Feet of the Angels

Also by Evelyne de la Chenelière:

Strawberries in January

Flesh and Other Fragments of Love

Feet of the Angels
© Copyright 2012 by Nigel Spencer.

Published by permission of Evelyne de la Chenelière from the original French,
Les Pieds des anges
.

The excerpt from
The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám
comes from the 1857 translation by Edward FitzGerald.

Playwrights Canada Press

202-269 Richmond Street West, Toronto, ON, Canada M5V 1X1

phone 514.274.4607 x105 •
[email protected]
•
www.playwrightscanada.com

No part of this book may be reproduced, downloaded, or used in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, except for excerpts in a review or by a licence from Access Copyright,
www.accesscopyright.ca
.

For professional or amateur production rights, please contact Marie-Pierre Coulombe of Duchesne Artists Agency

6031 Parc Avenue, Montréal, Québec H2V 4H4

416.960.9686,
[email protected]

Cover art,
La densité de l'homme est dans sa conscience et sa lumière éclaire ses pas…
by Lise Monette,

photography by Lynn Poulin.

Book design by Blake Sproule

Cataloguing data available from Library and Archives Canada.

Chenelière, Evelyne de la, 1975-

[Pieds des anges. English]

Feet of the angels    / Evelyne de la Chenelière

translated by Nigel Spencer

Electronic monograph.

Issued also in print format.

ISBN 978-1-77091-163-5 (pdf).-- ISBN 978-1-77091-164-2 (epub)

I. Title.

We acknowledge the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council (OAC)—an agency of the Government of Ontario, which last year funded 1,681 individual artists and 1,125 organizations in 216 communities across Ontario for a total of $52.8 million—the Ontario Media Development Corporation, and the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities.

Les Pieds des anges
was first produced in French by Théâtre Espace Go, Montréal, between March 31 and April 25, 2009. It featured the following creative team:

Actors: Enrica Boucher, Sophie Cadieux, Mireille Deyglun, Diane Lavallée, Hubert Proulx, André Robitaille, Isabelle Roy, Mani Soleymanlou and Erwin Weche

Director: Alice Ronfard

Assistant director and stage manager: Guillaume Cyr

Set designer: Gabriel Tsampalieros

Costume designer: Maryse Bienvenu

Lighting designer: Caroline Ross

Sound designer: Simon Carpentier

CHARACTERS

Marie: portrayed by two actresses, 1 and 2

Romain: her friend

Paul: her brother

Monique: her mother

Charles: her father

Karine: her half-sister (
Charles's daughter by his first marriage
)

Suzanne: Charles's sister

Jean-Pierre: Suzanne's boyfriend

Doctor: a veiled woman

The Eye: a camera

The Choir: a group varying in size from scene to scene

NOTE

The Choir is probably onstage at all times, and actors emerge from it depending on the scene. By turns, it can thus provide the salsa class, the funeral parlour, the sound stage, etc. It is the communal voice, whether in good faith or in pettiness.

Paul is something of an angel or apparition, sometimes visible, sometimes not, but omnipresent regardless.

MARIE 1
at the microphone, holding a sheet of paper. She is nervous, trembling and dry in the mouth.

MARIE 1

Let me begin by thanking you, ladies and gentlemen, members of the jury, for having read my work so attentively and also for your comments. Let me express my gratitude and affection to all those who have been generous enough to attend today and share my last moments as a student, officially, I mean.

She catches her breath, coughs, swallows and tries to relax.

There are so very many ways to approach the Renaissance: a revolution in all our senses, a conjunction of all types of knowledge, so much an integral part of our lives, our perceptions and all our forms of expression. Our accumulated research has forced us, time after time, to acknowledge the impossibility of embracing the totality of what appears to us as significant, fundamental and enlightening about it. It has been necessary to extract from all this one small aspect of the immeasurable upheaval in an attempt to isolate, at least partially, the fallout from the Renaissance that would forever colour man's relation to his existence. If the Renaissance is first and foremost a period of great exploration, of the spread of knowledge and the end of obscurantism, it is also paradoxically the time of a disenchantment that echoes the very first humanist values, for this new fascination with the self—a creative self certainly, but no less mortal and limited—is a cult necessarily tinged with melancholy. Such adoration of man by man, at the root of the first self-portraits and artists' biographies, resonates today more than ever with the boundless glorification of humankind, quite apart from whatever its accomplishments and exploits may be. Thus have we chosen to concentrate on a specific aspect of systematic humanization in Renaissance art, part of what we may call “the archaeology of image” or more precisely, “the archaeology of representation.”

