October 1970

by Louis Hamelin

  There was no membership, attendance was informal and spontaneous, based on individual interests and a desire to share truth. The Octobeerists’ format was therefore identical, in a way, to that of every revolutionary indépendantiste group active in the 1960s. A stable solar system gravitated around Chevalier Branlequeue: Alexis, the little comic destined to make stacks of money under the name Alexis-the-Man-of-Rubber, Humorist; Alexander, the cursed, trigger-happy poet who drank like a fish, got all the women, and was the future soul of the Group Alexandersen, of piercing and painful memory; Frédéric Falardeau, a.k.a. Fred, who was working on a great Joycean novel that absorbed him to such an extent that he ended up being transformed into the spitting image of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. And there was Samuel Nihilo.

  Women seemed condemned to remain at the periphery of the circle, assigned the role of simple observers, mainly because they (though not their clothing) were invisible as far as Chevalier Branlequeue was concerned. He quite simply ignored them. Among such creatures, Dogsbody’s spouse exhibited a kind of misogyny that looked a lot like distraction; their simple presence was something to which he seemed completely oblivious.

  Another explanation for the fragile and provisional status of female students who risked turning up at Lavigueur’s (they usually lasted about three weeks) had to do with the very nature of the themes of the meetings: if the October Crisis in Quebec was going to accommodate the rising and powerful feminist ideology over the next decade, then women, in this male-dominated milieu, would have to develop their own idea of liberty, just as the Senegalese and Algerians driven to disaster by their colonizers resurrected the holy spirit of democracy on the battlefields of Europe. But you had to ask the complex question about how many human females were really interested in the secret services, outside of Mata Hari, femmes fatales (most often Russian), and other Bond Girls, whose roles were assigned to them by tradition. “No doubt we are dealing here,” Branlequeue remarked, “with one of the last authentic private hunting reserves of the male condition.”

  Chevalier opened each session by tapping several times on the table with some object of his choice, brought from his home for the occasion: a cap pistol, an authentic Mohawk tomahawk, and even, once, a coyote femur. The agenda was, as a general rule, chaotic to a fault; the president of the assembly was elected according to the principle of deepest pockets, and sticklers for procedural refinements had to content themselves with Moron’s Rules of Order. Example: the adoption of the meeting’s agenda was carried more often by raising a glass than by raising a hand.

  “What you are holding in your hands,” Branlequeue announced, his voice quivering slightly as he passed around photocopies of a press clipping made on the department’s Xerox machine, “is an article from the Montreal Sun dated November 25, 1970. I’ll give you a moment to read it.”

  KEY WITNESS DETAINED

  SECRET FLQ MEETING HELD ON NIGHT OF NOVEMBER 3–4

  BY PAUL CHARLEBOIS

  The two FLQ cells claiming responsibility for the kidnapping of British diplomat John Travers and Minister of Public Works Paul Lavoie joined forces on the night of November 3 to hold a meeting that went on until the early hours of the following day, two reliable sources have separately informed a Sun reporter.

  The accuracy of the information already furnished by these two sources, as well as their professional honesty, have never been questioned.

  “The man who organized the get-together remains in custody,” revealed one of the sources.

  “He has already given a statement, and we didn’t learn very much, but we do know that he still has a lot to tell us. And he doesn’t know that we know.

  “We’re holding him for now in isolation from numerous other individuals who have been detained as witnesses.

  “He now believes that we have no other questions for him. And that’s precisely what we want him to think.

  “But at the proper time we’ll bring him back into Court, where he’ll have to answer to some pretty direct questioning.

  “He won’t be expecting that. We’re going to surprise him by getting him to lower his guard, and he’ll confirm everything we already know.

  “Such a corroboration of all the facts already in our possession will be very, very useful to us.

  “The only problem is that we have to wait for a while before putting him on the witness stand. But we can’t help that, for reasons that, when they are able to be known, will be self-evident,” affirmed one of the sources.

