Heroine

  The snow starts. The tourist turns his collar up. Fallout is what it reminds him of. In the telescope the grey woman leaves the park. Headed for Ste-Catherine. Display windows as in a minuscule Los Angeles. Barbecue chickens turn on spits. Next to a woman gyrating on a box erotically. The sign reads: EROTIC DANCERS FROM NOON ON. ‘I love you,’ she hears the youngest court clerk at the darkened table say. Her heart lips part: ‘J’fais l’parking seulement.’ His moustaches spread in a bittersweet Saturday afternoon smile. Dreaming of light shining through red lace. Of beer bottles down gallery stairs. The way it could have been.

  Yes, the way it could have been. Had things turned out, my love, with us, the leather-jacketed couple, writing, working in the morning. Then devoting afternoons and evenings to the revolution. At night (after political discussions, demonstrations, union organizing), a glass of wine and stimulating conversation before we fall exhausted into one another’s arms. (No one else’s.) When we were still serene, I liked how you put corks on my knitting needles so the stitches wouldn’t slip. Feeling safe, I almost confessed that I found Marx hyper-rational. The way he stood man outside nature, the better to harness HER.

  But things seemed to meander from bad to worse. No, actually they went more in circles with variations of good and bad. It just seemed like a straight line because by last spring I’d grown so frantic (due to the failure of our reconciliation) that I thought the heroine could be like Ingrid Bergman in Jean Cocteau’s play The Human Voice. She’s talking on the phone, to the one she loves. But nothing she says gets through. ’Twas April and I wrote in the black book: Waiting for you to phone. After I saw you last weekend I fell into such a bad depression, I’m being followed medically. Can’t tell you or you’ll leave. Ring, phone, ring. But have to have energy to dig deeper. Marie says this dependency only SEEMS to be on you. Actually, it’s the displacement of some earlier love. Ring, phone, ring. Chain-smoking again. Where are my c-c-cigarettes?

  It’s a good thing I didn’t write the novel then.

  If only Marie had come and sat by the tub today, we could have discussed all that. I mean, the way we got from there to here. Permitting me to raise the issue of how the English heroine (of a novel) might look against the background of contemporary Québec. But she, canny as she is, got up off my little sofa, saying, as she smoothed her white dress before opening the door of my bed-sitter: ‘Même si je ne le dis pas souvent, je reste profondément indépendantiste.’

  I think she said that in order to distance. In order to hurt. Forgetting that in November 15, 1976, we’re all sitting in front of the TV set in an east-end flat. (Small rooms, slanted linoleum floors, swirly plaster walls.) A gathering of comrades and former group members watching the elections. When suddenly it’s announced the indepéndantiste Parti Québécois has won. Everybody’s happy, although, of course, we’d spoiled our ballots. For revolutionaries cannot support bourgeois-nationalism in any form. A comrade looks at me, LA SEULE ANGLAISE, and says, almost worried: ‘Well now how do you feel?’ (Funny how I only noticed later that the girl with the green eyes watched the scene from the corner. As an Argentinean, therefore also from a country oppressed by the Anglo-American military industrial complex, more readily accepted.) Slightly embarrassed, I stand up, raising my glass, and shout: ‘Vive le Québec libre.’

  As a feminist I shouldn’t admit it. But my independence problems were (briefly, for ’76 was a good year) on another level. Because, on the way over to the comrades’ house to watch the elections, you’d stopped in a men-only tavern to make a phone call. Waiting outside (’twas November), I couldn’t help noting you’d chosen a place to phone from that I couldn’t go into. So who were you talking to that you didn’t want me to hear? I stood there dripping wet, listening to some sirens go by and thinking: ‘It serves you right if the tavern burns down with you inside.’ Then felt silly for being jealous again. From that moment on, I would definitely change. Soon you came out, smiling sheepishly. Two nights later I’m riding by the same tavern on a bus. And the place is burning down for real.

  What struck me at that moment was the power of dark thinking.

