Aimé got off the train, which had been like a home for the past week of his life. Last Tuesday he’d left Phoenix, where the temperature was 37 degrees Celsius, and here he was in Montreal, in the middle of a snowstorm. When he got off at Windsor Station, the Neo-Romanesque palace of columns and arched ceilings that hadn’t been there forty years earlier, a gust of wind blew down narrow Rue de la Gauchetière and Aimé caught his hat at the last second. You couldn’t even see the spire of St. George’s church. The passersby seemed to be walking on magic carpets, and the horses pulling the carriages of the bourgeois citizens snorted noisily in the icy wind.
The city had changed. On the streets adjacent to the station the buildings stood closer together. The lamps were electric now, and their wan yellow gleam was the only colour in the sea of white and grey of the snowy late afternoon. Canadian Pacific employees were hard at work clearing the station entrance with enormous shovels, the fringes of their coats heavy with snow, their moustaches frozen. Hundreds of people were in the street, as in any other city, on foot and on omnibuses and even in automobiles. The blizzard had slowed all traffic to a crawl. Power lines for the tramway criss-crossed the street overhead, forming spiderwebs and mosaics between the facades.
After confidently striding to the small hotel on Rue Saint-Jacques, the staff was waiting for him with a blanket and a steaming hot grog. There was a fire crackling in his room, and Aimé immediately set to work. While his clothes dried on the hearth, he summoned one of the hotelier’s sons and sent him on an errand downtown, thanking him in advance with American coins stamped with the face of a great president. The Canadian stared at them in his palm, not knowing what to say. Aimé closed the door and said, in somewhat creaky French: Send the inspector up the moment he arrives. There’s no need to ring, I’ll be waiting.
The room was luxurious. Drapes hung from golden triangles above the windows, the mantle was adorned with curios. The room was warm and softly lit, and it put him at ease despite the hint of wind that never stopped blowing outside. Aimé waited patiently for his contact to arrive, studying one of the two vases symmetrically arranged on a coffee table. He poured a drink, to pass the time and feel the liquor on his gums. The crystal bottles were intricately carved. From the high south-facing window slowly being covered over by frost he could picture, above the skyline, the dark, flowing St. Lawrence which refused to freeze, and the black silhouette of Victoria Bridge, which he had just crossed.
There was a knock on the door and Aimé, throat burning from the inferior rye, jumped up to answer it. Before him stood a giant man, as tall as he was, in an overcoat covered in snow on the left side. Aimé beckoned him in, helped him take off his coat, and hung it next to his own. The man took a cigarette case out of an inside pocket of his jacket, and offered it to Aimé. He was clearly happy to meet at last.
“No thanks, I never smoke cigarettes. But do sit down. Can I offer you a drink?”
“A whiskey would warm me up nicely, thanks.”
“‘Whiskey’ is a bit of a stretch for what we have here, but it’s the best I can do.”
Aimé proceeded:
“I haven’t been in Montreal for a long time. It’s true what they say, it’s impressive!”
“I don’t know about ‘impressive.’ Cold, mostly. And it’ll take them two weeks to clear the streets. Fingers crossed this snow will stop falling one of these days. It’s been coming down sideways like this since Monday!”
Aimé lit his guest’s smoke with a silver lighter and tried to convey understanding with a smile, to show that he too knew what it was like to get through a harsh winter. He passed a well-deserved whiskey to the inspector, who slowly moved to take it and got down to business.
“But I imagine you didn’t summon me urgently to discuss the Canadian weather. Last time we spoke, it was important business, and you didn’t even come in person.”
Aimé sat down in the armchair facing him. He undid the buttons on his shirt and his watch chain reappeared. He listened to himself speak. His French was lifeless, mechanical almost, like a rusty machine in need of oiling, one he’d think twice about using. It made him want to pull his jaw muscles taut and spit, to wash his mouth of those English-inflected ‘r’s he couldn’t seem to shake. How could he speak so poorly when he still thought and dreamed in French? He imagined the word “effectivement,” and in his mind pronounced it perfectly — but that wasn’t how it came out, instead it was squeezed through his tongue and teeth and his lips in a strange, foreign way he could not control.
