Last Days of Montreal

by John Brooke

  Turning to Pascale: Again, he saw those exquisite eyes raised, attentive. What did she see?

  Walking back to the car, she was lost in wonder. “As-tu vu? Comme ils l’aiment?”

  “Unreal,” said Donald.

  She begged to differ. “Mais si, c’est la réalité! Ils y croient!…C’est du fond du coeur!”

  “It’s ridiculous!…They think he’s some kind of saint. ”

  “Mais, il est superbe!”

  Superbe? Something was not right here. “Pascale, it’s not healthy. He’s just a politician. There’s something wrong with those people.”

  “B’en non, Donald. I feel this man is much more than a politician. Il est rassembleur.”

  In the sultry warmth of that late summer evening, his gorgeous go-getter wife refused to hear his skepticism. Suddenly, with the coming of this one man, Donald couldn’t read her. He felt the first prick of a new kind of anger. He wanted to go up to the man and tell him this was his wife’s head he was playing with. And to stop it! Donald searched the dictionary when they got home. There was no single word in English for rassembleur. Unifier? Had he ever heard anyone — English-speaking, that is — refer to someone as “the unifier”? No.

  He told her, “I had no idea you were so political.”

  She said, “I am not political. I am historical.”

  “He’s a goddamn politician!”

  “Non, il est rassembleur.”

  5.

  It’s that thing about overinvesting your hopes in someone else. It can happen to anyone.

  Or to everyone. Well, at least fifty per cent plus one…Luckily, there was Jane on the radio at lunch-time, always there, no face, just a voice, but solid and calming. Jane’s show was definitely one of the things that tied the English community together. Jane was Donald’s rassembleur. (Sorry!…rassembleuse.) The week before the vote she asked, How Is the Referendum Affecting You? Donald got through and told Jane about Pascale — how Pascale had told him, yes, she was going to vote Oui. “It was a Sunday morning, after we made love… It was the beginning of September, the thing was still unreal to most of us, and I was half-teasing, but only half, because she’s my wife and I’d been watching her, watching her watch Lucien, and I sensed there was something. We were lying there, the way we do. But I got it out of her. Can you imagine? My own wife! All she would say as she got up and dressed for mass was, ‘Je t’ai dit, ne me le demande pas,’ I told you not to ask me, Donald.” Donald needed to tell Jane this.

  And Jane listened, the way she always did, then said, “Thank you for your call.”

  Then Donald turned off Jane’s voice and sat there feeling foolish. Then justified. Then scared. He sat alone at his desk on the wrong side of town, staring out at flags on steps and slogans in windows up and down the street, wondering if Pascale would come home from work. Or would she say, To hell with this life with this Anglo, it’s making me too nervous…and go find someone more like herself?

  Of course she came home. This was her house, her terroir. The fear was all in Donald.

  He went to the Non side Unity Rally on a grey and humid Friday, down at Dominion Square. The speeches were loud but not very original. With two days to go before the vote and the Oui side leading in the polls, there was nothing much original that could be said. It was the energy behind the words that mattered, the endless cheers, a needful joy echoing in waves, rock anthems booming, in French, c’est sûr, pumping everyone with love. It was that huge Canadian flag, half a block long and as wide as Peel Street. Donald went under and became one of hundreds carrying it along. He finally knew what it was like to be a part of a real parade.

  And it was all on the news that evening. Except the feeling. The feeling could not penetrate the home on rue St. Gédéon, in the north end of Montreal. The giant flag billowed across the television screen. At noon it had been a Canada-sized postcard with “We love you!” scrawled across it in twenty-five-odd million variations, a love note addressed to the miserable five-or-so million Lucien was saying had not been loved enough; but by suppertime the Oui’s were crying, “Unfair! Get out! Go home! It’s not your business!” and the postcard was transformed into a massive mirror on Donald’s own flawed micro-situation. Us against them: Pascale scowling, walking away to set the table. “God, they must hate Montreal,” he told her, with intent to wound — no joy, no triumph. “They know what Montreal means, but try as they will, they’re finding out they can’t change it. It must really rot their pure laine socks.” Then Lucien came on. He came on strong in English, declaring Quebec would decide for itself. Switching channels: he came on like a prophet in French. More stuff about humiliation! And destiny! The thing that pissed Donald off was the fact the prophet did not have the balls to make the same speech in both languages. And Pascale, staring at the TV as though it were a magic fountain. Donald watched her.

