Blue Ravens: Historical Novel by Gerald Vizenor

Author:Gerald Vizenor [Vizenor, Gerald]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Historical, War & Military
ISBN: 9780819574169
Google: zhREAgAAQBAJ
Amazon: 0819574163
Barnesnoble: 0819574163
Goodreads: 18970559
Publisher: Wesleyan
Published: 2014-02-11T05:00:00+00:00

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GALERIE CRÉMIEUX

— — — — — — — 1919 — — — — — — —

Aloysius Hudon Beaulieu became one of those great artists inspired by the ancient vitality of the River Seine. My brother created a surge of blue waves on the river, and he painted a blue raven with enormous translucent wing feathers spread across the entire entrance to the Pont des Arts.

The Institut de France was on the south side of the pedestrian bridge and on the north side, the Musée du Louvre. At that moment on the Pont des Arts, in the middle of two national monuments, and the end of a savage war, we created a scene of native art, the presence of visionary ravens and the River Seine by expressionistic waves of color, poetic images, and the traces of totemic motion in words and paint. On that very first day in the city we revealed a native presence in our names, blue paint, and in my stories.

Naturally, we celebrated our notable surname and fur trade ancestors from France. The surnames and streets were ancient, and other artists and writers must have walked the same route through an alley to Rue de Seine. We turned right to L’Hôtel on Rue des Beaux-Arts. The street was messy, and the entrance to the hotel was shabby. No one was at the reception desk.

Oscar Wilde had died in L’Hôtel about nineteen years earlier. His name was posted near the entrance. We had expected at least an ordinary greeting at the hotel. The lobby stank of cigarette smoke, out-of-date newspapers were scattered on the floor, and the leather chairs were stained and cracked. We decided not to wait for anyone in that lobby. I left a note for Harry Greene that we had arrived and would be waiting in a nearby park on the corner of Rue de Seine and Rue Mazarine behind the Institut de France.

Aloysius painted several scenes of blue ravens at the Musée du Louvre and perched on statues in the park. We waited for several hours and then returned to L’Hôtel. No one was there and the note had not been read. The guest register was behind the desk, so we searched the pages and found the name of Harry Greene, and the note, une erreur dans la note, an error in the bill. His room was located on the second floor. We knocked, and then entered the cold, dark, tiny room that faced another building at the back of the hotel. There were several empty notebooks on a table near the

window.

Harry Greene appeared after dark, surprised, and with many apologies. Later, after some conversation about the war, he conceded that he had actually forgotten the date of our arrival in Paris. Never mind, you are here on leave at last, he said, and we rushed out of the hotel to the nearby Métro at Saint-Germain-des-Prés. He took us to dinner at the Café du Dôme in Montparnasse.

Harry was a familiar customer at

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