Wan

Dawn Promislow

Contents (4)

WAN

A NOVEL

DAWN PROMISLOW

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Freehand Books acknowledges the financial support for its publishing program provided by the Canada Council for the Arts and the Alberta Media Fund, and by the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund.

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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: Wan / Dawn Promislow.

Names: Promislow, Dawn, author.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20210368608 | Canadiana (ebook)

20210368616 | ISBN 9781988298993 (softcover) | ISBN 9781990601002 (EPUB) |

ISBN 9781990601019 (PDF)

Classification: LCC PS8631.R64 W36 2022 | DDC C813/.6—DC23

Edited by Deborah Willis

Book design by Natalie Olsen

Author photo by Eli Amon

Printed on FSC^® recycled paper and bound in Canada by Marquis

TO MY PARENTS

A JOURNALIST CAME to interview me once in my studio on Columbus Avenue. She arrived at the door, a young, breathless woman, her coat on for the snow, her black wool hat, her boots: it was a winter day. I knew right away it was a mistake, I shouldn’t have invited her to my studio, my space. The space felt suddenly small and crowded, the two of us standing there, I felt I would not breathe, that I must ask us to leave. But I was polite, I held myself. What choice did I have?

She sat for an hour on the wooden chair, I on the other. My studio had no view, but I needed no view. The tall sashed window overlooked the alleyway between two buildings, and the black fire stairwell. The room was filled on the wooden floor, against the walls, with my canvases, and frames, wooden ones, stacked in a corner, shelves and shelves of paints and jars of turpentine. And my easel, one easel only, in the one corner, where it had the light that I felt was enough. Enough. Only enough.

It was a room without features.

The journalist asked me questions about my painting: the one, the one that was my breakthrough, the one you ask about. She asked about my process. She asked about South Africa.

About my process I could speak. About South Africa I could not. And then I said, should we have a coffee downstairs? The coffee shop is a few doors down. Perhaps she felt relieved, she said then, yes, yes, certainly Ms. Kline. It’s Jacqueline, please, I said. But it was too late. There was no possibility of intimacy. And wasn’t it always like this, with me?