— Lisa Tennant, Vancouver Herald
“No stranger to controversy or criticism, the oft-discussed actions and decisions of the former Premier are laid bare here . . . Restoring Conviction presents the fascinating story straight from the source with no punches pulled.”
— R. Michel, Gazette de Quebec
“Stunning an engrossing . . . Restoring Conviction may have just single-handedly breathed life into the dying genre of Canadian political memoirs.”
— Jon Shermann, The National Mail
12
PABULUM
SO THIS IS it for me then? Confined to write the biographies of greater men for the rest of my pitiful little life? Am I the true twenty-first century cuckold, left to burn incense in sin while insincere seers sense inside the silent searing of my pride? Telling the stories of others while telling none of my own? My life’s work fluttering on and invisibly infecting the legacy of people whose names are worth remembering while I float unnoticeably down the Columbia toward the safe obscurity of the Pacific? I have stories too.
I’ve long been a lover of bread and could happily eat it unaccompanied and isolated. Most of my life I’ve never had the kind of money to eat at the types of restaurants that offer free bread. Once (the summer of 2013 for the future historians who would waste their lives documenting my own), while ceremoniously indulging with my unintended like the responsible consumers she wanted us to be, we were presented with the pre-meal bread, warm from the oven and nestled meticulously in an adorable woven basket. Four beautiful pieces for the two of us, the mathematics wonderfully parallel though compromised when I managed to finish three pieces before she her first. ‘Don’t rip it, use the knife.’ Her words heard but not processed as I chewed faster than I could swallow. Oh, sweet divinity, embrace me with your doughy arms and lift me from the ticking perils of consciousness. Cindy, yes, that was our server’s name. ‘Would you two care for some more bread?’ Why, yes, we would Cindy! And certainly some more after that! I see the tendrils of embarrassment starting to tickle the neck of my dinner companion. She didn’t want this. She wanted to wear her best dress. She wanted me to sit up straight and make gentle conversation about the wine, and how it was good, but not quite as good as the stuff we had at the vineyard in the Okanagan that one time. She wanted to play grown-up. I hadn’t yet reached the point where I felt like telling her that all wine tasted like shit to me, but as I recall that conversation was not too far off. Deep within me, buried under the black troches of contempt I had been routinely swallowing, there resided a genuine will to follow script and maintain the soft smile I knew would come upon her predictable face, but not tonight. Not with bread this remarkable and an appetite as unrewarded as mine. Cindy, I just can’t seem to get enough of this tremendous bread. Do us a favour and bring out another basket if you don’t mind. Oh, and my regards to the chef. The chef doesn’t make the bread you say? Well belay that order then. Thank you, Cindy, you’re doing a bang-up job. I’m eating louder and more furiously with each piece I conquer. I’ve hit the double digits. If I wasn’t on a date I think I could have broken the world record because fuck me this bread is good. Don’t you think so, babe? She’s checking her phone now. Trying not to pay me much attention, but that’s okay, everyone else in the restaurant has her covered. Eventually the main course came. I don’t think I finished it. It was pretty good but probably not worth the meal’s $120 price tag. Not to mention the other non-monetary costs that were incurred.
Maybe my life isn’t worth knowing. Maybe they don’t need to put out a casting call for someone to play me in the movie version. Maybe I’m better off accepting my earthly duty of presenting the stories of others for pennies and not for praise.
Though I do occasionally lie awake wondering what Cindy ever made of her life.
13
PSELLISM
I’M FINDING IT hard to write about Big White at the moment. He left the basement office about twenty minutes ago but I’ve since failed to climb back on board the old train car of progress. Today’s visit was brief, though with lasting implications that I did not intend to be still wrestling with. See, I don’t particularly like to be mired in my own thoughts. I’m a fall-asleep-with-the-TV-on kind of guy. I can do without the moments of existential panic that accompany dark and quiet rooms. No sir, I wouldn’t last five minutes under the Bodhi Tree. But that can’t be my fault. Surely I’m a victim of generational circumstance? Goal-oriented. Maybe that’s a better way of looking at it. I don’t mind climbing mountains so long as I never make it to the top. Yes, I truly am the champion of modern millennials everywhere, my finger placed firmly on the pulse of my successor milieu and the millions of voices that comprise it. So many voices, so many words, so many stories and experiences to draw from.
