October 1970 (39 page)

These questions continued to spin around in my head for days on end. A visitor would have been able to follow my trail by looking at the brown, wet spots on the floor left by my too-full cup of coffee that was always overflowing. I didn't shave for weeks. The mirror reflected the eyes of an idiot staring into the dimly glowing distance somewhere above my head while my unbrushed hair shot flashes of static electricity into the bad light. The telephone never rang. The world shrank from my door. I knew that I was on the right track, but that was all I knew.

I had followed the debate about the fallibility of the online encyclopedia with interest. A fascinating project except for its principal flaw: the autoregulation of the system. One way of dealing with the problem was to remember that there's no smoke without some form of combustion. No effect without its cause. That in our thermodynamic universe, absolute disinterest is an illusion. A causal chain, a root of sense, attaches the most illusory hoax to reality. Conclusion: a pure lie is an impossibility.
Arrested for carrying an illegal weapon in France at the end of the 1960s, sentenced to two years in prison. It was then that he became familiar with ways of making bombs and conducting kidnappings that would later serve him well in Quebec.
A truth hidden in the chaos of stories? Or a simple bit of gossip? These sentences had been tapped out on a keyboard by some anonymous contributor, someone who must have had a reason for doing so, that was what interested me. Where did the truth end and the legend begin?

When Noune jumped onto my desk to rub against my shoulder or cheek, she sometimes stepped on the keys of my computer keyboard, and what she typed probably made as much sense as anything I typed. When I stuffed another wild cherry log into the stove, the nails in the walls contracted with a sharp snap in the glacial night, and it was as if I were hearing music in my brain.

The night was getting on. I had gone back to sit in my office with a cup of anemic coffin varnish and reread the Wikipedia article for the dozenth time, when suddenly something leapt to my eyes.

The keywords that appeared at the top of the Web page read as follows:
article, discussion, modify, history
. I clicked history.

I discovered that the online encyclopedia gave access to the timeline of corrections, additions, crossings out, rewritings, and various other textual interventions that were normally eliminated by editorial work. It gave access to the history, not only of the subject of the article, but also of the article itself.

Fascinated, I worked backward down the chain of changes, jumping from one version to the next, following in reverse the thread of a series of modifications, mostly minor, but exhibiting a logical and fateful progression. It was as if, before my very eyes, the text opened like a flower to reveal the secret at its core, a sort of semantic buried bone that, exposed little by little to the light of day, eventually became the only thing visible. I then read the following curious notice:

François Langlais learned the art of terrorism in a camp for Palestinian commandos. Then he participated in numerous secret operations in Quebec during the 1970s. The Langlais family eventually moved to Alberta, Canada's oil-producing province, where it continued its struggle for Quebec independence. Today, a new generation of Langlais (including, among others, Dan Langlais and Ray Langlais) has emerged in the west of the country. It actively supports the FLQ and other radical groups linked, according to Canadian and American secret services, to the Islamic terrorist movement (Jihad).

This time the joke seemed obvious: the struggle for Quebec independence taken up in Alberta by a third generation, with Al-Qaida lurking in the background? Whatever!

It was a wink and a nudge, a joke among friends.

I read the entry again and again. It was quite frankly hilarious. The sun would rise another day, I would sleep through another night. Then I jumped.

I grabbed a pen and the first piece of paper that came to hand, and wrote the following words:

Dan Langlais = Daniel

Ray Langlais = Raymond

= Raymond Brossard and Daniel Prince = Zadig and Madwar

The next thing I knew I was standing in the snow, my eyes raised to the sky and its millions of stars. I played with drawing lines between them, making constellations, some familiar, others pure inventions. And in the frozen silence, all combinations were possible. To the east, the band of dark blue swelled behind the contrasting silhouettes of the evergreens. Not a sound could be heard, except for the vibrations from deep space that seemed to emanate from things themselves, from deaf life on a wild winter night at the edge of a northern lake.

