The Body of the Beasts Read online

  Le corps des bêtes copyright © 2017, Leméac Éditeur (Montréal, Canada)

  Éditions Grasset pour la France, la Suisse, la Belgique, le Luxembourg et les DOM-TOM

  English translation copyright © 2019 by Susan Ouriou

  First published as Le corps des bêtes in 2017 by Leméac Éditeur Inc.

  First published in English in Canada and the USA in 2019 by House of Anansi Press Inc.

  www.houseofanansi.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Title: The body of the beasts / Audrée Wilhelmy ; translated by Susan Ouriou.

  Other titles: Corps des bêtes. English

  Names: Wilhelmy, Audrée, 1985– | Ouriou, Susan, translator.

  Description: Translation of: Le corps des bêtes.

  Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20189053178 | Canadiana (ebook) 20189053186 | ISBN 9781487006105 (softcover) | ISBN 9781487006112 (EPUB) | ISBN 9781487006129 (Kindle)

  Classification: LCC PS8645 I432 C6713 2019 | DDC C843/.6—dc23

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2018962106

  Book design: Alysia Shewchuk

  We acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing program the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Government of Canada. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the National Translation Program for Book Publishing, an initiative of the Roadmap for Canada’s Official Languages 2013–2019: Education, Immigration, Communities, for our translation activities.

  To Simon, Jean, Colombe, Rose-Anne — the sturdy boughs on which our own branches grow.

  your silence will be everywhere and in the same way

  everything hushed here speaks of you i believe

  i’ll find you before nightfall i look for pebbles

  in my pockets with each cry or creaking

  of the wood which is you in your entirety

  Alexie Morin

  Prologue

  Mie is doing it again. She scrunches up her mind and imagines herself tugging on a string so its matter emerges from her ear and shimmers before her, malleable as a scrap of fabric; she rolls it up tight and slides it into the brain of another, that of a fish soon to perish, an ant, or one of the great stags braying on the edge of the forest.

  She is lying on the bed. Her twelve-year-old shape shows beneath the sheet: even covered, she feels exposed. She has no idea how to tame her nakedness, it’s a sort of animal inside which her mind is incapable of penetrating. So she grasps a morsel of her consciousness and thrusts it into the skull of the great blue heron alighting on the window ledge, she clucks her tongue against the roof of her mouth and it takes off, all long legs and greyish-blue feathers, above the coast.

  She gains altitude with the bird. She rises above the lighthouse, sees the rocks of the craggy foreshore appearing like an army beneath the waves, the bands of golden sand, the seaweed and crabs teeming underneath, the lagoon; she spots Seth and Abel, minuscule from on high, lining up hare carcasses on a pyre of rocks and branches, and, beside the Old Woman, little Dé turning wet sand into mud pies. Farther along the strand: the dilapidated cabin, its chiming shells, the collection of dried starfish on the steps to the porch, its broken railing. From the sky, Mie can see the thatched roof, mould-blackened and perforated again. Fresh tracks plough the earth — a woman’s steps have traced a straight line between the dunes and the cabin. Her mother hides inside, draws maps and trails on the cabin walls, fragments of forests, towns, countries. She conjures creatures and children. Mie would like to linger nearby but the bird does not stop; it soars to the trees crowning the cliffs, lands on top of a beech, and takes flight again — perhaps it will travel as far as Seiche and feast on deep-sea fish snatched from trawlers — then it flies out of reach, disappears.

  The sheet is cold against her hard nipples, her belly, and her pubescent mound. Spiked hairs cling to the fabric. In a flash, Mie’s thoughts return to her own body. She is naked. No other creature is in sight. She is alone.

  I

  1

  A wharf jutting out into the open sea. Waves rumble below, foam spouts from cracks between the planks. Men angle for tuna and stingrays. They cast their lines from the platform at the far end of the jetty, where the water is already deep, and wrest huge creatures from the sea that drench them in salt water as they writhe in mid-air and then again on the pier’s wooden planking. A warm breeze blows in from the interior and whips the clothing of passersby against their bodies and roars in their ears. Perched on the guardrails or on the backs of benches, children eat ice cream that trickles between their fingers and onto their bare bellies. The heat of the beach is like no other, worn like a piece of clothing.