So why couldn’t I honestly answer a simple question?
Living within M’s gravitational pull has been quite the adjustment thus far. One of the many oddities that I’ve now come to expect are the string of unusual questions that he insists on asking me. They come unannounced and are difficult to predict, though I don’t necessarily mind answering them honestly, even when they are of a deeply personal nature and even when it doesn’t seem like he wants me to answer them in the first place. Back in the real world the level of privacy that I normally maintain would be the stuff of legends—if it weren’t for the level of privacy that I normally maintain—but with M, there exists a precocious openness that allows me to provide unmasked responses to questions I would typically dread. I’m not sure what to attribute this to. Maybe it’s because I know this is only a temporary arrangement with an eventual end point. Maybe it’s because I’m unwittingly imitating the openness that he himself displays. Maybe it’s because there’s a pay-day on the horizon that I’m willing to jump through all sorts of hoops to ensure. Regardless, I haven’t lost any sleep over his questions. Quite the opposite, I’ve found engaging in strange acts of unencumbered honesty to be quite liberating. I haven’t yet felt the compulsion or need to lie to Montblanc like I so often do with others.
Until about twenty minutes ago.
Our meeting today was brief and strictly about the book, but as he stood up to leave the room he paused a moment before asking his entirely unrelated question:
“How do you envision yourself in a happy future?”
And what did I tell him? After taking some time to contemplate his words I eventually told him that in my happy future I see myself dancing with a woman. I told him that this was a daydream I often had, something I would think about before falling asleep at night. I told him that in these visions I was dressed in well-fitted black and white dancewear, and my partner in a grey gown. I told him that when we danced, everyone else was entranced by our faultless movements. In grace and sameness we moved our forms noiselessly across the floor. I told him that I can’t see her face, but I know that she is happy. And so am I. So happy that my body has transcended the incoordination and shyness that once kept it imprisoned, so happy that for once I didn’t mind having all of the eyes in the room on me. I told him that in my visions the dance never ended. I never let it. I didn’t want to know what happened after that because there’s no way it could have been as perfect as that moment was. I told him that this is my vision of future happiness, one where I have learned to be loved, one where I have learned to step out of my own limitations.
But none of this was true. This answer that I had provided was entirely fabricated and was delivered with just enough authenticity to sufficiently please M and end the conversation. And so, I’ve been sitting her for the last twenty minutes thinking on his question and wondering why I felt the need to lie about my answer. But here I am, ready to submit to you now in a selfish attempt to placate the echoing caws of guilt, the truth, as I understand it.
***
Before walking onto the makeshift stage and taking my podium, I sneak a quick glance toward the eager crowd. There’s a turnout that t
he owners and organizers are very excited about. ‘Substantial’ they call it. A lot of work has been done to organize this event. All of it for me. They even used the colour scheme I requested. I’m comfortable and relaxed when I am finally introduced to smiles and applause. Stepping behind the podium, I see my fans enthusiastically clapping with a copy of my new book nestled safely under their armpits as I open my own copy to Chapter Thirteen and begin reading the carefully arranged words contained within. And oh, how I read! I read fluid and flawless with furious and fortuitous fortitude. I don’t need to change a single word. I don’t need to be obsessively aware of the hard consonants or alliterations creeping up the page. I read elegantly and with a confident and attractive tonality. My words, unerringly transcribed from print to speech, resound with the captivated crowd. I finish the chapter to the sounds of admiration and acceptance. I don’t need to apologize for time wasted. I don’t need to politely nod to the disingenuous and once-expected chorus of, ‘you did so well’, ‘it was barely noticeable’, ‘you’re so brave.’