  The lousy weather got worse. It was not a great weekend chez Donald and Pascale.

  Although habit (and love, perhaps?) impelled them to carry on.

  Picture these two at the market, arguing, bitching, rubbing it raw: “Come on, Pascale, explain it to me. How could you think of voting Oui?” “How could I not vote Oui?…Dis-moi, Donald.” “Because you and I, we have a home! We live in it together!” “Yes, and our home is in Quebec.” “Our home is in Canada.” “I don’t feel it.” “You don’t feel it! What about me? Don’t you feel me? Do you know me at all?” “Oh, Donald, of course I know you. You are my husband and I love you!”

  Picture an apple vendor standing there watching these two saying things like that, on and on, no resolution in sight. (An apple vendor can listen in English or in French.) Picture them leaving the market without buying any apples. Now here they come, marching up Henri-Julien, out of step and crapulous. She adds, “Tu me connais, Donald! I have always told you everything.” He says, “Your father told me he believed in Canada. At the wedding. We were standing there after they took the pictures, looking out at the river.” She takes fifty more silent steps and tells him, “My father is old. He has lost sight of what is possible.” The way she says it, Donald knows it is the truth. Her truth. But he has to push, he has to try to get past that truth. He stops. “You should be ashamed of yourself! Before I came here my father said — ” “You told me this before,” she cuts him off and walks ahead. Donald yells after her, “So what am I supposed to think!” She calls over her shoulder, “Your father is old too!” Which hurt!

  And he screams back, “It won’t be good for business!”

  All these words, mixing together, desperate and stupid. Picture Donald knowing this. And Pascale, taking the key from her pocket, unlocking the door. She has her own schedule. She will keep going. Picking up the market bag, she tells him, “On ne parle pas d’affaires ici, Donald. It is our history. Ça vient du coeur.”

  Pascale goes in, leaves the door open. They’re home, home from the market, like any Sunday.

  And Donald is paying for half that house. But picture Donald, afraid to walk through the door.

  . . .Then comes a fantasy of history

  Winning only made things worse. That morning Pascale was sitting there dressed for work, twenty minutes ahead of him as usual, scanning the paper as she spooned cereal and sipped her coffee. Donald didn’t say a word. She finally looked up and said, “So we lose. Next time it will be better and we will have it.”

  “Next time?” ventured Donald.

  “We do not stop now,” advised Pascale. “I have been making une analyse — for the next time. I think Lucien will come to Quebec. Parizeau will leave, Lucien will come. He will lose friends because of the economy, oui, and he might have to sacrifice himself, but he will do this. Lucien will put the place in order.”

  “Put the place in order…What are you talking about?”

  “The next time there will be no fear of money. We will be ready and we will go.”

  It was the way she looked. Completely certain. And worse: so hopeful. Defeat did not figure in her analyse,
as if there were a logic to hope and it was all falling into place. The numbers of the night before had proved it: one or two bugs left for Lucien to iron out; next time through the machine of history, perfection!…they would have it. So Donald went to the Westmount Library, looking for Champlain. He constructed his own analysis: Hope. It’s there on her face writ large. I can’t bear to see it. It’s like living in a house with someone who’s wishing for a death. Not my death; she loves me, I know she does…the death of something I was raised to believe in. That I have to believe in or my sense of identity shatters. But she’s my wife and she should look that way. Hopeful. How can a man not want his wife to be imbued with hope? How can a man not want to see it? It’s the way life’s supposed to be. Donald could imagine Champlain coming up that long, amazing river, no borders, just one vast place, the river carrying him into it. When you think about it, thought Donald, Champlain had to have been bedazzled by hope. Hope and the wind. I can understand hope. I can!

