Watch that Ends the Night

by Hugh Maclennan

  It sounded so foreign I was startled, and yet I should not have been. Most of the communists that night were Jewish; some had been born in Poland and Russia, and those who had not were the sons of parents who had emigrated to escape the pogroms. A considerable Jewish quarter had slowly emerged between the French and English sections of the city, and the depression had hit the Jews – at least in their minds – harder than it had hit any other racial group in the city.

  I want to be clear about this. To me the Jews are the senior people of civilization and it annoys me that I am unable to say that some of my best friends are Jews without being accused of sneering at a people whose tradition I reverence. However, some of my best friends are, and one of them tells me that it is very easy for a Jew who leaves the synagogue, especially for one who left it in the 1930s, to become a communist. In Montreal quite a few had done this and had broken their parents’ hearts, and the guilt they felt for having done so had made them all the more bitter. By no means all the communists in Montreal in those days were Jews, but I think it a fact that it was the Jews who provided the passion. Who could blame them? For they knew, while the French and English blocs did not, exactly what Hitler was preparing for all of us.

  “The Cossacks!” the cry rang out again. “The Cossacks!” When the platform party came out the hissing changed to applause, the applause to foot-stamping and the foot-stamping to cheers. The first man out looked like a middle-aged shoe clerk, the second like a tallyman on the docks, the third was the Spanish tank officer and the fourth was Jerome. The Spaniard had a long scar down a swarthy cheek, he was lean and fanatic and as proud as a matador. The central bloc in the hall broke into the Internationale and looking down the aisle I saw the mild faces of a pair of Presbyterian ministers staring in surprise. The platform party stood at attention to the workers’ hymn and all but Jerome raised their clenched fists. Then Jerome, seeing the others doing it, did the same. The hymn ended and silence fell with a crash.

  The shoe-clerk in a toneless voice introduced Jerome as a great doctor, a great scientist, a great friend of the working class. He spoke as though Jerome was already a member of the Communist party, and as I listened I thought of what Jack Christopher had said about Jerome allowing himself to be used, and I felt cold and guilty. For that Jerome was being used now was obvious. The excitement of the crowd had worked on him. His own impetuosity, his own generous, reckless way of throwing himself into a moment and responding to the emotions of others – all this sucked him out of any restraint he might otherwise have had. He said things that night he would not have uttered had he kept his head. He sounded to an untrained ear more like a communist than the shoe-clerk had done, and at every point he made the crowd barked like dogs.

  The Spaniard rose and for three-quarters of an hour he spoke in halting French all the more moving because of a certain grim naïveté in his manner and choice of words. He told us about horrors he had seen in Spain. He spoke of the murder of his parents by the fascists, of the hope of the Spanish people had had before the Moors came in under Franco, and the passion of the Spanish war reached us even through the communist jargon he employed. He was arrogant, but in a way he was noble. I could not like him; I had the impression that if he ever achieved power he would be merciless. But he was obviously brave, he was fanatical, and he was literal. It was my impression that he had not been a communist for a long time and had become one only because the communists seemed to offer him hope. He ended his speech, raised his clenched fist and received a standing ovation. Then the central bloc, as though on a word of command, broke into the marching song of the German detachment of the International Brigade. It was called Freiheit and when they sang it in German it sounded like a Teutonic paean. They were still singing when the riot began.

  The riot started with a ripe fruit which sailed over the heads of the crowd and squelched on the wall just behind Jerome’s head. Jerome came to his feet with his bulldog jaw outthrust. Excited and stirred by the Spaniard, he had reverted to the primitive and if I ever saw a man thirsting for a fight it was Jerome at that moment. The Spaniard stood immobile and stately with folded arms, the shoe-clerk smirked and looked well pleased, but Jerome stepped forward to the edge of the platform and his very aspect was a challenge announcing that if there was anyone who wanted trouble, he was ready to oblige him. I turned and saw the black berets of French-Canadian students crowding in and the surge of the people in the back. Then I saw berets running down the central aisle toward the platform.