And now a line forms as I take my seat at the table that has been set up meticulously and lovingly for me. I converse with my fans and answer questions as I take my time elaborately signing their books. My book. ‘Who should I make this out to?’ ‘I’m glad you picked up on that’. ‘No, that character wasn’t based on a real person’. ‘You want to do what with me? That’s very flattering miss, but this is an all-ages event.’ Well I guess my time is up. Thank you all so much.
Thank you all so much, but my time is up.
My time is up.
And now I’m back in my ninth grade English class, pouring my entire being over the latest assignment. ‘Prepare and deliver a five-minute speech on a topic of your choice.’ A visceral dread envelops me as Mr. Smith eventually calls my name. When I take this podium I am neither relaxed nor comfortable. My hands shake uncontrollably as I place my well-prepared and routinely rehearsed notes in front of me. What follows is what I assume to be the longest and most difficult five minutes that my classmates have ever experienced. In the few brief instances when I’m able to tear my sheepish eyes away from my notes and toward the jury, I see Mr. Smith using his own to tacitly encourage me. Eventually I stumble over the finish line and everyone claps. Everyone fucking claps as if by some miracle of God I was able to finish. Except I didn’t finish at all. I had to skip about half of my speech just to fit the time. And I tried. I really tried. I researched, I revised, I endeavored to write an amazing speech and I practiced it again and again, just to be introduced to the refrains I would soon come to know by heart, ‘you did so well’, ‘it was barely noticeable’, ‘you’re so brave.’
***
And now I’m back to where I am, with all that I want to be still far away from me. Caught betwixt a daydream fantasy and a repressed memory, when I should be free of both, toiling away and searching for the words to fill a book that isn’t my own. Searching for the words that have always transitioned so easily from thought to pen, though never again to be spoken from behind any of the perilous podiums I’ve known.
14
PANTHEON
SOMETIMES WHEN M reveals to me his frustrations with the demagoguery he is often expected to engage in, I start seeing him less like a man and more like a God. Or maybe it was the other way around. He recently told me that he thought his devoutly Catholic parents were merely faking their piety as means of further distinguishing themselves from the English Protestant majority that they were surrounded by when they relocated to British Columbia just prior to his birth. He believed it was a sort of identity claim. As I understand it, despite being raised in a strictly French Catholic household Maxime himself did not develop any significant lasting religious convictions—unless he was in public. Though far less outwardly vocal about his faith than many of his political peers, there were nevertheless times when he was encouraged to strike those hymnal chords.
I myself do not adhere to any modern form of spiritual practice or belief, though sometimes at the very late hours, when my mind can afford to wander, I can’t help but dwell on the possibility that my soul is somehow tied to the will and divine mission of the fertility deities of old . . .
Ishtar
Here, the First Mother and giver of Life. I submit myself wholly. I will drink your bath water and ruminate for a separate lifetime on each of your individual vertebra. Allow me to lick clean the impious dirt clinging to your explicit form. Small women surround you in wordless reverence, stick-like figures applying oils concocted from the sacrificial tears and semen of your devout congregation. Each of your legs wider than my frame, seventeen sins apart, and I remain head-bowed and humbled at your feet, still stained from the vermilion tincture of those who fell from between your legs too soon and too eager in their purpose. The armies of the East, rumbling in the distance, will be stayed by these hands—else granted be my death. No, Ishtar, so long as I breathe, never shall they enjoy the gift of your proximity. My eyes are open and my strength well-endowed enough that I might tear them away from your figure and toward the dangers that conspire to take you from us.
Aphrodite
The ruinous future will not evade us. We met in jest, and so forever it would remain, if only it were in my power to dictate. Pray laughter may again return to the faithful. Hold still while your flesh be pierced, we must make the markings now. In the contemptuous year that will be 2014, they will serve as your only reliable means of identification. I will meet you then and you will draw from me a force shot so high that even Uranus must take notice. Until then I remain the vigil keeper of your dormant state, our secret of lust and redness cordially kept.
But under what name and guise?
No, for they are coming.