  “We’ve made mistakes so far. No investigation is perfect. But we are at the point of making up for lost time,” added the second source.

  Information furnished by these two separate and well-placed sources is to the effect that the man (AKA “the liaison man”) who originated the meeting of the two FLQ cells (the Rébellion Cell in the case of Mr. Travers and the Chevalier Cell in that of Mr. Lavoie) was so designated by FLQ members trained in Jordan.

  “We have reason to believe that the terrorists trained in Jordan are not presently residing in Canada, but that they keep in contact with their Montreal organizations. How they do that exactly we can’t say,” said one of the sources.

  “We know the identities of the two FLQ men in training in Jordan, but the time is not ripe for us, that is to say, Canada, to go to the Middle East to look for two men, important though those two men be,” confided the second source.

  “We have no assurance that Mr. Travers is still alive. What we do know, however, is that there are important frictions between the two cells.

  “Of the two groups that have taken hostages, one is radically opposed to the infliction of the death penalty, no matter who would be involved: them, or their hostage,” added the source.

  Chevalier let his glance sweep around the table.

  “Those who understand what’s going on here, raise your hand …”

  One of them picked up the pitcher of beer. Another cracked his knuckles.

  “Now,” Chevalier continued, “we’re going to do a textual analysis. In literature, what is the very first question we always ask?”

  “Who’s doin’ the talkin’?” said the big guy, Alexis.

  “The identity of the narrator,” Chevalier agreed, imperturbable.

  Eyes sparkling, he took a drink and put his glass back on the table.

  “I’ve not been able to trace this Charlebois whose name appears above the piece, but he seems to practise an odd kind of journalism. At first glance his article is a tissue of anonymous quotes and allusions that are quite shocking for the pages of a reputable publication. So, what’s the next question to be asked?”

  “Point of view,” said Fred Falardeau.

  “And whose point of view are we getting here?”

  “That of the two sources,” replied Fred and Alexander in unison, the latter slightly out of sync thanks to the two glasses of beer he’d poured and drunk for every one taken by his companions. He was beginning to show signs of being seriously tanked.

  “And who are they, do we know?”

  “Unidentified Canadian officials,” risked Samuel Nihilo, placing his finger on the sheet of paper and drawing his neighbours’ attention to the eighth line from the bottom: “ … us, that is to say Canada …”

  “Officials, or perhaps … unofficials,” Chevalier observed with a smile. “Okay, let’s look at the characters. What do we know about this so-called liaison man?”

  “We know who he is,” Fred said. “François Langlais, alias Pierre. It’s in the Lavergne Report. Page 53, I think … And, in fact, the episode of the meeting on November 4 is extremely well known. It’s mentioned in about three or four reports. And the name Pierre came up at the coroner’s inquest… . The real question is, why did these sources say he was detained in November 1970, when it’s known that he was not arrested before his departure for Cuba?”

  Fred drew the looks of mild hatred always levelled at those at the top of the class. In the battlefield of sheer intellectual virtuosity, he
and Samuel engaged in a muted competition for the Master’s approval that was no less ferocious for being subtle. Le Frotteur and Alexander were several rungs below them on the ladder leading to such emulation.

  “Yes, the mysterious Pierre Chevrier,” Branlequeue agreed. “The childhood friend of Richard Godefroid, and his companion during a trip to France. The most discreet of all the FLQers, from what we can gather. I think I’ll assign one of you to come next week with a complete dossier on this guy … Sam?”

  “Okay, I’m on it.”

  “We must also turn our attention to two other important characters in this little unhistorical history,” Chevalier continued. “You’ve no doubt guessed that I’m talking about the two fellows who went to Jordan to train with Palestinians from the Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine in August of 1970. The Algerian option. Code names: Zadig and Madwar. Both were graduates of Collège Sainte-Marie, the precursor to UQAM, and therefore they had the same alma mater as you, in a way. You’re practically brothers-at-arms. Does anyone wish to continue?”

  Frédéric raised his hand.