  His analysis had ended there.

  And each night it was the same story. Donald couldn’t move. Donald couldn’t touch her.

  Lucien kept talking, saying Canada was not reality, Canada would not survive.

  Donald’s fear was turning darker, becoming something harder to identify. He cut bits and pieces from the newspapers, collected them, trying to see a pattern. There had been several more visits to the Westmount Library. He was gathering material.

  Now it was coming on a month. Donald was driving south on St. Denis, heading for the river. It was mid-morning in the middle of the week and there was a contract sitting on his desk, an important client waiting for his work. A speech for a corporate V-P, Human Resources. Donald was good at writing corporate speeches, and it paid well; he should get at it. Or he could have been having the oil changed and the snow tires put on. The remaining leaves were waiting to be bagged and piled at the curb. He ought to start thinking about Christmas. He should start showing up for his Wednesday night hockey. Lots to do. But these bits and pieces of a normal life had been shoved from his mind. When he wasn’t staring at another editorial, Donald would find himself in the car, wandering the city, brooding, searching. The psychologist on the radio was calling it Referendum Spillover. Whatever. Naming the problem and declaring it pervasive was not the answer. All Donald knew was that Lucien had a hold on him and would not let go. He kept the newspapers on the seat beside him as he wandered. He often stopped to consider the facts, sat parked on streets in unknown quarters, trying to understand. He felt dislocated. Out of his element. Not where he was meant to be. He had told Pascale and she had tried to understand.

  “B’en, Donald, everyone wants to be in the element. This is what this is about, n’est-ce pas?”

  He had told her about the spirit of Champlain. She had listened, there in the bed beside him.

  A fax (in perfect English) had come through from her office; so businesslike, ma belle Pascale:

  Memo from the desk of Pascale St-Laurent

  Donald:

  In 1613 Champlain wrote a letter to the regent King Louis XIII stating that French should obviously be the language of this new place. And throughout his career, both in Canada and France, he went to great lengths, not only as a so-called “explorer,” but also military strategist, crusading evangelist and venture capitalist, doing his loyal bit to out-manoeuvre the British and Dutch and help this come to pass. It’s all there, in all the books (the real books, Donald) — no matter who wrote them. Anyone who thinks Champlain’s vision extended beyond an absolutely French-based Canada is dreaming. You are dreaming, mon cher. Champlain would have been delighted by Lucien. Lucien is translating Champlain’s most profound and natural hope. In Quebec, at least. Donald, I love you and I am willing to share the most real thing in the world with you. A home. A child… It’s almost time, mon Donald. For me everything is right and I am ready to work on this. You know I do not play at this life. Please move forward, cher… This is how we grow.

  À ce soir, Pascale.

  That had not helped either. No, there had been a drastic failure of imagination. Whose and why, this was the question Donald pondered, now heading east on Rachel, across the top of Parc Lafontaine. There was Félix Leclerc, standing in the park, a ton or two of oxidizing bronze. Donald turned into the parking lot, bumped over the curb and onto the grass, aiming straight at him. He stopped short of a hit-and-run. As he turned circles round the statue, Donald rolled his window down and called, “Salut, Félix! Gettin’ a little green around the collar there, mon vieux! Choo, choo, choo, choo…” A woman pushing a baby carriage through the last of the scattering leaves was aghast at the idiot driving on the lawn, quite reasonably afraid for her child. She yelled something Donald couldn’t catch. He waved at her. Don’t worry, madame, it’s out of love. The statue of the icon gazed, implacable. Love, Donald? A lumpy City worker piloting a ride-on leaf blower came jostling toward him, shaking a fist in the air. Donald did not run; he would face these people. He stopped and got out humming Le Petit Train du Nord…choo, choo, choo, choo, ingenuous, a man whose intentions had never been less than pure. “Bonjour.”

  “Qu’est-ce que tu fais là, tabarnouche!”

