Following the Summer

by Lise Bissonnette

  It took them two days to get near the park, some fifteen blocks from their hotel, and Marie made him walk there. He hadn’t come here to marvel at the last flowerbeds that were lingering into October, or at the green that was only now turning to gold on low hills or in small valleys, or at scenes of mothers walking dogs along the southern paths, past the reassuring row of luxury hotels.

  Marie would have liked to stay longer, to exorcise her memories of a summer that could never have occurred here, where you were never alone on a bench, where dogs must be kept on a leash, where the park opens onto the street, where if an unknown woman approached her, it would only be to ask the time. New York took its water from the big reservoir towards the northern tip of the park, a water tower would be impossible here, it would be padlocked. Here no one would be able to intrude. And she’d have liked to live here with Ervant, who would have been busy with something else. She’d have taught French to children who would arrive through the entrances on Fifth Avenue, she would come here at noon to read novels, perhaps even — finally — Theodore Dreiser.

  Close to the deserted zoo, a young man stood over an old woman collapsed on a bench. He was dark-skinned with a poorly trimmed beard that frayed onto his thick neck, boots over jeans, a bomber jacket with metal studs. He was shouting in a foreign language, she moaned in reply, she had a flowered dress and legs covered with varicose veins, and she wore shoes with laces. In a flash he had struck her face, his anger soon vented, her moans even louder than before. Ervant was there at once, grappling the man from behind, shouting two or three words in the same language, then bashed him into a low wall. No one turned around, the old woman fell silent, Ervant was already dragging Marie towards the exit. The man wanted the money she sent over there, he explained, the people in his country didn’t know how to behave in their misery. Ervant was irritated as much at the mother as at the son, you have to learn how to go away by yourself, you can always write, you shouldn’t be surprised when the old people transposed here miss their other children. He knew every detail of their story, he pictured girls still young enough to go out bareheaded, standing outside the public wash houses, married to fearful village men, wishing they had the currency that would buy them sandals or delicate soaps. The evening was ruined in spite of the movies.

  And the next day, too, because they had to visit the cousin and his wife, who were expecting them. They lived at 135 39th Street, between Third and Lexington. It was an ochre brick building with windowpanes surrounded by black metal like the ones you see all over the neighbourhood and that looked old to them. Air conditioners still wheezed on the upper floors, but according to the sign inside the door the cousin lived on the ground floor. The cautiously opened door, then the embraces. Only two connected rooms could be seen, the one window gave onto the yard and the back of the house next door, an iron grille lay crumpled across it, padlocked on the left. The janitor’s quarters, and his cousin seemed to be happy here.

  Ervant was tense throughout the meal, but he conversed willingly, she would never know about what. In English, she talked about her wedding and about New York with the janitor’s wife, a once-beautiful little brunette whose ravioli were excellent. She sewed at home and kept the hallways clean. There was wine on the table, in New York it costs nothing, and the lights were switched on around four. Ervant wanted to leave but first they had to tour the property, six floors and the perfect smell of bleach. All the doors had three locks, to which the cousin had the key, the corridors turned a corner to go to the apartments at the back, he’d put up mirrors so intruders couldn’t hide there, to lie in wait for tenants. At the third floor they held the elevator for a young woman in glasses who was making fast all the locks on her door. She carried a heavy briefcase, she agreed with the janitor about when the exterminator should come, she had a French accent. Marie was curious but didn’t dare speak, the janitor said she was subletting an apartment, he had no idea of her name. Washers and dryers in the basement, even when scoured the place smelled of grime, so the tenants preferred to take their laundry to the Chinese man next door.

  When Marie and Ervant were finally outside again, the sun had broken through for the first time, a late-day sun that created lights for those floors that were still dark.

  Now it was done, Ervant would no longer speak the language of janitors whom the new cities bury alive because they take refuge in neighbourhoods of the past. They didn’t visit these places, only walked through them to the Village, where they wanted to go for the music. To hear jazz, he had no idea where, but they aimlessly followed a trumpet’s moans. The musicians were white, the bar half empty, tourists, they were too early and Marie shouldn’t have worn flat shoes.

  An inexperienced singer leaned on the piano, a long golden skirt slit to the hips, wig-like hair a lacquered mass that fell to her breasts. The voice broke on lips smeared with pink, extended by a pencil to make them thicker. Marie slowly sipped a beer, they had no money for places like this. If they came back, she would at least consider wearing earrings, her red ones.

  There was a gleam in the singer’s eyes. She threw out her chest and offered herself to Ervant, the only man who was listening to her. Marie decided to enjoy it, leaned towards him to talk about the singer’s wiles, to brush against him. But he was frozen there. His hand gripped his glass, his eyes locked on the woman’s, she was undulating now. It was a waiter who roused him.

  She expected more chance encounters like this one as they wandered the streets. On their last night they agreed to go to Oscar’s, the Waldorf café, the least costly restaurant in the luxury hotel, where there were velvet banquettes. Ervant wore a tie, ordered wine with ease, dropped his discoveries one by one, talked about coming back. He even went so far as to tell the maître d’hotel that they were staying here, that they’d enjoyed their stay, that they had friends in New York. The man listened indulgently, he knew these refugees in search of plenty who came here seeking crumbs. He gave them better service.

