Life in the Court of Matane (2 page)

After a day at the Point, my mother would drive us back to the trailer park and the court of Henry VIII. It was known as Parc de l'Amitié—Friendship Park, if you will. It was a collection of sheet-metal homes a little like railway cars, carefully positioned around a grass circle, that could each be towed off someplace else like gypsy caravans. This travelling housing development was alive with children who waged occasional bloody war on each other. The neighbouring forest served as a terrifying torture chamber. Sometimes we would spot hippie children roaming butt naked from trailer to trailer, helping themselves to the fruit baskets of the people living there, who observed the marauders in stunned silence. On weekends, evangelizing Mormons sometimes ventured into these poorer areas to spread the good news. The Mormons—men more beautiful than any of us had ever seen—came from the United States and looked like the male models in the Sears catalogue. The parting in their hair, the black suit and tie, the American accent when they spoke French—they looked like gods descending upon our miserable abodes. I was six when two Mormons came into the trailer looking to convert Anne Boleyn. They failed. I would have let them convert me in a heartbeat: they were so handsome. Now when I see them walking in pairs in the Montreal metro with their Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints badges, I like to imagine myself as a Mormon, obsessed by genealogy, a father to nine little Mormons, playing Biblical Scrabble with the family every Tuesday evening and drinking only verbena and camomile tea.

In winter, the wind would crack the metal of our tiny homes. These lived-in containers are still scattered all across Quebec today, a sign of my country's poverty and fragility. They're built on wood blocks rather than concrete foundations, to make them easier to move. Living in one of these homes means enduring the whims of the wind. It makes you humble, banning all thoughts of vanity and pretension. Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn's house was glacial, ugly, fleeting, and rectangular. All kinds of people lived in these trailers, brought together by a love of sheet metal. A huge Russian woman, the mother of two obese children, lived in one. No one knew where her husband was hiding. Dead or alive? A spy in the pay of the USSR? No one ever saw him. We will never know what brought a Russian woman to Friendship Park at the height of the Cold War. Cries would often emanate from that trailer, terrible shouting matches. One day, the Russian woman's daughter barricaded herself in the bathroom in a fit of anger, slamming the door behind her and smashing an enormous mirror to smithereens. At Friendship Park there was no hiding your feelings from anyone. A teenager who lived two or three trailers down used to terrorize the place. She was called Diane and had been very aptly named indeed. You wouldn't have wanted to catch her by surprise, out hunting in the forest. A gaggle of other kids—these ones normal enough—lived just beside us. Further away, toward the shoreline, lived strange people who bared all in the strangest places.

Bank clerks, teachers, workmen, policemen, storekeepers, the unemployed, and welfare bums lived side by side in neatly arranged rows. Their houses were all exactly the same size, flanked by small square yards with wooden tables. Flowers in front of the trailer were the only tolerated variation. Some opted for roses, others for pansies, French marigolds, or dahlias. A field in the midst of the circle of trailers was used for ball games, baseball, and softball. Irony would have it that a Russian lady had left communism to come live in a commune worthy of Eastern Europe.

Right at the end of the row of trailers, we knew a family of separatists. We recognized their allegiance by the fact that in every conversation they gave the impression that the person they were talking to was a halfwit, while they basked in the light of Truth. One day they left and were never heard from again. Living in Friendship Park had one big benefit: the hope of leaving it someday. Because everyone left the trailer park one day. People were just passing through. When the worst came to the worst, people added extensions to their trailers to give themselves a little more room. Others put up sheds. But no matter how hard they tried, a trailer is still a trailer. People hated them while claiming to love them because you weren't supposed to hate anything or anyone at Friendship Park. Except for Nancy.

Nancy was a perfectly lovely six-year-old girl with blonde, curly hair, always in good spirits, always cheerful, and generally as nice as can be. I think, looking back now, that was precisely why we hated her. She lived alone with her parents. But one of the children had decided to despise her. I can't remember who. That was just the way it was. As soon as she showed up, we would shove her and insult her for the fun of it, telling ourselves, “If I torment her, the others will like me.” We were all capable of it. At Friendship Park, just like anywhere else in the world, finding the right outlet for your hatred was vital.