They won't catch me firing a 12-gauge shotgun in the house again, no sir. I was no fool, I wasn't going to prove them right. Before throwing myself on the bed, I decided that if anyone in this vast universe wanted to play me for a fool, he would have to pay dearly for it.

RENÉ LAFLEUR VERSUS
THE QUEEN

“ . . . THE TRUTH, THE WHOLE
TRUTH,
and nothing but the truth. Say: I swear.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah what?”

“I swear.”

“Your witness,
Maître
Grosleau.”

“Mr. Massicotte
 . . .
If I understand alright, your actual profession is
 . . .
”

“Er, social coordinator.”

“And
 . . .
”

“And I deliver chicken in my spare time. I worked two years for Baby Barbecue.”

“Good. You are how old?”

“Er
 . . .
”

“What year were you born?”

“Do I have to answer that?”

Sitting at the back of the courtroom, in the last row of seats, Chevalier looked up from his open notebook.

“It's not as if this were your first time in court, Mr. Massicotte,” the prosecutor said quietly. “The court already has this information. I'm only asking you to confirm it. Just to break the ice, if that's all right with you.”

“I'm thirty-six.”

“How old?”

“Thirty-six.”

In the section of the courtroom reserved for the press, the reporters remained impassive. But at the back of the spectators' section, his high creased forehead clearly visible at the end of the row, Citizen Branlequeue was scribbling away in his notebook.

In the defendant's box, René Lafleur, his eyes half-closed, was imagining himself balancing his canoe while casting a Mepps fly, a Black Fury No. 3, beyond a bed of water lilies that bordered the channel between the islands in Boucherville. Around him, light and reflections played on the water, pure Monet, and René, a practical man, was happy just feeling the all-embracing warmth of the sun on his skin, the gentle rocking of the wavelets that rippled in the channel like a muted echo of the river through a wall of vegetation. A sudden pressure, the rod bends, the feeling of moving weight at the end of it, the empearled line, taut, vibrating
 . . .
the large-mouth bass must weigh a kilo, it strikes, leads with its nose, and leaps out of the water.

René remembers these things, the crunching of snowshoes on the deep, fine, dry snow of January; the clucking of autumn grouse under cranberry and hawthorn shrubs; the resinous smell borne on the breeze of a June day on a lake full of trout; and the freshness of the atomized, iridescent water suspended above the chaotic rocks in a northern rapids. In prison, such memories had helped him keep himself together.

It was 1973, and things had changed in the two years since his older brother, who had been found guilty of first-degree murder after a hasty trial, had been sent to a maximum security federal prison. Jean-Paul had defended himself, Gode had not. In the end, it hadn't made a bit of difference: the authorities had put the death of Lavoie on their backs and they had accepted it. As for Ben Desrosiers, who had not been directly involved in the assassination, he had been given twenty years for his part in the kidnapping.

In 1973, things worked differently, mostly because the flamboyant
Maître
Brien was out of prison. He had been acquitted on a charge of seditious conspiracy and had returned to the bar and re-established his practice. He had triumphed over the harassment of the judicial authorities, crossed the desert of administrative obstacles inflicted by the bar association, and was once again a force to be reckoned with.

Another difference since 1971: René was being tried in Montreal's municipal courthouse, not in a room in the headquarters of the QPP. The special trial on rue Parthenais was now a curiosity of history.

Maître
Brien had explained to his client that the evidence against him was weak. A neighbour who claimed to have seen him at the wheel of a white Chevrolet on rue Collins sometime during the week in question. And experts had found his fingerprints on a box of chicken. “I'll beat that evidence raw,” the lawyer had promised him.

Evidence for the Prosecution P-21

Invoice no. 10079

Rotisserie Baby Barbecue

Address: 3056 boulevard Taschereau, Longueuil

Date: 10/10/70

Order: three club sandwiches (3 x $1.60 = $4.80)

+ six Pepsis (6 x $0.15 = $0.90)

+ tax ($0.46)

= $6.16

“Do you recognize this exhibit?” asked the prosecutor.

