by John Farrow
“Besides?” Inwardly, he was agreeing that the man’s points made sense. As had happened with many political adversaries of the old mayor, he was being charmed, if not actually duped.
“You and I have seen some things in our time, together and apart, have we not, Father?”
Father François bowed his head, then looked up. “We have.”
“And you and I, we know what the other has seen.”
The priest wondered who was confessing here. “True,” he admitted.
The old mayor allowed that point to shine between them. Then whispered, as the priest bent nearer, “If I asked one of the old priests for a drop, could I trust him to open a flask for a dying man? Out of spite—and I hate to tell you this, but the bishops can be spiteful men, no less than me—they might deny me. They might refuse to sneak a bottle past my nurse, who’s a battle-axe and a Temperance Unionist!”
Houde made firm eye contact then, letting it be known that on this one matter he would not broach a compromise.
“I see,” Father François noted.
“I’m glad you do. Is it settled, then? All I ask, Father, is that when my time comes you don’t get yourself tossed in jail for some union crap.”
“If I do, sir, you’ll have the connections to get me out.”
The old mayor enjoyed a belly laugh, confident that he had chosen wisely.
Father François could decline, or suggest further alternatives, but a dying man was an obligation for a priest, and to say no, to suggest that the man was too rapacious for his blood, or too right-wing, or too amoral in general, struck him as unseemly, not to mention un-Christian. If he really wanted to recuse himself from the duty, he would have to own up to a dent in his own character, for secretly, Father François was interested in what the dying man might confess. Beyond what they had already shared in secret. As well, he knew where Houde was coming from. He uttered his own confessions, and among his peers were many priests with whom he would prefer to remain mute. Rather than acknowledge such a failing, he would see to this man’s spiritual needs at the hour of his death.
“How’s the young princess of Montreal?” Houde inquired in his failing voice.
Anik stepped towards the big brass bed where Houde was resting under a sheet and a beautiful patchwork quilt that contained azure and turquoise, with orange piping. She smiled shyly, pleased that he had spoken to her that way.
“I’m all right,” she said.
“You don’t look all right to me,” Houde judged. “You look like a puppy left out in the rain. Maybe that’s what you need for yourself—a puppy.”
The girl shrugged. She sat at the foot of the bed, as she so often did, and nervously bounced a little. She moved her yo-yo back and forth in her hands.
“Any new tricks?” the old mayor coaxed her.
Again she shrugged.
“The reporters outside,” Father François revealed to Houde, “upset her.” “What did they say?” For a moment, the girl felt his spirit, his willingness to defend her.
“Anik is bothered that they’re here at all.”
The old mayor looked from the girl, back to the priest, then back to the girl again. Slowly, a wide grin began to grow on his visage. He winked at the child. “Come here, you,” he said.
When Anik moved up on the bed he pushed himself more upright, which required a considerable outlay of his remaining energy, and drew her close for a hug.
“Now listen up.” He held both his hands on her narrow shoulders. “I’m going to give those newspapermen something to write about. But I’m not just a cuddly old bear—I’m a mean one, too. Those newspaper boys will have to be patient. They’ll grow frustrated, they’ll be fed up and hungry, tired and plumb worn out before I give them what they’re looking for. It’ll rain on them. Several times! The sun will beat down hot. By the time I’m done, a few of them will wish that they were me and that I was one of them. So bear this in mind, Anik, my pet—us good guys, we don’t live to the schedule of the world. The world can wait upon the likes of me and you. Understood? The world can sit back and mind its manners until I’m good and ready. They’ll get what they came here for, but not a second too soon. Got that?”
Anik nodded and smiled with him, and when he tried to tickle her she laughed, although she could tell right away that he didn’t have much strength left, it was so easy to elude his grasp.
Driving, he inhaled the pungent smell of the street. A sweaty heat. The burnt rubber of fast cars. The oils of haughty, fragrant women who strolled along this boulevard with their suitors. He noticed the relaxed saunter of the ladies’ steps, the shimmer of their calves in nylons, the capricious personalities of their white or pastel dresses. Windows lowered, he caught the high timbre of sudden laughter and wished that he could join them, fling himself into whatever sport or seduction the night might bring. This evening confined him to a mission, and the frolic of a warm night in early September had to be ignored, for now.
He hadn’t enjoyed a good upper-class romp for a while. Lately, fun had been found in beer parlours and union halls, and in the cramped quarters of friends’ flats. Fun had taken serious turns—prolonged, animated discussions supplanting revelry, detailed strategies for strikes or political action displacing, for the moment, his dalliances. The days were tempestuous, and Pierre Elliott Trudeau welcomed the Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times.” He wanted to be wholly immersed in the world, body, mind and—as he was, in private, a religious man—soul.