“Effectivement, but this time it’s a private matter. Nothing to do with business. That’s why I’m here. This is not a matter that could be handled by telegram. I’m looking for someone. I need your help finding her.”
“A woman.”
“That’s right. I’m almost sure she still lives here, somewhere in the city. I need your help. It’s an urgent matter for me.”
“How much time do I have?”
Without waiting for Aimé to answer, the inspector continued:
“What’s her name?”
“Langlois. Jeanne Langlois.”
“Langlois? As in Langlois the judge?”
“I’ve never heard of any judge named Langlois. Is he an acquaintance of yours?”
“Yes and no. Everyone in town knows who he is. The youngest judge ever appointed to the Supreme Court. He left for Ottawa, no more than a month or two ago. He’s not even forty. It’s been all over the papers.”
“I don’t know. Could be.”
Aimé seemed worried suddenly, and stared into space. The inspector continued:
“Langlois is a common name, might be nothing. I was just thinking out loud.”
“No, it’s a good lead. Langlois the judge. Start there, it’s a good lead.”
The inspector phoned the hotel a few hours later, at dawn, to let him know where the woman could be found. He understood the urgency now: Jeanne Langlois, mother of Justice Pierre Langlois, recent Supreme Court of Canada appointee, was in Notre-Dame Hospital. She was dying of cancer. Terminal phase, they said, barely able to recognize her loved ones, children, husband. Aimé thanked the inspector and hung up. His ankles hurt, as if he had aggravated an old injury, as if a metal plaque were slowly rusting away under his skin. He had to sit down. Along his legs he felt a very old pain, which reminded him of his childhood, one no one could hope to understand anymore, least of all him, who had been dragged through the mud and thrust into the arms of well-meaning nuns with rotting teeth and putrid breath.
Aimé had been through two fins de siècle and had seen two new centuries dawn. They were always moments of turmoil: everything was dying and brimming with life, the number came up for some, while others lived in an optimistic swirl of new beginnings. He’d seen the grand celebrations that ushered in the nineteenth century when the excitement was at its apex. He was young then, hesitating between becoming an explorer and embarking on a life of crime. In December 1799, he remembered, people were equally scared and excited, anything seemed possible, both heaven on earth and the apocalypse seemed to loom just around the corner. It was possible to believe the white race was fundamentally superior to all others, that white men could own men of other races; books and convincing learned treatises were written on the subject. Aimé had been through that century and was amazed at the great changes in the world and people’s minds, the sudden arrival of automation, the workers’ revolution and the explosion of industry, the way these upheavals were at once so violent and so gradual. He’d settled on the life of a criminal explorer in which every friendship, whether with man or woman, dog or other animal, was fleeting. He had allowed himself to become attached to few things, and always tough ones, only things tougher than himself, things that gave him perspective on his own very long journey.
His legs gave out on him when he hung up the phone, and he was sitting in the armchair, thinking of the possibility of his
own death, of what it could mean. The people he’d known who were dead numbered in the hundreds, all had died of different causes, some understood and others not. When he saw how some of them died, shrunken and defeated by time, he was left speechless as a child, despite his venerable brain.
He’d started thinking about Jeanne for reasons obscure and impossible to pin down, though he wasn’t afraid to explore them. His intuition had brought him back. And now here he was, a couple miles away from the body poised to give up the fight and relinquish her soul, or whatever you wanted to call that unnameable thing inside her. He got up, opened the door, and hurtled down the stairs. He climbed back up to get his coat and hat and, after closing the door, hurtled back down the stairs and set out into the blizzard. He came back inside, his moustache all messed up by the wind, and asked the young man at the front desk the way to Notre-Dame Hospital. It had been so long since he’d lived here, he didn’t know where anything was. The hospital hadn’t even existed back then. Easy, just take Rue Saint-Jacques east toward the port, then head south, you’ll find the hospital right by the big market, you can’t miss it, even in the snow and gusts of wind that strip the world of its colour. A big white building facing the port. He couldn’t miss it. It was barely a mile, but he might have a hard time finding a carriage willing to take him there in this weather. The front-desk man drawled on, politely talking to himself. Aimé was already gone.