  “Calme-toi, monsieur!…calme, calme.” The City worker cut the rackety motor. Donald tried to explain. “C’est juste pour dire bonjour au grand Félix. Moi, je l’aime bien aussi, tu sais.”

  The man’s eyes rolled with weary rue. “Ah, you are English, toi, calisse.”

  Donald blanched. It was always so obvious. He said, “Come on, monsieur, the grass is dead, what the hell does it matter? I only passed by to pay my respects.”

  “You people have no respec’!”

  Donald had heard this line before. “Monsieur, monsieur…please! That is far too much of a generalization. You sound like Lucien.”

  “Hah! Lucien will kick your asses good, je crois.”

  “I know, I know. And we’ll all deserve it.”

  The City worker nodded oui to that. Donald could feel the man looking through him and into the face of everything that was wrong. He would love it when Lucien kicked Donald’s ass.

  Donald had a question. “Just tell me one thing.”

  “Quoi?”

  “Were you born wanting to separate? Or was it a politician who put the idea into your head?”

  “Eh? Qu’est-ce que tu veux dire?”

  “I’m asking if this separation thing is a natural need. Does every French Canadian child feel it in his bones? Or do you need the likes of a Lucien to feed it to you like some mother’s tit?”

  The man snorted. “B’en…I think there is nothing plus nature que le tit de la mère. Eh?”

  “Mmm… Just asking.” The worse it got, the harder it became to talk, to find the right question. Donald got back in behind the wheel. “Merci, monsieur. Bonjour.”

  The City worker said, “Pas sur le gazon, eh?” He watched guardedly as Donald drove away.

  Donald turned at Papineau, headed south along the eastern edge of the park. Memory made him stop again before he got to Sherbrooke Street. He had to stop and take it in, as if it might save him. The maples were bare but the poplars were hanging tough, always the last to succumb. Squirrels were risking everything to carry a crust of bread to the other side of the road, as they always had. He left his car and climbed the stairs. The landlord was Monsieur Parent. He made dentures and wore his product proudly. His wife was dead. He lived on the second floor with his youngest son, Jean-Paul. J-P was on lithium. Manic-depressive. Donald and Pascale were on the third. There was an Ici on parle français sticker on the door now. Had J-P’s illness turned him nasty? Donald rang the bell.

  “Oui?” A man not unlike himself: thirties, in black jeans, an expensive hand-knit pullover.

  “Bonjour. Excusez…You don’t make dentures?”

  “Moi, non. Vous cherchez peut-être l’ancien propriétaire.”

  “Oui,” said Donald, “Monsieur Parent. Where did he go?”

  “He died.”


  “Ah,” mused Donald, heedless of the gradual closing of the door, “but you, you look familiar.”

  “Alors?”

  “Did you play hockey over in the park…nine, ten years ago?” Donald gestured… That City guy’s next assignment would be putting up the boards.

  The man at the door gazed across at the park. “Oui, parfois.”

  “You remember me? I used to wear a Leafs sweater…27, the Big M? Remember? Do you remember the woman I was with…Pascale? You ever see us around?… I mean, back then?”

  The man shook his head, eyes lit with a sour chagrin. He pointed to the sticker. “Ici on parle français, monsieur. Bonjour.” The door closed.

  “Je me souviens,” said Donald.

  He went slowly down the steps, searching for traces; but found none, and drove away.

  He headed east, dropping down off the Plateau, headlong into the reek of the cigarette factory, the tainted perfume of a tattered and dirt-poor cluster of quarters called Hochelaga-Maisonneuve. They said it was the poorest riding in Canada. It had voted Oui. Donald had studied the numbers, trying to see it clearly. He had come to this place and settled. Come from another world, like Champlain. But Donald had missed something… He passed Parthenais Prison, a sombre line of hearses waiting to collect bodies from the Coroner’s lab in the basement. Approaching St. Catherine Street, he came upon a watchful daycare worker leading eight children tied in a halter, oblivious, chattering and marvellous as they marched along. Then two laughing nuns carrying groceries into their ancient convent. Now here was a dour fat man lugging a case of beer.