Jobs of any interest remained difficult to come by. Many believed that his law degree from Harvard went begging as he devoted himself to civil strife and writing for a journal that, in the overall scheme of things, had to be measured as insignificant. Frosh wrote on politics for startup journals, for heaven’s sake, not those who could, with a modicum of effort, be senior partners or professors. Yet the enterprise of a law firm could not satisfy his appetite for living, nor even for disputatious talk, and people were wrong that he could easily become a professor in Quebec. Three times he’d applied for a position at the Université de Montreal. Three times he had been rejected. The province’s premier, Maurice Duplessis, blocked each attempt—once through an intercession with the rector, once with a word to a dean, and once by putting in a call to the secretary general. In the premier’s eyes, Trudeau had studied in communist environments—in Paris and in London—therefore he was deemed unfit.
In the 1950s in Quebec, the heady freedoms of Paris and London were nowhere in evidence.
What to do? He was rich, smart and desired by women. For the time being, he followed his friends Pelletier and Marchand into battle against the regime of Duplessis—since he was being kicked around by the man, he might as well get in a few licks of his own. He also locked horns with American corporations who paid their workers more poorly than elsewhere on the continent. He skewered the political right and took on tough corporations with ideas and logical argument. Nobody could call it a job—it didn’t pay—but at least his interest in ideas and action was being stimulated. His choice of weapons—logic, intellectual confrontation—meant that many feared him even as he honed his skills.
By contrast, tonight offered no moment for either argument or agreement.
Tonight was destined for nothing more than a transaction. For him, the most obtuse imaginable.
A base affair. Decidedly illogical. Outside his customary domain.
Yet exciting. He had to admit. He was very excited.
I’m travelling as an emissary for the Catholic Church. He laughed as the notion leapt to mind. It wasn’t true, just a rationale. I’m travelling as an emissary for a rogue priest. Closer to the truth, yet equally amusing. A Dominican. For him, steeped as he was in Jesuit training, the alliance was an unlikely one. I’m a sucker for adventure.
He bored easily. Not only was boredom anathema to him, it was also highly dangerous. Boredom pushed him outside his beloved logic, provoked him to be rash. A whisper had been picked up in a conversation, a rumour,
so distant it had travelled as a flicker from a far galaxy, passed along out of time from the ears of the upper classes to their lips to fresh ears, so that neither its source nor its veracity could be ascertained. The Cartier Dagger, the rumour whirled around, is up for sale.
Yet, how could a buyer make contact, when those who possessed the knife, if indeed they existed, craved anonymity? Anyone auctioning the treasure would be suspected of crimes more heinous than mundane possession of stolen property. Buyers had to act covertly. Possession of the dagger itself was a crime, and those who were selling were thieves and killers. The purchase was immoral. Pierre Elliott Trudeau argued such matters with Father François who, having gotten wind of the story about the knife, brought it to the attention of the rich man’s son. Apparently, he had wanted to gauge, perhaps pique, his interest.
They discussed the rumour at length. Both men agreed that they should be calling the police, and Trudeau knew whom to call in the department. But they held off. They chose to keep talking, and Father François was developing a different solution. A curious scheme. A proposition. “Purchase the Cartier Dagger yourself, Pierre, why not?” he whispered finally over cognac.
“You buy it.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You’re the only man I know who can afford it.”
“In your dreams, Father. It’ll cost millions. I’m not frivolous with money.”
“If it’s not sold to an honest Quebecer, like yourself, where does it go from here? London again? Paris? It can’t appear in the Louvre—it’s a murder weapon. To California, perhaps, or to some oil man in Dallas? If so, Quebec loses a measure of its heritage forever. Cartier! Champlain! Maisonneuve! Brulé! Radisson! This is our history. No different than if Egypt shipped a pyramid to New York City. Or if the Taj Mahal were reconstructed in Missouri.”
“Not quite the same thing,” Trudeau said.
“Pierre, if you acquire the dagger—unofficially, of course—the time may come in some future epoch when it can be restored to the populace, no? Enjoyed by a museum, let’s say. Or placed in a glass case, let’s say, in Notre Dame. Hey, now there’s an idea.”
“Don’t pretend you’re entertaining that thought for the first time,” Trudeau scoffed.
“Bad enough it should be in the hands of Sun Life or the National Hockey League,” the priest went on, ignoring him. “At least in those instances, it’s still here, within our borders. Pierre, it belongs to the whole of our family, not to the least worthy of our elements, never to the Order of Jacques Cartier. If they must sell, the people of Quebec must buy. But the people cannot acquire the dagger except—except—through secret philanthropy. That’s where you come in.”
“But how can we do this?” he argued against the priest’s spirited ardour.
“That’s also where you come in.”
Trudeau was flummoxed. “How do you mean?”
“You’re smart. I’m not as bright. I’m a priest. You’re not. This transaction is beneath my station in life, but you’re not even employed. A rich man’s folly, we’ll call it. Why not? Do it, Pierre. Think of something.”
“What rubbish.”
The challenge attracted him, he had to concede. Trudeau was also drawn to the project by the priest’s desire. How wonderful to do something unique for the people of Quebec, yet in secret, so that no one would find out for decades. As for the moral issues, which stood apparent to both of them, neither man was a stickler for the rules. Leaving the knife in the hands of killers and thieves—as some believed, in the hands of neo-fascists, the Order of Jacques Cartier—did not seem a wholly moral choice either. Father François had another astonishing reason to acquire the murder weapon.
