by Roch Carrier
‘The fellow next door’s grass always looks a heck of a lot greener than your own.’
Old Herménégilde had never been inside an automobile.
‘I’m in no rush to die’, he said. ‘I want to do it on foot, like a man.’
One morning a black car longer than the one driven by Monsieur Cassidy, the undertaker, stopped with a jolt in front of old Herménégilde’s house. A son he hadn’t seen for a good many years got out of the car, all dressed in black, as Monsieur Cassidy usually was.
‘You coming to my burial, my boy?’ asked old Herménégilde.
‘No’, said the son. ‘I came to take you on a trip.’
Moving from one trade, one job to another, the son had become the private chauffeur to a businessman from Montreal; before he could ask himself what was happening, old Herménégilde, who had never been in a car before, was pushed onto the leather seat of a Cadillac that pawed the ground like a horse.
‘Father’, said the son, ‘you can’t die before you see the world a little.’
‘I’ve seen everything a man needs to see’, said old Herménégilde.
The son’s long black car carried him off at a speed he’d never experienced. To avoid seeing that he was going beyond the village limits, old Herménégilde closed his eyes. And with his eyes closed the old man didn’t see that he was driving through the neighbouring village, where a number of old men had gone to get their wives; he didn’t see Mont Orignal, the highest mountain in the region; he didn’t see the ten villages the black car drove through at a speed no runaway horse had ever reached. Tobie, his son, was talking, but he didn’t want to listen.
‘I’m your son and I know you’ve spent your whole life as if you were in jail. But you gotta see the world before you die and I’m the one that’ll take you out of that jail. Nowadays there’s no such thing as distance. My boss, he gets up in Montreal, he opens his eyes in Toronto, he eats his breakfast in New York and then comes back to Montreal to go to sleep. That’s what I call living! You gotta keep up with the times. We know the world turns. And you gotta turn with it. I never stop travelling. I know the world. I know life. But you, you’ve never lived in modern times. It’s something you gotta see.’
‘A man can go as far as he wants’, said old Herménégilde, ‘but he always stays in the same pair of boots.’
‘I’m not what you’d call a good son’, said Tobie, ‘but I’m the one that’s gonna show you the world. That’ll be one good thing I’ve done in my life.’
So then old Herménégilde understood that he was no longer allowed to keep his eyes closed. They had entered Quebec City. In a single glance the old man took in houses taller than the church, more people in the street than for a religious procession and cars swarming everywhere, like ants. His son drove him in front of an immense château, a real château whose name he’d heard when people talked about the rich - the Château Frontenac; then he showed him something much older than he was, older even than his late father — the houses built by the first Frenchmen.
The black car stopped in front of a large garden. Tobie helped his father get out.
‘Now people won’t be able to say you died without ever setting foot on the Plains of Abraham. This is where we lost our country…’
And then it was time to go home. In the car, the son noticed the old Herménégilde was keeping his eyes closed.
‘Father, don’t shut your eyes, look at the people.’
‘I seen too much’, said the old man, ‘you showed me too many things today.’
As soon as the son had left old Herménégilde at his house, he hurried off again in the long black car, summoned by other journeys in the vast modern world.
For long months, behind his big black mustache and his closed eyes, old Herménégilde waited for the long black car to return.
The Good People and The Bad People
IWAS VERY YOUNG the day I discovered the truth. It was during the war. (The Second World War had no other name.) The truth told us the world would be paradise if it weren’t for the bad people. All the misfortunes in our village and all the misfortunes in the Old Countries were caused by the bad people.
The war came to an end. The very bad people were conquered. It seemed that happiness was going to return to the earth, just as I asked God in my prayers. All that would be left then would be to take care of the not-so-bad people. I had an uncle who’d become a priest to convert the bad people; I assured God that I was prepared to become a priest too. I was nine years old. Peace seemed to be a good thing.
One man protected this peace and happiness in the land of Quebec — a man not like other men, a man who knew how to help the good people and how to be feared by the bad. My father had tacked up a photograph of our premier in his garage: I looked at it often. The man was sitting down, a battered broad-brimmed hat on his head, an old habitant’s hat, while before him paraded children to whom he was handing out money. What a generous man he was! I decided it was better to be like Duplessis - le chef— than my uncle the priest. From the mountain I looked around at the other villages, also built on mountains; I looked at the church steeples, the gravel roads, the green trees, the small rivers — and I was happy because no one would come and violate all this beauty as long as Duplessis was there to protect us.