  Never mind, even a revolutionary isn’t perfect. Of course she has to try. For life goes on in waves of falls and rises. Marie just happens to be going up as I am coming down. Those were my thoughts today watching her Gallic profile and eyelashes, slightly curled, on white skin as she turned her head a little, but not enough to put me in her line of vision. Probably trying to guard her distance, the better to avoid slipping back like I have. For her the fearful note is images from the past. She doesn’t want to be a casualty of colonization. Like that stylish aunt who wanted to be somebody. But was married to a bus driver who wouldn’t go anywhere, because back then you had to be English even to be a foreman. They lived in a tiny flat. She could only really shine at weddings, when, dancing the tango, she took up all the space by means of her gigantic hats.

  I almost blurted: ‘Outward trappings don’t mean failure. I’m an artist.’ But I’d determined not to say a word. Not unless she came in and sat on the stool by the tub covered by the lime-green satin bathrobe with a few old photos in its folds. Maybe she’d even offer me a smoke. At least she’d be close enough for me to smell her perfume. We could have also chatted about the current socio-political situation. I’d say: ‘How is the woman artist to create a positive feminist persona when she has internalized that the world is going to hell? To complicate matters, even men are suffering now.’ Then I’d tell her about being in that restaurant called Bagels’ yesterday on The Main. And this kid comes in, full of pride in his neatly leather-patched jeans. But from the hungry look in his eyes you know he’s starving.

  He says:

  ‘How much for a bagel and cream cheese?’

  ‘Two-fifty,’ says the waitress, a part-time model whose picture can be seen in many windows on the street.

  ‘Can’t you just make it with a little less cheese? I only have a dollar.’

  ‘Nope,’ she answers.

  Leaving, I notice he’s walking fast and smiling slightly. His head high. Maybe he’s going to do a robbery. That old woman next door, who never stops talking, said the junkies took everything in the last tourist room where she lived. Now she always carries her things in a bag with her. But I’m not afraid. No. No.

  The snow is getting deeper. Outside my low green window a man’s leaving black sled tracks on the white sidewalk. On the radio they’re saying among youth the unemployment is higher than ever. Authorities fear that for the homeless, this winter will be terrible. Then they play that depression song of lust and hunger: Puttin’ on the Ritz.

  But, I have to admit, in certain non-material ways spring seems the hardest. My love, that shaft of light in the park last April. And your shiny shoulders bearing down on the soccer ball. The smell of earth with those hard green shoots pushing through. At the time, knowing our reconciliation was failing, I wrote in the black book (under the line of pain): April 1980. Evolution of a spring day. Trees getting ready to bud. I take my aching body to the library to start my book. Then I’m trying to locate you, my love. Wondering if you’re up to something. Why am I so unprogressive and overbearing? A broken record in my head repeats the sentence: security is the lapse that makes the mouse play. What does THAT mean? On the second floor of the Annexe Aegidius Fauteux de la Bibliothèque Nationale, your voice on the phone says (reluctantly) I can come over. Then we’re sitting in your kitchen in a dusty shaft of light. Drinking coffee from your wonderful white porcelain cups. Bent over the table, our curly heads are so beautiful, so young. A blue-and-white fruit bowl completes the picture. We talk quietly. But your fundamental silence makes me fear it’s finished.

  Fortunately, the heroine’s tough, socially progressive, external image will protect her from such sentimental weakness. But what to do then with her internal desolation? Even in Brecht you could sense the darkness. Granted, mostly in the songs. Oh moon of Alabama / it’s time to say goodbye … / I must have whiskey / OR
I WILL DIE. Still, I think it’s better to hide it for the moment. To start by focusing on her high points, her periods of euphoria. Writing well over the top. A good place to begin would be that other spring when she’s really flying. Because loved by two.

  The scene is the restaurant with the blue floor. She’s sitting there in a red sweater, with her red curls, beside her main lover.

  In the blue sky outside the door, spring clouds are about to let through a burst of hallucinating illumination. Yes, she’s with him but also waiting for N with whom she’s shortly going to have a passionate affair. They’ve been out selling F-group’s newspapers at the hospital gates. Then back at headquarters listening to a report regarding a sticky-fingers operation. Ways and means of procuring new IBM typewriters from an unnamed educational institution, because the comrades figure equipment bought by taxes belongs to them as much as anyone. Why should taxes pay only for the production of official ideology?

