So you get comfortable in the living room. And for three hours, you pass around the pages, in complete silence.
You find the situation both entertaining and disconcerting. You feel like a tightrope walker on the wire of history.
We began to have higher expectations.
[ … ]
We must abandon the ways of society once and for all and free ourselves from its utilitarian spirit. We must not willingly neglect our spiritual side. We must refuse to turn a blind eye to vice, to scams masquerading as knowledge, as services rendered, as payment due. We must refuse to live out our lives in the only plastic village, a fortified place but easy enough to escape from. We must insist on having our say – do what you will with us, but hear us you must – and refuse fame and privilege (except that of being heard), which are the stigma of evil, indifference and servility. We must refuse to serve, or to be used for, such ends. We must refuse all INTENTION, the harmful weapon of REASON. Down with them both! Back they go!
Make way for magic! Make way for objective enigmas! Make way for love! Make way for what is needed!
We accept full responsibility for the consequences of our total refusal.
[ … ]
Meanwhile we must work without respite, united in spirit with those who long for a better life, without fear of long delays, regardless of praise or persecution, toward the joyful fulfilment of our fierce desire for freedom.
from Total Refusal/Refus Global, 1948
The breathing of the ones who have finished reading joins the rustle of the pages still making the rounds.
Borduas comes into the living room, threading his way quietly, aware of how tense the moment is.
When the last page has been set down, he asks everyone to leave. He wants your answers tomorrow.
He asks you not to talk about what you have just read outside of these walls, and he sees you to the door.
Too inflammatory, too risky. Roger Fauteux, Rémi-Paul Forgues, Yves Lasnier, Madeleine Lalonde, Pierre Mercure, Denis Noiseux, the Viau brothers, faithful friends and close collaborators of the group, refuse to sign.
Madeleine Arbour, Marcel Barbeau, Bruno Cormier, Claude Gauvreau, Pierre Gauvreau, Muriel Guilbault, Marcelle Ferron-Hamelin, Fernand Leduc, Thérèse Leduc, Jean-Paul Mousseau, Maurice Perron, Louise Renaud, Françoise Riopelle, Jean-Paul Riopelle, Françoise Sullivan will sign.
You also agree to sign the Refus Global. Because you want to belong, perhaps. Because you want to feel things intensely, like them. To be a true French Canadian. To rebel against your family. To find another family. To break down barriers, like Hilda Strike. That’s why you decide to sign.
The next day, the wheels are set in motion. Claude’s parents agree to loan you their house to print the manifesto.
You and Marcel manage to unearth an old Gestetner, which you will use to print four hundred copies. Everyone in the group has pitched in, and that’s the print run you can afford.
You station yourself near the printer and assist Claude, who operates it. It is slow going. Your fingers are covered with fresh ink.
Borduas has decided to add a few things to the text. A reproduction of one of Marcel’s sculptures and another by Jean-Paul. An oil painting by Pierre, and photos of Françoise’s dance performances. Three of Claude’s plays, including Bien-être, will also be added. Other oil paintings, other photos … You do the count. Everyone else has a place on the pages in your hands. Everyone, in one way or another, will be put on the Index. You envy them.
You hand a page to Claude, which he inserts in the machine. It’s his poem, which will be the manifesto’s cover, along with a watercolour by Jean-Paul.
You ask Marcel to take over for you, handing him the precious manuscript, and you leave the Gauvreau house.
It’s already dark out. You run home to get your poems.
It’s one in the morning when you ring Borduas’s doorbell.
He wasn’t asleep. His face is creased and his shirt is open. The wrinkles on his forehead get deeper right before your eyes. You would like to run your fingers over them. Plant flowers in them. But you hold back.
He invites you in. You glide into the hall, confident. He is whispering. His family is asleep.
He looks at you calmly, not surprised to see you. You hold out your poems to him. You ask him to read them. You tell him that you have a place in those pages, too. That you were waiting for this very thing. An invitation like an abyss in which to throw yourself.
He takes the few pages you hold out. He pulls them toward him. He runs his hand over the words without reading them. Pulls a piece of jute canvas from the pile, which he had looked at in the studio. Doesn’t read it, seems to recognize it.
His body is close to yours. He has a wild, wounded presence. He smells of warm sweat. He stares at you.
You move closer to him. Your breathing connects.
You ask him whether he will read them. He nods his head almost imperceptibly.
You apologize for having bothered him so late. And you leave.
Claude’s mother offers you another round of coffee. The sun has come up. Four hundred copies of Refus Global are almost all printed.
Claude is asleep. Marcel has taken over for him at the printer, when Borduas comes to join you.
You try to catch his eye. He strides toward the hundreds of pages that lie on the floor. You have collated them into booklets and are waiting for reinforcements to help assemble them. You have instructions just to fold them, without stitching or stapling, and to slip them in the cardboard cover.
Borduas is nervous. He is pacing the apartment without saying a word.
You approach him. You want to know.
