by John Brooke
She wonders if it’s far too late. Poplars think in tree time. They keep growing and growing so slowly.
This summer she gave in to the pattern, the need to complete it, and tried to jump off the bridge.
But she’s still here, and men are still fascinated; and when she sees it, Claudia knows who she is.
Yet no matter what the men think, the women aren’t impressed by our lady of the poplars.
Lise is tall, with the body of a swimmer, and yes, such brown skin in summer. Coming out her gate, she has her daughter Marie-Douce by one hand and her Rodrigo by the other. Lise’s mouth curls with scorn. “Oh stop it, Claudia. Not today, please. It’s too beautiful for your whimpering.”
“Maybe she needs help,” says Rodrigo. “Hey, señora, may I offer you a service?”
Claudia stares into his childish Latin eyes, and if Lise weren’t there she would easily have him around her finger by the time the sun dipped behind the maison de retraite. Rodrigo is attracted. To her whiteness. To everything Lise isn’t.
“No macho bullshit,” snaps Lise. “Can’t you see what she’s doing?”
“She’s crying,” says Rodrigo.
“Oh mon Dieu, the men I always choose…Allez! On y vas... ¡Vamos!” Lise can speak five different languages, including Claudia’s Italian. Claudia doesn’t stand a chance.
“Al-lez!” echoes Marie-Douce, stern like her mother, tugging Rodrigo away from Claudia’s eyes.
“Ta mère, elle n’a pas de…de soul,” whispers Claudia, spiteful, and not sure of the French for “soul.” But Marie-Douce has an English father somewhere, so maybe… “Do you understand soul?”
The girl’s uncertain eyes say, No. Biting her seven-year-old lip, she runs after Lise and her man.
Geneviève comes out of her garden with her bicycle and her market bag. She rolls her eyes, exasperated by the sight of Claudia. “Are you not too old for this…this presence you affect? Qu’est-ce que ça fait? Why do you not put yourself together the way a woman should and go out and do something? Dis-moi, Claudia.”
All Claudia can do is smile through her tears, a saint who only has love for those who torment her. Geneviève pedals away shaking her head. Ah, that contempt. Such a bitch. Been all over the world. Claudia’s only been to Albany to visit Mama’s cousin. And sometimes Claudia sees her in the health store on St. Hubert buying things she’s never heard of for her skin. But Bruce, who lives with this woman, he likes to look at her. Claudia has seen his eyes.
Yes. Now Geneviève has gone, Bruce appears at the fence. “Do you need a beer or anything?”
Claudia shrugs, woeful…half a smile. Perfect.
Bruce is blocked, wavering, puzzling, like the sun at the edge of the shade.
And Pacci is quietly offering a cigarette, because Aunt Marisa has gone inside.
Marisa’s like Mama — watching her, worried into silence.
The worst is probably Sophia, because she thinks she’s meant to help. Sophia heard and saw it all: Pa’s madness, as she calls it, which she claims seemed so deliberate. Pa was a smart man, an able man! well schooled and read. He could have done great things in Canada, but he’d been determined to use his new life in a new country as an escape route to his fantasies. Sophia, older, watched him become lost to his family, but not before “infecting” Claudia and making Mama’s heart turn dry. But she escaped where Mama and Claudia could not. She has moved away with J-F and the baby, and Claudia has the room to herself — mirror, wardrobe, window, everything. Sophia always hogged the mirror. She never wanted to hear about Claudia’s fate. All the power flowed one way. Now she says “Claudia’s illness” as she whispers away to Mama. Sophia and J-F live just over on St. André and they’re sure to visit on an afternoon like this. Sophia will commiserate with Mama and help with the supper. J-F will try to talk to Pa about his separatist views while Pa makes him help him hang another door.
And guess who gets to play with little Nic? Yes, he’s a darling boy: Pa’s ocean eyes and Mama’s supple mouth…which is Claudia’s mouth, and he has Claudia’s grassy hair, although, yes, Sophia’s hair is much the same.
But there’s a time and place for children, and the mystical layers of 4:00 pm is not it.
