Heroine

by Gail Scott

  Arm in arm we descend the outside stairs of our little flat. At Le Pavillon, comrades are sitting on iron chairs on a concrete sidewalk. Love-sated, I toss my magnificent red mane and stretch my tanned hand across the table. The women in F-group are so beautiful. Rose with her small tits and Irish curls. Smiling and licking her chops as she kisses X’s pockmarked face. What a sense of humour. He in turn is talking about the possibility of a general strike to a golden-haired French woman beside him. N comes in, his nose twitching as he leans his warm body toward me and whispers: ‘T’es si belle ce soir, j’ai envie de te sauter dessus.’

  My love, it’s funny you don’t notice. Maybe because at that precise moment the door bursts open. And some Chilean singers come through. Playing on their high Andes flutes. A blast of Indian summer air and Italian ice cream hit my face. The Chileans in their ponchos and flowing hair remind me of Appaloosas. Is that racist? I mean, what beauty, what strength, to sing like that of their comrades being tortured by Pinochet. N’s knee rubs against my leg. Suddenly the air is filled with the intoxication of roses. Your lit match by my right shoulder stays suspended above your pipe. I turn my head. The girl with the green eyes and a basket of flowers is leaning over the table.

  Just then Comrade X takes one of my cigarettes and says: ‘Chile is the vanguard of the combined and unequal Latin American revolution.’ The warm smell of male on each side is distracting. Maybe the euphoria is due to sickness. You’d been so nice, bringing me plates of ice to lower my fever in the autumn heat wave. I guess that’s why I don’t worry about how you look at the girl with the green eyes. X is still talking to me about F-group. Some rumour had spread that I’m a journalist. He asks if I have a high enough profile to help, through my articles, sensitizing the population to the atrocities in Chile.

  In the background someone is playing a melancholic song on the radio.

  ‘I’m no journalist,’ I say. But inside a black spot rises, reminding me of the time I tried to sell an article to an editor at the Holiday Inn. Just after it went up over La Hutte Suisse. The stone and glass decor and girls in miniskirts were pure sixties. It’s true we’d been flirting outrageously. Still, I didn’t expect him to push me down on his bed (gently). Without even drawing the orange curtains. In the shower after, I said to make myself feel better: ‘See this as a strike against monogamy.’ Knowing it wasn’t true, my love, because I couldn’t even bring myself to tell you.

  ‘I’m no journalist,’ I say to X. ‘I have a different view of history.’

  The melancholy song is ‘Autumn Leaves.’ About missing one most when autumn leaves are falling. We all laugh because that old-fashioned romanticism seems so incongruous.

  In the telescope the clouds hang low over the overpass to Park Avenue. In the park beyond, a grey woman crouches in the children’s climbing box. There’s a strange perfume under the dark leaves. The sun sets at both end of the streets. The grey woman stands, her filthy skirt falling about her stained legs. High above the glass tower, a little girl in a yellow raincoat. She starts to run, a sandwich-man behind her. Things happen to them young. Those were also my thoughts yesterday watching the cute lesbians, with chains in their ears and leather jackets, drinking coffee in the restaurant. The elegant pussycats don’t give a damn what anybody thinks. They’re not uptight like us because they haven’t fought with men. It’s strange to think that tightness became a problem, for what we hated most was rigidity of the body. No, they live on grain and welfare and just want to have fun. Still, I notice they’re inhibited about public kissing.

  I sit near, the better to hear. My chica serves me coffee. Sorry, Sepia, I should say the waitress. With me she used to be shy and nice. Now she hardly even smiles. Still, at night I hold her smooth brown skin, her jet hair, her beautiful lips next to mine. Not that I’m a dyke. And we dance the salsa. Around the plastic tabletop the young lesbians are breathing in the smell of cappuccino. And laughing at some joke. I’d love to insinuate myself into the middle. Then I could hear to which version of ‘live and let live’ they ascribe. Is it yours, my love, where everybody does what they want as if the other weren’t there? Or Marie’s, where a person lives for herself in order to keep from living for others as women usually do? Between the two is a subtle nuance. I think it’s the latter. For they walk like cats. As if the centre ran down their backs. Yet I could feel the alienation, the way one jeaned knee trembled wildly under the table, making the spoons vibrate. Sei-i-i-. Could be chemicals. C-cocaine. Although I doubt it. They say the product they put on apples to slow their growth until they redden makes you speedy.

