Two Solitudes (33 page)

“I was under the impression that we were partners,” Athanase said coldly.

He slipped out from under McQueen's hand and took a step nearer the door. McQueen paused to touch a flower into place beneath his mother's picture.

“I wish you wouldn't go away angry,” McQueen said. “You seem to have some personal–some fixed idea in your mind and you're fitting this affair into it. My dear Tallard, we must keep personalities out of business. I'm sorry, there's nothing I can do.”

Athanase opened the door, McQueen remained with him. “Now please,” McQueen said, “don't do anything rash. Come in any time and we'll talk things over again. I'll speak to Miss Drew and she'll settle our financial arrangements.” He smiled and held up his finger. “And here's a tip. Avoid the stock market, for it's not going to keep up much longer. There's going to be a depression very soon.”

Athanase strode out without taking McQueen's hand. He reached the hall and rang for the elevator. So that was that! A fool, his mind told itself, a fool, a fool, a fool! His whole life had been an insane groping around in a circle to discover reality, and everything he touched kept turning to smoke. Round and round in a circle of explanations, nothing real anywhere but always the reasons for why there was no reality, round and round the mulberry bush, round and round and round.

He found himself alone in Saint James Street looking for a taxi. The street was empty. It was a gaunt, scarred cavern hideously cold and ugly, this street where the English made their money. How could a man like himself have hoped to be successful here? He did not even know the rules. A fool, a fool, I met a fool in the street, a fool alone in the street not even able to find a taxi to take himself home! Why was he alone with nobody else here? The parade, of course. All the office workers were uptown in their patriotism to see the parade. Except McQueen. He was working as usual. A fool, a fool in the street! He walked west to Victoria Square and boarded a tram which rumbled emptily up Beaver Hall Hill. When it reached Dorchester Street he rang the bell and got out.

He found himself in a square partially shaded by tall trees that looked small against the buildings, two sides of it lined with slate-grey houses, an island between slums on the
east, and business and financial areas on the other three sides. It was like a relic of Georgian London.

Athanase looked up at the green leaves overhead. Another spring; and in Saint-Marc the consecrated seeds were in the earth and the blackflies would be swarming in the maple grove after sundown. A fresh spring for a world free of war forever!

Holy Mother of God, what could he do now? He turned a full circle on the pavement, spinning slowly on his leather heels, but saw nothing except the staring fronts of the buildings and the four streets branching emptily away from him. What could he do? What could he even think of doing now?

Somewhere out of his boyhood at the classical college floated a line his mind had stored for years. He could remember the black-gowned rector, that Jesuit with the wonderful voice and the ascetic face, translating it to the top form: “And of those trees you cultivate, not a single one will follow you, their brief master, save only the loathed cypresses…” And the rector had spoken of the terror of the pagan's death who had written those lines. His own death! But when he died he would not even own his maple trees any more. Even the deeds to the old land would be gone from the bank vault then. There would be no point in keeping land on which he could no longer live. Everything would go, as so much had gone already: status, family, friends, livelihood. But why worry about friends at this late date? They were gone already.

Nearby was a club which he had recently joined but had seldom visited. It was one of the old English clubs, filled with men successful after the English fashion, rich, dignified and incredibly ignorant. He thought of the long chairs in smooth black leather, the mahogany panelling of the walls, the pictures so dark you couldn't see what the frames contained, the cold drinks that never made any of them drunk because not
even a quart of alcohol could make any of them forgetful of his neighbour's opinion. He could not go there any more now. They would talk about him if he did; but discreetly, in a patronizing tone, and never to his face. “Too bad.” “Yes, but what can you expect?” “What I've always said, they just aren't practical.” “After all, look at the education they get.” “They ought to stick to the law and the church.” “Damned good lawyers though, I have one for a partner, clever little devil. Don't know what I'd do without him.” “It's the old story, what I've always said, east is east and west is west and never the twain…”

“This has got to stop!” Athanase said aloud.

