Life in the Court of Matane (4 page)

At Sainte-Flavie, they told us we had arrived in Gaspésie. The invisible line separating the Lower Saint Lawrence and the Gaspé Peninsula is much more than an arbitrary border drawn up by geographers with nothing better to do. People live quite differently to the east and west of the dividing line: The people of the Lower Saint Lawrence expect things will pick up, while those on the Gaspé Peninsula know they'll only get worse. Both sides are sometimes disappointed. When Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn told us with a smile that we had just entered the Gaspé Peninsula and the north shore of the St. Lawrence was nothing more than a thin strip of blue land, I became a Gaspé man once and for all.

At the end of that day, I stood before Matane like Attila before Rome. Looking toward the town, I wished it would just disappear. When I awoke after my first night there, I waited in vain for the TV people to come pack up the miserable set. Truth be told, the main problem with Matane was that it wasn't Rivière-du-Loup. Ironically enough, my father seemed to like Matane for the very same reason. And yet of all Quebecers, the good people of Matane are probably among the friendliest of the lot. Their cheeks have turned rosy from the wind that blows over the town three hundred and sixty-two days of the year. There, the supports below our trailer drew back, and on a cliff overlooking the sea the house fell down in a puff of smoke. We didn't stay there very long. A year or two, I think. I was seven when we moved to Matane. I had already had six addresses. In the decade I was to spend in my new town, I would have six others. Henry VIII wasn't the type to sit still. In Matane the rules of censorship were repeated even more firmly than the first time. We were given a helpful list of ins and outs:

In: Quebec (and all its symbols)

Anne Boleyn

Jacques Brel

Cod in all its forms

Out: Canada (and all its symbols)

Catherine of Aragon

Elvis Presley

Drives in the Renault 5

They couldn't have been clearer with us. In the same tone used to shout “Die, you pig, I'm gonna come spit on your grave!” the new rules of memory were presented to us. Over the years, a series of inexorable royal edicts were added. Edict 101: It is strictly forbidden to pronounce the name of Micheline Raymond, professional cook. Edict 102: The eating of Cadbury products is forbidden. Edict 103: The telephone is not a toy. It is strictly prohibited to call anyone without permission. All conversations shall be supervised by the queen. Get used to it. Edict 104: The word of the Lord is outlawed in the royal court. The king and queen shall hear no talk of catechisms, nuns, the new or old testaments, or resurrection. The dead shall not rise again. Edict 105: It is forbidden to make any allusions to the past in front of the soon-to-be-born little brother. He will have to work out how we got here by himself. Edict 106: You shall lend your unfailing support to the sovereignty movement, on pain of being disowned. The fleur-de-lys is your emblem, and Quebec is your country. Edict 107: This home is no place for halfwits. It is therefore forbidden to watch television for more than one hour per day. All programs must be approved by the queen. All TVA programs are outlawed. Since we will have no truck with cable, you shall have to make do with Radio-Québec and Radio-Canada. You will thank us later. Edict 108: You shall do the dishes thrice daily, after each meal. Even when visiting. The queen shall inspect the plates. Edict 109: Saturdays are devoted to cleaning. The girl shall scour the palace bathrooms, and the boy shall ensure the floors are spotless. Everyone shall do his or her bit in the kingdom of Anne Boleyn. And even then, the queen shall not let you out of her sight as you go about your work. Edict 110: You shall respect and obey your queen, whom you shall address by her first name. The queen's jurisdiction extends to justice, stewardship of the palace, financial management, culture, and telecommunications. You no longer have a mother. The king shall from time to time take it upon himself to remind you where you come from. For all questions about the matter, see Edict 101.

Oppression breeds revolution. The crushers will be crushed. Or at least that's what we like to believe. Anne Boleyn was a boycotter. Her strategy was a means of survival. She forbade. Castrated. First came the boycott of our mother. There then followed a series of lesser bans that made everyday life tough. One of them involved Cadbury, the chocolate makers. In 1976, after the Parti québécois had been elected in Quebec, a number of English companies had seized the occasion to move their head offices to Toronto, preferring the comfort of boredom to the tribulations of Quebec politics. Outraged separatists launched a boycott of Cadbury (and Sun Life Insurance, among others). Chanting “Let's bar Cadbury” as their slogan, they waged war against the English manufacturer of the sweet candy. Their movement would have left me completely indifferent at the age of seven had Anne Boleyn and the king not decided to buy into it. It was thereafter forbidden to purchase or consume any Cadbury products in the presence of the king or Anne Boleyn. The same glacial tones reserved for my mother were used to proclaim the banning of Cadbury.

