John Fretz is a Montreal poet and writer .
CHILD PRODIGY
Long ago in the fairytale land of Neuchatel
Was a house with a palazzo terrace
And just beyond a stately pine
The lake like a flag unfurled
Blue ripples glimpsed through the town,
And the cathedral that chimed the angelus
The sloping garden had plums
And a row of berry bushes
Des groseillers,
And at the foot
A place where my uncle burned detritus
Above, the train station
A narrow lane rose and passed
The girls’ finishing schools
And to each side, spaciously swaddled
Were other stately mansions,
The town spreading below
The hill flattened
To a formal park
Slender trees stark
Like sundials
In the waning light
A fortification wall
Rose like a hull
Above a cobblestone street
Here children traipsed to school
Past a fountain niche
That gurgled a greeting in passing
And burbled upon your returning
Squeaky shop stores
Announced the work day
Came down at noon and went up again,
Shutter cranks squealing at closing
Half and three quarters positions
Signalling favoured customers
Still greeted with a smile,
And the rest with a frown
Our masthead fir
Lower boughs trailing on the parapet railing
Awash in moonlight,
Like a brilliantine brigantine
Dark shadows, rustling rigging
Adrift ‘neath valley vineyards
Scudding clouds slid
Across a monocle’d eye, 1
Peering, high above the crow’s nest
Down on my balcony window
There were my cousins and my aunt
And for some reason she let it be known
I was her spiritual heir
Strange, it seemed to me
Even at an early age
They were all very artistic
My cousin Catherine made a vase
Ceramic chartreuse etched
With meadow sunlight the colour of sleep
Yearning, youth and alpine thunder
Stirred airless century rooms
Tighter than pyramid blocks
Slivers of life to fill the gaps of generations
That’s all gone of course
The villa changed hands
My uncle went away to live his retirement
With other captains of industry,
Dipped their toes ‘neath the palms of Italian lakes
Yet it was at Lac Lugano beach
The floater I almost swam into.
Later, I drew it on my paradise postcard
My Aunt, how to describe her?
She had a sort of cowlick
Very becoming to her,
Gave her a raffish look
Just exactly the opposite of any idea
You might have of her
When the monsignor happened in town
It was to her capable hands
That the elite fluttered to
She could jiffy up platters
Knew exactly how to prepare
entrées that went with chatter
She was adventurous
In her youth before the war
A governess to a Piedmont heir;
Peasants doffed their caps
When the boy rode by
Then, during the long period of isolation
Of rationing, country kin sending eggs by train
She was a sergeant
To a military court in Berne
She could paint
I have her carnations
Nine, in a pewter tankard
No light for illumination
Was she the fallen one, dying?
Or was it Jo, short for Georgette?
Burly orderlies arrived everyday at noon
To pull her polio leg
Kept it from deteriorating
Outside, the tram passing by
Hardly drowned her screaming
Jo, the smart one
Taught the kids at school
When the teacher was absent;
Never left home
The old apartment, the steep town,
The train emerging from a long tunnel
Shrilly proud of shooting Satan’s keep
It was my younger Aunt
Paved the way
A tennis champion in her youth
Although of that I knew nothing
One of those things
Shut away in the adult past
She was alone a lot
Her husband on the fly
Her children, my cousins busy
With the burden of growing up
And little of the freedom
As we knew it in Canada
Very early on,
My Aunt had her coterie
Examine me informally,
An evening séance
Spiked with cherry, poured discretely
Glasses poised at elbow’s side
The decision was,
My destiny lay as a banker
I who spilled all my pocket change
On the occasion of my invitation
Of everyone to a café
Nonetheless escaping the fate,
Of Seinfeld’s Newman prompting Kramer
In front of the judge, saying
And you wanted to be a banker, a banker!
