Two Solitudes

by Hugh Maclennan

  Huntly McQueen sat behind the walnut desk in his office, and his face was blandly expressionless as he looked at Athanase. “I’m sorry, Tallard, I’m afraid there’s nothing to do–nothing at all. It’s most unfortunate.”

  Athanase tried to keep the hopelessness from showing in his face. All winter he had been trying to persuade himself that things would turn out well, while he waited for McQueen to make up his mind to begin construction. McQueen knew he had changed his religion; indeed, he had congratulated him on that, although Athanase had suspected a peculiar look in his eyes when he had done so. While living in Montreal, Athanase had found it easier to pretend that his quarrel with the priest was unimportant. He had lost nearly all his old French friends, and this hurt; but in Saint James Street nobody seemed to care about matters like that. At any rate, arrangements for the factory had proceeded so far that Athanase had felt sure McQueen would not allow himself to be blocked. Prices could be offered to Tremblay and the other farmers that they could not bring themselves to refuse. A contribution could be made to help clear the parish debt. The bishop could not fail to see the advantage in that. In time, Athanase had pretended, the quarrel would be forgotten. He gave McQueen a calculating look. It was apparently not forgotten yet.

  “You mean…” Athanase swallowed. “You mean you want me to get out?”

  McQueen took his time answering: a deliberately measured pause, to break the natural flow of feeling between himself and Athanase. “I certainly don’t want that,” he said finally.

  “Then…” Athanase looked down, pressing his hands so tightly together that the knuckles showed white. During the past seven months his face had become as gaunt as an eagle’s beak; and yellowish. He looked a sick man. Glancing across the desk at McQueen’s heavy face, he suddenly hated him. McQueen was weighing and discarding him. It was a devastating experience to be weighed and discarded at his age by a younger man.

  “After all, Tallard,” McQueen said slowly, as if chewing a cud, “I told you in the beginning I would never try to force my way into a place unless assured in advance of good will.”

  “And my usefulness to you was to provide good will–and a cheap price–was that it?”

  McQueen regarded him placidly, his expression showing a resigned melancholy. But at the same time his pale blue eyes seemed to be looking right through Athanase and through the wall to some distant point in the future.

  “You mean,” Athanase said in sudden bitter astonishment, “you mean that without me you’ll build this factory? They’ll make no objection so long as I have nothing to do with it?” His cheek twitched in fury. These damned English! “Me–I’ve been hurt. I admit it. I’ve finished myself in Saint-Marc thanks to this factory of yours. I’ve finished myself with parliament, with everything. And now…”

  “Come, Tallard, be reasonable. You French-Canadians make too much trouble for yourselves–far too much.”

  Flushing angrily, his shoulders leaning aggressively forward, Athanase snapped back at him. “You English–you talk of making trouble! You upset our lives. You get into wars and conscript us. You throw us over the minute you can’t use us any more. But you–you never make trouble. No! You’re far too busy making money instead.”

  McQueen made a soothing motion with his hand, but his eyes still had the hard, distant look. For a second Athanase had the feeling that McQueen was angry with him for having permitted personal affairs to interfere with his business plans, and that this was his peculiar method of inflicting punishment. But if so, McQueen gave no indication of it. He remained impassive, objective, even meek and inoffensive in a hard and distant way.

  “You’re getting angry,” McQueen said finally. “You simply mustn’t do that. It’s quite useless to get angry over anything.” Not moving, his eyes unchanged, his ponderous voice as uninflected as a Presbyterian minister’s at prayer, he continued, “After all, your problem is rather unique, don’t you see? After all–what are you to be loyal to: what every French-Canadian thinks or what you think yourself? There’s no doubt about it, that’s the whole trouble with this province. A business man hardly knows where he is, working here.”

  Athanase snapped at him, “What’s this lecture to do with the point?”

  McQueen smiled blandly. “Now Tallard, be reasonable. We English have our faults, but these things one finds in this province–after all, we have to take them into account when we do business with you. After all, this case of yours proves the point perfectly.”

  Athanase felt himself choking. Gripping McQueen was like trying to close your hand over a rubber balloon. And all the time the pale blue eyes never wavered from his face, and he felt like a fly under a microscope. He gestured fiercely. “Listen, I’m not interested in your theories. What has this to do with our business? Theories–at a time like this! What do you try to say? What am I going to do? That’s the question,” he said, his voice rising. “What am I going to do?”

  Athanase was too excited to realize that his words were naive, that they would be registered by McQueen as just one more proof of his business incompetence. He dropped his eyes. Indignantly he told himself that he was not incompetent, it was just that he had never been trained for this smileless poker game the English and Americans lived for. What if he had been childish during the past winter in his obstinate clinging to his dream? A man had to cling to something. He had to make a start sometime. He had to show before he died that his life was not a total waste.

  “After all,” McQueen said, “this is not a catastrophe. Your affairs will be left just as they were before. You can liquidate the mortgage if you want to. Naturally, I intend to take over your interests in the company. I may tell you, Tallard…I might easily have manipulated things so that you would have lost all you had. As it is, you don’t lose anything.”

