Considerado como uno de los autores canadienses contemporáneos Alan Cumyn es autor de una amplia producción: Man of bone, Burridge Un bound y The Sojourn; se encuentran entre sus obras publicadas. Ha sido ganador de. Ottawa-Carleton Book Award, Trillium Book Award, entre otros. Pero que mejor que su obra hable por sí misma. He aquí un fragmento de The Sojourn, extraída de la
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My strategy is a simple one. I follow the King's Road and ask every four or five blocks if I am in Chelsea yet. And when I am finally told I am in Chelsea, by a prim set of ladies gussetted so tightly their eyes seem to bulge, I ask where Stokebridge Street is. Since they don't know–and the next four or five have no idea either–I continue on. Finally, a greengrocer tells me where to turn, what roads to follow, and then I am on a curving, quiet street of joined houses, quite new-looking, with black iron gates and tiny front gardens.
Number 30 is exactly halfway down the street. I pause for a moment, consider, absurdly, turning around, making my way back to the King's Road, finding a bus to return me to the woman with wormy teeth at Victoria Station who knew where soldiers were meant to stay.
Instead, I push through the gate, walk to the front door, handle the knocker with too much authority, as if I were some barbarian come to ransack the place. When the door opens, a tiny old woman in a maid's apron gives a jump. "Yes?" she says, with swimming blue eyes, not frightened so much as full of questions and surprise.
"Excuse me, ma'am," I say. "My name is Ramsay, Ramsay Crome. I'm a cousin of–" and I halt, tied up in the semantics of it. I try again. "My father is George Crome, who is the brother of–"
"Good Lord!" she says and takes a step back, then shuts the door in my face. I can hear her clucking down the hallway, and stand still, unsure of what to do, how long to wait until I knock again. I haven't moved a muscle, am standing as if on parade when the door is pulled open once more and a soft-eyed, pear-shaped version of my father–he looks like an illusion, a doughy parody of father's wiry toughness–is standing before me in shirt sleeves, suspenders, and stockinged feet.
"Are you George's boy?" he says in wonder–my Uncle Manfred, looking me up and down, not entirely with approval. "He did write that you might show your face sometime. Why the devil didn't you have the decency to wire ahead?" I stand stunned, trying to think through some kind of answer.
"Well," I stammer, "there was awfully short notice about my leave, and I–"
"Come in, come in, for God's sakes!" he blusters and pulls me through the doorway into a narrow entrance hall. "Harriet. Harriet!" he yells and walks ahead of me. "Put your bags here." He motions to the foot of the stairs. "You're staying, of course? How long have you got? HARRIET!" And he stamps up the stairs like an avalanche in reverse, disappears onto the second level. I am left to let my sack slump to the floor, to free myself from the gas-mask bag on my front, to stand my rifle in its canvas bag beside the rest of my things. I have just enough time to look at the small, fussy landscapes on the wall before a calm, willowy, silver-haired woman glides down the stairs and stands before me almost eye to eye.
"So you are Ramsay," she says. "I'm your Aunt Harriet. We are absolutely delighted to see you." She offers her hand, captures me in a moment with her large, bright eyes. "When did you get in? You must be starving," she says. "Miffy!" she calls down the hall in the direction of some back room, perhaps the kitchen. "We have one extra for breakfast."
"No, please, actually, I've eaten," I say.
"Nonsense!" she says, with a funny grin, as if I've made the most wonderful joke. "A growing boy like you. The last pictures we saw you were with your brothers, riding ponies, I believe. You couldn't have been more than eleven or twelve. And now look at you!"
She does look in some amazement at my sorry frame.
"Perhaps you would like a bath," she says after a pause that is so perfectly timed we both break into laughter. I have fallen in love with her, I think–this graceful, sunny-eyed aunt I am meeting for the first time. "Miffy. Miffy!" she says. "Could you draw young Mr. Crome a bath? And his clothes are going to need laundering." She turns to me. "Perhaps you would care to eat in the bath? I know, it's absolutely decadent, but why not? You're here, you've been in the horrors of the trenches–you have been in the trenches, haven't you? I sent those things off not knowing exactly–"
"Yes, ma'am. Thank you so much for the fruitcake."
"Auntie. Please call me Auntie. And you are my Ramsay, and I won't hear a moment's protest. You are here to be spoiled and pampered and fed to within an inch of your life, is that understood?"
My uncle blunders down the stairs, still in stockinged feet, his collar open, sleeves dangling. "How long is he staying?" he asks, and she shushes him with a single look–incredulous, dagger-eyed, punctuated with a dismissive sigh.
copyright 2003 Alan Cumyn
