Is it just me, or is it getting English-er out there?

GLEAMS THEATRE presents The Bald Soprano at Geordie Space
THE BALD SOPRANO is about the peculiarity of English life, English fires, English food, English chairs, English socks, English men, English women and everything English.Yes, all this is shocking, especially the first time you encounter it. After the war, Eugene Ionesco, who lived in France, began studying English, and wrote a play about the experience. Presumably he had also noticed how autistic, even catatonic, phrasebook-English speakers appear. Perhaps he felt lost without his native Roumanian and French - continental languages that entwine around reality, while English boxes it. Or perhaps he feared the world was growing Englisher day by day.This is where the Bald Soprano began: a reaction to culture shock. But Gleams Theatre's director Constantin Sokolov takes it a few steps farther. There's an introductory sequence that includes a fascinating monologue from another Ionesco play, THE CHAIRS, followed by a sequence in which the actors announce there will not be a play because the theatre is empty. Actor-ushers order the audience to get up and move to the other side of the theatre. Without a word, everyone cooperates, exchanging glances. Do these people know what they're doing? Is this a play? or something else? Should we leave now to avoid further embarrassment?The cattle are reseated. The play begins. A scene in London. A couple, seated in chairs. The husband is doing a crossword puzzle. The wife is darning socks. We know they are English by their accents, although their cellphones keep ringing, forcing them to switch to their real-life personas, before becoming British again. These improvised interruptions help emphasize the awkwardness and absurdity of the play.Inevitably the wooden English characters and their absurd dialogues become nearly comprehensible, and by Act Two we're almost interested in their 'story' -- which goes to show it's practically impossible to write something meaningless. Despite our best efforts to eliminate it, meaning creeps into everything. Time and habit create the illusion of familiarity and repetition builds suspense, even as Big Ben chimes 17 times whenever it pleases. Characters move like mechanical toys, changing chairs with no rhyme or reason; nevertheless, before long, they seem almost alive and the audience begins to care what will happen next. Somewhere between tension and total boredom, we await the grand finale of nonsensical lines shouted into space by maniacal robots on amphetamines.Despite a few gimmicks too many, this play was strangely satisfying. Could it be because, since 2001, we've been living in wartime? Or a simulation of wartime? In the beginning, wasn't Theatre of the Absurd a response to war and the psychosis it unleashes in every little corner of our lives? Didn't absurdity come into vogue between the wars? Aren't plays like this a way to relax and let go and indulge in a little controlled insanity after you've been trapped for too long inside the real, out-of-control kind?I'm all for more surrealism and absurdity in theatre. Nothing in the world is as solid or structured as an English play or English "life". No solid threat is real unless we allow it to entrap us in the fear of it. Down with television and newspapers. Down with the prison called English. The best response to the English Terror is a sense of irony and the absurd -- usually acquired after real immersion in a foreign language.

Oh India

An Awful Thing

Vermont was a white cathedral swept clean by a winter storm, the first time I heard Ray Carver read his work, along with John Irving and Grace Paley.

I knew nothing of Carver till that January, 1978 at Goddard College. Carver was the last reader that evening. He got up, awkwardly, and read "Fat." Then he read "Why Don't You Dance?" The room seemed to go still after he finished.

I doubted I’d get accepted into his workshop – everyone seemed to want to study with him. The following day, though, I was in.

The frozen sunlight in Carver’s office that morning nearly blinded me. I felt lifted out of my real life, back home in Montreal. We talked about what I would do over the semester. We talked about writers we both liked. Kafka, Isaac Babel, Milan Kundera, Rainer Maria Rilke.

Sparing with advice; generous with encouragement, he seemed to see that we all had to find our own way in this business. Whatever business that might be.

"Never write a line that you don't mean." He’d been reading my work, so that line really hit me, as if it were aimed at me personally:

"And don't ever imagine drinking will make you a better writer,” he warned. The thought had never even occurred to me. I didn't even drink, I told him, and he seemed surprised.
We were miles apart, I could see that.

We said goodbye and I went home to my secretarial job and chronically ill mother. For the next six months we would work by correspondence, communicating every two weeks. I would send him my writing, reports on my reading, and he would send me comments and recommendations for reading.

On the bus home, I had started reading his first collection, "Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?" nominated for a National Book Award. By the time I reached Montreal, I’d had a taste of what it might feel like to be born suicidally depressed. Maybe I should have chosen another mentor.These bleak rooms were not my world, and I had to force myself to finish the book.

In Vermont, Carver had said” "Always try to write a story in a single sitting. Even if it's only a first draft, put it all down. When you get to the end, you’ll know."

