Objects of Worship (5 page)

I slide open the door to my parents’ closet. I gather the clothes
that hang there and move them to the bed, laying them down
gently, making sure not to wrinkle them, just like my mother
would have done. From the top shelf, I take down the boxes of
old photographs, forgotten gifts, and useless knick-knacks and
pile them on the floor at the far end of the bedroom. I empty
the closet of belts, old shoes, ratty sweaters, and rarely worn
neckties. Once I’m done clearing everything out, I grab the
sledgehammer and start tearing the wall down.

Because I can’t become intangible and walk through it.
Because I can’t teleport at will. Because I can’t even punch holes
in it with my bare fists.

Because my father is dead. Because Bernard won’t do what
needs to be done.

“In the Second World War, I was a corporal in the Black
Watch, the Royal Highland Regiment of Canada, which was
part of the 5th Infantry Brigade. On the 19th of August
1942, Canadian forces spearheaded an attack at Dieppe, in
hopes of establishing a beachhead in Nazi-occupied France,
and my squad took part in that operation.”

It was 1988, and my brother and I were eight years old.
By that point, we’d been bugging Dad for this story for as
long as I could remember. He’d always put it off; he’d say,
“I’m not ready to talk about that yet,” but even then we knew
he meant,
When you’re a bit older
. Finally, he’d given in, and
he knew we didn’t want a kiddie version. He respected that,
so he told it to us as if we were adults.

“The invasion was a disaster. War is always brutal, but
this was a massacre. The Nazi soldiers slaughtered us. They
started shooting at us even before we landed, and on the
ground they just kept mowing us down.”

Dad was sitting at the foot of our bed, telling the story
with his hands as much as with his voice. Bernard and I hung
on his every word. Our father’s face was grim, shrouded
with sorrow; his fists were clenched, subtly shaking.

“As we stormed the beach at Dieppe, artillery shells
exploded around us and machine-gun fire tore into us. All
the men in my squad were killed; friends of mine died that
day, next to me, in front of me, all around me. But I was
only wounded, unwittingly left for dead in the chaos as our
forces retreated after losing thousands of soldiers.”

Mimicking
a
wounded,
unconscious
soldier,
Dad
sprawled himself on the bed; I remember his elbow digging
into my shin. Dad was never one to linger on tragedy; Dad
was all about fighting against tragedy, refusing to let it win,
and laughing in its face. Despite his promise to tell us the
story seriously, he couldn’t help hamming it up. Already, we
were so wrapped up in his narrative that we didn’t mind,
or even really notice. It’s not that he was treating us like
kids, it’s more that he was being genuinely himself: goofy,
fun-loving, and larger than life. Even while recounting
something this gruesome. Especially while recounting
something this gruesome.

Dad stayed silent, eyes closed. Bernard and I exchanged
wide-eyed, worried glances, completely hooked not only
by the story but also by Dad’s theatrics. I couldn’t bear it
anymore. I shook Dad’s shoulder, “What happened? What
happened after that?”

“The Germans must have seen that I was still alive.
They captured me, but they didn’t take me to a prisoner-of-war camp.”

Dad sat up.

“No . . . they had other plans for me. Or, in any case, they
needed a body, and mine was convenient. They took me to
a laboratory in the dungeon of an old castle. I never figured
out where I was exactly because I couldn’t speak German
then — ”

“But you can speak German now, right?” I asked.

“Yes, Gordon, I can.”

Bernard jumped in. “And French?”

“Yes, but so can you two. You even go to French school!”

My brother and I started listing every language we
could think of. “Spanish! Greek! Italian! Japanese! Chinese!
Swahili! African! Cree! Swedish! Ontarian!”

“Some of those aren’t really languages, boys.”

Bernard asked, “Are there any languages you can’t
speak?”

“I don’t think so,” Dad said as Mom walked into the
room. She sat behind him and hugged him, pressing herself
against his back, smiling at me and Bernard.