There was just one problem: Cadbury was—and still is—the maker of the Caramilk bar, a chocolate bar with a soft caramel centre that at the time was high on my list of favourite things to eat. My mother would pass them to me in her Renault 5 as I sang Gérard Lenorman to her. “Caramilk” had become a hammer word. Whenever I managed to scrape together thirty cents, I would slip off to a store where no one knew me to buy a Caramilk. I had to bike for kilometres to make sure word didn't get out. Anything not to get caught. Once we were in the depths of the countryside, beyond the village of Saint-Ulric near Matane, I settled on an old general store run by two senile biddies. It belonged to a different era, an old- fashioned general store that smelled of before the war. In the deserted store, you had to wait for one of the old witches to limp her way out of the storeroom. Children in the village used to say that they had both been dead for years and we were being served by ghosts. Their memory was so shaky that I could walk into the store four times in the same day without them remembering a thing about my earlier visits. Alzheimer's guaranteed my anonymity. Even under the harshest interrogation, at best they would have been able to confirm I had been to the store. They would never have been able to betray the nature of my purchases.

The first time I did it, I remember I was wracked by guilt and high on the sweet smell of dissidence. I stood before one of the two old crones and asked for a Caramilk bar. A few seconds went by in silence. A clock struck three. Slowly, she asked me to repeat my order, tapping away at a small device lodged in her ear. “A Caramilk! I want a Caramilk!” I repeated, pointing at the coveted candy. She turned around. I heard her bones protest. Three short steps toward a counter in disarray. From there, she looked at me to make sure she had understood, pointing to a bottle of bleach. Patience was paramount. My finger tried to guide her shaking hand toward the Caramilk. Sometimes, she would break off to ask me if I was Armand's son, a man who had probably been dead and buried for over seventy years. Then, a glimmer of reason flashed across her eyes, and her hand at last grasped the Caramilk. Her memory had also forgotten inflation. Thinking she was still in 1970, she asked me for twenty cents. Not that I was going to contradict her. I fled so that she wouldn't have to denounce me if ever the king raided the store. Then I went to the beach, the place of all outlawed activities, where Anne Boleyn never set foot because it was too windy. Hiding behind a rock, I devoured my Caramilk while looking out to sea. I had to be careful not to leave the orange and brown wrapper at the bottom of my pocket. It would have been giving myself away too cheaply. I dug a hole half a metre wide and buried it there. Today I sometimes still buy a Caramilk, eat it in secret, and burn the wrapper to destroy the evidence. I am the only Montrealer for whom eating a Caramilk is a subversive, revolutionary act.

Back home, some first-rate lying covered my tracks. Always have an alibi. In the court of Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII, the sovereignty-association debate had plumbed the depths of the most commonplace candies. Some of their most memorable mini-boycotts included religious education, the TVA television network, my sister wearing makeup, anything made by non-unionized workers, and visits to relatives Anne Boleyn didn't like. Boycotts invariably lead to other boycotts, until everybody ends up boycotting everything. After boycotting the Moscow Olympic Games in 1980, the tables were turned on the Americans when the Soviets boycotted the Los Angeles Games in 1984. What goes up must come down, apart from Cadbury, that is. Since 1976, the company has more than doubled in size, in spite of the separatist boycott. It just goes to show that sugar always wins in the end.