“It’s said to hold properties. Those who have possessed it have known great adventures. Imagine, Pierre, someone such as yourself, in possession of the Jacques Cartier Dagger. What a formidable power that union might create.”
“You want me to be powerful?”
“The Church can offer the dagger safekeeping. Perhaps you’ll bequeath it to us in time. If spiritual properties are at play, perhaps the work of God will benefit.”
Magic, then. That, too. Though it belied his logic, and the faith of the Church, it did possess, as an enchanting fragrance of this night, its own seductive allure.
“You’re spiritual when it suits your purposes, Father,” Trudeau told his friend. “I’ve noticed that about you.”
“I’ve also noticed something, Pierre. Your Jesuit strain runs deep. You may keep your religion in your hip pocket, yet it’s there. It’s important to you.”
How deep did it run? He had canoed the routes of Radisson, who had carried the knife with him. The spirit of the man seeped into his being during those long hours under the sun, paddle in hand. Those beautiful, endless rivers north. That peace. Radisson had been brutalized by history, working for the British, the French, the Americans—whoever might favour him with a stake. He had allowed the dagger to pass through his hands, sometimes merely to please his wife. With it, his wife’s family had prospered. Not the fur trader. That history ran as deeply within Trudeau as did his Jesuit influences. The desire to possess the dagger, to hold the knife once held by Radisson, burned within him. If ever he found it, he would not let go.
He returned to the priest with a calculated scheme. “You heard of the sale from someone—an individual.”
Father François buried his hands in his cassock and placed them over his expansive tummy. “I attended a gathering. A lot of ears. Quite a few voices, too.”
Trudeau issued an expressive shrug. “Yet, you heard the story from one person in particular. It’s not a story that people announce to all and sundry.”
“One person, sure. I reiterate, Pierre, he only picked up the rumour from someone else.”
“We’ll rely on that. Everyone who has repeated the rumour picked it up from someone else. No one speaks too boldly, but confides what he’s heard to a few trusted ears. No one knows who initiated the remarks, therefore no one will be afraid to return comments back to their source.”
“Perhaps,” the priest acknowledged.
They were seated in the quiet of Trudeau’s father’s library. The house had always been a place for conversation, wine and great debates. From boyhood, when his father had suddenly become wealthy, Pierre Elliott had listened to the best minds of his city argue politics and war, the social contract, the future of the nation. Big ideas had surrounded him during his formative years, and the large canvas of those notions would be tackled in spirited, often inebriated discussion. This room, on the other hand, where mahogany bookcases rose to the ceiling, had been a place for quiet reflection. Trudeau had rarely spoken to his father within this room, and only of matters most solemn. At the age of fifteen he had lost him, a sudden, unexpected death. The pain of absorbing the news had never been extinguished. He now knew why the priest had invited himself over, rather than undertaking this conversation inside a rectory, for theirs was dangerous, subversive talk.
Elbows on his thighs, Trudeau leaned in more closely to his guest. “You must recall who spoke to you, who recited the rumour about the knife going on the black market. Go back. Say to that individual that you repeated the story to a friend, that he repeated it to a friend of his, and so on and so on, you don’t know how many times. Say this: that the last person contacted on that chain, an unknown, would like to bid for the Cartier Dagger. He is prepared to pay fair market value.”
“What on earth would be its fair market value?” the podgy man in the black cassock inquired.
“Less than its true value, I suppose. Ownership of the relic is dangerous. The market’s compressed. If someone is selling, it’s either because they need to get rid of it to save their skins, or they require funds. Which also serves to depress its value.”
The Dominican-trained priest nodded. For a man who could not hold down a regular job, his friend Trudeau showed business acumen. “Go on.”
“Tell the person who had spoken to you to do exactly as
you have done. Go back to whoever told him the story initially. Pass the message that a buyer has surfaced.”
“Ask that everyone ask the next in line to pass along the message?”
“Exactly. No one will know where the chain ended, any more than anyone will discover where it began. If we’re lucky, someone will whisper in the ear of the man who possesses the dagger, or the man who started the rumour. That man will only nod and agree to pass along the message, knowing it will be to himself alone.”
The scheme seemed plausible, especially if they did not have to travel through too many links. Yet an obstacle remained. “How does the man with the knife, if he’s located, communicate back again to the other end of the chain?”
“The same way,” Trudeau postulated.
“It might be five people. It might be twenty … forty.”
“It might become a rumour mill. But communication is still possible. When the time comes to link opposite ends of a rumour mill … if and when we get there, we’ll figure it out. The point is, we have a chance.”
Captain Armand Touton preferred to visit Carole Clément in her home, although his presence could compromise her work as an informant. Yet meeting her outside the home was often difficult as she worked long hours at her sewing machine, and if they were spotted, the rendezvous would be even more awkward to explain. His going to her house gave her the option of saying he’d dropped by to update her on the investigation into her husband’s murder. Not that he had anything to update. More than three years had passed without tangible results. In any case, Touton took the preferred risk and used personal time to see her during the day.