by Kathy Reichs
Then, as now, there was tension. Though most of Montreal west of rue St-Laurent was English-speaking, by the eighteen-eighties the French had become a clear majority in the city as a whole. They dominated municipal politics, but the English ruled in commerce and in the press.
The French and Irish were Catholic, the English, Protestant. The groups remained largely separate, both in life and in death. Each had its own cemetery high on the mountain.
I closed my eyes and thought about that. Even today language and religion determined so much in Montreal. The Catholic schools. The Protestant schools. The Nationalists. The Federalists. I wondered where Élisabeth Nicolet’s loyalties would lie.
The room dimmed and the lamps clicked to life. I read on.
In the late nineteenth century Montreal was a major commercial hub, boasting a magnificent harbor, huge stone warehouses, tanneries, soapworks, factories. McGill was already a leading university. But, like other Victorian cities, it was a place of contrasts, with the huge mansions of the merchant princes overshadowing the hovels of the working poor. Just off the wide, paved avenues, beyond Sherbrooke and Dorchester, lay hundreds of dirt lanes and unpaved alleys.
The city then was poorly drained, with garbage and animal carcasses rotting in vacant lots, and excrement everywhere. The river was used as an open sewer. Though frozen in winter, the offal and refuse rotted and reeked in the warmer months. Everyone complained of the foul odors.
My tea had grown cold so I uncurled, stretched, and made a fresh cup. When I reopened the book, I skipped ahead to a section on sanitation. It had been one of Louis-Philippe’s recurring gripes about the Hôtel Dieu Hospital. Sure enough, there was a reference to the old boy. He’d gone on to become a member of the Health Committee of the City Council.
I read an engrossing account of the council discussing human waste. Disposal was chaotic at the time. Some Montrealers flushed excrement into city sewers that led into the river. Some used earth closets, sprinkling dirt over their deposits then putting them out for garbage collectors. Others defecated into outdoor privy pits.
The city’s medical officer reported that inhabitants produced approximately 170 tons of excrement each day, or over 62,050 tons per year. He warned that the 10,000 privy pits and cesspools in the city were the primary source of zymotic diseases, including typhoid, scarlet fever, and diphtheria. The council decided in favor of a system of collection and incineration. Louis-Philippe voted yea. It was January 28, 1885.
The day after the vote, Grand Trunk Railway’s western train pulled into Bonaventure Station. A conductor was ill and the railroad’s doctor was called. The man was examined and diagnosed as having smallpox. Being Protestant, he was taken to the Montreal General Hospital, but was refused admission. The patient was allowed to wait in an isolated room in the contagious diseases wing. Finally, at the railroad doctor’s pleading, he was grudgingly admitted to the Catholic Hôtel Dieu Hospital.
I got up to stoke the fire. As I rearranged the logs I pictured the rambling, gray-stone building that stood at avenue des Pins and rue St-Urbain. The Hôtel Dieu was still a functioning hospital. I’d driven past it many times.
I went back to the book. My stomach was growling, but I wanted to read until Harry arrived.
The doctors at the Montreal General thought those at the Hôtel Dieu had reported the smallpox to public health authorities. Those at the Hôtel Dieu thought the converse. No one told the authorities, and no one told the medical staff at either hospital. By the time the epidemic ended, over three thousand people were dead, most of them children.
I closed the book. My eyes were burning and my temples throbbed. The clock said seven-fifteen. Where was Harry?
I went to the kitchen, took out and rinsed the salmon steaks. As I mixed dill sauce I tried to picture my neighborhood a century earlier. How did one face smallpox in those days? To what home remedies did one turn? Over two thirds of the dead were children. What was it like to see your neighbors’ children die? How did one deal with the helplessness of caring for a doomed child?
I scrubbed two potatoes and put them in the toaster oven, then washed lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumbers. Still no Harry.