  I get up to go. Walking carefully so as not to disturb a new vision in my head of the heroine of my novel. Inspired by them. Strong and passionate, her own person. Any pain she feels, she keeps hidden (like that young dyke’s trembling knee under the café table). So that the external image with the black leather jacket, hand-rolled cigarette, and heavy eye makeup is impeccably courageous. Unfortunately, in front of my door stands the welfare supervisor. I have to let her in.

  Then today, I’m walking home again, with my novel in my head, really ready to produce. And who’s standing there encore but Marie? Normally she has this gay indomitable personality. But today her sad brown eyes sweeping over my little bed-sitter have dark circles under them. And in the green light of late afternoon my home looks tacky. Especially with the television blinking in the corner. I usually keep it on to make the place feel cozy. Finally she sits down, first brushing off the sofa. Don’t be paranoid. She was probably only irritable due to fatigue. Because her film’s in production.

  I decide to act natural. I run a little bath. On the radio, Janis is singing ‘Try (Just a Little Bit Harder).’ Then I climb in and try to relax. The essential is to be myself. To go with my flow. Marie taught me that. Leaving F-group in I forget what year, she said it was time women started living for themselves. We were in the Bauhaus Brasserie (the comrades sent me to recruit her back).

  Outside on the sidewalk the slush was thick. Tugging his beard, Comrade M had given me some tactical pointers before I went in. But seeing Marie leaning against the white tongue-and-groove wall with the fireplace burning in the corner, I couldn’t believe it. She clearly had no regrets, she clearly didn’t give a damn about leaving the avant-garde of the revolutionary movement. Her tam was tipped jauntily on her head over the clear brown eyes. Her beautiful mouth wore plum lipstick painted a little too high on the tip of one lip. So she seemed to be smirking as she shoved a pile of papers across the table. Some scenario she’d written for a film. About a woman poet. Said she was experimenting in new ways of expressing women’s voices: ‘Ce qui compte, c’est le rythme. When I write I talk out loud. J’ai décidé de m’écouter moi-même. Sometimes I even change the syntax because there’s a relationship between THEIR language and THEIR laws. You can’t have one without the other.’

  ‘LEURS lois, est-ce que ça comprend celles de la gauche?’ I asked sarcastically. Then, afraid she’d see my jealousy at how fast she’d produced in her new milieu of feminist artists, I said, more sympathetically, more complicitly: ‘Celles de nos chers camarades mâles?’ The smirk widened and we both laughed. Sepia, I almost forgot the comrades suspected me of being part of the feminist phalange. They called us les sorcières behind our backs. At the next table a pale guy of another persuasion sat shivering, waiting to go to the moon. That’s what he said when his friend came: ‘Please. I need to go to the moon.’

  I added, gently (Marie angry can be really scary): ‘But we women can’t turn our back on everything patriarchal. I mean, take music, take technology …’

  ‘C’est vrai,’ said Marie, ‘mais tout favorise la prééminence des fils. Ce qui nous empêche de nous inventer nous-mêmes. Can a woman be centred if she isn’t in charge of her words?’ She blew a halo of smoke from her red lips. I wanted to ask: But what if in THEIR world, I mean THE world, that feminine voice cannot be heard? Because it has some quality, some flow that’s different than men’s?
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  Anyway, running the bath, I think: ‘If she asks, I’ll just say I’m taking her advice. Going with the flow, the better to be myself.’ Still, I listen carefully through the open bathroom door. To see if she’s changed her line on any of the above. For this is the eighties and there’s an attempt at peace between the sexes. Also, as usual, she is looking gorgeous sitting on the sofa. A woman who, despite her politics, always loved seduction. Any man who saw her sitting there would say: ‘A real female.’ The flesh is exquisite. Not to mention the satin skin, the silk undies, the soft dress. And the perfume. You could nuzzle your nose anywhere on that body without regretting it. As if, instinctively, the outer image had adapted to everything expected of a woman. While inside there’s a girder of steel. When you didn’t call for a week, my love, she said, her voice hard: ‘Get a job, rends-toi intéressante. He’ll come back. Actuellement, il a peur que tu le manges.’ As rationally as a man. When one guy leaves she replaces him with another. Once I asked: ‘How do you do it?’ And she said: ‘Je n’en fais pas un drame.’

