tells me the true story, no matter how painful.

  Gendarme, Sis. What goddam gendarme?

  Relax and listen.

  In a trance, she starts to climb her mountain.

  I say: And you want me to relax? Look at you! You’re a mess. You’re shaking all over. And now you’re telling me that you started climbing a real mountain? Ju
st like that? What the hell’s the matter with you? You have zero climbing experience. Nothing.

  She says: Nothing but an instinct, nothing but an internal compass.

  Standing in the middle of my kitchen, she re-enacts her moves.

  For hours, she scrambles up the scree.

  Knees bent, she walks awkwardly along the kitchen floor. She hasn’t yet learned to estimate elevation gain. She may be three hundred, perhaps six hundred metres above the valley. She can’t say. She climbs on chairs, shields her eyes. Scrutinizes the floor.

  So high up is she, and because of the broader perspective, cars appear as slowly moving toys along the road. So high up is she, their annoying car noises no longer reach her.

  She says: Bliss. Blissful silence.

  Now she climbs a jagged ridge. She is standing on the stove.

  Exposure tugging at her back, she grips the rough limestone that abrades arms, cuts fingers, tumefies knuckles, shreds knees.

  She paws cupboard doors. Reaches for knobs and hinges. Six hundred metres above ground (she figures), she hangs on, wrapping her arms around the hood of the fan above the stove. Confident. She is that confident, as if, with every move, the rock itself were teaching her how to climb. She runs the palms of her hands up the greasy wall near the ceiling. And, over there, she tells me, she was moving up her vertical line of rock with as much ease as me walking across my kitchen floor.

  She tiptoes along the edge of the counter. The summit ridge becomes so narrow that my delicate sister must climb à cheval, a technique that consists of straddling the ridge, feet dangling over the void. She squats, dangling one leg off the counter and resting the other foot in the sink.

  Only to imagine her in that terrifying position, not ninety-two centimetres off the kitchen floor, but six hundred metres above the valley floor, my heart climbs into my mouth and my ears start to buzz. I am overtaken by real vertigo.

  I feel the wind as she jumps off the counter to rush to my rescue.

  Curled up on the floor, I scream at her: You could have killed yourself. Are you raving mad?

  She spins across the tiles, chanting: Madly in love, oh, yeah. So very, very madly in love. And it is for life, my dear brother. For life. Get up.

  Now, I know something is very wrong. I pick myself up. Pick up my chair. Sit down, head in hands. For life, I repeat in my head. For life, I repeat in my hands. For life.

  At long last, we get to the goddam gendarme. Honestly, I had forgotten about the rotten man. Man! I go straight from debilitating vertigo to jittery laughter. Can’t stop sputtering wise cracks. Now, it is my puzzled sister’s turn to think that I am the mad one. Not mad. Relieved. I pour her a fresh glass of water. Watch her drink.

  I say: Let me guess. You met an experienced climber, right? A partner who kept you from falling. And one thing leading to the next, your night with that gendarme. Now, I understand. What a relief! A liaison—tightly tied to your lover’s climbing rope, I hope—a liaison on a mountain isn’t cozy as in a great big bed or soft as a roll in the hay, right? A night of lovemaking on rock is bound to leave scrapes and bruises. Isn’t that right, eh, Sis?

  I laugh and laugh, relieved. Dear me! So very much relieved.

  You see, more and more Europeans flock to our Rockies, because their Alps are crawling with crowds lining up to climb. So, on her mountain, my sister met a Frenchman. Nothing unusual. After all, it was a Frenchman, Doctor Michel-Gabriel Paccard, who invented mountain climbing. And way back in 1786. Almost exactly three years before his countrymen took the Bastille by storm. As for Paccard, he took Mont Blanc by grit and gall on August 8th, 1786. Accompanied by a resident of Chamonix, the hunter Jacques Balmat. Yes, I know these mountain-related things. Possibly because I am overly attached to flat ground, I very much enjoy reading about people who choose to give themselves trouble, sometimes impossibly great trouble, clinging to rock. So, it is conceivable that my ethereal sister met a climber who happens to be a French gendarme on holiday in our Rockies.

  I ask: Is he a Jacques Balmat, of the rough-and-tumble hunter type, or a Paccard, of the considerate country doctor type?

  Now, it is my sister’s turn to laugh: The things you dream up, brother! A gendarme is a rock tower occupying and blocking an arête.

  Of course, I know that in mountain parlance, a gendarme is a rock tower occupying and blocking an arête. But how does she know that? I must tell you the day after she landed in Calgary to visit me, although heights make me truly queasy, I dutifully brought my grumbling sister to Banff and Lake Louise to see the mountains. She barely glanced at them, declaring that she shared painter Alex Colville’s opinion that mountains are silly. So, you can imagine my dismay that evening when she storms into my kitchen, gushing about the gendarme, silence among stones and quiet mind on the vertical line. More to the point though, that evening, I so wish a man with climbing experience, French or not, and not too audacious, were with her to keep her safe. I so wish she were not alone with her mountain. Any silly mountain.

