La Complainte du Givre at Citadel + Compagnie (amour amour)
Photo by M A R I E - È V E DION
On opposite ends of the left side of a rectangular sheet of Quebecois ice stand two figures shrouded in paint splattered duvets.
The near one hunches forward like a witch or a raptor or an armadillo. What she resembles varies because she rocks back and forth, causing the angle of her hunch to fluctuate.
The far one is upright.
The near one walks along the edge of the ice sheet. Though she has not stepped up onto the ice, she seems to think the ground beneath her equally fragile, because she lowers her toes to the ground with excruciating care. Each step takes many seconds to execute. Occasionally she caresses the side of the ice sheet with her left foot and toys with the possibility of ascension.
The far one stands still until the time comes to quickly waddle forward six steps. Her strategy: catch the ground off guard with quick movement. Then, perhaps, it will forget its own fragility.
While the near one is the first to walk on the ice sheet, the far one quickly follows and is the first to remove her duvet. She sheds it definitively, all at once, without fear. It hits the ice with a thud. She looks in her friend’s eyes. Her friend wants to take off her duvet as well, but she finds the process difficult. Instead of tossing it off with confidence, she unzips it from the inside with trepadition.
A beam of blue light pierces the air. The woman who had an easy time removing her duvet approaches it. It entrances her. She stands on her toes, reaches out past the corner of the ice sheet, and runs her fingers through the light. Though its colour is cool, it is warm. She is inspired to to sway her hips and paint waves in the air with her palms until she transforms into a bird.
Her friend, who has now completed the laborious process of removing her duvet, notices this transformation. She matches it, and flies over. The two birds fly into each other, foreheads pressed together, until they travel back in time and are human again.
The cold has crept up on them. They retrieve their duvets and huddle under them. Warmed, they sing, laugh, and hold hands. A slumber party.
Eventually the women realize that the two duvets do not offer enough warmth for the both of them. If one of them is to survive the cold, the other must give up their share of duvet and allow the other to be bundled in both.
The one who touched the blue light makes the sacrifice. Scared she will be tempted to take the duvets back, she leaves, effortfully trudging through the snowy landscape until she becomes a small dot on the horizon and disappears into the cold. Her friend watches her go, standing en pointe to improve the view.
The one who left resigns to live out her last hours in a cave. Just as she is settling in for the night, however, she stumbles upon another beam of light. It protrudes from a vein of iron. This one is orange. She touches it and it imbues her with a great burst of Apollonian energy. In an explosion of light she flies back over the field of snow, knocking over pine trees with sharply defined jazz hands and fending off polar bears with precise kicks until she reaches her friend.
She tells her friend to get off the ice sheet. Orange power in hand, she forges walls, doors, and windows from the ice, and the two live out the rest of their days in their house made of ice. When they sleep, they do so under paint splattered duvets.