Two Solitudes

by Hugh Maclennan

  Then a door in his brain seemed to swing wide open on hinges to disclose what looked like the atrium of an enormous museum. With dreamlike speed the corridor filled with men and women he once had known. God, had he known all those women? Where were they now? What were their names? But it is unreasonable, it is highly fantastic, that I could have known this woman so well and not be able to tell you her name…. The people moved silently about in the atrium: children, teachers, priests, farmers, lawyers, politicians, judges, soldiers, and among them the women. But it is not correct, they are all dressed the same way, their clothes are all of the same fashion and some of these women are surely dead, they must be, for it is not reasonable they should all have lived as long as I have, that is not reasonable at all….

  Passing his hand over his forehead, he felt moisture on it. The bones of his skull seemed to be vibrating, then pumping in and out. He heard his voice, like a stranger’s, mutter in his ear, “I’m not well, it’s nothing, but just now I certainly need to sit down.” Then he looked and saw the same street, the same buildings, the same trees.

  He walked slowly westward until he reached Saint James’ Basilica. He had done well to come this far alone. He still had his will power, the Tallard tenacity never let a man down. He stopped and looked calmly up to the row of greened-bronze saints that lined the pediment brooding down over the street. A good street to bless, considering the number of financiers who passed to work on it, the number of prostitutes who accosted you on it, the hundreds of people, each with his own secret little sins, who walked it every day. It needed the blessings of all the saints and of Bishop Bourget besides, who stood there near the pavement, also in bronze. An iron-willed man, an ecclesiastical prince–they said he had confronted even the Papal Legate with his unbreakable will. His own father had known Bishop Bourget, he himself had once been blessed by him, but now the man was a statue and the bronze had oxidized and he was as green and permanent as the saints above him, and somewhere his soul, his indissoluble essence…

  Athanase walked up the steps and passed through the vestibule into the nave of the cathedral. The incense-charged silence within was so cool he could taste it, the holy Catholic taste, the air breathed so many times by the anonymous little people of the city who thronged the cathedral Sunday after Sunday. Automatically, out of his childhood training, he genuflected to the altar.

  Then he glanced quickly around. No one had noticed him. A few old women were on their knees with eyes glazed with reverence as they stared at the candles above the high altar. A tram driver and a workman were kneeling in the last pew, and as he passed them his nostrils twitched to an odour of stale sweat. They were praying, finding God after a hard day’s work.

  “What am I doing here?” he murmured. “Me, of all people–how can I be here at a time like this?” But his legs felt so weak he could not have gone out had he wished. He moved slowly to a pew a few rows up from the workman and the tram driver, and sat down with his hat beside him. His knees went forward and found the kneeler, and his eyes blurred as he folded his hands and looked steadily at the candles flickering in the half-darkness.

  That evening Marius ate dinner in a cheap restaurant downtown and tried to talk about himself above the noise to Emilie. He had not seen her since he had been conscripted nine months ago, for this was his first leave from the army. He was still in uniform, and had no idea when he would be demobilized.

  The restaurant was overcrowded and smelled of unclean floor-corners, ice-cream spills on glass-top tables and sour dishwater. Since Marius and Emilie had arrived, the place had filled up with soldiers. Now the soda fountain was lined with men in khaki sitting on stools eating the things they had not seen for three or four years. One soldier had five sodas in front of him all in different colours. Another was eating a banana royal. One had a marshmallow sundae with chocolate sauce and another had a pineapple sundae with nuts. They were all talking loudly except the man with the sodas, who kept a straw in his mouth all the time. They were discussing food. One man was going to have a big breakfast tomorrow with corn flakes and cream and powdered sugar, and on top of that he was going to have bacon and eggs. Crisp bacon, not the white, fatty stuff he’d been eating the past three years. One wished it were August so he could have corn on the cob. A big corporal didn’t want to eat anything for weeks except T-bones smothered in onions, thick and medium done.

