by John Metcalf
“Me, I don’t care,” said Gagnon. “I got all the liquor I can drink. But five weeks, that’s not funny.”
“Especially on days like this,” smiled David.
“The government should stop that,” said Gagnon. “Five weeks – sacrament! Five weeks is five weeks.”
“Those guys were working for fifty bucks,” said David.
“Sure,” said Gagnon. “If guys don’t want to work – pataud! ”
“Well . . .”
“Yes, sir! With a new Ford you got no problems.”
“Anyway,” said David, hitching the case higher under his arm, “we can still get beer.”
“Me, I got all the liquor in the world. You don’t believe me? In the world.”
“Very nice,” said David.
“Go on, my frien’ – you say a kind that you like.”
David shrugged.
“Oh, I don’t know. I like most of them.”
“The name of one that you like.”
“Oh, pernod, I suppose.”
“You want to take a pernod?” demanded Gagnon, heaving himself up from the chair.
“Well, that’s very nice of you, but I . . .”
“I think you don’t want to drink with me.”
“No, no. Of course not,” said David. “It’s just . . .”
“Sure,” said Gagnon. “We’ll take a pernod. Pernod, rye, whisky, gin – krisse, no problem! Gin, rum, sherry, that white one there . . .”
“Well, I really mustn’t be long . . .” said David as he followed Gagnon’s waddling bulk into the dim foyer.
“This weather – sacrament!” said Gagnon, as he unlocked the apartment door – “it makes you thirsty like a prick.”
The smell.
The smell was rank and nearly made him gag. He tried shallow breathing. Shit certainly, piss, cooking, old sweat – but the sum was greater than the parts. Gagnon went into the kitchen alcove to get glasses and David put the case of beer on a kitchen table which stood in the middle of the living room. The table top was encrusted. Four chrome and plastic chairs. An open package of Wonder bread, a melted paper of butter, a bottle of FBI Cream Soda, a gallon tin of strawberry jam.
A pair of rubber pants hung from the TV aerial.
A once-pink armchair.
A gutted settee which sprouted yellowing tufts of kapok.
The liquor cabinet was large and baroque: glass doors with diamond-leaded panes and gold hinges, curved legs writhing with gilded scrollwork, cupid doorknobs.
He took the glass of pernod and sat down in the armchair wondering what had trapped him into being there and suffering this Gagnon who was accountable for unforgivable past abuse and hostility. Guilt that Gagnon was French Canadian? Class guilt? Defencelessness in the face of hectoring manners? As the glass touched his lips, he tried not to imagine the kitchen, tried not to think of the unspeakable French-Canadian diseases which were obviously endemic in such an apartment. Such as hookworm, ringworm, venereal disorders, tapeworm, cankers, botulism.
“Eh?” said Gagnon. “That’s the real good thing.”
The drink tasted like aniseed-flavoured maple syrup.
Staring at the plastic potty which sat on the carpet just in front of the chair, he made a judicious face. The potty was half full of piss; a pencil floated in it.
“It’s slightly sweeter than the kind I’ve had before. But very good,” he added.
Gagnon drained his glass. He sat on the settee with his legs apart to allow his belly to hang down.
“We’ll try the whisky,” he said.
“Well, I really ought . . .”
“I think you didn’t like the pernod.”
“No! It was excellent. Excellent,” said David.
“The whisky’s always good,” said Gagnon.
“How about a beer while they’re still cold,” said David.
“You save your beer,” said Gagnon.
On the wall above the settee was a large reproduction of The Last Supper; patches of it seemed almost iridescent in the sunlight.
Gagnon poured whisky from a Haig bottle into both glasses and brought them over. The whisky tasted only slightly less sweet than the pernod.
“It’s got an unusual flavour,” said David hesitantly. “Very interesting.”
“You notice that, eh?”
“Mmmm.”
“How much you pay for whisky in the commission there?”
“Oh, eight or nine dollars.”