I sent him a piece I had been working and reworking for over a year. Within a week, I had his response – the first of those 3-page single-spaced commentaries. He typed them the way he talked, piling up impressions, questions -- sometimes groping for phrases and worrying a topic until he had pinned it down right. He was concrete in his thinking, repetitive in a rhythmic way, like a character in one of his stories.

He said parts of the story I’d sent him – which had been short-listed for a prize in Toronto -- were interesting, but overall he found the piece “mawkish.” He advised me to get to work on something new.

For the next six months, I tried to write about my life in Montreal, but the more I wrote, the less fascinating it began to seem. My characters often babbled and did inexplicable, self-destructive things and I had no idea why. Carver commented that I was stuck at the surface, not going deep enough. I needed time to find my real material he said. I’d just have to allow my life to unfold.

He recommended I read a southerner called Barry Hannah for his gorgeous, natural style.

The first story of mine he read, and liked - "A Journal of Mona" – had been accepted by a Toronto magazine.

"Now that Mona's gone, I feel the need to reconstruct her," it began. It was about a self-conscious night club dancer who couldn’t get her act together.

"Write more about that world up there, where you're from," he said, at our first meeting. "It's sophisticated and fascinating. Don't be tempted to get involved with theory, though -- it will distract you Just write your stories."

Carver came from Port Angeles, Washington. I tried to imagine such a place, a blank far corner of America, gaping out at the Pacific. I couldn't see how people lived or how they wrote there. Montreal surrounded me with its gyrating mysteries which, on paper, lacked form and direction. A prisoner of layers and textures, I was trapped in a crammed mansion, but there was little natural light in there.

The second and last time I saw him was in June or early July – I had returned to Vermont to wrap up the semester.

I thanked him for all this letters and comments. It had been a great experience but I had decided I couldn’t afford to continue paying the high fees at Goddard. I was dropping out of the program.

It was hot. I wore a dress that looked like a nightie. He seemed worried about me. I had been working as a secretary at a college, taking care of my mother, writing in my spare time while trying not to be too influenced by Ray Carver.

Usually shy and taciturn, this time he was talkative. He was finally done with drinking, he said, having fallen in love with a poet named Tess Gallagher. That was why some of his letters to me had been mailed from Texas, where she lived. And also from other towns in America – he was invited all over to give readings, lectures.

By then I had come to admire his stories, how they reveal a tiny cosmos feeding on deep currents of malaise. His characters often seem handicapped by a spellbinding ignorance -- a crippling fear of the vast unknown. Each a living pebble, in the desert of the greatest country on earth.

I told him I could never write like that -- and wouldn't even try. I’d leave it to him to squeeze the world into a space the size of a diner.

I had noticed some of the other workshop students had started sounding like Ray Carver -- but none of them were. In his understated way, he could overwhelm you. It was dangerous. Silence in his stories suggested great depths underneath, but students were falling into the trap. Hoping if they imitated his style, they could also absorb his secrets, by osmosis.
He heard me out. "Never mind. They’ll never know what you know."

It sounded like a compliment, whatever he meant by it. I had no idea what I knew – only what felt true and false in the moment.

He still smoked, and his voice was muffled and hoarse. We sat in the noisy cafeteria for our final conference. I had to strain to hear what he was saying. He was a mumbler, I was a jumbler. His words dissolved before they reached my ears. Several times I asked him to repeat himself – he acted as if communication were a frustrating, painful thing, not his forte. He was really a very shy man, built large like an extrovert who has abdicated the role.

His lips were moving inaudibly. I leaned forward. "You know, it's an awful thing –“ The rest of the sentence came out clear, but made no sense.

After a pause, I asked: "Did you just say, ‘It’s an awful thing to take a bite out of an old Arab?’”

”No,” he laughed. "No, I didn't say that.”

In retrospect, it could have been an opening line for a Ray Carver story: like “A man with no hands came to take a photograph of my house.” It also described what it felt like to study with Carver.

He started to repeat what he’d actually said, then stopped to laugh some more. And so our last meeting dissolved in wave after wave of silly giggling. At least I’d made Ray Carver laugh.
Before we said goodbye for good, there was one further item of business. Because of all his moving from place to place over the semester, he’d mailed his evaluation a few days before he received my final package which was late. There was a sentence in his commentary that needed deleting, as it suggested I had not completed my work. He said I should contact the Records Office about that, and get it fixed.

He said he could get me a scholarship to Iowa, if I wanted to go there. He thought I should. All the best young writers graduated from that MFA program. If I enrolled, I’d have it made, he said.

I said I’d think about it.