The whirlwinds of snowflakes formed a vortex in the street and Aimé leaned too far forward, his body bent at an incongruous angle so he wouldn’t be blown over. He was walking against the wind, and suddenly the wind was pushing him in the back, or spinning all around him in a spiral. Aimé held his hat in his left hand, which was getting chapped. The hair in his nose and his moustache had frozen in seconds. Day was breaking, the first bundled-up workers were showing up at the port and greeting each other in between the banks that might or might not open today. On the corner of McGill St. a group of young men waited for a coach to stop and pick them up, but there was at least eight inches of snow in the middle of the street. Without proper boots it was hard for Aimé to move forward. He pulled himself along by walls and lampposts. His cheeks and nose hurt.
Each step only seemed to take him backwards. No building, no matter how high, afforded protection from the wind, which actually seemed to be gathering momentum in the spaces between buildings, rushing into the alleyways and climbing the facades of the tall banks, like an eagle determined to perform the role nature has assigned it. Several times during a trip that seemed to get longer as he went, Aimé was forced to leave the sidewalk and walk in the street. Faint desire paths were being traced in the snow, but were visible only with psychic powers or from a perch high above in a church steeple. Would the city wake up once the wind died down, or spend the day in contagious torpor? The last few storms Aimé had witnessed had been sand, not snow. He wondered which was worse. At least he could open his mouth to breathe deeply without choking on the mortal grains. Again and again he reached a street corner; it was never the one he was looking for. Though he had lived there for more than fifty years, nothing was familiar anymore. Everything was completely different; he couldn’t recognize a thing, not even the old signs at the port. The St. Pierre River had been filled in and paved over. The St. Lawrence had retreated noticeably, its presence receded into the distance as industry encroached.
As a final trial before reaching his destination, a snowbank had been plowed in the night to clear a path for emergency vehicles. It was an immense mountain of hardpack and ice, built up and then abandoned, as if in a panic, obstructing the one-way street on the north side. It must have taken a large team to clear the path. Once he reached the top of this miniature mountain, Aimé was level with the second-floor windows. If they hadn’t been thoroughly frosted over he could almost have seen the bedridden patients inside, warm and sheltered from the storm but not from death.
He would return to Phoenix with plugged sinuses and a runny nose, like a careless boy. The air popped his blood vessels. His coat was ruined. He put his hand in his pocket to check that his compass was still there. The metal was so cold it stuck to his fingers. His ears were burning and growing red in the grey light of day when he triumphantly threw open the door and entered the hospital lobby.
He was breathing heavily and a nurse came up to ask if everything was okay. Was he in pain? Hurt? Injured? Had he slipped on the ice? She was practically holding him up with a hand on his shoulder and another on his flank. Her cap fell off and she made no move to pick it up off the ground. A lock of blonde hair slipped out over her face. Aimé stood up straight. He was fine, just a bit out of breath on account of the cold. His ears started twitching in time with his pulse. There was nothing wrong, he wasn’t here for medical care. He was here to visit a patient. It was urgent. He was here to see Jeanne Langlois, née Beaudry. Could they point him in the right direction?
The nurse guided him toward a hardwood counter sculpted with religious carvings, and opened a register.
“Madame Langlois is in the recovery room, access is restricted. Are you family?”
“No, I’m an old acquaintance of Madame Langlois’s. I absolutely have to see her. I recently learned of her illness, and travelled from the United States to see her. I arrived yesterday. I only just learned she’s in the terminal phase. I’m an old acquaintance. Tell her I’m here, she’ll agree to see me.”
