Panegyric

by Logan Macnair

  I don’t feel any need to respond to Maxime. I look at him, smile, and let us slip back into silence.

  ***

  We’ve nearly arrived at the airport passenger drop-off area. M reaches into the inner pocket of his jacket, produces a business card, and hands it to me. I examine the card and see that the only things printed on it are a name, Vivian Chan, and a phone number. Before I can ask, M provides the answer.

  “That is the phone number of Vivian Chan. She is the head of the Canadian branch of [REDACTED] Publishing. As you know, they are the company that will be responsible for publishing and promoting my book once they have finished with the requisite edits. On that card is Vivian’s private number. As a personal favour to me, I have let her know to expect a call from you at some point in the future. Understand what that means? She has agreed to personally read anything that you are ready to submit for publication. I cannot guarantee that she will publish anything you choose to send her, but at the very least she will read it herself, which is far more than can be said for most submissions.”

  Before I can thank him or even process what this possibility really means, we arrive outside the airport. It was as if he had planned to the minute when he was going to tell me this so that we wouldn’t need to linger in the potential discomfort of it.

  “And here we are.”

  He parks the car, steps out, and proceeds to lift my suitcase out of the trunk for me. And as we stood there at the passenger drop-off area outside Pearson International Airport, M extended his hand toward mine. I meet his gesture and we shake hands, his powerful grip and large hand engulfing mine.

  “Au revoir, Lawrence.”

  Without once looking back he disappears into his black car and drives slowly out of my view.

  And that was the last time that I would ever see Maxime Montblanc.

  62

  PLIABILITY

  BELPHEGOR HASN’T A home in this soul nor body. I think about Maximus the Conqueror and his wife that I will never meet. The mimicry and mockery and mirth of the tabula rasa—those we wanted to be with shared beds and always uncertain where we would open our eyes. Before unpacking my bags as M’s guest, before the mattress in the corner of my bedroom back home, before Restoring Conviction, before the pile of rejection letters, before the weight of idealism cast off, there was the idiot kid molested by Belphegor with bright eyes looking only forward toward a future with you.

  You were special, but not like I was. Mine was a condition of severed words, not severed thoughts. Yours, they say, kept certain things from processing. And maybe some of me was lost. Maybe some of me never passed through proper. You showed me patience when few others would. Enter late nights of exchanging run-on sentences with carefully selected fonts and colours. Primal fire comes dressed as a muse and paints genesis with light hands. You wrote my name with a capital letter and you used it often. I never had such boldness, opting instead to craft juvenile metaphors under candlelight while the world was sleeping. And I was convinced in those moments that I knew what happiness was supposed to be.

  Your father was in the Navy, but now he drove a truck during all hours of the night along quiet and cold backroads—conditions he emulated in his home. I practiced my introduction countless times though I still managed to mangle most my initial words. Your patience, it would seem, was not an ­inherited trait. My passage was gained under the pretense of mathematical predilection and secured under my offerings of tutelage.

  It was around this time that the dream first came to me. It’s come innumerable times since and never with any variation. There’s a serene lake and it’s completely encircled by steep mountains. Both water and sky are clear and calm. And there I am, floating above the lake in a net that’s suspended by a panoply of brightly coloured balloons. The net limits my movement, but the balloons keep me floating at a safe distance from the water beneath. Though trapped, I am calm. This calmness lasts a short while before the murder of crows appears from behind the mountains. They fly dense and resemble an oil splotch on the sky. One at a time, the crows approach and begin pecking the balloons above me, immediately popping them with sharp and mangled beaks. The net descends closer to the waiting water with each destroyed balloon and fear fills my heart, but right as I am about to be submerged, I wake up. This happens every time without exception.

  Back then I would have this dream almost nightly, but over the years it has become increasingly uncommon. I don’t know the reason for this.

  All I know is that I miss it so much.

  63

  PALILALIA

  “GOOD AFTERNOON, PASSENGERS, this is the pre-boarding announcement for Air Canada flight 117 to Vancouver. We are now inviting those passengers requiring special assistance to begin boarding at this time. Regular boarding is scheduled to begin in approximately ten minutes. Thank you.”

