October 1970

by Louis Hamelin

  Brien began by spreading open the chicken box on the back of his hand. “The public prosecutor,” he said, “tried to prove that this box, produced in evidence in this court, came from rue Collins. The investigators could easily,” he postulated, “have procured it from a chicken deliverer sympathetic to the Crown …

  “As for the young man that the neighbour saw at the wheel of the white Chevy, he had medium-long hair. However, a witness came into this court and certified that in October 1970 the younger of the Lafleur brothers was clean-cut. Who was it, in fact, who sported a ‘mod’ haircut that autumn? Whose hair completely hid his ears in the photos of the Chrysler following behind a moving phalanx of police cars on the day that Travers was freed? François Langlais, that’s who. And who signed the ownership papers for the white Chevy under an assumed name? François Langlais. To which FLQ member were the following two connections traced: a link with the white Chevy and a mod haircut? François Langlais. And who, according to what we know, assured the liaison between the Chevalier and Rebellion cells? François Langlais. In each case, the same man!”

  Toward the end of his summation, the Maestro insisted at great length on the right of the accused to remain silent. In Canadian law, he reminded the jury, no trial has the authority to exact an oath from an accused person except in the case of a trial for treason. “But René Lafleur is not a traitor. He’s a patriot. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, two days ago my eminent colleague for the prosecution terminated his summation by telling you that the accused has not proven that he didn’t kill. The least I can say to that is that is one strange conception of burden of proof! But I’ll leave you now to judge for yourselves …”

  René took his mother in his arms. Everyone pressed around him. Chevalier saw a young hippie trying to flirt with the judge, whom she said to anyone who would listen that she found attractive in his wig. For one moment, Branlequeue’s gaze met that of Maître Brien, and in his eyes he still saw the sombre intensity of battle. The lawyer for the FLQ gave him a defiant and satisfied wink, as much as to say:

  “You owe me a beer, my friend.”

  CHEVREUIL

  A GLADIATOR ARMED WITH A net and trident, a retriarius, stared out into the silent shadows with lifeless, gleaming eyes. Farther down, skulls lit by indirect lighting grinned immobile. Farther still, past the entrance to the catacombs, beside the first cross planted in the old rock bristling with blue-flag irises from the Gaspé, the man from Saint-Malo was talking to the great Chief Donnacona. In other dark rooms, the colonial pomp of Frontenac’s little court, monographs on the Native Peoples of Cataraqui, the Sieur de Maisonneuve, and the good Jeanne Mance were displayed. There had been so many others who had taken possession of this land and repelled the evil Iroquois and the bloody English, lost Quebec, then Montreal, and resisted the advances of Benjamin Franklin and the incursions of New England generals.

  Across from the wax museum there were three old-style apartment buildings. The street was variously called the Chemin de la Reine-Maire, Queen Mary Road, or just Chemin Queen Mary by the people of Montreal. In the living room of apartment number six, in the building situated at 3730, François Langlais, Richard Godefroid, Jean-Paul Lafleur, and Benoit Desrosiers were sitting quietly. Dawn had arrived; it was November 4, 1970. They had been talking all night, keeping their voices low for the most part, because the walls have ears. Between them, separating and reuniting them in the brotherhood of blood, was the Minister of Labour, Paul Lavoie, as thin and pale for his date with history as one of the statues in the miserable pantheon created from the ends of candles in the well-appointed museum across the road. The others occupying the apartment were either asleep or pretending to be.

  Gode looked at Pierre Chevrier, whom he’d known since childhood as François, the Little Genius of grade seven, and who was now as pale and haggard as the rest of them. For an instant he saw him again in his choirboy robes, serving mass for Father Gamache, the curate with the Mohawk. More than a few megawatts had flowed under the bridge since those days.

  “Amen to that,” said Jean-Paul. “Lavoie played his hand and lost. His bluff came back to kick him in the ass. I’m not going to cry over spilt milk. What I’m more concerned about is what’s happening now. We’re going to need your help, Pierre. We’re spinning our wheels, here.”

  “They’re spinning their wheels up in Montreal North, too,” replied le Chevreuil.

