Crossing the Continent

by Michel Tremblay

  On the night in question her father hit her once too often, without the leather belt, though, a simple slap because she’d dared once again to stand up to him. She slammed her bedroom door, threw herself onto her bed and, in the midst of her tears, decided that it was now or never: the time to pay her father back in kind, to humiliate him without his ever being able to recover, had come. Why then in particular? She could never explain precisely but she’d always been grateful for that moment of sheer madness that was going to throw her into what her circle claimed to abhor most, sensuality – it was true for women, false for men, Louise suspected and she intended to take advantage of it, even if she didn’t know exactly what it meant – and that would turn her into the most adulated woman in the city and at the same time the one most held in contempt.

  A young girl from her background would never go out alone after dark, it wasn’t done, even though Ottawa was a fairly peaceful city, where danger didn’t roam the streets. Reputations were quickly undone, gossip sprang up like weeds, engagements were broken over trivia: the rules were that much stricter as there were few families who mattered in this piddling little capital of a vast country, the fortunes significant and the stakes nearly always tinged with the corrupt hypocrisy that marks everything politics touches. Young girls served as currency in this provincial Victorian society and that currency had to shine.

  What she did on that hot, humid night in July then was mad and bold.

  She had noticed that Captain McDonald, the chief of police, ogled young girls at official receptions or balls given on the occasion of an engagement announcement; the birthday of some head of a family; the election of some notable to a position he didn’t deserve. The more he drank the cheekier he became, being careful though to drop his libidinous innuendo into young ladies’ ears or to run his hand around their waists in distant corners of overfurnished salons where it was easy to hide, or behind the doors of dimly lit offices.

  Did the heads of families suspect, did the mothers keep a close watch? Of course. But he was the chief of police, he was feared, and nothing very serious had ever happened, so they let him go on in the hope that he would disappear after the next election. But mayors of Ottawa succeed one another and Captain McDonald, who incidentally did a very good job as a hunter of criminals of all kinds, kept his job. In any event, he wasn’t the only one who fondled young ladies at receptions and the mothers spent long evenings looking for their daughters or on the lookout for their husbands’ tactics. They attributed it all to drink, pretended that it was unimportant – men will be men – and the receptions ended with smiles – fulfilled on the men, forced on their wives.

  Louise knew the location of the private club where Captain McDonald went nearly every night. As had his father. And all the important men in Ottawa. Women were not admitted, it was the refuge – inspired by London, most civilized and most hypocritical city in the world – where the men withdrew to drink and smoke cigars while they bragged, boasted of escapades that couldn’t always be checked and pranks that were often imaginary. For a few hours, men would think that they were the driving force of a great city, they’d snap their suspenders, get drunk and go home content.

  She also knew of the existence of what her father called “the anteroom,” a parlour fixed up in a discreet corner of the Saint James Club where women, legitimate and others, especially the others, the legitimate would rather die than be seen in that cursèd place, could come discreetly and wait for their men while sipping tea. (Another open secret: everyone knew that what was served in the tea cups wasn’t tea.) As rooms were available upstairs for the tired old gentlemen who were in no shape to go home, the tea drinkers had just one staircase to climb to dispense the services expected of them. That, though, Louise did not know.

  After she’d dried her tears, she left the house with everyone thinking she was asleep in bed, humiliated and remorseful, and she made her way straight to the Saint James Club. You could almost hear her heart pounding: she was about to rub shoulders with women of ill repute, take tea that wasn’t tea, offer herself, yes, offer herself, to the chief of police without revealing to him who she was, from a simple need for revenge! And hoping that he wouldn’t recognize her because they had met on numerous occasions. The enormity of what she was getting ready to do made her tremble while she climbed the few steps that led to the colonnaded balcony of the Saint James Club. The two religions practised in the Wilson household, that of her father, that of her mother, would condemn her once and for all, she would be marked for life, the future that was being planned for her destroyed forever … No husband, no future. But never mind, too bad for her, too bad for the others, they were going to see, all of them, who she was and what she could do!

  What happened next was so fast that she didn’t have time to think or to change her mind. She met Captain McDonald accompanied by an Anglican minister, Mister Glassco, who were getting ready to go home after an evening with plenty of wine. She didn’t have to wait in the anteroom with the tea drinkers, she didn’t even see them, and she approached the chief of police right in the lobby of the private club, with a look of alarm.

  The story she’d prepared was implausible, ridiculous, a muddle of details from her forbidden reading – Marguerite Gautier wasn’t far away – but for the two intoxicated men with overactive libidos the unexpected arrival of this magnificent young girl in tears who was throwing herself at them to tell them of her woes – the violent father, the escape by night (that’s where the truth stopped), the bus chosen out of the blue, the arrival in Ottawa in the middle of the night, the reputation of the Saint James, its anteroom, its tea drinkers – was an amazing bargain not to be missed. Through the alcohol fumes they didn’t see the holes, though huge and plentiful, in her melodramatic account, nor her clothes that were too elegant for a poor girl from Alexandria, nor did they notice her carefully chosen language or her extensive vocabulary. They took in only the easy prey they’d make short work of, drooling at the possibility being offered them, treated her kindly in a way that was soon transformed into thinly disguised propositions. Two men, intelligent and seasoned though they were, fell into the enormous trap set by an inexperienced young girl, from the sheer lust of intoxicated males. They behaved like profiteering boors without even a hint of guilt: they were powerful, they knew they were immune and they acted accordingly. As was their wont.