I never did contact the office or get that comment removed, so it’s probably still there on my record. Maybe he was right the first time -- something was unfinished. It didn't seem to matter then. My mother was dying; I knew I would not go to Iowa. Anyway, where was Iowa? I was a city girl from Montreal where there was plenty that was fascinating to write about -- exotic tales that could light up all the diners of America. Or so I thought, not knowing what lay ahead.

A few years later, when he was very famous, I tossed our entire correspondence into a black plastic bag and left it on the sidewalk for the garbage men to collect. I still didn't want Carver’s influence -- or anyone else's -- in my life.

For a while, life got the better of my writing. For which, I think, I'm grateful.

Early in 1988 my first novel, based on that first short story -- was accepted. The publisher asked me if I knew someone who could write a blurb for the back cover. I found a paragraph from Carver's 1978 evaluation. I wrote to Carver for permission to quote from it, but never heard back. Soon afterwards, he appeared to me in a dream. Yes, he remembered me. No, he couldn’t be of much help. Then he waved as if to say, Good luck!

A few months later, I heard he was dying of lung cancer. Come to think of it, I never wrote a short story after that. Instead, I wrote personal essays, book reviews, novels.

“Never write a line you don’t mean.” The few times I repeated that advice to my students, I tried not to make it sound like a death sentence. Hard as I try, I can’t think of a more awful thing than sitting down and finishing a story in one go, the way he did it.

Hello and Welcome

Before I begin, here are some links to my other sites:

http://anndiamond.net
http://anndiamond.blog-city.com (closing December 31)

An interview with Duplessis Orphan Silvio Day

An interview with Duplessis Orphan Silvio Albert Day

November 2005
Interview and translation by Ann Diamond

Q: When you were working at St Jean de Dieu, you were responsible for –

When I worked at St Jean de Dieu, I was there as a patient. I worked in the Vestiaire des Morts -- the Locker Room of the Dead, where they wash the bodies and put them in the refrigerator. One bathroom was for washing the dead bodies. That was the washroom. And all around were refrigerators.

Q: And there were corpses of children--

Yes. I worked for a year and four months in the Vestiaire des Morts. All I did, I went to get the bodies from the operating room. I didn’t go into the operating room, but the nuns and the doctors there had masks on their faces.

A nun said to me, “Monsieur Silvio.”

“Yes, sister.”

“Could you stay there, and wait in the hallway?”

My buddy and I waited.

And the nun said, “Okay, Mister Silvio, would you please go get the stretcher?”

I said, “Yes, sister.”

So then they got the person, and it was a child. They put the child on the stretcher. They rarely covered it with a white sheet. So I went towards the elevator, to go down to the basement. The Locker Room of the Dead was down in the basement there.

Once I arrived, the nun said, “Mister Day.”

And I said, “Yes, sister.”

“Mr. Silvio, you took your time.”

I said, “Sorry. The elevator wasn’t working well, and I had to wait.”

So then the nun took charge of bringing the body to the washroom. There was a big sink where they put the dead bodies to be washed.

I took the arms and my partner took the legs and we put the body in the big flat sink, it was a flat sink which had a drain for the blood to run out.

In the beginning, she had said to me, “Go ahead, do your work, and I don’t want you talking!”

So I used to put the body down in the sink, but very rarely I removed the bonnet, because these patients who were operated on always had a blue bonnet and a blue jacket, and a pair of white socks. So anyway, this time I took off the bonnet, I removed the bonnet, and there was a flap of skin, and then the flesh of the brain was hanging there in the sink in front of me. It just sort of poured out like a tap, and it was all over me.

I let out a scream. There was no hair, it had been shaved all around, which was why the skin was hanging like that, swinging back and forth.

I was shocked. “Mother of God!”

My partner didn’t do anything. We had an orphan there, and he was supposed to take care of that.

“Silvio, you better not make any noise.”

It was my job to wash the bodies. But I didn’t know there had been an operation. Once I saw that flap of skin, which hung there, moving and getting soft, and then I saw the brain, I didn’t say a word, I took the bonnet, and I picked up the piece of brain, and I put it back in the bonnet.

In fact, there was a paid worker there who said, “Listen, stay where you are and don’t open your mouth, don’t talk about this. Everything here, stays in here. It doesn’t go outside.” He was the one who put on a bandage to hold in the brain. I started washing, and when I finished, I put the body in the refrigerator. The freezer.

Later, in the evening, the telephone rang. A nun said, “Well, Mr. Silvio?”

I said, “Yes, my dear sister.”

“Would you go to the operating room again? Yes, again! And keep quiet. If you’re late, you will be punished. You’ll be sent to the cells.”

