***
Claude. This time the bar in question is located in Toronto. Is the kitsch of the decor intentional or accidental? There is no way of knowing. Nor is it any easier to define the sort of people that gather here. The point is that they gather. They may be young or old, but they are all more or less the same age, the age of the slightly worn-out soul, the soul that wants to live, but not at any price. Because nothing here seems to be prepared to live at any price. Nothing wants to spring forth, nothing absolutely needs to erupt. At least not in those terms. People’s sexuality, for example, does not seem to have that primordial need to spring forth.
And yet, bodies play a critical role in this place. As a group, they produce movement, distribute atmosphere. Individually, they attract the eye, move the spirit. Here and there, people stand, walk, or look around. Others are seated. Some talk quietly, some are more determined. More determining. At least in comparison to the rest of the scene. At least in comparison to the calm that envelops everything. If someone were to burst out laughing, for example, they would immediately hear their own noise. Would immediately become conscious of it. Although there are times when noise is welcome. Like music, for instance. When it does not seek to crush or restrict anything. Particularly spontaneity. With a burst of laughter. A fit of jealousy. An outburst of anger. Because all things can live. Ought to live. Emerging from within to the external world without ever worrying or shocking. Because body and soul are one.
Claude has been seated for approximately an hour at the end of the long bar. A while ago, another man sat down nearby. They are separated by a single stool. They have exchanged a few words. They are quiet, more or less united in this activity which consists of watching people circulate in the large room. As they make small-talk, Claude tells the stranger he is a masseur, but that he is just about to give up the profession. More to maintain the gentle rhythm of their conversation than out of any real interest, the other man asks him why. Claude shrugs. The other man does not pursue the matter. He has no desire to become entangled in answers. In any case, there probably is no answer. The two men fall silent. The to and fro of the room gently rocks their gazes and their thoughts. Until something comes to an end. Claude empties his glass and pays the barman. Before leaving, he hands his business card to the man who is no longer entirely a stranger and, without another word, walks out of the situation.
***
No Girl at All. America, which had clung desperately to the notion that George’s transformation into Christine was in fact merely the finishing touches to a work of Nature, was finally obliged to face the facts: George Jorgensen had clearly been a male, which made Christine (now the belle of Manhattan, rubbing shoulders with celebrities and playing to the media circus) a reworked male. There were those who argued that George/Christine had never implied the contrary, and many intelligent readers had long ago realized that there was nothing female about the original George Jorgensen. Such people sought to distance themselves from those who, shocked by the unthinkable, had attempted, in this case, to soften the blow by imagining a technical defect or natural anomaly of some sort that required the attention of the medical world.
Determined to get to the bottom of the case once and for all, the New York Post sent a correspondent to Denmark to meet Jorgensen’s doctors, including a psychiatrist. The doctors were frank and open: Jorgensen was neither a hermaphrodite nor a pseudohermaphrodite. It was because of his fervent desire to live as a woman that he had been given the treatments necessary for his physical transformation. Jorgensen’s psychiatrist, Dr. Georg Stuerup, added that psychiatry was practically powerless to deter true homosexuals from their preference. In response to the cries of alarm from American psychiatrists, according to whom transsexuals were risking even greater suffering than homosexuals (their transformation being illusory), the Danish doctors argued that the media frenzy surrounding trans-sexualization constituted a greater danger for their client than the transformation itself. Jorgensen’s psychiatrist went so far as to describe the American attitude as puerile and hypocritical. He declared that transsexualization was a common practice in the United States and denounced American surgeons who were used to intervening on all parts of the human body, including the brain, but were not prepared to touch the testicles. It was the maturity of Danish society, he observed, that preserved it from such incongruity. He added that Danes would continue their work in the area of transsexualization, but without treating foreigners, since that provoked too much hysteria. Needless to say, this announcement was a great disappointment to the six hundred foreigners who had flocked to the doors of Danish medical science since the Jorgensen story had broken.
