October 1970 (12 page)

“Better and better.” Branlequeue beamed appreciatively. “Good. I think we deserve another round after that
 . . .
”

As always, the tone mounted slowly, the voices became thicker, the discussions grew more heated, more chaotic, the entire table seeming to dance on a thin line between scandal and genius.

Taking advantage of the fact that he was still reasonably sober, Branlequeue refilled his glass and resumed control of the seminar.

“In this newspaper article there is probably more mystery and human drama than in a dozen pages of Shakespeare. The text you hold in your hands reveals a few things, but it hides a few things from us as well. In fact, it hides as much as it reveals. The mask betrays its real function: it shows us the very thing it would hide from us
 . . .
”

The Octobeerists hung on his every word.

“We are literary scholars. Our vocation is to decode texts. And it is my belief that this strange example of prose contains the key to many of our preoccupations. Read it again carefully, keeping in mind that the police controlled a great many journalists. Their exaggerated overstatements are the oil in a machine that creates atmosphere and fabricates public opinion. We are looking for the subtext, the infrastory
. . . .
We should read it as if we were defusing a bomb, opposing our intelligence to theirs. Disinformation is nothing less than the bastard child of the union of literature and publicity. In brief, we are swimming in a pool of semiotics, my friends. The text that you have before you may well be a kind of minor masterpiece
 . . .
”

“Maybe, but in any case it isn't addressed to me!”

Everyone turned to Marie-Québec, who was sitting at the opposite end of the table, the only hanger-on to have turned up that day.

“Excuse me?” asked Chevalier.

Marie-Québec squirmed in her seat, then leaned forward.

“All I said was that I didn't understand a word of it. And for a very good reason: because it wasn't written for me. That's obvious.”

Fred turned toward Chevalier:

“The question of the intended reader
 . . .
”

Chevalier, pensive, nodded silently. As for the young woman, a first-year drama student, she was so uncomfortable with all the looks she was receiving that she did her best to be forgotten again, and at the first opportunity she put on her coat and fled to the door.

Sam let the silence continue for a few seconds, and when the meeting erupted once again in a contained euphoria of cackles and crazy laughter, he took his own leave.

Stepping out onto the sidewalk, he saw her hurrying through the rain, making her getaway, perfectly discreetly, as untheatrical an exit as anyone could want, he thought. Then, seized by a sudden impulse, he almost ran after her, but changed his mind and let her go.

VILLA GRANDE SECTOR,
ITALY, 1943

THE COMPANY HOLDING THE POSITION
had established its advanced command post in the carcass of a tank that had driven over a mine. The message came over the radio in the middle of a German counterattack: machine gun almost out of ammunition. Bédard, the brigadier-general, ordered two cases of cartridges to be loaded onto a donkey and two men to go with it.
Poor beast
, he thought as he watched them leave,
nothing of what's happening here is its fault
. But when he thought about it, that was the case with them, too, wasn't it? With each shell that exploded, they could see the donkey stiffen, plant its hooves in the ground, and flatten its big ears, and the two men had to pull it harder each time to get it to move, one pulling, the other pushing from behind to take up the slack. The rest were able to follow their progress from a distance thanks to the Boche flares that kept going up and coming down, slowly burning themselves out above the incredible confusion of battle, the close combat, sometimes at point-blank range in thick shadow saturated by explosions and lights, tracer bullets, and the smell of gunpowder and burnt flesh, the dry rattle of the machine gun still holding its position, and the muffled sigh of mortars followed by the exhalation of shells and the shaking of the earth all around. Halfway to the machine gun's position, the donkey stepped on a mine.

A huge orange geyser filled with bits of donkey and steel rose from the ground into the illuminated night. Clots of earth and sharp explosions were still peppering the roof of the shelter when the brigadier-general's voice resumed yelling — “Stretcher-bearers!” — as though he really expected anything in that heap to be still alive. A stretcher-bearer, identifiable by the red cross on his armband, grabbed one end of the stretcher and caught his colleague's eye. The colleague nodded, and it was clear they were thinking the same thing. They set off at a light trot, leaning forward, heads drawn down as far as possible into their shoulders, in the direction of the cloud of sulphurous dust that filled the entire space ahead of them and was spreading slowly over the battlefield and into their lungs until there was nothing else to breathe where they were. Their route looked impossibly long to them as the mortars continued to explode, making the mud quiver around the bombed-out assault vehicle below them. At the spot where the donkey and the two men had last been seen was an enormous crater into which they almost fell, smoke rising out of it as from a huge volcanic mouth that had been hidden from view. They crawled into it and began their search. By patting the ground ahead of them in the darkness, they came up with several bits of skin, three or four pieces of donkey hide, and one hoof. That was it.

