Last Days of Montreal

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Last Days of Montreal Page 25

by John Brooke


  Assumption Day: Does that mean it’s now or never?

  There is no curé in sight, just an altar boy setting up for the early mass. Fine. She’s not interested in a ritual or any other intermediary. This has to be private and direct. In truth, Geneviève feels it has more to do with the Lady who stands outside in the sky than the one they keep in here. But this is where She receives visitors. And it is cool inside. Geneviève bows, makes a motion across her face and chest, and slips into a pew. Then the altar boy is gone and she can breathe. Geneviève has been holding her breathing, trying too hard to match the silence. It has been so long since she’s come for this sort of thing.

  She stares into it, the silence, and the light around Her image, wondering if she has the right.

  Her own is a basic image too: the sinner who has exhausted all detours and finally come full circle, and now must speak frankly — as opposed to piously: Are You still here? What can You do for me? Every time she has seen or read it, the Lady has accepted this approach: Bonjour, Geneviève. Ah, ma pauvre, I’m more than glad to come through for you, and especially in these last desperate moments. Part of the job. The most important part in fact. What it’s all about it, no? Bah! Stop it! What tripe! Geneviève pleads to break past this self-consciousness, the bane of her every move.

  She tries again: Praying? Trying — but having trouble making contact.

  She opens her eyes and sighs. She lifts a flyer from the hymnal rack in front of her: There will be a corn-husking party with a country-western band a week this coming Saturday to raise money for renovations to the presbytère. That Marcel Beaulé the separatist morning man will be on hand to make it a very special affair…Geneviève drops the thing back behind the hymn book.

  She thinks, Oh my! Why did I ever come in here?

  She should have kept it to wishes sent into the deep blue yonder.

  Looking around, uneasy, regretful, on the threshold of an even deeper hole…

  The woman who was Miko’s girlfriend is by the pillar. She’s not praying — she’s cleaning: has a dust cloth in one hand, a plastic basket in the other. She has put on weight. It’s too dim to see if her skin has improved; but she’s free of that dreadful tense fidget she showed last spring in the street.

  She is watching Geneviève with equal recollection. Embarrassed, Geneviève turns away.

  Then she turns back, responding to a flash of understanding. Why come here? This is why.

  “Are you all right? You look a lifetime better.”

  It brings a shy, wry smile. Geneviève is good with people, when required.

  “I’m better now. It’s gone away…it’s like it died with him.” She’s Anglo, or at least partly, but her French is fine. She moves closer, running her cloth along the back of the pew. She stops again. Yes — out of the shadows, her improving skin confirms the truth. “You’re right,” she murmurs, “it’s like I have this whole new life. I almost didn’t make it. I mean, I just went nuts, but, well, Father Martin — I mean, I was pretty lucky.” She shrugs.

  Geneviève’s eyes acknowledge the fact of luck.

  “And he got me a job doing rooms at the maison de retraite. Just down the street?”

  Geneviève knows the place.

  “I can handle it. There’s a lot of women there who are alone. We talk…I thought I would have to move again. Back to Toronto. But there’s no need. I might even go back to the coast. Gaspé. See my sister. Well, my half-sister… I’m saving money.” She stoops, picks a Kleenex off the floor and drops it in her basket. Shrugs again at Geneviève. “It’s a way to pay him back. You know?”

  Her name is Carolyn. Geneviève stands, murmurs, “Bon courage,” offers a smile by way of saying that she is glad, and leaves.

  Just this. A fragment. But enough. Outside, in the thickening air, Geneviève pauses on the church steps and looks into the sky. She whispers merci before heading back.

  Back into his orbit.

  11. Heavy air

  Menocchio surveys the morning. Assumption Day: the day Our Lady leaves Her perch forever. It is hot and dog-breath muggy. He thinks, With the air so heavy, Our Lady’s flight will be difficult. Menocchio plans to go with his Geneviève to the corner, where together they will contemplate the divine transition. He will impress upon her the notion that after today, the Virgin will be gone.