  Now, in the café with the blue floor, they have a couple of hours before the afternoon meeting to plan the evening’s intervention in a Chilean solidarity meeting. He’s working on a political text, but she (when she’s feeling good like this) shoves duty out to think briefly of the novel she wants to write. She opens her black book diary to where she has pasted a clipping about a great Chilean revolutionary woman. A possible role model for the heroine of her story.

  PINOCHET LIBÈRE RAMONA RODRIGUEZ

  Santiago – Ramona Rodriguez, the companion of Pascale Puig, secretary-general of the MNR, killed Oct. 5 during a confrontation with security forces, left Santiago Saturday for London. The young woman, who was carrying a special pass from the external affairs department, boarded an Air France plane. She is eight months pregnant and was wounded during the Oct. 5 struggle. A spokesman said she was pale and had her arm in a sling. Ramona Rodriguez is the ex-wife of Miguel Allende, another leader of the MNR.

  A woman with everything. Loved by two (although one’s dead), not afraid to face the barricades, even when pregnant. Instead of hanging on the periphery while others get arrested. Shh, never mind that. A member of the avant-garde can’t be too self-critical, given all the outside pressure. But I wonder, did she feel guilty knowing she was about to leave one of those precious brilliant leaders of the struggle for another? Knowing it could cause pressures in their revolutionary group. Walking into the grey college room where the clandestine meetings of the group were held? Maybe she’d be wearing a long blue skirt. And large earrings. Down below stretched a street toward the prison where they held political prisoners. She’d sit strategically between the two men who loved her. Or later (when they got it sorted out and she was pregnant), did she get morning sickness standing outside in the beating sun selling papers at the dusty entrance to a copper mine a long way from Santiago? Certain comrades think people with children can only be fellow travellers. Obviously that’s not true. I’m going to try to be more like her. Keeping in the present, the better to sense the edge of change. So a day in the perfect life of a revolutionary would look like this:

  5 a.m. Coffee with you, my love. Beside the good-smelling cup, a package. You always give me presents when you can’t touch me with your penis. I mean, at conjunctures in my life when I feel lower sexual interest. The quadrangle in your palm is further proof of your generosity.

  6 a.m. A warm day predicted. April mist rising off the park. We take the bus to l’Hôpital Ste-Justine. The workers have just struck. I step off in my huge red sweater. Wild curls, rimless glasses that make the guys standing round take notice. You’re behind me with a hand on my shoulder. (An unusual gesture.) The Maoists, the Communists, and us, all pamphleting the pickets. Ours show how a general strike can lead to worker power. The goal is a Québec free state, socialist and independent. We also call for hospital occupation. That way the workers can supply essential services and at the same time be an example of autonomous management. It seems so obvious I can’t see why they don’t do it at once. I ask one, and he says (eyeing my small tits): ‘C’est intéressant. Mais on se méfie un peu des communistes.’

  10 a.m. A meeting of the newspaper cell at headquarters. Despite the coming clouds, the weather is so fine it’s hard to stay inside. We decide to leave the door slightly open. Even if the guy parked across the street is likely a cop informer. He can’t hear us. He can’t hear us. The debate is whether or not to run an editorial saying comrades are being hassled by cops. Some have been raided. Others phoned. The voice always says the same thing. ‘Attention ou tu vas passer tes vacances aux frais de la reine.’ News like that frightens me so much I walk the streets hugging the walls. Trying to look innocent when cop cars pass. This morning I was doing just that, hugging the cement side of the Park Avenue underpass. When ahead of me on the grass I see this flasher. With one hand he’s pumping his little red penis. With the other he holds to his mouth a cigarette he’s desperately puffing. The smoke rises in spurts, comme à Rome, when the Pope dies. ‘When he’s elected,’ says a comrade, plutôt sec, when I tell the story to the newspaper cell.

  The lens shifts again to that dome-shaped café. Inside, a group of chic men and women raise their glasses and sing an eighties homage to Champagne. Near them, at another table, a few demonstrators quietly fold the dove of peace. Before ordering their beer. Among them, you, my love, and the green-eyed girl. They say you behave as such a new man to her, both of you are really happy. In fact, she’s so young and beautiful (as well as feminist) that your couple has become a sort of symbol for progressives. What the new man and new woman together can do. Now that the couple seems back for good.

