by André Alexis
A surge of fellow feeling ran through Edward. How rare it was, in his experience, for men, no matter how close, to speak of their mothers. And he was about to say something along those lines when Franklin interrupted him.
– Anyway, said Franklin, the important thing is to get Bowell penitentiary built.
He put his arm around Edward’s shoulder.
– Thanks for coming, he said.
It occurred to Edward, then, that he had been unkind. Franklin had shared something of his past, his deepest memories, and he had given nothing in return. As soon as he tried to think of a confidence appropriate to the occasion, however, he realized there was little he had ever withheld from Franklin. He was not private in the way Franklin was. His confidences were neither as secret nor as personal as Franklin’s. As he put on his coat, he remembered a small animal he had loved.
– You know, he said, when I was in Grade Seven, I had this great frog.
– The one that died? asked Franklin.
– How did you know?
– You’re an open book, Eddy. That’s what I like about you.
When Edward had gone, Franklin sat down to drink a tumbler of vodka with a hint of grapefruit juice, adulterating the vodka because he did not like to drink alone. He put on a record and listened to La Bolduc. (Yes, somewhere deep within, he was irresolvably Québécois.) And on hearing La Bolduc’s voice, he sank into the small fissure in his being that led to his childhood.
This self-indulgence was something he rarely allowed himself, because he did not like to be reminded of the past. But on this night, pleasantly inebriated after an evening with Edward and a few guests, he allowed his memory to wander in places it did not usually go: here was his mother, her face a charming mask of pinkish makeup and white powder, there was his father looking out at the blue-green river, and there he was staring at himself in a mirror, trying desperately to pat down a cowlick at the top of his head. Touching details, all mercifully distant because Anse Bleu was a world he had deliberately left behind. And yet, it was also the place that had inspired him. In a sense, Anse Bleu, being the community he had known best, the one against which he compared every other, was the “ideal community” Alba was meant to protect. How strange that he should wish to protect and keep a world he chose not to inhabit. Perhaps someday, when he had made his mark, he would return to Québec, having redeemed the loneliness that had been his childhood and the blandness of the world that had made him.
And as Edward made his way home, he thought of Franklin. Though they’d been friends for years, he could not think of a time when he’d seen Franklin more optimistic, or more open. And yet, Edward had lately begun to feel a little disloyal. The truth was, he had reservations about MacKenzie Bowell penitentiary, but he hadn’t the heart to tell Franklin about them. To Edward’s mind, MacKenzie Bowell was, first and foremost, a prison. Its purpose was to segregate the dangerous from the innocent. If, in so doing, it produced monsters, well, that was the price a society paid. If you could convince the monsters who murdered and raped that they had souls and that their souls needed tending, then, perhaps, you could rescue them from their own filth. But how was that to be done with bricks and mortar? Were buildings really so persuasive?
That was the question, and that is where matters stood: Franklin believed places were or could be persuasive; Edward could not.
Yet Edward was not the kind of man to easily contradict a friend. His idea of loyalty had always included the duty to believe what his friends believed. This had, until now, been rather easy for him. After all, he had few friends, two to be exact: Franklin and Reinhart. And then again: once one said a thing a few times, it became a habit of mind and the road from mental habit to belief is not long. Were there not things Franklin believed that Reinhart did not? Yes, of course. Franklin believed in God, Reinhart did not. So, did Edward believe and not believe? Yes, exactly. When he was with Franklin, he allowed himself to be persuaded by Franklin’s presence. When he was with Reinhart, he allowed himself to be skeptical. If both men had come to him and asked, point blank, if there were a god, he would, for the sake of friendship, have had to lose consciousness. And did he believe in god? He believed in friendship. For most other things, there was a space within him, a place for possible belief, for belief when it was called for.
Which is why Bowell penitentiary was so frustrating to Edward. He had come upon something that he could not share with Franklin, his friend. He blamed himself, of course, and his own stupidity, but there was something more: a feeling of impending disgrace. Should he, then, have told Franklin of his premonition? Another man might have, as a tribute to friendship. But Edward was not that kind of man. As he walked home that night, he resolved to put his misgivings behind him and to be supportive of Franklin’s vision, to believe in Bowell penitentiary the way he’d come to believe in Art.
When he entered his parents’ house, his home, he saw that a light in the living room was on. His father (insomniac, as usual) was up watching a late-night movie: House of Dr. Rasanoff.
– Why don’t you watch it with me, Ed?
– I’ve already seen it, Dad.
And yet, they did watch it, until Edward fell asleep, falling just as it was getting interesting, just as the faceless girl was beginning to understand what her father had done in her name.
{21}
AN EVENING OUT
In the three years since his wife had died, François Ricard thought of her often and found solace in the textbooks on quantity surveying he read or reread. People spoke of the consolations of philosophy or of poetry, but he found in those things little but wasted words and obscurity. Yes, he still attended Fortnightly evenings, but he took no comfort in Plotinus or Kant, still less in Claudel or Ronsard. Even the great Allais, whose work he and Michelle had often read together, even Alphonse Allais seemed bitter:
– Cet homme-là…me tromperait sur la tête d’un teigneux!