  So different from the others in their long shirts, the Borya brothers serve as their mother’s bodyguards. She holds the youngest on her hip and strides toward the fishermen, her skirts billowing around her legs. Three coins jangle in her pocket and their clinking combines with the clacking of her heels against the wharf. The biggest fish require tough bargaining, so the boys’ father sent his wife. He told her to wear her grey dress, the one with the low-cut square neck that shows off her breasts, plump with milk. She makes her way toward the men, her attempt at sensuality somewhat hindered by the presence of her sons. The eldest walks in front of her, pushing a wheelbarrow three times his weight to transport the animal once the deal has been made. The younger two run to keep up with their mother’s swaying gait. As for her, she sees only the huge fish hanging mid-wharf, the fishermen’s sturdy bodies, the blue water and the light sparkling on its surface.

  Osip Borya, chasing a salamander, has stayed behind. By the time he loses the tiny creature in the tall grasses, his mother and brothers have left. He can’t see them anywhere. Immediately overhead, seagulls wheel like sparrow hawks. A pelican swoops toward the beach, throat stretched taut with its catch, and lands on a post right next to the boy. The bird is still dripping from its plunge into the water. It looks at the child, throws its skull back and, swallowing its prey in one majestic gulp, unfurls its wings. At that exact moment, several things occur. First, the pelican lifts off and returns to its position on the waves. Then, watching the seabird, Osip spies his mother at the end of the wharf and notices a tiny movement she makes: as her right foot lifts out of its shoe, she reaches down to brush sand off the sole of her foot. Just behind her, a fisherman lets out a shout and hauls from the water a five-foot-long swordfish thrashing around like a demon. Three men harpoon it to sap the creature’s strength.

  Osip memorizes it all. The curly down on the pelican’s neck, the pearls of water on its feathers, the extended pouch below its beak, the exact shape of the still-living fish sliding down its esophagus from throat to gizzard, the silence of the prey’s extinction amid the continuous din of the beach; his mother’s tanned hand brushing her white foot, the ankle he’d never noticed before, her bosom as she reaches down; the raised bill of the swordfish, its death throes, the light striking the metal tips of the harpoons, the blood mingling with the salt water spilling into the sea and along the dock, gently splashing his mother’s dress and brown hand though not her foot, already tucked back beneath her underskirt.

  Suddenly, Osip’s small sex stiffens. There’s no controlling the phenomenon: the rod rises, a stranger to the child. A secret part of his body has come to life and suddenly the fear of being found out by h
is brothers, by the fishermen — grown men — washes over him.

  He sinks into the tall grasses and waits for the stiffness to pass. It takes forever. His mother is still visible; from afar, he recognizes her dress and her braids. He knows he must avert his eyes because if not — it has taken him a while to understand as much — his sex will never soften. He looks for something to distract him: a shell, a crab. Occasionally, intense concentration on a jellyfish — a medusa — restores some suppleness to his member. He catches sight of the salamander he tracked earlier and meets its black gaze. It has two yellow spots on its eyelids and he focuses all his energy there. He tries to shake off the thought of his mother’s ankle by studying the salamander’s skull, but its ocelli call to mind the circles of his mother’s breasts. He has to find a way to rid himself of thoughts of her. His mother. Her tanned wrist and the bounce to her chest, restrained by her undergarments, when she brushes her hair, when she eats, when she carries the baby on her hip.

  He tugs at his pants, backs deeper into the bushes. He glances up at the dock, ever so briefly, so as not to look at his mother yet see her all the same. He strokes his member, just below its unsheathed head. His mother haggles, she moves her body like a woman of the street, swaying her hips as she measures the size of the swordfish. She sets the youngest down on the bench and ruffles the eldest’s hair.

