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"A Blue Rose Perfume" 1974
- University of Ottawa Press
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Andre Langevin Translated by Basil Kingstone A BLUE ROSE PERFUME Born in Montreal in 1927, Andre Langevin worked asliterary editor of Le Devoir before becoming a broadcaster for Radio-Canada, and has written numerous radio and filmscripts as well as novels and short stories. His first novel, Evade dela nuit, appeared in 1951 and won the Prix du Cercle du livre de France, as did his second, more famous novel, Poussiere sur la ville (1953; Dust Over the City, 1955). The novel is set in a mining town called Macklin—a thinly disguised Thetford Mines, where Quebec's most bitter labour dispute had taken place in 1949 between workers and the owners of the asbestos mines. Concerned not only with workers' health issues (the central character is the town doctor ), the novel also deals with such issues as marital infidelity and existential angst. In the words of critic Gilles Marcotte, it gave readers "more to think about than most of the other books that have come out of French Canada in many years." It may have given them too much to think about, because Langevin's later novels, Le Temps des kommes (1956), L'Elan d'Amerique (1972) and Une chaine dans leparc (1974), translated by Alan Brown in 1976 as Orphan Street, never achieved the critical or popular success of Dust Over the City. "Un parfum bleu-rose," translated here as "ABlue Rose Perfume" by Basil Kingstone, first appeared in 1974 in the Montreal magazine Liberte'. It is a simple story—a man whose wife has committed suicide tries to trace her last movements —but it explores many of the themes that have occupied Langevin since his first novel: marital infidelity, existential doubt, and the lack of a truly committed social conscience. "A Blue Rose Perfume" is reproduced from "A Decade of Quebec Fiction," a special issue of Canadian Fiction Magazine, no. 47 (1983) and wasoriginally published under the tide "Un parfum bleu-rose" in Liberte,no. 62 (March-April, 1969). 284 ANDRE LANGEVIN s he saw the city from this window?" the man asks. Motionless, his hands flat on the spread-out newspaper , he is looking at the livid emptiness, suddenly dotted with a thousand clusters of light. The tall buildings mired in the dying January daylight are lit up, straighten up with a jerk, just as they are about to keel over and disappear. "She tried to see the river and the mountains—then she got dizzy, I suppose," he adds, in a faint voice which hardly carries in the deepening gloom, but which I can hear clearly above the loud digestion of a snowblower on the street, twelve floors below, and a shrill music trickling out of the radio like water from a dripping tap. The presence of this tall figure with its back to me, silhouetted against the picture window of the apartment, hems me in, almost physically . "Anyway, she came here? It isher? You recognized her!" "I can't see now. Let me put a light on." "No. Later." As he turns back towards me he raises his voice, but not in anger. His overcoat gives him unnaturally broad shoulders. With both hands he brandishes the newspaper, now rolled up. "As you wish." "This time of day is like her." His voice becomes even fainter. Behind him now, the countless lights draw a picture of an almost warm city in the night. I turn the radio off and sit down in an armchair a few steps from him. The snowblower has suddenly fallen silent, and between us there is an interminable wave of silence. "I'm sorry. How can you be expected to understand? I'm looking for ... something like a perfume, or a breath . . . I've often come across her in the dark... away from home ... Jeanne liked to get lost." "Jeanne, you said?" "She came here, didn't she? Why did they find nothing in her purse but a ticket which she had written your address on?" "Her name was Anne." A BLUE ROSE PERFUME 285 S S [44.204.164.147] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 09:49 GMT) "Anne or Jeanne, it makes no difference. You recognized her? It's her picture?" "Yes and no. Anne had a different expression, a different smile, a passion—" "It's her!" "If you wish." "It's not a question of what I wish!" "I'm sorry. Yes, it's Anne." "Jeanne! What was she doing in yourplace?" I see his silhouette storm up...