Blue Ravens: Historical Novel (45 page)

Nathan was about to negotiate the sale of the two vertical portrayals,
Totemic Wounds
and
Blue Horses at the Senate
, when the German collector rushed forward and shouted that he would buy the entire collection of blue ravens, twenty paintings. Conversations in the gallery were hushed, almost a ghostly silence. Suddenly the private negotiations over two portrayals became a public transaction of the entire exhibition of blue ravens.

Nathan directed the mysterious German to discuss the unusual declaration at the back of the gallery. The collector had not revealed his name to anyone that night. Aloysius was summoned later to the discussion, and then the sensational announcement was made that the
Corbeaux Bleus: Les Mutilés de Guerre
, the entire twenty blue raven portrayals, had been sold to a single collector.

Aloysius announced that he would accept commissions to paint similar scenes in the series. He had already agreed to paint two more vertical totems, and that was the necessary condition to negotiate the sale of the entire collection of blue raven portrayals.

Nathan was surprised only because the portrayals sold on the night of the exhibition. He was convinced that the entire blue raven series would have sold in a few weeks time. The German collector paid in cash that night, and actually had the series packed the next day for immediate shipment to a gallery in Berlin, Germany.

Nathan invited friends and veterans to a celebration of drinks and dinner
at the Café du Dôme. André and Henri were grateful to be invited, but they could not face the curious spectators, and they could not eat or drink with a mask. André tried to explain that the sight of their broken faces would distract the company.

Aloysius rightly refused to accept the defense of a grotesque wounded face as a reason to avoid dinner with friends. He insisted that André and Henri show their wounded faces, then and there, and that would resolve any concern about spectator avoidance. Everyone consented to circle the veterans at the Café du Dôme.

We told the story of the blue ravens sale over and over with variations, and each story became more elaborate and ironic. The German, in the last stories, was a spy for the exiled emperor, and would secure and destroy avant-garde savage art and especially the scene with Saint Michel and the Kaiser, or the art collector was a
metis
native and veteran of the war, or the collector was a secret buyer for the British Museum. That story was quickly shouted down as arrogant and elitist, but the story that lasted the longest that night, and had the most convoluted variations, was the art collector as colorblind gallery owner who had no idea what he had actually acquired in the name of blue ravens. Aloysius was teased in every story, and he deserved to be teased for several days about the sale of
mutilés de guerre
and blue ravens.

André and Henri raised the metal masks and used a fork to eat sausage and mashed potatoes, and sipped wine from a large spoon. My brother teased the veterans that there was not much chance to overdrink with a spoon of wine at a time. André raised the mask and laughed, and everyone at our circle of tables drank wine with a large spoon that night.

Nathan told another story about the collector, that he was so eager and concerned about acquiring the entire series that he paid three thousand francs more than the actual cost of the entire series, and my brother was paid seventy percent of the total amount. The money news generated many teases, slight tributes, and some ironic envy.

Marie toasted my brother, toasted the veterans, praised the compassion and integrity of great gallery owners, and then turned directly to Nathan. She touched his gentle face, and he blushed, so the others reached out and touched his face even more. The circle of veterans raised spoons of wine
to honor his dedication to native art. Nathan turned rouge, more than the slight touch of rouge in the portrayals of blue ravens by my brother.

Aloysius told the veterans that he was not a schooled artist, but a native visionary painter, and he would not have been recognized as widely without the interest and support of the gallery, and my stories would not have been published in translation without the generous and direct assistance of Nathan Crémieux.

Marie insisted that the stories be continued at her atelier at Le Chemin du Montparnasse. Nathan paid for the dinners and ordered a case of wine delivered to the atelier. The stories were in natural motion that night at the Café du Dôme, and resumed at the atelier with even greater character and irony.

Augustus, my uncle, convinced me that the best stories were created and revealed in the most spirited situations and natural places. Natives continued the stories of our ancestors in natural motion at the headwaters of the Great River. The stories continued at the livery stable, government school, reservation hospital, Orpheum Theatre, Château-Thierry, Square du Vert-Galant, Café du Dôme, and Le Chemin du Montparnasse.

