Sing, Nightingale


 Table of Contents
 
 Cover
 Title
 Copyright
 Dedication
 I. By the Clear Fountain
 II. Sing, Nightingale, Sing
 III. Let’s Go for a Walk in the Woods
 IV. Beneath the Wing He Loses Blood
 V. Sheep’s Wool
 VI. We Won’t Go Into the Woods Anymore
 Translator’s Note
 Songs and Works Cited
 About the Author
 
 
 
 
 Landmarks
 
 Cover
 Title
 Copyright
 Dedication
 Start of Content
 Translator’s Note
 Songs and Works Cited
 About the Author
 
 
 
 
 List of Pages
 
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 The book cover features an illustration of a deer that is predominantly a gradient turquoise colour. There are leaves and vines decorating the antlers and within the body of the deer. The book title is in a sans-serif font in all-caps and is filled with a pink and orange gradient.
 
 
 Sing, Nightingale
 
 
 Sing, Nightingale
 Marie Hélène Poitras
 Translated by Rhonda Mullins
 Coach House Books, Toronto
 
 
 Originally published in French by Les Éditions Alto as La Désidérata by Marie Hélène Poitras
 Copyright © Marie Hélène Poitras and Les Éditions Alto, 2021
 English translation © Rhonda Mullins, 2022
 First English-language edition.
 
 Coach House Books acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada. We are also grateful for generous assistance for our publishing program from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. Coach House Books also acknowledges the support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund.
 LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION
 Title: Sing, nightingale / Marie-Hélène Poitras, translated by Rhonda Mullins.
 Other titles: Désidérata. English
 Names: Poitras, Marie Hélène, author. | Mullins, Rhonda, translator.
 Description: Translation of: La désidérata.
 Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 2022024989X | Canadiana (ebook) 2022024992X | ISBN 9781552454480 (softcover) | ISBN 9781770567351 (EPUB) | ISBN 9781770567368 (PDF)
 Classification: LCC PS8581.O245 D4713 2023 | DDC C843/.6—dc23
 Sing, Nightingale is available as an ebook: ISBN 978 1 77056 735 1 (EPUB), 978 1 77056 736 8 (PDF)
 Purchase of the print version of this book entitles you to a free digital copy. To claim your ebook of this title, please email [email protected] with proof of purchase. (Coach House Books reserves the right to terminate the free digital download offer at any time.)
 
 
 For my motherFor my father
 
 
 
 ‘This dull, blind land. And all the blood, the milk, the chunks of crusty afterbirth.’
 – Anne Hébert, Kamouraska
 
 
 
 I BY THE CLEAR FOUNTAIN
 Under the clouds, the village of Noirax looks like a little theatre. Cardboard sets, a stage on which to deliver lines, and puppets awaiting a hand to bring them to life, send them scurrying right to left, then left to right, until they disappear into the wings.
 A distant melody can be heard, carried on a woman’s voice. A joyous refrain that in no way foreshadows the brutality of the last verse, which will fall like a guillotine’s blade.
 The surrounding forest is made of words, with secrets buried in the spaces between them and entwined around the roots.
 Curtain.
 
 
 Thick smoke rises from the estate’s ancient chimney, blending into the gathering clouds. Along the forest path, the warm body of a hare by the neck in one hand, a rusted trap that has seen better days in the other, the father walks onto the set.
 Spring is early this year; the buds are sprouting over the dead leaves that a mild winter never managed to dislodge. In the forest, one walks on a carpet of ancient moss that marks the eras – the Era of the Horn, the Era of the Wing, the Era of the Sheep, and the Era of the Hoof – and that can be read like growth rings on a sectioned trunk. Summer is returning like a promise kept, never betrayed. The three jennies of the estate, heavy with foal, will give birth in a few days. There will be visits from the young cep merchant and the renderer. The tender thorns of the blackthorn tree will be macerated to make the Troussepinette that will be drunk until September. Camellia flowers will bloom. There’s the fountain and its pond scum to clean out, down to the bend in the marble goddess’s hip. There’s the sycamore hedge to propagate and train so that the knotty branches keep climbing toward He who observes us from on high, his sights trained on us until our last moment, never relaxing his watch.
 Let spring come and let the young donkeys bray.
 At the manor, there sits on the massive acacia-wood table a plate made of kaolin, local treasure and pride of the village, a precious mineral, fragments of which are embedded in the tombstones and the clock at city hall. Since the kaolin reserves were exhausted, small artisans have settled for producing eau de vie and other regional spirits. On the plate, a gracious hand has placed four prunes, some