  At precisely this moment in his life, Osip Borya is mindful of four certainties:

  His eldest brother is no longer a virgin.

  His mother has done him the Great Favour.

  Osip, too, will have his turn. (But when?)

  He is ready.

  2

  Fifteen years later, the eldest brother’s woman makes the same gesture. Osip sees her from the lighthouse observation gallery: she raises her foot and brushes the sole with her hand, a trifling act that shouldn’t arouse him yet still gives him pause. He’s not met her yet, she’s only just arrived, brought out of the forest by Sevastian-Benedikt along with a half-dozen hares for skinning. She holds her dress against her knees; its train drags in the sea like a dead animal. A puffed sleeve has slipped down her arm. Her shoulder is exposed to the sun, the top of the dress loose across her belly and her slim throat visible at the neckline. The lower part of the dress sticks to her thighs: no bustle, underskirt, or form, nothing but the frayed fabric against her skin.

  Since the Boryas left Seiche for Sitjaq and its lighthouse, the only woman that Osip — nineteen, chief lantern keeper — has ever known is his mother. The stranger troubles him. She’s older than he is and so free, behaves like a wild child — she walks barefoot, her heels scar the sand, she eats fish and rice with her fingers, tears her dresses and doesn’t mend them. For the past fortnight, she’s not spoken a word, though she has often sung in a language of harsh accents. She has an erratic way of filling the hours, spends her days on futile tasks. Here she is, for instance, carrying pails out to the waves. She fills them with medusas washed up onto the shore, then piles the jellyfish in the shade of the beech trees crowding the cabin. She holds her chin high as she walks, her head tipped back slightly as though the bun in her hair weighs heavy on the nape of her neck, which extends in a long line from her shoulder blades. The neckline of her dress rides low, droops, and exposes her breasts. It is an ensemble that both conceals and reveals her body, and Osip has never seen anything like it.

  A child’s heated emotion. The stranger bends down to extract a shell lodged between her toes, revealing both her décolleté and her ankles. His sex thickens and presses up against the seam of his clothing. Neither the Old Woman nor his eldest brother is in sight. Only the new arrival occupies the beach; she walks, and water from the pails splashes over the bottom of her dress, its fabric hugging her legs. Osip leans back against the lighthouse, wishing the stone would swallow him whole, wishing he were able to disappear till he was nothing but two eyes and a phallus. He undoes his trousers and uncoils his penis, thumb and index finger closed around its flesh; he no longer strokes but tugs at it, his movements quick, his breathing and his pleasure too. He wipes his hand on his trousers, then returns to the lantern. All day long, he lurks on the gallery and spies on the stranger.

  3

  Before moving to Sitjaq’s rugged terrain, an eight-hour walk from Seiche, the Borya father, mother, and five sons live in a shack, where they eke out a living curing fish caught on the high seas. Everything in the shack is secured by something else; furniture remains standing thanks to the support of the walls and rocks. Aside from the parents’ room, big enough for a bed and a dresser, there are two bedrooms in the house, sectionvied up unequally between the brothers. Osip and Leander share their parents’ old mattress, laboriously stuffed into a frame far too small. Matvey and Golby sleep in a chest of drawers leaning against the living room partition. The top and bottom drawers are filled with wadding and once served as cradles; much time has passed yet the little ones have still not been relocated elsewhere, and now their legs and arms dangle and their heads extend beyond the sides of the drawers. Sevastian-Benedikt has the attic to himself and enters it through a trap door. Every night, he has to stand on a chair and hoist himself up; at the crack of dawn he drops to the kitchen floor and his heavy landing awakens everyone else.

