by André Alexis
– Listen, Eddy, you know I care about you.
– Well, yeah, of course. You know I care about you too
said Edward, embarrassed that Reinhart had spoken words their friendship made superfluous.
– No, no, just listen. What I mean is, you’ve got to move on. I think you should leave this job with Franklin. How are you going to get anywhere chasing after his vision? I just don’t see what’s in it for you.
– But you designed it.
– Yes, I did, and I’m glad I did, but my work is done. That’s the last time I’ll do anything like it. I wasn’t an architect at the start of all this, and I’m no architect now, but the point is I’m not wasting away in someone else’s universe. Let the things that don’t belong to you go. It’ll be better for you. Anyway, Eddy, you’re being taken places you don’t like.
What if he did have imagination? Should he dissociate himself from Franklin’s means and Franklin’s ends?
At Somerset, he asked Reinhart
– What would you do?
And Reinhart answered
– I’d quit.
Edward had the same sense of foreboding he’d had for some time, but he simply could not quit and leave Franklin to fend for himself. It wasn’t in him. He was loyal and loyalty meant something. He would stay put and stay quiet until all this was over, until MacKenzie Bowell was built. Only then, if even then, would he be able to resign with a clear conscience.
– I can’t quit, said Edward
– Well, look, said Reinhart. You really didn’t have much to do with these guys. I don’t see how it could hurt you, if you just keep quiet and do your work. Anyway, I know you. You’ll find your way.
– Yes, said Edward. Sooner or later we all find our way, because there’s only one destination.
Words so uncharacteristic of Edward Muir, Reinhart stopped mid-stride.
– Where’d you hear that? he asked.
– What? Oh. Dad used to say it.
– Really? Your Dad’s a pretty happy guy.
– Not after his sister died.
– Oh, said Reinhart. That’s true.
Reinhart had a sudden memory not of Mr. Muir but of Edward’s mother, the sound of her, the first adult he had seen weep: he and Edward walking into the kitchen where she sat, head down until she heard them and got up to find them something to eat, rubbing her eyes as she did.
Even by streetlight, Edward looked very like his mother. No wonder Reinhart couldn’t stop drawing or painting Edward’s portrait. However he disguised him, against whatever background he was set, Edward was inevitably hearth, for Reinhart.
They were almost at the river. It was time to turn back.
Reinhart asked
– How’s your mother?
But as Edward answered, Reinhart had an unexpected vision of Edward dressed as Federico da Montefeltro in della Francesca’s portrait. (How the Old World had colonized his imagination! Or was it his imagination that had colonized the Old World?)
– I’m sorry, Eddy. What were you saying?
{47}
EDWARD SPEAKS UP
It would have been sensible for Edward to keep quiet about Mickleson and St. Pierre. There was no upside to speaking. Why, then, did he speak of the men to Mary Stanley? Well, to begin with, Mary was the one who broached the subject one afternoon when, after a day in which there’d been little to do, she had casually asked if he was acquainted with St. Pierre and Mickleson.
– No, he’d answered. I couldn’t be friends with animals like that.
– How’re they animals? Mary had asked.
– I’ll tell you some other time, he’d said.
He’d had no intention of saying anything “some other time.” He was speaking to a woman and he could not keep from trying to make himself seem interesting or, at least, possessed of interesting information. Amour propre demanded it.
– Hmph, Mary had said
not fooled by his deferral.
– No, I’m serious, said Edward. We should go out for coffee sometime. We’ve worked together all these years and –
– Edward, would you come in here, please?
Franklin had heard this exchange between Mary and Edward. After calling him into the office and closing the door behind them, he turned on Edward and said
– What do you think you’re doing? Why? Why would you be talking about St. Pierre and Mickleson?
Caught off guard, Edward answered
– No, no, Frank, you’re overreacting. I was just talking. That’s all.
– Well, stop it. It’s irresponsible.
Edward, feeling almost parentally castigated, was sheepishly defensive.
– You’re right. I’m sorry. But, you know, those guys deserve to be punished for what happened to the McAllisters. I know I shouldn’t say anything about them, but I wish there was something we could do.
– What are you talking about? asked Franklin.
– Nothing, I’m just saying, if you look at this objectively, there must be some way to punish them for what they did. That’s what I’m saying. If you could tell the right people about them, it wouldn’t necessarily be bad, don’t you think?
Franklin stared at Edward for a moment, before recovering his sangfroid.
– Look, Eddy, this is all ancient history. Just let it go.
Later that day, as he walked out of the office and down the quiet halls, Franklin wondered just how well he knew Edward Muir.
They’d been acquainted for more than twenty years. In that time, Edward had seen him through the worst: his despair while running for office, his despair after losing. Edward had encouraged him when he decided to translate Avvakum and Edward had welcomed him back to the Hill when his self-imposed exile ended. Edward’s admiration for him was plain and, ultimately, the admiration gave pleasure. That is to say: for more than twenty years, Franklin had enjoyed Edward’s company.