He looked quickly around, but there was no one near enough to have heard him.

Farther east was a French club to which he had belonged for years. But he could not enter there now, for they had demanded his resignation. Where could he go? He could not go home because the parade was crossing Sherbrooke Street and it would be at least another hour before there would be gangway across the street. Where could he go? There were so many people to avoid now. He thought again of McQueen and the anger welled in his stomach like bile.

As he stood on the sidewalk, wind swirled his coat about his knees. Then he lifted his chin defiantly. Why was he ashamed? Was a man a traitor to his race just because he had done his best and failed? And who said he had failed? There was still time to show them. McQueen had said that business was going into a depression. Yes, but twelve months ago he had said the war would last another three years, then had changed his mind a few months later and so postponed the factory. If he had not changed his mind the factory would be half finished now. Would it? Anyway, suppose there was a depression? There was a depression after every war, but first there was always a
brief boom, too. Did McQueen know history as he did? What did McQueen know of anything except that cold wiliness the English and Americans always had when it came to money? He would show them yet, he would make a million. And when he had his money he would not sit on it like an incubating hen the way the English did, so frightened of doing anything their neighbours hadn't thought of first that they never did anything at all. He would endow a public library and set it up in the heart of the French section on Saint-Denis Street. The Athanase Tallard Memorial Library! If he made enough money he would endow libraries all over the province; there were less than a dozen now, and none of them were first class. His libraries would be big, big as churches. He would show them all, French as well as English. He would prove that a man could leave the Church and still be faithful to the people. Did the priests think they had a monopoly on public service?

Then his chin sank and he thrust his hands into his pockets and walked slowly westward. Slowly, but still sour with bitterness; thoughts about McQueen continued to crawl around in his mind. He remembered a sentence of McQueen's and gave it a different twist: “The tragedy of French-Canada is that you can't make up your minds whether you want to be free-choosing individuals or French-Canadians choosing only what you think your entire race will approve…” Like all the English, free with advice! But do they ever help a man? Do they ever stretch out a hand? Do they ever really want us to have a chance?

Kathleen would be out watching the parade now, and of course enjoying it. She was spending a lot of money since they had moved into town, but she was certainly happier. She had a flair for dress, and already she looked years younger. What was she doing with herself all the hours she was out of the house alone? Did she know other men? He did not think so,
though perhaps she did. At least he was not like a selfish old man, keeping his young wife under lock and key away from all pleasure. But now the thought of Kathleen seemed strangely distant, like the memory of someone he had known long ago when he was young. What did it matter now that she was beautiful, that the rich body was so warm and skilled? Incredible, that for most of a lifetime a man could imagine that beauty was enough, or that women could satisfy the ultimate solitude.

Then a door in his brain seemed to swing wide open on hinges to disclose what looked like the atrium of an enormous museum. With dreamlike speed the corridor filled with men and women he once had known. God, had he known all those women? Where were they now? What were their names? But it is unreasonable, it is highly fantastic, that I could have known this woman so well and not be able to tell you her name…. The people moved silently about in the atrium: children, teachers, priests, farmers, lawyers, politicians, judges, soldiers, and among them the women. But it is not correct, they are all dressed the same way, their clothes are all of the same fashion and some of these women are surely dead, they must be, for it is not reasonable they should all have lived as long as I have, that is not reasonable at all….

Passing his hand over his forehead, he felt moisture on it. The bones of his skull seemed to be vibrating, then pumping in and out. He heard his voice, like a stranger's, mutter in his ear, “I'm not well, it's nothing, but just now I certainly need to sit down.” Then he looked and saw the same street, the same buildings, the same trees.

