The Longest Year

by Daniel Grenier

  Soldiers were thicker on the ground every day, civilians fewer and further between. As long as the unrest in the southern colonies did not abate, or succumb to British military might, the curfew would remain in effect and sentries keep watching the horizon and the Lévis woods, from where Arnold and Montgomery had once launched missiles over the river at Quebec. Some days a line of fire could be seen in the low sky, further out, as Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore made ready to rise up as one.

  After swallowing a final mouthful of bread, Aimé struck a match and ran it down his palms and fingertips. He held it to his lips and nostrils, and repeated the process with another when it went out. The little flame was almost immediately snuffed out by a gust of wind that crept under the porch where he had taken shelter. His legs no longer hurt as before. It made him euphoric in a way he couldn’t wrap his head around. What he felt was akin to joy, but he lacked the words to articulate it. He was terribly cold but, at the same time, didn’t know what else to do, beyond praying and thanking the Lord for this respite from pain. He wore a little cross on his neck and considered giving it a kiss, but quickly abandoned this idea when an icy gust of wind, or maybe blowing snow, forced him to shut his eyes.

  A chunk of ice broke loose from the roof above him as a brigade went by on Côte de la Montagne hill. The soldiers halted. Aimé remained still, and even stopped breathing. In the dark he could stay invisible, blend into the shadows, and slip into the openings between the bricks, but if they came into the passage to find the source of the noise he’d have nowhere to hide. One of the men pointed a bayonet into the darkness and, under his officer’s orders, was slowly advancing. Aimé understood that he was out of options. He considered the relative warmth of the prison cell where there would be straw on the floor. He raised his arms in surrender and to let the soldiers know where he was, speaking clearly to avoid startling them.

  They asked him to come out and step forward into the light of the lantern. No false moves. What was that in his hands? What did he have in his pockets? What was he doing there? This was private property. A few seconds later, the officer making the inspection noticed, and pointed at, Aimé’s hole-riddled boots. He spat as he spoke, in the English Aimé associated with the wealthy merchants down at the Port and Customs House.

  “Where did you get those boots?”

  Aimé hesitated a moment. Fear had stepped in and obstructed the words that should have slipped out right away. The lie that could have saved him wasn’t forthcoming, only silence, in the middle of the road, cold, immobilized by the soldiers’ guns. The officer repeated himself, in French mostly, and louder:

  “Où avez-vous trouvé ces boots? Answer me!”

  Surrounded by five soldiers with no means of escape, Aimé couldn’t fathom a way out. One soldier held his hat down on his head in the nick of time before the wind and blowing snow made off with it. Aimé quickly thought it over. He made a mental list of all possible answers but none seemed to work, all led straight to the gaol. The holes in his toes didn’t change a thing, the boots were army property, from the leather to the gilded buttons to the worn-out soles. When he’d found them Aimé had discarded the removable spats to avoid attracting notice. But the officer immediately and effortlessly recognized these pieces of enemy kit. Aimé felt his nerves, and then impatience. Everyone knew prisoners of war had managed to escape, the prison was poorly guarded, hard to secure with the threat of attack ever-looming. There was talk of a full-fledged insurrection, led by a militia under Ethan Allen backed by the Canadiens. American propaganda continued to reach Montreal and spread around the city, they were powerless to stop it. Pamphlets were slipping over the border along with printed letters signed by Franklin and Adams.

  The officer looked Aimé in the eye. His pupils were strangely empty, as if the endless winter he had suffered through since getting off the ship had robbed him of his eyesight. What little remained of his teeth seemed to be disintegrating before their eyes, as he bellowed at Aimé, Explain yourself, tell me who you are. The Ursuline Sisters’ bell rang eight times in its tower and the officer issued a peremptory order. The men seized Aimé by his shoulders and arms, the shoulders and arms that had finally stopped causing him pain, and started walking again. They took him to join the three hundred and fifty survivors of Benedict Arnold’s march on Quebec, crammed into the seeping stone cells of the military prison.

