The American Fiancee

by Eric Dupont

  Before I get to Westkreuz, I have to tell you about something funny that happened on the way back from the gym last night. I took the elevator in my building. It only goes up to the ninth floor, and I live on the tenth. To get to the tenth, I have to pass by a door belonging to someone by the name of Berg. Here, everyone has their name on a neatly polished plate. The thing is, I could feel someone watching me through the peephole. And I was sure I heard a noise. So I looked at the Berg door. I could no longer hear a thing, proof positive that there was an eye pressed against the door and spying on me. I wanted to knock, but what would I have said. “Excuse me, but are you watching me?” I would have looked like an idiot. So I just smiled. I’ve only been here a few months, and I still don’t know the neighbors. I mean, I met two of them downstairs, two women from East Germany. They’re very funny. I think they’ve decided to adopt me. They insist on doing my washing and are always offering me butter, milk, things one of their nephews brings back from the dairy where he works. You’d think it was still the age of socialism, with people swiping what they could, wherever they could, to survive. This Mr. Berg frightens me a little. We’ll have to wait and see.

  I have to go now, Michel.

  Gabriel

  * * *

  Blankenfelde–Bernau

  May 4, 1999

  Dear Michel,

  On my way home, I reread the letter I wrote you on the thirtieth. Fear not: I’m capable of love. And since last fall I can even prove it. You’ll have noticed that I can’t resist a teacher’s charms. No surprise then that I met Claudia in a classroom a little over two years ago. I’ve never been so happy, so free.

  You might think, like Mom does, that not seeing you all is torture, that I stay away from you as some kind of mortification. But you’d be wrong. I’ve never felt better than these past ten years when I haven’t had you all right there every day reminding me how useless I am and how great you are. You mentioned your singing career has finally taken off. So there isn’t even a tiny bit of Mado gas in your engine? Are you absolutely sure?

  But first, let me reassure you. In your letter, you call me out for being cold toward Mom. You’ve got some nerve! Come on, Michel. Mom can go to hell! She doesn’t need any help opening her restaurants. All of them look like convent canteens anyway. Maybe she should go confess her past sins. Did you ever notice that every time she brought us to confession in Rosemont, she never spent more than two minutes in the confessional with Father Huot? As though she’d nothing to tell him! I could have dictated a confession worthy of the name, starting with the sin of pride. She’s been guilty of that more times than there are fir trees in Canada. And it was she that insisted:

  “Gabriel and Michel, I don’t want to see you come out of there before fifteen minutes are up. Get everything off your chests! You especially, Gabriel!”

  Me especially! That’s what she’d say every time, and you’re calling me out for being mad at her? And do you remember her catechism lessons? We’d be treated to them every time we got in the car to go to mass. Mom would have us reel off the responses. Come on! Try the one that’s forever etched in my mind. You’ll have to imagine for yourself the “I missed my vocation as a nun” voice!

  “‘Which sins need to be confessed in the sacrament of Penance?’ Gabriel? Michel? Which sins must you confess?”

  And you, you smarmy little angel, you’d come back with, “We must confess all our mortal sins, but it’s also good to confess our venial sins.”

  Well, here’s a venial sin I want to confess to you, Michel: back then, I could have ripped your nose off. She’d smile at you. I wanted to open the door and throw myself under the wheels of an oncoming bus and be done with it all. And allow me to be so callous as to remind you of another well-known question.

  “This one’s for you, Gabriel: ‘What must one do who cannot remember the exact number of his sins?’”

  You could have searched me. She must have told me ten times already, but I could never remember. Who gives a fuck? That was the only real answer to her question.

  “Gabriel, Mommy asked you a question,” she would insist.

  I didn’t know. Round it up? Work out the square root? Give an even number for luck? You were chomping at the bit to answer. She kept on glaring at me from behind her catechism book.

  “Answer me, Gabriel! What do you do when you can’t remember the exact number of sins?”

  I didn’t speak. She lost patience. Then she made me repeat after her: “If we cannot remember the exact number of our mortal sins, we should tell the number as nearly as possible, or say how often we have committed the sins in a day, a week, a month, or a year.”

