Read Online Elle by Douglas Glover - Free Book Online Page A

little with the beauty of the landscape, which, as I now recall, I own, by the grace of his majesty Francis I and the intemperate actions of my unforgiving and ungenerous uncle.
    This is a good moment which, as I might have guessed, is really only a prelude to something worse. In Canada, I have learned that feeling good about oneself, entertaining hopes and plans, is a recipe for disaster. I am in the realm of the Lords of Misrule, who, in my former world, caper about only on feast days, disrupting convention, ridiculing the good, tweaking the powerful, exalting the humble, the criminal and the ugly.
    What I notice is that the chuff-chuff of the shore ice is exceedingly close and persistent. It has not the leisurely rhythm of the waves on a calm day but is quicker and more erratic and given to the occasional emphatic snort. This takes more time to tell than to think, and as soon as I think it, I twist round and spy a white bear nosing amid the snowy rocks of my lover’s grave. This should frighten me, but I am not up to much excitement and so simply note the fact that there is a bear sniffing (chuffchuff) at Richard’s grave.
    My experience with bears is limited to watching dancing bears and bear-baiting exhibitions at harvest fairs. I once saw the skin of a white bear sent to King Francis when he was still Prince of Angoulême by the King of Russia. The bear died en route, only the skin arrived. This bear is not exactly white, not as white as the snow, more a yellowish-white, and its fur is worn to the skin in places. It is huge — what you would expect — but the hugeness is oddly deflated. The bear is skin and bones, mostly bones, much as I am myself. And it limps on three legs, the fourth held gingerly above the snow, dripping blood. It is clearly old and weak and dejected and pathetic. And it has come here, drawn by the scent of Richard’s corpse, in hopes of finding a meal it will not have to hunt or fight for.
    It turns its ungainly backside to me, shoves its black nose into a crevice and snuffles wetly, with anticipation. By the look of things, she is female, an old mother bear, a fact which increases my sense of kinship and identification. She begins to dig, using her nose and forepaws to push boulders aside, pausing now and then to lower her nose and sniff. She quivers with a wan excitement that only exaggerates her decrepitude. She is a sad bear, a dying bear, who, like me, is out of place and soon to be extinguished from this land of sudden sunlight and clarity.
    It is like a dream: The white bear scrabbles at the feet of the scarecrow woman in court dress. I am not afraid. The bear resembles me in so many particulars (skin, bones, loss of hope). In the distance, I hear a dog barking, though there can be no dog. I manage to rise to my feet and shuffle toward her, looking bear-like in my bags of bird feathers. I brush against an arquebus, still aimed at the contorted pines, though rusty and useless, the priming powder blown away by the wind. I stumble to the grave mound and subside upon a rock, from which I can smell the bear (pungent yet full of warmth) and observe the rheumy gentleness deep in her eyes. Her eyes remind me of Bastienne, that interrogative look: Why me, Lord Cudragny? What did I do that I should deserve to grow old and find myself starving at winter’s doorstep, digging in a French tennis player’s grave? I probably wear the same look.
    Bear, I say — it is a pleasure to speak to someone, even a bear, though my voice is weak, and I imagine my words freezing before they reach her ears. Bear, I say, you had better leave off digging. I don’t want you to eat Richard. Let his poor body lie in peace. You can eat me. I don’t mind. Don’t hurt your mouth on the bones.
    The bear snorts. Whether from surprise or disgust, I can’t tell. She turns her back on me, resumes digging. She mews like a cat. I think, this is the trouble when two worlds collide: It is