  Seriously, I ask: A gendarme, eh? How big was your gendarme, the one blocking the way?

  Taller than a tall man.

  You can’t climb on. Can you downclimb?

  I didn’t get that far only to bail at the first obstacle.

  What did you do then? With your gendarme taller than a tall man? Standing on the edge of the precipice?

  My metamorphosing sister keeps quiet for a long time. She and I in growing darkness, in deepening silence. I sit, she stands. Both of us quiet. For a long time.

  She pours herself a glass of water. Drinks. Climbs on the end of the counter.

  She says: In fading light, I can see that, farther on, the ridge is rising abruptly. To continue, I’ll have to wait until morning. But something tells me that I must contour the gendarme before sunset. You see, this is a rite of passage. If I ace that test, tomorrow I’ll reach the summit.

  Rite of passage?

  The motor of the fridge kicks in.

  How did you manage that?

  It was a rather intimate encounter with the gendarme.

  In other circumstances, I’d fall back on dumb locker-room jokes. Not tonight. No. In the darkness filling my kitchen, darkness falling on the rocky ridge where my addle-brained sister is perched, I am too moved to laugh, too petrified to move. An initiation into the mysteries of what she calls the vertical line. This can’t be my sister the unbeliever talking. And yet, here she is, standing on the end of the kitchen counter, talking about rite of passage, initiation, falling in love. Where might that lead, if not to disaster, certainly to another disappointment?

  My usually sharp-tongued, impatient sister speaks softly. In a voice I never knew she had. A voice to share secrets. I am listening. Holding my breath. Even Calgary outside my kitchen window, I swear, is holding its breath. So silent the summer evening, it may have drifted into town from a very ancient place. Oh! To capture such rare silence and offer it to my strange sister, so that she would agree to stay among us, flatlanders.

  My zany sister, who has no experience, no gear, no partner—my sister, whom I love dearly, is, to go around the gendarme, about to face deadly exposure.

  She demonstrates. Wraps her arms around her gendarme. She hugs the fridge. Stretches her left leg and, on the side of the drop, finds a tiny hold on which to rest her big toe. She stretches her leg as far as it will go across the fridge to reach the other section of the counter. Her stance looks unstable. She’ll fall. To reach the other side of the ridge, she must jump.

  She says: Just a short jump.

  Jump? Jump? Are you crazy? Jump as in jump?

  My heart skips a beat. A short jump! How short is short? What else is she required to do? Perform a swan dive? The leap of death?

  Deadly calm, hugging the fridge, my lunatic sister gets on with her story: I must do that little hop to free the tiny hold on which my left big toe is resting and make room for the tip of my right foot. You understand, there’s not much room for error…

&nb
sp; At this cliffhanger, I hit pause, interrupting the flow of the narrative, to make an observation that has probably occurred to you already. My charming sister is standing in my kitchen, in an off-balance position on the edge of the counter, telling me about her night with her gendarme, so it is obvious that she survived her one-night stand with the mountain. Also, as I mentioned earlier, although I am a man who enjoys his routine in a safe and familiar environment, I get my thrill vicariously by reading accounts similar to the one unfolding tonight in my kitchen. Even if those accounts are written in the first person after the fact, making it clear that the author survived the ordeal, as I turn the pages, I allow myself a certain measure of emotional involvement, suspending my disbelief and playing along. As I am doing this evening. With the exception that, in this case, I care a whole lot more about the narrator of this tale than I do about any writer-adventurer whom I will never personally know. So, tonight, I greatly fear the future. After all, my emotional sister is in the grip of first love. And gravity, maw wide-opened, awaits. I hit play. Let’s get this narrative over with.

  …There’s not much room for error. With my left foot, I feel my way to safety along the flat ridge on the other side of the gendarme.

  I shout: Safety? What safety is there in hopping over the void?

  She stretches and rests the tip of her big toe on the section of the counter beyond the fridge. Pushing with her other leg and gripping the sides of the polished, cold white fridge, she lunges. And loses her footing.

  I jump up from my chair, try to break her fall and, together, we tumble to the floor. I holler. She laughs.

  She says: Obviously, up there, it went without a hitch.

  At this point, I’m so bewildered, I slap and hug her at the same time.

  I yell: The mountain has gone to your head. Snap out of it. Right this minute, snap out of this. Neither of us has ever been a big supporter of love at first sight. What your climbing Frenchman, if he existed at all, would call the coup de foudre.

  She says, giddy and raising a finger: But, dear brother, that’s exactly what it is.