Life in the Court of Matane (11 page)

When the time came, I arrived at school convinced that my suggestion would win hands down. I had mulled it over all night. The name, in my view, had to reflect the northerly latitude where we lived, and evoke both the beauty of the north and the dreams of humanity, all while sounding suitably French.
The
Aurore Boréale
seemed perfect. I had been tempted to suggest
The
Aurora Borealis
, but I knew exactly how many punches that would earn me at the hands of the boys of Saint-Ulric. Madame Nordet wrote all the suggestions on the board. A list of improbable names appeared.
The Champion
.
The Dragon
.
The Sun
.
The Ulricois
. This final suggestion was put forward by a student by the name of Julie Santerre, who lived in a big house not far from us. She was a spoiled little blonde girl who owned all of Nathalie Simard's records, a children's repertoire that had been slapped with an edict from the queen. Anne Boleyn deemed the singer's work too inane for our ears. Little Julie, as well as speaking with a forked tongue, came from a family of diehard federalists: they even went as far as flying the Canadian flag outside their home, which was just asking for it in the eyes of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. In the court, the intelligence of the family was regularly called into question. At school, the little girl was very popular with the others, thanks to her fashionable clothes and the toys that no one else had. Rumour had it that it took the Santerres up to two hours to unwrap all their Christmas gifts. Julie was also into figure skating, a sport that Anne Boleyn couldn't abide and that the king dismissed as boring and bourgeois. True, figure skaters reminded us that grace, agility, and vacuousness sometimes came in the same package. And so Julie suggested that our boat be called
The Ulricois
, a facile word she had no doubt arrived at by sticking together the words
Québécois
and
Saint-Ulric
. It was a ridiculous idea. All the others, mine included, were in with a shout. Why burden our boat with a name that no one would recognize? What would the Newfies say? The first round of voting confirmed my deepest fears.
The
Ulricois
earned enough votes to make it into the second round. While
The Aurore Boréale
was eliminated straight away. Too many voters, I later learned, hadn't understood the name. Every girl in the class got behind Julie Santerre in the third round. Our boat would be called
The Ulricois
. I think that was the day when I first understood the fragility of democracy and just how pointless referendums can be. People rarely answer the question put in front of them. They vote for the little blonde girl in the mauve tutu twirling round and round on the ice. We applauded the winner, who smiled inanely, and placed the order with the carpenter tasked with building the little boat.

In the meantime, we had to brush up on the gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. Madame Nordet invited the local priest in Saint-Ulric into our classroom, the first member of the clergy to put in an appearance so far. Our teacher told us three days ahead of time that he was coming. Before even sitting down, the surly man demanded that the little Laotian girl be banished on the spot.

“Get that one out of here!”

“Oh, yes! I had forgotten, Father.”

The little Asian girl was politely accompanied to the library.

“Those people aren't Catholic,” he said. “They're
Buddhist
.”

He said “Buddhist” the way you might have said “Soviet intercontinental ballistic missile” back then. “Buddhist” was the magic word that had you excused from the whole rigmarole. The priest had about as much personality as a dead rat. I suddenly felt the urge to say I was a Buddhist, too, but I thought of the beautiful hymn we were about to launch into and decided to keep any thoughts of conversion to myself. They didn't much go in for ecumenical dialogue in Saint-Ulric. Once the outsider had been taken away, the baptized among us discussed the Holy Spirit's impending arrival. The priest, an old fellow on the cusp of retirement, didn't muster much excitement for the whole affair. He often grew impatient, raised his eyes heavenward after every question, and kept glancing at his watch. Madame Nordet stood there swooning, smiling at the priest's every word.

A tall, skinny kid whispered to his neighbour, grinning while the priest went on about the Pentecost. It was no great surprise to anyone who knew him. He was one of the Desrosiers, a family of farmers who lived just up from us on the east side of Route Athanase, the road that marked the official border between the municipalities of Matane and Saint-Ulric. It separated the parishes, too. The Desrosiers, who straddled both kingdoms, went to our school all the same, because they could take the school bus and because they felt more of an affinity with Saint-Ulric. The Desrosiers family, which was viewed with suspicion by the teachers because of its offspring's disappointing school performances, also went to the village church. Irked by the interruption, the priest stopped talking and looked the unfortunate boy square in the eye.