Rénald looked briefly at the piece of paper held out to him by the bailiff.

“Yes.”

“You recognize it as what?”

He hesitated for a moment.

“I don't like your question.”

“You
 . . .
I beg your pardon?”

“I don't like your question.”

As a prodigiously interested spectator, Chevalier made a note of this response in his notebook, then raised his head and met the gaze of
Maître
Brien who, from his seat, met his in return. The lawyer recognized him and allowed himself a faint smile, followed by a wink.

Chevalier turned his attention to the witness, who was rocking back and forth with his hands in his pockets. He saw in the man a certain resemblance to Gaston Lagaffe: the green pullover with its rolled collar, the toupée falling over his eyes. But his was greying. “A salt-and-pepper Lagaffe,” he wrote.

“Tell me how the delivery went.”

“I parked in front of the house. And then I saw someone come out and come down to the street to get the order.”

“Did this someone speak to you?”

“I don't think so, no.”

“And what house did this person come out of?”

“From that house — 140 Collins. The address that was written on the bill. I went back there later and there it was: 140 Collins.”

“You say you went back to the place
 . . .
later?”

“Uh-huh. You don't have a problem with that, do you?”

“But you went back there when, exactly?”

“It's a personal matter.”

“Excuse me?”

“It's my private life. It doesn't have anything to do with the trial.”

Maître
Brien stood up.

“Your Honour, if you'll permit me, very respectfully
 . . .
I believe that what the witness is trying to tell the court is that he went back to see the famous house later, as a simple tourist, like a great many people in Quebec at the time. You know, a short drive-past, on a weekend, a pleasant little outing
 . . .
”

The judge thought for a moment, then turned from the defence counsel and addressed the witness.

“This private life of yours, when was it, exactly? In the days immediately following the delivery?”

“Uh, well. Am I obliged to answer that?”

“You are under oath,” rumbled
Maître
Grosleau.

“Yeah, but I don't see where all this is going.”

“You say that you returned to the house after delivering the chicken on the tenth of October. When? A week later?”

“No, later than that.”

“All right, we'll leave it at that,” concluded the Crown prosecutor.

Chevalier continued to scribble in his notebook, then looked up and saw that everyone was peering in the same direction: toward the jury box, specifically at jury member 10, a frizzy-haired youth with an Afro haircut and enough hair poking up between his chest and his Adam's apple to stuff a La-Z-Boy, and an open magenta silk shirt revealing a medallion as big as a Frisbee.

He had raised his hand.

Jury member 10: “Excuse me for interrupting, but
 . . .
isn't someone going to ask him if he would be able to recognize the guy who came out of the house to get the order?”

Finally, sighed Chevalier, someone who's doing his job.

The judge turned to the witness.

“Can you reply to the question?”

“Um
 . . .
”

“What does that mean, um?”

“It means um. Um, as in um. I could still say something
 . . .
What I do is between me and my conscience.”

“You are under oath.”

“Maybe so. But I'm the only one who knows if I'm telling the truth or not. And what my conscience is telling me is that I don't remember the person who came out to take the order.”

“Does your conscience tell you anything else?”

“Yes. I'm afraid of the FLQ and I'm afraid of the mob, but I'm not afraid of the police.”

“Excuse me, would you repeat what you just said, please?”

“I'm afraid of the FLQ and I'm afraid of the mob, but I'm not afraid of the police.”

The Domaine des Salicaires was a modest-looking subdivision, designed for the ambitious working poor, otherwise known as the lower-middle class, the same people who had moved to the South Shore at the end of the Second World War to escape the slums of East Montreal, a human flotilla,the perpetuation of space and their laborious aptitude for happiness sublimated to the production of children.

A corrupt, or simply busy, developer, maybe both, had profited from the elastic nature of his contacts in city hall to wrangle a building permit, then dumped a few loads of gravel into a swamp that had been the home of reeds, bullfrogs, and red-winged blackbirds until then. He sketched out a few roads and divided it into building lots. Even when it didn't rain, the Branlequeues' basement filled with water, and the first time Éléonore saw a rat crossing the tiny rectangle of grass growing on the swamp that was their backyard, Chevalier had turned away and let the crisis pass. Then he had asked the neighbours about it.