  The Church, you’ll notice, was very flexible when it came to selecting the unit of time. The rest was basic multiplication. If I calculate that Mom took us to confession three times a year from the age of six for at least twelve years, I make that thirty-six times. Now there’s a number she should keep in mind the next time she goes to confession.

  Remember the time you threw a tantrum in the car and she whacked you to get you to shut up? Remember what she said? I don’t want to bad-mouth her behind her back, but if ever you’re looking for an explanation for your neurosis, remember these words: “Michel Lamontagne, stop snivelling. You’re going to confession. Period. It’s not a choice, it’s a duty. If you don’t go, I’ll have you adopted. Do I make myself clear?”

  Perhaps your shrink will find the answers to a few nagging questions in this little anecdote . . .

  You make me laugh, by the way. I know how hard things are for you, but you make me laugh all the same. If you weren’t my brother, if I didn’t know you so well, I don’t think I’d be laughing. But every time I read you, I hear your voice and see every twitch. When you write, for example: “The way Suzuki looks at me pierces me like a sword. Thankfully, Mom is there to calm her down. Otherwise she’d have carved me up into little marinated cubes and served me on caraway crackers a long time ago . . .” No, Michel. Suzuki’s look is nothing like a sword. It’s the only human presence I knew in that Outremont home. She doesn’t wish you any harm. Leave her alone.

  Am sitting comfortably on the Blankenfelde–Bernau S-Bahn writing my letter, far from Father Huot’s confessional. It’s strange. I used to be content with reading on the S-Bahn; now I write there too. The seats are comfortable, I find. The first time, like everyone, I was amazed to see these little trains—so efficient, so fast, so punctual!—transporting people from one side of this huge city to the other, without having to dive into the bowels of the earth like our subways in Toronto and Montreal. At the start, it was nice: the S-Bahn helped me see a little of the city. Now I sit there more out of resignation than anything. But it’s the only place where I still feel like I’m moving forward. And, even though people get on and off every five minutes, you’re left alone. Here in Germany, no one ever speaks to someone they don’t know—unless it’s to point out a bylaw they’ve broken or a faux pas they’ve just unwittingly made. Das ist verboten . . . And since it’s not verboten for a young man to sit quietly reading or writing on an S-Bahn seat, they don’t speak to me. If only they knew how I revel in their coldness! You with your ear for music, you’ll understand the next bit. Wherever you are in Berlin, you can always hear the wheels of the S-Bahn grating against the steel tracks. The sound of German efficiency. You hear it all night on weekends. Every time you close your eyes, it’s impossible not to picture a whole people traveling by rail, inexorably driven forward, from Grunewald to Anhalter Bahnhof, from Oranienburg to Ostbahnhof. Tracks are to Berlin what canals are to Venice. People get on at each station by the dozen, looking a little dazed. Young men can even be seen swigging, quite legally, from big bottles of beer. Nothing is more fascinating than these German trains, dear brother. Berlin life is set to the screech of the S-Bahn, the voices of the platform ticket collectors who shout “Zurückbleiben!” at the tardy passengers who’ve just run flat out and are now trying to pry open the doors of the train that’s just ab
out to leave, as though it’s the last train ever, as though there will never be another. But there always is. For as long as there are people in Berlin, there will be trains.

  To answer your more practical questions, I’ve been living since January in one of the buildings they call Plattenbauten, in the Lichtenberg district of former East Berlin, where these tall, narrow apartment blocks stretch as far as the eye can see, looking for all the world like they were built from pastel Lego blocks. The first thing that comes to mind when you see them is: “The wind’s going to knock them over like dominos.” But they hold up. It’s not much to look at, but it’s comfortable enough. What am I doing in Germany? It’s simple enough: I followed a woman here. Love brought me here. I can hear you grinding your teeth. Rest assured: Claudia and I aren’t living together.