Meanwhile, the situation on the hill had become critical, and the brigadier-general ordered the men to make a second attempt. When the stretcher-bearers appeared at the shelter with their empty stretcher, they were met by General Bédard, hands on hips, standing as straight as an I. “Where are the wounded?” he thundered. “Up in smoke,” came the reply. But the man who made it could see that this response was not going to make the brigadier-general's day. Surely he wasn't going to send them back in there? He hadn't even had time to formulate that thought before he felt himself being grabbed by one arm, and before he could understand what was happening he had been turned precipitously around and, still clutching the stretcher, was doing his best to avoid a series of swift kicks to his backside delivered by the brigadier-general. “Follow me!” cried the latter, and he meant it, overtaking the two men and leading them back into hell. They could see the general's gigantic silhouette rising up out of the smoke at the lip of the crater, hands on his thighs like a tourist peering over the edge of a cliff. The scene was illuminated by the flares and explosions that continued to rain down around them. When they saw their commanding officer doing their work, the stretcher-bearers felt foolish and began to look around as well, groping their way through the burning shadows in a kind of frenzy. They found one of the men ten feet away, missing two legs and an arm; blood was spurting in huge, burbling jets from the stump.

The brigadier-general came up to them. One of the stretcher-bearers, who was on his knees beside the body, looked up and shook his head: dead. “Are you quite certain of that?” shouted Bédard. Just at that moment there was a momentary lull in the roar of battle, and the man who had just been declared dead opened his eyes and said: “Not sure
 . . .
I'm quite dead yet
 . . .
commander.”

They put a tourniquet on him, then hoisted him onto the stretcher, and while they were doing so the general found the other soldier a few feet away, in no better shape than his fellow soldier. The general lifted him across his shoulders like a sack of potatoes. And so they headed off into the night, completely soaked in blood from the stumps of the half-dead man who, admittedly, was easier to carry because he was missing two or three limbs. Whenever the pair at either end of the stretcher stumbled with their load over bomb holes, the good general found some way to keep them going. If anyone had predicted that night that the two donkey attendants would make it, he would have been laughed out of the regiment. But that's what happened: they both survived, costing the government a fortune in prostheses.

In the 22nd regiment this story was often told. It was like a glorious wreath around the brow of the regiment and its mythic commander, to show to the lowliest orderly stationed in Cyprus what sort of stuff Brigadier-General Jean-B. Bédard was made of.

DORA OF THE JUST

SAMUEL WAITED FOR MARIE-QUÉBEC IN
the Lavigueur Tavern, sitting at a table near the window. When he looked up from his beer, he recognized the portrait of Raoul Bonnard, the former comic and crooner, the Channel 10 man, his face swollen like that of an overstuffed gargoyle covered with make-up that cracked when he smiled. Powder-blue suit, red bow tie, white chrysanthemum in his lapel. Thick Brylcreemed hair of a dubious colour. Le Bonnard from the heyday of cabaret.

Across the street, between two tattoo parlours, was a pile of boards and rubble that had once been a Hells Angels hangout before it was destroyed by a car bomb. Just to the left was the window of a pawnshop, a favourite with the local petty thieves, and a store selling old clothes whose owner, wearing his perpetual cowboy hat, lit a candle for Kurt Cobain every day in the church next door, which had been taken over by Latinos. At the corner, the masculine silhouette of a homeless person spun like a top at each passing car.

“Hey! Psst
 . . .
”

Sam raised his eyes to the king of entertainment's painted mug, looked around, and then looked back at the painting. He hadn't been mistaken: Raoul Bonnard had indeed tried to attract his attention. Above the bow tie, his bloated face resembling the physiognomy of Thing, one of the Fantastic Four superheroes, softened suddenly and spread into a sly, astonishing smile.

“How's it goin' there, young fella?”

Samuel looked around again, then back at the portrait.

“Are you talking to me?”

“No, I'm talkin' to the wall. Hey, kid! What do you call a Negro buried in the sand with his ass in the air?”

“No idea.”

“A bicycle rack!”

Samuel looked quickly over at the waiter.

“Mr. Bonnard
 . . .
that's not funny at all.”

“Maybe not, but you got a face on you like a bloodhound with a head cold. How come you're sittin' here fuckin' the dog all by yourself?”

“I'm waiting for a woman.”

Raoul leaned out of the canvas and gave him a twenty-four-carat wink accompanied by a truly lecherous grin.

“
Attaboy
! What're you drinking there, my son? Scotch? Cutty Sark?”

“Why not make it turpentine? What are you trying to do, kill me?”

Then Samuel gave a start: the waiter had come up to his table and was looking at him curiously.

“A Cutty Sark,” said Sam.

Marie-Québec ordered an apricot beer. The waiter gave her an uncomprehending look, and Sam went to her rescue.

“I'd be surprised if they have that here.”

“Okay, I'll have a Belle Gueule, then.”

The waiter still didn't move.

“They don't have Quebec beers, either,” Sam whispered.