  Oh, why doesn’t she look in my direction instead of keeping her nose fixed on the grease spot over the stove? Marie, the best of me is here. But her head doesn’t turn even though I keep saying to myself: ‘Yes, Marie, I’m waiting, waiting.’ Still, after a while her beautiful soft red lips start to speak: ‘C’est étrange, I had this dream. We were in a hotel in Halifax. You and I were pulling on a silver plate. One on each side. Il y avait une lutte terrible pour voir qui finirait par l’avoir. Finally I said: “Oké, take it. But you’ll never know what to do with it. Tu vas gâcher la chance que ça représente.”’

  She stands up again. Her soft skirt falling around her calves.

  Maybe she can play the game of seduction because she takes it for exactly what it is: a game. She said to me once: ‘Il a beau avoir ses airs libertaires, ton nouvel homme est très classique. Just remember that and you’ll be okay.’ She turns on her heel. Oh oh, she’s heading toward the door.

  This is the city, 5 p.m. That grey woman just went by my window again. In a green pall due to the moss creeping over the pane. Please. froth, fall gently now on my small point. Sometimes after a while it gets so sore I call it my dolorous reptile. Because after a while over-rigidity of the body sets in, keeping it from shimmering like it should. They say this is due to lack of concentration. Thank God, with you, my love, I never had that problem. Of course the focus of my pleasure was angled slightly in your direction. Then, toward the end you said I wasn’t modern, there’s the rub. Don’t be maudlin or the punishment is getting out of this nice warm tub. A modern woman has the detachment of an artist. That way she can recognize human progress even if it hurts. When you took up with the girl with the green eyes, I should have been happy. I should have opened my little fist and wished you the best. I should have listened to the others who said she’s good for you, my love, slowing you down, sending you to therapy and consciousness-raising groups. Helping you become the new man you always claimed you were.

  But I couldn’t bear the thought of losing all that beauty. On our second visit to Ingmar’s we were at a kind of Tiergarten. At the tree-lined edge of the terrasse is a row of iron chairs. You’d fallen asleep. The photo shows the profile of your cheek, with wire glasses resting on skin that tastes like the almond Easter buns they eat in Scandinavia. I’m waiting. We need to talk. The trees are twisted black and white like a Chinese etching. A flag-pole goes up by the stone railing. A mast. This could be a yacht. I must have also dozed off. For suddenly you’re dancing again. A woman’s head against your hairless chest. Your feet in the leaves. Some striking hospital workers come up to watch. Luckily, out of respect for your mother, you don’t go any farther. But how will you be later back in Canada?

  I have to pull myself together. To get a fix on the heroine of my novel. Hot autumn, and despite her errors the heroine’s moving euphorically toward the mysterious yet (she’s certain) fully integrated third bird in that dream she had. The one with a silver-grey back sitting on a branch. Having transcended the bird in her that’s dark, singing so quietly in the grass that no one hears. And also (she thinks), the dream’s chattering, flighty, painted second bird.

  Arriving in Montréal by Scandinavian Airlines, after her second visit to Ingmar’s, she steps onto the Dorval tarmac in a yellow sweater and brown leather skirt. Over her arm a European trenchcoat. She also has a European haircut. Going by a mirror, she smiles. The woman in the reflection could be out of a foreign movie. Of course, there’s much more to her than that. Her goal is to maintain a certain (modern) equilibrium. To be on every front a totally avant-garde woman. Before leaving, she’d written, in the sand by the twinkling Baltic: I’LL NEVER BE JEALOUS AGAIN. And covered it with a stone. In the taxi from Dorval airport to the city she resists stroking the blond hairs on her lover’s arm. Detachment is part of the image she’s working on.