On the other hand, the textbooks on quantity surveying, most of them in English, were, if not consolation, at least soporific. He could read Willis’ Elements of Quantity Surveying or Practice and Procedure for the Quantity Surveyor with as little or as much attention as he could manage, and they led him, by way of memory…memory of a time when he and Michelle had only just met, both of them walking together along Laurier to Sandy Hill, where she and her friends shared an apartment on Templeton…by way of memory towards sleep. Not that sleep was simple. Since Michelle’s death, sleep had become a process, one decision after another: to lie down on their bed or on the sofa, to retire early or stay up late, to close his eyes or read…
He had other duties, of course, besides sleep, and other responsibilities. There was work, for instance. To think he’d studied so hard to end up sharing a small office at Transport Canada with his English counterpart, an office with a window that looked onto other buildings. At the beginning of his career, he had travelled to the ports along the St. Lawrence (Trois-Rivières, Port Saguenay, Sept-Îles, and points between) and had shaken hands with managers and supervisors who played the small game of making their needs seem more urgent than they were.
– Cré moé-là, on a besoin d’bécosses en ostie toastée.1
Now, as a manager, he sent inspectors out from time to time and collated their reports, made certain they were in language plain enough to be understood by the new minister, Mr. Mazankowski, and sent them along in the hope that they would, eventually, attain the minister’s attention. It was not exciting work, and the less said about it, the better.
There was also his responsibility to his son. In the time since Michelle’s death, they had spoken of her often, and it had been his task to comfort Daniel.
– Papa, est-ce qu’il y a un Dieu?
– Oui.
– Papa, est-ce qu’il y a un paradis?
– Mais oui. Si’l y a un Dieu, il y a un paradis.
In the beginning, they’
d had that conversation so often, François had almost managed to believe in a God whose existence he doubted.
– Papa…?
– Oui Daniel?
– Est-ce qu’il y a des revenants?
– Non, Daniel.
They’d both had trouble sleeping. For months, Daniel would wake in the middle of the night, or near morning, and come in to sleep with him, so that François, sleepless himself, would lie awake, waiting for his son to fall asleep. It drew father and son closer, grief making contemporaries of them. In fact, it sometimes seemed to François that his son was more mature than he was. It wasn’t that Daniel recovered faster than he did, but that Daniel often tried to console him and, at times, for his son’s sake, he allowed himself to accept the consolation.
His relations with his peers were as tentative now as formerly they had been open and confident. He shook hands with his underlings, and nodded to his superiors, but it would not have surprised him if, as he walked the narrow halls of Transport, he passed through his fellows as through pillars of cloud.
His relations with his friends were almost as vaporous. When Michelle was alive, he had enjoyed the company of a great many people, men and women with whom he could remember real conviviality. But whose company had he sought in the last year? He attended evenings with the Fortnightly, but these evenings were no longer amusing. He continued attending, in part because this was something he’d done with Michelle, in part because it was curiously satisfying to see how little comfort ideas brought. Really, Franklin Dupuis, whom he’d met after Michelle’s death, was one of the few people who called regularly, once or twice a month, to invite him out for drinks and conversation or drinks, conversation and boeuf stroganoff, and François often accepted because there was something voluptuous in his lapse from the world, and he fought against it, against the voluptuousness.
It seemed odd that Franklin, who had not been a close friend, who had attended but one or two Fortnightly evenings, should choose to socialize with a man in mourning. One wondered what he drew from the long silences that were now inevitably part of François’ conversations. Though they were both francophone, their conversations took place, for the most part, in English. François could speak to Franklin in French, if he chose, and, for a few minutes at most, Franklin would use their shared language, but, somehow, they always returned to English. It unnerved François to speak English with someone who spoke French as well as he did. It made you wonder what it was Franklin was trying to avoid. Still, there was something agreeable about the man. In a word, he was diverting. Franklin was one of those men who could talk about themselves without seeming self-absorbed or blinkered, who could talk about themselves without talking about themselves. In fact, the more Franklin talked about his studies, his time with Diefenbaker, or his thoughts about prison, the more his so-called “self” seemed to recede. Listening to him was like driving along a flat road, in late summer, towards a bright but resolutely distant horizon. At the heart of the man, there was something unreachable, and it was, at once, off-putting and compelling.
One evening, the two of them had dinner in the Market and drinks at Wim’s. It was, in most ways, a typical evening out for the two, save that Franklin spoke French as they walked to the Market. Wim’s was crowded, noisy, and dimly lit. They sat near the front entrance and looked out onto Sussex Drive on a warm summer evening, the street dark from a light rain, the pedestrians mindless of the weather, animated.
– What would you like to drink? asked Franklin.
– N’importe quoi.
Franklin ordered a single cognac from the waitress.
– Tu n’ bois pas? François asked.
– Pas ce soir, said Franklin. L’alcool a tendance à me distraire.
