Pan Bouyoucas - Portrait of a Husband with the Ashes of His Wife

ALMA JONCAS WASone of the most acclaimed, the most venerated actresses in all Quebec. Until the day she turned fifty.

A tough moment for any actress whose life marks time with her roles.

A tough moment too for her spouse who must constantly feed her self-esteem and her hopes so that she won’t collapse into depression.

Doctor Alexandre Maras, ophthalmological surgeon, mentioned the name of his wife to all the producers and directors among his patients. All replied that Alma was a great artist, that they would definitely call her when a suitable role came along. But Alma’s telephone was silent and all signs suggested that her age — too mature for a young lover, not old enough for a granny — would confine her to the worst fate that can be inflicted on an actress: invisibility.

Alma was driven to despair but refused to resign herself. Rather than let time mould her for the granny and old nurse parts, she decided to hurry things up by stuffing herself with everything that would make her put on weight.

Instead of filling out though, Alma began to lose the little bit of fat she had on her body.

She told her husband:

“I want you to put my ashes in the place where I was happiest.”

Doctor Maras scorned the resignation that actors are partial to when they’re not working and recommended that she see her doctor. But Alma was convinced that the stage was her sole salvation, that she just needed a good, meaty part and she would get her strength back.

Finally, the phone rang: Pauline Brunet, artistic director of the Théâtre Orphée and a friend of Alma, offering her the title role in The House of Bernarda Alba .

It was a role as beautiful as it was rare for an actress of her age, but exhausting too, and Doctor Maras feared for his wife’s health.

Alma replied that what was most exhausting in her line of work was not working.

And in fact as soon as she started rehearsals her eyes gleamed, her back straightened, her voice sparkled, and the butterfly that age was getting ready to turn into a caterpillar flew again.

On the night of the premiere, despite a severe bout of stage fright and stomach cramps, Alma played García Lorca’s tyrannical matriarch with such self-assurance that the next day, the critics couldn’t stop praising her performance, describing it as the most luminous moment of the theatrical season.

It was April 24, spring had finally arrived, the show was an overwhelming success, and every night when the curtain fell, applause and bravos called the star back onstage at least five times.

Alma was feeling a numbness in her extremities but could not for a moment imagine the heavy cost that her success would impose and didn’t speak to her doctor until the day after the last performance.

Her family doctor sent her to a cardiologist, who diagnosed a contraction of the aortic valve so far advanced that blood could barely flow between the left ventricle and the aorta.

In other words:

“You should have had an operation three months ago.”

Back home, Alma prepared a candlelit dinner and put on a yellow silk dress with a décolletage that was an enchantment, as much to please herself as to arouse her husband, because soon her torso would be butchered and never again would she be able to wear a plunging neckline.

Two glasses of wine later, intoxicated more by anxiety than by alcohol and the fragrant breath of lilac with which spring had filled her garden, she said to her husband:

“My love, make me fly. Even if the operation is successful, for a long time I’ll be nothing but a sea gull with broken wings.”

Her eyes were glowing but her shortness of breath and Doctor Maras’s expertise advised him not to comply. But he also knew that when his wife got something in her head she would pursue it until she was satisfied. He concentrated then on the pleasure he could give her without her having to exhaust herself.

Alma murmured, Yes, yes. Then, her face transformed by orgasm, she stiffened in her husband’s arms.

Doctor Maras called 9-1-1, then did all he could to bring her back to life.

In vain.

AFTER THE PARAMEDICShad taken the body away, Doctor Maras called on her cell phone Mélissa, their only child, who had gone out that night with her boyfriend. He told her:

“I killed her.”

“What are you talking about?”

“She wanted to make love…”

“That’s so sweet. She wanted to make love one last time.”

“But it killed her. I killed her.”

“No, papa, no, you helped her to die happy.”

The candles Alma had lit were still burning in the dining room which barely an hour ago was filled with life. Doctor Maras didn’t have the heart to blow them out or to watch them burn up either and he went out into the garden to wait for their daughter to show up.

Alma’s garden…

During these past three years of waiting and worry, one bud was enough to make her forget every jobless winter she’d just endured. But gardening for her wasn’t a hobby indulged in when nothing was happening in her career to take her mind off her boredom. It was a passion to which she devoted herself as much as to her roles, fiercely and with extraordinary excitement, and even when she was working she spent her free hours raking, sowing, watering, weeding, pruning and staking.

“It’s pure creation,” she said of gardening. “True magic.”

The previous year her garden had won first prize in the Montreal in Bloom competition “for the impressive diversity of annuals and the synergy of climbing plants whose shapes and colours make a dynamic garden as a whole.”

This year she had opted for a diversity of vegetables and perennials which in her opinion would create an atmosphere full of gaiety that would win her her second first prize.

Next year, for their 25th wedding anniversary, she intended to plant two plum trees.

Doctor Maras recollected all that and when his daughter arrived he told her:

“She asked me to put her ashes in the place where she was the happiest so I’m going to bury them here, in her garden. She will stay with us for the winter and she’ll waken in the spring.”

Mélissa hugged her father and both of them finally allowed the tears they were holding back to flow.

THE FUNERAL WASheld six days later, at the church of Notre-Dame-du-Bon-Conseil where it seemed everyone who had worked with Alma over the past thirty years had come together to pay her a final tribute. Also present were the mayor of Montreal, the mayoress of her district, Quebec’s Minister of Cultural Affairs, some colleagues of Doctor Maras, some friends of Mélissa too, and of course Alma’s close family members: her unmarried sister, Carmen, a notary in La Malbaie where the three Joncas children had been born; her brother Zak, a sculptor who lived in the Montreal suburb of Saint-Hilaire, accompanied by his young wife Liza and Ezekiel, their six-year-old son; and two female cousins with their spouses. There was no one from the family of Doctor Maras because he had only one sister, Hélène, and she lived in Paris where she was responsible for academic and cultural relations at the Canadian embassy.