As they drove up the zig-zag road Tala exclaimed, “Wow. It feels like we’re in the country.”
“That’s exactly how I felt when I first came up here. It’s an entirely different world up here.”
Tala leaned her head back and closed her eyes. “I love the smell of the air.”
They passed a couple of people jogging up and a group of bicyclists flying down in tuck positions. After a series of curves they passed through a stretch of road nestled in what looked like a miniature mountain pass.
Prez slowed a little and said, “I read that this used to be part of a volcano. Those rocks are millions of years old.”
He stopped, turned the car around, and headed back down, pulling off the road into a parking area to the right. Prez stood on his seat and grabbed Tala’s elbow to help her stand on her seat. They put their heads up through the little Citroën’s roof-top opening and leaned on the roof of the car.
“It’s beautiful up here,” said Tala.
They could see so much of the city. It stretched before them like a storybook rendering.
“It’s my special place, my open-air haven, my place of solace. I come here in daylight and the night-time. I’ve been up here in all four of the seasons. Look over there towards that bridge. That’s the Jacques-Cartier Bridge. The sun will come up over there.”
Sure enough, the sky began projecting its most radiant hues of mauve and magenta with wisps of yellows mixed in. The bridge stood with its feet awash in the sparkling waters. Vehicles with far less presence than ants could be seen moving across the bridge’s surface.
Prez got down and came around to open the passenger-side door. He took Tala by the hand and pulled her over toward the railing. He pointed down the mountainside; there were cars just visible through breaks in the thick foliage. “That’s Park Avenue.” He looked at Tala’s face and her eyes were still fixed upon the bridge. He could see the lights of the sky shimmering on her skin, which slowly began to brighten. He turned and there it was—the sun was just emerging from its slumber. Slowly but surely it rose behind the mountains that could be seen far off behind the bridge. It rose with an indescribable, breathtaking majesty that provided the first and last words on the powerful beauty of nature, the relative insignificance of people, and the ephemeral nature of existence. He moved behind Tala and, with both his arms around her, gave her a squeeze.
“This is so beautiful,” she said. “You know, I’ve never seen a sunrise before.”
How strange, thought Prez, he had never been atop the royal mountain at sunrise with anyone.
Prez pointed to his left and let his finger trail upwards. “That’s Mount Royal Avenue, where we started from. It runs towards the East End. The river over there, that’s the Saint Lawrence. It’s a major shipping route. I’ve worked down at the docks loading and unloading ships.”
“Really? You did that kind of stuff?”
“It’s beautiful down there too, the Old Port, Old Montreal. Old Montreal has cobblestone streets like Georgetown.” He pointed towards the right, about where the sun was coming up. “That’s downtown Montreal.”
“Okay, we crossed Park Avenue, it’s just down there, right?” asked Tala.
“Yep.”
“Which way does it run?”
“Huh?”
“You said Mount Royal runs east-west. Park Avenue must run north-south.”
“Yep.”
“Oh? The sun rises in the south up here?”
“Huh? Tala!” He started laughing. “You are too smart for your own good!” Prez had never thought about that.
“Well, what’s so funny?” She became annoyed and tried to twist out of his embrace.
He squeezed her tighter and wouldn’t let her go. He sucked on her neck.
“You stop it! Either let me go or answer the question.”
“I think they might have messed up a little bit.”
“Who?”
“The people who laid out the city. I think you’re right. The sun rises in the east. The streets are maybe a little bit twisted, but you have to admit that takes nothing away from the beauty, does it? You are really something, Tala! What a firecracker. You can get ticked off at me so quickly. How come?”
“I’m not quite sure . . .”
“Beautiful up here, though, isn’t it?”
“It surely is the most beautiful city I have ever seen and I haven’t really seen any of it yet from the ground.”
“There’s more up here to see. C’mon.”
He grabbed her hand and ran up some stone steps. They were getting higher and deeper into the forest. They walked through the trees, observing the morning light penetrating through the shadows. The light fell to the ground in strips and at one point they spent minutes hopping and skipping to a just-made-up game, “don’t touch the light.”
Soon they were at a clearing and they walked down a dirt path for a bit before Prez stopped and pointed down to a man-made lake and chalet on the shore.
“That’s Beaver Lake.”
Sunlight had not yet breached the wall of trees, so an intriguing luminance imbued a thin layer of mist that floated upon the surface of the water and whiffed around the stone façade of the chalet. As they walked down the hill toward it through wet grass the air smelled musty-sweet. At the lower level of the chalet they found an unlocked door. A sign pointed toward washrooms.
“Hallelujah!” exclaimed Tala. They both laughed as she ran off.
#
Back in the car, the moments of silence between them were becoming tense. They hadn’t had the real conversation.
“You came to see me to give me some news, huh? How’s your father, by the way?”
“Oh, you know my father, you can never really tell. He would probably make the best poker player if he was a gambler.”
“Yeah, like back in the Old West, sitting across from gunslingers in ten-gallon hats.
“I also wanted to see you. Not just bring you news.”
“Like a little vacation. I can dig it. This is a wonderful city for that.”