“Are you ever going to stop talking? Would you like to continue in my place?”

The boy reddened.

“I don't even know why they let you come here. You're not even from my parish!”

Alain Desrosiers stared hard at the floor.

Madame Nordet didn't know what to do with herself. The priest brought his interminable presentation to an end, blessed us half-heartedly, and walked back to the presbytery. I secretly thanked the king for building his house west of the road. It's so easy to inadvertently find yourself on the wrong side of an argument.

The school year slowly drifted past, and the winkle still hadn't burst in on my spiritual life. I tried to reach out to the Laotians. Their manners and courtesy were unparalleled in our village. The eldest boy, Phousavan, was becoming more popular with the girls at school. They would ask him to write their names in the snow using the Laotian alphabet. The exercise seemed to charm them. One day, a girl broached the subject of whether the Laotians' presence was useful, or indeed desirable, in our village. At least, I think that's what she meant when she said, “What're they all doing here anyways?” I was at a loss for an answer.

I lost touch with the Laotians and I've never met any others. None that I know of, at any rate. Not so long ago, I happened to read in an article published by a university in Montreal that Phousavan Vonvichit was conducting some very complex medical research. Something to do with HIV. I'm not quite sure what. If ever I bump into him, I'll ask him to do something I never dared ask in Saint-Ulric: to write my name in the snow using the Laotian alphabet. It snows in Montreal, too.

That year, it was decreed that the students at our school, École Monseigneur-Belzile, would put on a talent show for their parents' entertainment. Skits, songs, acrobatics, a piano recital—every ounce of the school's talent was to be distilled for all to see on a small wooden stage that was opened out in the gym for the occasion. Preparations for the talent show and our confirmation took precedence over grammar, math, and geography. You didn't need to excel at geography at our school at any rate. Knowing which parish you belonged to was quite sufficient. We worked feverishly on our comedy routines and a song or two. Rumour had it the Laotians had something up their sleeves, too. A dance number. We would have to wait and see.

On the evening of the talent show, parents filled the theatre-for-a-night to catch their kids' performances. Fathers, mothers, grandparents, uncles, and aunts piled into the gym, listening to the wind whistle through the freezing night air as they waited for the show to begin. No one had yet set eyes on the Laotians' number. The show got underway. First, the audience was treated to a hilarious monologue from a young boy dressed in a white soutane. He played a young priest, all at sea since Vatican II had decreed that mass was now to be said in French, and had mistranslated the Latin
petere
(to pray) as
péter
(to fart). He urged his parishioners to let flatulence solve the problems of their existence. “
Péter tous les jours pour que Dieu vous entende
!” he shouted. “Let rip every day and God will hear you!” The audience fell over themselves laughing. Bodily functions are always good for a laugh. Next came acrobatics. Human pyramids, jumps, and contortion acts. The crowd went wild as a boy walked across the stage on his hands. Then, a musical number. A little girl with the voice of an angel sang Mireille Mathieu's
Santa Maria de la mer
, the touching lyrics familiar to everyone... “Santa Mariiiiiaaaa!” A lady wiped away a tear from her eye.