  “Maybe, but up there they’ve still got their bargaining chip.”

  “Lancelot doesn’t want to know about you guys. He says you’ve fucked everything up.”

  “Yeah? And who’s dropped the ball, eh, Pierre?”

  Pierre lowered his eyes, a boy from the South Shore like them. He remained silent.

  “You, they’re not searching for you, no one suspects you. You can walk around, you’re free to come and go where you want. Ask Lancelot if he can take us.”

  “He won’t want to.”

  “Then find us another place to hide. And we need more money. We’re broke. We can’t stay here.”

  “I’ll see what I can do …”

  Passing in front of Gode, Pierre nodded and, without looking at him, said:

  “He played you like a group of school kids …”

  “Who? You mean Lavoie?”

  “Not so loud,” said Jean-Paul. “We’re not going there again. It happened. And we can’t do anything about it now. What’s important is to get our stories straight, to all say the same thing … Listen to me, you guys: it’s the government who killed him.”

  They all looked at him.

  “That’s our story. It was after hearing Vézina nail the last nails in the lid of his coffin, on Friday afternoon on television, that he tried to throw himself out the window and cut himself to shreds like that. It was an act of desperation. Everything that happened after was caused by that one act. That’s what we tell them. It’s the government who condemned him to death. Does anyone here have a problem with that?”

  His gaze made the rounds. No one objected. “So it’s settled.”

  The dawn filtered in through the curtains. The television had been on the whole time. The head of the Great Chief of the End of Emissions was searching for Indians in the snow.

  In the subway car, his left hand clutching the metal pole, Pierre idly scrutinized the faces of the people around him. The too-blonde woman with the lined yellowed face, the one with the frizzy brown hair carrying the Adidas bag. Waitress? Security guard? Was she going on shift? Was he going home to sleep? What did all these people do in life? Whose job was written all over their face?

  He’d once read a story about a fox who escaped from some dogs by running into the middle of a flock of sheep, jumping onto the back of one of them, and clinging to its wool and thereby evading his pursuers. At seven o’clock in the morning on a weekday, at the Berri-de-Montigny subway station, there were plenty of Saint-Jean-Baptiste sheep about, but the similarity ended there. Because Pierre’s problem, as he headed back to the north end of the city, was that some of the dogs sometimes behaved like foxes, English foxes or not, and were wandering into the flock themselves.

  The worker in the plaid shirt, green work pants and workboots, who was reading his Montréal-Matin. Too obvious, that newspaper trick. The accountant with his moustache and double-thick lenses, in his late thirties, greying hair well-combed, attaché case resting on his knees. Maybe.

  He casually turned his head a quarter turn and became interested in a young man in a purple windbreaker and black serge pants, short-cropped brown hair, face a bit red, hands thrust into the pockets of his jacket. You couldn’t find a more ordinary-looking guy. But no bag, no briefcase, nothing in his hands and God knew what was in his pockets. Where was he going, and to do what? Their eyes met briefly and Pierre had the impression that the other man reacted to the visual invasion of his territory, was confronting him without either smiling or looking away. He turned his own eyes and furtively looked at a young woman wearing tight-fitting clothes, an I
ndian blouse, green velour bell-bottoms, candy-pink high-heeled boots. A hippie, maybe. Yes, maybe.

  They could be bearded, wearing bracelets, they could have bad breath, big boobs, a lunch pail. They could be old and decrepit, they could have dandruff, long hair, a ponytail, half their face could be disfigured by scars from an accident involving hot grease or acid, the skin as red as raw steak. That’s how you can recognize a professional: you can’t.

  And he, the former aficionado of Sherlock Holmes and Arsène Lupin, was now involved in his own living novel. The genial bloodhound and the master of disguises. The one who hides himself, the one who searches for the hidden. Rarely both at the same time. But this morning, in the subway car full of workers and students, he felt the long, sleepless night in his body, he felt like a man of forty, and this time the roles were reversed. He was the one who was searching, and they were the ones who were hidden.

