Nia

Allan Inc. Wargon

Description

This is the story of a man and woman in love, with all the doubt, hesitation, delusion, jealousy, desire, passion, ecstasy and pain
of people thus enthralled.

The man, Robert, is every joy, every fear, every terrible thought and high-minded aspiration, every conceit, every strength and weakness of mind and body that any man has ever felt and known but only reluctantly acknowledged in himself. Nia reflects the tenderness, hope, fear, suffering, attempted dignity and primordial rage of all women.

The story is written so intimately and boldly, yet so subtly and nakedly, that the reader comes to Nia and Robert's ultimate and final humanity with a chastened heart.

Sujets

• Histoire
• History

Informations

• Publié par: eBookIt.com
• Date de parution: 21 février 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780986567155
• Langue: English

Extrait

ALSO BY ALLAN WARGON
 
I Am Come Into My Garden, My Sister, My Bride
A poetic novel in appreciation of the Song of Songs
 
David
A biographical novel of the biblical King David
 
Showbiz, And More
A novella, sonnets and three stories
 


 
 
Nia
 

 
Allan Wargon
 
 

 
PIED PIPER
BOOKS


Copyright © 2011 Allan Wargon
 
Excerpts from this publication may be reproduced under licence from Access Copyright, or with the express written permission of Pied Piper Books, or as permitted by law. A reviewer may quote brief passages in a review. Otherwise all rights are reserved and no part or all of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, scanning, recording or otherwise, except as specifically authorized.
 
In this work of fiction the names of people and places are used with creative imagination, and are in no way related to, and certainly do not reflect upon, actual persons and places known by those names.
 
References to Peanuts are made with the kind permission of its creator, Charles M. Schulz.
 
Copyright is registered with the Library of Congress and the Canadian Intellectual Property Office.
 
Cataloguing data available from Library and Archives Canada
 
Nia / Allan Wargon
 
ISBN 978-0-9865-6715-5
 
Typeset by Gordon Robertson Design, Toronto, Canada.
Cover: Simon Jacob and Sholom Wargon
 
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
 
Published in eBook format by Pied Piper Books
825941 Mel-Nott TL, R R 2, Shelburne, ON L0N 1S6 Canada
 
Converted by http://www.eBookIt.com
 


 
 
 
This novel, though it is fiction, is dedicated
to a wonderful woman who actually lived,
died, and left indelible memories.
The world is very much richer for her
having been in it.
 
Part One
 

 
 
A few evenings ago I was lying here,
just as I am now. We’d had supper here
on the porch and Nia was sitting on the edge
of the cot, the small of her back against my thigh.
I drew her down and she came meltingly,
her body to mine, her mouth to my mouth.
I touched the sweet hollow between her breasts,
held their warm heaviness, nuzzled her soft cheek,
kissed the hair beside her temple. All yielded to me.
You have changed, I said.
She sat up then, her hands in her lap,
and looked out over the water. Stars were in the sky
beyond the porch rails, the trees on the far shore dark,
stirring, doubled with star glints in the glimmering pond.
Nia, her hair unpinned and loosely off her neck,
sat looking at the quietly moving water. I waited,
wanting to hold her, yet not wanting to intrude.
After a moment she said, I guess when you
belong to somebody, you belong completely.
 
Yes. But everything is more complex than it seems.
 