Before going further, however, let us mention the origin of this interest in a particular detail, which however intimate, constitutes, beyond any personal aspect, an analogy with the thesis… here defended.

We sense that she is no longer looking at what she has written, her eyes wandering from the paper…

MARIE 2

But I changed my mind, that is… I mean… I didn't really want to be here anymore, talking, drawing you into my subject, defending… I… it seemed more than I could handle. That's what I wanted to say five minutes ago. I wanted to tell you, it's nothing personal, but I can't stand you looking at me, and all of a sudden it… oh, I know you're just doing what's expected of you; it's what you have to do, but this convention that makes you… makes us… me… that's what I mean. I'll go on of course, no need to panic… I can do it… but I just felt I had to share this with you, make things clear. Right, yes, I'll go on now. Um, I mean I'll start.

My brother died when I was still a child, and ever since I've been fascinated with angels. I was sure he had become an angel himself, and that reassured me. That was when I decided to collect them… angels. I acquired dozens of awful dust-gatherers: cherubim, archangels and seraphim at first. Then as I developed a more refined taste, I lost interest in them. Instead, I became interested in the portrayal of angels in paintings.

MARIE 1

…while studying art history, research led to the discovery of Giotto. It became apparent that angels were practically flying trunks with no feet under them, sometimes cut off at the knees, or at least hidden by their long, flowing robes that were tattered at the bottom, almost as if someone had chewed them off or set fire to them. Thus we wondered what had deprived them of their feet, and most of all, who had veiled them, torn them off, burned or devoured them.

THE DYING SWAN

A deceased young man lies in his casket.

Behind it, a giant screen, where we see Anna Pavlova performing “The Dying Swan.”

The young man gets up and awkwardly climbs out of the coffin. He faces the screen, back to the audience, and tries to imitate Pavlova.
MARIE
2
and her mother do not see him. Although facing the audience, they are evidently watching the screen too. While talking, they never take their eyes off it.

MONIQUE

“A message of beauty and joy in living
.
” It was Anna Pavlova herself who said that, “Dance as a message of beauty and joy in living,
”
eh?

MARIE 2

Yes Mama.

MONIQUE

It's as though she's floating and flying, don't you think?

MARIE 2

Yes I do.

MONIQUE

Just hanging in mid-air.

MARIE 2

Hanged?

MONIQUE

No, hanging—suspended.

MARIE 2

Oh.

MONIQUE

Like something ethereal, immaterial, so light you'd think she didn't have feet at all, like an angel.

MARIE 2

Angels don't have feet?

MONIQUE

I don't know. I don't think so.

MARIE 2

(
silence
)

MONIQUE

Marie?

MARIE 2

What?

MONIQUE

What effect does this have on you?

MARIE 2

Does what have?

MONIQUE

When you look at it.

MARIE 2

…Does it affect me?

MONIQUE

As though… as if you were all at once… saturated, fulfilled, as though your eyes were immediately full of beauty… of grace, and you are so sure of being a better person that you say to yourself: “It's too much beauty. It can't help but affect me, all this beauty; I've surely been touched by grace, radically transformed, helplessly transmuted into
something different
forever, doubtlessly a better person than I am now.”

MARIE 2

Nope. Doesn't do that for me.

Pause while the mother looks at the coffin, as though the young man were still in it.

Mama?

MONIQUE

Yes?

MARIE 2

If angels don't have feet, then Paul has lost them too?

MONIQUE

Yes, I mean no. Paul still has his.

MARIE 2

But you said he was an angel, and they don't have feet, you said. So Paul hasn't got them, right?

MONIQUE

Paul has feet. He's sort of a special angel, okay?

MARIE
looks at the spot in the coffin where
PAUL
's feet lie hidden.

The dance is over and the young man lies back down in the coffin while a group of people join the two women, offering condolences, kissing, hugging, leaving flowers, etc.

THE FUNERAL HOME

CHOIR A

1.
He looks handsome.

2.
They made him handsome.

3.
Courage.

4.
You'll need courage.

5.
We came to lend you courage.

6.
We didn't see it coming.

7.
We can't always see it from close up.

8.
You can't see.

9.
You can't hear the call for help.

10
. It's not your fault.

11
. It's nobody's fault.

