“I have my diary hidden in the room—please find it and destroy it,” she had whispered. “It reminds me too much about too much of my past.”
She had travelled to every continent in the world, she told him once.
“Except for Antarctica,” he said.
“How do you know—in fact I have gone there too, on some kind of big damn ice-killing machine. And it’s not half as nice as the brochure says it is, and all the penguins do is stand around and blink.”
“Why do they blink?”
“If you ask me, they’re snow-blind.”
Was left as an orphan.
The years had flown by on crooked streets, avenues with no name, houses with terraces above cities she did not know, until this moment.
2.
AFTER HE GAVE HER PLU HE WENT BACK TO HIS ROOM. HE TOOK the diary from the garbage bag he had placed it in, and began to flip through it.
He discovered that they were in France when Mary Cyr met the Russian ambassador. It was a big, big plush place, as Mary Cyr noted, with “lots of plushes around—red chairs and things!”
There was a publisher there too, one of the French publishers, and a woman, a patron to the arts named Madame Something-or-other, who coughed right in Mary Cyr’s face, and talked about someone’s wine empire.
“Empires come and go,” Mary Cyr said, because she had heard that on television; Mary Cyr was seven when she said this. Her mother was a British woman, completely out of fashion in the new Canada and thought to be small-minded.
Mary heard it as if by osmosis. The British had destroyed everyone in Canada, didn’t you know? And her mother was British. She did not think of it, however—in any particular way—when she was seven or eight or nine, until she was one night invited to sit at the big table, with the adults. It must have been in the early seventies by that time.
That’s when she met the man named Ernest Vanderflutin, the son of one of the men her grandfather had helped in the Netherlands. Ernest had come east to discuss selling his shares in the iron ore mine.
Yes, he was young. Yes, he was tall. Yes, he was good-looking. Yes, he had finished his doctoral thesis; yes, he had written a book.
Then at supper there was a sharp disagreement between Vanderflutin and her mother, over British imperialism. (Or this is how she remembered it.) It might not have been anything, but Mary always made a great deal of it. She always hated the idea of how her mother was ostracized that night—ganged up on. And she never forgave any of them.
Whatever happened—whatever it was—it turned her against this man.
And it turned her against Nanesse and Garnet for taking his side.
“Why?” John said, when she was seventeen, telling him about it for the first time.
She thought for a moment—a long moment.
“Because,” she answered slowly, “whatever Ernest Vanderflutin was in favour of seemed at that moment so easy to be in favour of—it is like those men who continually bash the Catholic Church—at one time they were probably all little towheaded snitches for the Brothers and acted in little plays about Bethlehem. The ones people like myself would never get picked for.”
She looked at him and gave a small intense smile, one that disappeared as suddenly as he had seen it. It allowed one to see she had battle scars.
“Vanderflutin struck me as the same. His father owned land, farmland out west, that had been taken at some point from the First Nations—but all of a sudden it wasn’t them—it had to be a bigger target, a bigger scapegoat: the British—they seem to be the easiest to blame—they were the racists, the imperialists. I found that out, that night long ago. Vanderflutin was white and hid behind First Nations prowess he did not possess in order to scapegoat the Brits. My mom simply became collateral damage. Yes, I am sure some Brits were sons of bitches, just like some Dutchmen. Anyway, I have met enough First Nations sons of bitches to know it is a sham anyway—so being called racist by them is probably a blessing. It is like being called a sexist by some feminists—it is a badge of honour—which you, John, must well know by now. So I care for no opinion. How I wanted him to like my mother and me—but now I care less.” She said this as pollen blew in the air about her head, and the smell of sweet flowers mingled with the drafts of heat and paint.
“So I don’t give a damn,” she said.
But in a way, of course, she did. It hurt her very deeply, as a condemnation always will.
“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me” was also a lie.
Besides, she said, Ernest was likeable, yet young and quite silent about the Dutch and French participation in the divvying up of the world.
“The diamonds and the rubber trees, and the rest of the fuckin’ swag and loot,” she said. “So everyone, he said, hated and made fun of the English—and had the table laughing—the Irish hated us, the French, the Americans and the whole bloody lot—so I said, well—let’s see if I can’t fight back. My best weapon is my counterpunch.”
“That night—”
“Well—if not soon after.”
That long-ago night when he visited the house to receive the offer for the New Brunswick mine, Ernest said that British Loyalists had destroyed New Brunswick.
“I’m glad the French are still to be found here—they did not manage to get rid of all of you,” he said. “Comment peut-on dire qu’ils ont une joie de vivre?”
Nanesse being an Acadian girl (though she had lived much of her childhood in Quebec) was very delighted by this turn of events. She had not expected it—and she looked with piety and triumph at her archrival—Mary Cyr’s mother, Elaine, that little English salope. Of course this was the subtle grasp for power within the family that Elaine, never welcome as a war bride, did not really understand. In fact her little daughter, Mary Cyr, saw it much quicker than she did.
“Les maudits anglais,” Nan was capable of saying at least eight times a day.