  When she left Toronto last year after defending her thesis on medieval literature—she’s into Minnesang, the German version of courtly love—I watched her go, and I don’t know if you can wrap your head around this, you who are so much like Mom, but I felt alone for the first time. Do you want to hear where I met her? Are you interested in your brother’s love life? Or, in telling you about the woman I love, am I running the risk that you’ll jump on the first Alitalia flight to Berlin to murder her in her sleep?

  I have to go. The train’s pulling into Bernau. I’ll write more tomorrow, or another day.

  Gabriel

  * * *

  Teltow Stadt–Hennigsdorf

  May 5, 1999

  Dear little Michel,

  I’ve even found an S-Bahn route called the Ring. It runs clockwise around Berlin. You can get on at any station along the circle and spend the day on the train without ever having to get off. It’s on the Ring that I find the most time to write, since the scenery is unremarkable. Industrial estates. East, then West, then East again, in a never-ending circle, a spiral of Berlin’s own. Perpetuum mobile. Here, far from the center, the East still looks like the East, and the West still looks like the West. In the distance, the Mercedes logo, that Germanic deity forever twirling in the Berlin sky. You can also travel counterclockwise around the Ring, but I avoid that. For reasons I can’t explain, going in the opposite direction makes me nauseous.

  Remember when I told you I felt like I was being spied on by a man called Berg while I waited for the elevator in my building? I think I was right, you know. When I came home last night, I could feel someone watching again from behind the same door. This time, I just waved at the person spying on me, as though to invite them to come out of their hiding place. I didn’t have long to wait. I went up to my apartment. My door had been closed for no more than twenty minutes when someone knocked on it. Three brisk knocks. I didn’t even look before I opened it. There in front of the door was an elderly woman who said she lived just below my apartment. She’d come to ask me to thread a needle for her.

  “My name is Magdalena Berg, I’m almost eighty years old, and I’m your neighbor on the ninth floor. Where are you from?” she asked me in warlike German.

  “Gabriel Lamontagne, I’m from Montreal.”

  “Ach! Kanada! I thought you were Italian with that wavy dark hair. Or Slavic. How come you speak German?”

  Germans are always surprised to find you speak their language, and they often inquire a touch suspiciously, as though they take you to be some sort of spy. I’d started studying German seriously, I explained. I’d been in Berlin for five months, although naturally I didn’t tell her I’d learned German for a girl called Claudia who I wasn’t even living with. She was a little insistent, as though wary of my reasons for being there. She wanted to know how I’d found the apartment. I think I must have been the first Quebecer to ever live in Lichtenberg. How should I describe her? She’s quite a solid woman, the type who could derail a moving tram with a thrust of her shoulder. Five foot seven, I’d say. Heavier than me. She was wearing a sort of maroon velvet dress tied around the waist—or around her equator, should I say—with a rust-colored leather belt. Her grey hair was cut in a style that was no doubt the height of fashion in 1935, slightly wavy on the sides. She was holding a needle in her right hand and a length of yellow thread in her left.

  “Here. I can’t see a thing. Give me hand, will you?” she said, thrusting them under my nose.

  She wanted me to thread the needle. It was a very fine sewing needle, and the hole was so small I could barely see it. I stuck out my tongue as I concentrated. I’m not used to having to be so precise. She looked me up and down while I threaded the needle. I’d already taken off my shirt and there I was standing before her in my white tank undershirt. She must have noticed my arms and pecs.

  “Do you like Riesling?” she asked.

  “Yes, but I have to get up early tomorrow,” I replied. I found her a little frightening.

  “I’m not after your life story, I’m just asking if you like Riesling,” she sniffed.

  “Ah, uh, yes. Riesling’s nice.”

  “That’s all I wanted to know. Thank you. Gute Nacht.”

  Have you ever heard the like of it? She took the threaded needle from me and repeated my name in her German accent. “Kapriel Lamontagne aus Kanada . . .” Then she went back downstairs. I just stood there, dazed.

  Have rehearsals started? If I understood correctly, you’re making a new movie version of Tosca, like the DVD you sent me? So you’re following in the footsteps of Placido Domingo, are you? He’s a tough act to follow. Did you know that Bruno-Karl D’Ambrosio was born Marcel Truchon? I kid you not. He comes from La Malbaie, in the Charlevoix region of Quebec. I read that somewhere. He changed his name when he moved to Montreal.

