The image of the body as a lampshade is courtesy Lenore Mendelson Atwood; the expression “brain snot” is courtesy E J.A. Gibson. The red-and-white footprints recall a story told to me by Earle Birney; the toboggan incident and the black-painted apartment from Graeme Gibson; the ghost as dry rice was suggested by an episode recounted by P K. Page; the notion of a flesh dress came from James Reaney’s poem “Doomsday, or the Red-Headed Woodpecker”; the tale of the heroic German aunt was suggested partly by Thomas Karl Maria Schwarz; and the professor who disallowed military essay topics for women from an anecdote related by Susan Crean.

Zenia is pronounced with a long e, as in seen; Charis with a hard c as in karma. The Teutones (second century B.C.) are distinct from the Teutons (tenth century A.D.).

Onset

The story of Zenia ought to begin when Zenia began. It must have been someplace long ago and distant in space, thinks Tony; someplace bruised, and very tangled. A European print, hand-tinted, ochre-coloured, with dusty sunlight and a lot of bushes in it—bushes with thick leaves and ancient twisted roots, behind which, out of sight in the undergrowth and hinted at only by a boot protruding, or a slack hand, something ordinary but horrifying is taking place.

Or this is the impression Tony has been left with. But so much has been erased, so much has been bandaged over, so much deliberately snarled, that Tony isn’t sure any longer which of Zenia’s accounts of herself was true.