From then on she was tacitly acknowledged the leader of her cell. She organized meetings just as she had in the past, scheduling them, making sure word got around, acting as general secretary and chair. Yet now, whenever a question came up, whenever a decision was to be made, it was left to her: her vote was supreme. And the actions and ideas discussed were all referred through her; she approved them, dismissed them, supported them or ridiculed them. And her approval was the cell’s decision.
She’d always seen the struggle in Quebec as a struggle against the past, a struggle for the future. Everyone involved knew they might never personally see the changes they so desperately wanted, might never benefit from the kind of society—a French society—they envisaged for Quebec, the independent nation of the future. But they knew their children and their grandchildren would enjoy an autonomy that had never been possible for them, an identity as a fully recognized people in the world community.
But somehow, now that she was herself in some small part in charge of the necessary tasks to propel them towards that goal, Marie began to feel quite differently about the future, about what the results of her actions would be. She began to feel protective of her people and her cause; she began to accept the sacrifices they would all have to make—even as Angus had—for the benefit of the future generations. She realized some of these might be unspeakable, unthinkable, inhuman. But the future of Quebec and its people occupied a new place in her heart, not one simply of a youthful, rebellious nature but of an eternal, living affection that could never be shaken or broken, even if it could be disappointed. The children of the future, of the new Quebec, were Marie’s children. They might be ungrateful, they might be disobedient, they might even be unforgiving.
But they would always be hers, and she would do anything for them.
Hubert haunted Marie like a guilty conscience. He would have been the father of her child, and they had killed him. They weren’t even Anglos; these cops were fellow Québécois. But that hadn’t stopped them from beating him to death. They were so blind to the problems that had made thugs of them that they couldn’t see he was their saviour, not their enemy. And they had created the conditions that forced her to abort her child. How could she have given birth to another soul under these intolerable circumstances, which set siblings against each other, tore generations and families apart, weakened the well-being of the nation itself? How could she bring up a child as she herself had been brought up, under the yoke of economic and social oppression, without the means of determining her own destiny?
So many forces had been marshalled against them all their lives. The money didn’t care for the underclass, the English didn’t care for the French, and the politicians openly snubbed the electorate. And the successful French all followed the path of assimilation, of Uncle Tom. And the press, French and English, so controlled by the money at the top, which trickled down just enough to its middle-class servants to slake their bourgeois aspirations, couldn’t fail to be against her friends. Not just in editorials constantly denouncing the felquistes as murderers and thugs, but even in the supposedly factual articles, so slanted against the FLQ for the sake of petty sensationalism and emotionalism, in the name of circulation figures. They cared nothing for their brethren without jobs, without education, without dignity … without real lives.
It was unbearable to think things would always remain the way they were. That families like hers would always suffer the miserable, grey winter that was life in Montreal. Forced into crime for a living, forced into belittling subservience for spiritual sustenance, forced into sleeping through life to avoid its pain. Grandfather, Aline, Mother. Even Jean-Baptiste she pitied; in this rare moment of reflection about her brother’s world, she saw him, too, caught between reality and his dreams, saw how it was crushing him.
If they could kill and imprison her friends, if they could suppress her own ambitions and everyone else’s, what chance did any hypothetical children ever have? If no one acted, if no one effected change, there would be no point in anyone ever having a family. What would happen to the family of the Québécois themselves? Her family?
She agonized for days. She wandered the city looking for a purpose, for a reason to continue, one way or another, any way at all. She spent time in Parc du Mont-Royal, walking the gravel road to the summit and the cross of iron; she gazed out over the city towards the river, the Pont Jacques-Cartier and the South Shore beyond. She wound her way through the tiny, quiet streets of Westmount; so isolated and rarely visited except by these residents. Million-dollar homes, huge shiny cars, but no sidewalks inviting riff-raff into the neighbourhood.
Something must be done to shake this up. There had to be a more fulfilling life for the Québécois than shovelling snow for the Anglos. There must be an act capable of awakening a sleeping people to their rights, their dignity, their destiny.
She was at a turning point in her work, her life, her relations with people, with politics, with her family—with herself. She had to accept the fact that there wasn’t anything she could do to achieve her goals, that what she wanted was beyond her means. That her years of work and struggle had been wasted. Or she could accept that the work was bigger than she was, that the goals were larger than a single person could expect to meet, and give up everything else in her life to struggle for whatever progress might be possible—to let others see that things did matter, that things did change, if you were willing to take the long view.
It was a question of placing herself in a different context regarding the Great Work. It was a matter of recognizing that the Great Work was her master and she was the servant, not the reverse. She would write no more scripts in her head, have no more expectations that she was in charge or would get the results she anticipated. The Work existed separately from her, of its own accord and for its own reasons, and she was only an instrument of its desires.
If this made Marie recognize just how small she was, it made her see just how Great the Work was: it controlled people and events beyond their ability or even desire to stop it, just as money did, just as society did. Now she knew how hard her task would be. How foolish she’d been to think that a mere few years of campaigning would shift the balance between the great forces of Change and Inertia.