And yet, what did he know about the man? Only the trivial: the physical details, the brown eyes, dark hair, and so on, the personal data, that he lived with his parents, was left-handed, had studied history, that his best friend was gay (and, be it said in passing, Franklin had his suspicions about Edward, on that score). Edward was geniality itself when he was with friends, sometimes thoughtless when dealing with others. And, most pertinently, he was expansive when drunk.
That was, more or less, the extent of Franklin’s knowledge and, before this, it had been sufficient. But, on hearing Edward off-handedly express his opinion of St. Pierre and Mickleson it suddenly seemed to him that his ignorance of the man had become a liability. How sharp was Edward’s judgment? He did not know. He wondered to whom else Edward might have spoken. Reinhart? His parents? Nameless drinkers in neighbourhood bars? He wondered just how discreet Edward had been over the years, how careful with the details of ministry business. There was no way of telling.
So, as well as hard feelings about the dismemberment of Alba, hard feelings about Rundstedt’s having decided, without telling him, which buildings would, in the end, be built, uncertainty about the fate of the ministry, and pessimism about life itself these days, there was mistrust of Edward Muir. It was too much. Think of all the years he’d spent in a city he disliked, a city in which he’d made only one friend, a friend who, it turned out, was as mysterious to him as an enemy might have been. The full extent and depth of his solitude sprang up in his imagination like a field of spiny, black bramble. He found himself resentful of Edward, and he began to consider how to free himself of what was, now, an acid presence, a reminder of his isolation.
It being a warm evening and, having no other duties to fulfill, Franklin left the office and walked. He walked along Rideau all the way to Record Runner, where, after a browse, he bought Glenn Gould playing Gibbons and Sweelinck. He bought it on the advice of a clerk who swore it was better than Goul
d’s final recording, an “abominable” Goldberg Variations, but Franklin would have bought anything the man suggested. After that, he ate at Marcel’s, a bistro in the Market, and passed a not unpleasant evening out. He then returned to his apartment and fell asleep to the music of Orlando Gibbons.
And yet…
Though Franklin would not have said he’d been overly upset by this day, it proved curiously persistent. For years afterwards, Franklin remembered the wainscotting at Marcel’s (painted reddish brown), the ruddy stains on a white polyester tablecloth. Besides the waiter’s clothes, he remembered the stubble on the man’s chin, a furtive tuft of hair on the second knuckle of his left hand, and the smell of his breath. He remembered the name of a businessman sitting at the table beside him (“Hi, I’m Roger”) and the voice of a woman sitting across the room from them. Nor was his memory confined to the inside of Marcel’s. He also remembered the weather, some of the cars he saw along Bank Street, and the sound of the trees shaken by the wind. In fact, it sometimes happened that a number of these details came back all at once, so that he began to think the memories of this day were like a cloud of midges.
Worse, the details of this day often brought with them the worst despair, a despair very like the anguish he’d felt as a child in Anse Bleu. Had it not been that MacKenzie Bowell might still prove effective, might still redeem all of his choices, he would almost certainly have succumbed to his own depression.
* * *
—
Days after the unpleasantness with Edward, Franklin and François met for lunch.
There was no agenda to their meeting. They had spoken since their missed appointment. François had passionately presented his objections to the architect’s designs, decrying the expense the prison represented, reminding Franklin that there was poverty in the land and the homeless to be seen to. Franklin had listened distractedly, before letting François know that, although he could have refuted these concerns, there was no longer call for objections or refutations. The architect’s designs were too expensive to stand, as François’ own estimates had made plain, and Franklin was now awaiting the stripping down Cabinet would impose on the designs, awaiting the results of a surgery that would permanently damage his “child.” That being, more or less, the end of that, the two men had gone pensively on to the other things: governmental gossip, philosophical issues, and so on.
If they had spoken more frequently than they usually did since then, it was because François now (perhaps unconsciously) sought occasions on which to see or speak about Mary. On this day, for instance, François would have preferred to lunch with Mary, but as they had recently seen a movie together (a rather strange movie, The Last of England, in which, among other seemingly random occurrences, a man eats and then vomits up a cauliflower, a scene that still poisoned François’ meals when he thought about it) and he did not want it to seem he was pursuing her, he instead invited Franklin, who had time on his hands, for lunch. But François went to Franklin’s office early so he had a chance to speak to Mary for a while before he and Franklin left.
The restaurant they chose (Don Alfonso’s) was, in its interior, plain but not drab. They ordered gazpacho and tilapia for Franklin, gazpacho and paella for François, and a white Rioja they shared. Franklin asked after Daniel, mentioned a covert wish for children of his own, denigrated his knowledge of women, and adverted (glancingly) to the one woman he had loved. He was, in other words, expansive and reflective.
When they had finished eating, as they were drinking the manzanilla Franklin ordered, François said
– You know, I miss the Fortnightly Club. I haven’t been going as often as I used to.
– It seemed like a waste of time to me, said Franklin.
– Not at all, answered François. I went the other evening and they were talking about Plato’s Republic. The question was if a republic can be moral when it’s based on immorality. Getting rid of artists, forcing people to do the jobs you think they’re suited to…how can you have a morally good state founded on injustice?