  “Okay,” he said to himself, “let’s try to spot at least one before Henri-Bourassa …”

  The others, Jean-Paul, Gode, Lancelot, all committed the same mistake; they looked for cops who looked like cops. Plainclothes police, inspectors in suits. Not him. Because le Chevreuil knew.

  On the down escalator in the Henri-Bourassa station, he noticed that the young man in the windbreaker was following closely behind him. Nothing unusual there, everyone was going down. This was the terminus. Casting a glance over his shoulder, he again met the fellow’s eye looking up at him. Hands still shoved into his jacket pockets, half a dozen steps back. The man took his time before looking away.

  Pierre went to stand in line for the bus and, from the corner of his eye, verified that the young man had done the same thing. Standing there, hands in his pockets, three people behind him. For a moment Pierre’s heart beat harder. He advanced toward the bus’s open door, then abruptly left the line and walked quickly away and joined the line for the bus headed in the opposite direction. This time the man in the purple windbreaker waited a good five seconds, then calmly walked over and stood behind him.

  Now le Chevreuil was certain. His mind worked at lightning speed.

  He turned brusquely and met the man’s eyes. Without the least attempt at dissembling, the man returned his look and accompanied it with a barely perceptible nod of his head. Then the shadow of a smile appeared on his face.

  Finally Pierre understood: an open tail.

  He turned on his heels, resisted the impulse to break into a run, and hurried off, taking long strides, and jumped into the first taxi he came to without looking around. He slammed the door.

  “1345 rue de la Compagnie-de-Jésus,” he told the driver.

  FALSE WALL

  ON SATURDAY THE SEVENTEENTH, I’D promised Marie-France we’d go dancing at the Café Campus or in Old Montreal. Instead, René and I turned up at suppertime looking like a couple of ghosts who hadn’t slept for two days. Jean-Paul had been crashing there since the previous night. René had blood on his pants and he asked Bellechasse, Marie-France’s younger brother and roommate, if he could borrow a pair of his. “What for?” asked the brother-in-law (ex-brother-in-law, actually). “Because mine are dirty.” The other looked down, saw the dark stains, and asked René, as a joke, if he’d stuck a pig or something, and René said no, he’d been on a hunting trip and could Bellechasse lend him a pair of pants? Because he’d made a mess of his.

  As it turned out, it was a waste of time, because when Nicole and René disappeared into the bedroom soon after that, I found some pants that, clean or not, were bunched up in a pile in the corner. It had been at least three weeks since the two lovebirds had seen each other, so it wasn’t a surprise, my friends. As far as my situation went, I was still doing penance. Jean-Paul was in the kitchen, editing a communiqué. I went into the living room and lay down on the sofa to watch Hockey Night in Canada, as exhausted as an old dead rat. I could hardly keep my eyes open, in there by myself, listening to Nicole moaning over René Lecavalier’s play-by-play.

  I opened my eyes with a start and there it was: the Chevrolet, Hangar 12, the fence, the police cars, cameras flashing. It was like a nightmare that started up again every time you wake up.

  “They found it,” said Marie-France. There was no more noise coming from Nicole and René in the back bedroom. Just the voice of the reporter on the black-and-white TV in the living room. Marie-France looked at me oddly and said that responsibility for the murder had been claimed by a new FLQ cell.

  I looked surprised. I was surprised. I looked at Jean-Paul.

  “It’s the Dieppe Royal 22nd Cell,” he said, without taking his eyes off the screen.

  In Sunday’s papers there was a photo of Jean-Paul, wanted in connection with the kidnapping and murder of Paul Lavoie. That night, the television made the same announcement, making him out to be a killer and a danger to the public.

  “Not a very good photograph,” commented the danger in question. He held the newspaper up at eye level as though it were a pocket mirror. “I’m usually a lot better looking than that, don’t you think?”

  The Tuesday before, he’d had his face rearranged by the police when they picked him up in a raid, and so his joke didn’t go over so well. He told the women that the pigs had brought him to the station to ask him a few questions and had given him a pretty rough going over. All the rest of that day, I could feel Marie-France’s accusatory looks sliding over me like sulphuric acid down the back of a duck.

