Griffintown

by Marie Hélène Poitras

  IN A SKYSCRAPER, THE Men from the City are gathered around a large oval oak table.

  “We’ll have to move on to Plan C.”

  “No way around it, gentler measures haven’t worked.”

  “You call that gentler measures?”

  “I’m talking about buying back permits from the city. Despatie couldn’t have cared less. Plan A, activated two years ago and reactivated last winter, was a failure. From the word go.”

  The atmosphere is more tense than usual around the table where three city employees are seated along with five promoters, one of whom chairs the meeting, two men in black hats, three foremen and a secretary.

  “Plan B didn’t work as planned either. Apparently we didn’t cut off the right head!”

  “Yet we’d been assured that it was Despatie who made the business run smoothly!”

  “I guess they’re better organized than we thought.”

  The place of honour, at the centre of the table, is given to the mock-up of Project Griffintown 2.0, with its red brick condos, redesigned streets, and ornamental ponds of clear water. On the site of the stable, where the tin castle still barely stands, there are plans to build a small marina to store the boats that will sail on the waters of the Lachine Canal.

  One of the contractors gets up to pour himself a glass of water. Two of the black-hatted men light cigars. Time seems long to them, they don’t participate in the discussion and their presence around the table bothers those who are in the habit of carrying out only part of their mandate and don’t try to know the machinery that allows each of the different links in the chain to play its part smoothly.

  There are no ashtrays in the meeting room, but the men in hats have portable ones that could be taken for jewel boxes.

  “What’s Plan C?” asks a city employee getting anxious for it to be over.

  The foreman rubs his temples briefly and speaks in very concrete terms about the worksite to be organized by late October, early November.

  “We don’t have time to fool around with cowboys and their old nags. We have to scatter them.”

  Plan C, though drastic, has the merit of being infallible.

  ONE LAST WHINNY

  BEFORE THE ESCAPE

  *

  LAURA DESPATIE KNOWS EXACTLY where to find the man she’s looking for. Not far from Leo Leonard’s former stables, in the cabin of the murky parking lot where no one ever parks a car. But he’s not there at the moment, so she has positioned herself at the back of a large container and is waiting for La Mouche to return.

  A few metres overhead a billboard sings the praises of Project Griffintown 2.0: Peaceful, elegant lifestyle minutes from downtown. Sales Office opens in September. On the poster, a thirtyish brunette is roaring with laughter over a plate of lobster in the company of a man with greying temples, serene, wreathed in success, who seems to be behind the witty remark that has made his companion burst out laughing. Holding a glass of rosé he smiles, thinking no doubt about the happy, peaceful, elegant years that appear on the horizon.

  Mignonne’s ghost would feel cramped in that Griffintown.

  * * *

  TWENTY MINUTES EARLIER, AT at nightfall, when he was heating up some soup on the single working burner, after the train and after Marie and John have left, Billy spotted La Mère through the window, recognized her by her green beret and her limping gait; all at once the sight took his breath away. He set out to follow her, at first from a distance. Laura Despatie tacked through the lanes, walked in the very middle of the street, stepped briefly into the light, then went back to her trenches. The stock of her rifle jutted out from beneath her closed umbrella. She muttered to herself; her environment seemed to vex her. Billy heard La Mère talk about “honour,” about “thankless,” and “pain in the ass.” She has something against someone who has never learned to mind his own business. The groom deduced that she was talking about the loan shark.

  Then she made her way to the abandoned parking lot, to the place where they’d burned Paul Despatie’s truck. When La Mère hid behind a big container, Billy took refuge in the cab of the pickup.

  * * *

  AFTER WHAT SEEMS LIKE eternity, La Mouche finally shows up in the parking area, escorted by the same two hooligans. The moneylender gives them something that only Billy can see: brown envelopes probably stuffed with bundles of money. The three bandits say hello, La Mouche shakes the men’s hands and they leave.

  The moneylender returns to his cab and spends a moment counting something, his tongue out. La Mouche wears a beige raincoat, his yellow aviator glasses and his English cap; recognizable out of a thousand, as exasperating as ever in the eyes of Laura Despatie.