  “The Cossacks have let the fascists in!” one of the communists screamed.

  Fists began swinging and I heard French voices crying “Sales Juifs” while others responded with “sauvage”, “fascist” and “pea-soup.” The flash bulbs of newspaper reporters began popping and a body of cops following the students down the aisle began to take control of the spectators. Three black berets climbed the platform and made for the speakers and Jerome, his eyes glittering, his body moving craftily despite his limp, slipped a punch and landed a solid right on a student’s jaw. The student was knocked clean off the platform and disappeared and Jerome’s eyes gleamed with joy. More students milled up and Jerome was in the center of a tangle of them, doing all right for himself, and then the police went up to the platform and began pulling the fighters apart.

  “Let’s get out of here!”

  It was Lazenby talking and pointing to the cops with one hand and to a side door with another. He disappeared while I stood where I was, wondering what to do. By now the police had the riot under control and solid blue uniforms were marshalling the crowd from the center aisle to the side doors. I was pushed out in the mêlée and found myself next to Professor John David, who said excitedly that it was quite a night. In the street there were several paddy wagons, a crowd of loafers and about twenty cops, and everyone looked quiet and orderly except for one character who was being pushed by a pair of enormous cops into the back of a paddy wagon. His mouth was opening and closing very fast and I heard him scream that if they didn’t let him go he would sue them for false arrest. The cops threw him in, closed the door on him and left him there.

  I waited around thinking about Catherine and feeling shocked and rotten and wondering what to do. Now that the communists had made their demonstration, they were quiet and orderly. A few of them stood around, but most of them moved off singly or in small groups in an easterly direction. I saw no sign of Lazenby and forgot about him, and after a while I went to a cop and asked him what had happened to the platform party. He gave me a stolid look and did not answer. Then I walked around to the back of the building and saw a police automobile drawn up before the back door with one cop behind the wheel, and two more standing outside talking to a trio of students in black berets. I asked one of them in French what had happened to the platform party, but he did not answer. I waited about four minutes and then the door opened and they all came out: the shoe clerk, the tallyman, the Spaniard and Jerome, and directly behind them was a woman I recognized as Norah Blackwell. Jerome had a mouse under his left eye and was laughing as though he had enjoyed himself. Norah came up to him and took his arm, Jerome gave her a quick kiss, then all of them piled into the police car and were driven off. This happened in less than thirty seconds.

  “What are you doing?” I asked the sergeant in French. “Arresting the speakers?”

  He evidently thought I was a reporter, for he replied with courtesy. “No, monsieur, we are protecting the speakers.” There was nothing more to see or do at this hall, so I walked away, and as I came around the corner I saw a familiar figure ahead of me, quickened my step and overtook Adam Blore.

  “Were you at that goddamned meeting?” he asked me. “I certainly was.”

  “Did you ever hear such crap in your life?” He let out a sneering laugh. “Well, was I right or wasn’t I about Martell and that little Blackwell bitch? He’s fallen for her like a tree in a swamp. Where are you going?”

  “Home, I guess.” “I’m looking for a woman. There’
s nothing like a show like tonight’s to serve as an aphrodisiac for some of these little puritan girls. Down on Dorchester Street it would cost me two bucks, but with them all I have to do is say I hate Franco.”

  We parted company and I turned in the direction of the university and walked until I ended in the little street where Jerome and Catherine lived. There was no light in the living room, but knowing Catherine was home I went up the steps and rang the bell. When nothing happened I walked through the tradesmen’s lane to the back and looked up at the bedroom windows. They were all dark. Catherine might be asleep or she might be lying awake, but with all of those windows dark it was certain Jerome had not come home.

  Leaving the quiet area of the university under a rising last-quarter moon, I walked down to St. Catherine and saw by a clock that it was only ten minutes after ten. I walked slowly along in the streaming crowds of St. Catherine Street on a Saturday night: the unemployed shuffling with the noise of a river, the young couples with petty jobs emerging arm in arm from the movie houses, the trams clanging, the lights glaring, the popcorn smell on the corner of Peel, the vendors selling the bulldog edition of the Gazette, the grit and the torn scraps of newspaper and the throb of downtown Montreal after dark. I boarded a westbound tram and when I reached my parents’ flat in N.D.G. they were both up and surprised to see me home so soon. My mother inquired about dear Catherine and my father, happy in his shirtsleeves after several hours at his work bench, produced a telegram he had received that morning.