  “They were found near Javesh, in Jordan, by the journalist Yves Lépine when he was writing an investigative report of the FDPLP training camp in the middle of the desert. They let themselves be interviewed and used the occasion to announce that a campaign of selective assassinations was to be carried out in Quebec. As far as I know, the Sun article was the first to suggest a possible link between the famous fedayeen in the FLQ and the Travers–Lavoie affair.”

  “Excellent … really, excellent,” murmured Chevalier. “My dear Fred, you will report back on these weird fedayeen and their mysterious delegation to Algeria.”

  Falardeau and Nihilo exchanged smiles above the empty pitcher. Chevalier, at the head of the table, embraced the group with his beneficent regard, like a scholar from Greek antiquity.

  Falardeau, apparently having decided to deliver the coup de grâce, raised his hand once again.

  “Yes, Fred?”

  “This Charlebois, it’s beginning to come back to me … he collaborated with the police. His double game was revealed by a commission of enquiry in the seventies. He was an officer in the Reserves, with connections to military intelligence.”

  “Better and better.” Branlequeue beamed appreciatively. “Good. I think we deserve another round after that …”

  As always, the tone mounted slowly, the voices became thicker, the discussions grew more heated, more chaotic, the entire table seeming to dance on a thin line between scandal and genius.

  Taking advantage of the fact that he was still reasonably sober, Branlequeue refilled his glass and resumed control of the seminar.

  “In this newspaper article there is probably more mystery and human drama than in a dozen pages of Shakespeare. The text you hold in your hands reveals a few things, but it hides a few things from us as well. In fact, it hides as much as it reveals. The mask betrays its real function: it shows us the very thing it would hide from us …”

  The Octobeerists hung on his every word.

  “We are literary scholars. Our vocation is to decode texts. And it is my belief that this strange example of prose contains the key to many of our preoccupations. Read it again carefully, keeping in mind that the police controlled a great many journalists. Their exaggerated overstatements are the oil in a machine that creates atmosphere and fabricates public opinion. We are looking for the subtext, the infrastory… . We should read it as if we were defusing a bomb, opposing our intelligence to theirs. Disinformation is nothing less than the bastard child of the union of literature and publicity. In brief, we are swimming in a pool of semiotics, my friends. The text that you have before you may well be a kind of minor masterpiece …”

  “Maybe, but in any case it isn’t addressed to me!”

  Everyone turned to Marie-Québec, who was sitting at the opposite end of the table, the only hanger-on to have turned up that day.

  “Excuse me?” asked Chevalier.

  Marie-Québec squirmed in her seat, then leaned forward.

  “All I said was that I didn’t understand a word of it. And for a very good reason: because it wasn’t written for me. That’s obvious.”

  Fred turned toward Chevalier:

  “The question of the intended reader …”

  Chevalier, pensive, nodded silently. As for the young woman, a first-year drama student, she was so uncomfortable with all the looks she was receiving that she did her best to be forgotten again, and at the first opportunity she put on her coat and fled to the door.

  Sam let the silence continue for a few seconds, and when the meeting erupted once again in a contained euphoria of cackles and crazy laughter, he took his own leave.

  Stepping out onto the sidewalk, he saw her hurrying through the rain, making her getaway, perfectly discreetly, as untheatrical an exit as anyone could want, he thought. Then, seized by a sudden impulse, he almost ran after her, but changed his mind and let her go.

