“It’s not for me, but for a young girl I know who’s in serious trouble. It’s her brother’s, and I suspect she’ll get it done regardless of whether it’s someone who knows what he’s doing or not.”
Dr. Bertrand pinched some sleep from his eyes. “Sadly, the Church has grown watchful these last years. Do you know what could happen to me? To you? Her? And I needn’t even bother asking if this would be paid . . .” He turned his back to her, playing with some papers on a table. “These are hard times, Claire.”
“Harder for some than for others, Dr. Bertrand. I’m pleading with you. Remember that I barely made it through, and even then not wholly intact.”
His shoulders dropped. “Merde,” he mumbled. “Fine. But not here. It will have to be at some local address, have to look just like a house call. And this girl, she should never know my name.”
“Agreed.” Claire rocked on the heel of her left foot. “Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Bertrand. This means much to me.”
They set up the appointment and decided to use Claire’s apartment, where she would be able to stay with the girl afterwards. There was the risk of Serafim discovering them, but she could find a way around that easily enough. Taking advantage of his traditional and prudish views, she insinuated that she needed to be left alone for “women’s reasons,” reasons about which he was more than free to ask, though he was sure to be mortified if given the answer. As predicted, he kept a sufficient distance and his misgivings to himself.
The arrangement was supposed to be a one-off, an isolated rescue attempt, but within a few months careful confidants and discreet inquiries had led another young woman to “the basement,” where she waited outside to catch Claire as she left for the day. It was imperative, the girl said, that she speak with Claire right away. To Claire, every story she heard seemed more desperate than the last, until she simply stopped asking for them, as did Dr. Bertrand. The circumstances that these girls (and sometimes older women) found themselves in became less important than their obvious need and powerlessness.
Claire sometimes wondered why she kept this from Cécile. Oddly enough, it occurred to her that it was because Cécile would praise her efforts, commend her. Claire wasn’t doing what she was doing for Cécile, or her approval. Neither was she doing it for herself. Like her dance classes, she was acting on impulse, and from motives that she’d never really imagined were in her. In many ways, the more silent it all was, the more valuable.
It was late autumn, and Claire had just walked the latest of these girls to a tram stop near their apartment. As she turned to head home she saw Serafim making his way down the street. Perfect timing, she thought, waving and setting off towards him.
Serafim hadn’t been able to find work for the last several weeks, and something that amazed Claire was that, even with so much time on their hands, they still managed to inhabit such close quarters without getting on each other’s nerves. She suspected that one of the ways they accomplished this was by reading, both of them settling in corners of the studio, hunched over tomes in their laps. And seeing as they only read illicit literature, it made for intriguing conversation afterwards as well.
Both Cécile and Antonino had their hands in the dissident underworld of banned books, which had been censored by the Catholic Church and were often smuggled in by mail — Trotsky, Balzac, Huxley. Sometimes Serafim’s friend Álvaro would send a few additional blacklisted authors from Paris — Descartes, Flaubert, Hugo — and if he was feeling unusually nostalgic he might throw in a record of Portuguese music as well, something that was easier to come by in France than in Canada. They were records whose melancholic harmonies Claire often enjoyed more than Serafim, who had never been as taken with music as she was.
It was among the last warm days of the year, a clear October afternoon, not a breath of wind, and it looked as if Serafim had been gardening with Antonino again. She soon caught up with him, and they walked on either side of his bicycle. “And, how’s Antonino? Wow, so much food! What’s in the wrapped parcel?”
“Antonino is fine. And that, I am proud to announce, is meat,” he declared.
They hadn’t eaten meat for what felt like months, though it was probably only weeks. They brought the groceries into the apartment, and with both of them hungry, they decided to get cooking right away. It was true that neither of them were artists in the kitchen, but Claire felt that they bumbled along well enough, and that they were making improvements all the time. While the vegetables he’d picked weren’t superior by any standard, with a bit of cutting away and cleaning up one could get to something salvageable, even fresh, just beneath. The meat, however, was another thing. It was apparently venison, killed by a motor car, and one of its sides was still matted with fur. Claire had no idea how to begin cutting it, and happened to doubt that even a trained butcher would know. But once she had finished chopping a few carrots, she could feel that the job was falling to her, that Serafim was waiting for her to at least give it a shot. She prodded the meat with circumspection, trying to work out the best way to proceed.
As she did so, Claire heard Serafim get up from the table behind her and return with his camera, adjusting the settings in that highly concentrated way of his. He had just given her news that he might have some work tomorrow, taking pictures for one of the city’s major newspapers. Something to celebrate, to be sure. Claire put the knife she was holding down on the cutting board beside her, rinsed her hands.
Yes, she contemplated, they both had so much. Which was probably what he wanted to capture, considered Claire, probably why he had just slipped out of the kitchen and returned with his camera, why he was waiting for her to pivot round and face him.
Claire smiled, quietly, and turned.