***
As though by magic, the consecration of His Excellency Monsignor Albert Leménager shed some small light on the sacrilege committed by the movie The Moon Is Blue. His Excellency Monsignor Norbert Robichaud, archbishop of Moncton, hit the nail on the head in a sermon recalling the religious and Marian origins of ancient Acadia. He reminded everyone that the French colonial settlement of Acadia had coincided with the golden age of religious practice in France, a period that saw the birth of the French religious school of Cardinal de Bérulle. The Father of Conden, Saint Vincent de Paul, Monsieur Olier, Saint Jean Eudes, and Saint Louis-Marie de Montfort were the principal adepts of this spiritual school. The archbishop also recalled that Acadia had been founded during the reign of Louis XIII, a monarch who, “in 1630, had instructed that Mary be solemnly declared celestial protector of all his lands, and on August 15 of that same year, dedicated his realm and colonies to the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.” According to Monsignor Robichaud, this explained both “the robust faith professed by our ancestors” and the “uninterrupted series of Marian events and coincidences” which had marked Acadian history.
Aside from this historical perspective on the religious fervour and torment of the 1755 Deportation, which was proof positive that God had not forgotten the Acadians (dixit the Angel to Tobias: “. . . it is because you have been agreeable to God, that you must be tested”), the consecration of His Excellency Monsignor Leménager was the occasion for the modern Acadia of 1953 to show itself in all its splendour. The event took on such importance that people referred to it simply as the consecration, the way they referred simply to the coronation, without having to mention who it was that was actually taking holy orders. Without a doubt, this gift offered by the Church to the Acadians of Baie-Sainte-Marie of “a bishop born on its soil, nourished in its homes, fortified in the shadow of its churches, educated in the spirit of a past renewing itself in glorious purity” was like a corner of heaven come down to earth. The jubilation and magnificence of the ceremonies culminated with the singing of the “Te Deum” and the “Ave Maris Stella” in Saint-Ambroise Cathedral in Yarmouth.
The incomparable ceremony of consecration was echoed in an equally extraordinary scene outside the cathedral. First, a great number of ex-parishioners, priests, and nuns had come from every corner of the Maritimes to join the faithful in the diocese of Yarmouth for the celebrations. Many participated, in one way or another, in the various parades (accompanied by the Cornwallis naval base band) and processions (including up to three hundred cars). As these passed, people kneeled at their doors to receive the Episcopal blessing. Others waved Acadian flags. The route was beautifully decorated. At one point, the official car stopped to allow the new bishop to accept a bouquet of flowers. In addition to the numerous receptions replete with appropriate speeches, there was a banquet complete with toasts and an elegant menu: celery, nuts, and olives; fruit bowls; consommé; lobster à la crème with a roll; roast turkey stuffed with jellied cranberries; mashed potatoes; peas and carrots in butter; ice cream, chocolate delights from Baie-Sainte-Marie, and Acadian cake; coffee and sodas; and finally, cigars and cigarettes.
***
Sunday, August 30, 1953, on the eve of the consecration, Nurse Vautour waits peacefully, in the Moncton station, for the Sunday tr
ain to Pointe-du-Chêne. She has decided to take advantage of her day off and catch the season’s last train to the Shediac beaches. The train leaves Moncton at half past noon and will quit Pointe-du-Chêne after supper, at 6:30. Nurse Vautour will spend the afternoon strolling through the village streets, along the dock and the beach. She has brought a sandwich, which, with the addition of some french fries or an ice cream cone, or both, she will make into a meal. In her travel bag there is also a pair of sneakers (she does not want to be seen wearing sneakers on the train), a sweater, a towel, her wallet, a bottle of Tulipe noire perfume, and the latest issue of the Reader’s Digest. She is wearing a summer hat, purchased on sale at Vogue’s and, for the first time, a new brand of nylons, which she picked up at a good price at Surette’s drugstore.