Gagnon held up his glass.
“Seventy-three cents,” he said, “for the gallon.”
“What do you mean?”
“Steinberg’s.”
“They don’t sell liquor.”
“For the whisky taste. How do you say that? The – what you put in.”
“In?”
“In the alcool. The taste, there.”
“Oh, l’essence – the flavour.”
“Sure.”
“And you put that into alcohol?”
“That’s it – but that from the commission, that shit it’s not strong like this. I have this friend who use to work with me – a big man in RCA-Victor there,” gesturing towards the window. “A chimiste?”
David nodded.
“He brings me for nothing. One hundred per cent.”
Gagnon started to roll another cigarette.
God, that it might be pure! Any “big man” in RCA-Victor Gagnon was likely to know probably rendered down old records in his basement to extract the alcohol, bubbling the crude through Mr. Clean and filtering through an undershirt. Patches of The Last Supper were iridescent; glittering; moving. He’d rather be paralysed than blind.
“Your friend there – I think he isn’t from Canada.”
“He’s English,” said David, not letting the whisky past his teeth.
“Yes, but I think he isn’t from Canada.”
“English from England,” said David. “Me too.”
“You know what we call you guys?” said Gagnon. “Guys from England? Limeys. You ever hear that?”
David smiled and nodded.
“I wonder,” he said, “if I could have some water in this? I don’t usually . . .”
“That’s the real strong stuff,” said Gagnon.
“A bit too strong for me without water,” said David, shaking his head.
“There’s a lot of fog there,” said Gagnon.
“Pardon?”
“In England,” called Gagnon from the kitchen. “What you call fog all the time.”
“That’s right,” said David, taking the jug and thinning the whisky with as much water as he could get into the glass.
They sipped and drank in silence.
He could feel the drink hitting his empty stomach.
Gagnon sighed from time to time; from time to time, apropos of nothing, said tabernac! – an expression he seemed to favour.
David was offended by the naughtiness of French-Canadian swearing. So soppy. Rather like English children saying “Bum.” How could one take seriously those who expressed anger, wonder, or disgust by saying, “Oh, Host!”, “Receptacle for the Eucharist!” or “Little Box!”
Swimming about somewhere – if “tabernac” did mean the container of the Host rather than “tent” or “church” – the word was, was – ciborium!
Definitely something odd about The Last Supper. Optic nerves seared by 33⅓ juice.
Records were my downfall, doctor.
Gagnon was so fat that there was no loose in his trouser legs. His arms were thick and muscled but the skin was pallid. It was the paunch, however, which fascinated David. He observed it covertly. He found himself thinking of “the paunch” and “it” rather than of “Gagnon’s paunch” for it seemed somehow independent of Gagnon, an excrescence. It crouched on Gagnon’s thighs like a plump animal; like a porridge-filled balloon. Except that “balloon” was misleading as to size. And “garbage bag” was possibly exaggerating.
When he stood, the paunch hung like a little
barrel. A little firkin. But the key question – was it hard or soft?
Down, Firkin! Good boy!
In French, garbage bags were called “sacs à ordures.” A delightful word, ordure.
What, he wondered, did Firkin look like naked? Or, to be more specific, and specificality. Specificity. Try that again. Or, to be more specific, and specificity was always a virtue, how was it attached? Was it firm beneath the skin or did it hang like a vast boob?
And dependent on that, if “dependent” was indeed the word he sought, was the whole problem of how Gagnon achieved sexual intercourse. No erection would extend beyond, could extend beyond that overhang. Unless he was abnormally and mightily endowed or afflicted with giantism of the member – but such endowment or affliction could be discounted because there was nowhere in his trousers for it to go. David felt pleased with the logic of this. It would seem, therefore, that the answer was positional. Perhaps, lying down, the flesh subsided like a breast and his wife bestrode him?
Were that not the case, the words “sexual intercourse” were inadequate. He needed a cumbersome word, dignified, elephantine, a ponderous, lumbering word to do justice to such coupling.
