Swan Noir

The story of Swan Noir

Noir means black, and that is the whole of the name. She is matte deep black-charcoal clay, faintly warm, never glossy and never feathered, a soft loaf that eats the light — and being black is not a style choice, it is a job. A white swan at night is the brightest thing in the picture, and the brightest thing in the picture is supposed to be Tardy. A black swan never once competes with him for the eye. It also delivers, literally, the thing that had only been asked for in words: on dark water she is already a silhouette, and nothing has to be styled away to make her one. The one colour anywhere on her is her bill. Dusty rose-red, with a pale band near the tip, and it is the only thing on her that is not the dark. Which is what makes her method visible. She nods, once, slowly, and the head goes down along the back, and the red goes out. That is the whole of it — a Sleep Ladder in one gesture, with no eyelid to animate and nothing to explain, in the same family as the Stepping Stones’ faces going out and Old Oak’s hollows going dark. It happens once per film and it never comes back out. A real black swan has a red eye, and on a clay character at night a red eye reads gothic rather than sleepy, so she keeps the house eye — large, round, dark, glossy — and the red is taken from the bill only. And her name has a second meaning that costs nothing and is never mentioned: a black swan is the thing that was thought impossible. She is on the water with the white ones, quietly not like them, and nobody ever says so.

Friends

• The Nodding SwanThe white one, on the same water, and the arrangement is that neither is ever explained.

• The Lady of the LakeThey share the lake and never once acknowledge each other, which is how you know it is calm.