The Laotian girls' performance was finally announced midway through the show. A murmur made its way from one side of the room to the other. The Vonvichit family's three oldest daughters took their place on stage in the darkness. We still couldn't see them. Then the spotlight fell on the dancers. They were dressed in traditional Laotian costumes. The audience gasped in admiration. Anousone, Khonesavanh, and Nouphone were wearing long embroidered dresses with delicate details and stitching. The silk, scattered with sequins and gold decorations, reflected the white light. Their hands clasped before their chests as though in prayer, the Laotians waited for their musical accompaniment to begin. For the first time, we saw them all made-up like the Thai dancers you see in tourism brochures. But most remarkable of all wasn't their dresses or their light sandals, it was the golden three-pointed hats that stood straight upon their heads, making them each twenty centimetres taller. I had never seen anything so beautiful, so delicate. The music began. We didn't understand the choreography at first. The three girls were all lined up, facing the audience, and didn't seem to be moving. Then suddenly we realized their hands had shifted without us noticing. Their wrists performed movements with surgical precision. Not since Nadia Comaneci had I seen such grace and beauty. Did communism make people more graceful? The idea seemed to have some merit. I was so busy trying to figure out how they were managing to change position without me noticing that it took me a while to see that their feet were also moving, just as imperceptibly. Nouphone, the youngest, was advancing to the front of the stage while the others glided back. But it was impossible to see what was going on until the movement had already been completed. The dance lasted around five minutes, during which time the Laotians moved to the front and back of the stage as though they had tiny wheels on their feet. The captivated audience was aware it was witnessing a scene that bordered on the supernatural. Some of the boys began to imagine the Laotian girls had magical powers, that none of it was possible, that it was all some sort of trick. The number was over. The applause built slowly and quickened as the audience emerged from the spell. Mrs. Vonvichit seemed content. The Laotians disappeared backstage.

I think that the people of Saint-Ulric left the school that evening pondering questions they would never have considered before the show. For my part, I filed the Laotian dance away in a corner of my mind reserved for things that evoke wonder without being entirely comprehensible. Like Pentecost, the feeding of the multitudes, and the migration of the snow goose. When I walked out into the freezing Gaspé night, the aurora borealis were flickering on the horizon. They were the same colour as the Laotian girls' costumes and they, too, moved back and forth without me being able to grasp exactly how.

Our boat was to set sail a few days later. The ice on the St. Lawrence had melted, the blues of the sea were once again starting to merge with those of the sky. The birds were back from Virginia, Jacques Brel was singing
La Fanette
, and it was high time for a boat to be put to sea. When the day came, the whole class set out for the stretch of beach that was to be used to launch
The Ulricois
. Deep down I hoped the boat would sink after a second or two, leaving no one in any doubt that a boat that was supposed to represent my soul should never have been given a name like that. Standing on the shore, we sang
Come Holy Spirit
for the millionth time. The school had recruited a local fisherman to tow the boat out to sea.

The tide was at its highest. Clumps of green seaweed flung in by the waves washed over the shingle beach and up to our feet. A hundred metres away, a crazy young guy on a moped played chicken with the waves, zigzagging his way across the foreshore. He came to a sudden stop before a huge pile of seaweed that had just rolled in front of him. Without it being clear why, he clambered off his bike and bent down over the seaweed. He poked at it with his foot and shrieked in horror. He jumped back onto his moped and sped up toward the road. The incident had no effect on our singing, but I watched it unfold out of the corner of my eye. We sang as we walked back, our hearts filled with hope that
The Ulricois
might be fished out of the water in Newfoundland or maybe even the French islands of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon.

At suppertime back in the court of Henry VIII, I announced that
The Ulricois
had been put to sea to the east and that it was carrying my soul off to new lands. The king and queen considered the whole undertaking a childish and slightly idiotic Catholic fancy, never suspecting that this departure, in fact, heralded my destiny. The king had much more entertaining things to talk about. He had spent a tiring day answering calls for help that were much more pressing than the imminent visit of the Holy Spirit. Between two mouthfuls of potatoes, he explained that a distraught mother had called the police after her son had come home from the beach in tears. A dead body had rolled in front of his moped while he was riding along the sand. Henry VIII had headed over to discover a pile of seaweed wrapped around the still-frozen body of a sailor from the
Hudson Transport
. It must have been one of the panic-stricken sailors who had fallen into the water when their lifeboat overturned. The king had picked up the body that had been biding its time all winter long beneath the frozen St. Lawrence. The body, he explained, had been very well preserved and the man's flesh had not yet begun to decay. The
Hudson Transport
sailors were Russian, he said, which was news to me. Apparently the freezing water and sub-zero temperatures had preserved the sailor's features perfectly. He was a young man, his eyes still open, when the king had arrived. Or rather, just one of his eyes had been open. The other was missing. A winkle had taken the place of the left eye of that Russian sailor who had died of cold over Christmas just off Saint-Ulric.