Nurse Vautour arrives at the station three quarters of an hour early. She likes to watch the travellers coming and going, and the people on their way, like her, to picnic for the day. Absent-mindedly, she picks up a magazine on the bench beside her, leafs through it without conviction, her attention drawn mainly to the feverish activity of the waiting room. She is not really able to read until a kind of quiet settles over the waiting passengers. She reads that a reputed scholar, a Dr. Kinsey, is about to publish the results of his research on female sexuality in the United States. As far as she can make out, the conclusions of the study deal with the sort of morals depicted in The Moon Is Blue. As a matter of fact, the film is temporarily off the screen, until the Capitol begins showing it again later in the week.
Nurse Vautour has not yet decided if she will see The Moon Is Blue, the movie “that every Catholic should abstain from seeing.” Although she finds all this talk of morality annoying, she is not willing to defy the Church openly. Happily, such dilemmas are not frequent. Because Nurse Vautour enjoys the movies. Unmarried and therefore relatively free to do as she pleases, she can go to the movies as often as she likes. On that score, Nurse Vautour can’t help but pity Nurse Comeau who, because her shift begins at suppertime, cannot go to the movies during the week. But, as Nurse Comeau does not seem to realize what she is missing, Nurse Vautour does not dwell on it. She has no desire to appear the luckier of the two. Nurse Vautour is well aware of her good fortune and rarely envies other women’s lives. All things considered, her life seems to her the best possible.
7
Real Life II
Comfortable swivelling stools made of chrome and plastic — A novelistic sense of time — Rain of death from the firmament — Cinematic and nuclear atmosphere in Hampton — Murmurings of an expectant mother — Intermission at the Kinsey’s — The splendour of uranium — Mass defect, the nuclear family, and sexuality — Indestructible immortality —A destiny fulfilled even as it is revealed— Real versus virtual population of the world — Postmodern delinquency and other nuclear moments
THE IMPACT of September 1953 was further intensified seven days after the consecration, when Acadia became the scene of yet another apotheosis. In addition to celebrating its fiftieth anniversary that fall, the Société Mutuelle l’Assomption insurance company moved into its newly constructed four-story building on the corner of St. George and Archibald streets in Moncton. The various contractors involved in the work bought ads in a special insert published by l’Évangéline in honour of the event. The contractor Abbey Landry (the Dieppe, Lakeburn, and Parkton churches, Notre-Dame d’Acadie College, Moncton Fish Market) had directed the construction of the Shediac stone building, while the masonry contract was awarded to Donald Gould (the Brunswick Hotel, Eaton’s) and the plastering to Abbey Cormier (Woolworth’s and the Imperial Bank). Every effort was made to ensure the building would serve as a powerful symbol of Acadia in Moncton. Even the buttons on the elevator had been coded in French (OP for ouvrir porte, FP for fermer porte, SS for sous-sol and RC for rez-de-chaussée). To occupy the building, L’Assomption had attracted renters who shared its dedication to the glory of Acadia. Radio-Canada and the Provincial Bank shared the ground floor with Chez Marcil, which was equipped to feed its fine clientele on “comfortable swivelling stools made of chrome and plastic, and arranged around three horseshoe-shaped tables covered in red Formica, all of which comes together in a great look.” As the mason Gould put it, “it takes good buildings to make good business.”
The Acadian effervescence of September 1953 coincided with the start of a critical stage for Baby M., for whom there remained only two months of intra-uterine life. During this period, she would have to watch her weight and her cerebral life. A shortage of vitamins and mineral salts could damage her cerebral development. Baby M.’s extra-uterine life depended on these last two months. Circumstances, therefore, required Baby M. to gradually adapt to the stress of living. In addition to supervising her own development, she had to remember to press from time to time on the bladder and diaphragm of her mother, who required such occasional inconveniences in order to experience her pregnancy as normal. This was also the time for Baby M. to enter into a relationship marked by the anxiety of separation with her mother. All these behaviours had to be well regulated, so as not to upset or tire her mother unnecessarily, because, sooner or later, that could only harm Baby M. In the end, all these concerns contributed to Baby M.’s acquiring, in spite of herself, a sense of rhythm, which may well have already been a novelistic sense of time, a sense manifested in all its splendour on the day of her arrival, in the form of a so-called normal presentation, which is to say, head first.