  Seeing La Mère advance towards him, he thinks the same thing about her. The same gait, scatterbrained as ever, same straight black skirt and, as always, the same old rifle at her side.

  “Come out if you’re a man, La Mouche.”

  He slips the revolver into the inside pocket of his raincoat and complies.

  “One of us here is one too many,” announces La Mere, charging her weapon.

  * * *

  The Pretender

  La Mouche had not always been a vile man, without honour or speech, who could be bought for not very much in exchange for a particular type of errand. Legend has it that in the past of Griffintown he had pretended to the throne and contemplated occupying the territory.

  But La Mère, very active, had been able to extend her empire faster than he could his, built discreet and profitable alliances with the men in black hats — at the right time and in the right way. A number of others, such as La Mouche, had thought and hoped that she would disappear into the air after the death of her husband. But what happened was the very opposite: she became untouchable, ever more terrifying, larger than life. As of that moment, Laura Despatie rose to the rank of legend. She was decked out with a nickname, La Mère with a capital M. At the time, La Mouche had shown a lot of interest in the calèche business — whence his name, a mockery of La Mère. But she had never wanted him to rise too high in the hierarchy because she’d once seen him beat a horse. The coachmen could slug it out among themselves as much as they wanted, but hands off the horses. Laura Despatie had assigned management of the stable to Paul and the Saloon to Dan, her son and nephew, a decision La Mouche hadn’t understood when he was there, awaiting nothing else. He would never forgive her for this reversal and would seize every opportunity to enrage her.

  The story of La Mouche was a gold rush that had never produced anything.

  Because a person has to live, he had become a moneylender, doubly honouring his name. In the inside pocket of his raincoat he kept at all times an A.J. Aubrey .38-calibre revolver inherited from his arms-merchant father. La Mère and La Mouche were born of the same father but not the same mother. Fruit of the old man’s illegitimate loves, La Mouche was the child of a whore from the east end. He had learned his father’s identity on the day when the man had turned up to offer him a blue nickel revolver before disappearing from his life for good. La Mère had never wanted to believe that this filth was her brother, and for that reason, too, La Mouche vowed to get even with her even if it took a century.

  In recent years, the moneylender had started doing more and more jobs in the name of the black hats, though it never kept him awake nights. From that arose a certain confusion, for the mafia, even as they were protecting the Saloon, were making every effort to bring down the stable.

  When the time had come to make the head of Griffintown roll, La Mouche enjoyed playing a part. He had signed the murder: two bullets to the heart. And he had wondered if the one person able to recognize his signature was still breathing the gold-powdered air of the Far Ouest. The answer to his question was approaching him, breathing loudly, rifle in hand.

  * * *

  MORE AND MORE CHUBBY, the tangle of twigs and feathers stuck together with tallow, pirouettes towards them like a ghost somersaulting, light and crumbly and easily set on fire.

  L
a Mère and La Mouche wait until the crown of foliage is out of sight before contemplating one another. Laura Despatie spits on the asphalt, takes a step towards La Mouche and establishes eye contact.

  “Shouldnt’ve taken on my son,” roars La Mère, pointing her rifle at him.

  “Anyway, La Mère, your reign is over,” he replies, stuffing his hand in his raincoat pocket.

  For a moment the loan shark wonders where the deafening sound of the drum he can hear is coming from.

  When he realizes that it’s his own fly’s heart, fragile, dry, and quivering, it’s too late. The shot is fired before La Mouche has time to take aim at La Mère.

  After she has watched him fall, La Mère, satisfied, blows on the tip of her weapon. Laura Despatie has just honoured the memory of her son. On the asphalt, her shadow has taken on outrageous proportions.

  From his hideout, Billy can see blood spreading in the shape of a heart on the moneylender’s raincoat.

  One bullet was all it took.

  The cross on Mont Royal glows in the distance, eternal, but it’s not for the salvation of souls.