Though the reading had taken my mind off Mathias and Malachy and Carole Comptois, I was still tense and my head hurt. I ran a hot bath and added aromatherapy ocean mineral salts. Then I put on a Leonard Cohen CD and slipped in for a long soak.
I used Élisabeth to keep my mind off my recent homicide cases. The trip through history had been fascinating, but I hadn’t learned what I needed to know. I was already familiar with Élisabeth’s work during the epidemic through the volumes of information Sister Julienne had sent before the exhumation.
Élisabeth had been a recluse for years, but when the epidemic raged out of control she became an advocate for medical modernization. She wrote letters to the Provincial Board of Health, to the Health Committee of the City Council, and to Honoré Beaugrand, mayor of Montreal, begging for improved sanitation. She bombarded the French- and English-language papers, demanding the reopening of the city smallpox hospital and arguing for public vaccination.
She wrote to her bishop, pointing out that the fever was spread in places where crowds gathered, and begging him to temporarily close the churches. Bishop Fabre refused, stating that to close the churches would be to laugh at God. The bishop urged his flock to church, telling them that united prayer was more powerful than prayer in isolation.
Good thinking, Bishop. That’s why French Catholics were dying and English Protestants were not. The heathens got inoculated and stayed home.
I added hot water, imagining Élisabeth’s frustration and how much tact I would have used.
O.K. I knew about her work, and I knew about her death. The nuns had gone to town on that. I’d read reams on her final illness and the public funeral that followed.
But I needed to know about her birth.
I took the soap and worked up a lather.
There was no avoiding the journals.
I ran the bar over my shoulders.
But I had the photocopies, so that could wait until I got to Charlotte.
I washed my feet.
Newspapers. That had been Jeannotte’s suggestion. Yes. I’d use the time I had on Monday to view old newspapers. I had to go to McGill anyway to return the diaries.
I slid back into the hot water and thought about my sister. Poor Harry. I’d pretty much ignored her yesterday. I’d been tired, but was that it? Or was it Ryan? She had every right to sleep with him if she wanted. So why had I been so cold? I resolved to be more friendly tonight.
* * *
I was toweling off when I heard the beep of the security alarm. I dug out a flannel Disney nightshirt Harry had given me one Christmas, and pulled it over my head.
I found her standing in the living room, still wearing her jacket, gloves, and hat, her eyes fixed on something a million miles away.
“Long day, I’d say.”
“Yeah.” She refocused on the present, and gave me a half smile.
“Hungry?”
“I guess. Just let me have a few minutes.” She threw her pack onto the couch and flopped down beside it.
“Sure. Take your coat off and stay awhile.”
“Right. Damn, it gets cold here. I feel like a Popsicle just walking from the metro.”
A few minutes later I heard her in the guest room, then she joined me in the kitchen. I grilled the salmon and tossed the salad while she set the table.
When we sat down to eat I asked about her day.
“It was fine.” She cut her potato, squeezed it, and added sour cream.
“Fine?” I encouraged.
“Yeah. We covered a lot.”
“You look like you covered forty miles of bad road.”
“Yeah. I’m pretty beat.” She didn’t smile at my use of her expression.
“So what did you do?”
“Lots of lectures, exercises.” She spooned sauce onto her fish. “What ar
e these little green threads?”
“Dill. What kinds of exercises?”
“Meditation. Games.”
“Games?”
“Storytelling. Calisthenics. Whatever they tell us to do.”
“You just do whatever they say?”
“I do it because I choose to do it,” she snapped.
I was taken aback. Harry rarely barked at me like that.
“Sorry. I’m just tired.”
For a while we ate in silence. I didn’t really want to hear about her touchy-feely therapy, but after a few minutes I tried again.
“How many people are there?”
“Quite a few.”
“Are they interesting?”
“I’m not doing this to make new friends, Tempe. I’m learning to be accountable. To be responsible. My life sucks, and I’m trying to figure out how to make it work.”
She stabbed at her salad. I couldn’t remember when I’d seen her so down.