“You’re ignoring what I said. I wanted to see you.”
“You must be starving.”
“Oh, yes.”
“I know just the place in Old Montreal.” He drove down the mountain and turned right on Park Avenue. “You see the park area on your right? One of the men who helped design Central Park in New York City helped lay this out.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
*
The cobblestone streets of Old Montreal seemed too narrow for regular-sized cars but the little yellow Citroën was right at home. Prez parked and came around to escort Tala onto the cobblestones.
Rose-tinted light hovered in the sky above drab-looking gray stone buildings as they walked by not-yet-opened storefronts with leaded glass and heavily lacquered wooden doorsills.
At Place Jacques-Cartier, near the intersection with Saint Paul Street, Prez found a restaurant open for breakfast. They walked in and were engulfed by dimness. The wide, dark-stained wooden floor planks creaked rhythmically. The walls were exposed stone overlaid with intricate wooden latticework. The ceiling was vaulted and trimmed in oak molding. The burgundy curtains were thick, and had been pulled back to allow a clear view. The heavy-legged wooden tables seemed almost too massive for an intimate breakfast. But they found some cozy little round tables beside a window.
“Ahhh . . . Bonjour, monsieur! Bonjour, madame! Pour deux?”
Both Tala and Prez jumped. Where did he come from?
Prez laughed. “Oui monsieur, bonjour, pour deux, s’il vous plaît.”
As they were led to a table Tala turned and gave Prez the most quizzical look he had ever seen from her. “You speak French?”
“No, no.”
After they were seated, “Well, what was
that I heard back there?”
“I just know a few French words. Believe me. That’s all. I try. It breaks the ice if you at least try. Now for the really funny part, me pretending to read the menu and order in French. But have no fear, because I already know what we’re having.”
They talked up a storm while waiting for the fellow to return with the menus.“Hi, Dougie!” a cheery female voice interrupted. “That will be two orders of crêpes suzette, a tall glass of milk for the gentleman, and what will the lady have—”
Prez looked up. “Theresa! What are you doing here? It’s so good to see you. How are things in your new job? Oh, Tala, this is my only black friend in Montreal. Meet Theresa. Theresa, this is my dear friend from back home, Tala.”
“Preta! That’s me. Hi Tala.”
Tala blinked and looked again. That’s a white girl, she thought. But Tala couldn’t pin down ethnicity. Theresa was quite dark-complexioned, but that could just have been due to taking a lot of sun. She could have been Chicana, Puerto Rican, Brazilian. Tala couldn’t tell. But she knew Theresa wasn’t black. “So nice to meet a colleague of Doug’s.”
The ladies shook hands.
“Don’t tell me you’re working here on weekends,” said Prez. “Of all places—I mean the coincidence.”
“Yep. Gotta work my tail off this summer to make sure we have enough for a house down payment. Getting married next year, you know.”
“Now, Theresa, you know it worries me to hear you talking about working your sweet tush off. It is still sweet, isn’t it?”
“Oh yeah,” she said as she turned around and wiggled it.
They both laughed out loud.
“And yours, is it still sweet?”
“Most definitely,” he said as he got up, turned around, and shook his.
They laughed out loud again.
“And your fiancé, is he working his off too this summer? Let me take that back. We don’t want him losing any of that already too-skinny ass. He already looks like a zipper when he turns sideways and sticks out his tongue.”
They laughed really loudly.
“You leave my honey alone, Dougie. It’s so nice to meet you, Tala. I’ll be right back with your first glass of milk. And you’re both having crepes, I know. “
“Dougie?” Tala teased. “It’s a bit weird to hear you talking like that with her. Like you two are great buddies or something.”
“You know, I think we are. We talk to each other about anything and everything. She was really the first person, sometimes the only person, who I could just talk to and be myself with here. She would listen to what I had to say at union meetings and stick up for me. She tells me everything . . . sometimes way too much.” He laughed a bit nervously. “We talk all the time, or rather we used to, before she transferred to a new department. Now we meet for lunch or a break from time to time. She cracks me up with her sick Portuguese sense of humor.”
“What’s Preta?”
“It’s what her father calls her. It means ‘blackie’ in Portuguese. She gets very dark in the summer.”
“Does she know about you?”
“You heard her call me ‘Dougie’.”
Well that doesn’t answer my question, Tala thought.
*
After breakfast, Prez drove east.
“That’s the Jacques-Cartier Bridge again in the distance.”
As they drove across Tala said she could see for miles. There were big ships on the water and she thought about Prez loading and unloading them. She wondered how hard that type of work was. She wondered about the loneliness.
Prez tapped his fingers atop the steering wheel to Pauline Julien on the radio.
He pointed towards a Ferris wheel below. “That’s La Ronde amusement park. Bring back any memories?”
They had participated in sit-ins to desegregate Glen Echo Amusement Park back in Washington and had bitter memories of that struggle.
After crossing the bridge Prez swung onto a street called De Lorimier Avenue. After a few blocks he pulled over and parked. He came around, opened the door for Tala and took her by the hand. They walked up towards the corner and there Prez stopped and looked over a big ragged field strewn with bricks, bottles, and beer cans.