  * * *

  AFTER STEALING LA MOUCHE'S weapon, La Mère limps offstage with the satisfaction of a job well done, not knowing that it was there, in that inhospitable parking lot, that her son ended his days too, on his knees, his hands behind his head, facing the moneylender.

  His heavy body, hauled painfully to the cabin by La Mouche, then taken in an armoured car by two mobsters, flung into the canal, carried by the current all the way to the stream, spotted by La Grande Folle, folded and stowed in the freezer by a groom who didn’t know what he was doing until he decided to expose it openly to alert La Mère before returning it to the secrecy of the earth.

  Laura Despatie never waited for anyone at all before taking the law into her own hands and she would like that to be sufficient to re-establish an equilibrium in Griffintown, but she doubts it. At least the honour of her son has been avenged. All at once she feels very weary.

  The metal tip of her old rifle is still smoking when Billy looms up like a shadow in the night, cowboy boots under his arm so as not to make a sound.

  As he walks past Leo Leonard’s old stables, he stops for a moment. Then pulls off his socks, sets his foot on the damp stones that are visible under the worn asphalt. Stones that travelled to Griffintown hundreds of years before in French merchant ships come in search of furs and wanting to avoid sailing underweight on an uncertain sea. In the more recent past, a streetcar passed this way.

  In the distance a whinnying rises in the evening coolness. Then a second.

  It seems to Billy that the horses are calling him.

  * * *

  THE ODD SMELL OF a wood stove working overtime or a cake of burnt earth is drifting in the air.

  The closer Billy comes to the heart of Griffintown, the harder its emanations grip him by the throat and fill his mouth with a chalky taste. Suddenly a muffled roar like the noise of an old tree falling. More whinnying can be heard. At the intersection of Ottawa and William he is filled with a foreboding. He starts running towards the stable, protecting his face with his sleeve.

  At first he thinks the fire must have started in the hay box. Someone — who? — must have tossed a butt away inadvertently. He has always been afraid something like that would happen. As he approaches the calèche garage, Billy realizes the extent of the inferno.

  The fire is devouring the charming carved calèche. Not far from there, along the low walls, flying sparks lick the sheet metal, threatening to liquefy it, to extract from it a toxic syrup. The beams that hold up the roof of the garage have apparently been sprayed with oil; eventually they’ll give way to the combustion. Some arrogant amber flames are biting the old wood along its full height.

  Trying to catch his breath, Billy leaves the calèche garage and heads for the office.

  A second fire is raging in the garbage can where he threw the letters from Paul Despatie, not knowing that all this paper would feed a blaze.

  Out the dirty kitchen window, through the translucent grime that serves as a curtain, Billy realizes that the fire is going to overwhelm all the pavilions of the tin castle.

  Panicking, he grabs the receiver off the wall phone near the entrance, dials the Saloon’s number, and starts to scream.

  In their stalls, the horses stamp the ground and kick at the posts that define their space, old dry wood that will burn like a match. Billy unfastens the chains that keep them captive, opens wide the door to what used to be Champion’s stall where Maggie now takes her place. He grabs her by the halter, tries to pull her out, pulls on her beautiful head with all his might.

  A black horse goes past the stall, panicking, fire in her mane, front legs very far apart. Despite the smoke, the groom identifies Pearl by her fleshy thighs with their coppery glints.

  He hears crackling at the other end of the stable, a grave, repeated neighing, Poney, then human voices, John’s, Joe’s, and Alice’s. Reinforcements.

  The coachmen arrive just in time to see Pearl slide into the stream on folded knees. The clammy earth falls apart in layers under her hooves as she advances into the water. They also see Lloyd’s Charogne rear up in the reddening light, then collide with a wheelbarrow. And that’s when the power goes off, sentencing horses and coachmen to falter in the dark and in the flames like the living dead they have become.

  To the flames, Pearl preferred the uncertain water. Moving away from the fire, abandoning these men, it scarcely matters on what road, leaving them seems to be the only possible way out. She turns her dark, imposing head towards the coachmen one last time, thinks about them briefly, then disappears.

