Chapter I

It was a beautiful, crisp evening in October 2024. The celestial vault shone in all its fiery glory; the moon dominated the darkness, chimneys smoked, and the chirping of crickets reached the ear like the softness of cotton against the skin. A west wind blew strongly enough to wash ashore, at the foot of an old cedar plank fence, the broad deciduous foliage of a red maple plantation. Candidly, young children formed piles where they hid, uttering cries of joy.

Not far from there, in a field, the tall stems of goldenrod and fireweed swayed as waves roll on the sea. At the edge, a hedge of weeping willows, already stripped of their leaves, swung its branches like the pendulum of a clock. Just across a small bumpy asphalt road, through the slightly open window of an old Norman house, escaped the soft and harmonious notes of a piano, carried freely by the autumn breeze. There was, that evening, something of Eden mixed with all the melancholy of an autumn landscape.

This fragile harmony seemed however to hang by a thread, as if the slightest sudden movement, the slightest heavy thought, could fracture this delicate balance. Autumn, in its silent splendor, was never more than a reminder: everything that shines is destined to change, to be stripped bare.

In this deceptive sweetness, time seemed suspended, as if refusing to move forward at the same pace as ordinary days. October evenings always had that effect on old Mr. Sisley: they invited contemplation, but especially introspection.

The beauty of the landscape did not bring peace. It brought reminders. It recalled past seasons, absent faces, voices that now echoed only in memory. It awakened images that Mr. Sisley thought had long been buried, but which, in reality, had never ceased to keep a silent vigil.

The house itself seemed to breathe at the same rhythm as him, as if the walls had learned to know his silences, his sighs, his long internal absences. Nothing there was truly modern, but everything was in its place, frozen in an era that resembled him.

Huddled in his house, he liked to rest in his peccary leather armchair, worn by time, two or three large pillows well placed, bundled up in a mended but still very warm percale blanket. He did not sleep, quite the contrary: his mind was awake, his thoughts in motion. Thus he awakened his memories by listening to his favorite music.

He often remained motionless for long minutes, his gaze lost on an invisible point in the room. The armchair had molded to his body over the years. Every crack in the leather, every sag in the cushion bore the mark of faithful, almost ritualistic use. Once settled, he knew there was nothing else to do but listen... and wait.

Wait for what, exactly, he could not have said. Perhaps a memory more precise than the others. Perhaps an appeasement that never came. Or simply the slow passage of hours, the way one lets a river flow knowing it will not turn back.

It was then that music took its full place. It became both refuge and mirror, incapable of lying. It did not soothe him; it kept him in contact with what he had been. Without it, he would have felt he was betraying himself, denying an essential part of his identity. It was the last tangible link to the man he had once been, before the renunciations, before the prolonged silences.

It was from this loyalty that he drew his listening choices. Mr. Sisley was particularly fond of instrumental and classical music, profound and very melodious. Often, he would doze off in the midst of his memories, the music continuing to play all night, sometimes leaving the trace of dried tears on his cheeks. There seemed to exist a perfect harmony between the outpouring of his memories and the notes he heard. Some works seemed to have been composed for him alone, as if every measure already knew his wounds and regrets.

That evening, the volume of the music was just loud enough to let him hear the crackle of wood slowly being consumed, matching the rhythm of the passing hours. Often, while listening to Beethoven, he would bring his silk handkerchief to his nose, overwhelmed by the never-appeased intensity of his emotions.

It was as if the music understood and replied to him. It became the echo of his memories and, in the same movement, revived his pain, preventing him from forgetting the lingering shadow of their passing.

Every note seemed to reopen an old scar, never fully healed, but never entirely painful either. A known, tamed, almost necessary pain. He knew these notes brought up what he nevertheless tried to keep at a distance. But he preferred this familiar pain to complete silence, which he dreaded even more.

Silence, for him, was not rest. It was void, and the void frightened him. When he closed his eyes and thought back to all these nostalgic moments, the effect was like an intense light that lingers after the eye has received a bright visual impression. But here, it was not a glare, but a deeply embedded past event that had left a profound mark on him and crystallized in his memory. These images returned without warning, often when he least expected them, imposing their presence with unsettling clarity.

An octogenarian, Mr. Sisley particularly cherished moments of tranquility, undisturbed by anyone. Like Beethoven, he isolated himself in his silence. Those who knew Mr. Sisley say that he often seemed full of embarrassment and felt as though something was left unfinished.

Despite this, he is a good and fair man, showing decent sociability beneath his taciturn appearance, clumsy in expressing his emotions. Touching and touched by everything around him, even philosophical at times, he knows how to appreciate the beautiful things in life and share them with anyone willing to listen.

He often gave the impression of being elsewhere, as if listening to an inner music that others could not hear. Sometimes he would speak at length, then stop for no apparent reason. Certain phrases lingered in mid-air, as if they had reached a boundary he dared not cross. These silences often spoke volumes more than his words.

This solitude had not imposed itself brutally. It had settled slowly, almost comfortably, over a series of renunciations. It had slipped into the gaps of his life, between two seasons, between two decisions, until it became a natural, almost reassuring state.

Sisley, as he liked to be called, was not wealthy, but could not complain of poverty. A landscaper by trade, he had founded a small grounds maintenance company in the late 1950s when he was only 21. He devoted ten years of his life to it, working one hundred to one hundred and twenty hours a week.

At his peak, Sisley managed around twenty employees and a variety of machinery, from the most modest lawnmower to the backhoe, including agricultural tractors designated for snow removal. He received on average a thousand phone calls a month. This did not frighten him; quite the contrary, he fed on it.

He had the wind in his sails until the day he broke down, unable to carry this weight on his shoulders any longer: the whims of employees, the complaints of clients, the quotes and everything that came with it. He worked seven days a week. The words *vacations* and *time off* had no place in his daily life.

In the years that followed, Sisley found, near the small town of Lambton—on the shore of Lake Saint Francis, in the Eastern Townships—a job as a laborer-operator. This period of relentless toil had forged his character as much as it had contributed to wearing him out prematurely.