Solomon Gursky Was Here (71 page)

A
UTUMN
. The season of the sodden partridges, drunk from pecking at fallen, fermented crab apples. Moses, in need of fresh air, dropped his empty Macallan bottle into a wastepaper basket and drifted outside. Raking leaves, he wondered what Solomon would have made of all of it.

One of the journals Solomon had sent Moses some years back had come with a typically irritating note:

“I once told you that you were no more than a figment of my imagination. Therefore, if you continued to exist, so must I.”

But he's dead, Moses thought, even as the sky above was filled with a sudden roaring, Moses ducking involuntarily, an airplane passing low enough overhead to clip the treetops. Straightening up, his balance uncertain, Moses couldn't find the airplane anywhere. Then it was back. A black Gypsy Moth wagging its wings at him. It made another pass at the cabin, wagging its wings again. Then, as Moses watched, it began to climb. He knew where it was going.

North.

Where north?

Far.

Watching the Gypsy Moth climb, Moses believed that he saw it turn into a big menacing black bird, the likes of which hadn't been seen over Lake Memphremagog since the record cold spell of 1851. A raven with flapping wings. A raven with an unquenchable itch to meddle and provoke things, to play tricks on the world and its creatures. He watched the bird soar higher and higher, until he lost it in the sun.

Author's Note

Years ago, following the publication of another novel, a television interviewer asked me, “Is this book based on fact, or did you just make it up out of your own head?”

I made the Gurskys up out of my own head, but I did not invent everything in
Solomon Gursky Was Here
. I dug deeply into Franklin, M'Clure, Back, Richardson and the rest on the doomed expedition to circumnavigate the globe through the Northwest Passage, putting my own spin on events.
Frozen in Time: The Fate of the Franklin Expedition,
by Owen Beattie and John Geiger, struck me as the most original of recent studies. I am indebted to
The Raven Steals the Light,
by Bill Reid and Robert Bringhurst, for the Haida myths. I found
The Victorian Underworld,
by Kellow Chesney, indispensable in my attempt to recreate nineteenth-century London. I have leaned heavily on James H. Gray's
Red Lights on the Prairie
and
Booze
for western history, and on Bernard Epps'
More Tales of the Townships
. I am also grateful to Christopher Dafoe, editor of
The Beaver,
for going through his files for me.

I should also come clean and admit that Captain Al Cohol is not my invention. He was conceived by Art Sorensen, then with the NWT Alcohol Education Program, and the radio scripts I have quoted from are by E.G. Perrault.

Finally, I would like to acknowledge the help of my wife. Over the years, Florence had to endure this novel in many drafts. Without her encouragement, not to mention crucial editorial suggestions, I would have given up on
Solomon Gursky Was Here
long ago.

Mordecai Richler