Appropriate Place

by Lise Bissonnette

  That night however we said together the Ite Missa Est which it was agreed had been uttered by Hertel, the former Jesuit. His death in that year, 1985, marked the end of the intellectual dilettantism that had allowed an entire generation to listen to itself talk about the country with a felicitous candour that its descendants would envy, like its moral freedom, forever. From that demented, Hertelian, boundless chattering had been born in some of our hearts a revolt so powerful that the country had been lived before it came into being. This wouldn’t happen again. The advent of AIDS, after the lost referendum, brought us into an era of precautions. To preserve what remnant of life?

  Clothaire Lemelin, battered by the depressing prospects he evoked, was losing his vehemence, carefully picking his words, stretching out some silences that even Pauline couldn’t interrupt to bring it to a conclusion. The entire house was impatient now, having opted out of this grim discourse that had far exceeded the three minutes prescribed. The health minister, brave as ever, was getting ready to simply go onstage; he would walk briskly, shake hands with Lemelin while murmuring admiration of the poet’s presentation, and the follow spot would abandon the nervous man. The closing speech would come back to the main question — the need to mobilize around AIDS research. As for sovereignty, the minister was one of those who thought it was dormant, bound to come back, people mustn’t worry about it the way those poets do, they tend to exaggerate. It was enough for a two-minute address.

  Clothaire had launched into a roundabout speech on the inevitable massacre of the innocent when a slight commotion shook the wings. Flames were already licking out on the left, at the screen where the video was projected in a loop. The first thing to burn was the portrait of François Dubeau.

  There was no panic — with its wide corridors and numerous exits the auditorium was easy to evacuate. The small crowd had time to congratulate itself some more outside while the firemen did their work. In general, people were laughing at Clothaire Lemelin.

  With a shrill voice, his chest bulging in an expensive leather jacket, a clean, well-groomed young man was dominating a conversation with others like him at the entrance to the parking lot. He was lashing out at the organizers of the evening. A retrograde idea, in his opinion, to have accepted, even solicited, the presence of Lemelin and his disciples. “No wonder we lost the referendum, when we give the floor to a bunch of incompetents who’ve served their time, who ought to go home and cultivate their pot and smoke it before they go to sleep in their beds after spending the day asleep on their feet. It’s because of them that we’re blocked, I’ve been waiting eight years for a permanent job teaching literature at a CEGEP in the Laurentians where the students are bored to death by their pathetic bullshit. Did you hear that lecture of his on the symbolism of the death of François Hertel? Tomorrow he’ll waste the time of his stunned students who are suffering through their first literature courses, unloading this totally uninteresting story, those pedantic musings on a minor player who’s just gone to join Adjutor Rivard in the limbo of our literature. Clothaire Lemelin doesn’t even have a doctorate, he has no scientific apparatus, they’re all phonies, he and his followers. They already were when they were teaching me because I had the bad luck of being in the first generation of CEGEP students. One day we got stuck with some semiological ineptitude to justify the triteness of their poems, the next day it was digressions on the liberation of Quebec, and the day after that, if the weather was grey, their perorations on the absurd, topped off with their feigned melancholy à la Marguerite Duras. No consistency, no structure to their thinking. And besides, they weren’t very clean, they had bad breath, never changed their shirts, smoked Gitanes . . .”

  This speech had an undeniable success. A girl, the only one in the group, with arms crossed and eyes bright, took up the crusade. “And those dimwits are selling this evening short. What they should have done to benefit AIDS research was organize a prestigious public lecture, invite Professor Montanier, get interviews in all the media, examine the scientific angle instead of constantly falling back on music. As if we haven’t moved beyond old folk songs. They’re provincials totally out of touch with what’s going on in the world and all they can do is gripe. They’re a disgrace.”

  Gabrielle, slightly off to the side, picked up only bits of what the woman said, distracted as she was by the appearance of Pierre, with whom she’d expected to go back to rue des Bouleaux. The little group’s bitterness upset her. She was quite fond of Clothaire Lemelin, whom she’d run into at various forums, even if he nearly always disputed the cultural policies of her government, of all governments. She envied him his easy indignation and she’d probably kept in some box of files the wonderful letter he’d sent her, in an official but luminous tone, to threaten the State with the collective resignation of all its poets if the project of liberating Quebec were put on the back burner: “Madame Minister, we will no longer be the carriers of your stars if you become the sawyers of our dreams . . .”