  Bruce, the man she lives with, has been at the house for several weeks now — his holidays, supposes Menocchio — and he has seen them walk away together every noon. But Bruce stays silent. There has been no warning issued, no resistance to the fact. Obviously he knows he cannot compete. This morning he leaves with his golf clubs and doesn’t even look at Menocchio as he drives his car out of the lane and away along St. Gédéon. Bruce is distracted.

  By her? wonders Menocchio. Business? Politics? Golf? Or me? Menocchio concludes, Whatever it may be, Bruce is clearly not the right man for Geneviève at a time like this, these dog days when conscience, guilt, humidity and Eros compress the soul and transform it.

  Sniffing the air, Menocchio surmises that it must be why the Virgin chose this time of year to leave.

  Menocchio’s wife has no energy for garden work in such humidity. She leaves to get her hair done. As soon as she leaves, Geneviève returns from a morning errand. Departures all around — and this arrival. And she leaves her gate wide open! Everything is of a piece; Menocchio ventures through. He thinks, To be inside her garden, literally six inches on the near side of the token fence that divides us: this is proof!

  Her kitchen door is also open, like another sign along the trail to the heart of Menocchio’s world. And her kitchen is as she described it: Clean. Here are the oranges she chose at the market yesterday. Monday’s grapes are turning brown. The cheese under the cloche is a brebis from the foothills of the Dolomites, an hour or so from Menocchio’s Montereale, and one that he suggested. It sweats — as he sweats, filling his nose as she does. He finds a knife, some bread…he looks for a bottle of wine.

  Her cupboard holds cereals, pasta, biscuits, teas and rice, all packed neatly. The shelf paper has been scrupulously wiped. But why so many cereals? Here are eight, no, ten of them! Menocchio thinks, These are children’s food. These biscuits too. Her teeth, still white and far better than most French teeth he has seen, will fall out from all that sugar. He thinks, That has to be her man, her beer-drinking Anglo, who cuts her lawn and clears her snow, who knows so little of her. So he is addicted to children’s food. Menocchio wonders what his crime was. And does she know about it? They will explore this thing. They have not talked nearly enough of her Bruce.

  But the wine — where is it? He locates the door to her basement and goes down.

  He finds boxes filled with English books — detective stories mostly, it appears. Menocchio thinks, Well, there it is: I’ve always thought a man who subverts his mind with this sort of vicarious shadow play ends up with his soul in a musty cellar. Better just to drink and dream. Yet here is Shakespeare, and Dante Alighieri in translation, sustenance amid the dross; but inactive, left to moulder. Who is this Bruce, who has the poets but ignores them, who eats children’s food and golfs, who sees Picasso in his face? A Spaniard. Why? Where would he get that?

  How could he ever be anyone but Menocchio?

  And how could he not be her travelling heart’s true need?

  Her wine is lined on a rack against the wall behind the books. Their wine. It will be theirs: one of hers, one of his, as they trade nights of wine and kisses.

  She is there when he comes back up with a bottle. She is with a policewoman.

  “Ah, Geneviève! Here you are. But where is your corkscrew?”

  The officer speaks instead. “Are you all right, monsieur?”

  Is he all right? What is that supposed to mean?

  “The madame would like you to leave her house. And to leave her alone.”

  He says, “I want to report a murder.” …if she’s going to play it that way.

  “If you don’t leave, I wil
l have to call for assistance. The madame will press charges.”

  He says, “The madame has killed a man. A completely innocent man.”

  “No!” blurts Geneviève, “that’s not true.” She turns to the officer. “You see?”

  The officer turns to Menocchio. “The madame has told me everything, monsieur. She witnessed an accident. I myself investigated it. This incident has been ruled an accident. It is off the books.”

  He points a finger at Geneviève and says, “But the madame has confessed her guilt. To me.”

  The officer steps closer. “Monsieur, please.” She indicates the front door.

  He thinks, Police acting in this manner is what makes people cynical. He asks, “You don’t care about justice?”

  The officer responds by laying a hand on the bottle of wine.

