The Party Wall

by Catherine Leroux

  Marie, mesmerized by the images streaming across the screen, wrestles with the urge to open a window and extend her arm in a gentle wave, the way children passing in front of an electronics store verify that it is indeed they who are pictured on the screen in the shop window, confirming their unimaginable profile, their peculiar gait snatched on the sidewalk. Ariel comes over and delicately ushers his wife away as if to prevent her from being struck down by an enraged beast. He whispers a few words in her ear, and the light coming through the curtains seems to grow more intense. Then he steps toward the windows and in his turn glances at the grey mass of people in front of his home.

  “What do they want now? Didn’t they get their fill at Lambert’s place?” he asks, turning to Marc.

  “That’s it exactly. They camped out in front of his house for almost a month,” his right-hand man answers. “It whetted their appetite. Better get used to it. This won’t be the last time you’ll see them keeping watch at your house. You had a public life. From now on it’ll be transparent.”

  Grumbling, Ariel goes back to pacing up and down so quickly that one can almost see a golden streak in his wake. He sees himself three nights ago face to face with the suddenly distorted features of the party veterans, the ones known as “the cops” precisely because of their role in constructing that unavoidable transparency. For many hours they confronted Ariel with his past, looking for hypothetical skeletons in his hotly indignant breathing, scrutinizing the film of sweat glistening on his brow for a hint of an admission of guilt. After the double life of Daniel Lambert, the former opposition leader, got splashed across the front page of a tabloid amid a slew of public statements by barely pubescent male prostitutes, the party could hardly afford another blunder. The brutality of the cops’ questions was in proportion to the magnitude of their mismanagement.

  Humiliated, Ariel gave the veterans the information they sought; the tone of his voice was a blend of gall and satisfaction, because he knew his track record was beyond reproach and also that he would demolish the careers of the three men once he became head of the Labour Party.

  Now, the official verdict is about to be pronounced and he is jubilant. The closeness of power is such that the texture of things and the composition of his own cells seem to have changed. Only a few minutes stand between him and what he has been preparing to become since the end of his adolescence: a leader.

  Spurred on by this prospect, he goes back to the speech he has been working on with Marc since the day before, ejects a comma, inserts an exclamation mark, and then resumes his rounds, striding like a conqueror. As for Marie, she is still glued to the screen but has changed channels. Disturbing pictures of yet another storm on the coast give way to two or three preachers in quick succession. The last one is the host of a talk show where a facial composite melding the Devil’s features with those of Daniel Lambert says it all. Marie shuts off the TV and moves closer to Ariel, steps through the feverish aura surrounding him, and places her hand on the back of his neck.

  “And you? Will they put a halo on you, Golden Boy?”

  Ariel smiles, kisses his wife’s pale forehead perpetually aflutter with nervous little wings. Just then, the telephone rings. The committee has ended its deliberations. As though sensing the momentous news has arrived, the cameras move in closer, like jaws tightening around the house, still slightly parted before biting into the apple.

  Marie is choking. She feels as though she’s been plunged into water, as though she is watching the celebrations going on around her through a crude glass jar. She leans against a pillar and focuses on her breathing; her lungs don’t fill up with water, and the smells of victory are enough to subdue the muddy vortex whistling in her chest. Groping in her handbag, she finds a small candy box. She swallows a tablet that leaves a bitter trail as it slides down her throat. Then she waits a moment and from another container pulls out a menthol lozenge. A wholesome chill inundates her mouth. She is ready to go back and mingle with the crowd, in the middle of which Ariel stands beaming.

  He grabs his wife’s cool hand and squeezes it. Her bony fist seems to shrink inside his palm and grow hard and dense, a hidden gemstone granting him access to a silent, unaltered region of his being in which he left behind everything he had to give up to get where he is. Marie, with her pure heart, her unshakable integrity, her undisguised idealism. If it is true these qualities are at odds with political life, then to have such an open-hearted woman at his side convinces Ariel he has not abandoned what led him to take up this profession. He notices her arm is trembling. She isn’t feeling well. He turns toward her, but her eyes reassure him. It will soon pass.