  True, there was no follow-up to the letter, literary circles were much too divided. And above all, if a collective resignation by the poets were to be taken seriously, they’d have had to turn their backs on programs that provided grants to artists, programs that, though modest, were much sought after by the poets in the CEGEPs who unlike their university colleagues didn’t have access to sabbatical leaves, but would also like to spend some time writing in Provence. The missive had remained a secret between her and Clothaire. She had kindly invited him to lunch at a bistro in the Petit-Champlain neighbourhood and it consoled him over his friends’ desertion, he wanted to repudiate them. As a sociologist, she had put forward some objective findings on human nature, on the prevalence of mediocrity save during periods of severe crisis. It was obvious that Quebec wasn’t experiencing one, or at least didn’t think that it was. They took time to sip a cognac after coffee, something that hadn’t been done since the sixties. The small group that was gravitating tonight around the junior lecturer with a Ph.D in literature most likely didn’t know the taste, just as the young woman with a scientific heart most likely no longer swallowed semen and possibly never had. It was the age of white wine and, increasingly, the condom.

  Gabrielle returned to the building, there was only one fire engine at the rear entrance, the hoses were being rolled up. In the lobby she spotted Pierre in conversation with two police officers, the female one was taking notes. She went up to them, it was over now, and she realized vaguely that Pierre had had something to do with starting the fire but that, until further notice, the matter was being treated as an accident. He had left a dry rag on a turned-off spotlight, the lighting man had switched it on again to follow Clothaire, the rag had caught fire and the screen upstage a few centimetres away had burst into flames. He would be questioned again tomorrow should the need arise, but that was enough for tonight. Anyway, there were no other witnesses.

  Gabrielle wasn’t sure what to think. The story held together, it was hard to imagine anything that would have driven him to wreak havoc, but he seemed to her to have the evil eye. He appeared to find it natural to walk home with her in the cool clear night, beneath a froth of milky clouds.

  They walked past vacant lots, bungalows, cottages, a small shopping centre with all its lights off, the jumble of remnants of what had been thirty years earlier a village and its surrounding countryside. The night lent charm to the disparate neighbourhood, it seemed possible that children lived out their secrets there, that the forsaken lived torrid affairs with individuals
come from foreign parts, that cuckolded husbands would rather pamper their cars than defy intruders, and that the streets enjoyed recounting it from one celebration to the next. And that a boy who was fated to be a writer would one day turn it into a multivolume best-seller, gem of Quebec literature.

  Pierre became serene once more. Again he described the fire, showed himself to be concerned about the damage but not really sorry. She shared his lightness, what could one do, these things happen. Then came the question, which he asked in a casual tone: “Did you know that guy François Dubeau, the one with the picture up on the screen that burned?” She paid no attention to his peculiar curiosity, he shouldn’t have even known François Dubeau’s name, he was just a teenager with time on his hands, poorly educated, conscripted into doing odd jobs. “I knew him slightly. He was a great art critic, at least he was very respected here in Quebec. But he stayed in his own world, the university, periodicals, symposiums, away from the political battles, very different from someone like Clothaire Lemelin, for instance. All I know is that he was very influential and that his death was a shock in his milieu.”

  Pierre kept trying, despite her vague answers. “And how could he have died of AIDS?” Gabrielle started. “He was homosexual, you know, he was even considered to be particularly active, his travels, the baths, all that . . . He was one of the first to be struck by the virus, it’s because of him that the others started becoming a little more aware of the danger . . .”

  Pierre stopped, grabbed her elbow to slow her down, became abrupt. “That doesn’t make sense, what you’re saying. I knew him, he was Marie’s boyfriend, he slept with her, he was at the house a lot. I know I’m right, his name was François, it was him.”

  Gabrielle sighed. “Are you sure? Lots of intellectuals resemble one another. Still, it’s possible. In those circles you see all sorts of things. All I can tell you is that he certainly didn’t have a reputation for being interested in women.”

  Why was it so important to him to stir up that old story? François Dubeau was dead. Marie was dead. And if she had been his lover, she had well and truly survived him for a while, she too had moved to Laval, made a new life for herself, a job. There was no connection between their deaths. A few minutes from rue des Bouleaux, Gabrielle tried to inculcate in Pierre, in the simplest words, some notion of the dissociation between human beings and their sexual practices, a phenomenon now prevalent, for better or worse. To please him, or so she thought, she brought up the possibility of a genuine love between François and Marie, despite François’s other affairs. Maybe he couldn’t afford to be seen with a woman: his sexual practices were part of his image. Social prohibitions, she explained laboriously, always find a way to renew themselves. And then she reminded him — because she had to conclude her remarks, they’d reached the freshly turned earth of the begonia bed — who were they to judge?

  She heard her own emancipated tone, she recognized the inner voice that had authorized her also to be unfaithful to whomever she wanted. “Really, Pierre, we can’t judge.”

  It would not have been surprising, after that lecture on animal nature, for him to try to end the night between Gabrielle’s sheets. But he made no such move. They took the elevator in his stubborn silence. Just as the doors were opening he held them for a moment. “I’m leaving the apartment for good three days from now. I’ll drop in tomorrow night if you want and show you some of Marie’s papers.” Why not? Gabrielle was filled with curiosity. That’s what happens when you become a well-behaved woman, she thought before falling asleep, easily, sated with the good suburban air, naked but with no appetite. Short news items can be interesting.