– Pourquoi m’encourager à boire alors? Ça m’distrait, moi aussi, non?
– T’es pas dans le même bateau que moi, austeure. Toi, t’as besoin de distraction.
François looked up, wondering where this new tack was heading.
– Pourquoi? he asked.
Franklin hesitated.
– Because…your wife is dead.
– And?
– Tu as porte ouverte sur la douleur.
– Ça c’est mes affaires, said François.
– Yes, mais t’as surement besoin de distraction de temps en temps, n’est-ce pas? À travers cette porte il n’y a que tristesse.
– Tu n’as aucune idée de quoi tu parles.
– Voilà ce que j’aime chez toi, François. T’es la franchise même. C’est vrai que je n’peux pas comprendre ta perte, même si ma mère est morte.
– Ta mère est morte? Quand ça?
– L’année passée. Et puis, tu sais, j’en parle rarement, mais j’aimais ma mère.
Both men stopped speaking. But then, as quickly as it had come, the unexpected tension dissipated. They began to laugh. For François, it was as if he had at last discovered Franklin’s secret heart. The man’s mother had died recently, and it was touching that he should seek out others who had been recently bereft.
– T’avais raison, he said. J’ai besoin de distraction de temps en temps. Ta mère est décédée. On va boire ensemble. Waitress! Can we have a cognac for my friend?
The waitress ran the fingers of her left hand through her hair and exhaled words that ran together and sounded like
– Cognananasaft…
Franklin began to speak English.
– Thank you, he said. I probably could use a drink.
They sat in silence until the young woman brought another cognac.
– Santé, said François
– Skol, said Franklin.
Then, as if an idea had just occurred to him and he needed a drink to quell his excitement, Franklin swallowed another mouthful of cognac and said
– Maybe I can help you.
– Comment ça, “help”?
– Well, I’ve been given more responsibility. You know how it is. And there’s one project that’s going to be big. It’s not public knowledge, but it just so happens, I could use a quantity surveyor. You told me a while ago you haven’t been doing work in your field. Wouldn’t you like to get back to surveying?
– I already have a job, François answered.
– That’s just it. You wouldn’t have to leave Transport, for this.
– For what?
– For a penitentiary. It’ll be a while before there’s approval, but I think we’re talking about several buildings. Water, roads, drains…the works. Rundstedt’s behind the project, and I’ve been asking architects for designs. I know it’s all a little early, but if it goes through I’d like to have figures from a quantity surveyor I can trust. Once we find the right site, of course.
– You want me to do this for you? asked François.
– Yes. I’d pay you out of my own pocket. I couldn’t pay you as much as the job deserves, but I’d like to have the figures before the government’s surveyors go to work.
Actually, what Franklin wanted was complicated. He wanted François’ work, because he really did think it would give him an advantage to have a proper and thorough appraisal of the penitentiary’s costs. François was, at very least, a conscientious man, and Franklin had no doubt his work would be professional. But he also wanted François’ esteem. He needed confirmation of Alba’s soundness and he sought François’ admiration, because he knew how difficult it would be to attain, François being a man who thought for himself. It may have been something like superstition but, in these early days of Alba, it seemed best to bring the best along with him. Not that approval makes right more right. It was rather that Franklin still had small doubts about Alba and was insecure enough to lie about the year of his mother’s passing to bring François to his side. Still, lest we forget: Christ himself wondered about the need for crucifixion, before getting on with his death.
�
� All right, said François, I’ll think about it.
1 I say, we could certainly use some water closets.
{22}
MR. RUNDSTEDT AND SUCCESS
What is a successful life, anyway?
The Right Honourable Rundstedt was not the kind of man who could have asked such a question in such a way. It isn’t that the question, asked in precisely that way, would not have interested him, but, rather, that he would have thought it an abstraction. Certainly, in Rundstedt’s life, there had been elections lost, debacles, and humiliations. There had even been dark nights of the soul, but the soul in question was never his own. That is, Rundstedt believed his defeats and debacles were the world’s doing, so he took them easily in stride.
– Well, what’re you gonna do?
was his response to condolence or commiseration. In a word, Rundstedt was not particularly self-conscious or self-aware. He might lose this election or that vote, this money or that house, without gaining the slightest doubt about his way of life. The metaphysical question
– What is a successful life?
needs a metaphysical notion of failure in order to receive a meaningful answer and Rundstedt simply did not know about “failure.”
He had a wife.
He had children.
He was recognized in the circles that mattered to him.
And yet, a year after his election, a year after his nomination to Cabinet, he began to feel there was something missing. Not that he had in any way failed, but rather that there was a lack. It was, in emotional terms, as if he had misplaced his car keys. Take, for instance, the small matter of women.
He had a wife.
The same could be said for most of his contemporaries, it’s true, but a number of them seemed remarkably unconstrained by their family ties. In public, of course, it was de rigueur to laud the benefits of stability, fidelity, hearth and home, but a number of his contemporaries still managed to chase skirt, from one end of the day to the other. Rundstedt was not that kind of man.