  The wind slipped in through the loopholes but it was hot inside, the men’s bodies touched as they paced their cell, only to end up back where they’d started. Aimé tried to settle into a corner and enjoy the warmth a little, at least until his nose and fingertips had time to thaw. They’d pulled off his boots and pushed him into the cell without further explanation. He didn’t know when he’d be sentenced, maybe later that day, maybe not for weeks. Though this worried him, the absence of pain in his limbs was cause to rejoice, something he wanted to experience in silence, simply moving his lips a little. A euphoric feeling was coursing through his body, and he was gradually assimilating it. He touched the cross on his neck, took it out of his shirt as a man came up to welcome him. Deep cracks in his hands told Aimé he’d spent too long outdoors, laying siege to the city last December, and would have scars for the rest of his life. He spoke English and his greasy hair stood out every which way, as if someone had yanked off his wig. Aimé answered in halting English but addressed him respectfully. Clearly he was a man of rank: the others got out of his way when he walked, like tropical insects boring an opening in the swarm.

  This man and Aimé spoke at length, while day began to break and the other inmates slept where they could, or yelled out through the arrow slits, wind in their faces. Sometimes a guard came to demand silence. The prisoners answered with insults, mocked his accent. Whenever the man stopped talking to Aimé, to put one of his subordinates in his place or massage his temples with two filthy middle fingers, Aimé drifted off into his thoughts and plotted his escape. It was far from his first time in prison. He observed the walls and composition of the stone, ran his fingers along the iron bars, while the man, in great detail and with an honour none would ever take away from him, told his impassioned story. His legs had grown thin, the hair had fallen out on his calves. Despite his rank he was not allowed to smoke.

  His name was Daniel Morgan. A captain in the Continental Army, he’d fought alongside Benedict Arnold in the attack on Quebec from the north, through the faubourgs of the lower town along the St. Charles River. With the regiment of men rotting away in this dank cell, he’d sought to take the British by surprise, waiting for General Montgomery’s cannonade to cover them from the south shore. In the blizzard, nothing went according to plan. He’d thumbed his nose at the English by surrendering his sword to a Catholic priest before Governor Carleton arrived. For that he’d been denied a private cell. Which was perfect; he would have been much colder without his men, shut up alone, whiling away the hours penning incoherent missives.

  Aimé listened respectfully and politely. Morgan’s beard was growing long and matted. He also introduced himself, with profound humility: Aimé Bolduc, after one of the nuns who had cared for him. He had no baptistery certificate to prove it, but knew that when she’d taken to him, the others started calling him by the maiden name she’d renounced when she took her vows. Aimé had been arrested for stealing a dead man’s boots, a dead soldier’s boots, a pair of boots that had gotten him through the winters up to now. It was an offence sure to land him in this prison for a long time, but then Aimé had never stayed anywhere long; he was restless, knew the city’s hidden corners and the many ways to slip through cracks and disappear. While he spoke he fingered the stone of the walls, quarried by men undernourished and broken by fatigue. It stuck to your fingers, the rock powder and sweat of the thousand prisoners who had found themselves here, leaned against this very wall, waiting for their sentences to be executed.

  Intrigued and fascinated, Morgan listened to Aimé’s tale and trie
d to properly parse the syllables that piled one upon the other, rough consonants and diphthongs swelling up out of nowhere mid-word. They talked until the sun came up, until they were so tired their eyes tingled, especially Morgan, who hadn’t slept in three days. He listened to Aimé talk, French phrases mixed in as if he were reluctant to be fully understood. He recounted a litany of misfortunes in a backhanded way, refusing to dignify them with the seriousness others might. Unlike Morgan, he had no undue attachment to the idea of an independent state. He’d settle for freeing his own body. He didn’t put it in exactly those terms, but that’s what his new friend took away, after so much time awake. As hours went by, his trust in Aimé grew while he began to doubt this man’s existence, his material presence. The soldiers had stopped yelling. It must have been five in the morning. Everyone was listening to Aimé and Morgan chatting away like old chums, friends who’d get together and share serious thoughts. Morgan quietly insisted that it wasn’t true, he’d lied, in fact he’d written a few letters, including an especially important one to Wooster, who had been spotted in Montreal. Morgan finally fell asleep after handing a sheet of paper over to Aimé, who secreted it away in an inside fold in his torn-up shirt. For the first time since the rebel troops arrived in the colony, the cell was totally silent. Aimé’s eyes didn’t close and he wasn’t blinking much either, his eyes were too dry from thinking about the end of an era in his veins and under his skin, dreaming about being outside these walls, dreaming hard enough to get there.