  Then they began talking about women. All the time he had been overseas the corporal hadn’t been able to find the kind of woman he liked. They were like schoolteachers or by Christ, they were like whores. He talked in a factual explaining voice. “I want my women like my steaks. I want them medium.”

  The man with the marshmallow sundae looked around. “Brother, so far as I can remember, you’ve sure come back to the right country.” He pushed aside his empty dish and turned to the man with the banana royal. “The guy was never satisfied. Last month him and me were in Piccadilly and a couple of women picked us up must have been countesses or something. Real class. And right in front of the Ritz the guy starts telling them about a skirt he knew in Birdville, Ontario.”

  “Why not?” the corporal said. “I like a comfortable woman.”

  The man with the sodas took the straw out of his mouth. “What kind of a place is this Birdville, anyhow?”

  “They got a railroad station there.” The soldier licked some syrup off his spoon and laid it down on the counter. “They got a general store and a church, and they got a hotel for the drummer that comes around in the spring.”

  “Hell!” The man went back to his sodas. “It sounds like Toronto!”

  The voices faded out again and Marius leaned over the table to Emilie. “In the army I made a bet with myself. If ever I heard them talk about anything else but women and what they ate or drank I’d give a dollar to the Red Cross.”

  “But they treated you all right?” Emilie said.

  Marius showed her two stripes on his left sleeve. “I’m a corporal now. Five months after the war ends, the army gets around to making me a corporal.”

  He bent to his food again, and while he ate, Emilie kept her eyes on him. He looked healthy and almost tough, he had gained weight and the whites of his eyes were clear. But he still ate as though he expected someone to jerk the plate away from him the moment he stopped. When he had finished his dessert he wiped his mouth fastidiously with his napkin. He noticed for the first time that Emilie was much better dressed than she had been a year ago. She looked almost like a city girl now. He noticed also that her hands were smoother, and that she spoke more carefully, with better grammar.

  His eyebrows rose and he asked suspiciously, “Did you get a raise?”

  “I don’t work in the restaurant any more.”

  “Did they fire you?”

  “I left. That job–it was no good for me.”

  “What are you doing now, then?” His voice was sharp with suspicion.

  “I got a new job.” Her eyes showed she was proud of herself and hoped he would be pleased. “In a dress factory.”

  “What dress factory?”

  “Greenberg–you know, up on Bleury?”

  He cracked his hand down over her wrist and held it. “You mean you’re working for the Jews?”

  “They pay me good money. I get twelve a week. If I do better I get a raise maybe. Lots of girls…”

  “So you work for the Jews!” He kept holding her wrist and staring at her as she wondered what she had said wrong this time. “I thought you called yourself a Catholic!”

  She pulled her wrist away. “You stop that. You’re hurting me. Maybe I do work at Greenberg. Who do you think you are–a priest? Father Gervais knows I work there. Maybe you’d like it better if I starve? Who said a Catholic can’t work for a Jew?”

  The noise at the fountain was rising again. A tall soldier with an angular face had stopped eating to make himself heard. “When I get home to the Missus I’m finished batting around, see. I’m going to show her right off I’m through with a
ll that stuff. If you guys are smart you’ll do the same.”

  “What’s the use? They can always tell.”

  “My Old Lady’s a very religious woman,” the angular man said, “and she can’t tell on account of she never thinks about stuff like that.” He was very serious. “I’m not kidding. It was all right before the war but now it’s going to be different.”

  “Like hell!”

  “I’m telling you, the women are all set to get their hands on us again and tame us down. You take a look at their faces. I’m telling you, they’re after us.”

  The man with the sodas shoved another glass across the counter and called to the Italian for more straws. He pushed a jarful across.

  “You fellas better get wised up to yourselves,” the angular man went on. “I’m telling you, they’re ganged up to get hold of us, for sure.”

  Marius sipped his coffee and leaned back, watching Emilie. His hand was lying on the table beside hers, long and sensitive. He touched the sleeve of her dress. “You got that in the factory?”