  The air in the two-hundred-year-old house where Ariel grew up is tinged with the fragrance of jonquils. Some people, when holding a party, make it a point of honour to ensure there is enough alcohol for the guests to drink themselves into oblivion. Ariel’s parents stake their reputation on flower arrangements. Bouquets the size of Cadillacs have pride of place in every corner, nearly overshadowing the platters stacked high with petits fours and sweets. Never before have the Goldsteins had such an extraordinary opportunity to fête their only son and show him how immensely proud they are of him. From the moment he entered their lives they knew he was destined for great things. Granted, the road has been full of twists and turns—the underground art scene where Ariel performed as a slammer, his unpalatable girlfriends and his even more dubious hairstyles—but as soon as he entered law school they were reassured. His adolescence was simply the forge in which their son’s talents were tempered.

  Amid the toasts of uncles, aunts, and old friends, Ariel receives the praise with the same magnanimous pride he displayed at his bar mitzvah. His old high school buddies taunt him with teasing grins.

  “Real politics will get the better of you, Goldstein the Good. You’ll crack as soon as you’re offered your first bribe!”

  “Come now, my son is above all that!” Mrs. Goldstein protests.

  “No need to cheat when you’re the best,” his father adds, giving Ariel an affectionate pat on the back.

  Marie smiles. Goldstein family gatherings invariably throw her into a state of melancholic delight. Her husband grew up surrounded by a munificence of finer feelings. No wonder he’s endowed with an unshakable confidence in the future and in himself. There’s no comparison with her own childhood, which was spent under the yoke of powerful clan where she was so glaringly out of place. In many ways it was her meeting with Ariel that drew her out of her acute shyness and her vocational dithering. If he hadn’t been there to encourage her, she would never have dared to found a humanitarian organization, nor would she have had the strength to deal with powerful men, of which her husband, ironically, was now one.

  A strong hand has just settled on her shoulder. Even before Marie turns around, she senses that the hand belongs to Rachel, her sister. From atop her warrior-like stature, Rachel rattles off her congratulations and then laconically apologizes for their parents’ absence. Marie cuts her short. She knows perfectly well why they haven’t come. It’s already hard enough for her father to have a confirmed federalist for a son-in-law; to be seen at a Labour celebration would finish him off. Marie kisses her sister, her ruddy cheeks and the powerful muscles of her canine jaws. Rachel is half a head taller than most of the guests.

  Circulating among his own people, Ariel continues to shake hands. Ordinarily, the well-honed gesture is an automatic reflex, but this morning, after officially addressing the party membership, he finds the handshaking intensely satisfying. At last, he’s no longer the one who’s striving, trying his luck, begging for trust, working behind the scenes. He has fulfilled the hopes his parents had placed in him; he has proven his pre-eminence beyond the shadow of a doubt, and everyone—including the husky guys who, fifteen years ago, demolished him on the ice rink—has to acknowledge this. Savouring the moment, he forces himself not to think of the colossal task that awaits him. He will get to
work tomorrow. Right now he ad-libs a little speech reminding his familiars of the days when, with the help of an out-of-tune guitar, he made up lines and rhymes for an intoxicated audience.

  When he thanks Marie, she lifts her hand to her chest. Her head is spinning, perhaps from exhaustion or because of the pills; she feels the ground giving way beneath her feet. Or maybe it’s the smell of the jonquils going to her head. She hears the sap rumbling in their stems, their stamens launching vague messages into the air. For a fraction of a second she is convinced she understands them. Then, like everything else, the sensation passes.

  The first thing to do. Given the widespread public cynicism, given the five wars the country is mired in, given the shantytowns burgeoning on the outskirts of Canada’s largest cities and the epidemic of environmental cancers, the first thing to do is neither to consider withdrawing the military nor to discuss social programs and air pollution. The dossiers that Ariel has prepared in recent months are put on the back burner by his director of public relations.