It was at this same time that, almost everywhere in Quebec, the
hood du char
started to be called the
capot de la voiture
and it became frowned upon to
canceller
one's appointment. If you wanted to
annuler
it, that was fine.
Hamburgers
became
hambourgeois
, and
hotdogs
,
chiens chauds
. At the peak of this pile of grotesque terminology decrees sat the innocent T-shirt, henceforth a
gaminet
. The idea was to make a clean break from the past in all its forms. New words for a new world. The words
father
and
mother
, which had until then always occupied a clearly defined semantic field, were now elastic terms. One was just as good as the other; the roles had become interchangeable. We belonged to a new gender, a new race of humans that wouldn't trouble itself with the morals of another age. Once independent, we would be like androgynous gods. We had painted a huge fleur-de-lys in royal blue on the wall of one of the homes we lived in. Our sovereigns dreamed of sovereignty. One man's name cropped up more and more frequently in conversation. Far from being a hammer word, his name brought a sparkle to the eyes of the king and queen: René Lévesque.

“Who's that?”

“René Lévesque.”

“What's he doing?”

“He's leading us to independence.”

So sovereignty was a place you needed a guide to get to. A little like Matane. A man brings you there for your own good. Only René Lévesque had decided to ask the people before throwing the house on the back of a truck. While our questions about sovereignty were sometimes answered in great detail, any inquiries about the relationship between Anne Boleyn and us met with varying reactions, depending on whether we asked the king or the queen. The king was categorical: “Anne Boleyn is your mother. You must treat her as such.” The queen was more nuanced: “I am not your mother and I never will be.” This bone of contention between the king and the queen sometimes led to verbal jousts. Catherine of Aragon was declared dead or, at the very least,
persona non grata
, and the crown refused to come down on the possibility of finding a replacement for her motherly duties. The role played by Anne Boleyn in this story reminded me of Heidi's governess in Frankfurt. One day, the queen, exasperated by the discussion, settled the matter once and for all with the king: “I'll respect them, but don't ask me to love them.” I was surprised to see the extent to which monarchs are prepared to do more for their people than the people are prepared to do for them. Anne Boleyn's emotions were, when you think about it, much simpler than Catherine of Aragon's. The latter could be completely irrational and unpredictable. Most of the time she was as happy as a lark, but it only took a sad song to come on the radio or a police car to drive by for her to plunge into the depths of despair. Anne Boleyn, on the other hand, responded most of the time in the same way to the same stimuli, apart from her divine rages, which she could fly into at any time for no reason at all. If slamming doors had been an Olympic discipline, the queen would have taken gold. Everything I know about the timeless art of door slamming, I learned from her.

We soon learned that she had an almost Pavlovian reflex whereby she rewarded good grades, reading progress, and signs of intelligence and general knowledge with a smile. Conversely, bad grades, misspelled words, and acts of irrational behaviour were met with disapproval and punishment. When I was seven, she explained to me that I had reached the age of reason and was now capable of thinking like an adult. In other words, I should stop whining and asking for stuff.

“Now you can understand certain things.”

“Like what?”

“Things to do with people.”

“People?”

“Yes. Family stuff.”

From that moment on, I promised myself I would be one of those people who don't understand anything.

The unforgettable images of Nadia Comaneci's gymnastic routine the previous summer were shown again and again on TV. I thought to myself that I wanted to be free, communist, and light like her so I could fly through the air. For two years, there was no word of Catherine of Aragon. For two years, we didn't speak to her. For two years, she wasn't in the vocative case. Then one visit per year was allowed. For these eight years, we were not allowed to utter her name in the presence of the king or the queen. And the cat? I'll have to tell you about the cat soon.

Then, the same thing happened that usually happens with the twisting of memory: we took our memories underground. For the first few years of our life in Matane, the beach was somewhere to hide out and bring up her memory. The forest was too risky: you never knew who might be hiding in the bushes or who might rat on you. Very quickly, we learned never to mention in public that we were the children of this woman from Rivière-du-Loup, to never allude to her existence, to erase all memory of our love. We never even talked about it at school for fear that news of our dissent would make its way back to the queen. When a teacher, tired of teaching us spelling, suggested one May that we make a card for Mother's Day, I said that mine was dead. In the circumstances, the idea seemed more bearable to me or at least easier than having to explain: “My mother lives in Rivière-du-Loup, I haven't seen her for two years, and I'm not allowed to talk about her. What I have just told you has put my life in danger. I'm sorry, I'm going to have to kill you.” It was easier than defying Edict 101 at any rate.