“You won’t believe this, but there used to be a famous baseball stadium here. It’s where Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in white baseball.”
Tala’s was astonished. She looked at the site. She looked around at the neighborhood.
“It’s nothing like I pictured it. I’m shocked.”
“You are also, I think, insulted.”
“That’s a good word for what I’m feeling right now. This doesn’t look like a place where history was made.”
“What neighborhood does, before or after the fact?”
“But this looks so barren and desolate. It’s an eyesore. Playing for the Montreal Royals must have seemed like an exile.”
“Well, this is the spot where it all happened. The stadium was called the Delorimier. And Tala, he was born in exile—just like we were.”
*
He drove westward. “Remember all those church steeples we could see from the mountain?” He stopped at the corner of Rachel Street and Henri-Julien Avenue. “That is the Saint-Jean-Baptiste Church. It’s the third largest church in Montreal. Who would guess this neighborhood could host such grand historical structures when the row houses are so tiny? And, up the street on the corner, a dépanneur—a corner store with a twist: they sell booze. It’s like back home.”
“You’re losing me. How is this similar to back home?”
“Dépanneurs sell booze. Churches sell an equivalent. Back home you see neighborhood landscapes dominated by churches and liquor stores. But in both places, you only see that dominating juxtaposition in poor or working-class neighborhoods. So, what’s the ultimate purpose? These are some similarities that help me understand a book I’m reading.”
“What book?”
“White Niggers of America. Basically, it says that the French Canadians live under a sort of neo-colonial domination perpetrated by the Anglo financial and political classes. Quebeckers have been systematically held back by legalized and institutionalized prejudice which has relegated them to the lowest rungs of society. Moreover, and this plays to the book’s title, they have been treated as less than human by the white Anglo power structure.”
“Really? Is that true?”
“It appears to be. But the fellow who wrote the book, Pierre Vallières, is a member of an organization called the Front de libération du Québec—or FLQ. They believe in planting bombs and urban guerrilla warfare to achieve French-Canadian freedom. So that’s where I have strong disagreement. Their violence is a turnoff. And another thing, the name of the church, Saint-Jean-Baptiste . . .”
“That’s Saint John the Baptist,” Tala said.
“Yeah. Well, Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day is a big holiday here; it’s in a couple of days, actually. I read that some countries in Europe celebrate Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day, but it’s a religious or cultural festival for them. Here, it’s very political. Saint John the Baptist is Quebec’s patron saint, according to the Catholic Church. Quebeckers have succeeded in transforming religious symbolism into a political tool.
“Things here are complicated, just like back home. The same big question lurks in the shadows: is it about class or is it about race and ethnicity? And do you work from outside or from inside the system for change? For us the idea of a black president of the United States is so remote, so outlandish that it’s beyond being funny—it’s just too absurd. But what if there was a black president? Tala, I’m asking you: what if there was a black president? Do you think that’s what it would take for things to go in a positive direction for Afro-Americans?”
“That’s just such a strange question. It’ll never happen, so why bother tr
ying to answer it?”
“Well, as of June last year the prime minister of Canada is a French Canadian.”
“Really?”
“Yep. And guess what? At last year’s Saint-Jean-Baptiste celebration there was a big riot and some French-Canadian nationalists threw beer bottles at him. You would think they would be happy to have a prime minister who was one of them. But no, instead they had a big riot. The debate that should have been a reasoned and respectable one became unreasonable, disrespectful, and violent—and nothing positive was achieved. People just got angrier.”
“What debate?”
“Whether Quebec should be an independent country or whether it should be a part of Canada.”
*
They walked down Saint Laurent Boulevard.
At Prince Arthur Street they turned left and walked toward Saint Louis Square.
“I think this is my second favorite place in Montreal. Let’s go sit by the fountain. The way the park sits surrounded by classic architecture reminds me of Lincoln Park.”
“Really?” said Tala as she looked around. “It’s way smaller.”
“Yeah, but the houses . . .”
Then someone called out.
“Doug! Hey, Doug! Over here!”
A bunch of Prez’s work colleagues were in the park sitting on a patch of grass.
“So, who’s the chick, Doug? Is she why none of us can get you into bed?” said the attractive big-boned, dark-haired girl.
“Oh, I thought Marianne was the problem,” said the barely-five-foot-tall girl whose attitude clearly punched way above her weight.
A tall, handsome Italian fellow who was Prez’s best friend at work stood to introduce himself and the others. “I am Roberto and I am so pleased to meet you. The big broad with the big mouth is Lora. The little one with the big mouth is Marie-Claire. We have another Marie here, Marie-Josée. My lady Toffee. And now the gentlemen . . . oh, I guess I’ll sit back down.” Everybody laughed.
Prez took over. “This is Alain and over there is Max.” Prez held his hands to mimic a megaphone, “short for Maximilian!” There was a round of handshakes as Prez said, “And this is my dear friend Tala from back home.”
Exile Blues Page 5