I took the stretcher, and made a dash for the top floor. The operating room was on the fifth floor. We got the stretcher, and headed for the elevator to the fifth floor, and then we went down a passage which led to the operating room.

“Well, well. Hello. You sure took your time.”

“I did my best. There were people in the elevator.”

“Please leave the stretcher there. Go sit down.”

“Pardon?”

“I said, take a seat and don’t touch anything.”

“No, I won’t touch anything.”

The stretcher rolled away all by itself. We didn’t say a word. We sat down. And it took a long time. I watched the clock in the hallway. And eventually, it was 3:30 am.

The two nuns said, “Mr. Silvio, would you mind…”

The doctors wore gloves and green uniforms, and there was a man there, and some others, and there was a lot of blood.

So I got up and I was going to take everything away.

“No, don’t touch those!”

I backed off, and waited for the other guy, and then I headed down to the Locker Room of the Dead, and once I was in there, I said “Oh, Lord, not another one!”

I removed the white sheet, and started pushing the stretcher toward the sink. I took off the jacket – another child, around 10 or 11 years old.

Anyway, I took the patient, and put him on the stretcher or the big flat sink, and I said, “Okay, I’ll take off his jacket and his pair of white nylon socks.”

I took off the cap, and the other guy said, “Hey, those are holes, as if a machine had drilled through his head like that …”

I froze. That’s when our boss said, “Mr. Silvio.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Don’t say a word and do your job.”

So I washed the body, and I took the bonnet and put it back on, and then I took the jacket. And I used the method the other guy used: I stapled a ticket to the jacket, to identify them by name.

Q: And how many times did you have to transport dead bodies from the operating room?

Around 60 times. I worked a lot of hours per week.

Q: And what year was this?

In the 1960s, 50s.

Q: You were how old?

I was born in 1942. And at that time I was about 18, 19.

Q: Did you undergo any experiments yourself? Were you drugged?

Well, one thing: I was treated with Largactil, 25 mg. After that, you’re like a vegetable. We were like mummies; we walked like mummies. At one point they wanted to send me for electroshock, but they said I wasn’t ready yet. So then they said they would give me a new treatment, Largactil pills, 25 mg. After that I became a vegetable. Later on, they changed the pills so I would be better.

That’s when the doctor asked me, “Mr. Silvio, would you come to the office?”

“Yes, Doctor.”

This was Dr. George Gravel, a psychiatrist. He was the one who first asked me if I would like to work in the Locker Room of the Dead.

I said, “Yes, Doctor.”

If I refused, I would get punished, I’d be put in the cells, like the others.

I said, “Am I obliged to accept?”

He said, ”Yes. Do you agree?”

I said, ”Yes.”

They sent another guy to watch over me. “You will be accompanied by a worker and a guardian.”

A guardian and a guy who worked in the Locker came to get me. I didn't feel good about it – we went straight to the Locker Room of the Dead.

He said, “Well, here we are. That’s a dead body. Whatever happens, I want you to keep your mouth shut. I don’t want anything repeated outside this place.”

I said, “Okay.”

“If you speak, you’ll be punished.”

I said, “Okay.”

Up to that point, on the first floor, we'd taken the elevator. But now we took the staircase.

Once I was downstairs, I took the passage that went to the Locker. I noticed there were coffins in every compartment, like in a funeral parlour, and on the left was where they put the dead patients in refrigerators.

Then he said, “Now we’ll show you how to wash a dead body.”

They started washing a child, a really small child about 4 years old.

I let out a scream.

They looked at me. “Are you afraid of corpses?”

I said, “No, but it’s the first time I ever saw something like this.”

Then, once they had washed it, they said they were going to put it in the fridge. I opened the door, so they could put the child inside. Once it was inside, it moved on rollers, so then they said “Okay, that’s just the first step. Now you’ll go with him – the other guy -- follow him.”

“Okay.”

“Just one thing: we’ll show you how to clean up.” I would be in charge of moving the coffins and washing the floors.

But then the other worker told me, “No, I’m not going to train you to clean up. I’m going to send you where they transport the bodies and wash them.”

So the nun said, “Mr. Silvio, take the stretcher and go to the rooms in the back.”

“All right.” I knew that meant the operating room –

“I want you to understand -- you are not to do any dishes.”

“No, sister. I promise.”

So off we went.

Q: She meant, no touching the dishes after handing the corpses?

Exactly. So when I got to the room, I hadn't realized the doors were locked and I needed a key.

“Excuse me, can I have the key ???”

“Yes.”

“Is it all right if I hold on to it?”

“Yes. Oh, excuse me – I have to answer the phone.”

He took a look at the stretcher, and went away.