I imagined the presence of my uncle that night and we anticipated the sites of our best stories. Most of my stories had been published, and the site of memory was the Galerie Crémieux. Misaabe told stories in his cabin on Bad Boy Lake, and even the mongrels were enchanted. Odysseus was a great singer on the road, and his stories on a summer porch, at the livery stable with his horses, and over dinner and absinthe were truly
memorable.

I presented signed copies, with a dedication to the memory of Augustus Hudon Beaulieu, to the veterans and friends that night at the Café du Dôme.

Marie told marvelous ironic stories about expatriate artists and sculptors, and the stories were always captivating and memorable in her atelier. The banquet stories of Amedeo Modigliani, Juan Gris, Fernand Léger, Blaise Cendrars, Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Béatrice Hastings, and others were not only visual memories, but opera scenes and singable. I told many versions of native stories by visual memory, and the atelier was a spirited site of art and trader stories that night.

André must have been inspired with the mood and sprightly humor, the natural irony, and liberty in the beams of the atelier, because the stories he told that night were poignant, momentous, and catchy. He had created a character named the Façade Man, and his stories were forever connected to the sites of ateliers, cafés, art galleries, and the River Seine.

Façade Man covered the caverns on his face with a metal mask. He could not remember the origins of his face, the curve of his jaw, the natural pucker, tease, and gestures were only faces created in stories, not by memory.

Façade Man had no sense of age by the natural wrinkles of his face. The grafted skin was lumpy and hard, ageless. He had no visual memory of his own face, no favor of form or natural color in the morning light. Only some animals and birds were aroused with his sense of magic in a metal mask.

Façade Man collected masks, and wore a different mask every day, masks of countenance, and he imagined the stories of the mask, the presence of the mask in public. He wore the masks of shamans, carnival dancers, ceremonial masks, tragic and comic theater masks, and even various gas masks. The many masks of demons and the demented, and with sprouts of wild hair, were not as sinister or as ominous as the ordinary military gas masks.

Façade Man never found a trace or memory of his face in a mask, but he found a profound sense of presence in some masks. Gas masks brought him comfort when he could not bear the mirror image of the hideous cavity on his face. The gas mask tormented more people than his own broken face. The mask that saved his memory, and became a connection to the world was a twisted wooden mask, a false face, and a mask similar to the masks of the False Face Society of the Iroquois.

Façade Man served in the military with a native soldier, and learned how to carve masks. The spiritual power of the false face masks was derived from the way the masks were carved from a live tree, and the tree continued to live after the release of the mask. The mask was the memory of the tree, and the mask became the memory of his original face. The carved mask was his spiritual liberty. The mask scared some people, mostly children, but most people were more curious than scared. The wooden mask created a sense of age, motion, and liberty for the Façade Man.

Marie invited me to stay for the night. I was ecstatic, of course, to be intimate once again, and to touch her sensuous body. The stories never seemed to really end that night, as most of the veterans and our friends had
just wandered away. André and Henri removed their masks and slept overnight on the floor of the atelier, and with a secure sense of presence.

Marie moved closer, rested on my chest, and our breath was natural, a secret union. We heard the laughter in the room below, the murmur over wine and the last stories, and that human sound created a natural sense of solace.

››› ‹‹‹

I read book twenty-four of
The Odyssey
, the last in the book of adventures by Homer. I was at the window in the early morning light. Marie was asleep, a gentle spirit nearby, her face radiant in the rouge light. Paris was my best story, and no other place would ever be the same.

I should have said that you were one of those who should wash well, eat well, and lie soft at night as old men have a right to do; but tell me, and tell me true, whose bondman are you, and in whose garden are you working? Tell me also about another matter. Is this place that I have come to really Ithaca? I met a man just now who said so, but he was a dull fellow, and had not the patience to hear my story out when I was asking him about an old friend of mine, whether he was still living, or was already dead and in the house of Hades.

Believe me when I tell you that this man came to my house once when I was in my own country and never yet did any stranger come to me whom I liked better.

A
BOUT THE
A
UTHOR

Gerald Vizenor is a prolific writer and
literary critic, and a citizen of the White Earth
Nation of the Anishinaabeg in Minnesota. He is
Professor Emeritus of American Studies at the
University of California, Berkeley. Vizenor is
the author of several novels, books of poetry,
and critical studies of Native American
culture, identity, politics,
and literature.