  He’s the same D’Ambrosio who caused a stir here in Berlin last year with a trashy production of a Wagner opera. The Flying Dutchman, is that what it’s called? I only know the German title. It was in the newspapers a lot. Apparently one of the characters—Erik, I think it was—shoots a woman dead at point blank range at the end and rapes her corpse in a necrophilic scene that raised eyebrows, and that’s saying something for Berlin. It was also him, I think, who had Werner Oberhuber and Andrea Apfelbaum sing Madame Butterfly, the pair of them stark naked, in some Austrian or German town or other. Bregenz? Munich? I’d have to ask Claudia. They say that Werner Oberhuber had a bit of a boner going at the premiere. D’Ambrosio explained that the nudity was supposed to represent the purity and innocence of the love between Pinkerton and Cio-Cio San. I can’t wait to see your film, dear Michel . . . You’re sure you don’t want to start getting in shape for it now?

  I’d started telling you a little of what happened to me after I left Outremont. As I was saying, already back at Brébeuf, I was going out with our French teacher, Chantal Villeneuve, who asked me to move in with her when her husband left her for a boy barely older than the two of us. I’ll never know if all she wanted was to get her own back by taking a younger lover herself. I had to wait until I’d finished school before moving in. The morning you were crying in your bed, that’s when I left. I took the photo of Papa Louis with me, the one Suzuki gave me. I took the metro from Outremont down to Jean-Talon, where Chantal lived. I caught her just as she was leaving. She agreed to let me stay for no more than a few weeks, but I ended up staying a year. Time to find my feet again and become someone.

  The rest is pretty straightforward. I enrolled in phys ed at McGill and did a teaching certificate. The chances of running into you at the gym building at McGill were slim. I can hear your mocking tone: Big deal, you’ll tell me, phys ed programs will accept just about anyone these days. And you wouldn’t be entirely wrong. I’d be lying if I said the education faculty was the most intellectually stimulating place in the world. But I do have a teaching certificate that allowed me to make an honest living in Toronto for six years, which is more than you can say. When you have no one but yourself to rely on, sometimes you have to do whatever it takes to survive. Remember Cyrano: “To be content if neither oak nor elm. Not to mount high, perchance, but mount alone!” We read it with Chantal Vi
lleneuve at Brébeuf; you even enjoyed it. But like most actors and opera singers, you seldom apply the valuable lessons your characters teach you.

  In 1994, I applied for a job as a phys ed teacher at a Catholic school in Toronto. I had to take an English test and provide a reference from a priest who’d known me for a while, just to prove that I was a good Catholic and had no intentions of encouraging the students to sin. A brief interview with the principal and the vice principal and that was that. Once that’s out of the way, it’s pretty much in the bag. Toronto had one big thing going for it: Mom didn’t have any restaurants there yet. That changed quickly, but for the first few years at least, I was happy to live in a city where there wasn’t a reminder of her on every corner.

  I was to replace a teacher the school board had forced to resign because he’d admitted he was gay to one of the girls, and she’d brought his confession home to her mother. The news spread by phone until one of the more pernickety parents pointed out to the principal that Ontario teachers are obliged by law to lead a life in line with Christian values. In Quebec or in any public school in Ontario, no one would have gotten hung up about the poor guy’s sexual orientation, but not at Holy Canadian Martyrs Catholic Secondary School. The hysterical mother ended up making a fuss to the archbishop, then they started making it clear to the guy that he’d have to go, which he did, but not before kicking up a stink. He’d have his day in court. Everyone said he was going to win his case and come back to work, but I had his job in the meantime.

  On my first day at the school, September 2, the principal, Mrs. Delvecchio, had a word with me “in private” about the teacher. Gerald Lemon was his name. My God, how his students must have teased him with a name like that! She seemed quite fond of him and was still frustrated at being forced by her superiors to let such a good teacher go.