In September 1976, we were all sent to school in Notre-Dame-du-Portage. Every morning we waited for a yellow school bus we could see coming from miles away, always at the same time. We would all stand in the grass circle and wait for it. Little Nancy often arrived at the last minute. She had always forgotten something. Her mitts, her hat, her catechism book. In a panic, she would ask us if she had time to go back and get whatever she had forgotten. The less cruel children advised caution. Others, eager to see her suffer, lied and told her she had plenty of time and that the bus would wait for her, when we could already see it coming in the distance. The poor girl believed them, hesitated just long enough to increase the risk factor, and foolishly returned home. Four times out of five, the bus came as she was rummaging through her trailer looking for a mitten, book, or scarf. Some of the nastier kids said she was looking for her brain. From our seats on the bus, we watched her emerge from her trailer. She broke into a run—which always raised a laugh—then the bus set off again, leaving the little blonde girl behind, arms outstretched, shouting “Wait for me!” as we smiled at her, feeling not the least bit ashamed of ourselves. As far as we were concerned, she deserved everything that came to her. Once, someone, a boy, if I remember right, expressed pity for her. We looked at him like he was from another planet. I don't know what ever became of Nancy. She's surely running to catch a bus, train, or plane somewhere.

When we came home from Sundays with my mother, the prisoners were exchanged quickly. Nothing else was exchanged. Not a look, not a word, not a sign. My mother stayed in her car, my father in his trailer. We would have to spin a few times on the lower uneven bar to build up the speed and momentum we needed to reach the upper bar. The twenty steps separating the car from the door served as a buffer between the two bars. Readers who would like to try it for themselves at home must first understand that you need to build up enough speed and grab the bar with both hands so as not to fall flat on your face on the blue mat, which happened often enough all the same. You have to grab the upper bar as you fall back. Forget about the lower bar so you don't miss the upper bar. And above all else, never mention the lower bar. Forget all about it until the following Sunday. In Henry VIII's home, heated to 17 degrees, all the pure light from my mother's face slipped away. In the presence of the king, thoughts would turn to plots, the court, and decorum.

After one such Sunday, I once dared, in the home of the king, to utter my mother's name before Anne Boleyn. I don't know what came over me, at six years of age, to speak of such unseemly matters. I knew I should mention her only when strictly necessary. I must have been nuts to say my mother's name out loud. It was sheer provocation. Fortunately, Anne Boleyn was on the ball! Censure was sharp and swift, delivered in a rasping voice just one degree above absolute zero. “I never want to hear another word about your mother again. She abandoned you. Don't ever talk to me about her again.” It was at that precise moment, I remember, that I understood the touching precariousness of those who have been given the benefit of the doubt. The start of Anne Boleyn's reign had brought the Great Terror to an end. God bless her. But as soon as she tried to wipe my mother's name from my memory, doubt set in. I also remember that, one day, in order to get into her good graces, my sister dared to call Anne Boleyn “Maman” and that the outcry had been even more vociferous. What's wrong with you, you little nitwit? What do you still need a mother for at your age? You're seven years old! Kittens are weaned at seven weeks. They don't care where they come from. And so “Maman” became a hammer word, one that made a lot of noise and drew disapproving looks. They are practical because you can use them to drive nails home or pull them out, but they should be used sparingly.

From that moment on, I took pity on Anne Boleyn for thinking that she could win, that things were going to turn out differently for her. I took pity on her because everyone aspires to be No. 1, but she could only be No. 2. Think about it: if Nadia Comaneci had won the silver medal in Montreal, would anyone remember her name? Do you really think so? So go on then, who came in second on the uneven bars in Montreal in 1976? Not so easy, is it? Her name was Teodora Ungureanu. She wasn't a bad gymnast, far from it. She was way better than you or me. Her only flaw was that she wasn't Nadia Comaneci. That she wasn't No. 1. There you go. Quebec's registry offices have recorded precious few Teodoras. And I guarantee that most Nadias in Quebec who are turning thirty this year are secretly thanking the Romanian champion for giving her all. That's the problem in a nutshell. Everyone wants to be a Nadia. No one wants to be a Teodora. Anne Boleyn never stood a chance. The day when, after stripping Catherine of Aragon of her royal titles, King Henry VIII had Anne Boleyn crowned, the new queen got a hostile reception as she passed by. Out on her decorated barge on the Thames, Anne Boleyn couldn't make Londoners forget that the real queen was still alive. She was booed by the people, who preferred Catherine, a devout Catholic. For the rest of her reign, Anne Boleyn was despised; first by the people, for whom she was nothing more than a crown grabber, then by the court because she had too much influence on the king, and finally by the king himself, who wound up having her executed. Hence the importance of never being No. 2 and always eating your hamburger with your eyes closed.