  I watch the boarding agent from my seat on the gate bench as she makes this announcement. She delivers her lines flawlessly as if she’s delivered them a million times before. She probably has. She probably hears those words in her head when she’s trying to fall asleep at night. Though what may be now mechanical and meaningless to her was surely a treat for me. It feels like I haven’t heard any other voices all summer. And as I sat there waiting for the heavenly voice of the boarding agent to invite me onto the aircraft that would soon carry me westward toward some familiar purgation I started reminiscing on the peregrination that was my summer at Château Montblanc. And as I did I couldn’t help but think of all those ‘P’ words that I never could say. And how free those words then flowed as I saw what lived inside!

  I saw pugilists painstakingly perfecting punches, pelting ­pampered poetasters. Poltroons performing pantomime, puerile parodies—particularly prurient perversities par powerful politicians placating panicked putschists. Persephone, prayers piously paid, protecting participating patrons. Parallel palisades preventing; peeping peers, patrolling parades, picketing pricks, parasitical propagators. Pavlov, providing peanutted pabulum, pets proud pointers plus puerile poodles. Penumbral pernoctations perhaps pleasing plangent purveyors, Pollock painting pastiche pointillism, purposeless practitioners planning pastimes, prepping pencils, playing Pictionary. Prognostication preparing procrastination. Parallel pistons projecting pained poets presenting parsed poems. Promised peace peeking past peerless peaks.

  And how deeply I wanted to stand up and shout. I am not what you think I am! I swear I never was. I just want someone to know. But though my beleaguered seams fluctuate I resist the urge to stand up on this bench and shout with jangled words what many would consider to be a long overdue apology. Instead I drift toward halcyon days with water and with family and with imagination. Imagination—the only thing that ever saved me, the only thing I was ever any good at. This meditation on the process being our only evidence one way or the other. I reach into my back pocket and observe once again the business card Montblanc left me as a parting gift. Vivian Chan—Publisher. What might just be my last chance. There may be scintillating fates at work, though I’m sure Max would call them by another name. As I hold the card with both thumbs and both index fingers claiming a corner I remember the seemingly simple question that initiated this odyssey nearly five months ago:

  “Do you know who I am?”

  The words repeat in my mind as I stare at the font of Vivian’s card.

  “Do you know who I am?”

  I hear his voice clearer with each repetition as if it were my mantra.

  “Do you know who I am?”

  My focus so committed that I almost fail to register the general boarding announcement for my flight.

  I place the card in my back pocket and I board the plane toward a future that seemed at once both harrowing and life-affirming.

  64

  PLANGENCY

  That woe is me, poor child, for thee

  And ever mourn and may

  For thy parting ne
ither say nor sing,

  “Bye bye, lully, lullay.”

  ALL GLORY BE to our Lord Father who would grant us relief and protection from the tempest imminent.

  My pneuma has merged with Montblanc’s, and lo, a piece of me will be with him when he makes his ascent from this mortal coil to the promised lands above. After the cacophonic medley of the beeping machines and the doctors dictating directions and the priest’s soft-spoken viaticum and the collective wallow of the nation and the flatlining finale we find ourselves on a staircase of marble guided by golden handrails. And there was Max. And there was the troubadour, the Greatest White Mountain, the unconscionable sinner, the hope of so many and the ire of all others. The childless and the loveless. The boiled-over water. The man unmeritedly marked. And though toward the end his body trembled and quivered ungraciously, he stood now stoic and calm. He was dressed in a well-fitted white suit, the kind his father never would have worn. He looked ahead and he looked above and beyond the marble steps into the clouds but he never once looked behind. His eyes twinkled and shone and may have leaked had he not been focused on the way ahead. He stood there for some time before taking his first step. His shoes, immaculate and white, landed atop the solid marble with an audible click. And so did his final walk begin. The uninitiated would see a man slowly walking these steps in silence save for the rhythmic sounds of his shining shoes, click, click, click. And soon it was that the clicking of his shoes on the marble steps grew fainter and fainter as he ascended into a place where I could not follow.

  But as he did I knew the man’s thoughts as if they were my own.