  Four women, noisy, came and sat at the next table. They weren’t young, thought Marie, but their hair was like the singer’s and their dresses were cut low. They were celebrating a divorce, telling each other salacious stories about the husband’s impotence. The one with the reddest hair had her elbows on the table while she sipped her scotch, and Marie recognized the fleshiness of a Corrine. A woman who belonged in hotels. Ervant had fallen silent, was staring at these bodies that ignored him, was drinking in their throaty voices, sniffing the perfumes mingled with the sweat of late afternoon.

  When I’m forty, thought Marie, he’ll want me to bleach my hair and he’ll buy me black underwear. I’ll need heavy makeup the colour of no flesh that ever existed. My hips will be broad, he’ll pat me on the rear.

  She knew that she would arrange to grow old far away from him. She packed their bags at dawn while he slept, she still had years to leave him. Only the Corrines of this world were authentic, they are the only women who endure to the end of every summer, whose wrinkled hands make young men throw back their shoulders. On the eve of her wedding she had sworn never to see her again, the park would shut down when the cold came, there was no reason, she had lost her way. But the sirens screamed at daybreak. She would find her again, to learn.

  Twelve

  ERVANT HAD CALCULATED A THREE-YEAR WAIT before they purchased a house. They would live on one salary and stockpile the other. And postpone having children until they possessed a back yard. Their three-room apartment in one of the first blocks to go up behind the hospital would be furnished sparsely while they waited. To the west the windows looked out on the first slope of a hill, on bare trees. They hadn’t had time to eat on the balcony even once before the first sudden showers. Everything shut properly, the closet doors as well as the one to the landing. They could hear nothing and Ervant could turn up the stereo and the TV set, which he liked to have on at all times.

  He no longer worked nights. He’d moved up to the surface, to conveyor-belt maintenance. When Marie went home in the middle
of the day she missed him. The white sun in the warm bedroom was made for Ervant, so playful when he made love. He laughed in what he said was the language of cats, clawing faintly, and he could come just like that while looking into her eyes. Evenings, they had to talk a little more, find ways to understand each other. With a key now, and a mailbox in his name, he was able to shake off his memories. Already conversations sprang from something else, from school, the mine, the newspaper, often from TV series. Early dark, the swift passage of time.

  She had little time to look for Corrine, but she knew she must. In class a dark-haired twelve-year-old girl stared at her with the same eyes, slightly protruding and obstinate, in a face made red by cold houses. For once Marie took an interest in a pupil, even though she was without talent. Who talked fast, gave orders, wrote dirty words in English on the board, and pushed around the younger, timid pupils. Marie had seized an illustrated pornographic book that lay open on her desk, a European publication brought here through some chain of forlorn nomads. The child had faltered. Her splendid arrogance was gone now, and from quivering lips came a faded voice. “It’s my father’s …” Her fear passed like a sudden chill. Marie had pictured a violent father, a pleasure-seeker from whom the daughter had stolen a secret. She had taken pity and heard herself simply ask the girl to leave the book at home. She had said thanks, and in her mouth the word sounded like one in a foreign language. Her name was Diane, though, like other local girls.

  One late November evening a violent rainstorm froze the snow that had fallen the day before. People walked on the road, where the ruts iced over more slowly. There, not far from the school, she saw Diane walking — alone, bareheaded, already soaking wet. She followed her for a while, a small form with hunched shoulders whom a car could have swept away like a wisp of straw. A little slip of a thing. Marie’s umbrella was red, more easily visible. She took the girl’s hand and went two or three blocks with her. Her palm was as cold as her fingers, what was the terror that filled this child? She wanted to walk her home, but Diane stopped to take her leave at the corner by the Protestant school. A streedamp lit the deserted schoolyard. Marie saw a face puffy with tears, heard the beginning of a hiccup. A second later, perhaps two, and Diane had gone. She saw her fall on Pinder hill, get up, pause, probably swallowing, then climb up the stairs of one of those square blocks stacked with Depression-era apartments. Their musty smell touched even the people who lived there.

  First thing the next day, Diane was swaggering. During the prayer that was read over the intercom she had unbuttoned her collar to show the two big girls behind her something that made them giggle. At recess she showed the little girls what she called love bites, two perfect bruises at the top of her barely formed breasts, and explained to them how a boy can give them to a girl. She claimed to have met one the night before, a friend of her brother’s, who had left them alone. She laughed and continued to tell her story until Marie could hear her, so that she could hear her.

  Later that day, when she expressed her concern, a colleague said that some months ago Diane’s father had been accused of incest and released for lack of evidence. The mother had gone away, no one knew where. And Diane was constantly proclaiming her admiration for the man who was, apparently, very handsome. The colleague turned away. “You’ll have all kinds of suspicions,” he said, “but you won’t be able to do a thing. Just stay calm.” She was on the lookout though, ready to respond to the smallest sign of distress. There were none. Perhaps after all she’d confused tears with rain, silence with refusal. Diane was robust and insolent, she masterminded the minor disturbances of the day, and she was the first to disappear when school was over.

