Métis Beach

by Claudine Bourbonnais

  After two months, I was forced to quit. Not because I “lacked spirit,” as my father would have said, but because I ended up, I don’t know how, in the pages of the Daily News: FROM TV TO BAKERY, ROMAN CARR SPOTTED ON AMSTERDAM AVENUE! The Ostrowskis hadn’t heard my story because their world was limited to a few Polish newspapers. Stan was so disappointed, so saddened, the poor man, he offered me a small raise on the spot. I felt wretched.

  “I told you it would happen!” Moïse said, moralizing. “What did you expect? That no one would notice?”

  In fact, I didn’t really care. And, unlike Moïse, I found the Daily News photomontage actually quite amusing — a picture of the old bakery and its washed-out awning and then a larger picture of me, taken with a long distance lens, so fuzzy it could’ve been anyone.

  In Central Park, I passed a group of noisy Iraq War protestors, students holding signs with shrill slogans, carrying two large papier maché heads of George Bush and Tony Blair. Observing them, I thought of Moïse again, who had appeared at my place full of rage only two hours before. It might have been our worst fight ever. He was holding a copy of the New Yorker in his hand, in which I had written an article under my professional name, Roman Carr, author of In Gad We Trust. The first time I’d said anything publicly since Ann’s death.

  I just couldn’t be indifferent to what was happening — attacking a country against the will of the Security Council and some ten million people who’d demonstrated in the major capitals of the world to prevent an illegal war. Moïse had railed against the swarming crowds shown on television, “Why the fuck are they meddling in something that’s got nothing to do with them, these idiots! It’s between Saddam and us!” And when France had refused to participate, “Traitors! How many of our soldiers died to kick the Germans out of France? And this is how they thank us?”

  Once, over a lunch of pastrami at Zack’s, he had warmly thanked the owner for having changed the name french fries to freedom fries on his menu.

  I said to Moïse, “Freedom fries? That’s just ridiculous.”

  He sniggered, “I don’t think so. Freedom fries, liberty fries. It’s more New York. Like the Statue of Liberty.”

  “A gift from the French,” I countered, to shut him up.

  He didn’t reply.

  “You agree with what’s happening in our country, Moïse? Honest citizens, dissenters, all monitored by your friend Bush? Don’t tell me you’re okay with that?”

  “If there is a threat to national security, the law allows it.”

  I pushed my plate away, disgusted. “What’s wrong with you Moïse? I don’t recognize you anymore. Where has my old friend gone? The man who read Thoreau, jealously protected his principles, and was part of something greater than himself?”

  “We were kids, goddamn it! With all the naïveté that goes with it! I work, now. I reflect on a dangerous world. Four planes, three thousand dead, that’s not enough? What do you think will happen next? You think they’ll stop now, if we don’t show them that we’re stronger? They want to destroy us. Destroy our way of life, as Americans! We can’t be dreaming like we used to in the sixties. The world is more dangerous today. But your country doesn’t realize it. It abandoned us, just like the French.”

  I stiffened. “My country! It’s my country that welcomed you so you wouldn’t get yourself killed in Vietnam! And let me remind you that you are also a citizen of my country! But now you’re sixty years old and you’ve got a great job at the Times, and you make plenty of money with your books, so you’re fine with American kids going to get themselves killed in your place, in a country that did nothing to us.”

  “Young men who enrolled of their own volition. There’s no conscription. No one is forcing them to go.”

  I was stunned. “For a lot of kids, the army isn’t a choice. It’s the service or unemployment. You know it very well!”

  “Hey, calm down! We won’t be there for ten years. We’ll be in and out in a few months.” He swallowed a mouthful of beer and wiped his mouth with a paper napkin before poking fun at me, “If you’re so sure of your truth, why don’t you go to Washington and protest with Susan Sarandon?”

  Disgusted, I took a taxi back to my apartment, convinced I wouldn’t let it go at that. After drinking a double scotch, I sat in front of the computer and began writing a long article that the New Yorker would publish a few days later.

