Exile Blues

by Douglas Gary Freeman

  Prez first heard “What rubbish!” that first night he landed in Quebec as he followed Jamie’s shadow through the airport chaos. As they approached Jamie’s cab parked outside the terminal, two Montreal cops nearly knocked Prez on his face as they rushed to confront Jamie. They argued heatedly in French. Then Jamie exclaimed, “What rubbish!” After arguing back briefly in French, Jamie gave them a card and screamed, “You don’t want to make the morning papers, do you?” The cops looked at the card and made no further attempt to stop him. The cops could have mistaken Jamie for a well-known fugitive Quebec nationalist whose organization had been planting bombs in front of the US Embassy. Or maybe they simply took offense at the “Off the Pig” slogan Jamie had painted in a bright white across the front of his Beetle cab’s psychedelic trunk lid. But what was certain was that they did not want to tangle with his lawyer, Raymond Bourgeois—“Who is also my girlfriend’s uncle,” he had screamed at them. Bourgie Ray was the notorious, feared, and celebrated labor, Mafia, and police-union lawyer so corrupt that his contagion was airborne.

  Prez wondered if his Jamie flashback was connected to the realization that he was being followed by a black Pontiac. He paused often to shift the grocery bags in his arms as if they were heavy, but they weren’t. Even though it stayed almost a whole block behind, it was obvious that the car paused and resumed whenever he did.

  When he crossed Villeneuve Avenue, he saw another black Pontiac fuming exhaust vapor parked at the end of the block in front of him. Its roof and windows were cleared of snow on this quiet street where all the other cars sat cold, quiet, and snow covered. The car behind got too close and he was able to see that the car’s insignia was Bonneville, not Parisienne, and that it bore New York license plates. As he neared his own building he was shocked to see a crouching figure on the roof aiming a rifle at him.

  He dropped his grocery bags and sprinted ahead a few paces before making a sharp turn to his left and toward a laneway. Two bullets kicked up the snow just where he would have been. He emerged onto Saint Urbain Street, where he hailed a cab and asked the driver to take him downtown.

  *

  He got out at the intersection of Sainte Catherine Street and Saint Laurent Boulevard and walked in the opposite direction of his destination until the cab was out of sight. Then he went into Le Bijou Bleu, a sleazy blue-movie theater that sat in a fog of smokey blue light. There were rows of ornate wrought iron seating with plush velvet-like Onyx black seats. He marveled anew at the fat round marble columns that led the eye towards the raised stage over which the movie screen was suspended. And then there was that thickly slatted and polished rock-solid wooden flooring that was immune to squeaking. It was troubling that such a majestic place had become a scum collector, he had thought when he was first taken there as part of his emergency contingency plan tour. While the sordid little sex movies played on the screen, guys sat there and masturbated under their coats. Management didn’t care as long as the posted warning sign was heeded: DO NOT SOIL THE SEATS.

  Prez went to the telephone booth beside the ladies’ washroom, a very private area, because no ladies, nor women of any type, came into the Bijou Bleu movie house.

  He dialed the number they’d had him memorize, let the phone ring once, and then hung up. He waited five minutes, then dialed again. The phone at the other end was picked up almost before it had a chance to ring.

  “Oui, âllo. Saint Eustache Home for Girls,” said a dusky female voice.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” replied Prez, “I thought this was the airport; I’m trying to catch a flight out. Good night.”

  He hung up the receiver and looked at his watch. He would have to sit in that grimy theater for an hour and a half before “she” would come to pick him up. He went into the men’s washroom and opened a little black leather sack that he always carried with him. He shaved his sideburns off and also the little patch of hair he’d let grow under his bottom lip. With pomade and an Afro comb, he packed his hair down as tightly as he could so that it would fit under his camouflage-green army hat.

  He suddenly felt very tired and wished that he could just go to sleep. But in that theater, you could watch all the sex movies you wanted, you could masturbate until it fell off; you could even get high. However, if you fell asleep, they’d kick you out.