  “They’re going to take my can opener,” he said, and his sheep dog’s face beamed.

  “Isn’t it wonderful?” said my mother. “Who’s going to take what can opener?” I asked, and both their faces fell.

  “But George, you know all about it. Father showed you his can opener months ago.”

  “Here, George, read this.” And Father handed me the telegram. I read it and learned that the Acme Home Industrial Development Corporation of Buffalo, N.Y., was at least interested in Father’s can opener.

  “This time I decided to make something simple and indispensable – something everyone wants,” said Father, smiling. “I got the idea from reading about King C. Gillette in a magazine. You know, the razor man. He had a theory. Invent something which becomes indispensable to a man the moment he has it, but something which wears out quickly and has to be replaced. Now take this can opener. Think of the number of times you’ve been on a picnic and used the old fashioned thing that jigs and jags, and you end up by cutting yourself and leaving the top of the can like the edge of a saw. Wait – I’ll show you the thing itself.”

  Father darted into his bedroom and returned with a gadget that looked like an old-fashioned, medium-sized jack-knife. He opened it up and it turned into the kind of can opener you now see screwed into kitchen walls, but with a difference: this one was anchored to a tripod which could be held onto the ground.

  “If you don’t mind me saying so, Father, this thing seems a little flimsy.”

  “But that’s the point. It’s meant to be flimsy. It will break somewhere, or bend somewhere, after a month or two. But during that time it will work, and it will carve the tops off cans as neatly as King C. Gillette’s blue blade shaves off beards, and once a family has owned one, it will never be without one again.”

  Suddenly I felt exhausted. I looked up from the sofa, handed the gadget back and said: “That’s wonderful, Father.”

  “You really think so, George? I value your opinion, old man. You’re not pretending?”

  “Of course I think it’s wonderful.” “I’ve always known your father was wonderful,” Mother said. “And I’ve always known he’d be recognized.”

  “What happened to that crossbow?” I asked him. Father laughed. “Oh, that! When I became a man I put away childish things.”

  He embraced his wife and kissed her as though he had just married her; I said good-night and made ready for bed.

  The next day was Sunday and I went to the Martell’s apartment just before noon and found Catherine in a housecoat. She sent Sally upstairs on some pretext so that we could be alone.

  “I suppose you were there last night?”

  I nodded. “I wasn’t, of course. I haven’t gone to one of his meetings in months. Perhaps I should have gone to them all. Perhaps that’s been the trouble.” “How is Jerome today?”

  “I wouldn’t know. I haven’t seen him.”

  “You mean, he didn’t come home?”

  “He called up around midnight to say he was all right and that he had to look after this Spaniard. He told me to sleep and get my rest. I hardly slept all night.”

  “I came here after the meeting,” I said. “I thought it might have been you who rang the doorbell.” She got up and rearranged some glass objects on her mantel-piece and spoke to me with her back turned.

  “My father was a great reader, and when I was a girl I remember one of his favorite poems was by an ancient Greek. Something about the turn of a dragonfly’s wing.”

  “Like the turn of a dragonfly’s wing, so rapid the change,” I said.

  “So you know it, too.”

  “Is there anything I can do, Catherine?” Still with her back to me, she said: “Only give me a normal heart. Only give me enough strength to be a normal woman.”

  I said nothing and stared at the floor. “I’ve been reading the Bible lately,” she said. “Do you know the Ninetieth Psalm?”

  “No.”

  “Nobody ever reads it any more, I suppose. They should. ‘Thou turnest man to destruction and sayest: return, ye children of men.’ Yes indeed all our days now are consumed in somebody’s anger. Well, George –” she turned and faced me and her whole face was pain, and at the same time beautiful. “I think you’d better go now.”