And that’s what she was really fighting. Not just money and social conventions and apathy: Inertia. But now she saw the opposition as people just like herself—if only they knew it—people who had given their lives up to their own causes, people who’d been unknowingly mastered by their own ideals.
She was at that point where people shed their dreams, stop complaining and slip into the mainstream of life, into repetitive work and small comforts. Or where they consciously step fully outside, shed any sentimental or emotional attachments and get down to work: coldly, methodically and, very often, cruelly.
She could choose to continue the larger struggle, a struggle that would consume her and all her feelings and hopes, and would leave her no normal human life. Or she could instead give up the years already devoted to the work, and all the physical and emotional energy it had required, and retire into her family—her difficult, simple family, whom she both loved and hated.
Father was delighted to have Marie home.
“It’s time we started working on putting this house in order,” she declared. “Let’s finish the framework between the kitchen and front parlour so Aline can get through without tripping over something or getting her sleeves caught on a nail. That’s where we’ll open the stairs to the adjoining basement as well, for your workshop. It’ll be less work to combine them.”
His own daughter back—and involved in the family. She’d never cared before, not like this: having an opinion, offering advice, even lifting tools to help—so much more help than his brother or father had ever been. Or his son. She was growing up. Not just that, but having her help in his project to launch a new career, to better the situation for all of them: it was a boon, a refreshing breeze that lifted his spirits and set his ambition
s afire.
Years ago, when he’d been a younger man and Mother pregnant with their future hopes, he dreamt one day he’d work beside his son. Physical work like this, where you felt your muscles and sweat, where tools and materials passed hand to hand and where something actually got made. He held a beam as Marie yanked with a crowbar, and remembered that early longing. Now his son was in jail, a traitor to the family, and Marie, his daughter, was bringing him this unexpected satisfaction.
“Here, let me try it,” he said.
“No, no,” said Marie. “When it comes free you have to hold it. It’s too heavy for me, but I can work this lever.” And she put her back into it, instinctively holding her breath with the strain.
She’s smart, too, he thought. She could make a difference around here. She could really change things if she put her mind to it.
Once that was done it was time to attack the basement in earnest.
“We’ll throw out all this old trash of Angus’s,” said Father.
“No,” said Marie. “We’ll work around it like everything else down here. It belongs to Mother now. She’d never forgive us if she woke and it was gone. Any one of these pieces might be a real treasure to her.”
“You’re right,” said Father. He realized then that he and Marie had always bonded through Mother. She was their link, and caring for her was how they expressed affection for each other.
“And there’s plenty of room,” said Marie. “In fact, we’ll raise partitions here and create a little room where I can sleep.”
“You’re fine where you are. Why move into this dank basement?”
“Jean-Baptiste will be back soon. They won’t keep him locked up forever. I need my own room. Right at the end here, and we’ll stack Angus’s boxes right up against it. It’ll be quiet and snug. You can work in the rest of the basement and never know I’m here.”
“To hell with your brother. You stay where you are.”
So that was that. If she wanted a room in the basement, she’d have to hide it.
Naturally the renovations took longer than expected. The sheer amount of physical work was the main deterrent. It loomed over Father’s imagination like an unyielding mountain, an implacable fate. But this was perfect for Marie. It was easy for her to make her own arrangements with false walls and hidden ducts in the mass of lumber, plaster and dirt being moved about. With Angus’s boxed possessions stacked up against her meagre four feet of false wall, no one even glanced over in that direction, let alone wondered why so much space was lost. And the sealed boxes of books, magazines and old clothes provided effective noise-proofing as well. Which would come in handy when her plan came to life.
Hyde sat in his office with only a desk lamp for company. He was going over his old case notes, reviewing every experiment he’d done for years, trying to remember every error, so as to avoid them all now. He knew he was close. So close, he’d spent some time just staring into the darkness collecting his thoughts, daydreaming the papers—no, the book—he’d write about his work, his experience, his life. It was important. Everyone would see that. He would explain it properly. But for that, he had to turn it over in his mind, prepare his arguments in a logical fashion. He’d wandered, luxuriating in the acclaim he imagined would be his. He scolded himself mentally. He must get back on track. He’d never been a daydreamer, never been a man of fantasy.
If it were possible to artificially create a being in the laboratory, Hyde thought, and that being possessed the traits recognized as the soul—conscious and deliberate actions based on desires and emotions, the ability to master mere animal instinct or reflex reaction, a sense of self that marks one’s own individuality—then that would go at least partway towards demonstrating that these traits and the soul itself were nothing more than either a property of matter under certain conditions or inherent aspects of a complicated system. Perhaps even the governing component of a series of subsystems, all adding up to a conscious human being. On the other hand, if such a being were created and demonstrated none of these traits or qualities, then that might lend credence to the idea of the soul as either some kind of divine element that predates corporeal existence, and perhaps even outlasts that state, or a biological or genetic element that appears, matures and dies with each individual.