  There is no window in the garret. Heads have to be bowed to avoid bumping into its frame. Light filters between the beams. Even in winter, the wind that penetrates the walls is not enough to cool the attic since the stovepipe rises through the middle. Sometimes, when the house is empty, Osip climbs up into the attic and takes in every detail: its expanse to begin with, its smells, and his oldest brother’s treasures. One day, in a bold moment, he stretches out on the mattress. It buckles beneath him and he realizes the shape left by his weight won’t be the same as that left by Sevastian, so he jumps to his feet, beats the straw pallet, and smooths the blanket. Doing this makes the floor creak. At night, Osip hears his brother Sevastian-Benedikt turn over in his sleep; the floor doesn’t creak in quite the same way when he reads, dreams, or touches himself.

  Below, the front door slams. Osip freezes. He’s not allowed in his brother’s room. From the far end of the kitchen come loud scraping noises. He turns, careful not to make the floorboards creak, and nudges open the trap door a crack. His mother has dragged the large basin over to the stove and is boiling water: steam rises from the kettle and the pots. A few years back, when he was six or seven, Osip would sit by his mother’s side whenever she decided to have a bath, keeping an eye on the babies. He said little and would stare at her glistening legs dangling outside the basin. The soft down on her calves and thighs formed captivating landscapes; he’d imagine himself an explorer bent on discovering the unfamiliar horizons there.

  Through the opening, Osip contemplates his mother, her body deformed by the water. She removes a bar of soap from its packaging, wets it, and lathers it between her fingers. She scrubs herself, then sponges off and puts the soap away like a precious object. Osip has never before experienced a scent so refined. He imagines the fragrance wafting up in pink plumes from the washtub to the attic. He’s lying on his stomach, the crack through which he observes his mother bathing not quite as wide as his eye. With his face pressed to the crack, he begins to rock his pelvis imperceptibly against the floor, fingers wrapped around his penis, fist against his belly. His mother steps out of the basin; he catches sight of her plump buttocks and arms, nothing more. She grabs a towel, wraps it around herself, then rubs her body with the leftover oil she saves in a small flask after each of their meals. Her hands slide over her limbs and stroke the hair on her body, each trace a new world. Above all she mustn’t hear him, Osip prays the floor won’t creak. His mother’s nails leave marks on her pink skin, and Osip focuses on the distribution of his weight so his back-and-forth motion doesn’t give away his presence; now his mother’s palms pass along the long plane of her foot, the curve of her calf, run up her thigh and brush her groin, draw close to her sex,
reach her hip, then find the slope of her leg again, down the back this time, stroking her knee, her ankle, her heel. A shudder: something warm trickles between Osip’s fingers. He’s taken unawares. This has never happened before. He’d like to take a closer look but doesn’t dare sit up, he’d make too much noise. In the kitchen, his mother hums as she braids her hair. He rolls onto his back. At the end of his glans is a thin filament that he pulls and pulls. The skinny, sticky cord keeps on coming. This time, his fear of discovery is tinged with newfound pride. His cheeks burn. If only his mother would return to brining her fish. She stays put. He decides to wind the filament around the handle of the trap door, then wipes his fingers on his trousers. He lies there for the longest time. Most likely he dozes off, marvelling at what he’s capable of, dreaming of girls in braids, too many to count and all identical to his mother. When he wakes up, the basin has been stored away, his mother has disappeared, and his sperm has dried.

  He manages to get back down before Sevastian-Benedikt reappears. He drops into the kitchen and, as he does so, aims a few kicks at the pots to mask the sound of his landing. When it comes to hiding, no one is more gifted than he.

  4

  Osip loathes his childhood home as much as he does his life of poverty and his eldest brother’s strength. It’s impossible to breathe; the shack is too small, too full. For him, it means living outside and venturing inside only for food and sleep. During the day, Sevastian-Benedikt roams the forest, the river, and its mouth, so Osip avoids those areas. He walks the scenic lanes bordering the sea on the far side of Seiche. People from the Cité holiday there. In October, the villas are deserted and lie empty until the buds blossom in late April. Osip glues his nose to the villas’ windows and peers at what’s inside — furniture draped in sheets, dust floating in rays of sunshine. He wishes he had the audacity to choose a property and winter in it like a cave. He doesn’t dare.