You intercept him as he paces, stepping into his path.
But you are bothering him. You can tell immediately. You are pestering him, and he doesn’t like it.
He steps around you and keeps walking, heading toward the window. You realize that will be his answer.
Claude surfaces. His eyes puffy, he helps Jean-Paul fold the booklets. You interrupt them, ‘Not yet.’
Claude looks at you, confused.
‘We have to start over. I’m not signing.’
Marcel looks at you, stunned. You repeat clearly that you don’t want to sign.
Since the agreement was to respect everyone’s wishes, no one dares contradict you. Although Marcel tries to reason with you.
‘You’re going to regret it. And everything is already printed, with your name on it.’
You are calm, but you raise your voice a bit, adding solemnly that you don’t think it is well enough written. You think it could be reworked. That’s what you think. The text is too dense and complex for a breath of fresh air that should be inviting, light, inspiring. And Borduas’s dismissal has hurt you. You want to hurt him back.
He glances at you. You detect a hint of a smile.
He orders Marcel to reprint the last pages four hundred times, without your name.
You leave. It’s morning, the stores are opening, families are on the sidewalks. Church bells are ringing.
You wonder whether your river is overflowing and hope that Achilles has new boots.
People around you are talking loudly and laughing. It’s a normal, hot summer day.
History has just changed course, and you are standing in the shade.
The Refus Global manifesto is launched at the Tranquille bookstore on August 9, 1948.
Your little sister Claire has become a nun. You didn’t attend her taking of the habit. You think it’s a farce.
But today, you want to see her.
You go to the Sisters of Saint Joseph convent, where she lives now. It is a big, sunny building. Your shoes echo through the empty halls. All of this uninhabited space. Or maybe no space is so inhabited. You feel good here, and that unnerves you. Your religious past clings to you like a second skin.
Claire receives you in the large official sitting room. She sits in an armchair, facing you. You remain standing. Jesus
hovers over her.
She smiles. She says you look pretty, that you have put on weight and it suits you.
She congratulates you on your marriage. She is disappointed she wasn’t invited. She doesn’t say so, but you can tell. She asks whether you are happy. And you realize that is the very question that you came to be asked.
You lie and say yes. Claire knows you’re lying.
She asks you whether you have any friends.
No. Not really. You are still a stranger. You have no roots.
You tell your little sister that you’re free and that’s the way you like it. That unlike her, you like living life on the edge.
You are still standing in front of her as she beams in her stillness.
You shouldn’t have come. Claire knows you better than anyone. She can see your chasms no matter what you do.
You have to go. She doesn’t stop you.
You leave her a copy of the manifesto, which you snatched in the spur of the moment. The only copy where your signature still appears. Proof of your passage on this page of history.
For a week, negative reviews appear in the newspapers, criticizing both the manifesto and its signatories. Borduas, because of the ‘reckless and offensive’ remarks it contains, is targeted in particular.
Tuesday evening, you go to his studio as usual.
It’s empty.
Claude and Marcel are worried. You know the old wolf is lying low, and you like the idea of him hurt.
You go to his house. His wife opens the door. Behind her, you see his children eating. The mood is gay: bursts of laughter mingled with the pleasure of eating.
‘Paul-Émile was fired,’ she tells you.
Fired from the School of Furniture, the old wolf.
‘He’s not seeing anyone right now.’
The beast, decapitated.
It gives you a bit of pleasure. His wife looks at you, overcome. Maybe she spotted the satisfaction in your eyes. Maybe she is wondering how she will survive, with the children and a subversive, unemployed husband.
You gaze fondly at the house one last time. Misfortune has just befallen it and yet it is still cloaked in a raw, landlocked happiness.
You take Marcel’s hand as you leave. And you think that maybe one day you would like children.
On October 21, Borduas was relieved of his duties by order number 1394, ‘for conduct and written statements incompatible with the duties of professor in a teaching institution in the province of Quebec.’
Marcel finds a small apartment on Rue Jeanne Mance. You live in a double room, which serves as both bedroom and studio. The group drifted apart shortly after the publication of the manifesto and Borduas’s retreat, but you aren’t bored. You wander along Avenue du Parc to the mountain, which you climb at a leisurely pace.
You come back down through the cemetery. The dead bring you back to your body, acutely alive.
Your step is lighter here. You choose tombstones at random and read the names. Maybe you will find your child’s name on one.
You are pregnant.
You go back to the apartment before Marcel comes home, just to lie down a little in the solitude of the end of the day, which is different from the solitude of the morning.
You get the urge to paint.
You unroll a canvas, take out colours and a brush.
You want to paint a bird. A figurative bird, a real bird that is recognizable to the eye and that has no other pretense than to be a bird in flight that people will look at.
So that’s what you do. A red bird, with a broad wingspan and a graceful beak. You feel like a woman. Painting without a compass or a ruler. You don’t remember this ever happening.
Your bird’s flight covers the canvas; you draw a yellow sky for him and wish him a safe journey.