He walked slowly westward until he reached Saint James' Basilica. He had done well to come this far alone. He still had his will power, the Tallard tenacity never let a man down. He stopped and looked calmly up to the row of greened-bronze
saints that lined the pediment brooding down over the street. A good street to bless, considering the number of financiers who passed to work on it, the number of prostitutes who accosted you on it, the hundreds of people, each with his own secret little sins, who walked it every day. It needed the blessings of all the saints and of Bishop Bourget besides, who stood there near the pavement, also in bronze. An iron-willed man, an ecclesiastical prince–they said he had confronted even the Papal Legate with his unbreakable will. His own father had known Bishop Bourget, he himself had once been blessed by him, but now the man was a statue and the bronze had oxidized and he was as green and permanent as the saints above him, and somewhere his soul, his indissoluble essence…

Athanase walked up the steps and passed through the vestibule into the nave of the cathedral. The incense-charged silence within was so cool he could taste it, the holy Catholic taste, the air breathed so many times by the anonymous little people of the city who thronged the cathedral Sunday after Sunday. Automatically, out of his childhood training, he genuflected to the altar.

Then he glanced quickly around. No one had noticed him. A few old women were on their knees with eyes glazed with reverence as they stared at the candles above the high altar. A tram driver and a workman were kneeling in the last pew, and as he passed them his nostrils twitched to an odour of stale sweat. They were praying, finding God after a hard day's work.

“What am I doing here?” he murmured. “Me, of all people–how can I be here at a time like this?” But his legs felt so weak he could not have gone out had he wished. He moved slowly to a pew a few rows up from the workman and the tram driver, and sat down with his hat beside him. His knees went
forward and found the kneeler, and his eyes blurred as he folded his hands and looked steadily at the candles flickering in the half-darkness.

 

That evening Marius ate dinner in a cheap restaurant downtown and tried to talk about himself above the noise to Emilie. He had not seen her since he had been conscripted nine months ago, for this was his first leave from the army. He was still in uniform, and had no idea when he would be demobilized.

The restaurant was overcrowded and smelled of unclean floor-corners, ice-cream spills on glass-top tables and sour dishwater. Since Marius and Emilie had arrived, the place had filled up with soldiers. Now the soda fountain was lined with men in khaki sitting on stools eating the things they had not seen for three or four years. One soldier had five sodas in front of him all in different colours. Another was eating a banana royal. One had a marshmallow sundae with chocolate sauce and another had a pineapple sundae with nuts. They were all talking loudly except the man with the sodas, who kept a straw in his mouth all the time. They were discussing food. One man was going to have a big breakfast tomorrow with corn flakes and cream and powdered sugar, and on top of that he was going to have bacon and eggs. Crisp bacon, not the white, fatty stuff he'd been eating the past three years. One wished it were August so he could have corn on the cob. A big corporal didn't want to eat anything for weeks except T-bones smothered in onions, thick and medium done.

Then they began talking about women. All the time he had been overseas the corporal hadn't been able to find the kind of woman he liked. They were like schoolteachers or by Christ, they were like whores. He talked in a factual explaining voice. “I want my women like my steaks. I want them medium.”

The man with the marshmallow sundae looked around. “Brother, so far as I can remember, you've sure come back to the right country.” He pushed aside his empty dish and turned to the man with the banana royal. “The guy was never satisfied. Last month him and me were in Piccadilly and a couple of women picked us up must have been countesses or something. Real class. And right in front of the Ritz the guy starts telling them about a skirt he knew in Birdville, Ontario.”

“Why not?” the corporal said. “I like a comfortable woman.”

The man with the sodas took the straw out of his mouth. “What kind of a place is this Birdville, anyhow?”

“They got a railroad station there.” The soldier licked some syrup off his spoon and laid it down on the counter. “They got a general store and a church, and they got a hotel for the drummer that comes around in the spring.”

“Hell!” The man went back to his sodas. “It sounds like Toronto!”

The voices faded out again and Marius leaned over the table to Emilie. “In the army I made a bet with myself. If ever I heard them talk about anything else but women and what they ate or drank I'd give a dollar to the Red Cross.”