  “Oh, let him keep the wine,” says Geneviève. She turns away and retreats into her kitchen. The police and Menocchio both bear witness as she begins to touch things…the oranges, the grapes. She opens the cupboard and peers inside. She puts her hand on something out of their view.

  “You see,” he tells the officer, “guilty as sin. She’ll use anything to keep it quiet. This wine’s the least of it.”

  The officer appears to recognize the truth when it’s dropped at her feet. Across the distance of the hallway she asks Geneviève, “Why would you let him keep something he stole?”

  When Geneviève does not reply, Menocchio adds, “I have been trying to help her come to terms with it, and come forward. This is only right, no?”

  The officer wants an answer from Geneviève. She waits.

  Geneviève murmurs, “Sais pas…Pity, maybe? I mean, if he really needs it.”

  So now the officer is compelled to wonder. “What happened, monsieur?”

  “She crushed him.”

  “How and why would she do that?”

  “With her bitterness — to both points.”

  The officer’s ash-blonde hair is pinned in a tight chignon. Something prompts her to reach for it, and pat it with a delicate hand that has no relation to a gun. He considers her attractive face: equine, fine-boned with full lips and purply-blue eyes; pure laine, to be sure. She tells him, “I do not understand you.”

  He says, “Ask her.”

  She turns. Geneviève tells the officer, “He’s speaking metaphorically.” Geneviève must see the woman’s incomprehension, because she adds, “He is speaking about himself.”

  The officer asks Menocchio if this is true.

  Before he has a chance to respond to this vital question, Geneviève says, “He is in love with me.” She frames this information with a flat shrug — the same one she uses almost every day on their walks. It is meant to indicate that he is a pathetic old man.

  The officer asks for his name.

  “I am Menocchio.”

  The officer asks him, “Will you file a complaint, then?”

  He says, “I am only trying to help her.”

  “If you want to file a complaint, I will take it.”

  Geneviève says, “We can work it out, officer…I’m sure we can.”

  He says, “She is lost. I have found her.”

  “He has saved me,” adds Geneviève. It’s meant to be a joke.

  Menocchio tells the officer, “Montreal is eating her alive. She lashed out. Understandable, but still not right.”

  Geneviève ripostes, “Another metaphor. Eating and lashing both, actually. He’s very spiritual. Well, metaphysical is probably more apt. Not quite on the ground, you know? There’s a kind of charm in it, but…” Her French eyes say oh-là-là!

  The officer rubs her cheek. Her skin is more coarse than Geneviève’s. “Monsieur,” she says, “at the moment it is you who are in the wrong, but the madame seems to be willing to forget it. If you have another matter to take up with the law, we will begin at the beginning. You decide. But you must leave now.”

  He allows her to guide him to the door. He tells her, “I’m going to insist.”

  “It is your right to do so. But think carefully before acting on something like this, monsieur.”

  He tells her why. “I am master of all that can be seen and touched in this corner of Montreal.”

  “Well, good,” says the officer. “This is my beat. I will be watching for you. Good day now.”

  Geneviève’s door is softly shut and Menocchio is left in the street.

  No walk with Geneviève today. Assumption Day is effectively ruined.

  But he has a bottle of wine for the afternoon. Perhaps that’s for the better. With this humidity…

  12. The change in all its glory

  Now she sees him from her window while she works. He stands in the park beside the bench, offering it to anyone who passes by. Poor man, it appears he’ll have to live with it to the end. His little world. All that logic, all those notions; yet so static. He can’t change. For her part, she can and is. Changing. She feels it. She has been back to see her doctor. Everything’s fine. Proceeding apace.

  “You’ve made all the right moves as far as I can tell. Whatever you’re eating, keep eating it. Oh yes, here’s some lubricating cream you might try. That your Bruce might appreciate, if not yourself.”