  * * *

  MARIE STARTS OFF IN different directions, trying to see the horses in the smoke. A man’s voice, Alice’s, yells at her to stop that little game and get moving. She hears Billy yelling at his mare to get out of the stall, calls her mule-headed, crazy filly hamburger meat and every name that comes to mind. Marie wants to help him, even though flames are licking at her ankles, burning the lace at the hem of her dress. Even as a second voice, John’s, calls to her, coughing, with a cloth over his mouth, and also orders her to get the hell out.

  To save a horse: it seems to Marie that her whole life has been reaching towards this one accomplishment.

  “Most of the horses are already out!” screams John when he realizes what she wants to do.

  Next to her, Billy pulls at his mare’s halter as hard as he can. Marie hears him moan and curse, then plead. It’s hopeless; the stoical Maggie’s hooves are nailed to the ground. Invisible roots have grown under the fork of her feet, in the nail, through the metal of the heated shoes. Obstinate, she’ll stay there.

  Arms held out before her, Marie is trying to find the groom, her mare, her way. Thinking she has finally found the stall, she collapses into the horse shower like the drowning victims who imagine themselves coming back to the surface though they are foundering in the depths, numb and deluded. A horse passes near to her, avoiding her, but from where she is now she can make out only a crimson, smoky screen. Outside can be seen the animals freed from their stalls trotting along Ottawa Street, others on William Street and still others fleeing along the bike path, whipping the air with their tails or galloping in a field that is going to make way for a construction site. Grey pebbles are stuck beneath their hooves.

  Always, during a fire, a certain number of horses refuse to leave the stable, or will go back to it after they’ve been freed from the flames. The horsemen all know that, they sense it right away in the pit of their stomachs. They’ve always known it. It is not a legend or an exaggeration; for once, it’s the truth. A truth that’s a kick in the balls.

  Billy collapses into the soiled straw on the floor; he will die by fire, under the hooves of this animal he loved to feel moving under him. The mare will let herself fall onto the groom. Their flesh will be consumed in one furious flame.

  The calèche garage may survive, but the stable is so dilapi
dated it would be best to wait for the firemen before venturing inside. Marie has fainted in the horse shower. A beam has collapsed on her, crashing violently onto her back. Another crushes the nape of her neck. The boards of the roof have started to give way where the metal — burning hot, reddened, like lava — is no longer enough to keep them in place.

  John spies a piece of yellow cotton, Marie’s dress, then a leg, and the other. The long fingers of a woman lying motionless in the embers. He will blow on her body until life is restored.

  Joe and Alice see a man on fire emerging from the stable, carrying in his arms a girl whose hair is still on fire: Rose with a broken neck.

  Firemen are busy around the stable. On Richmond Street a police car has collided with a horse. An ambulance arrives, along with a small veterinary team.

  They drape a fire-retardant blanket over John’s shoulders, and pump oxygen into his lungs; paramedics wrap his legs, arms, torso, and head in rolls of sterilized gauze. Around him in the ambulance are ointments, flasks, cries, shrieks into walkie-talkies, and, high up, the droning of a helicopter. John hears the thud and crackle of boards and beams giving way. The siren of an ambulance speeding towards the Grey Nuns’ Hospital with Marie on board.

  The horses can’t be seen now but they can be heard galloping, panicking, in every direction. Beyond the limits of Griffintown without a bit, without a master and without blinkers, they don’t know what to do with this freedom.

  Together within the confines of the livestock territory, head to tail, the teeth of one resting on the withers of another, playing with their hooves and using their hocks to find a little more space, then searching again the warmth of their fellow creatures, the most peaceful horses stretch their necks to graze.

  * * *

  THE STABLE COLLAPSES AT dawn.

  The heart of Griffintown is consumed with Billy, Poney, and Maggie inside.

  On the glowing coals are the smoking skeletons of calèches, red-hot metal rods, shoes, braids of bridles, a pair of stirrups and some shedding blades, scattered among the black logs. The lingering smell of burnt rubber tire elastics has spread. The three-legged cat edges its way through wisps of smoke, meowing.