  “Lose anything?” Athanase stared. “My God!” He had already lost every single thing that counted. At best he would be a pensioner for the rest of his life. Only a fortnight ago he had learned that the provincial government was shortly going to end his rights of toll on the bridge.

  Suddenly McQueen said, “Why didn’t you tell me about your quarrel with your priest? It would have saved time–as well as a lot of unpleasant friction.” The blue eyes were now very hard. “You surely must have known the meaning of a development like that.”

  Athanase was angrily silent. He struggled to think. “You’re going to build without me. You have fixed it so that the land will be sold and your plans can go ahead so long as I have nothing to do with it–is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

  “I wouldn’t make any definite statement yet. We certainly don’t intend to start immediately.”

  Athanase rose abruptly and crossed the room. From the window he could see the Saint Lawrence steel blue under a bright sky, and he pulled the window up, feeling choked for fresh air. The window rose with a smooth surge letting a rush of air into the room. The papers on the desk rustled and McQueen’s hand shot out to bang them down. Athanase lowered the window to a slit and returned to his chair.

  “After all,” McQueen said, “you’ve still got plenty to do.”

  “How long do you expect me to keep my seat in parliament now?”

  “Well…”

  In the silence they could hear the faint, high singing of bagpipes. McQueen’s ear seemed to cock to the sound, a frown touched his face and he shook his head. “You know, Tallard, those returned soldiers are going to present quite a problem. The war has accustomed them to all sorts of hasty action. We may well be in for a bad time here. I don’t see how the country can ever be the same again, after what they’ve been through. Let’s hope the government takes a firm line with no nonsense. After all, they must be protected from themselves.”

  Athanase stared at him, indignant at the irrelevancy and shocked by the astonishing realization that McQueen was not being hypocritical. He had really meant every word he had said. Then his own anger blew everything else out of his mind. “You started me in all this. Yo
u came to me, McQueen–I didn’t come to you. Now you want to throw me into the discard. All right! I was a fool to expect loyalty from a business man. I can see they’ve been getting at you. But just how do you think you can put this business through in Saint-Marc by yourself if you couldn’t do it with me?”

  “The parish is in debt.”

  “You mean you’ve approached the bishop about it?”

  McQueen’s face gave nothing definite away. “I certainly showed the bishop what a fine thing it would be for the community. I pointed out that unless work was provided many of the young men would have to leave.”

  Athanase nearly choked. This was his own great argument.

  “It seems,” McQueen continued, “that the bishop has somewhat different views on industry in general from those held by your Father Beaubien.”

  “Are you telling me that the bishop will take you–but that he won’t have the factory so long as I have any connection with the company?”

  McQueen shook his head. “You mustn’t be so personal about everything, my dear Tallard. The bishop didn’t even mention your name.”

  “But that was the impression you got?”

  “There are many factors to consider.” Again McQueen shook his head. “After all, Tallard–after all! You know yourself that this situation is unique. You made an open issue of your quarrel with your Church.”

  Athanase froze into a calm. His face became grave, reserved, aristocratic. “All right!” He got up and pointed his long finger in McQueen’s face. McQueen blinked at him stolidly. “It’s the old story. You play us off, one against the other. You do it so naturally you don’t even know you do it at all.” His voice broke in its effort to hold in the spilling anger. “Someday the whole country will pay for this sort of thing.”

  He turned, straight and dignified, toward the door. McQueen bustled around his desk and laid his hand on his shoulder. “My dear Tallard–what can I do? No one can swim against the current. You don’t know what you’re talking about. I played nobody off against anyone else. This was a business proposition, that was all. I wanted to build a factory. The bishop agreed with me that a factory would be desirable. That’s all.”

  “I was under the impression that we were partners,” Athanase said coldly.

  He slipped out from under McQueen’s hand and took a step nearer the door. McQueen paused to touch a flower into place beneath his mother’s picture.

  “I wish you wouldn’t go away angry,” McQueen said. “You seem to have some personal–some fixed idea in your mind and you’re fitting this affair into it. My dear Tallard, we must keep personalities out of business. I’m sorry, there’s nothing I can do.”

  Athanase opened the door, McQueen remained with him. “Now please,” McQueen said, “don’t do anything rash. Come in any time and we’ll talk things over again. I’ll speak to Miss Drew and she’ll settle our financial arrangements.” He smiled and held up his finger. “And here’s a tip. Avoid the stock market, for it’s not going to keep up much longer. There’s going to be a depression very soon.”

  Athanase strode out without taking McQueen’s hand. He reached the hall and rang for the elevator. So that was that! A fool, his mind told itself, a fool, a fool, a fool! His whole life had been an insane groping around in a circle to discover reality, and everything he touched kept turning to smoke. Round and round in a circle of explanations, nothing real anywhere but always the reasons for why there was no reality, round and round the mulberry bush, round and round and round.

  He found himself alone in Saint James Street looking for a taxi. The street was empty. It was a gaunt, scarred cavern hideously cold and ugly, this street where the English made their money. How could a man like himself have hoped to be successful here? He did not even know the rules. A fool, a fool, I met a fool in the street, a fool alone in the street not even able to find a taxi to take himself home! Why was he alone with nobody else here? The parade, of course. All the office workers were uptown in their patriotism to see the parade. Except McQueen. He was working as usual. A fool, a fool in the street! He walked west to Victoria Square and boarded a tram which rumbled emptily up Beaver Hall Hill. When it reached Dorchester Street he rang the bell and got out.