  ’Tis March 17. We get out on the corner of Ste-Catherine and St-Marc. In the blue air damp with spring there’s a ring of chaos because a parade’s about to start. I’d like you to watch it with me but you can’t. You have to write a text on Le nouveau souffle de la gauche dans les pays nordiques for a central committee meeting tonight. For a moment you hesitate on the corner, taking in the scene. Along the street, small two-storey houses lean against tall buildings. Big American cars screech at stoplights. You say, once more, how macho and anarchistic North American cities are. Compared to Europe. However, you add, the mixture of races makes the women truly beautiful. Fixing your eye on one whose blue-black hair and white skin may point to mixed French-Native ancestry. Raising my face to the sun (a smart woman knows how to deflect tension), I notice our neighbour on the upstairs balcony bringing out his hemp plants. Down his shoulders flows his long hair. By the sides of the flowerpots curve his smooth calves. I look at the full part of his crotch between his legs. Feeling languid with the spring air against my cheek. You’re climbing the stairs to our turret smiling wistfully. Our room has your desk, our bed, and a bureau with some funny twisted sculptures on it left by a former tenant. (Soon we’ll move to that adorable flat on Esplanade by the mountain. A sign of your commitment.)

  Maybe, upstairs now, you’re putting on a record by Stravinsky.

  I cross the street. People are arriving for the parade. Some majorettes go by. Then a bus with blackened windows so you can’t see in. On the side is written: ST ANNE’S PARISH GOLDEN AGE CLUB. A little English girl with her pointed nose in an ice cream cone says bossily to her father: ‘Now, Daddy, we’ll stand right here, otherwise we’ll never see a thing.’ I move behind a stunning woman, whose high cheekbones and blond colouring maybe French and Irish. Wanting to see what makes her tick. The crowd presses my nose closer to her golden sheen of curls. A truck of Irish warblers passes. Followed by a group of men bearing swords and dressed in satin Arab garb. The air smells of people, her perfume and the earth swelling due to irrigation from spring runoff. I feel euphoric. My nose moves closer to her wall of silk. In the corner of my eye I see a Black man watching me. Maybe he’s thinking: ‘In this city everyone’s a minority.’ Maybe with my kinky curls and open trench coat he finds me interesting. The truth is he probably doesn’t give a damn. A slight breeze shifts the sheen of her bright hair. The blue air charged with the smell of rapidly melting snow reverberates against my skin. The word ‘euphoria’ has grown so large across my mind I have to write. Some Irish rovers pass. Hugging the black book, I head for a restaurant.

  Not that place selling submarine sandwiches. I can’t stand the smell. Going by, I notice a teenage girl in platform heels standing out in front. Holding a baby and saying to the kid beside her (he must be the father): ‘Please carry her, I can’t stand it any longer.’ ‘No way,’ he says, taking off. ‘I’m gettin’ outta here.’ The restaurant is full of green hats and the smell of beer. In the next booth is a woman so pissed she can’t stand up. But she keeps trying as if she really needs to go. Then she gives up, falling back in her chair, and orders another
scotch. ‘Why, Betty Hannigan,’ says the new waitress coming in on shift. ‘Haven’t seen you in a dog’s age.’ ‘How do I look?’ asks Betty, her drunken features smiling coyly. She’s wearing a brimmed hat, heeled rubber boots, and checked pants. ‘Oh,’ says the waitress, ‘you’ll pass.’ I write in the black book: Euphoria: When my cup runneth over (to take a note from Betty) I sense the way to freedom. The trick is to maintain the feeling no matter how dark the situation. I write smaller and faster, like I did, my love, sitting in the Harbour Restaurant, with you listening to the sound of ships moving up and down. There was a cop standing at the counter. ’Twas earlier that spring, 1975. And F-group was working on a little pre-Olympic anti-games campaign based on the slogan: HOUSING, NOT STADIUMS. Now I just have to hurry. A revolutionary has little time for dreaming. Soon I’ll close the black book and start my own political text. That’s okay. Euphoria is right for noting flashes of perception. But for real creation a person has to be neither happy nor unhappy, just floating along in the middle. The political text is on equality of women. They wanted me to do it, living as I am in such an open couple. That’s everyone’s impression. I order another coffee and a Danish, for greater concentration. Noting that under Betty’s feet there isn’t yet a puddle.