***
The possibility that scientists were on the verge of perfecting a new super-bomb, compared to which the A- (for atomic) bomb and the H- (for hydrogen) bomb “would be mere firecrackers,” somewhat disrupted the calm which Baby M.’s mother had been working to preserve during the last two months of her pregnancy. The concept behind this C- (for cobalt) bomb was not reassuring. “An atomic bomb would be used to detonate a hydrogen bomb. The hydrogen bomb would be thickly encased in cobalt. The cobalt would become radioactive, and its dust would spread high up in the atmosphere. Atmospheric currents would spread this deadly dust throughout the universe. Then, a rain of death would slowly descend from the heavens onto every part of the globe. This poison would contaminate all its inhabitants. Men, women, and children would fall victim to the radioactivity and slowly die.” This gloomy description in l’Évangéline was all the more troubling since many important countries, the United States and the USSR first among them, were falling over each other in their haste to announce that they possessed these impressive weapons. In spite of all the warnings against nuclear weapons by enlightened men and women (Mrs. Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, sister of India’s Prime Minister Nehru, had just been elected to the chairmanship of the United Nations, Mr. Pearson having been vetoed by the Russians), the apocalyptic bombs continued to gain ground from week to week. By the end of September, the United States was in a position to envisage the low-cost manufacture of H-bombs, thanks to its enormous plutonium factory in Aiken, South Carolina, which was ready to begin production. There was one catch, however: the Americans were short of modern military planes capable of transporting the bombs over long distances — to Russia, for example. On the other hand, although the Russians trailed the United States in terms of numbers of bombs, they were not lacking in planes to transport them.
Here was a scenario to worry a pregnant woman, especially when, since the beginning of the year, l’Évangéline had been reporting all the details of the American nuclear tests being conducted on the Yucca plains, explosions which shook the desert and cast a fiery light that could be seen for hundreds of miles. Even as certain details provided a clear picture of the impact (“cars parked thirty-five miles from the sight vibrated for four-and-a-half minutes after the explosion”), the American testers also announced grave plans. It was their intention to fly radar-controlled airplanes carrying mice and monkeys through the nuclear cloud, to plant a forest of pines, to build steel bridges, and to run a freight train through the test site, all to measure the effects of the bla
st. During the fall, nuclear proliferation spread first to Germany and Great Britain (which conducted its tests in Australia), and then underwater, with the launching of the first atomic-powered submarine. Canada played its part, providing the terrain for guided missile tests along the border between Saskatchewan and Alberta.
Though Acadia seemed to be free of the arms race, it was not entirely untouched. The nuclear fever had catapulted uranium into a position among precious metals formerly occupied by gold. As a result, for the previous five years, every uranium find had provoked another rush. As of the spring of 1953, the fever had struck various regions in Québec, the Sault Ste. Marie area, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, and Cape Breton. At last, at summer’s end, it reached New Brunswick. On August 31, next to the article describing Monsignor Leménager’s arrival in his future diocese of Yarmouth, l’Évangéline reported the discovery of what was believed to be a rich deposit of uranium in Hampton, not far from Saint John, upon which “an army of mining engineers and prospectors” had descended. “The scene, in this sleepy little town in King’s County resembles a movie version of a gold rush. . . . People everywhere, elbow-to-elbow with ardent young engineers hurrying to the site to take samples of the precious element, in order to determine its potency.” This cinematic allusion, along with the conclusion of the article (which implied that Hampton might become a flourishing city like Bathurst, where a major mineral deposit had been discovered), gave cause to rejoice and an opportunity to forget the nuclear threat fur a few days. Baby M. observed all this fuss from within the uterus, which protected her from her environment without isolating her. She was not exactly sure what was causing all the excitement, but she did notice that this was a different agitation from the sort that usually quickened her mother’s heartbeat, and which was generally followed by a raising of her voice. Baby M. did not yet know that four sisters and brothers had preceded her in the maternal womb and that, since their emergence, they had much to do with the greater or lower intensity of her mother’s heartbeat.
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