  “Where are you today?” I asked the generation that fought against the Vietnam War. “Should we understand from your silence that all the rhetoric we gloried in at the time — an illegal, criminal, immoral war — was solely designed to help us avoid the front rather than condemning the indefensible? Were we truly against the war or simply against being sent to war? ... Today I see a majority of Americans (including former anti-Vietnam activists and rehabilitated draft dodgers) standing behind President George W. Bush. And so I ask myself the question.…” Later in the article “Do we really need to once again talk about the Tonkin incident, documented as a lie in the Pentagon Papers? Weren’t we scandalized? ... Yesterday it was a Vietnamese torpedo boat invented by the Pentagon’s fevered imagination.… Today invisible weapons of mass destruction.… A war without the support of the United Nations is illegal.… France and Canada are on the side of international law.…”

  I was writing feverishly, a piece conceived in indignation. I should have let it rest for a moment, not sent it off to the magazine so quickly, and yet urgency got the better of me; I felt like I needed to punch a hole in the wall to make myself feel better. I wrote urgently and well, words and phrases running one after the other, my position and arguments clear; I re-read quickly, correcting mistakes, eliminating repetition, tightening a few passages, before sending it to the New Yorker after having spoken over the phone with an editor, still on an adrenaline high, but relieved, peaceful, like after an orgasm.

  “Oh, Mr. Carr. Yes, of course. We will read it attentively.”

  Moïse was losing his mind; this country was losing its mind. And I might have been as well.

  2

  In my car, I replayed every possible scenario, knowing that on this show, the shots came without you seeing them coming. Controversy didn’t scare me, certainly not after In Gad We Trust; I accepted risk, knowing that a little bit of dissidence might just wake a few people up. But more than anything, I was being given a chance to reply to my critics.

  “Impostor,” “traitor,” “anti-American”… My name in every paper, and with it indignant comments. And Moïse, my friend Moïse, who had slammed the door behind him as he left, mad as hell, and hadn’t spoken to me since, “‘Rehabilitated draft dodger’! You wanted to go after me, eh? And you did, you did all right, and you did it publicly! Disgusting!”

  No one mentioned the name Roman Carr anymore without reminding the reader that I was born Romain Carrier, a French Canadian. I felt like the court of popular opinion had decided to revoke my American citizenship. Romain Carrier isn’t American. He can’t be. He’s against us. The award for insanity definitely went to the New York Post with its slapstick headline: PARLEZ-VOUS BETRAYAL?

  My neighbours avoided me in the building. Especially nasty Ms. Brown, a Democratic donor since Jimmy Carter and an organizer of fundraising activities in New York. Annoyed by her constant haughty air, I called out to her one morning when we bumped into each other in the hall. She stepped back, as if I were about to physically assault her.

  “You’re for this war, Ms. Brown? Or are you against it but you don’t dare say anything for fear of shocking New York’s high society?”

  Her pinched smile disappeared; livid, she took her awful Pekinese in her arm, “It’s a shame we can’t use the Patriot Act to expel you from the St. Urban, Mr. Carrier.”

  My Audi was flying down I-95, northbound. In forty minutes, I’d walk into WXTV in Stamford, Connecticut. I was off to defend my ideas. I was used to cameras and interviewers who believe that
a good interview means having your guest on the floor for the count of ten. With people like that, you need to smile more, be more relaxed. I turned the radio on and found the news. The army had captured two presidential palaces in Baghdad, a B-1 combat aircraft dropped four bunker busters on a building thought to hold Saddam Hussein, his sons, and a bunch of officials. A rain of fire, no matter the cost to civilians. The Pentagon invented an ingenious term in the first Gulf War, and everyone used it now, without thinking: surgical strikes. A clean war. Like in video games. You could tell by the tone of their voices that the radio broadcasters were applauding the action — to find Saddam by any means, there was no opposition, everyone united behind a President with eyes containing all the intelligence of a reptile. It was hard to believe I was the only one outraged at this playacting. There were others, of course, so why weren’t they speaking out? “Bravo!” Ethel said. “I agree one hundred percent with what you wrote in the New Yorker. All my friends do too. They salute your courage.” Courage? Had speaking your mind in a democracy become an act of courage?