  Prez sat down in the back of the theater hidden from view of the entrance by a big square concrete pillar. He was determined to stay awake. Keep your eyes open and stay alert, his mind kept telling him. But he dozed off and was startled awake by a commotion in the front of the theater. Two guys were standing over another administering one hell of a beating. Thud, thud-thud, thud, thud, thud-thud, the licks were raining down on some poor sap. Prez almost thought it funny, noticing how frantically everyone was trying to get away from the beating, until he noticed the glint of flashing steel and realized it was a murder in progress. There was no way anyone could survive such a knife attack.

  He scrambled for the side exit and rushed out into the brightness. “You’re late!” he heard a voice say. He looked over to the curb to see a dirty-white Saab station wagon with way-too-skinny tires and a long aerial on the roof. Under the dirt and grime, he could tell it was practically a new car. She reached over and swung the door open for him. The car was a mess inside. There were books and papers scattered all over the back seat. He hopped in and looked at his watch; an hour and forty minutes had passed.

  “I’m sorry,” said Prez. He looked over, and behind the wheel was the little woman from the airplane who had shoved him down the chute. His mouth fell open.

  “You know, fella,” she said, “I was generous. There’s a five-minute leeway on both sides of the appointed time. And you’re six-and-a-half minutes late. You would have been on your own. And suspect. None of us would have gone near you again. The network depends on no one making mistakes. And one mistake by a self-appointed, self-righteous ‘black nationalist’ leader such as yourself could prevent us from helping anyone ever again, and could even send some of us to prison!”

  For someone in such a rush to pass judgment, she took her sweet time pulling away from the intersection as the light turned green.

  “I’m not a black nationalist,” said Prez. “I dozed off. I was exhausted. I got shot at and had to run for my life and you talk as though I just took a stroll in the park.”

  She double-checked her rear-view mirror.

  “You know I’m here totally unarmed and vulnerable,” he continued. “I have to depend on you folks for everything, and I’m grateful, but I was almost killed today.”

  “You folks,” he heard her say mockingly under her breath while shaking her head at the pathetic creature beside her. “You’re so American . . . ‘You folks.’ Just please, never say ‘y’all’ when I’m around. I swear I’ll shoot you.” The smile on her face as she said this was too wicked for him to fathom. “I am Isabelle.”

  *

  Isabelle had called him “fella,” and this was not lost on him. Did she mean “fellah” in the sense that prior to the Algerian Revolution, the Algerian peasants were considered to be passive, submissive, and ignorant victims of colonial oppression who had been conditioned to hate themselves and to do nothing to free themselves from under the yoke of French imperialism? In other words, was she calling him a “nigger”?

  Or did she mean “fellah” in the sense of the great mass of Algerians, a lumpen-proletariat, with great revolutionary potential, who when properly ignited and channeled did indeed seize their own destinies and oust the French from their land?

  Or, maybe she meant a bit of both.

  He was told she wouldn’t like him, but was also told not to take it personally. She was a veteran member of the Communist Party of France who believed in the sanctity of the proletarian revolution, reviling nationalism as reactionary, even counter-revolutionary. She apparently reserved her greatest disdain for the FLQ, Pierre Vallières’ group. She thoug
ht them to be “charlatans” who put bombs in mailboxes instead of focusing their attack on the capitalist class. “They haven’t the faintest inkling of what it is to build a popular uprising, much less engineer an authentic revolution in which the dominant relations of production are overthrown and new productive forces arise leading to the qualitative transition from this capitalist epoch to the socialist one.”