In other words, are we momentary or eternal beings? It’s a purely scientific question, and the answer, either way, would revolutionize our existence.
That’s what the whole ghastly business was about, the years spent taking people apart with scalpels, trying to get legs, arms and organs working and living, even if only one piece at a time. That’s what the opening of skulls was for, piercing living, conscious brains with needle-thin electrodes and introducing random charges into an already working system. He still watched his own old films, black and white, himself in the bleached robe glaring out in high contrast under the operating lights, while the edges of the frame were dark, like a silent film from the twenties. One scene kept turning up in his dreams, a recurring nightmare: an ape waking, blinking weakly and then, clearly confused but instinctively and inconceivably horrified, trying desperately to scream—but unable to do more than grimace, so wide it seemed its whole skull would fall out. Mercifully, it died almost immediately.
And the other memory, more comical, since he’d no qualms at the thought that the patient was—had to be—fully conscious during the operation. What happens when I touch you here, he’d asked. Burnt toast, Doctor. It smells like burnt toast. That one had made his name, early on, been broadcast to a world amazed at his daring, his skill, his sang-froid.
Hyde smiled. You ain’t seen nothing yet, he thought.
Aline envied Mother. Whatever she was feeling, she felt it all in a dream, and even if it was some kind of pain or suffering, it wasn’t real. Aline, on the other hand, had to face her situation and had no idea what to do. In fact, she was having trouble simply grasping what her real state was, having trouble keeping everything together in her mind to form a pattern or story or a clear picture. She knew only two things: that she’d never known the despair and anxiety that now consumed her daily life, and that her only relief was in Grace.
When she’d been a spinster living with her father, life had been small and difficult: money was a constant problem, they both missed her dead mother, and there was no hope of any improvement or change. Since she married Grandfather, she felt cut off entirely from her father, speaking to him only by phone. How could she see him without revealing the horrible secrets of her new, unhappy life? Impossible. And it would be unfair to burden him now, when he no longer had to stretch his pension to feed two and had become used to the lavish excess of a single bottle of Crown Royal every month. Bootlegger’s, he called it, in English, repeating the story of how such a respectable anglo family had made their money during Prohibition. And he never ran out of cigarettes now. He travelled in a cloud happily, hacking only when he laughed a little too hard.
She missed her earlier life and pined to go back to the tiny apartment on rue Cartier at the bottom of the hill. But if she did that, if she broke down and confessed that her fairy-tale marriage had turned out to be Walpurgisnacht instead, it would be the end of his rye and his laugh. Even though she knew he wouldn’t hesitate to take her back and would make no complaints. Pensions don’t grow like inflation, and they’d both lived off his meagre stipend long enough. That had been one of her joys in an unexpected suitor, when Grandfather first came around so clearly intent on taking her from his house: that it would make things easier for him too.
Aline was puzzled why the Lord, who’d so clearly favoured her with a vision of the miracle at St. Joseph’s, was now testing her so thoroughly. She’d only fled from one poorhouse to another when she moved in with the Desouches, and life since then seemed one endless, dark litany of disappointment. Grandfather’d turned bitter and vindictive, and had his horrible accident—which for some reason he occasionally seemed happy for. Mother’d been crushed by Angus’s death; constant family rows
drove Marie out of the house and back again; on New Year’s, she discovered Grandfather’s illegal and disgusting trade; Jean-Baptiste’s play broke open a rift in the family, and then he was arrested. Finally, as if it were a sign to her personally that she’d been set adrift by the Good Lord who’d always protected her, the very symbol of their personal compact, Brother André’s heart, had been stolen in broad daylight.
It was flabbergasting. Such brazen heresy. And it couldn’t have been a simple theft; it was crazy to take something of no intrinsic monetary value. There was no shortage of more convertible church property lying about unguarded, that any common thief would more likely have chosen: the silver and gold, the jewelled objects. There was some other reason the heart had gone missing, there had to be. She’d been praying in front of that relic every Sunday since the miracle. Who else knew that? Only God Himself. What more direct renunciation could be imagined?
But why? Why had she lost favour in the Lord’s eyes?
Marie swabbed Mother’s face with a damp cloth, rinsed it, swabbed her arms. She turned Mother as necessary, lifting her arm, bending her leg, reaching as much of her body as she could. Marie performed these actions with a deep sense of guilt, for being the cause of her mother’s condition. But also with a deep sense of sadness, because she identified Mother’s way of handling her grief with the silence of the Québécois. In the same way that Mother was sleeping through a life otherwise unbearable, the great mass of her fellow Québécois slept through their political and economic suppression. If only they would awaken, how changed things could be. If Marie had transgressed by her actions, by causing Mother’s pain, she would redeem herself by what was to come, by redeeming all her brethren, by awakening everyone to the horror of reality in Quebec, by showing how far they must go, by leading them away from a life made bearable only by intoxication and slumber.
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