Wrapping his fingers around Mom’s, Dad said, “Now do
you want to hear the rest of this story or not? ’Cause it’s
gonna be lights-out pretty soon.”

Mom said, “Actually, it’s lights-out now. The boys are so
excited it’ll take them hours to get to sleep as it is.”

“Mom!” Bernard and I shouted together.

“Okay, okay,” Dad said. “I’ll jump to the ending.”

Mom nodded, grinning. She slipped past Dad and
squeezed between the two of us. We snuggled on either
side of her, and the three of us listened to the conclusion
of Dad’s war tale.

“For more than two years, I was a lab rat for a team of
Nazi scientists. Their research was equal parts science,
torture, and occultism. They subjected me to all kinds
of
gruesome
experiments;
operated
on
me
without
anaesthetic; performed bloody rituals using my body as the
focal point; irradiated me with radioactive rays; injected me
with serums; forced me to drink foul-tasting concoctions
that burned my throat . . . I think I even remember, at
various times, having my limbs amputated, my tongue cut
out, my eyes torn out . . . I have this memory of one of them
reaching into my chest and ripping out my heart, holding it
up above my face while its blood dripped onto my chapped
lips . . . But I don’t know if any of that’s true. I’m not sure
at all what really went on while I was their captive. Even
while it was all happening, I had difficulty distinguishing
fact from delirium.”

Bernard interrupted. “Did they do all that to you because
you’re Jewish?”

“I don’t know. I really don’t.”

Impatient, I prompted Dad to continue.

“One day, a particularly messy, gory, and complex rite
was disrupted by the castle shaking. The Nazi guards
ran down into the dungeon to evacuate the scientists.
I recognized the sounds of an air raid: the castle was
being bombed. Part of the ceiling fell, and the scientists’
machines — these were like no other machines I’ve ever
seen; I never did find out what they were or did, exactly —
anyway . . . The machines exploded, destroying everything
in sight. A powerful blast catapulted me into the air, and I
lost consciousness. When I came to, I was naked — but, to
my utter astonishment, otherwise completely unhurt, my
body no longer showing any sign of the ravages the Nazis
had inflicted on it. I’d landed in the middle of some woods
with no idea where I was. So I just started walking, until I
was found by some American soldiers. It turned out I was in
Bavaria. They took me under guard, debriefed me, verified
my identity, and eventually I was shipped back home to
Montreal.”

Mom beamed a proud smile at Dad. He smiled back,
and they exchanged glances that sparkled equally with
complicity, triumph, and mischievousness. Then Mom
giggled; pretty soon Dad was laughing, too.

“What’s so funny?” Bernard asked.

Dad said, “Nothing. Just some old joke between your
mom and me.”

They kissed us goodnight and got up off the bed.

“Dad,” Bernard said, “that was more than forty years ago.
The principal at school fought in the war, and he’s old. Real
old. Like, he’s retiring next year. You don’t look anywhere
near that old. Our Math teacher, Monsieur Savoie, he told
us once that he was thirty-five, and you look younger than
him.”

Mom’s face darkened. “You know about your father. And
you know you can’t ever even hint at it to anyone outside the
four of us.”

Dad said, “Honey, they know. Lay — ”

“Let me handle this,” she told him. Turning back toward
Bernard, she said, “Well?”

“Yes, Mom.”

She looked both of us in the eye. “You know you have to
keep it a secret. You know that.”

“Yes,” we said in unison, doing our best to match Mom’s
seriousness.

There’s dust in my nose, my mouth, my throat, my lungs. I
should have worn one of those filter masks or something.
But it’s done, now; I’ve broken through to the concealed
room behind the closet. The room where Dad kept his
secret hidden from the world. The room with no doors and
no windows that Dad included when he built this house
after coming home from the war.

That’s around the time the newspaper articles about
Hochelaga started appearing.

I step inside the tiny room. There are three spare
uniforms, all identical.

I undress, choking back tears.