  Isabelle de la Fressange was the most experienced member of the group, with the kind of real experience in clandestine activities one can only get in the cauldron of a revolution. Born in 1939 in Paris, she was a petite woman with a head full of thick disheveled brunette hair that was interwoven with strands of premature silver as if by aesthetic choice. Her prettiness was hidden beneath layers of fierceness. Yet her eyes were a child’s, seemingly ever on the verge of a good cry. The effect was exaggerated by her eyelashes, which were so long that everyone wondered how she managed to wear her trademark black-framed sunglasses when she went out on the town to dance, dance, dance. Her finely chiseled features had been permanently bronzed by the North African sun. If no one knew that both her parents were French, no one would guess she was European.

  Isabelle’s parents, both doctors, had been sympathetic to the Algerians’ cause after learning of the abject poverty, social debasement, and torture the Algerians suffered at the hands of the French colonialists. They left their respective practices in Paris and moved to Algiers.

  Isabelle was eighteen years old in 1956 when she, against the advice of her parents, joined the French Communist Party in Algiers. The Battle of Algiers had begun and her parents were being secretly investigated.

  Her mother had been forewarned of their imminent arrest for aiding and abetting the FLN. They received the warning at, of all places, a cocktail party for the head of the SDECE—the French government’s security service. Or, should it be said that it was Madame de la Fressange who received the warning from a young officer in the French Foreign Office with whom she had been intimate all over Algiers. Thus, straight from the party, Monsieur and Madame de la Fressange hopped aboard an oil-bearing vessel headed for Canada with young Isabelle in tow.

  *

  She drove like the proverbial bat-out-of-hell once she got out of downtown traffic. Prez marveled at her style, the way she shifted, her timing in overtaking and avoiding traffic, her quick up-shifts and down-shifts. He saw 90 mph on the speedometer with such regularity that it was no longer alarming.

  Prez closed his eyes once he had gotten used to the speed and they both were satisfied they were not being followed. A new wave of exhaustion washed over him.

  His eyes jerked open with the sickening thought that he was supposed to have been the victim. Washington’s not-so-secret war on black America was seeping across the border and he knew the stench when he smelled it.

  3

  Montreal, March 1969 – A Friday

  Weeks had passed since the attempted shooting of Prez.

  That morning the group’s electronics whiz kid, after pulling an assortment of devices from an assortment of valet cases, had declared not just Prez’s apartment but the entire building clean, no bugs. As a matter of fact, he boasted, there were not even any remote listening posts or devices set up anywhere in a radius of two and a half kilometers. The group’s contacts at the phone company and at the courthouse confirmed, no taps had been requested or approved. There had been no snooping around his job. But because there could be no thorough search of the roof until the snow and ice melted, Isabelle’s continued hostility toward him fueled skepticism and distrust.

  Then Jamie came forward and said that he had been up on the roof and had indeed found something. From his pocket he produced two spent casings. He told the group that they were from a rifle called an AR15 made by a company called Armalite. “The fully automatic version of this weapon, the M16, is the primary infantry weapon of US forces in Viet Nam,” Jamie told them.

  Marianne was shocked. “Why didn’t you tell us this before, Jamie? You knew we were beginning to lose faith in Doug. You should have spoken up sooner.”

  “Can’t speak up if I actually haven’t been around too much lately, can I, Marianne?”

  Prez was suspicious of Jamie’s show of weaponry knowledge and by the fact that the only access to the roof was through his apartment.

  “Eh bien, Doug,” said Isabelle as she cast a cutting glance his way. “Time for you to get back to normal.” Indeed, he needed to get back to being “Doug.” He missed his beloved library job and his community of activists which included French-Canadian nationalists, Canadian Indian activists, and an emerging group of young Afro-Caribbean English-speaking lawyers who were becoming interested in the whole question of Caribbean people’s relationship to the African-American Black Power movement. Many of his French-speaking and immigrant friends were community activists opposed to the autocratic style of Montreal’s mayor while attaching themselves to the fervency of surging Quebec separatism. He missed those intense “ideological struggles” in Saint Louis Square or on the grass in front of McGill University’s Redpath Library. He even missed his coffee breaks with Theresa, his Portuguese co-worker.