“So, Mr. Vanderflutin, you are on our side,” Nan said. (She pretended she meant on the side of the table, which meant Mrs. Cyr as well, but Mary knew instinctively that nothing could be further from the truth, and it was a way to further ostracize her mother, who had not lost a smidgen of her mild British accent.)
“Oh, of course I am always on the side of the underdog, the Métis and the First Nations.” He smiled. “What good person wouldn’t be?”
“And you think like we do—finally someone who is progressive. We have to get rid of the mayor of Moncton—a bigot—and the mayor of Campbellton and Saint John—big English French-hating bigots.”
“How absurd. In this day and age?” Ernest said.
So he had his opening and began to tell jokes.
At one point he said that he had heard the Natives could smell the English a mile away, and that the English knew nothing about horses, and would continually lose them. Nanesse laughed very gaily at all of this, though she herself could not go into a barn without coming down with hives if a horse was in it. And neither in fact could Ernest.
However, Ernest spoke this in French to the more progressive end of the table.
“Ils peuvent sentir des kilomètres,” he said.
“Mon Dieu! Non, je ne le crois pas.”
“Oui,” Vanderflutin said, his face filled with pork chop and mirth.
All of this had started earlier in the day, when he was talking about soccer and European rivers. That is, at twenty-four he had to tell all he knew, about what he knew, to everyone he knew, believing that before himself no one ever knew.
Garnet had said:
“How do you like the Miramichi?”
And he had answered:
“Oh—yes, well, pretty of course, but I’ll be back on the Rhine soon.” And smiled as if to say: Nothing else could or should be said.
Mary stared at him, as he spoke earlier in the day, with a strange and childlike curiosity, her head suddenly confused about something, and then went and had a bath.
As she lay up to her chin in th
e water, listening to the voice of the young man elucidating to them all the things he knew, and all the things he had done, and all the things he intended to do, she felt sorry for her mother, who seemed not to be included in any of the talk. She waited desperately to hear her mother’s voice, and each time she heard it her mother was soon interrupted, and fell silent. She heard Nanesse tell her mother to bring a chair from the other room. Then tell her to take the cups away. All the while Ernest kept talking. And Mary Cyr all of ten or eleven was furious.
So little Mary Cyr dressed for supper that night, not sure of these thoughts she was having but realizing that she at least had them, and in having them she wanted to protect her mom from everyone else in that room. Her heart at that moment was filled with a protective and sorrowful love.
But it seemed there was no reason to speak of Europe at supper. No one spoke of it for the longest time. Well, Garnet did say that he had gone with his family to visit Beaverbrook’s papers when he was a boy.
So Mary tried to cut her pork chop and was very silent. For the longest time no one was speaking about much of anything.
But Mary eyed Nan with her beautifully clever eyes. She knew something was coming. And she was right. Nan was waiting for an opening. And then someone at the far end of the table—a fellow, a former teacher of physics from St. Stephen—mentioned how pretty the Acadian villages were in winter.
Nan looked around the table. She took a drink of water from her crystal glass. She smiled at the compliment, even though she had never been in one of those houses.
“Des maisons très belles,” Vanderflutin said. Again there was a pause.
“Oh oui,” Mary said, hoping to stop Nan from speaking, “Très belles—très belles—a few more très belles tout le monde—rootie tout le tout tout—and a few more très belles.”
She laughed loudly at this, shaking her head at her own joke, thinking she had made quite the impression, but no one spoke to her. So she rubbed her nose with the inside of her wrist and picked at her pork chop again.
Then suddenly Nan said, in her most subversive and antagonizing way, that the villages would be even prettier if the British paid their enormous debt to good decent people; that their dealings in all the former territories were now being exposed, and they should pay restitution, starting in the provinces with the Acadians. Who suffered just like Mahatma Gandhi in India.
“It would come to billions,” she said, putting potatoes on her fork. “Yes—billons upon billions,” she said, covering the potatoes with green beans.
“Mais les anglais ne payeront pas,” she said, giving a quick frown and shake to her head. “Mais les anglais ne payeront pas,” she repeated.
“Oui, ils le feront!” Vanderflutin declared, with astonishing compassion. “Il y a un règlement de comptes à venir.”
He was looking at Mary Cyr as he said this, thinking that she must be some little radical. But she didn’t have a clue what he said, and only said, looking about for dessert:
“Où est le grand…cupcake?”
But no one paid her any mind at all. They all looked at him. Nan stopped chewing, and then continued chewing slowly.
Vanderflutin nodded. Yes, everyone wanted him to shed light on it. That is what he had done his doctorate on: British imperialism in the colonies. So he took a gulp of water and cleared his throat. Then he smiled at them all. He began to mention stodgy names and poor legislators, factors in land disputes, hidden and secret betrayals by people like Sir John A MacDonald, and very bogus land claims.
“I have come to the astonishing conclusion that the world would have been much better off without the British,” he said. “Or I should say better off if the British hadn’t left their foggy Isle.”
He was quite animated, but he, as a historian and political scientist, did not understand one basic thing: the Balkanization of this little household.
In fact Mary Cyr had four nationalities in her—Irish, Scottish, French and English—and very likely Micmac as well. So at this supper, listening to Nan and their guest, she would decide who she was once and for all. And she would never waver once she decided.