Yet as Bruce stands there mesmerized, and Pacci ogles, and Mario just happens to appear at his gate with a case of empties and his dog, and Maurice steps out on his balcony with a smoky frying pan in his hand…just now, at the moment when all those male eyes needing another glimpse of Claudia all lock onto her in wonder…Sophia comes out the back door, sings “La la!” to Mama, and sends the kid running down the steps and into the lane to comfort his poor aunt.
When Claudia looks up from her kiss, the men have gone.
Two people at the maison de retraite have died today; this news after supper from Joseph, who lives around the corner in the cul-de-sac, but parks his car in the garage under the home. He’s walking home in the twilight and mentions it to Mama when the subject of the beautiful day comes up. “Yes, two of them, in the midst of it, some time in the afternoon. Madame Gingras, and that black woman, Madame Jean-Louis. B’en…Je suppose j’en voudrais comme ça la dernière journée…je suppose.”
Mama’s face tightens. Since Claudia’s adventure on the Cartier Bridge six weeks ago, Mama won’t acknowledge any mention of death. Mama says something about the breeze instead.
Claudia folds her arms, nods bonsoir and goes inside to her room. And me, she thinks, crying all afternoon. But justified now. Justified again. Claudia is the lady of the poplars. She feels death. She needs death…or else she might be ridiculous. Madame Gingras, Madame Jean-Louis, thank you for dying today. Quiet tears and slow submission. The sun. The wind in the leaves. Of course you would choose that, eh, Joseph? Who wouldn’t want to go that way?
But what about love — the other side it? Because now it’s Saturday night.
For the old people the poplars are a doorway. For men whose lives make them nervous, the poplars and their mistress are like a growing germ, a subsuming force, yet sheltering, gentle and calm. Look at Bruce: he can’t escape the awful Française. Maurice the tenant is too scared of Pa to make a real move. Rodrigo will soon be a fool for Lise — she’ll eat him alive, poor man. Mario’s been through four more jobs in the year since he and Claudia almost did it. Almost made love… All that failure. But they watch her, these men, and it soothes them. Claudia listens to their eyes — she listens like a tree, and they grow quiet. Yes, stay calm. Your life is bigger than your dreams. Money. Politics. Women who push too hard… Your life will take you to the other side and I will be there. Claudia. Here by the poplar trees. They hear, they accept. Look at Mario: he goes fishing with Greta the dog.
Saturday night and Claudia sits at her mirror smoothing on her cream. Adding white to the whiteness in a face so fragile, irreproachable. To reproach would be to shatter, to turn to dust lost inside the earth. Oh!…a shattered face. She glimpses lines running round a face that’s in the earth, running wild and wildly like a busy squirrel from branch to branch. Like busy death… And yet more cream for her white, white face. Then Claudia brushes her hair. Her window is open wide to the balmy air. The curtain is there, but the curtain’s as sheer as her peignoir. She bought it in a shop up on rue Jarry. Pa saw it once, but that’s too bad for him and maybe even proper if it gives him a stab of pain. Pa didn’t know the poplars were the same. Pa could never see that in loving the poplars his Claudia would have to choose eternally between the things inside herself. A father’s careless prophecy? A daughter’s trust misplaced? She talks about it with her counsellor, yet another man not quite brave enough to touch her (of course she feels it). The deeper part of Claudia knows it’s more like the natural end for a seed that travels and grows beyond the pale. How else to see it? She is her father’s daughter, and yes, perhaps as deliberate as he. (Her counsellor wants to explore this issue further…) The fact is, she has tried to die, she has tried to love; now she lives with it, the back-and-forthness of it all, an
d she takes pleasure where she can.
The city beyond is filled with sounds. Traffic. Police and Urgences-Santé sirens. The sudden shouts of raucous boys. Claudia filters it. She hears only the poplar leaves, never ceasing to whisper. There’s a space outside her window, a quiet space and a patch of dark. Cats can sit there. So can men. She can’t see them but they can see her… That’s how it should be. Bruce. Mario. Maurice. The nurse’s dumpy little man, the slender Latino who sleeps with Lise. Even Pacci, her uncle, he has been there when Aunt Marisa’s sleeping. The men can’t help watching. The men need to be watching. Claudia brushes her hair and checks her pearly skin. She moues through her most tender smile: It’s Saturday night… Do you know where your lovers are?