  On Monday, Marie-France went back to her courses at the University of Montreal. With the imposition of the War Measures Act, her studies had been suspended. Now her profs had begun teaching again, and the students stood on campus gaping at the army helicopters.

  She came back in the middle of the afternoon, rang the bell the number of times we’d agreed on, six, and we unlocked the door from the top of the stairs. She had just run into her brother on the stairs.

  “He told me he was going out to buy wood … What’s that all about?”

  René was unrolling a rug in the hallway. He looked up.

  “We’re doing some renovations.”

  “Hey, where did that old rug come from?”

  “It was in Nicole’s parents’ shed. It’ll cut down on the noise, so we don’t disturb the neighbours.”

  “It’s a disgusting colour.”

  Bellechasse, the ex-brother-in-law. A young prick, thin as a rail, hair falling down over his eyes. Said he wanted in on the action. Any action would do. He came from Saint-Profond, in the Bois-Francs region, and had stopped off at the Fisherman’s Hut for the festival at Manseau, all the best drugs on his resumé. Barely able to put one foot in front of the other without help, but ready to try anything, so why not revolution. He was the one who delivered the communiqués that Jean-Paul continued to write, to all the phone booths and trash bins in Centre-Ville. On the run.

  The large closet beside the front door of the apartment suddenly fascinated René. Especially its depth. He measured it and came up with his project. That night, the ex-brother-in-law came back to the apartment with six large sheets of plywood and boards cut to the right length, according to instructions given to him by René.

  The Renovator got to work the next day. Using the plywood, he built a false wall for the back of the closet, plastered the joints, then covered it with wallpaper. The sheet was removable from the bottom left, and so it was actually a kind of door. With hooks screwed at the four corners, he could pull it closed from the inside. The false bottom was impossible to detect from the hallway, and even from inside the closet. On the other side, René installed two large tables for an office or to serve as beds.

  “The wallpaper is a disgusting colour,” said Marie-France.

  “What did you do with Lavoie’s confession?” I asked René.

  “Nicole went out and opened a safety deposit box at the bank, and it’s in there: as security.”

  “We aren’t going to send it to the papers?”

  “Not right away. In any case, they’d never publish it. They’ll say
it’s a fake …”

  “But it has to get out. There must be some way.”

  “It wouldn’t do any good. Jean-Paul says we should wait. Let the dust settle for a bit.”

  According to the papers, the only thing we didn’t do to Lavoie was cut off his cock and shove it down his throat. Jean-Paul said to me:

  “You should write a communiqué to explain what happened …”

  “Why me?”

  “Because you were there, with René. And you’re also the one who makes the fewest errors. So …”

  So I wrote communiqué number seven to explain that we never tortured Lavoie, and that his wounds had been self-inflicted when he tried to escape.

  The next day, we watched the state funeral on television. Saw the security measures, cordons of soldiers surrounding the hearse, helicopters circling the cathedral steeple, and sharpshooters posted on all the roofs. Little Albert climbed out of his limousine, like the star student in a class of penitents.

  The following day Nicole’s friends came to the apartment and we tried out our hiding place. Not great in the comfort department, but we could stay seated in it, lie down for a bit, drink water, piss in a pot, smoke cigarettes. René had even put in an air vent, which also gave us a bit of light.

  No justice. Nicole and René continued to send each other to seventh heaven at least four times a day. It was the only sound we heard. After the hockey game on Saturday night, I slept on the sofa in the living room. Marie-France’s brother slept at his girlfriend’s most of the time, and Jean-Paul took his room. When I think of how much hay the journalists would make with numerous scenes of the apartment that fall, turning it into a kind of theatre! For me it wasn’t complicated, it was my nest.

  That morning — about five o’clock — I bumped into Marie-France in the kitchen. She couldn’t sleep, either, and was warming some milk. I pulled up a chair. She was naked under a plaid jacket she’d taken from a coat hook in the hall. Her hair tumbled wildly on her forehead and over her eyes, and caressed her cheeks. Under the table, I was as hard as a humpbacked whale.