1
The rising tide carried off a dory that was vital to the scene. It had been drawn up on the shore but no one had thought to secure it. There was no other boat; the motor ship that had brought them to this isolated cove was not due back for another three hours. The actors shrugged and sat down, while some of the crew, delighted by this divine rebuke to their director, began dismantling the equipment. But Robert, frowning fiercely, told them to leave everything as it was. Stripping to his shorts he plunged into the waves and swam after the dory, which an offshore breeze was swiftly driving seaward. He was all but out of sight, had swallowed some water, and was beginning to thrash, when he reached the boat and pulled himself aboard it.
Nothing was said while they finished the scene, but that evening, when the director was working alone in his room — he wrote reports on each day’s filming, explaining how he meant the shots to be edited — the others discussed the incident. The crew held there had been something weird in Robert’s feat, while the actors, who recognized swagger when they saw it, nonetheless wondered why he’d taken such a fearful risk.
*
Robert had dragged his crew though continual discomfort and danger. They were chilled by rain, burnt by the sun, cut by rocks; they were seasick, they went without meals and slept on bare boards. The men grumbled and occasionally shouted; once one wept, others reproached Robert to his face. And secretly they plotted to denounce him when they got back. But they obeyed — overcome by his sheer stubbornness, by what seemed his absolute devotion to getting the best-possible shot.
None of the crew had worked with Robert before, and had assumed from his reputation that he would be slow, moderate, even timid. Indeed, some suspected the assignment was meant to ruin him: why else, they had argued, would Eldon have recruited an arty director to shoot such rough stories? They could not believe that the producer simply wanted to exploit Robert’s talent, for these crewmen, more than most — they’d been chosen for their toughness — looked upon talent as an erratic and somewhat unmanly quality. So they had not been at all prepared for the person they now had to deal with, and feeling that something singular was at work in him they were wary and scornful, and sometimes a little afraid.
*
There were some nuns in the Cape Breton village where the crew was staying. These half-dozen sisters made up the teaching staff of the Catholic high school, and they lived together in a drab wooden house leaning at the low corner of a rambling plot that also held the brine-pitted church, the old graveyard, and the rectory. This last building, like the first, was coated with weathered clapboard, but it was graced by three tall columns and a wide verandah. Standing at the high end of the property, it had a commanding view of the village and its curving harbour.
Robert had been shown through the nuns’ house at the request of the priest, a robust passionate man with heavy hands and a ruddy face, whose strangled love of life constantly threatened to break through his piety. The son of a coal miner, the good father had been one of that dedicated group of students, fostered by St. Frances Xavier University, who had become leaders in the cooperative movement. This priest could be moved to tears by the mystery of the mass, but with the film people Father Jovian was as little pontifical as a playful puppy. He invited them to huge dinners of lobster, which was out of season, blessed their beer to give it an extra kick, offered prayers for the success of their movie, and served them holy water that turned out to be contraband ninety-proof whiskey. At first the cast and crew were astonished at this freedom, but they soon took it for granted, and began to treat him familiarly, and with a tinge of contempt.
If the priest felt slighted he didn’t show it; he forgave the others for the director’s sake. In Robert’s intensity he sensed a loneliness as deep as his own, and he could not do enough for him, even to satisfying his eagerness — passed off as a naïve interest in Catholicism — to see the inside of a nunnery.
Actually, Robert had been motivated by a mischievous, yet humble, romantic longing. He had been told that the mother superior, who was briefly absent, was young, good-looking and well educated, and it was to penetrate her surroundings, to see and feel and smell some of the details of her existence, that he had asked to be shown the house in which she lived. He was in luck: hers was the only bedroom door open, just at the top of the stairs, and while they stood there — the nun conducting them was pointing out to Jovian a jagged crack in the ceiling — Robert could see that on her desk the superior had some dainty writing paper of the sort women sometimes use for intimate correspondence, and that there were modern novels among the books that filled the shelves under her window. These personal touches enchanted him; sight unseen he became infatuated. Two nights later, when he saw her window lit and partly open, he wanted to climb to the woodshed roof under it and whisper in to her — stand-in though she was. On the hill, in the dark, he struggled with this fit. Finally he went on his way.
Was he aware of what drove such exaggerated desires? Yes, partly; it was a sort of delirium trembling within him. But vanity would not let him admit he was so little in control of his own behaviour. He liked to think of himself as inflexible in his purpose, ready to do anything to further the cause. This lofty self-regard prompted him to help with the most menial tasks; he would even carry equipment and drag cables. But often he only got in the way, and his zeal was galling to those who were simply trying to do their job.
*
Their next location was Sable Island, called the graveyard of the Atlantic because of the many ships wrecked on its shifting shoals. The filmmakers were put aground there, in waist-deep water, during a blustery dusk, with high seas heaving. Two of the landing boats were swamped and half filled with sand, littering the surf with kegs and cases. The drenched sailors cursed the wind, the waves, the boats, the cargo, while in the bewildering dark the flickering lanterns held by men from the rescue station, who were eagerly awaiting their provisions, particularly the bottled sort, only added a final bizarre touch to the scene.
*
In the morning the crew searched for a lost set of earphones, and though it was a spare set, which the soundman said he could do without, Robert set off alone in the evening to see if its wooden container might have beached farther up shore. Engrossed in looking at scallop shells, seaweed, and the skeletons of ships buried in sand, he failed to notice the fog coming in. Suddenly it engulfed him, and was soon followed by night. The rescue station, where they had slept, was on the other side of the island; in the haze and darkness he could not find the path by which he had come.
Once he turned inland, but swiftly sank into soft ground and drew back, for he had been warned that the bogs were bottomless . A fine