12
. There's no one to blame.

13
. We only see it when it's too late.

14
. He's with the Lord now.

15
. I don't believe in God, but he's with Him anyway.

16
. This is the kind of thing that makes you wish you believed.

17
. He lives in our memory.

18
. We'll never forget him.

19
. Memory, memories.

20
. He'll always be with us.

21
. It was right to have visitation.

22
. It's important to grieve.

23
. It's good you had an open casket.

24
. People need to see him.

25
. At first, you're afraid and you don't want to see, but after you realize it's good to be able to see him.

26
. You have to see.

27
. I looked.

28
. Courage.

29
. We're here for you.

30
. And you have the girls.

31
. You still have the girls.

32
. That's right: Karine and Marie.

33
. Especially Marie.

34
. It's good that you have the girls.

35
. Did she say her brother's become an angel? That's so cute.
(
to someone else
)
Marie says her brother's become an angel.

36
. Kids are tough.

37
. Yeah, tough.

38
. Well, life goes on.

39
. Kids are life itself.

40
. Life goes on.

41
. The video was a good idea. Classical ballet.

42
. Classical ballet. He'd have liked that.

43
. His favourite dance: “The Dying Swan.”

44
. “The Dying Swan”—it is nice, isn't it.

45
. It's a good thing you can do what you like in a funeral parlour these days.

46
. You can do what you like.

47
. Everyone according to his beliefs and personal interests.

48
. You really can do what you like.

49
. They personalize it more these days.

50
. It's more personal.

51
. Before, it used to be the same for everybody. Now it's more personal.

52
. You can even have a cappuccino.

53
. It's better nowadays.

54
. Before, it wasn't so good. Now it's better.

MONIQUE
stands before
the
eye
. During what follows, we sense that she is going to speak, but each time she takes a breath and breaks off. She breathes more and more rapidly. At the same time, a phone rings.

MARIE 1

…throughout the period of the Middle Ages, in fact, portrayals of the angels were amputated, so to speak, but the Renaissance restored their feet to them, a sort of gradual reinstatement of their complete being from hip to toe.

We will attempt to draw conclusions from their partial humanization and their move away from the celestial, floating entities they used to be.

Thus the research has been limited to the archaeology of image, specifically the details concerning feet and their uncertain portraiture. The outcome has been a questioning of the representation of the world at large—sometimes veiled, sometimes not—to the extent that the world itself is revealed to us.

MARIE
2 and
KARINE
are on the phone.
KARINE
is in a phone booth at the hospital.

KARINE

…appendicitis.

MARIE 2

Is it something serious? I can never remember if it is…

KARINE

Not if you catch it in time.

MARIE 2

…And did you?

KARINE

Well… I almost didn't. I mean, I didn't realize. When he wouldn't stop complaining about his stomach hurting, I thought he was
going to die
, as usual. You know how he is. I didn't want to go to the hospital; I didn't want go and wait five hours just for them to tell me my son was stressed out.

MARIE 2

There was no way you could have known, Karine.

KARINE

Well, the doctor told me I waited way too long and it could have turned out really bad.

MARIE 2

Yeah, but at least it didn't.

KARINE

Good thing the school nurse called me right away…

MARIE 2

Is John with you?

KARINE

John's in Toronto…

MARIE 2

Oh yeah, that's right. Is he coming home?

KARINE

…I told him there was no point rushing back. He's due home in two days anyway.

MARIE 2

So it's an infection, is it?

KARINE

They're operating on him now.

MARIE 2

Right away… now?

KARINE

It's so weird to think they're looking at his insides… seeing part of him I'll never see.

MARIE 2

How long do they think it'll take?

KARINE

I should be able to go to the recovery room in two hours. Know what he said just before they put him to sleep?

MARIE 2

What?

KARINE

He said he was afraid he might not recognize himself without an appendix, so I told him it wouldn't show at all.

MARIE 2

Yeah, well, it doesn't…

KARINE

He hated the idea they were going to take away a piece of him, so I told him he didn't need it anyway.

MARIE 2

Sure, it isn't good for anything…

KARINE

I promised he'd recognize himself; boy, I sure hope he will. How much do you wanna bet he'll fix it so he doesn't, just to get me! Anyway, I won't be able to make it… sorry.

MARIE 2

Don't worry about it… give him a kiss for me.

KARINE

I'll be thinking of you… good luck!

MARIE 2

Thanks. Let me know how things go.