  He imagined Montreal and everything became possible: journeys down paths through the still-virgin woods, mountains at once faraway and near, in perpetual motion over infinite, immortal ground. He pictured himself elsewhere and in more eventful circumstances, his abnormally long legs, boy’s legs, transformed into those of an exotic, mythical animal, at once hind and hunter, his slender arms as strong as the trunks of maple trees. He pictured Montreal, Ville-Marie, a big city where big things were going to happen.

  Deep in his dreams of combat in the undulating Connecticut woods, Daniel Morgan was aware that, when he opened his eyes, Aimé Bolduc would be gone.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  OCTOBER 1925

  PALM SPRINGS, CA

  He had become a handsome man. The twentieth century had been kind to him so far, you could see as much in his appearance and bearing, complexion and deportment. Each new day brought revolutionary new products rolling off the assembly lines of sprawling factories. They were redrawing the horizon with towering chimneys whose dramatic plumes of smoke were indistinguishable from the clouds. He bought pomades for his hair and scalp and dieted to maintain his figure, ordered life-changing emulsions and astringents from the pages of the Sears, Roebuck & Co. catalogue. People were going crazy for radium, walking around with radioactive watches. Aimé had quietly invested in the Pedoscope, an invention that let shoe salesmen take X-rays of their clients’ feet on the spot. It was an elegant machine with ornate flourishes, built by master craftsmen out of wood varnished to a shine.

  When he applied anti-ageing cream to his wrinkles, Aimé wasn’t unaware of the cosmic irony of his action and his wish, the one we all share, even at an advanced age, to live forever. Like the rest of us he acted in a perfectly normal manner most of the time. He was forgetting things. That year, in New York or San Diego or wherever he was, Aimé looked like a man of forty-one. He’d been alive for more than a century and a half.

  Aimé believed the promises of the factory-builders and entrepreneurs, men who had dreams and weren’t afraid to lay everything on the line for the good of their fellow man. How could he not believe in them? His teeth, a source of shame for nearly the entire second half of the nineteenth century, while life expectancy soared and hygiene was on everyone’s lips, those teeth were white today, and why? Radium toothpaste. He could smile without embarrassment, as if the rotten teeth and bad breath that had plagued him for so long, until it became a part of him, had evaporated. X-rays were the greatest discovery in the history of mankind, and Aimé was working hard to keep abreast of the latest developments. He’d tried to get in touch with the Curies, learn more about the science of radiation, but after a few unsuccessful attempts he had shifted his focus to the technology’s commercial potential.

  Every night and every morning he brushed his teeth with Doramad Radioaktive Zahncreme, a privately imported German product that glowed in the dark. He kept the silver tube on his person at all times. His nails were always carefully clipped, with no cuticles. He combed his shiny hair after applying a special mousse developed by retired soldiers who’d made the move to R&D.

  In Houston, Seattle, or Great Falls, Aimé always looked good and stood tall, though he liked to keep to the background. People at receptions and charity balls were always wondering who he was. There would be whispers: He might be William Van Ness, heard of him? The name sounded familiar, but no one knew why. Was he one of the Vermont Van Nesses? Probably, but hadn’t the Van Nesses gone bankrupt after the governor’s political misadventures, not long after the Civil War? That man in his tailored suits sure didn’t look like the scion of a ruined family. He dressed in the finest fabrics, always stuck to the periphery of activities and conversations. You could talk to the man, sure, but he always answered curtly, with a half-formed, distant smile. He was polite, like a man who had something to hide, people would say as they stepped away. They’d think about it for a few seconds, then forget all about him as they snatched a flute of champagne from a passing tray. There were dozens of other interesting, influential people to meet and fraternize with. Bursts of laughter could be heard all around, erupting at the slightest provocation.