  They talked to her about the rooms available upstairs, offered to provide her with one for the night, long enough for her to get over her emotions, even to accompany her if she felt that she needed protection …

  Louise Wilson lost her virginity twice that night. First, through assaults aggressive but brief by the Ottawa chief of police, then in the quivering arms of a man of the Church. Both in fact would become regular visitors to the apartments, then to the houses she would keep, thoughtful protectors, mainstays of her clientele, but that night they allowed themselves shameful acts and she planned to make them pay.

  She submitted to the act itself – painful, but not as sharp as she’d have thought, the actual lovemaking, the sweat, the odours – by concentrating on the advantage she could take from them, already the mistress of herself, controlling her emotions, lost in her need for revenge. She would amuse herself later, claiming that she’d become a professional whore in a few hours.

  She went back to her father’s home at dawn, sat down in front of him, very calmly, and told him everything. She hoped that she’d see him die of apoplexy but found herself facing the very image of offended Victorian virtue: forefinger pointing, the other hand on his heart, he called her an unworthy daughter and showed her to the door of his office, telling her that he never wanted to see her again. He was very effective at outraged indignation, he was used to it as a corrupt lawyer who owed part of his fortune to more or less dubious cases. He could have killed her, he would have had the right, or buried her in a convent or shut her up in her room for good, he contented himself with ordering her to disappear from his sight. He knew he was hel
pless before the chief of police who had fairly often helped him out of tricky situations – mostly having to do with women – to whom he thought of himself as debtor; as for the Anglican priest, she didn’t mention his name. But he knew very well who it was, having himself taken advantage many times of the naivety of young girls along with his minister, Mister Glassco. He wasn’t going to demand compensation from his companions in debauchery! And so Louise was no longer his daughter, she had never existed, she could make a new life for herself somewhere else.

  But Ottawa was a small town and Louise would have many opportunities to remember her father. Especially because she often went to the same places he did.

  She took her small suitcase, her copy of La dame auxcamélias, and went back to knock on the door of the Saint James Club. She joined the ranks of tea drinkers awaiting her turn to climb upstairs to honour those gentlemen, but not for long. Because her ascent was meteoric: beautiful, bright, funny, she made for herself with dazzling speed a most flattering reputation across the capital and even beyond. Her taste for extravagant outfits, her scathing humour, the professionalism she displayed in plying her trade made her within a short time the queen of the secrets of the chaste capital of Canada. And she went from Louise to Ti-Lou. The she-wolf of Ottawa would come later, when her pecuniary requirements became exorbitant and her whims famous.

  At first her family claimed that she had gone to Europe, to Switzerland more precisely, then that she had found a husband, a fortune and happiness. A false trip was even organized around her false marriage and the Wilsons disappeared for several months. In fact, they spent the summer at the seaside, in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. No one was fooled, though no one dared to say a word: you could see the supposed newlywed travelling the streets of Ottawa in a carriage every afternoon, but no one would have dared to contradict Mr. Wilson, even when he wasn’t there. They treated her as if she’d just arrived in town and no one knew who she was.

  But if someone who really didn’t know her asked her where she came from – visiting foreigners were numerous and often partial to fresh meat in this tiny government town where opportunities for fun were rare – she started with her famous powerful throaty laugh and said:

  “I’m the daughter of the lawyer James W. Wilson here in Ottawa. Do you know him? If you don’t, stay away; if you do, watch out, he’s the biggest crook in town!”

  They’d all been there: Catholic priests and Protestant ministers, dignitaries from far-off lands as well as local worthies, crowned heads, phoney nobility, real mafiosi, one or two gents with no money or brilliant positions but dangerously handsome: those, she kept for the end, as a treat. A cardinal. But no pope despite hints by the authors of hot gossip who never knew where to stop. And all, without exception, had fallen for her charms. Her cultivation matched her expertise, her conversation and her style. She held sway over balls, reigned supreme in bed. She made men laugh after making them moan. She dressed wounds to self-esteem when a client turned out to be not up to it – alcohol could take the blame and she had the sensitivity to accuse it – and she knew how to congratulate those whose performance found favour in her eyes. Never did she disappoint. Anyone. She was the barely hidden gem of Ottawa and people came from far afield to honour her. Not from Rome, though. No, a pope wouldn’t have been so reckless as to cross the Atlantic twice for an encounter with a simple guidoune! Although …

  Legends, each more unlikely than the others, were then created around her personality, like the pope’s, actually, and she allowed it because she knew that it was excellent for her reputation.