  “The first thing to do,” she announces, “is to establish you as a normal person. Faithful husband. Good son. Amiable neighbour. Future father. In a word, the antithesis of Lambert. We must offset your predecessor’s indiscretions—and your young age—with an image of integrity.”

  “An image? So what’s the current perception? That I’m a corrupt old satrap?”

  “No, but the public has no idea. You need to show people who you are.”

  “Am I going to wear a badge: Good Boy Goldstein?”

  Ariel taps on his desk impatiently. He knew very well that once he became leader he would have to submit to some window dressing, but he dislikes it. For years now, he has attended to his image. He yearns to move on to issues of substance, to plunge his hands into the inaccessible matter that he has wanted to mould ever since he took his first steps inside the party. Unaffected by her leader’s mood, the publicist continues to lay out her ideas.

  “Everything centres on you and Marie. Over the coming weeks we’ll need to follow you as much as possible, so people can see you at the restaurant or catch you off guard when you’re shopping. In interviews, you’ll joke about your domesticity. You have to be approachable and look like Mr. Average.”

  “In any event,” Marc adds, “you’ll be under constant scrutiny from now on. Every Tom, Dick, and Jane will take your picture and broadcast everything you say and do on the social networks. That’s why Prime Minister Milton avoids being seen in public. You, however, will take the opposite tack. Once you’ve become a friendly, familiar face for Canadians, we’ll address the other issues. Just in time for the elections.”

  Ariel grudgingly opens the folder his publicist has given him, but he is unable to concentrate. The little MP’s office where he grew accustomed to working alone now seems far away. His new quarters bustle day and night; pressing yet altogether insignificant issues arise at all hours. He thinks about his parents, who picture him toiling over the fate of the nation, and feels somewhat ashamed as he turns a page filled with the twelve prescribed shirt styles, arranged in a gamut from “impromptu stroll,” to “formal ceremony.” Then his thoughts turn to Marie.

  When he describes how he spent his day, she of course will refrain from criticizing, but her silence is what will hurt him the most. Without saying a word, she has witnessed each of his compromises since he was first elected, and her extraordinary rectitude has hovered over the hard decisions to which Ariel gave his consent. He must win this election. A single action on his part, the slightest correction of the country’s ruinous trajectory would be enough for him to win the wager he made.

  Keeping the tumult that surrounds him at bay, Ariel hangs on for an instant to the bright, hazy image of his wife and lets it dance momentarily above the Ottawa skyline before he opens his eyes again, signs an official letter, forwards an email message, clears his throat, replies to a counterpart, straightens his tie, shakes a hand, finds the right tone, refines an argument, improves his standing in the polls, defends his position, aims higher, qualifies without lying, drives his point home without shouting, bends without breaking.

  “There’s always something blinking,” Marie grumbles as she slips a shawl over her eyes in a vain attempt to shut out the icy glow given off by the computer, the mobile phone, the router, the satellite radio, the alarm clock that in less than three hours will start screaming to wrench them out of sleep. Only three hours of sleep left. The thought is enough to rouse the little beasts running through the most rebellious parts of her body: her hands so sensitive to the cold, her hair poking around in the orifices of her face, her feet rippling with tiny spasms. The ticking of her watch on the dresser punctuates the twitching of her extremities. She clenches her jaw.

  When you’re trying hard to sleep, the slightest rustle, the tiniest tremor in the air becomes unbearable. Marie has been awake for four hours on this her third day battling insomnia. But she forces herself to stay still. She knows that even in the deepest recesses of a dream, Ariel manages to distinguish the sinuous movements of sleep from the firm, sharp ones of wakefulness; in a few seconds, he would be sitting up in the bed asking her what’s the matter.