“And these exercises help?”
“Tempe, you just have to try it for yourself. I can’t tell you exactly what we do or how it works.”
She scraped off the dill sauce and picked at her salmon.
I said nothing.
“I don’t think you’d get it anyway. You’re too frozen.”
She picked up her plate and carried it to the kitchen. So much for my resolve to be interested.
I joined her at the sink.
“I think I’m just going to turn in,” she said, laying a hand on my shoulder. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
“I’m leaving in the afternoon.”
“Oh. I’ll call you.”
* * *
In bed, I replayed the conversation. I’d never seen Harry so listless, or so snappish when approached. She must have been exhausted. Or maybe it was the thing with Ryan. Or her breakup with Striker.
Later, I’d wonder why I hadn’t seen the signs. It might have changed so much.
ON MONDAY I GOT UP AT DAWN, PLANNING TO make breakfast for Harry and myself. She declined, saying it was a fast day. She left before seven, wearing sweats and no makeup, a sight I had never expected to experience.
There are records identifying the coldest spot on earth, the driest, the lowest. The gloomiest is without doubt the serials and microform department of McGill’s McLennan Library. It is a long narrow room on the second floor done in poured cement and fluorescent lighting, set off smartly by a bloodred floor.
Following the librarian’s instructions, I worked my way past the stacks of serials and newspapers to rows of metal shelves holding tiny cardboard boxes and round metal tins. I found the ones I wanted and took them to the reading room. Deciding to start with the English press, I withdrew a roll of microfilm and wound it onto the reading machine.
In 1846 the Montreal Gazette was published triweekly, with a format like today’s New York Times. Narrow columns, few pictures, numerous ads. My viewer was bad and so was the film. It was like trying to read under water. The print kept moving in and out of focus, and hairs and particles of debris migrated across the screen.
Ads extolled fur caps, British stationery, untanned sheepskins. Dr. Taylor wanted you to buy his balsam liverwort, Dr. Berlin, his antibilious pills. John Bower Lewis promoted himself as a worthy barrister and attorney-at-law. Pierre Grégoire would be pleased to do your hair. I read the ad:
Gentleman can accommodate respectable male and female clients. Will render hair soft and glossy, however harsh. Will use admirable preparations to produce beautiful curls and do excellent restoration. Reasonable prices. Select clients only.
And now for the news.
Antoine Lindsay died when his neighbor hit him in the head with a piece of wood. Coroner’s finding: Willful Murder.
A young English girl, Maria Nash, lately landed in Montreal, was victim of an abduction and betrayal. She died in a state of madness at the Emigrant Hospital.
When Bridget Clocone gave birth to a male child at the Women’s Lying-In Hospital, doctors found that the forty-year-old widow had recently delivered another child. Police searched her employer’s home and found the body of a second male infant hidden under clothes in a box. The baby showed “. . . marks of violence as though occasioned by the strong pressure of fingers on the neck.” Coroner’s finding: Willful Murder.
Jesus. Does anything ever change?
I shifted gears and scanned a list of ships that had cleared the port, and a list of ocean passengers leaving Montreal for Liverpool. Pretty dry stuff.
Fares for the steamboat. Stagecoach service to Ontario. Notices of removal. Not many folks moving that week.
Finally I found it. Births, Marriages, Deaths. In this city on the seventeenth, Mrs. David Mackay, a son. Mrs. Marie-Claire Bisset, a daughter. No mention of Eugénie Nicolet and her baby.
I noted the position of the birth notices within each paper, and fast-forwarded through the next several weeks, going right to that section. Nothing. I checked every paper on the reel. Through the end of 1846 there was no notice of Élisabeth’s birth.
I tried the other English papers. Same story. No mention of Eugénie Nicolet. No birth of Élisabeth. I shifted to the French press. Still nothing.
By ten o’clock my eyes were throbbing and pain had spread throughout my back and shoulders. I leaned back, stretched, and rubbed my temples. Now what?
