Introduction

328
Sonja Lehmann
focus of the building. Slowly his vision began to swing. He turned his head
to the left to the right to the left, discovering the horizon. (SL 210).
In this moment Patrick becomes aware of everything that has separated him from
others all along. His silence is contrasted with the noise of the dogs and he sees
his blindness reflected in their eyes. He now begins to see and recognizes the horizon,
which clearly evokes the “terrible horizon in him beyond which he couldn’t
leap” (SL 157) but is now able to. With the beginning of the following paragraph
“[h]e moved tentatively into the city” thereby crossing the “horizon” and once he
arrives in Temelcoff’s bakery, Temelcoff greets him with “[t]he grip of the world”
(SL 210) so that Patrick, too, has finally reached a state of connectedness.
5.2.3. Narrating the Self
Another last step is needed for both characters to finally develop transnational
identities: the awareness of their multiple connections and affiliations which will
lead to a change in their self-understanding. This last change occurs through the
use of narrative through which Patrick and Temelcoff will narrate their transnational
selves. In the scene that gave the novel its title, Alice tells Patrick of a play
in which a number of actresses took turns playing the central character. To demonstrate
whose turn it was, they passed around a storyteller’s coat decorated with
skins. The narrator comments, “Each person had their moment when they assumed
the skins of wild animals, when they took responsibility for the story” (SL
157). Speaking and telling stories is thus a sign of power and agency and taking up
the skin and narrating a story is a symbolic act to identify as the hero of the play.
A similar act also occurs in both Temelcoff and Patrick’s final deliberate identification
with their transnational identities and ways of life. After all, the act of publicly
speaking and telling one’s story equates to identification with it and shows a
character’s self-understanding which in Patrick and Temelcoff’s case is made up of
references from multiple places and cultures. By telling their stories these two will
then identify with their transnational selves.
So far, both Patrick and Temelcoff have found ways to connect to their new
environments and are both equally part of a transnational social field: Patrick, the
native Canadian, is integrated into the immigrant community and Temelcoff, the
immigrant, in addition also is “a citizen here, in the present, successful with his
own bakery” (SL 149). However, both characters are only engaged in ways of
being without emphasizing their transnational belonging. The text stresses that
“Nicholas Temelcoff never looks back. He will drive the bakery van over the
bridge with his wife and children and only casually mention his work there” (SL
149). Criglington therefore assumes that “[w]ith his immigrant’s desire to integrate,
Nicholas has repressed his old identity” (135). He has hardly suppressed it,
though, since he still lives in the immigrant part of town and accordingly still is