Looking up, she favoured the waiter with a forced smile that seemed the essence of charm.

“Right. Got it. I'll have a draft.”

“Excellent choice, Mademoiselle,” said the waiter, before he moved away.

Sam asked Marie-Québec a few questions about her work. She had just spent two weeks in Montreal filming a couple of scenes from
The Just
and was leaving the next day. When Sam asked her what character she was playing, she realized he hadn't read the play. She supposed she might have been playing the Grand Duchess, but did she really have the kind of head that would be a Grand Duchess?

She tried to sound Samuel out on the character of Dora.

“I'll have to reread the play,” he told her.

“Because you've already read it?”

“Oh, sure I have. Camus, a must-read.”

The lie didn't convince her and they both knew it. The conversation trailed off. After a moment, Marie-Québec got up and went to the bathroom.

“Hey!”

Samuel looked up at the painting.

“Yes, Raoul
 . . .
”

“Nice piece of ass. Play your cards right and it'll take you three, maybe four sentences to get her from here to your bed.”

“I'm not completely obsessed with sex, if that's what you think.”

“Yeah, go tell that to someone else, I ain't buyin' it. And stop tryin' to make her think you've read all them French philosophers. Keep that up and she'll be out of here in ten minutes flat.”

“No, she won't, Raoul. She's an actress
 . . .
”

“Yeah, I've known a few actresses in my time. They don't get lips like that from suckin' lemons.”

“What do you think of her? I mean, seriously?”

“Well, to be honest, I prefer blondes with bigger tits. And I gotta ask myself what she's got against high heels. But listen, she's got a nice little heart-shaped ass on her, and ever since she got here she's been tryin' to rub up against your knees under the table, so I'd say
 . . .
”

“What's with the knees?”

“Yeah, keep playin' the innocent. What d'ya think she's doin' in there? Crossword puzzles? She's gonna come back with her face all made up and perfume on her, and then we'll see what kind of stuff you're made of, my man.”

“Marie-Québec isn't like that.”

“Hey, listen up, Happy Face. I'm advising you to take my advice, otherwise you ain't gonna get nowhere.”

“Dream on!”

“Yeah, well, what else can I do, jump into a cab? You gotta score for both of us
 . . .
”

From the corner of his eye Sam saw the young woman in question coming back. Walking silently in her running shoes, she moved with a graceful modesty and simplicity that could not have been put on, even though her self-assurance and a certain tightness in her gestures spoke of effort and self-consciousness. Sam imagined the former stars of the music-hall stage, like Denis Drouin and Ti-Zoune Gimond, salivating as she walked past their portraits.

He cast a final glance at the painting. The old straight man gave him a spicy eyeful, the whole Bonnardian gamut. The facial equivalent of an all-dressed with extra anchovies.

The last thing I read of Camus's
 . . .
”

Samuel stopped himself. Bonnard, from his frame, was holding his head in both hands.

“What's going on?” Marie-Québec asked.

“Nothing. The last thing I read of Camus's was his defence of Don Juan in
The Myth of Sisyphus
.”

“Oh? And what did Camus think of Don Juan?”

“First, he was a pretty good Don Juan himself. By which I mean he was someone who knew he was mortal and believed in holiness down here.”

“And is that what you are? A Don Juan?'

“Not yet. But I'm working on it.”

“Not very hard, from what I can see.”

“When I was fifteen, I wanted to be an engineer. At twenty, a biologist. At twenty-five, a writer. But when I turned thirty, I really understood what I wanted to do with my life. It was Don Juan or nothing.”

“Well, in my case I didn't get off to much of a start.”

“But you're an actress. Your goal in life is to seduce.”

“No. My goal is to change the world.”

“I don't believe it. You've been put on earth to give pleasure. Changing the world, that's something else altogether. You need an AK-47 for that.”

“What's an AK-47?”

“An assault weapon. Soviet made.”

“So you're a nihilist.”

“I may well be.”

“It's people like Dora who change the world. With their love. And me, when I'm being her.”

“I adore Dora.”

“But you don't know her.”

“I've read the play. But it was a long time ago.”

“If ever. And you haven't read
The Myth of Sisyphus
, either.”

To prove to her that he had, Samuel launched into a long harangue about reconciling the Casanova and the actor/actress in the Camusian absurd, which quickly embroiled him in a web of conflicting ideas, a total cerebral miasma in which, in the end, every possible position was abolished by its opposite, and from which he extracted himself only in time to see the young woman stand up and hold out her hand.

“I think I'd best be gone.”

Samuel looked at her hand with a stupid expression on his face. He took it with as much enthusiasm as if it was a venomous snake or a baited marten trap.

“Are you staying here?” she asked him.

Fully aware of the immeasurable inanity of the only word that he could bring to his lips, he said it anyway.

“Yes.”