Once I was inside, I continued towards the cells. They opened the door, and I saw someone hanging from the bars. The person in charge, who had let me in, said: “You have no business looking at that!”

It was an adolescent, 14 years old.

Later, another one hanged himself, I think he was about 25. When I got to his cell, they said, “You’re not allowed to look!”

I said, “Well, but I saw him.”

They let it go.

“All right, okay. Don’t say a word about it. Take the stretcher.”

I came back with the stretcher. The nun said, “Mr. Silvio, late again?”

I said, “Sorry, Sister. This door isn’t big enough to get the stretcher into the cell. It’s not my fault you’re fat.”

She said, “Watch what you say, or you’ll be punished.”

I'd expected her to say that. So I got my coworker and we went into the cell. We picked up the body, and put it on the stretcher. That’s when I saw traces of acid in the hole. But I wasn’t allowed to touch the linen. They took away the linen and threw it in the garbage can.

Q: I’d like you to tell us the story about when you met Father Joseph, aka Dr. Mengele, in the hallway of St. Jean de Dieu hospital.

Oh yes. Yes yes yes. I was getting to that.

Well, one day when I’d finished working in the Locker, the nun said, “We’re giving you three days’ off."

So I was off work, I had three days to rest, and for the first time I had time to wander around the halls. I was drugged, because of these pills, and so I was walking like a mummy.

Also, there were a lot of doctors, for example there was Dr. Camille Laurin. I saw him one time but I wasn’t sure if it was him that I saw. There was a Dr. Archambault and Dr. LaRoche, and there were other doctors. But the doctor I saw that day was only so tall, with his hair combed back like this, and he had a moustache. Well, since I had seen so many war films, when I saw his face I thought, “My God, he looks like Hitler!”

So when I saw this doctor, I raised my arm and said: “Heil … Hitler!”

He blinked his eyes at me, and made a sign with his hand: “Take this guy and go lock him up.” So they grabbed me and this time they put me in a cell. Then they said “Go to the doctor’s office.”

Not the same doctor who had been there in the hall. Another doctor. A French Canadian. We went into his office and I said, “Is anything wrong?”

“Would you repeat what you said?”

So I repeated it. “Heil Hitler!”

“Stop saying that! Why are you talking that way? Why are you walking and moving your feet like that?”

I realized it was because I had been watching war movies. So then the doctor – I think it was the one who had invented the 25 mg. drug – Largactil.

Q. Dr. Heinz Lehmann?

Yes. You had these people there, who studied children, orphans, and did experiments, operating on the patients and using these patients like guinea pigs. Besides practicing on animals, they practiced on human beings. He was the one.

Q: But the first doctor, the one in the hallway. You said he had a moustache. Did he speak French?

Yes, he spoke French but not much. He always held his hands like this (straight down at his sides). He had … his hair was always combed back, you know?

Q: And how tall was he?

I would say about 5 foot 6. Yes.

Q: Dr. Mengele was 5 foot 8.

Well, he was slim. Black hair, brown eyes.

Q. Mengele was slim, with black hair and brown eyes.

I used to talk to him, and he talked to me, but I didn’t understand him. Still, he made an effort to speak French. He gestured to the other doctor, who was his assistant, Dr. Georges Gravel. Gravel spoke to me so that I could understand, because he also understood me. Dr. Gravel spoke English, German and Russian.

So finally he said, “Why did you insult him? What did you think you were doing? Why do you say he’s the one who is doing the experiments?”

I said, “Listen to me, Dr. Gravel. I wasn’t going anywhere, it was my day off. I saw him in the hallway near the operating room. He wasn’t wearing a mask. He had on a blue jacket, you know, like a uniform. I saw him leaving, but he was alone and didn't speak to me, but he still looked at me like this, with his great big eyes, you know…”

Q: But do you think Mengele was doing operations there, himself?

Yes. Yes. Yes. Well, he was the one who talked to the others, to the surgeons. He used to walk around in -- the place where I went when I got sick (the infirmary) and he would walk around with a tall doctor, a surgeon with a mask, and the conversation went like this:

“Does this boy have a family?”

The nun answered, “Yes.”

“We won’t touch him for now. What about him?”

And the nun said, “No, he is an orphan. He has a file, this orphan.”

“Okay, that’s good.” He’d found one. “We’ll study this one.”

That’s how they did experiments, studying the ones who had epileptic seizures – not really epileptics, but they passed them off as epileptics. They did experiments, but instead of on animals, they used humans instead of animals, and I saw it, but not with my own eyes …

Everytime I think of someone, they die

In future, I'll be careful to think of NO ONE.