  He found himself in a square partially shaded by tall trees that looked small against the buildings, two sides of it lined with slate-grey houses, an island between slums on the east, and business and financial areas on the other three sides. It was like a relic of Georgian London.

  Athanase looked up at the green leaves overhead. Another spring; and in Saint-Marc the consecrated seeds were in the earth and the blackflies would be swarming in the maple grove after sundown. A fresh spring for a world free of war forever!

  Holy Mother of God, what could he do now? He turned a full circle on the pavement, spinning slowly on his leather heels, but saw nothing except the staring fronts of the buildings and the four streets branching emptily away from him. What could he do? What could he even think of doing now?

  Somewhere out of his boyhood at the classical college floated a line his mind had stored for years. He could remember the black-gowned rector, that Jesuit with the wonderful voice and the ascetic face, translating it to the top form: “And of those trees you cultivate, not a single one will follow you, their brief master, save only the loathed cypresses…” And the rector had spoken of the terror of the pagan’s death who had written those lines. His own death! But when he died he would not even own his maple trees any more. Even the deeds to the old land would be gone from the bank vault then. There would be no point in keeping land on which he could no longer live. Everything would go, as so much had gone already: status, family, friends, livelihood. But why worry about friends at this late date? They were gone already.

  Nearby was a club which he had recently joined but had seldom visited. It was one of the old English clubs, filled with men successful after the English fashion, rich, dignified and incredibly ignorant. He thought of the long chairs in smooth black leather, the mahogany panelling of the walls, the pictures so dark you couldn’t see what the frames contained, the cold drinks that never made any of them drunk because not even a quart of alcohol could make any of them forgetful of his neighbour’s opinion. He could not go there any more now. They would talk about him if he did; but discreetly, in a patronizing tone, and never to his face. “Too bad.” “Yes, but what can you expect?” “What I’ve always said, they just aren’t practical.” “After all, look at the education they get.” “They ought to stick to the law and the church.” “Damned good lawyers though, I have one for a partner, clever little devil. Don’t know what I’d do without him.” “It’s the old story, what I’ve always said, east is east and west is west and never the twain…”

  “This has got to stop!” Athanase said aloud.

  He looked quickly around, but there was no one near enough to have heard him.

  Farther east was a French club to which he had belonged for years. But he could not enter there now, for they had demanded his resignation. Where could he go? He could not go home because the parade was crossing Sherbrooke Street and it would be at least another hour before there would be gangway across the street. Where could he go? There were so many people to avoid now. He thought again of McQueen and the anger welled in his stomach like bile.

  As he stood on the sidewalk, wind swirled his coat about his knees. Then he lifted his chin defiantly. Why was he ashamed? Was a man a traitor to his race just because he had done his best and failed? And who said he had failed? There was still time to show them. McQueen had said that business was going into a depression. Yes, but twelve months ago he had said the war would last another three years, then had changed his mind a few months later and so postponed the factory. If he had not changed his mind the factory would be half finished now. Would it? Anyway, suppose there was a depression? There was a depression after every war, but first there was always a brief boom, too. Did McQueen know history as he did? What did McQueen know of anything except that
cold wiliness the English and Americans always had when it came to money? He would show them yet, he would make a million. And when he had his money he would not sit on it like an incubating hen the way the English did, so frightened of doing anything their neighbours hadn’t thought of first that they never did anything at all. He would endow a public library and set it up in the heart of the French section on Saint-Denis Street. The Athanase Tallard Memorial Library! If he made enough money he would endow libraries all over the province; there were less than a dozen now, and none of them were first class. His libraries would be big, big as churches. He would show them all, French as well as English. He would prove that a man could leave the Church and still be faithful to the people. Did the priests think they had a monopoly on public service?

  Then his chin sank and he thrust his hands into his pockets and walked slowly westward. Slowly, but still sour with bitterness; thoughts about McQueen continued to crawl around in his mind. He remembered a sentence of McQueen’s and gave it a different twist: “The tragedy of French-Canada is that you can’t make up your minds whether you want to be free-choosing individuals or French-Canadians choosing only what you think your entire race will approve…” Like all the English, free with advice! But do they ever help a man? Do they ever stretch out a hand? Do they ever really want us to have a chance?

  Kathleen would be out watching the parade now, and of course enjoying it. She was spending a lot of money since they had moved into town, but she was certainly happier. She had a flair for dress, and already she looked years younger. What was she doing with herself all the hours she was out of the house alone? Did she know other men? He did not think so, though perhaps she did. At least he was not like a selfish old man, keeping his young wife under lock and key away from all pleasure. But now the thought of Kathleen seemed strangely distant, like the memory of someone he had known long ago when he was young. What did it matter now that she was beautiful, that the rich body was so warm and skilled? Incredible, that for most of a lifetime a man could imagine that beauty was enough, or that women could satisfy the ultimate solitude.