I slip into the green jumpsuit. I put on the orange rubber
boots. I pull the skin-tight orange hood over my head, lining
up the holes with my eyes and mouth. I fasten the green
helmet, making sure the chin-guard strap is tight enough,
but not too tight. Finally, I pull on the thin white gloves.

I walk out of the closet wearing Dad’s uniform. For six
decades, Dad was Hochelaga, Montreal’s own costumed
superhero.

When Jacques Cartier arrived in 1535, Hochelaga was
the name of the Iroquois village that stood on what was
to be later named the Island of Montreal. “Arrived” being
the polite term for “invaded,” Dad had always reminded us
sardonically.

Dad chose the name because it honoured the First
People who lived here before the European invaders, and
because it was neither a French nor an English name. It was
important for him that his superhero name favour neither
of Montreal’s major languages. Dad, like most Montrealers,
just
wanted
the
Francophone
and
the
Anglophone
communities to get along. He spoke both languages fluently.
In fact, courtesy of his multipurpose energy, he was fluent
in every language spoken in the world today. Hochelaga
was a hero for everybody.

And now, because of my selfish, useless brother, it’s up
to me to become the new Hochelaga.

Because somebody has to.

Summer 1992 in Montreal. The city’s 350
^th
anniversary.
The year The Mighty came to town to see my father.

The Mighty. An elite group of international superheroes.
The
elite group of international super-heroes.
They’ve been around since 1961, protecting the world
from
alien
invasions,
interdimensional
demons,
mad
scientists, and other world-threatening dangers.

The day before The Mighty’s visit, having no clue of
what was to come, Bernard and I had had a rare quarrel.
And, coincidentally, it had started with a discussion about
The Mighty themselves.

“I think the Lion King’s the coolest member; he’s the
most radical. And the most mysterious. Nobody knows if
he’s even really human,” I said.

“Whatever. My favourite’s Samson. Because he’s Jewish,
like us.” This wasn’t the first time Bernard had brought this
up.

“You know we’re not Jewish. Not really.”

Dad was a secular Jew — and an atheist. He didn’t
do anything Jewish; no Yom Kippur, no Hanukkah, no
religious or traditional stuff at all. No circumcisions for us.
No Bar Mitzvahs. No Sabbath. No worrying about kosher.
Either he didn’t have any family left or he didn’t speak to
them. He was close-mouthed about that. And Mom wasn’t
Jewish at all; according to Jewish law that means we’re not
either.

Mom, as she liked to say, was half Louisiana Negro, half
Canadian Cree, and all Montreal atheist. Bernard and I
didn’t look a thing like her. But we looked almost as much
like Dad as we looked like each other. And Bernard turned
out even more like Dad than I did.

“We’re not
not
Jewish. I’m not ashamed, like Dad is.”

“Dad’s not ashamed. He just doesn’t believe in that. In
any religion. And neither do we.”

“Being Jewish doesn’t mean that you have to believe in
Judaism. Besides, there’s nothing wrong with believing in
God.”

“Whatever. I don’t care about any of that, anyway.”

But then Bernard took the argument somewhere new.

“Oh yeah? Well maybe you should care about this: there
were no superheroes before the war. All that began after.
Around the same time Dad became Hochelaga.”

“So?”

“Dad gained his powers from Nazi experiments. And
there’s a bunch of Nazi scientists who vanished after the
war. Maybe all the superheroes were created by secret Nazi
science.”

“That’s stupid. Dad isn’t a Nazi. The Mighty aren’t
Nazis.”

“You don’t understand. I’m not saying they’re Nazis. I
know they’re heroes. I’m not denying all the good they do.
But maybe the Nazis created all the superpowers — or Nazi
science, anyway. On the backs of tortured and slaughtered
Jews.”

“Dad says the Nazis didn’t kill only Jews. They nearly
exterminated the Gypsies, they sterilized Blacks and
mulattos, they murdered millions of Europeans of all
kinds.”