  Thirteen

  AND SO, ON THE MORNING of October 6, 1985, Gabrielle Perron embarked upon another new life, with the exhilaration that accompanies such resolutions. Her retreat to 10,005 rue des Bouleaux, as she had finally realized, had been until then a simple flight, as several of her acquaintances muttered. Next stop suicide, she upbraided herself as she emerged from the perfectly streaming shower, inhaling the tender scent of the creams that though not perfumed, give women of every age the illusion that they are pleasant to the touch. But death has no appeal for her. None.

  A sound mind in a sound body, she took a rapid count of the disappointments she’d been turning over in her mind since her return in the spring. The sum was large. Lost love, of which she had sullied the memory by succumbing to others. Lost country, for which she had been one of the first to give up hope. Lost ideas, of which she had cut ties with her former master. Lost beings, for she hadn’t been able to give them her time — which was lost as well.

  The inmost depths should have sucked her in, she saw that very clearly through the finest black coffee. But vertigo didn’t come. Her life had been anything but a tragedy, of that she was well aware. Even if she were gnawed at by a cancer, she thought, she’d have had no reason to complain. She could simply go out and listen to the murmur of the city to discover some real calamities. She’d met so many: women terrified by their children’s mental handicaps, fathers hopeless because they couldn’t make ends meet, ugly girls walled up inside rejection, drudges weighed down by contempt, old women collapsed at the backs of buses or on park benches. And the cripple at the university, remember him, Gabrielle, that superior intellect imprisoned within dribbling speech, whom you all avoided in company? He was there last night, at the AIDS benefit, taking in the sobs of the beautiful people over a disease of the beautiful people.

  The unhappiness of those like Gabrielle was merely a facsimile. Despite multiple impasses, it had to be pushed away like a guilty thought. Today would be the day for her to do what was necessary to ship it away towards exterior darkness, the day when the confinement she’d chosen would take on its meaning, when she would stop doing things by halves. She smiled, was amused to think of herself as the reincarnation of Jeanne Le Ber, the recluse of Nouvelle-France, walled inside her father’s house of her own free will and surviving on bread and water, for the redemption of the nonbelievers. That story had made a big impression on her at school, not so much for its salutary merits as for the logistical problems it posed. How did she wash? Who dealt with the chamber pots? Who cut her hair? The nuns didn’t talk about such things and no pupil would have dared to ask, so the image of Jeanne Le Ber remained duly virginal. No, Gabrielle preferred to see herself as Laure Clouet, her story taken up again long after its conclusion, when the old maid from the Grande Allée, whom readers had seen straightening her shoulders and soaking up the sensual sun in the final pages of Adrienne Choquette’s novel, would many years later approach the other shore of her liberation. Tall and still beautiful, well-educated about men’s bodies and maybe about women’s too, having had a glimpse of what Quebec could have been, had it wanted, she would be neither weary nor bitter but determined to remove herself from the tumult, to seize from inside everything that the intense outside had brought her. She would go back inside her beautiful house, quietly close the door and make of it an appropriate place for her detachment.

  The spirit of the cloister was turning up here. At its best, though, that is without the absurdity of renunciation. No servitude towards God and his saints, no sacrifice of the earthly nourishment that we discover so much more effectively after forty, generally imported, like fine wines and exquisite woollens. “All human evil,” Pascal had decreed, “comes from this, man’s being unable to sit still in a room.” Recalling that lovely cliché, Gabrielle saw it as a challenge over which she could triumph. She experienced
a conceit similar to what she felt after her first successful speeches, proof that no nun was asleep in her.

  On the first detachable page in one of the large-size Rhodia writing pads she’d accumulated with the idea that one day she would write important things in them, she listed the prerequisites for her new life:

  to look at every document she’d brought from her Quebec City office and get rid of whatever should not be turned over to the National Archives;

  to renounce officially and permanently any sexual adventure that was not a loving relationship (and therefore, no doubt, give them up for good);

  in the proper time and place, to recall the splendour of the lover’s touch and manage to experience it again;

  to undertake to read the finest works available to humankind, limiting herself however to works of fiction, which tell of history and humans so much better;

  to acquire a cat, a young one so that its life expectancy can match hers.

  The list was odd, but perfectible. She saw it as a good start, some ways to relegate the past without denying it and an entry, through books and the cat, into a welcoming room. She had just succumbed to the notion of a cat after having long rejected it. She liked cats, from little grey-and-white balls of fluff to fat yellow crippled alley cats, but she hated the old-maid appearance they give to the women who pamper them, talk to them, turn them into presences. Another attitude to reappraise. And she’d do it that very day, inviting Madeleine to lunch at Vito’s, for old times’ sake, then taking her along as a consultant to the SPCA, the ideal spot to find a gutter kitten, the toughest species and the smartest, as hers was duty bound to be.