  And there is indeed a freedom in it. Like a loosening of textures. In the skin too, certainly — it’s a trade-off with nature, after all; but it’s in the bigger picture where it really matters, in the feeling of the days. Afternoons, she sits in the garden, in plain sight under the late September sun, sits in her tangerine maillot and reads American policiers. Menocchio…Vic? Picasso — whoever he is, he can watch her from his step as he drinks, if he wants or needs to. That’s his choice; in this cramped quarter a fence is a state of mind. If he does, she won’t turn to gloat. Why would she? She doesn’t feel him. She’s past him now. The clematis has offered up a second bloom, arriving with a strain of rich mauve flowers this time, layered in amongst the usual horde of silky china blue. Her eyes savour its profusion. Geneviève will take all she can from the last of the season, then continue on.

  Because she is a traveller and has lived with many things that were never dreamed.

  But each one is a story: It’s true, there was once this horrible man. Do you want to hear that one again? Well, ma petite, just sit still and perhaps you might…

  Oui, she has to concede: in that sense, it is a shame there will be no grandchildren.

  Yet that decision — it was right. At the time.

  All choices begin to show clearly now, from the calm of today’s surface down to the bed of that time’s meaning. It can be breathtaking, each day, seeing it newly, a sudden sharpness as the eye goes deeper…like a ray of sun in the waters at Les Calanques.

  That was so long ago! another lifetime.

  No, that’s a fantasy — not the same as revelation. It’s this life. Her life. All one.

  Which means she’s learning to live with it.

  Guilty? This comes and goes. Could it ever be so absolute?

  You heard that girl, that Carolyn: It changed. And the officer: An accident. Off the books.

  The Books of Fate? That’s a harder one.

  She has started going to mass again. Not every week, but often.

  She tells Bruce, “This is something I am feeling.”

  Bruce only smiles. She goes. She listens. Bonjour, Geneviève…

  Les belles couleurs (5)

  Traffic reporter René Bonenfant had first spotted Marie-Claire Lamotte in June, just south of the Métropolitaine Expressway, out on her top-floor balcony in the morning sun with her flag. And she continued to be there every morning — even when it rained, through the week of St. Jean Baptiste and into July…sans faute!

  René had given her coordinates several times now. René had practically landed on her roof! But she hadn’t called. So they made some calls, learned her name, then tried to arrange an interview; but the nurses at her building had turned them away. So Marcel and René both talked to her now. The priest had promis
ed, and René had seen her wearing headphones. They knew she was listening. They talked to her by name, trying to entice her out of her seclusion. Marcel’s listeners were getting to know her. Some asked about her: who is this Marie-Claire Lamotte? Marcel couldn’t tell them much and he’d been feeling something urgent. He wished the reclusive old woman would call.

  That August day it was the schools issue again: dull, but related — and relevant, with September and la rentrée fast approaching. The caller spoke an excellent French. She was outraged by the lack of money for new textbooks in the English-speaking community’s school system, denouncing it as a shame, and surely the result of politically based economics. She did not believe it would be allowed to happen in the French system.It was unconscionable that the current government would not provide for this most basic of her children’s educational tools!

  “Madame,” said Marcel, “you are misinformed, and, I would venture to say, tending to paranoia. If you and your children are going to stay here in Quebec as you say you will, you will have to live the life that the rest of us are living. In English, I believe you would say all in the same boat? Eh? This is what is basic, madame. Merci. Au revoir.”

  Cutting the line, pausing to taste his coffee, Marcel then offered a critique: “In essence, leaving schoolbooks aside, the caller is really asking whether or not we Francophones wish her and her Anglo colleagues to remain here in Quebec. There is an endemic insecurity extant in that community, and the question has become perpetual — it is posed every day in a thousand different ways. No? Yes. And I wish I could help the caller feel more at home. Don’t we all?” Breathing in more coffee — letting them hear it; this is a big question. Then he asked, “But don’t we all know that some people have a sense of home — and some poor souls do not? It’s something that’s bred in the bone, no? And can you legislate this feeling? Will money help it grow? My friends, let’s agree: some people are simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Historically, I mean — and what, realistically, is one supposed to do? Now let’s go up to René for a word on traffic and another glimpse of les belles couleurs. Salut, René.”

 

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