  At best, thought Marie, she’ll turn out to be a Corrine. The drama, if there is one, would vanish with what remained of her childhood. And she had enough of the toughness needed to keep her distance from any torments, to take from others the scrap of life that had been snatched away from her. When she turned sixteen, unless some priest got mixed up in it, the father would be just another man among men, and Diane would have restored to her once again laughter come in from the cold. A survivor, a thistle.

  The frost had settled in, but through this child-woman with her tarnished gaze the summer came back to her throat every day. At noon once, she went out for no particular reason and walked along the park, now closed. Behind the bare trees she could make out the line of the water tower which was giving off smoke. The banks had disappeared under the snow, now it looked like Ervant’s village, the one he never mentioned anymore, which in winter resembled scenes in picture books, with the only breath coming from chimneys. Corrine wouldn’t have gone back there, to contend with the frost and a badly ploughed road. She took what was within her reach.

  But at noon hour the warm places where she might find her were closed, or deserted. In the main room of the Union Hotel there would be two or three solitary drinkers and a man washing the floor who would stare or insult her. There would be no Corrine, she would still be sleeping upstairs. She must ask someone, but who? A caretaker in slippers who would take her for a social worker, an informer who needed something to spy on? Her hair was loose and it fell freely to the beaver collar of a heavy navy wool coat, her tawny leather boots were freshly polished. A schoolteacher on the doorstep of a tavern.

  Several times she was in the vicinity, buying a paper from the newsstand across the street, browsing in a store she’d never been to, going to the bank from which she could observe the front of the hotel, the ladies’ entrance now blocked by the snow, and the storm door whose window was opaque with dirt. The street was bright, there really was no one walking past, but the whole town would see her go in.

  She finally decided one Wednesday at five o’clock, when it was snowing and dark. There was no counter, no board with keys, no grimy manager. A bar where a boy in a black shirt was tidying up; he smiled at her. “Looking for the phone booth?” The few drinkers already at tables were watching television, the beery smell created a gentle warmth in the dimness, it was so simple, she discovered. She asked for Corrine, her room number, she could take the stairs on the left that led directly to the room. But would she recognize her? Or laugh? Or greet her briefly, indifferently, then send her away.

  “Corrine? She isn’t here any more. They left weeks ago.” The boy was curious. He looked at Marie and he didn’t go back to his glasses.

  Thirteen

  ACCORDING TO THE BOY, THEY HAD taken an apartment in town. He didn’t know where. Their life at the hotel had become unbearable. Pietro rarely left his room, they couldn’t even clean it, now and then, he’d fly into a rage, pound the wall at the slightest sound. He never went downstairs except to force Corrine to go up, in the middle of the night. “He’s psychotic, you know.”

  The boy, the owner’s son, was at the age to be studying social sciences. He mentioned it because they were both incongruous here, he in his almost clerical garb, she in her well-cut coat, and also because he wanted to keep her here for a moment. She could have claimed to be Corrine’s cousin or a childhood friend. Say that they’d lost track of each other, that she had conducted a lengthy search before coming here. Talk with him about living in some hovel when luck has passed you by, and the country, vast as it is, is basically so small for human beings and has so little to offer the poor.

  But she invented nothing in a story that boiled down to so little. She had met Corrine last summer, Pietro had been sick, they’d talked just like that, in a park, and with marriage, moving, travelling, going back to school, they’d got out of touch. She’d come to catch up, now that winter was here to stay, and she’d been able to find the time. It would soon be Christmas. Had she not left an address? “No,” he said, “but I can ask.”

  He walked her to the door. Under his eyes he had a peculiar square ridge, it stood out very clearly on his pale face, exposed by his close-cropped hair. He repeated his promise to look. She promised to come back. Soon.

  It was a Monday, and he behaved as if he’d been expecting h
er. He took her coat, seated her at the bar, offered her a beer which she refused because of the smell and because of Ervant later, offered her a coffee which she barely touched because of the faded cup. He didn’t know exactly where Corrine lived now, but she was working in the little grocery store at the corner of Rhéaume. Marie said nothing, wanted not to believe him, but he had his theories. About women who aren’t as strong as they seem, who dominate the weak, a common characteristic in a nation that is itself subservient. People raised their heads only to find out when to lower them under blackmail. Running a grocery store had always been a job for immigrants, who served there before going on to be served, and you could be an immigrant in your own country. For someone Corrine’s age, though, it was the end of the road. At forty she would wear flowered dresses and an apron, and then Pietro would be able to sneer at her as well as tyrannize her.

  He tried to make her shed the image of Corrine the survivor, the thistle. He gestured with his hands and brushed against her, but it was with words that he tried to get her on his side. There was no need to spar with her, she’d have been easy to take. Now that she had crossed the threshold it would have been good to go up to a room with him, spread a clean sheet, let herself be penetrated while she breathed in the musk of damp walls and of the long neck of this tense young man. There was a sensation of warmth in her groin, but he was looking at her like a girl you take to the movies and then to the Paris Café, a girl to be slept with only by candlelight and to music by Schumann, many weeks after the first kiss. What would Corrine have done to capture him?