“Is it the Norway rat that we have here?”

“No, it's the water rat. You should do what I do: I catch them in a leg-hold trap and by the end of spring I have a fur coat for my wife. And cooked in a stew you'd swear it was rabbit
 . . .
”

“It isn't the common sewer rat, Lonore,” Chevalier announced triumphantly to his wife, “it's the ondatra!” He used the native word for muskrat. But Lonore was not the kind of person one could win over with a classic fur coat, especially when it was still running around in her backyard.

“You have to place the trap a certain way, so your rat drowns when it's caught,” the neighbour had specified. “Otherwise it'll chew its leg off.”

“I don't blame it,” Chevalier Branlequeue had replied.

In these isolated suburban outposts, where maisonettes, enclosed courtyards, sandlots, swimming pools, and garden sheds edge out woods, fields, and wetlands with impunity, the arrival of a Harley-Davidson on a Saturday morning is the sort of thing that causes no more commotion than an ondatra crossing the end of the yard.

“My Sweet Lord, now it's the Hells Angels
 . . .
” whined Éléonore.

“More like a respectable lawyer,” replied Chevalier, his nose at the window.

Chevalier Branlequeue was forty years old. His two sons, Martial and Pacifique, abandoned the skeleton of the scooter they were taking apart in the yard to surround the fire-and-chrome charger belonging to
Maître
Brien. They found the chopper's fork, installed by the lawyer shortly after the release of
Easy Rider
, particularly interesting.

Maître
Mario, dressed in leather on this brisk spring day — the sun was as hard to catch as a flea, and a cold wind was blowing in off the lake — was greeted at the door by Chevalier.

“You're very lucky, Chevalier: two tall lads to carry on the family name, already practically grown
 . . .
”

“Oh, I know what you're thinking,” replied Chevalier, busying himself with the coffee maker. “For you, I'm nothing but a poor guy worried about barbecuing and the continuation of the race. When you see a child's bicycle in the lane, you allow yourself a brief moment of tenderness, but not enough to make you regret the interchangeable young hippie chicks you hang around with in the Gaspésie on your machine. With the exhaust fumes drowning out the smell of drying cod, it's a perfect life.”

“I wouldn't say that, Chevalier. In the world's eye, you're a father second and the immortal author of
Elucubrations
first, the pride of our national literature!”

“Yes, well, the author of a single book who's a little frazzled around the edges and too well known not to be a little suspect
 . . .
”

Brien shrugged and looked at the Saturday newspapers scattered on the kitchen table. The mistress of the house was raising dust and making noise in the next room.

“I read your diatribe in the letters-to-the-editor column,” he said.

“No need to say anything,” the poet–publisher said amiably, and smiled. “I was expecting your visit. Let's go into my office.”

Maître
Brien took a flask from the pocket of his leather jacket and liberally baptized his coffee.

“A drop of brandy, Chevalier? And by the way, is it all right, my calling you Chevalier?”

Branlequeue agreed to both propositions.

The house plan was six rooms; one bedroom for Vénus, another shared by the two boys, even though Martial already had one foot out the door. The father had been spending most of his nights on the mattress in his office for some time. When one looked toward the end of the street, one could see, in the distance, boats passing on the St. Lawrence.

From another pocket of his leather jacket, the lawyer produced a newspaper clipping dated that same day: Chevalier Branlequeue's contribution occupied three-quarters of the page devoted to the
vox populi
.
Maître
Brien had simply torn it out, folded it in eight, and stuck it in his pocket.

“
A comedy meticulously plotted
,” he read. “Holy Crumb, Chevalier, since when have you been a theatre critic? We're on the same team, you and I. And here you are, in the act of scoring in our own net. Because if you say that the trial is fixed, how does that make me look, eh?”