  She smiled proudly. “I worked late a whole week for that dress.”

  “Nice man, this Greenberg!”

  The restaurant door opened with a bang and a soldier with three valour ribbons on his chest came in with a rush. He was short enough for a bantam battalion, and as he cocked up to the big men at the bar he bent his hands backwards on his hips and flapped his elbows like a rooster’s wings. He crowed. “For Chrissake!” he shouted, flapping his bent arms. “The stuff you guys are drinking! Where’s your morals?”

  The man with the five sodas was now on his fourth; it was chocolate and full of brown bubbles. He kept on sucking and said out of the corner of his mouth, “I bet Pete’s canned so he stinks.”

  Marius set down his coffee cup again and looked at Emilie. “What are Jews like when they’re drunk? Funny thing–I never saw a drunk Jew!”

  “Mr. Greenberg treats me good enough. He never gets drunk.”

  “He just runs his hands over you while he fits the dress–eh?” “Him!” She wished Marius would not be so unpleasant. “He’s a little old man all bent over.” She giggled self-consciously. “Seventy years old, maybe.”

  Marius’ face twisted. “I know an old man that doesn’t let a little thing like that stop him.”

  Emilie blushed.

  A roar of noise exploded from the soda fountain. “Who started it?” the drunk was shouting. “You mean you don’t know? Bloody Limey M.P. crimed me and put me under a black sergeant for fatigue. Did that nigger jump when my bayonet started travelling up his ass!”

  The man who had been eating the banana royal now had a cherry sundae with a dust of nuts over the top. He turned lazily to the drunk. “You mean a little runt like you started that riot?”

  “I’m the guy that got all you bastards back home,” the drunk shouted. “If it hadn’t been for me you’d still be over there now.”

  The Italian behind the fountain was smiling and wringing his hands and saying “Gentlemen, gentlemen!” The man with the sodas said to him with a straight face, the straw still in his lips, nodding toward Pete, “See–he’s quite a guy!”

  “How do you mean you got us home?” the man with the cherry sundae said.

  “We burned down the camp in the riot, didn’t we? After that–hell, the Limeys couldn’t get rid of us quick enough.”

  The angular, serious man put his arm about the bantam’s shoulder. “Now listen, Pete–you got to sober up. Last time you got so sick you couldn’t eat for days. I got to look after you, Pete. I’m not forgetting what you did for me that time.”

  “For Chrissake, who’s talking about the war?”

  “Discipline, Pete!” the angular man kept saying. “Remember that time we were sitting half a week on top of a mine? Remember that?”

  “This guy a pal of yours?” the man with the sodas said.

  The angular man almost shaped up to him. “Is he a pal!”

  “Can the war!” Pete shouted. “Stuff it up! After what I did the whole bloody merchant marine wasn’t good enough for us guys. They had to give us the Olympic.” He belched and staggered. “You ought to give me a statue.” He flapped his arms again and crowed like a rooster.

  “Gentlemen.” The Italian smiled and showed white teeth as he leaned forward. “Gentlemen–I got customers.”

  The noise quieted down and Marius rose. “Look at that oily Italian sucking up!” He lifted his voice and shouted, and the man came running, one hand holding his apron. “How much do I owe for this rotten meal?”

  The Italian smiled another mouthful of white teeth. He seemed to think Marius drunk too, but he was very respectful to the uniform. “One dollar feefty,” he said.

  Marius threw down a bill and a fifty-cent piece, and the coin rang on the glass top of the table. “Next time a lady eats here,” he said, “you wipe off your tables first.”

  When they were outside on the street, Emilie took his arm. “The table was clean enough,” she said.

  “Listen,” Marius said, “I learned one thing in the army. You shout at a man and he always gets the idea he’s to blame for something. Before he has time to figure it out, you’ve got him where you want him.”

  She did not answer, for she was not quite sure what he was talking about.