  The truth was simple: Aimé brought the booze. That was his role and he excelled at it. He walked around the immense ballroom making sure everyone had everything they needed. Not many people knew who he really was, but that took nothing away from his efficiency and expertise. In the middle of Prohibition you could call on Aimé and rest easy knowing your function would be well supplied with European wines and quality spirits, for a soiree that never disappointed. It came in by the caseload, through secret back alleys behind reputed establishments. With Aimé you never got anything doctored, that was his trademark. Unlike the other bootleggers in Chicago and elsewhere, who plied their trade over the Canadian border, men like Gursky and Capone, Aimé’s catalogue listed only controlled-origin products. No matter where he did business, he always delivered and oversaw distribution personally, to make certain everything ran smoothly, from start to finish. Aimé was a high-class caterer like no other, with discretion and strict standards to match. He arrived early, rang the doorbell, and settled payment terms with his host, while the cases and barrels came in through the municipal gutters and storm drains.

  No matter where he found himself in those years of prosperity when federal legislation made him rich, he always stayed modest, discreet, and anonymous. People talked about him, in the sophisticated circles that sprung up and mutated and disappeared in a puff of smoke, but this man with gleaming hair and a slender moustache remained unfailingly impossible to size up. He wasn’t a servant, that much was clear at a glance, and everyone wanted to know who his family was. He’d smile politely but never engage. Or almost never. People would wonder about him for a few seconds and eventually forget all about his presence, as evanescent as that of the chandeliers and other touches of opulence — they created an ambiance, but everyone got used to it and stopped noticing after a while. He became part of the furniture. People stopped asking questions and kept right on drinking. That night, in Palm Springs in the California desert, they were mostly drinking Dupeyron Armagnac and a fine Saint-Émilion of the fabled 1900 vintage.

  No information about this period of Aimé’s life would have come down to us through Albert’s notebooks, no matter how comprehensive they have proven on other, often much older episodes, were it not for a man of uncertain age who sat down next to him that day, on the bench of a grand piano. He sipped a
martini; Aimé, as was his custom, drank nothing. The man put his glass down on the instrument and lay his hands on the keyboard, as if readying to play a polonaise, but then stopped himself just in time. He was young, barely thirty, but Aimé could discern something in his movements and his eyes, which stared straight ahead, an ancient wisdom he was not unfamiliar with himself, the one you see in trees and giant tortoises, living creatures that grow old according to another rhythm and bear witness to entire eons in the blink of an eye. If it almost looked like he was wearing makeup, it was just his features receding into the overall melancholy of his face. In the shoulders of this young man sitting next to him, their gentle slope, Aimé could read the passage of long stretches of time. This other man wore the years differently, but Aimé could easily see them nonetheless.

  The two men barely looked at each other. Conversation took time to get going but soon gathered steam, Aimé listening with interest to his companion’s scattered, darting gambits, before weighing in himself, taking the floor and making it his own, opening up for the first time in ages. The man began by asking Aimé if he was also obsessed with films, the new possibilities opening up with moving pictures. Aimé said he didn’t really know much about it, he preferred real life, and sometimes books. The other man was watching the spectacle in front of him, couples dancing to the band, men smoking cigars.

  “As far as I’m concerned, there is no difference. Life, movies. There’s no difference anymore! It’s the same images, superimposed. Sound crazy? Just wait, you’ll see I’m not a nut.”

  Aimé flagged down a waiter, who came to replace the empty martini glass with a full champagne flute.

  “Soon they’ll make the actors talk. Then there’ll really be no difference, none at all. No more music, the actors will talk, and their voices will be recorded right on the film. Synchronized with the images. After that the sky’s the limit, you’ll see. One day it’ll all be in colour. And then there’ll really be no difference between the movies and life.”