Across the Bridge (26 page)

The concern of the French middle class – the French of the Continent and of Montreal – with money is one of the things Mavis Gallant understands, down to the last grudged sou. Money, for these people, is not a medium of exchange or an aid to some kind of freedom, but a mystical essence, loved for its own sake and cherished with a darkly religious fervour. The loss of money or of any advantage that might lead to money is the hobgoblin of these bourgeois, and betrays them into covert cheats and mean economies which they persuade themselves are examples of a laudable prudence, and it is of these that they weave the web from which weakly aspiring souls like Sylvie Castelli cannot hope, ever in this world, to escape.

Sylvie is a retiring girl possessed of one puny talent; she can make watercolour copies of pictures that someone else has already painted, and painted infinitely better. Mavis Gallant is unerring in her understanding of that unhappy and large class of persons who have some talent, and some artistic impulse, but not nearly enough to sustain a career or carry them far into an understanding of what art really is. But in Sylvie this feeble aspiration is evidence of a romantic nature and a rather nice, but weak, character. This is what leads her to project her yearning for real love and real romance upon Bernard Brunelle, who not merely fails to reciprocate but rejects her with brusqueness.

Her dream topples. She must make it up with the deadly Arnaud. In the end she finds a shadow of happiness, and we hope that it will illuminate, however feebly, the life before her.

This is comedy, but of a special sort which may be described as comic because it is not tragic. And why not tragic? Because, as Sir Philip Sidney reminds us, “tragedy concerneth a high fellow” and there are no high fellows in this tale; they cannot rise high, and thus they cannot fall low. We are invited to see them as they are, and they are set before us without any nudging by the author to turn us for or against her creations. They are set out simply as they are and all they are is implied by brilliantly chosen detail. This is true social comedy, and as well as making us laugh it provokes our pity and causes us some pain. We cannot take Sylvie as a heroine, done down by Fate; with the best will in the world we cannot imagine a destiny for her much better than what lies ahead with Arnaud. Is hers, then, to be a life of quiet desperation? No; she is not strong enough to despair; she can only endure. She has not the swollen egotism, the sense that her destiny is a mirror of mankind, that makes the truly tragic figure.

We are very sorry for Sylvie, but the sorrow is ours. The author is not sorry on our behalf. She lets us pity, if that is our choice. Or would we prefer to laugh?

This is art of a special kind. How is it done? By suggestion. By implication. We see it at work in the first three stories in the book. Not a word can be said against the Carette family except perhaps that they are utterly unendurable. Not unendurable on a great scale; they do not cheat greatly, betray largely, or eat their young. That is to say, they do not eat their young corporately; psychologically, things are quite different. But in lives so sodden with orthodox religion, psychology, as turned within, is not a factor. We may think that they create their own hell, but we are wrong. The hell they create arises in our own understanding; to them the lives they live are dutiful, impeccably moral, in so far as morality can be squared with financial prudence, loving in so far as love can be offered and accepted in their world. We read of them with
fascination, and – no, no, never let it be said – some measure of self-recognition.

And what does the author make of it? She does not say: she reports. She does not pursue anything to its conclusion; she implies what is to come. The result, by some magic that I cannot pin down, is delightful. Its quality is shown by the fact that I cannot “pin it down.” If it could be explained, it would not be magic, but conjuring. We are complimented in having been introduced to a mind so serene, so unjudging. And so sly.

Yes, that’s the word. Sly.

DRAMA

What Is To Be Done?
(1983)

ESSAYS

Paris Notebooks: Essays and Reviews
(1986)

FICTION

The Other Paris
(1956)

Green Water, Green Sky
(1959)

My Heart Is Broken: Eight Stories and a Short Novel
(1964)

A Fairly Good Time
(1970)

The Pegnitz Junction: A Novella and Five Short Stories
(1973)

The End of the World and Other Stories
(1974)

From the Fifteenth District: A Novella and Eight Short Stories
(1979)

Home Truths: Selected Canadian Stories
(1981)

Overhead in a Balloon: Stories of Paris
(1985)

In Transit
(1988)

Across the Bridge: New Stories
(1993)

The Moslem Wife and Other Stories
(1994)

The Selected Stories of Mavis Gallant
(1996)

Paris Stories
, ed. Michael Ondaatje (2002)

Montreal Stories
, ed. Russell Banks (2004)

Going Ashore
(2009)