  On the highway, I could practically feel the happy tranquillity of the picturesque small towns I sped through — Larchmont, Mamaroneck, Rye. Communities that were ninety percent white, with average household incomes more than three times higher than in New York. You bet your bottom dollar they couldn’t put their finger on Mesopotamia on a map. Why care? George W. Bush was taking care of it for us. Wasn’t he the best one to make the right decision?

  On the radio, they were bored of Saddam already. A few ads shouted at me, then a quick item on how the Supreme Court had upheld the ban on cross burning in Virginia. “The Ku Klux Klan’s case dismissed,” the newsreader said before giving the microphone over to a man with a heavy southern accent speaking without irony of a “black day” for freedom of speech. I laughed. These guys set fire to crosses to terrorize Blacks, and preventing them constituted an attack on their freedom of speech? “The First Amendment is not absolute,” one of the judges wrote in her opinion. There were still sensible judges in this country. Freedom of speech was proclaimed and defended for all sorts of reasons in the United States, except, of course, when it came time to publicly denounce an illegal war. Enough to make one disgusted, as an American.

  I felt feverish at the wheel of my Audi A8. While I was convinced I was right, I knew my positon was fragile. If she were in my place, Dana wouldn’t have backed down. If she’d been here, Dana would have told me to confront them. You know what you’re worth, so show them.

  A few polite introductions. I was led in silence to a starkly lit make-up room, where my presence created a certain awkwardness, I could see it in the way people were looking at me, it’s him.

  Over the phone, the show’s researcher had informed me that there would be a handful of panelists on set, each with his or her own ideas about the war. He mentioned a Canadian and a Brit. When I asked their names, the researcher became evasive, no confirmations yet, “But,” he quickly added, “don’t worry, they’re all smart people who like to debate and respect differing opinions.”

  I smiled as I hung up. Bill Sweeney, the host of the Bill Sweeney Show, was one of those populist ultraconservative stars who didn’t have a reputation for finding middle ground with his guests.

  “Mr. Carr, I’m happy to see you!

  This was the researcher who had kept the list of other guests vague. He appeared in the make-up room, a conqueror’s smile on his lips. Young, confident, perhaps even arrogant, the type of guy who would exploit his proximity to Bill Sweeney to get a table at the best restaurants in New York.

  “Feeling good?”

  “Always.”

  “Not too nervous?”

  “No, it’s fine. But I’m still waiting to hear who else will be on the panel with me.”

  His smile wavered, and he turned away. “Oh, Bill will explain. Don’t you worry. Bill likes giving that sort of information.”

  “What’s your name again?”

  “Carter. Carter Lundt.”

  “Carter, this isn’t my first TV interview. I was in a bunch of debates in California, and not once was I given the old ‘mystery guest’ treatment.”

  He seemed annoyed, made a face. “All I can tell you is that there will be two people on link-up from outside New York.”

  “Who?”

  “Bill will tell you.”

  “You’re taking me for a ride, here, Carter.”

  “No. Bill always works this way. He doesn’t like it when his guests can anticipate questions.…”

  “And in studio?”

  He looked at his watch. “An evangelical pastor.”

  “Really? For or against the Iraq War?”

  “He was on the front lines of the anti-Vietnam War movement. But he’s for this war. He’ll be able to answer the questions you asked in the New Yorker.”

  “Do I know him?”

  “Uhm … I don’t know.…”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Bill will tell you. Come now, we’ve got to go. Also, wait a second, you need to sign this first.”

  He held out a document, just a couple of pages.

  “What is it?”

  “A formality. A statement that asserts your voluntary participation in the show. Every guest has to sign one.”