  “Catherine!” But I got to my feet. “Yes, I think you’d better go, for he may be home any time now.” Her large eyes looked into mine. “Was the Blackwell girl there last night?”

  I would have liked to lie, but it was useless to lie to Catherine, so I nodded.

  “Was she there in her capacity as a communist, or as a woman?”

  “As both, I’d say.”

  I told her briefly about the scene on the stage and about seeing Jerome and the platform party drive away.

  “She could be very attractive and appealing,” Catherine said, “especially to a man like Jerome who always wants to help people. He’s spoken to me about her quite frankly. He’d like me to like her. Of course he would, poor dear.” An elliptical smile. “Men seem so strange to me sometimes. Probably we seem equally strange to them. However – from the way she’s behaving and from what he’s told me – I’m afraid he’ll rue the day he looked at her, for she can’t be judged normally. I tell you, she’s an unbalanced personality, and I think Jerome must have been tired of her a few minutes after he first made love to her. If only he wouldn’t feel responsible for her! But she’ll see to it that he does.”

  I lit a cigarette and looked out the window and for a while neither of us spoke.

  “Well,” she said finally, “if he must go to Spain, then he must go to Spain. I know he’s sincere in that, and I wish this girl were out of the picture for the sake of our dignity. People will say he’s going on account of her. He tells me a personal life doesn’t matter in a time when millions are going to be killed. I suppose he’s right, but I’m a woman and a personal life is all I can understand.”

  Then she said very simply: “Jerome and I loved each other too much. I haven’t been able to rest him. He needs rest and this winter I failed. One gets so tired of hurting and being hurt. One gets so tired of thinking.”

  I looked out the window at a street empty save for a cat washing its face on the curb.

  “I loathe that girl for what she’s done to our dignity,” Catherine said. Then she shrugged: “But Jerome is unconscious of this, so why should I be? He’s put me into an impossible position, and he doesn’t seem to realize it. He’s put me into a position where I can’t help
him. If I tell him the truth about that girl – at least what I think is the truth – what else will I seem to be but a jealous woman? How can I tell him to stop feeling guilty to her when he also feels guilty to me?”

  “Is he as mixed up as that?”

  “I’ve been badly mixed up myself, so how can I blame anyone for being the same? I feel useless. I seem to be one of the few people you know who distrusts everything about the communists. Lots of people join them because they’re idealists, but the real communists hate too much. I can’t accept Jerome’s view of them. Now – on account of this girl, who is also a communist – I can’t even talk to him about that. Women can be frightful deliberately, but men can be frightful out of sheer chivalry.”

  She got up and with her head held so high that for all her small stature she seemed tall, she said: “In spite of all this I’m going to make one more attempt to talk to the silly man. But I’m not going to pretend I see anything good in the communists.”

  She went to the door and turned: “Now George, you’d better go, for he’ll be back soon.”

  Bumblingly I said: “I’m sure he didn’t spend the night with Norah. I’m sure he just went off with the speakers and got talking and didn’t come home.”

  Her smile made me feel like a child: “I know the difference between love and sex, George. And I know that what he feels for Norah Blackwell – apart from a normal desire – is pity and not love.”

  The following Monday morning, eating breakfast beside McNish in the Waterloo dining hall with my back to the admirals of the Red and my face to the admirals of the Blue, I learned from the morning paper that Saturday night’s riot had outraged opinion in Montreal, and that the real cause of the outrage had not been the Spaniard, the students or the communists in the audience, but the presence of Jerome and the role he had played.

  It is a curious city, Montreal, and in this story I keep returning to the fact that it is. Strangers never understand its inner nature, and immigrant families, even from other parts of Canada, can live here two generations without coming to know it in their bones. I am absolutely certain that Montreal is the subtlest and most intricate city in North America. With her history she could not have been otherwise and survived, for here the French, the Scotch and the English, over two centuries, have been divided on issues which ruin nations and civilizations, yet have contrived to live in outward harmony. This is no accident. They understand certain rules in their bones.