  One step for the parents he never had the chance to forgive. One step for the mother and the stories she told him about the cathedrals in Quebec. One step for the father and the malignant blood he passed on. One step for the teachers of the Frontier Apostolate. One step for their curious hands and for the permanent separation of carnality and love that they sculpted. One step for the forests of the Cariboo and the promises he made there. One step for the emptiness he would feel his entire life. One step for the angels he knew were there but would never admit to seeing. One step for the man he let into his heart. One step for their pained and pragmatic vow of separation. One step for the wife he abandoned. One step for the daughter he once promised her. One step for the son he never gave her. One step for the family name that died alongside him. One step for the kindness within him that he desperately wanted to show. One step for the image that meant he never could. One step for each stone thrown from his backyard, resting forever now on the bottom of Lake Ontario. One step for each prayer he whispered into each stone before releasing. One step for the reverence he inspired in some. One step for the contempt he inspired in everyone else. One step for the immense wealth he accumulated during his life. One step for the foundation he created and left every penny for. One step for every child’s life he saved because of it. One step for the ­legacy he left behind. One step for his empty house and for the loneliness he always felt inside it. One step for the choral hymns he listened to late at night when no one else was around to hear. One step for every career he made and every career he ended. One step for the condition he hid for as long as he could. One step for the soft smile he left on his deathbed.

  And yes, one step for the stuttering writer who was inadvertently allowed to grow closer to him than nearly all others could.

  65

  POSTLIMINY

  LEONARD COHEN DIED one year ago today. I think maybe none of this exists without him. It’s an anniversary that has me feeling like maybe I shouldn’t be alone tonight.

  And so I’m staring out the window while sitting on the upper deck of the bilevel West Coast Express. It’s a one-hour train ride from downtown Vancouver to Port Haney Station in Maple Ridge, and while it’s a trip I’ve taken many times, I still like to gawk out the window as I’m sure most people do. Through a cheap pair of earbuds I’m listening to Songs of Love and Hate with the volume set to medium-low, the only way the Godfather of Gloom should be listened to. That’s the medium-low volume part, not the cheap earbuds part. I should make it to Grandma’s house just after six. I’m not sure what she’s making for dinner but I know she’ll be making strawberry shortcake for dessert and that alone is worth the trip. A couple years ago she gave me the recipe and I had a go at making it myself. I don’t need to tell you that it didn’t turn out well at all.

  It’s been about two months since I’ve returned home.

  In the row in front of me a mother is scrolling on her phone while her young son, both hands rested on the base of the window frame, is asking questions about the mechanics of the train without averting his eyes from the glass portal.

  “How does the train stay on the tracks?”

  I turn my volume down slightly in anticipation of the mother’s response.

  “It’s magnets and electricity.”

  I don’t think that’s correct, but who am I to say otherwise.

  The song changes and I wonder how he was able to arrange his words in the way that he did. What a pure artist that man was. Even if I could stand tallest amongst his legions of imposters I wonder if I could ever reach such purity. In the two months since I’ve returned home to B.C. I still haven’t written anything that I believe is worthy of being sent to the publisher that Montblanc put me in touch with. In truth, my life is more or less back to the way it was before I was recruited by M, and that might be the hardest thing to admit. See, people like stories, fictional or not, where the main characters undergo some sort of noticeable change between the beginning and the end. I don’t think that has happened here, and it’s for that reason that I find myself truly questioning whether or not I belong on this track.

  In the back corner of the car I see a well-postured woman reading a book.

  Truth be told, I have written very little since returning home. Maybe I’m still burnt out from writing M’s painstakingly researched memoirs over the course of one congested summer. Maybe that’s just what I tell myself to justify my lack of output. I sincerely believed that with all my immediate and near-future financial needs met, my productivity would surge. Turns out my spending habits have been largely unaffected. You can’t readily change your instincts after a lifetime of living frugally I suppose, although I did buy a pretty nice pair of shoes that I’m wearing right now. More expensive than any pair of shoes I’ve ever had, but every man needs a nice pair of shoes. At least that’s what I told myself as I bought them.

  Maybe it’s time to call it in. Hang up the skates, take a walk in the snow and start punching the clock like everyone else. I shift my focus to the woman in the corner and this is where I’ll ask you to really stretch your suspension of disbelief, because the book that she’s reading? It’s the memoirs of Maxime Montblanc.

  Now we can start counting the various reasons why this shouldn’t be happening. For starters, why does she have access to a book that hasn’t been publicly released yet? While I finished the book two months ago, it wasn’t due to be released for another couple of weeks yet. I know this because I’ve been counting down the days with obsessive anticipation. But beyond that, what are the chances that this woman just happens to be reading that exact book, on this exact train, at this exact time, on this exact day when I just happened to be heading out to my grandmother’s house on a whim because the anniversary of Leonard Cohen’s death had me feeling down? Blame chaos theory. Blame providence. Blame deus ex machina. I don’t think it really matters, because it happened.