No, no such. Anyway, I was on vacation
Later I went to film school
But it was during the early years
I first felt a chill in that well-positioned house
My Aunt needed rescuing
But there was no one about
I heard a quarrel with a neighbour,
Severe spindly Madame Trost
Perched on the pitching slope
Had a convenient vantage
Much like a captain’s bridge
O’rlooking my Aunt’s kitchen
From here the crone
Did more than look down her nose
At the lower orders;
Blasted classical music
Cleansing the parvenus
Living cheek by jowl to the gentry
One fine day, windows open
My Aunt with a migraine
Asked Trost to lower it a bit
Her gramophone purgatory,
Politely, but she got all huffy
Said playing good music loudly
Was accepted because of its validity
Trost, nurtured a running battle
A thorn in my Aunt’s side
Little pricks and jabs
Breathed scandal into a life so drab;
Secrets, hung between trousers and a pair of pants
My Uncle, Jesuit trained,
From a farm family of many children,
He the smartest,
Ducking out of the clergy at the last minute
Making his way, meeting a mentor
In the military service
That led to the boardroom
Where it was understood
Senior men had a mistress
Trost, of the upper crust
Her blue-veined legs thin as baguettes
Watering her geraniums
Surveying the scene
Always prompt with a little sermon
At the smallest request
Ungraciously complying,
Drove my Aunt silly
My Aunt painted and when finally abandoned
Held onto the villa
Got a job past the age of retirement
Taking the tram beyond the city limits,
At an horloge factory
Added hand-painted flowers
On pendules Neuchateloises
A delicate task
For which there was a dearth artists
It was piecework
I remember my Aunt saying
She could do slightly more
Than the worst quota
But never the best
By sticking to her finest endeavour
She lived alone now
The children gone
A succession of borders
Men with puzzling pieces
To their makeup;
Rolf, always well-attired,
But with sudden absences
Left his military costume
Unaired in the rafters
It was Trost, gave my Aunt
A dressing-down with her eyes,
Watchtower glances that never
Missed an opportunity
To ridicule my Aunt’s fall from
Bourgeois acceptability
I saw the strain of many things
In my Aunt’s eyes, looking peaked
And once, too, Rachmanioff
Drilling through the foundations
Of mental stability
And a story about garbage bins
Correctly placed in the lane,
Neat soldiers and not layabouts
Advertising a general absence
Of officers in the family
On one of my visits
I offered to so something drastic
But my Aunt wanly smiled
Losing weight
Because of her illness
I wished I’d been her champion
She inquired after my progress
In the film business
Gave me advice
About not marrying an actress
Une petite amie
To please her,
I made up story
At a young age
I’d have been a child prodigy
And after an exhaustive year
With a full load at school,
Tutors that came along
As I toured the concert capitals
Performing, winning prizes
For my piano playing,
I would return to my Aunt’s
For a well-deserved vacation
I would recuperate
She knew my need for nurturing,
Quickly before I arrived
She’d move a baby grand
Into the salon, casual-like
It being understood
That I must have time
Picking cherries with my cousins
Till we burst from over-eating
That I’d go down to the lake
And jump in the rowboat
The girls next door moored
At the bath house,
I ran and savoured
All those things
And then, only when I wanted
I’d practice a bit
And fill the air with exquisite music
Her klatch of friends
Would wait,
Quietly, almost on the sly
Hoping I’d be up for a bit of playing
No cornering me after dinner
Oh yes, heavens
A fine transcendence filling the house
Drifting outside, up the vines
The trellis of roses, rising
To dour Madame Trost’s unfriendly perch
Then one Sunday after church
My Aunt and my cousins
Would’ve stopped for an aperitif
While my Uncle puttered about
With his latest lady friend
A tiny car he bought her, was seen in
Just a tiny auto
With him the director as passenger
Knees practically up to his chin
Wearing a satisfied grin
On that fine summer morn
Sun pouring through haze
Cool dapples under trees
Up the lane I’d race
Past Trost on patrol
Her watering can
Primed for action
Windows open, molecules circulating
The air breathless with anticipation
I’d be at the piano,
Exquisitely, grandiloquently
Sheathing Her Staidness
In a paralysis of ecstasy
Little could she ignore
My Aunt, perspiring up the hill
My Uncle, the rake out for a spin
She, left with the accoutrements
But no solace
Too late for Madame Troll
To display cowardice
Ducking into her house, no,
She governs herself accordingly
The snob, playing her hand
Gauntly offering a critical smile
To my Aunt, drawing abreast
Catching her breath
Properly levelling her gaze
At her tormentor
After all these years
My Aunt, like an actress
Bested Trost with a sally
Oft repeated in our family
Her réplique catching the other
The way sun caught her face
Red as lobster bisque
A reluctant compliment
Dribbles from her lifeless lips
Giving me my due
My Aunt, taking her cue, said,
Alors chez nous...c’est pas des disques
Even now the international
Finishing schools
Are largely irrelevant
Young Canadian Emily’s
Meeting bonafide thingies
Grand nieces of obscure countesses
Gone is that
The last was my Aunt
On her death bed
Saying the name
Of the one she loved
Never spoke a harsh word
Of him, to my knowledge
They burned her old bed
That she’d been so sick in
Everything else went
She’d said she offered him
To come back,
They’d cater out,
Couldn’t cook anymore
Always this illusion
Time and again she
Reread Gone with the Wind
And when she called the last
Time, was pointedly asked
Did she mean the father
Or the son, both names the same
As if it wasn’t obvious;
She had wanted to be buried
In a pauper’s grave;
This wasn’t honoured
And so it goes
Relationships once removed
Reveal the compassionate eye
The oneness of mercy