  “I wonder how many sergeants are going to be out of jobs?” he said. “A sergeant without anyone to shout at–yes,” he went on, nodding, “that’s going to be a useful thing to remember. The next few years whenever I see a discontented man I’ll remember he used to be a sergeant.”

  They walked slowly eastward along Sainte-Catherine Street. The city was alive tonight. It pulsed with the vitality of the new men who had entered it.

  “What are you going to do now?” Emilie said.

  “Do? What does anybody ever do in the army?”

  “Sure, sure. I mean, when they let you out?”

  “That’s the big question,” he said, mysteriously.

  “I guess maybe you go back to college, no?”

  “That’s another question.”

  As they walked along the street together the crowds surged about them under the light, the sidewalk was packed with men and girls strolling in the warm spring evening because they had no other place to go. There was an expectant happiness in the air, and not many of the soldiers they passed were drunk. Some stood alone on street corners with quiet expressions on their faces as though it were so good to be home that just standing still was all they needed to make them happy. They passed a sergeant-major on the corner of Saint-Lawrence Main talking in French to a tram driver. He wore five medal ribbons and the badge of the Regiment Maisonneuve. He had a great chest and shoulders, jet black hair and an eagle face, a wide moustache showing solid black against tan skin. He could have doubled for Frontenac. Marius looked at him, then jerked his eyes away.

  They walked on, drifting eastward into the French part of the city.

  “Let’s go where you live,” Marius said suddenly. “I want to meet your father.”

  “Oh, no!” she said.

  His fingers squeezed her wrist sharply. “I want to meet him. I’ve never even seen him.”

  “I told him about you. It’s all right me going out with you.”

  Marius stopped under an arc light and stood off, watching her face. It was pale in the flickering light. God, he thought, what an ordinary face! So ordinary he sometimes found it difficult to remember what she looked like. Why was he here with a girl like this? Out of all the women in the world, why spend his time with her?

  But he knew the answer. He could not go with beautiful girls because he hated them all on sight. They traded on their looks and that made them as false as hell. And as he watched Emilie, something of her instinctive goodness softened him. What if she did not come from his own class? French girls of his own class were so strictly brought up he was afraid of them.

  His searching eyes made her embarrassed, and he saw her glance away. And at that instant she touched h
im deeply without knowing it, and as his eyes dropped to her square figure set on its stocky legs he suddenly knew that he could not do without her. Instantly a flash of joy passed through him. The feeling was so rare and strange it brought tears to his eyes.

  “Come on,” he said gruffly, taking her arm, “let’s go to your place.”

  Emilie walked quietly beside him. Tomorrow she would go alone to the church and say her prayers, asking God to take away his bitterness and to make him kind.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Paul had been at Frobisher School for nearly three years. He was now twelve. He had become so much a part of the place that he spoke English all the time and thought and even dreamed in English. He liked it here, for he had learned how to play games. He played football in the fall and hockey from December to March. In the early spring there was boxing, and Sergeant-Major Croucher said he was a natural at it. He had a very quick straight left, the punch the English boxers like better than any other, and he was fast. In early summer, in the long days before term ended, the boys put on white flannels and played cricket very badly on the square green field in front of the school where the elm trees reminded the masters of an English close. Unofficially, they threw baseballs about behind the school at recess.

  Now it was a late afternoon in February, 1921, and Paul was playing hockey for his house in a junior inter-house league. The boys played in an open-air rink behind the school with the snow piled ten feet high back of the boards. The rink rang with skates and the knocking of sticks and the banging of the puck against the boards, sometimes with a loud shout from a boy or the shrill peep of the referee’s whistle. Whenever the whistle blew there was an instant’s silence while they faced off. Paul loved these moments when the game paused and he was able to get the whole feel of it: the full exhilaration of the air coldly still in the sunshine, the teams poised and the referee standing over the crouching centre-forwards, holding the puck above the crossed sticks, the sticks twitching nervously and the sweat warming on the face, the lungs charged with fresh cold air and the legs tired, yet the knowledge that you could go on like this forever if you had to.