Little Nadia wasn't the only one making the news back then. In 1975, somewhere in England, a certain Margaret Thatcher had been elected leader of the Conservative Party. Britain's education minister from 1970 to 1974 had made a name for herself by putting an end to free school milk, earning her the unflattering nickname Margaret Thatcher, Milk Snatcher. But she didn't stop there. She was elected Britain's prime minister in 1979, transforming England by giving the country its productivity back. For Mrs. Thatcher, self-satisfaction could only come about by putting all thoughts of laziness to the back of one's mind. A hard woman, she was blind to the social dramas her austere policies caused and didn't think twice about criticizing public opinion, declaring war on Argentina, breaking the unions, or imposing unfair taxes—in short, the Iron Lady earned her nickname. “If you want something said, ask a man,” she remarked. “If you want something done, ask a woman.” London's Saucy Seventies—a golden age when rock singers still choked on their own vomit—gave way to Thatcher's implacable England.

I had never heard of Margaret Thatcher when I lived in Friendship Park. It was only when reading her biography years later that I had the impression of bumping into an old acquaintance. Under Anne Boleyn, trains ran on time. Life in the court was as regular as clockwork. Two and two always made four. The roars of laughter and the sheer madness that had marked the reign of Catherine of Aragon were now in the past. The time had come for education and reason. It was a new age in which women were worth more than men, mothers were interchangeable, and anything was possible as long as you applied the right mathematical formula. We had quickly learned that poetry, hugs, and kisses would get us nowhere in a court where knowledge, science, and cleanliness would be rewarded. Thanks to Anne Boleyn and her books, I foresaw the chance to walk toward the future a new man. Memories would be of no use to me. They compromised my relations with the crown. Before the monarchs, it was simply a matter of feigning approval of all their dreams and projects, all the while imagining their disappearance behind their backs and the day Henry VIII would come to his senses. I waited and learned. My every progress was noted. Unlike Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn believed that a meritocracy could distract from the gentle chains of filial attachment. In the face of family relationships that stubbornly perpetuated ignorance and mediocrity, Anne Boleyn put forward a new model free from all sentimentality, by which everyone could use knowledge to save their own skin.

It was in this spirit of discovery that I was sent to school in Notre-Dame-du-Portage in the fall of 1976. The first day, Henry VIII or Anne Boleyn (I can't remember which) came with me and talked for a long time with a little round woman with short black hair who wore a small cross and was going to take care of me. I think they talked about Catherine of Aragon, the Thénardiers, and my big sister. Sister Jeannette Jalbert strived to deliver children from their inner prisons by teaching them to read. Strangely enough, literature speaks very seldom of the women—because they usually are women—who give birth to us for a second time. In the world's great squares, there are no statues in honour of these armies of teachers who, every September, recreate the miracle of Pentecost all around the world. No chain of mountains has been named after the schoolmistresses who lay the sword of knowledge on the shoulders of millions of snot-nosed kids each year and say, “Here is the world. Do with it what you will.” Sister Jeannette Jalbert, a teacher in Notre-Dame-du-Portage, Canada, would free me from the shadows of illiteracy. She started by giving us little illustrated books, with no more than a sentence on each page. It was, all in all, simple enough. Someone had drawn on the pages, and the drawings were called letters. These letters, grouped together in a certain way, had a given meaning. This meaning was called a word. By putting
a, i, g, h, h, n, r, s
, and
t
in the right order, you got “thrashing.” It was simple enough. The words could then be put together to form sentences like this one: “You have to hide. Madame Thénardier is looking for you.” The system could also be used to ask questions like: “Does it still hurt?” There were infinite possibilities: “Here you go, child. Now you can write what once was, what is, and what you wish there to be.” This was Sister Jeannette's message in a nutshell. I drank in her words like a precious alcohol. I remember the first time I managed to decode a word, I heard something like the long whistle of a rocket taking off. Something had built up a head of steam. I moved on to decoding sentences in no time at all.