“The English did nothing in the Second World War either, and wouldn’t have lasted without the Americans,” Nan said. “Isn’t that true, Ernest. Churchill with all his aimless puffing of his cigars—as much of a tyrant as anyone else I would say.”
“Quite true,” Ernest said, lifting his fork to make his point.
Suddenly Mary thought in her mind’s eye of her mother, who, as Mary’s father had told her one night, had run up ladders during the Blitz to throw buckets of water on burning roofs; sitting there politely as Mr. Vanderflutin spoke about the decimation and the ruining of culture English people did. Even if it was true—it was truth told to do the devil’s work—and she would not forgive him.
Mary was sitting at the farthest end of the table of about fourteen people. It was the very first night she had been allowed to sit at the big table. There were lilies floating in a glass bowl—the bowl was smoky, and she could see her face distorted in it. During the first course of the dinner she made faces at herself, in this bowl, until Nan told her to stop.
Then she picked up her napkin and tucked it under her chin. She yawned and then pretended to smile, so as not to be rude.
But as the meal progressed, and as her father was not at home, she saw how the family had turned on her mom, without having the decency to say they were—who now had no one to shield her. Their family was Scottish and French—but she, because of her mom, was half British. So she had to suddenly make a choice. It happens in very subtle ways in almost every Maritime family sooner or later.
“Oh, my père too—old père—said the anglais knew nothing,” Nan said. “We were here hundreds of years before them—yes—let me tell you—we loved the First Nations and they loved us. THEY LOVED US! They hated the British, and all their schemes, but they loved US.”
“C’est la même chose dans l’ouest, je suis afraid,” said young Vanderflutin.
Mary looked at her mom and winked her support. She saw her mother’s lips tremble. That wink would be the wink that was her destiny. That tremble would never be forgotten.
For the next half-hour or so, at everything Vanderflutin mentioned about anything, did not matter what, Mary would give a great “Ahh—haaa!” And then put her head down.
“No—I didn’t do much farming myself,” said Vanderflutin.
“Ahh—haaa.”
Or:
“No, I have never fired a rifle—I had one—I didn’t fire it.”
“Ahh—hhaaa.”
Enough to make everyone look at her, and then she would be silent.
Then, during a brief silence, she said to herself:
“I had one once—I didn’t fire it. Ha.” And started to giggle uncontrollably.
“Marie—mon Dieu, mon enfant—mon enfant terrible,” Nan said.
“Shhhh,” her mother said, for the fifth time.
3.
SO SHE WAS TRYING TO EAT HER PIE AND LISTEN VERY CAREFULLY while not spilling anything on her red dress. She could still feel water in her ears from the bath she had had before supper, and once in a while she would give her head a shake, or pound one side of it with her hand.
But then at a pivotal moment, just when Garnet and Nan had joined in against the Brits, and the Expulsion, which they said destroyed thousands of lives, and her father was not home to protect her mom, Mary spoke up. Her voice changed. It did not become older; it became, however, purposeful and strangely hypnotic. And her eyes showed flashes of brilliance as they darted here and there.
“Well,” Mary said, “that is not very nice of you, Mr. Vanderflutter—even if Aunt Nan thinks so.”
“It’s Vanderflutin.” Ernest smiled. He was still feeling the general giddy emancipation of the table, and did not catch what Mary had said.
Still, she kept her eyes averted, and suddenly spoke most solemnly to her pie plate, but very quietly so it was hard to hear
her.
“I am sure it is exactly like something like that. I mean a Flutter or a Flutten,” Mary Cyr said, now looking straight ahead, now casting a short bright glance his way. “But still you are at our house, and have just gotten a nice piece of pie—and you should eat it. For my mother is British. And she didn’t mean to be British, but she is. So it is very mean of you and my aunt and uncle to say those mean things about her country. She did not mean to kill all the Indians, perhaps just some of them, or expulse all those Frenchies, but I guess—well, maybe they had it coming. Who knows what they would have done to the British in their place. Maybe boiled them up or something—ha ha ha—off with their heads, because well, there was a big revolution in France and they went about doing that to everyone—even killing their own queen, who had a nice wig, which I saw in a picture—and was wondering so much if she wore her nice wig when her head was lopped off—and I wondered too if the French ever really forgave themselves for being so—mean!”
“Mary,” her mother said. “You are being rude—very rude, dear.”
“Mean, to their queen,” Mary finished. Then she took a big gulp of milk, which gave her a moustache. “Yes, a bit mean to their queen!” And then she sang:
“Riding in a cart up to the head off chop!”
Vanderflutin up until that moment did not know Mrs. Elaine Cyr was British. He had simply assumed she was so quiet because he himself was so brilliant.
Now he did not want to backtrack, just explain.
“I am talking about imperialism, which was a disaster for many a country, dear. It is what kept the class system here. Someday you will understand what it is I am saying. I am seeking a new awareness for women and men.”
“The class system, that’s it exactly—that’s it exactly!!” Nanesse agree with a certain triumph.
Mary was silent. The whole table was silent. Everything seemed silent. For a while. Then suddenly Mary spoke; said in a strange almost altered voice:
Mary Cyr Page 11