  I was the sucker to think it ever left. I should have listened to my father that summer dusk as we drove over the bridge (our fingers covered with raspberry stains). And I, looking at the sun setting in pink and blue stripes, said: I want to be an artist when I grow up.’ He said: ‘I don’t think so, you’ll just get married.’ ‘Why,’ I asked, thinking of Her sitting on the veranda, ‘would anyone want that?’ And he made one of his stupid cracks:

  ‘Love insurance.’

  Still, my love, sometimes I wonder if it wasn’t me who lied. Pretending to be jealous certain springs when I felt good, craving the music of a trio. Example, sitting in the restaurant with the blue floor, N was on my mind. Yet, metaphorically speaking, winter had kept us warm. We’d developed our little habits the way a happy couple does. One being to come to precisely that restaurant every day because the landlord refused to heat our flat. Apart from that we loved our little place so much. When it snowed the light was white. The lit-up cross on the mountain shone in at night. Fear in the morning was a note on the door (as the first cigarette smoke hit my stomach), saying: You’re being evicted for cockroaches and filth. Signed: The landlord. So with the old bugger I played it careful. Asking for nothing. Having reformulated in my mind five times the way to say: ‘Euh, we’re chilly.’ Then plugging my ears while he screamed hysterically he was calling his lawyer and would have us evicted in five minutes. Nor would you, my love, argue with him about the heat, being under pressure as you were. Because F-group was in a crucial period of building the revolutionary organization. Shoring up against the coming period of reaction.

  Besides too much domestic comfort indicated permanence.

  In the mirror of the restaurant with the blue floor, I watched the comrades’ faces gathered around the other tables. Sure we had internal squabbles, fear of police repression, and crazy painful love affairs. But we also had something so heady, so incredible, others could only guess at it. Like Mick Jagger in the poster on the wall (smirk, outrageous clothes, relentless sexual charge) we lived on the fringe of a new era.

  11:40 a.m. N hasn’t showed. Your hand’s on my leg. On your face that sheepish smile that comes when you sniff illicit sex. I mean extra. Because you know something’s about to happen with N and me. I think: ‘Ha ha, eat your heart out. It’s my turn to have some fun.’ Thank God I can quickly block the cruel thought out. Although it’s April, snow is falling. I feel the febri
lity of the waitress. In a high voice over the clatter of dishes, she’s singing: ‘Aider l’amour.’ Rising like the sound of spoons over a water glass. Seii-i-i-i. She comes out from behind her counter. Shirt tucked in at the back. But left out in the front in a moment of thoughtlessness. She is almost touching her face with her strung-out hand. Walking, her high-heeled boots barely skim the floor. We smile in complicity. Youth in revolt. Now they dull the pain with drugs. But soon they’ll rise up and take back their own.

  That’s what we’re working for.

  Then Mick Jagger is singing ‘Dancing with Mr. D.’ It’s an evil song. Same initial, too, as D, N’s live-in girlfriend. She has beautiful black hair and middle-class skin. Had a pertinent discussion with her once about what a daughter of the Québécoise bourgeoisie, whose progressive nationalist family wanted her to make it for the sake of bettering the image of the nation, can do for the class struggle? Putting on my older-sister role, I suggested a part-time job. Devoting the rest to politics. Because a revolutionary can’t take any profession seriously as it’s now practised under the capitalist system. Except maybe art. She pretended to be listening respectfully under that glowing hair and cheeks of peach. But later I dreamed that while I slept with N, she was sitting straight-backed (under her well-cut shirt the cupped breasts that moved a little when she walked) on the grass on the mountain. Smiling slightly. Not the least bit impressed or threatened.

  12:15 p.m. We’re sinking into a jazz afternoon. Actually, the tape is playing ‘Sister Sherry.’ The beautiful waitress’s voice still sings. But quieter now. So what, what angers? All’s fine. You’re sitting there with your hand on my knee. Still titillated because tonight N and I … (though nobody’s said a word). I notice you’re not worried. You just keep writing your text defending F-group’s decision to drop questions like feminism and anti-imperialism and intervene directly in the workers’ movement. The anger buzzing in my mind gets stronger. Despite the fatigue that’s setting in. At 6 a.m. we were distributing pamphlets to hospital workers. Now I’m too tired to grasp the shaft of light that was the poem I was going to write. As an artist I need to be my own woman. Not handing out pamphlets, writing. Writing.