Union?
CONGRESS
“It goes good, the rum there with the coke, eh?” said Gagnon.
“Splendid!” said David.
“Yes, sir!” said Gagnon. “That’s a beautiful car. It makes sense.”
Upstairs in his drawer was a packet of Ramses he’d bought yesterday against Susan’s coming, if indeed “against” and “coming” were the words he sought . . .
Stop! Stop.
“You want to buy a TV?” said Gagnon.
Susan!
“A colour portable?” said Gagnon.
“I don’t usually watch it,” said David.
“Twenty-four dollar.”
“That seems cheap.”
“They cost in the store five hundred, five-fifty. In the store,” said Gagnon with heavy significance.
“You mean . . . ?”
“I got guys I know – any little thing you want, you tell me and I order it for you, O.K.?”
“How much are electric typewriters?”
Gagnon breathed in heavily, shaking his head.
“Now is not the season for typewriters,” he said.
David nodded.
“I can get a electric piano,” offered Gagnon. “But that’s not the same thing.”
They sat for some time in an easy silence. The sherry tasted like cough medicine.
“My frien’,” sighed Gagnon. “We’re all a bunch of poor pricks.”
David nodded.
A key turned in the lock and Mrs. Gagnon came in. She was carrying a sleeping baby and trailed by one of the snotties.
David forced himself up and out of the armchair.
“This is Madame,” said Gagnon.
She nodded and said something in rapid French.
David smiled.
“She don’t speak English good,” said Gagnon.
Madame was wearing shorts and a halter. Green veins snaked and lumped in her white legs. She disappeared with the baby. The kid stood with his back against the wall near the door, staring. He looked as dull as his mother. David turned his foot on some clothes pegs which were scattered near the chair and sat down again. He pulled out some of the garments which were wadded uncomfortably behind him and dropped them over the arm onto the floor.
“No,” he said, “I’ll stick with the rum, if you don’t mind. I think I liked it better than the sherry and that other one.”
He glanced at the child, then stared. The kid’s face was bright red, tears starting in his bulging eyes. As David looked, the flush faded, the eyes returned to normal. He wondered if he should mention it. Embarrassing if the child was subject to fits. Normal enough looking now. Petit mal, was it called?
It seemed likely.
Madame came through the room and went into the kitchen alcove.
“She only got a few words in English,” said Gagnon.
“No, no,” said David, “I should be able to speak French.”
“You know what she is?” said Gagnon.
He opened his mouth and leaned forward on the couch. His mouth was a black O. He put a fat forefinger into his mouth and waggled it while letting out a falsetto scream.
David stared at him.
“Her,” said Gagnon, “she’s Indian.”
“I’ve never met an Indian before.”
“That’s what she is,” nodded Gagnon.
Was it polite to mention tribe? A tricky point of etiquette. Perhaps like asking an Australian what his ancestors had been sent down for? Stick to faces. If indeed, upon mature reflection, Australians, who consumed steaks with eggs on top for breakfast, would be? The point was, if it would bother them.
The kid had come nearer.
“Hello,” said David.
Nothing.
“Allo,” he essayed.
“He’s Réal, that one,” said Gagnon.
The kid, still staring and silent, edged nearer. He seemed to be the centre of a strong odour. Petit mal, indeed! The centre of a strong ordure. Réal had shat himself, and evilly.
Madame came in and cleared the table; didn’t clean it though. Need a hammer and cold chisel for that. Dish and kitchen noises. The Coke cut the sweetness of the rum. How could they sit down with a load like that in their trousers! To be able to speak real French, French enough to be able to politely hint that something be done.
The derrière of Réal is plastered with merde.
Had a fine lilt to it.
Madame talking from the kitchen; Gagnon answering.
Gagnon reclining on the settee; it did subside but did it subside enough?
The glass furred with condensation.