Across the room someone at another machine hit the rewind knob. Good idea. Good as anything. I’ll go backward. Élisabeth was born in January. Let’s check the period when the little sperm and egg were introducing themselves to each other.
I got the boxes and wound a film through the spools. April 1845. Same ads. Same notices of removal. Same passenger lists. English press. French press.
By the time I got to La Presse my eyes would hardly focus. I looked at my watch. Eleven-thirty. Twenty minutes more.
I rested my chin on my fist and hit rewind. When the film stopped I was in March. I was advancing manually, stopping here and there to scan down the middle of the screen, when I spotted the Bélanger name.
I sat up and brought the article into focus. It was brief. Eugénie Bélanger was off to Paris. The noted singer and wife of Alain Nicolet would be traveling with a company of twelve and would return after the season. Except for some verbiage saying how much she’d be missed, that was it.
So Eugénie had left town. When had she returned? Where was she in April? Did Alain go with her? Did he join her there? I looked at my watch. Shit.
I checked my wallet, dug into the bottom of my purse, then printed as many pages as my coins would allow. I rewound and returned the films and hurried across campus to Birks Hall.
Jeannotte’s door was closed and locked, so I found the department office. The secretary dragged her eyes from her computer screen long enough to assure me that the journals would be delivered safely. I attached a note of thanks and left.
Walking back to the condo, my mind was still on history. I imagined the grand old homes I was passing as they’d been a century ago. What had the occupants seen when they looked out across Sherbrooke? Not the Musée des Beaux-Arts or the Ritz-Carlton. Not the latest offerings of Ralph Lauren, Giorgio Armani, and the atelier of Versace.
I wondered if they would have liked such trendy neighbors. Surely the boutiques were more uplifting than the smallpox hospital that had reopened not far from their backyards.
At home I checked the answering machine, afraid that I’d missed Harry’s call. Nothing. I quickly made a sandwich, then drove to the lab to sign reports. When I left I placed a note on LaManche’s desk reminding him of my date of return. As a rule I spend most of April in Charlotte, with the understanding that I’d return to Montreal immediately for court appearances or urgent matters. Come May and the end of spring semester, I’m back for the summer.
Home again, I spent an hour packing and organizing work materials. While I am not exactly a light traveler, clothes are not the problem. After years of commuting between countries, I’ve found it�
��s easier to keep two sets of everything. I have the world’s largest suitcase on wheels, and I load it with books, files, journals, manuscripts, lecture notes, and anything else on which I’m working. This trip it held several pounds of Xerox copies.
At three-thirty I took a taxi to the airport. Harry had not called.
* * *
I live in perhaps the most unique apartment in Charlotte. Mine is the smallest unit in a complex known as Sharon Hall, a two-and-a-half-acre property situated in Myers Park. Deeds don’t record the original function of the little structure, and today, for lack of a better label, the residents call it the Coach House Annex, or just the Annex.
The main house at Sharon Hall was built in 1913 as home for a local timber magnate. On the death of his wife in 1954, the 7,500-square-foot Georgian was donated to Queens College. The buildings housed the college’s music department until the mid-eighties, when the property was sold and the mansion and coach house were converted to condos. At that time wings and annexes with an additional ten town houses were added, all conforming to the style of the original home. Old brick from a courtyard wall was incorporated into the new buildings, and windows, moldings, and hardwood floors were made as similar to the 1913 style as possible.
In the early sixties a gazebo was built next to the Annex, and the tiny building served as a sort of summer kitchen. It eventually fell into disuse, then served as a storage shed for the next two decades. In 1993 a NationsBank executive bought the Annex and converted it into the world’s smallest town house, incorporating the gazebo as part of the main living area. He was transferred just as my deteriorating marital situation sent me into the market for alternative living arrangements. I have a little over eight hundred square feet on two floors and, though cramped, I love it.