  *

  That evening, after repeatedly pounding on his door to no response, Marianne entered his apartment using her landlady’s privilege of having a key.

  Two big stereo speakers were pulsing in the corners of his living room. Sitting on the floor between the speakers were two gadgets that both contained glass tubes and a box with a long cord running from it. The glass tubes glowed softly in a haunting way that seemed to orchestrate the moonlight coming in through the windows, the enormous black velvet curtains uncharacteristically left open. The whole room, though bathed in darkness, was not dark.

  Suddenly the music didn’t seem so loud and incomprehensible as it did when she first heard the throbbing of the bass on her ceiling, the screeching of the horn as she climbed the stairs, and the staccato chords of the piano as she stood outside his door fumbling with her keys after he didn’t respond to her knocking. The music created its own light, she concluded. It floated and twisted and made the darkness glow.

  She stood mystified; feeling the plucking of the bass strings in her chest, sensing the piano and drums swirling around her head while the saxophone—that tenor saxophone—pulled her somewhere she wasn’t prepared to go. That scared her. She needed to remember she had come to scold Prez about the noise.

  “Doug, are you here?” she mumbled. Alarmed by the meekness of her own voice, she shouted, “DOUG! YOUR MUSIC’S TOO LOUD!” There was no response so she started walking down the hall following the long cord. Light flickered from his bedroom and she shocked herself by suddenly becoming horrified at the thought of finding him in bed with another woman. She steeled herself and burst right through the love-beads dangling from the top of the door frame.

  “Doug! Your . . .” He wasn’t there. The big brass bed was empty.

  The cord went into the bathroom. She followed and there he was standing naked in the tub fiddling with candles on the ledge above. He was oblivious to his surroundings because of headphones.

  How suddenly and unexpectedly moments of romantic truth arrive. Nothing can prepare you for it. She couldn’t stop looking. She couldn’t stop the flushes to her cheeks nor the heat she was feeling in her stomach and below. She couldn’t get enough oxygen into her lungs. He was just so beautiful to her.

  His tall Afro was glistening and dripping. His skin looked as though he had just been doused by an ocean mist. His lean, hard, and muscular body sparkled.

  He sat back down, leaned his head back, and closed his eyes.

  She tugged at the cord. At first, he swatted as if a fly was buzzing him. She tugged harder, he looked around.

  “What are you doing here, Marianne?”

  “Your music is too loud, I think. Or, it was. Now it’s perfect. Come and listen with me.”

  “Is
everything okay?”

  “Of course.” She picked up a towel and went over to him. “Here. Dry yourself. I’ll make tea.”

  He wrapped the towel around his waist and got out of the tub. She just stood there.

  “You’re making tea, right?”

  She placed her palms on his face and placed her lips to his. He put his arms around her, pulled her tight in a deep embrace and surrendered to the kiss. The moist fullness of her lips and the citrusy taste of her mouth bewitched him. Though she was taller than him, it seemed a perfect fit.

  He ran his hands all over her luscious back. His fingers traced the circumference of her waist. His palms became full of her buttocks. He looked into her eyes and they were glazed over, moist, and ethereal. He couldn’t imagine the kiss ever ending.

  “Prez,” she whispered, “my clothes are all wet now.”

  Together, they removed her clothes until she stood, goddess-like, before him. He wanted to look at every inch of her. Marianne was almost five foot ten, and at first glance appeared plump. But she was solidly built and perfectly proportioned, with freckles speckling her body as if comet-dust had sprinkled down upon her one night and, just for her, changed from moonglow yellow to starburst red-orange. Her breasts were full and her nipples orange-red. Prez kissed her shoulders, her neck, and her succulent earlobes. Marianne quivered uncontrollably.

  Neither one of them remembered how they got into the bed. They both remembered when he first entered her. She had gasped loudly, “Oh, Prez!” as she tensed and clutched tightly at his arms and back. It was his last moment of mental cohesiveness, because he paused, thinking that he had hurt her.