Medium:Gelatin silver print
Description:Woman standing at a sink
Location:Montreal, Quebec
Date:1933
A woman, wearing a simple and modest dress, stands before the sink in a small kitchen. Her hands are wet. One of them is reaching slightly behind her, clasped onto the porcelain lip of the basin, near a wooden cutting board that balances pieces of a carrot, unevenly sliced. The other hand she doesn’t quite seem to know what to do with (likely on account of its glistening with water) and so is holding it at her sternum, as if for the interim, where it cups its own shadow.
She is smiling, the few lines drawn onto the left side of her mouth, in the shape of brackets, parenthesizing an intimacy she has with the person holding the camera. Her hair, dense and dark, falls in loose curls to just below her shoulders. The right side of these tresses is rimmed with light, which draws the eye up and into the background, where a small window hovers.
The window is overexposed, though the coarse grain of its brightness suggests that the pane of glass is somewhat dirty. Despite this, the sliver of a cathedral shaft filters through, folding into the leaves of a potted plant on the sill. There, luminescence, balling up like melted glass, drips from the sill into the washbasin, a soldering flare. This light lands just behind her, fanning out and settling into depressions and corners, as soundless as embers. And as incandescent.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The research required to write historical fiction puts one in touch with remarkable people, and I owe immense gratitude to many of them, for their time and their passion. Though I wish to begin with two people in particular: Maria Teresa Veloso Alves Rocha Resende de Almeida was an Oporto archivist who went to great lengths to ensure I understood the complexity of her city as it was in the 1920s, which included exposing me to different sights, neighbourhoods, archives, and restaurants while in Oporto. And Armida Spada-McDougall gave me treasured information on her father, Antonino Spada, who was at first just another vivid detail of the era that kept cropping up in my research, but who soon became nothing short of a hero figure in my mind. At some point, I decided to incorporate his real character, and many of his actual stories and struggles, into t
his work of fiction. The information that his daughter provided to this end was invaluable.
I received guidance concerning the openings and closings of the letters, as well as ideas on names and other historical facts, from Jean-François Millette, Genevieve Côté, Sophie Wertheimer, Inês Lopes, and Salvador Maria Simões de Carvalho. Isabelle Perreault provided insight into the early years of the Quebec feminist movement. Joyce Gilmour generously gave her time to proofreading an early draft. And a place to live and write most of the book was provided by Julian and Anne Whitlock in Brittany, and Patrick Andrivet and Kathy Coit in Paris.
Archivists who went above and beyond to help out with information were:
Marie-Josée Lecours at the Bibliothèque de la Danse.
Theresa Rowat, who also helped with dance history in Montreal.
Lyne Champagne at the City of Westmount.
Nicol Huber at the Musée des Hospitalières de l’Hôtel-Dieu de Montréal.
Jean-François Courtemanche for incredibly detailed information on the Laurier Palace Theatre fire and other firefighting realities of the day.
Marielle Lavertu and Audrey Saint-Jean, who helped me find early street photographs from the massive collection of photos at the Bibliothèque et Archives Nationales du Québec.
Paula Alexandra Lages de Oliveira and Rosa Maria Teixeira at the Biblioteca Pública Municipal do Porto.
And Helena Parente at the Centro Português de Fotografia.
Of the heap of books I read, scanned, and photocopied, three stand out as exceptionally important:
Bystander, a History of Street Photography, by Colin Westerbeck and Joel Meyerowitz (Bulfinch, 1994)
Montréal de vive mémoire, 1900–1939, by Marcelle Brisson and Suzanne Côté-Gauthier (Triptyque, 1997)
Fascism and the Italians of Montreal, an Oral History: 1922–1945, by Filippo Salvatore (Guernica, 1998)
Of the fourteen theses I read, three were both instrumental and an absolute joy to read, namely Master’s work by Karen Herland, Marc Charpentier and Tamara Myers.
Thanks also to the wonderful editors Jared Bland and Janice Zawerbny, who I am convinced loved and understood these characters as much as I did; and to Sarah MacLachlan and all the immensely talented folks at Anansi.
And thanks, finally, to Lauren, for listening so carefully.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mark Lavorato is the author of two novels, Veracity and Believing Cedric, and a collection of poems, Wayworn Wooden Floors, which was a finalist for the Raymond Souster Award. He lives in Montreal, Quebec.
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
House of Anansi Press was founded in 1967 with a mandate to publish Canadian-authored books, a mandate that continues to this day even as the list has branched out to include internationally acclaimed thinkers and writers. The press immediately gained attention for significant titles by notable writers such as Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, George Grant, and Northrop Frye. Since then, Anansi’s commitment to finding, publishing and promoting challenging, excellent writing has won it tremendous acclaim and solid staying power. Today Anansi is Canada’s pre-eminent independent press, and home to nationally and internationally bestselling and acclaimed authors such as Gil Adamson, Margaret Atwood, Ken Babstock, Peter Behrens, Rawi Hage, Misha Glenny, Jim Harrison, A. L. Kennedy, Pasha Malla, Lisa Moore, A. F. Moritz, Eric Siblin, Karen Solie, and Ronald Wright. Anansi is also proud to publish the award-winning nonfiction series The CBC Massey Lectures. In 2007, 2009, 2010, and 2011 Anansi was honoured by the Canadian Booksellers Association as “Publisher of the Year.”
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