The Long Way Home

No Man.

“I need some fresh air,” said Clara. She looked as though someone had just put a pillowcase over her head. Disoriented, she put down the device, picked it up again, then gave it to Myrna.

She turned full-circle, looking around for the door, and finding it, she left.

The others followed her.

She walked quickly and they had to rush to catch up, until they were strung out behind her like a tail.

Far from slowing down, Clara gathered speed. She sped down the alleyways, down the back streets, the cobbled streets, the side streets, where tourists never ventured. She headed past the faded Québécois homes, chased by that bloated face, until she’d left the town behind.

Until she reached the edge. Until there was no more there there. Only air. And the river beyond.

Only then did she stop.

Jean-Guy was the first to reach her. Then Gamache and Chartrand and finally, huffing and puffing but undeterred, Myrna arrived.

Clara stared ahead, clear-eyed, her chest heaving.

“What does it mean?” She spoke as though the vast river might know. Then she turned and looked at them. “What does it mean?”

“It suggests that Professor Norman and this No Man are the same person,” said Gamache.

“Suggests?” said Clara. “Is there any other interpretation?”

“Not really.”

“And if Norman and No Man are the same person?” Clara demanded. “What does that mean?”

“For us?” asked Gamache. “You know what it means.”

“It means Professor Norman came here when he was fired,” said Clara. “He was probably from around here. He came back, but not as Sébastien Norman. He decided to become No Man.”

“But why change his name?” Beauvoir asked.

“Shame, maybe,” said Myrna. “He’d been fired.”

“Or maybe it was the opposite of shame,” said Gamache. “He wasn’t exactly in hiding. You said he started an artist colony.”

Chartrand nodded and looked troubled. “He did, but I don’t think he meant to.”

“What do you mean?”

“He built a place for himself not far from here. In the woods. But then people started joining him. Other artists. Uninvited. It just sort of happened.”

“Peter came here looking for him,” said Clara. “He wanted to find Professor Norman for reasons I can’t begin to understand. But did he find No Man instead?”

“Non,” said Chartrand. “C’est impossible. No Man was long gone by then. His colony collapsed years ago. Long before Peter arrived.”

“Why did Peter come all this way looking for Professor Norman?” Clara asked. “What did he want from him?”

There was no answer to that, and so they remained silent.

“Where is he?” Clara asked. “Where’s Peter?”

“Where’s No Man?” Beauvoir asked.

Gamache hadn’t taken his eyes off Chartrand. “Well?”

“Well, what?”

“Where’s No Man?”

“I don’t know,” said the gallery owner. “I’ve already told you that.”

“If you don’t know where he is, you at least know where he was,” said Gamache. And Chartrand nodded. And pointed.

Away from the river and into the woods.

*

Ten minutes later they were walking along an overgrown path through the woods.

And then, as though they’d crossed some barrier, the woods stopped and they emerged into sunshine. Before them was a clearing overgrown with grasses and bushes. They had to force their way through the bracken until they were in the middle of a large circular field.

It was pocked with bumps and lumps. Gamache assumed they were tree stumps, but then realized they formed shapes. Squares. Rectangles.

Foundations.

What was now a tangle of wildflowers and burrs and weeds had once been homes.

Not just abandoned, but dismantled. Taken apart. Until just the bare bones remained as evidence that anyone had once lived here.

Gamache heard a noise beside him. A sort of exhale, a moan.

He looked over at Clara, who was standing very still and staring ahead of her. He followed her eyes, but saw nothing unusual.

“Clara?” Myrna asked. She’d also noticed the sudden stillness, the focus, in her friend.

Now Clara moved. Rapidly. She unrolled Peter’s paintings and, dumping the other two on the ground, grabbed one and started walking, this way and that. The painting held open at arm’s length, like a map. She searched the field, a dowser desperate to find the wellspring.

She stumbled over the rocks and stones and foundations.

And then she stopped.

“Here. Peter was here when he painted this.”

They joined her. And exchanged glances. There was no correlation between the wild colors and fierce strokes of the painting and this bucolic scene. A desperate wife had seen something not there.

But the longer they looked, the more it fell into place.

If the clearing wasn’t seen literally, if the true colors weren’t looked for on the canvas, then slowly it revealed itself.