She envisions them all and, as always, ends by rejecting them; ends at the thought of dying.
Stop it! That’s past. You’re home, Claudia. This is not the Cartier Bridge.
No, but what if she had jumped?
The poplars said, Claudia, your loneliness is an illusion, the last thing standing in your way.
She had to listen. She always has to. She took her bike that day and pedalled south, passing the ones with the tans and makeup, athletic and self-conscious on their 10-speeds, and the ones with their men in tow or towing their children, and all those lonely men out riding by themselves. Claudia had to believe her children would be ghosts, quiet voices in the lane making Mama look and wish. It was July, the peak of summer, sun worshippers were sprawled on the lawn in Parc Lafontaine, glistening, immodest… Claudia passed through, so white, white as a bowl. She did not fit this place and never could. Her life was irretrievable. She rode on, past bacci and baseball and tennis, nurses from the hospital smoking on their break, then glided down Papineau and approached the bridge.
She’d sweated despite the river’s breeze as she climbed toward the high point.
Then standing there, losing all relation to the traffic…
She does not remember any traffic, although there must have been. The river was a slate colour. Its patterns were broad, then gone in an instant as the next took form. It reminded her of how the poplars moved their heads. How the secrets of the leaves would disintegrate then be rewhispered, slightly changed. So she climbed up on the rail, ready, willing…
But he came along and saved her — cajoling, harassing, wheedling, insulting, gross and rude as he turned her mind around. A strange man held her there, held Claudia on the absolute edge. A ravaged man without legs in an electric wheelchair, with dirty hair and filthy language, screaming at her to stay alive; and she, there at the edge of death, entranced by the joining of the circle, life-in-death, death-in-life, the shapeless river miles below. He talked her down. He swore her life was precious. He called her goddamn Miss Montreal! He was unafraid to challenge her, as if he saw exactly who she was. That’s rare. Even Pa’s not so sure of his cara mia anymore. He had a sign attached to the back of his chair: Last Days of Montreal. He came rolling along and saved her life.
Claudia saw him rolling along St. Hubert Street this morning as she and Mama did the shopping. She sees him all the time now and she knows why. He’s looking for her. He likes her.
Oh, they all like you, Claudia. Or think they do.
Just because he was there doesn’t mean they’re partners in this dance.
My partners are the poplars!
…but you have to hope.
True. But unless you have the fir tree, which gives you hope for children, hope’s a sprig of poplar they put inside your coffin.
Oh, Claudia…
Later, tired of hashing it out with herself, asleep and far from Montreal, Claudia meets Hercules, one of Pa’s lost gods. Claudia is wandering in the poplar grove beside the lonely river when she sees him there amid the leaves. His famous staff is lying on the ground, unprotected. In his arms he holds a dog that looks like Mario’s Greta. The beast is docile, nibbling on a biscuit, proffered in one massive, heroic hand.
Spying Claudia — it’s a challenge to the hero: he reaches up and tears away a poplar branch.
“Why are you doing that?”
“A gift,” he tells her, “for my lord the Sun.”
“But that’s mine!…the poplars here are mine!”
“Mine now…” Hercules smiles.
“And this dog — what will you do with her?”
“A trophy,” replies the champion. “I will display it as we feast in honour of conquered death.”
“Take me,” says Claudia.
Hercules moves toward her with a willing smile.
“I meant, take me to your feast.” So coy.
But then they are making love. Hercules does not look like Mario. Nor Bruce or Rodrigo or Maurice. He looks like none of them, ever. The more she looks, the more elusive his lovely features are. Just white, pure and simple; and the longer they do it the whiter he gets. There are no gods, no God either, not in a life like this one, that’s something she’ll tell Pa…When Hercules is almost dead, Claudia holds him in her arms like a baby. She feeds him water from the river. She adores him. The only thing that saves him is the dawn. He gets away with the poplar branch but she keeps the sleeping dog.