  And there would be so much to say in answer to that question. From the moment Ariel’s position as party leader was confirmed, Marie has been worrying herself sick. This was unexpected. She had believed she would experience nothing but joy on seeing her husband’s unflagging efforts finally rewarded. And yet, the phone call that decided their future filled her straightaway with a sense of foreboding. She has the feeling they will never again be alone and that the lack of privacy will destroy them. Even now in their bedroom, where no one else sets foot, it’s as though they were here: the advisers, the delegates, the spokespeople—a shadow cabinet surrounding their bed, together with reporters behaving like Dobermans, and, in the closets or under the box-spring, hordes of lobbyists also waiting for a bone. And this is just the start.

  She does not relish the thought of the entire nation knowing her name from now on. She does not relish the prospect of being held up to scrutiny, of people detecting the weariness underneath her foundation, the blood rushing to her cheeks, the nervousness gathering in the hollow of her fist; she, who has no secrets, all at once feels she has so much to hide when it comes to her tastes, her failings and rare moments of cowardice, her family, her background, her youthful peccadilloes. She would never dare to voice this malaise to Ariel, who is more inured to public life. He would not understand why things now appear so burdensome to her. He would not acknowledge that their lives no longer belong to them, that they no longer constitute a closed unit, let alone a family in the making. The house’s framework lets out a creak, and she starts in spite of herself.

  On the east side of the bed, Ariel is dreaming of a gigantic hedge, a row of trees so dense one cannot see through it. But on the other side he hears the roar of an approaching storm, a ravenous ogre on the march. Suddenly the trees all come crashing down together. He opens his eyes, turns westward and, stretching his arm, strokes his wife’s back.

  “What’s the matter, my love?”

  Before she has time to respond, he sits up, and turns on the bedside lamp, instantly killing the constellation of blinking lights. Marie’s rumpled face comes into view. Ariel gets up, takes his wife by the hand and leads her downstairs. In the kitchen, he boils some whole milk, to which he adds a drop of rum. Then he opens the door onto the night as vast as the sea. Marie steps out onto the porch, straightens the plush blanket on the swing, and sits down next to Ariel. They let the tenderness of late August rock them, with its headwinds unsure of which season to usher in. Behind a thin layer of clouds, the Perseids are on the wane. The silence is absolute.

  “You see,” Ariel says, “there’s no one. No reporters, no staff. Nights still belong to us.”

  Marie nods in agreement, warmed by the delicate puffs of vapour rising from her cup.

  “
Our core hasn’t moved, my love. It’s smaller but denser. What we put into it doesn’t change. And it doesn’t concern anyone but us.”

  “A child?”

  “Secrets. New honeymoons, getaways to inns that the satellites can’t see. A child—yes, of course. As many children as you wish. You don’t believe me?”

  Marie purses her lips. So Ariel gently gets to his feet, removes the cup from her hand, and kneels down in front of her to split open her nightgown one button at a time. After the twelfth, he’ll plunge into the narrow precinct of his wife’s breasts, where her scent is sweetest, and he will make love to her with a kind of intensity that arises just once a year, when the seasons waver between hot and cold, baffled by incomprehensible climate cycles, by ocean currents that have become strangers to themselves.

  The first time they met, they fainted. Ariel approached her with a leaflet put out by the student association, Marie extended her fingers toward the hand that he held out to her insistently, and as soon as their palms touched they both collapsed in perfect synchronicity on the parched campus lawn. When they regained consciousness they had no recollection of falling down, only the feeling that a warm wave had swept over their bodies and lingered like the pleasant burning sensation one gets after a day in the sun. Some students who were reading nearby told them they had lain there inert for more than three minutes. No one ventured to revive them because they were thought to be actors rehearsing a scene.

  This peculiar prelude did not keep them from agreeing to meet three days later in a draughty café on the McGill University campus. Ariel came up behind her, laid his hand on Marie’s shoulder, but before she could even turn around and recognize him they both crumpled to the floor in a peaceful, almost graceful fall. This time an attempt was made to rouse them, but to no avail. Their immobility, though harmless, was persistent.