You sign it Suze, age 22.
Marcel arrives with his hands as red as a hunter’s. Since losing his job, he doesn’t smell like sawdust anymore, but he is working hard at the butcher’s, and every day he brings home a nice cut of meat, which you share while telling each other about your day.
That evening, you spread the tablecloth underneath your red bird, which is drying on the easel. Marcel smiles, criticizing the conventionalism. Before he starts in on the foundations of the Automatist movement, which you know by heart, you tell him you love him. You list a few names you gathered while walking by the tombstones on the mountain. And you tell him he will be a good father.
You head into town. You have five of Marcel’s paintings under your arm, rolled up together. He doesn’t want his child to have a butcher as a father. He is an artist, and you will help him.
You walk up Rue Sainte-Catherine to the Museum of Fine Arts. Obviously you know that Borduas and his disciples are feared there, or, at least, unwelcome.
But you aren’t afraid. They don’t know your face or your name for that matter, because it doesn’t appear on the manifesto, the lightning rod of the day.
You stride toward the office of the director. You knock and go in, smiling.
You find him absorbed in something he is reading, which he reluctantly lifts his head from. He looks at you, surprised, and asks how he can help.
You introduce yourself, tell him that you were just popping in, that you know that your being here may seem naive and unorthodox, but that you wanted to show him a few paintings, which you think are splendid and ready to be exhibited.
You know he will either smile or show you the door. He takes a moment to decide, and you take advantage of his hesitation to spread the pieces out before him.
They are part of a highly personal series Marcel recently painted, at night by candlelight. He calls them Combustions originelles. And you think they are beautiful.
The director’s powers of speech are restored, and he thanks you. He recognizes the signature of the group these paintings come from. He asks you to roll them up immediately. You do so, prepared to leave right away with the paintings under your arm. But at the door, he tells you to leave them. That he will unroll them when the time is right.
You want to throw yourself into his arms, kiss him full on the lips, dance like someone dying of thirst under rain that was a long time coming. But you don’t. You leave, barely containing the joy coursing through your body.
You feel like seeing Borduas. To console him, maybe.
You take a detour to his door.
The lights are out. You ring the doorbell. After a moment, you see him behind the glass. He is coming down the long hallway toward you. You notice the way he is walking. Haltingly.
He opens the door. You search for words in the face of his despair. He is absent, hollowed out. You ask him if he needs anything. He doesn’t answer. At a loss, looking for a possible spark of joy, you tell him you are expecting a baby. He looks at you then, coming back into his body for a moment.
And then you hear it, behind him. The silence. The black hole created by those who have left.
Borduas is alone. His wife and his children have left. You know he wants to close the door. To wallow in the space left behind. To wolf it down until he vomits it back up.
You take his hand, firmly, and you pull him toward you. You hold him in your arms. Your body is lost. Gliding. You whisper that they will come back. That people don’t just leave like that.
When you go home, you find Marcel painting. It is raw and passionate. You are about to tell him that his paintings are sitting in the office of the director of the Museum of Fine Arts, when, beneath the bursts of cyan and magenta, you spot the red wing of your bird. It is all that remains of its short-lived flight.
Marcel tells you that he ran out of canvases, that they have to be used sparingly, that they are scarce commodities.
You ask him to stop for a minute, to interrupt his brushstroke. You approach the painting, and with a childish gesture that you don’t explain, you touch what remains of your bird. A few feathers.
You tell yourself that, even hidden, it will survive.
You walk away, l
eaving him to paint in silence. You say nothing.
You suddenly remember the faint notes of a piano. The spectre of your mother, faded from the years.
There is commotion in the streets. A throng of walkers is protesting the extended imprisonment of Jules Sioui, a Huron. A militant for his people’s rights, he has been fighting for years for his nation to be recognized as distinct: they will no longer be forced to go to the front, nor will they pay federal taxes to the colonizer. Jules Sioui founded the Indian Nations of North America before being thrown in jail, where he is in his seventieth day of a hunger strike.
He will probably die. So you march for him. Truth be told, you hadn’t heard of him until yesterday. Pierre circulated a letter of support for his cause to the group. A letter you signed.
It’s the first trace of you in history. Your signature in support of an ‘Indian rebel.’
The bodies meld into one. A warm, fragile stream that takes over the streets of Montreal. Faces meld and feet fall into step. There is a flutter in your stomach. You let yourself be carried by the human current, which rocks you.
The child you are carrying in your belly in the midst of this group of militants is my mother.
Fifty years later, she will dedicate part of her life to Indigenous rights.
It’s the moment everyone has been waiting for. The big annual exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts. In this post–Refus Global year, what a lovely surprise to find that two of Marcel’s paintings have been selected.
You help him prepare the two pieces. You roll them in thick plastic and tape them up carefully.
Marcel notices how gentle your gestures are. You handle the second painting as if you are swaddling a baby for a nap. You smile at him. He finds you sweet.
Suzanne Page 7