  I’d seen this sort of document before, having signed them and seen them at It’s All Comedy! Protection for the producer and the network. “Is it necessary? You told me on the phone that these guests you’re hiding the identity of are competent people who respect other people’s opinions.”

  “Right. But house rules are house rules.”

  Carter Lundt led me through a labyrinth of corridors until we reached the empty set. There were three seats — one, off to one side, was the host’s, then there were two others, side by side. I was seated in one of them.

  “Do you want something to drink?”

  “Water.”

  A technician came near me, put a microphone on my jacket. The researcher came back, glass of water in hand.

  “Where’s Bill Sweeney?” I asked.

  “Don’t worry. He’s coming.”

  Bill Sweeney, a man I truly disliked. He’d been in the papers a few years back for sexual harassment. A poor waitress spilled her guts to a newspaper, recounting how he had followed her, woke her up in the middle of night with obscene phone calls, and come to her door naked under a trench coat with a “threatening erection.” The exact words she used, which the New York papers re-printed as often as possible. It had been insinuated that Bill Sweeney bought her silence, which she categorically denied, though her complaint had miraculously disappeared. His reputation had been harmed by the episode, though he’d been able to bounce back after September 11, another ultraconservative opportunistically jumping on the post-attack bandwagon. Bill Sweeney, Righteous Billy as some of his followers called him — as if! — rehabilitated as a zealous patriot, parading on stage, attacking those who didn’t fight hard enough for the USA. His ratings exploded. A right-wing publication, The Republican, even named him Patriot of the Year.

  Righteous Billy’s set was something else. Sober, clean, constructed like a boxing ring, defined by four red, white, and blue ropes. All around, rows of seats his audience had begun to fill. The atmosphere was good-natured, but that wouldn’t last, I knew. Not with Righteous Billy. A boxing fan — though no fan of the legendary Muhammad Ali, whose refusal to serve in Vietnam made him “unpatriotic” — Bill Sweeney appeared in every single one of his ads wearing boxing gloves, ready to get it on with the enemy. Of course, it was all show: you just needed to play his game calmly and with good humour. He was no match for smart, cunning journalists.

  He finally appeared. Climbed into the ring to a roar from the crowd. Colgate smile, impeccably styled hair, studied tan. He saluted the crowd, blew kisses out at them. The crowd asked for more, and he smiled,
giving them their due. Then he came towards me and offered a firm but distracted hand, telling me in a low voice, all smiles, an eye on the crowd, that I was courageous. Though he said nothing about the other guests.

  “Three minutes!” someone shouted. With his hands, Bill Sweeney commanded silence. He held total power over his crowd; they did what he wanted. The lights came on, then the cameras. Nothing was going the way I’d been told. I was beginning to strongly suspect that Bill Sweeney had no interest in discussing the war.

  3

  Like blurry images of a landscape seen from a train at full speed. Bill Sweeney had started the show, just him and me, alone on the set shaped like a boxing ring, duking it out in front of an overexcited crowd. I was nervous, which was normal; it was always this way when an interview began, so much so that I only heard a few fragments of Righteous Billy’s introductions, words catapulted into the audience and bouncing back into the ring. “Roman Carr … against the invasion of Iraq … The New Yorker … In Gad We Trust … controversial series … the anger of Christian conservatives … abortion … terrible tragedy … the murder of his friend by a lunatic.…” While he introduced me in his thunderous, almost rage-filled voice, I was surprised to see myself on screen, forehead glistening, despite the powder that had been applied and would be reapplied at every commercial break. Bill Sweeney was getting carried away now, “Trying to moralize with Americans who love their country and seek to protect it from people who would do it harm.…” Out of thin air he produced a copy of the New Yorker in which I had committed my crime, brandishing it furiously. “When you try to moralize with an entire people — the American people! — in a liberal publication,” he pronounced that word like some sort of shameful disease, “your own morality better be spick and span.”

  “Bill! Bill! Bill!” The crowd shouted, supercharged.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Bill Sweeney Show!”