  VILLA GRANDE SECTOR,

  ITALY, 1943

  THE COMPANY HOLDING THE POSITION had established its advanced command post in the carcass of a tank that had driven over a mine. The message came over the radio in the middle of a German counterattack: machine gun almost out of ammunition. Bédard, the brigadier-general, ordered two cases of cartridges to be loaded onto a donkey and two men to go with it. Poor beast, he thought as he watched them leave, nothing of what’s happening here is its fault. But when he thought about it, that was the case with them, too, wasn’t it? With each shell that exploded, they could see the donkey stiffen, plant its hooves in the ground, and flatten its big ears, and the two men had to pull it harder each time to get it to move, one pulling, the other pushing from behind to take up the slack. The rest were able to follow their progress from a distance thanks to the Boche flares that kept going up and coming down, slowly burning themselves out above the incredible confusion of battle, the close combat, sometimes at point-blank range in thick shadow saturated by explosions and lights, tracer bullets, and the smell of gunpowder and burnt flesh, the dry rattle of the machine gun still holding its position, and the muffled sigh of mortars followed by the exhalation of shells and the shaking of the earth all around. Halfway to the machine gun’s position, the donkey stepped on a mine.

  A huge orange geyser filled with bits of donkey and steel rose from the ground into the illuminated night. Clots of earth and sharp explosions were still peppering the roof of the shelter when the brigadier-general’s voice resumed yelling — “Stretcher-bearers!” — as though he really expected anything in that heap to be still alive. A stretcher-bearer, identifiable by the red cross on his armband, grabbed one end of the stretcher and caught his colleague’s eye. The colleague nodded, and it was clear they were thinking the same thing. They set off at a light trot, leaning forward, heads drawn down as far as possible into their shoulders, in the direction of the cloud of sulphurous dust that filled the entire space ahead of them and was spreading slowly over the battlefield and into their lungs until there was nothing else to breathe where they were. Their route looked impossibly long to them as the mortars continued to explode, making the mud quiver around the bombed-out assault vehicle below them. At the spot where the donkey and the two men had last been seen was an enormous crater into which they almost fell, smoke rising out of it as from a huge volcanic mouth that had been hidden from view. They crawled into it and began their search. By patting the ground ahead of them in the darkness, they came up with several bits of skin, three or four pieces of donkey hide, and one hoof. That was it.

  Meanwhile, the situation on the hill had become critical, and the brigadier-general ordered the men to make a second attempt. When the stretcher-bearers appeared at the shelter with their empty stretcher, they were met by General Bédard, hands on hips, standing as straight as an I. “Where are the wounded?” he thundered. “Up in smoke,” came the reply. But the man who made it could see that this response was not going to make the brig
adier-general’s day. Surely he wasn’t going to send them back in there? He hadn’t even had time to formulate that thought before he felt himself being grabbed by one arm, and before he could understand what was happening he had been turned precipitously around and, still clutching the stretcher, was doing his best to avoid a series of swift kicks to his backside delivered by the brigadier-general. “Follow me!” cried the latter, and he meant it, overtaking the two men and leading them back into hell. They could see the general’s gigantic silhouette rising up out of the smoke at the lip of the crater, hands on his thighs like a tourist peering over the edge of a cliff. The scene was illuminated by the flares and explosions that continued to rain down around them. When they saw their commanding officer doing their work, the stretcher-bearers felt foolish and began to look around as well, groping their way through the burning shadows in a kind of frenzy. They found one of the men ten feet away, missing two legs and an arm; blood was spurting in huge, burbling jets from the stump.

  The brigadier-general came up to them. One of the stretcher-bearers, who was on his knees beside the body, looked up and shook his head: dead. “Are you quite certain of that?” shouted Bédard. Just at that moment there was a momentary lull in the roar of battle, and the man who had just been declared dead opened his eyes and said: “Not sure … I’m quite dead yet … commander.”

  They put a tourniquet on him, then hoisted him onto the stretcher, and while they were doing so the general found the other soldier a few feet away, in no better shape than his fellow soldier. The general lifted him across his shoulders like a sack of potatoes. And so they headed off into the night, completely soaked in blood from the stumps of the half-dead man who, admittedly, was easier to carry because he was missing two or three limbs. Whenever the pair at either end of the stretcher stumbled with their load over bomb holes, the good general found some way to keep them going. If anyone had predicted that night that the two donkey attendants would make it, he would have been laughed out of the regiment. But that’s what happened: they both survived, costing the government a fortune in prostheses.