She gave him a fixed look, turned on her heel, and left.

“Bravo.”

“Not you again.”

“My boy, it's not as though it's your face on the marquee, you know what I mean? You gotta work at it a bit!”

“I'm socio-affectively maladapted, is that what you're saying?”

“Look, that wasn't a pole she was handing you when she left, it was a whole goddamn Hydro-Québec pylon. What are you waiting for? Get off your ass and run after her. I'll pick up the tab.”

“Thanks, Raoul
 . . .
” Sam murmured as he jumped to his feet.

When he emerged onto the street, he had to run barely thirty metres to catch up with Marie-Québec at the next corner, apparently waiting for someone. She looked up at him.

“Do you want me to come with you?”

Here I am, sitting at the kitchen table nibbling at the heel of a baguette and reading, for the third time, a paragraph in an article by Réal “Real Life” Poirier on the Pavlovian Saga — Sergei Pavlov, the hockey player that is, the Red Light, the Russian Missile, recently acquired by the Montreal Canadiens, and whose mysterious upper-thigh injury and his eight-million-dollar-a-year contract are the hot topics of the day. In a few seconds the coffeepot on one of the burners on the stove is going to explode. Through the open bedroom door, I can see her stretched out on the bed, at the foot of which the rumpled sheets make a kind of elongated lump, and I think: cat. She has that suppleness of body, nervous and languid at the same time. And I remember when I entered her last night and again this morning the sound that escaped from her lips and her chest could only be described as a growl. The impression of having spent the night fucking a cat, and having shared enough secrets to last a thousand years, and of not having felt this good since Christ knows when.

“What do you want to do later?”

“I'm almost thirty years old. This
is
later.”

“I mean in your life. By today's standards, you're still an adolescent.”

“I want to live alone, in a cabin, in the woods. In voluntary simplicity and truth. That's it.”

“But that's no ambition for a young woman like yourself
 . . .
”

“What's an ambition for a young woman like myself? To be celibate?”

“Among other things.”

“And why is living in a cabin not a legitimate ambition? Too difficult?”

“Yes, for a woman living alone.”

“But if it's so difficult, is it not therefore a legitimate ambition?”

“You have a point.”

“And to be celibate, is that difficult or isn't it?”

“Not so difficult, it would seem. But all right, I just can't see you doing it.”

“Doing what? Living alone in a cabin or being celibate?”

“Both.”

“You don't have enough imagination.”

“And you, you have absolutely zero ambition.”

“I do what I can. I'm in a play in Abitibi.”

“Dora. That's a really nice name.”

She had a small, striped kitten inside her that growled when he opened her up and brought her to the end of herself and raised her up like a feather a fountain a full moon, and it became her gravitas, her risen rose.

The Mazda, or Colt, or Corolla pulled up behind a taxi in front of the bus station on rue Berri, and Samuel put on the four-ways. He turned to Marie-Québec, who was huddled in her winter coat.

“Funny, but I have the feeling that what I'm going to say now is bound to sound stupid, not that it matters.”

“Ha!”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you don't have to say anything.”

“No, I know. See you soon?”

“I don't think so.”

“No? Why not?

“You see, I was about to say that if you wanted to see me again you would drive me to where I'm going, but of course that's crazy.”

“You mean
 . . .
”

“Yes, up there.”

“How far is it?”

“Seven hundred kilometres. But I was kidding.”

“Seven hundred kilometres from Montreal to Maldoror.”

“It's not far.”

From where he was sitting, by stretching his neck a bit he could see a small piece of the Judith-Jasmin Building. If he worked at it, he could probably pick out the window of the office in which he'd been sorting papers a few days earlier.

“I've got a lot of work waiting for me. A pile of things to do
 . . .
Research
 . . .
”

“It was a joke, okay?”

He managed a smile.

“One of these days, though. Why not?”

“You just said that because you felt you had to.”

“I didn't say it like that.”

“You even said
that
like that.”

“Hang on, I'll park a bit farther up.”

“No. Don't bother.”

He watched her get out, her large backpack trailing in her hand. A homeless man dressed like a lumberjack held the door for her and bowed as she went into the station, as if she were a princess.

At five in the morning he was listening to the Chinese couple quarrelling in the next apartment while he took four crackers at a time out of the box and stuffed them into his mouth. He chewed the dry purée while standing on one foot in the morning light, remembering Marie-Québec perched, rather than sitting, on the sofa chair he'd inherited from his grandfather, and that she'd dragged over to the sliding glass doors in order to catch the first light of day coming in from the alley, naked, her knees drawn up to her chin, letting her body soak in the sun's warmth as naturally as the pot of herbs on the neighbour's balcony. And the perfect curve of her breasts, their self-assured line, the way they pointed toward the sun like phototropic fruit. The delicate, precise outline of her darkly pink nipples, as if they'd been carved from coral.