“I understand, sir, but Madame Langlois’s health requires that we —”
“No, you don’t understand. I’ve known Jeanne Langlois for a very long time. It’s imperative that I see her before she dies. We haven’t spoken for years. I’ve come from Arizona. I left last Tuesday. I’m sorry, I — I don’t mean to be impolite.”
Aimé had placed his hands on the counter in front of the young nurse. His fingers were clenched over the edge. She gave him an empathetic look, visibly seeking a solution. She felt for him. No matter how hard he pressed, the wood refused to break into pieces.
“Yes, I see now, I understand your situation. Wait a moment, I’m going to speak to my superior. What did you say your name was?”
“Aimé. I’m Aimé Bolduc. Tell her Aimé is here.”
She disappeared down a dark hallway and Aimé heard a door open. The lobby had electric lighting, completely electric, the lights never flickered. He could see the black wires running along the stone walls, and now noticed other people, sitting and waiting. Nurses in uniform, just like the one who had dealt with him, walked around the large room with a vaulted ceiling, talking quietly and calmly. No one raised their voices, only the wind could be heard when a gust worked its way inside. Aimé’s body was slowly returning to normal temperature. His throat was scratchy and he massaged his Adam’s apple as he looked around. When she knew he was here she would ask him to come to her.
A quarter of an hour later, when it seemed the sun was breaking through the layer of cloud spread over the city, Aimé heard the already familiar footsteps of the young woman, a typical sound of shoes on granite. The nurse came back, with a Grey Nun whose skin bore the marks of scarlet fever. She came up to Aimé and held out her hand in a way that was at once professional and welcoming.
“I’m Sister Élodie Mailloux. Follow me, Madame Langlois will see you. She’s waiting.”
As they walked down the straight, rectangular hallways of the west wing toward the cancer ward, Sister Mailloux told Aimé that, while Jeanne no longer reacted to the presence of visitors, she had said his name more than once. Neither she nor the doctors had realized it was a name, not the infinitive “to love,” until Sister Valois came in to tell them there was a man in the waiting room demanding to see her.
“She’s very weak. Don’t be alarmed. She doesn’t have much time left, I’m afraid. We stopped treatment last week. But when I went to see her just now, to tell her you were here, her eyes lit up.”
Their footsteps echoed off the walls and ceilings, and they
conversed in polite whispers. Sister Mailloux kept her hands in her uniform’s front pockets. She stared at her toes as she walked, giving directions as they went. She told Aimé that Jeanne had been admitted for breast cancer, and the cancer had spread. Experimental treatments using electricity had been tried without success. She wanted to be clear, even stopped for a moment as she said the words; this was no longer the woman Aimé had known. Her face was swollen and radically transformed. He might even have trouble recognizing her, both her face and her voice. She wanted to be crystal clear: Jeanne was nearing the end of the line, his visit was one final favour they were granting her, before she passed on. Aimé listened, and was grateful, a gratefulness the sister surely felt. Sister Mailloux nodded her assent. When she smiled, her scars pulled tight. She moved sideways and, behind her, a door appeared. Yes, he could go in now. She was waiting. Her bed was at the end, to the right. She was waiting for him.
Aimé turned the knob and pushed the metal door. It squeaked on its hinges. He had to lean a little to avoid knocking his head on the doorframe. He was standing in an immense room, as big as a gymnasium, with dozens of beds. A heavy silence accompanied every sound, every complaint. Patients lay under white or pale green sheets. Aimé surveyed the room and then walked toward the beds at the end. He was anxious to see Jeanne again, talk to her one last time, but he suddenly felt bad for giving in to this impulse. It might have been a mistake. She wouldn’t have forgotten him, but that didn’t mean she’d forgiven him for running away. He trod carefully so as not to bother the patients, his presence felt only in a gentle dragging of his heels. His throat was scratchy, he could feel his sweat and his sticky clothing.
The Longest Year Page 16