Sunday morning. Refreshed, Claudia looks out at her trees as she dresses.
Another beautiful day. New tears are welling. Her fate weighs heavy.
Yes, the poplars are a burden but at least they’re always hers.
Les belles couleurs (2)
It was 4:15 on a March morning in 1996, still dark, frigid, six weeks easily till any hint of the thaw as Marcel Beaulé left his home and made his way into the city. There was never much traffic at this hour, almost no one to notice his elegant car or himself at the wheel. Still, in lieu of jumping onto Highway 10 and racing for the Pont Champlain, it was Marcel’s habit to take the residential routes. A quiet morning drive was central to his sense of things. He thought of it as part of his ongoing research, a way of seeing where his voice hit home… He wended his way through the sleeping streets of Greenfield Park, heading for St. Lambert and the Pont Victoria. He was looking for flags. The numbers his producer always talked about were trite. Those who heard him clearly would show it, silently but unequivocally, with a flag.
And here was one, a fleur-de-lis at the corner of Walnut and Windsor. In the midst of more ambiguous numbers (although the Non had taken it) and these dubious street names, stood a flag. Marcel pulled over. It hung lank in the pre-dawn stillness, overseeing the dream of a patriot inside. Bravo! thought Marcel, if you want it, you have to dream it. The vision lives in a flag. He got out of his car. There was the low rumble of traffic in the distance, but it was icy quiet on this street, total silence save for the murmurous hum of the streetlight. Marcel, moving carefully up the walk, hoped there was no dog asleep behind the door. He did not want to disturb them. He only wanted to know who they were.
His conscience asked, What are you hoping to find, Marcel?
He had to admit he didn’t know, not exactly. Faces, yes. But something more. The essential thing. The thing that loves a flag… He was creeping along the lane to scout the back windows when a light came on in the house next door. So he withdrew. Marcel was watching the flag as he pulled away, imagining it shifting to life with the sun and the wind in the dawn… And that morning Marcel greeted his listeners with a meditation on flags and fealty. Would they wake up and listen? They’d better; because that plain-faced woman in Ottawa — they called her the Heritage Minister — had surprised them with her offer of flags. That’s right: free flags for the asking. Red and white Maple Leaf flags, of course. She was saying it was for a show of national pride. Marcel said it was a blatant move against Quebec.
One caller got through and taunted. “Admit it’s a good idea, Marcel. Great potential. Solid political value at twice the price. Far cheaper than paying people to have babies. Eh, monsieur?”
“Cheap politics,” rejoined Marcel, “and cheap comments. Bonjour.” He cut the line.
“Toys and baubles,” scoffed the
next caller, clearly a Oui man. “I think any self-respecting Federalist would be ashamed to be associated with such a transparent ploy. Monsieur Beaulé, it is either in your heart or it is not, and with these people, clearly it is not. The only Maple Leaf flag I ever saw that wasn’t on a government building or a gas station was that giant flag at their little demonstration downtown before the vote. That was a distraction, a novelty item, one huge flash-in-the-pan and nothing more. I say let them send away to Madame la Ministre for a flag. Our new Premier is right: Canada is not a country. Soon we will have our sovereignty!”
Leaving the microphone on, Marcel took a mouthful of coffee. His listeners had come to expect and even need to hear it. It meant he was mulling. Thinking. It meant it was important. Gazing into the glass separating him from his producer and the engineer, he studied his own image reflected there. Marcel Beaulé: the one left alone with the question. He was torn. Affinity was crucial; his compatriots must feel it. They had to feel Marcel’s love and hope or there was no point. And yet some mornings his listeners could seem like children. He started slowly: “Monsieur, you leave me, not ashamed, but worried…distressed. It is your smug naiveté. This is the last thing we need in such delicate times…in this tricky spring of ’96. Yes, a flag project is likely little more than a distraction for cowboys in Alberta, or for executives on Bay Street as they wait for their golf courses to dry…”