Qetesh
Born of incestuous union under scattered stars and summer sky, my Lordess waits patiently for me to mutter my binding oath. Thousands of slaves assembled to witness the flowing crimson let free from my borrowed veins and collected in the ceremonial chalice. Too many eyes make for unsteady nerves. No direction to run. I taste the indecency in the air as she beckons me toward her chambers. Four men stand at the door, another two by her bed, though not a single one of them blocks my path. Reparations for my sins is it? Memories of these transgressions to travel 3200 years and inhabit this body? To write this book? With no female characters named? Think of the critics. Think of yourself more importantly. Can such a fate be avoided by lying with the exposed deity before me? By letting free my member and savagery with no thoughts of shame or remorse? Witness now the symmetry of her lips and the evenness of her eyes, a surprise given the disgusting nature of her genealogy. I hold my breath as I enter her, my final sin.
Xochiquetzal
She stands in a field of lavender. There is no consensus in the academic world regarding when lavender was first introduced into the New World, or if in fact it was ever introduced at all. I myself thought this sight to be a touch anachronistic, but what good are superficial ponderings in the company of such a combination of beauty? Never mind the usurpation of the hitherto monochromatic palette in place, let this purple presence root deep in my cerebrum and make an automaton out of me. She pulls a piece from the ground and places the root between her lips. I have, in this exact moment, become her messiah and my volition in my mission is now crystalline. Through her gates I will walk, one head held high and the other chaffed and bruised. I am not yet emptied my love. Let us paint these purple fields with our juices. Red and white and now a softer shade of purple.
Leonard Cohen
Teach me to speak.
Teach me to feel.
Teach me to fuck.
Teach me to kneel.
15
PERNOCTATION
I’VE SPENT ENOUGH nights in Montblanc’s guest bedroom that it is now beginning to feel more like my own. From when I lie down to when I fall asleep there’s a noiseless and unpaved backroad of time where I am free
to piece together flashes of M’s life in some kind of workable way. With every logistical concern that is pruned more inconsequential roots break through the ground and struggle to catch some light. Does Max sing with fervor the words of O Canada or does he simply mouth them? I’m a terrible judge of character but I do read a lot.
Still, there are no words in the lexicon that seem readily obvious when attempting to truthfully define Maxime Montblanc. He intimidates me while at the same time putting me at ease. He insults me while he lavishes me with praise. He changes roles seamlessly from mentor to villain, from an object of contempt to one of pity. He fluctuates between profound insights and arbitrary vulgarities. He never uses curse words. He’s a poet and he’s a preacher but when he speaks I don’t know whether to scribe his every word for fear that they may be lost or to burst out laughing at the utter ridiculousness of his overreliance on archaic and grandiose language. His eyes project an unwavering confidence while alluding to some sadness whitewashed and eroded to a lingering essence. The story I’ve been paid to convey is the insipid journey of a self-made man who came from nothing and rose to a position of political prominence and leadership. If told with conventional language, strategic focus, and occasional embellishment, I suspect that its shallow feelgoodery will have the result and impact Maxime intends. But that’s hardly the entire story. My position affords me peeks into his life and with every—hold on.
There’s someone in the backyard. It’s a clouded and lightless night, but through the window above the bed I can see a faint silhouetted figure standing amid the darkness. My chest runs tight and hot as the cogs of some rusted fight-or-flight mechanism begin turning inside me. I strain my eyes at the human-shaped mass and it stands there motionless, but it stands there all the same. I avoid making any movements in the hope that I may remain unseen. I can’t be certain for how long it really was but after forming and swallowing a lump in my throat another figure enters stage left. This large body I recognize immediately as Montblanc’s. As my eyes slowly adjust to the dark I see the two men shake hands. If they are speaking they are doing so too softly for me to hear. Less than a minute passes before I see Montblanc place his hand kindly on the stranger’s shoulder and pat it three times before turning around to leave. The stranger exits in the opposite direction and disappears into the trees. I listen intently but I never hear Montblanc come back inside the house. I lie awake for some time with a dormant and inaudacious mind before sleep arrives.
Panegyric Page 4