  She had but one regret and she thought about it for the rest of her life: she had aimed at her father but it was her mother she’d killed. In fact, Gertrude had died of sorrow after several months of pleading with her husband, in vain, to retract his censure of their daughter, and trying for reconciliation with Louise. Both refused. Of course, Louise didn’t dare show up at her funeral and mourned all alone. And never forgave herself for what she would see as the single bad deed she’d committed.

  In 1912, when the Château Laurier had become the new Saint James Club, its corridors travelled by all of Ottawa’s influential political riff-raff, from the most serious senators to the new members of Parliament, ambitious but still green, the she-wolf of Ottawa settled there into a suite that would soon become the most popular salon in town. Outstanding salonnière, idolized as much by artists as by the political community, she was finally able to play Marguerite Gautier as she pleased. And like her, every month she placed a bouquet of red camellias in the doorway to her sweet. The perfume they spread around her then was not that of gardenias.

  Today, when she happens to run into her father – retired, bitter, sick – she always makes it a point of honour to greet him with a great big “Bonjour, Papa!” that every time he receives as a knife to his heart.

  Rhéauna didn’t know that it was possible to have your breakfast in bed, unless you were sick of course.

  In Maria, breakfast is a joyous ceremony around the big kitchen table: bread is toasted on the wood stove, summer and winter; eggs are fresh – Méo has just collected them in the henhouse; coffee is fragrant; bacon sizzles; everyone talks at the same time; everyone hurries because they’re late for school or for the day’s work. But it would never occur to anyone in the house to have it in bed. Meals have to be eaten together, not separately!

  After she has finished explaining, Ti-Lou grabs the telephone majestically and orders all kinds of things in English. A little later, a lady in uniform – different from the one who’d come earlier to change the sheets – delivers it all on a metal cart. Now the two of them are sitting up in the big cream satin bed, trays between them, breadcrumbs all over, empty little jam jars on the plates, remains of eggs solidifying in a sauce that Rhéauna doesn’t know and decides is exquisite. The little girl is even allowed to drink her first cup of coffee. It smells better than it tastes.

  She hasn’t mentioned the sounds she heard during the night and Ti-Lou hasn’t taken the trouble to explain them. The conversation is trivial, about this and that, Ti-Lou repeats the same questions as the day before about her mother’s relatives scattered all over Canada, life in Maria out in the middle of the prairies, school. At first Rhéauna appears to be reserved, simply replying to the questions as she had the day before and not really presenting her own ideas. She bites into a piece of bread, chews slowly, seems to think it over before replying to the question she’s just been asked. Her reactions are serious, overly polite. Gradually, though, more personal thoughts slip in, then some confidences, discreet at first, then more and more intimate. She deals with the same subjects but in a way that’s more thoughtful, less automatic. And she can’t help herself, she needs to confide in someone and finally bares her heart to her cousin Ti-Lou: her life in Maria, which she’ll miss; how she found out that she had to leave Saskatchewan, no doubt forever; her desire to see her mother again combined with her fear of living alone with her, after all she doesn’t know the woman, in a big city unlike anything she has experienced so far; her uncertain future with or without her sisters because she doesn’t even know when she’ll see them again; the loss of her grandparents who provoke her first sobs.

  Ti-Lou takes her in her arms, wipes her tears with a big lace handkerchief on which Rhéauna smells again the scent that overcomes her soul.

  “I don’t want that life, Ti-Lou, I want my other life back!”

  Ti-Lou holds her even closer. The scent of gardenia explodes around Rhéauna, who wishes she could drown in it, wishes she could die there, between satin sheets, in the arms of the most beautiful woman in the world.

  “Your mother has a heart of gold, Nana. I don’t know her very well but you could already tell when we were little girls that she was a good person, even though she could be difficult sometimes. We only saw each other at Christmas but I always looked forward to it because she was my favourite cousin. You have to think about how brave she was, Nana, to move all the way to Providence, t
o bring up a family on her own because her husband was at sea, to separate from them when she realized that she couldn’t bear that life … She separated from all of you because she loved you, and now if she’s called you back … You’ll have to be brave, too, Nana, probably it’ll be hard at first, but she’s your mother, you have a mother who loves you! You mustn’t ever forget that you’ve got a mother who loves you!”

  It’s time to get ready to leave. Rhéauna calms down, repeats again that she understands, that she’ll be sensible, that she’ll do everything she can to accept her new life. She told her grandmother, her two aunts, now she repeats it to her distant cousin. But she’s far from convinced. Anyway, she’s nearly there, in a few hours she will be in Montreal. The outpourings are over, the messages delivered, her move to Montreal is settled, she’ll see what’s going to happen. Her instinct reminds her, however, that it won’t be all that simple, that she must be prepared for surprises and difficulties of a kind she can’t imagine, and her anxiety comes back, more oppressive than ever.

  Ti-Lou tells her to take her bath, that they’ll leave the hotel a little earlier to enjoy the beautiful morning.

  “We’ll take the phaeton again. And put the top down. We’ll show ourselves like two queens through the streets of Ottawa. Ti-Lou and Nana, friends for life.”