– That’s a naive question, answered Franklin. All states are founded on injustice. Someone rules, someone serves, and power keeps things in order and running. You should judge a state by what it does, not how it’s founded.
– It isn’t so simple, said François. A good monarchy starts with an enlightened monarch. A corrupt democracy starts with a corrupt populace. Origin influences character, don’t you think? Plato’s republic begins with the idea of control, not justice. So, how can it ever be just, except by accident? Look at it another way. What if MacKenzie Bowell Penitentiary…
Here, François argued that Franklin’s prison, if it had been made by corrupt men, would have carried with it a stink of hypocrisy that would have turned its inmates cynical and inoculated them against whatever nobility the place held. This Franklin easily answered, comparing Bowell Penitentiary to a work of Art that, despite its origin, ennobles. Think, for instance, of François Villon: murderer and thief, hanged (or was it banished?) for being a villain. And yet, is there a deeper poem than Ballade des dames du temps jadis or, better still, Le Grand Testament, which he wrote on his release from jail:
En l’an de mon trentiesme age
Que toutes mes hontes j’euz beues,
Ne du tout fol, ne du tout saige
Non obstant maintes peines eues…
In fact, François’ argument was so feeble, Franklin (more bitter than joking) asked
– You really want to drive the last nail into MacKenzie Bowell’s coffin, don’t you?
François laughed.
– Not at all, Frank. I’m not disappointed it won’t be built the way it was designed, but part of me is sad for you. I know you believed in it.
The park outside Franklin’s window was striped by waning sunlight. A portion of it was in pinkish light, a portion in shadow. A strong wind moved the tree branches from time to time and rattled the panes on the doors to the balcony. The world, if it was any one thing, was a correlative to his emotions: of two minds and agitated. The meal with François had not been unpleasant, but it had filliped his impatience with philosophical debates. The morality of Plato’s republic? Just the kind of thing to turn you against thinking itself. And yet, he could not let it go, because he had felt, rightly or not, implicated, felt that he had been François’ quarry and that the real question was not “what is a good state?” but “what is a good man?”
So, what did it mean to be a good man?
Was it not to pursue, selflessly, ideals that spoke to a greater good, a good beyond the self? Had he been pursuing a personal vision with Alba? No, he had not. He did not need any of the renown that would have come had the prison been built as it had been imagined. He needed only to feel that his time on Earth added up to something solid, something of value to those around him. He had found the thing he could believe in and, believing, he had felt less estranged from the world. Now that he had failed to shepherd Alba into being, what was left?
What was left for the good man who has failed?
Hope, of course. That and the knowledge he is a good man, whatever missteps he may have taken.
{48}
IN WHICH: RUNDSTEDT LEAVES THE SCENE
What was it that undid Albert Rundstedt? Was it “Larry” with his photographs of the minister and a woman named “Gudrun Lindemann”? No, of course not. You can’t blame the guillotine for the walk towards it. Besides, neither Larry nor Gudrun was about when the end came.
Was it, then, a question of longing or desire?
Yes, to an extent, but both of these were heightened by the change of fortune that promoted him from ambitious but honest drudge to a position of power and influence.
Was it, finally, a lack of self-awareness?
Yes, this it certainly was, because Rundstedt was a man who had no idea how principled, well intentioned, and honourable he was. He’d had, i
n other words, no idea what mattered most to him.
Immediately after his meeting with the Estonian Larry, Rundstedt had considered, momentarily, cooperating with whomever it was Larry represented. The photographs of himself and Gudrun would lacerate his family, his friends, and his party, a party that had suffered through more than its share of scandals. If only to protect those who trusted him, it was tempting to carry on as if there were no Gudrun, no Larry, no espionage. To do that, however, would have been an even greater betrayal. So, the question was how to lessen, as much as possible, if possible, the pain others would feel. To do that he would have to suffer as much or more than anyone else. That is, he would have to abandon the goals he cherished and the standing he had attained.
Before leaving office, however, there were three communities to inform: his family, his constituents, his party. Each would have to be handled in its own way. To his family, he would have to be brutally frank – honest with Edwina and then, though the idea crippled him, with the children.
So, for the first time in his life, after more than five decades on Earth, Albert Rundstedt was obliged to look coldly at what he was and at what he would be. It might have been worse: he might have had to confront himself in Vancouver or, God help him, in Ottawa. Instead, he was allowed the consolation of his own city, Calgary. On the day he decided to tell Edwina what had happened, Rundstedt walked along or above Memorial Drive from Centre to Crowchild. The river was a thoughtful companion, as rivers sometimes are, and this was the first time he had walked this far in, what?, thirty years? If he were to be banished, better to be banished here where he could accompany the Bow. If he had to lose everything, better to start again here.
By 14th Street, the understanding he might lose the only woman he had loved filled him with such anguish he wondered how he would survive. He had been thoughtless for an instant, had looked away from the road, and suddenly, there was an oncoming car. How true it was that men did not know what awaited them, all of life an illusion until one came to a moment that was almost tangible, a moment that would not leave.