“She says do you like pizza and macaroni?”
“Oh, really,” said David, “I really don’t want to impose, really.”
“She made for you, my limey frien’,” said Gagnon.
“That’s most kind of you. I hadn’t realized it was so late. Really very nice of you. I will postpone, I will abandon my engagement.”
He had wronged this Gagnon.
Tears welled into his eyes as he clasped the honest fellow’s workscarred hand . . .
Something he had said there. Disturbing. He had said . . . ?
“I see you looking at my picture there,” said Gagnon.
“Sorts of glitter,” said David.
“That’s a heirloom picture,” said Gagnon.
About dinner, it was. He had said . . . . .
“You think,” said Gagnon, “she’s painted, that picture.”
“Can I use the phone?”
“Sure.”
Phone book almost impossible to read. Stupid small print. Wavery. Tracing along the line.
“On that painting,” said Gagnon, “I’m telling you is not one, single piece of paint.”
As he dialed, he saw letters in the blue carpet. Woven in red.
TEL.
He stooped on the last digit following the TEL further under the table.
WINDSOR HOTEL
Susan!
I’d have hung up.
I’ve got to see you.
I love you.
ALL THAT MATTERS IS I LOVE YOU.
And do you?
Susan?
He put the phone down.
“You never guess what she’s done with,” said Gagnon, “in a thousand year!”
“Who’s done with?”
“She’s done with wing!”
He waggled his fingers.
“Papillons wing. Papillons?”
“Butterflies,” nodded David.
“Tabernac! Butterflies! You ever hear of that thing?”
He bolted the bathroom door. Definitely a little squiffy. Food would fix that. He sat on the edge of the tub. The air was festooned with clothes; he pushed away a pair of nylons that touched his face. The light was fading. Like being a fish in the bo
ttom of an aquarium with the water above crowded with the bright hanging shapes of other fish. Cooler here and lino not those little black and white tiles. Lino with roses. Through the open window, jackfrost glass, he could hear vague traffic noises. He found he was breathing heavily; it was his nose making the whistley noise. He sat on the edge of the tub.
It is a hot summer evening, he thought, the light is fading, and I am in Montreal, Canada, and I am sitting alone, all alone, in the bathroom of André Gagnon, janitor, feeling sad.
On a shelf above the end of the bath stood a cut-glass bottle, a length of rubber tubing coming out of it and ending in a netcovered bulb. Scent? Or some strange feminine sexual accessory?
His words. And her words. The precise words spoken.
She had said
“It matters if I love you.”
He had said:
“And do you?”
And she had said:
“I don’t know . . .”
The lavatory, the lavatory was full of what he hoped were coffee grounds. He missed the bowl at first burst and steadied himself against the wall with his right hand, leaning forward. He aimed into the slop studying the effect, careful. The porcelain
I don’t know . . . she had said . . . I don’t know . . . peppered with black specks.
He pushed himself upright and worked the flush. Tumbled nature’s germens. A golden bottle of shampoo on the window sill. He peered at the fine print.
Versez un peu de shampooing dans la paume de votre main et appliquez aux cheveux.
Bent closer; definitely “shampooing.” Something wrong about that; wrong part of speech or something. An odd people, the French. Merely another instance.
He looked at himself in the dim mirror.
Undersea.
A Welsh accent sounding in his head.
If that wasn’t coffee grounds, boyo, someone in this house was in a bad way!
“Why,” he said aloud to his reflection, “are the British so amused by lavatory humour?”
Tears were running down his cheeks.
The light in the room was failing fast; Gagnon, save for the white glimmer of his T-shirt, was becoming an indistinct mound on the couch. The window was pearly.
David lay back in the armchair, Réal heavy on his chest and stomach, listening to Gagnon’s deepening snores and staring at a glint of light on the edge of the TV set.
He felt less well.
The pizza had been the frozen kind without much cheese and withered. The macaroni had been naked. Madame seemed to have disappeared again.