All the Nazis had most likely been put in prison; that was why we heard nothing more about them. But other bad people, very bad people had hypocritically used trickery to rise up and try to dominate the good people; they threatened the happiness of the good people. These were the Communists. Once more, because of the bad people the good people wouldn’t be able to sleep without anxiety.
The Communists were beginning to take over the Old Countries. In our village, the curé explained why. Because the Old Countries had abandoned the true religion - ours, that is — they were being punished with a fatal disease: Communism. We in Quebec had continued to practise the true religion reverently; we had continued to pray to the real God. So why were the Communists threatening us? Why were they infiltrating groups of workers who no longer wanted to obey their bosses? Why were the Communists trying to poison us with pamphlets, with letters that told lies about the true religion? Happily, Duplessis was protecting us; he sent a number of Communists to prison and he didn’t hesitate to put padlocks, for years, on the doors behind which Communists held meetings to perfect their plan for the domination of Quebec.
At suppertime my parents talked about an article in the newspaper. The good people’s newspaper was called L’Action catholique. That evening I read the article, an editorial (I learned the word that evening). The journalist heaped abuse on the Communists. Never in the village during quarrels had I heard so many insults. The good people had the right to insult the bad, ten times more so if the bad people happened to be Communists. I still remember the conclusion of the article: ‘The Catholics of Quebec will stand erect in the face of the horde of Communist invaders; we will fight proudly to the last drop of our blood’. I felt I could see Stalin in Moscow, furious, grumbling into his mustache, humiliated by the article in L’Action catholique from Quebec. To fight the bad people I announced that it was better to be, not like Duplessis, but rather like the intrepid journalist who had dared defy the Communists’ top leader, Stalin himself.
In my village there were good people and bad people, but there were no Communists. In the autumn I was sent away to a little seminary to learn Latin; I found no Communists there either. When I whispered to my confessor that I wanted to defend the good people against the Communists he blessed me three times, then wrote an address on a bit of paper and took a few coins from the pocket of his soutane so I could subscribe to a magazine that would teach me all a man might want to know about Communism. It was written by a Jesuit missionary who had spent years as a prisoner in Russia and by another man who had been a Communist agent in Canada and then repented and became a policeman. After a few issues there was nothing I didn’t know. I was ready to attack Communists like the journalist fro
m l’Action catholique, whose style I copied in my own writing. Then I announced to my friends at the seminary that the Communist danger was greater than we knew, that Communists had infiltrated the factory at the bottom of the hill where they spun wool, and all the factories in Quebec — and even the government. It was impossible to see but it was present, gnawing away like a cancer. Communism had perhaps even attacked some priests. I named names, cited facts I’d read in my magazine. I wrote by hand an anti-Communist newspaper that I circulated in my class. We had to be vigilant. I even made speeches in the club devoted to developing our oratorical gifts - passionate speeches denouncing in no uncertain terms the spies in the pay of Moscow. I still, however, had not seen any Communists. Not a single one. Sometimes we were given permission to walk in the town of Saint-Georges-de-Beauce, in a long line of uniformed seminarians. If I spotted a man who seemed to look a little morose I couldn’t help thinking he must be a Communist. Quebec could feel secure: Duplessis and I, with all the strength of my twelve years, wouldn’t give up the struggle of truth against lies.
But as I would soon learn, the truth I possessed was not complete. I received a paper in the mail read by ‘only those who don’t fear the truth’, a little newspaper with big ambitions that in four pages told the whole truth about the real evils in our society. The newspaper dazzled me; at last it shed light on the true face of the really bad people. I had to subscribe to it. The paper told me that the great ills of the world are caused by the banks, the factories and business. And who owned the banks, the factories, business? The Jews. It took three or four issues to convince me. I even wrote to the editor of the paper: the Communists, I objected, were more dangerous than the Jews. He replied that Communism was a disguise the Jews hid behind as they prepared to take over the world. ‘Don’t you know that Karl Marx, the father of Communism, was a Jew? And if you look at Stalin’s picture aren’t you convinced that he has a Jewish nose?’ The editor had written the letter himself, with a pen. How could I still doubt? I remained perplexed for several days, then I received another issue of his paper. On the front page, a headline: ‘Proof of the International Jewish Plot’; under it, a photograph of the three masters of the world: Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill. The three statesmen were shaking hands and their crossed arms formed a sort of triangle that the editor had circled with black ink. Beneath it, this note: ‘This triangle, one of the essential symbolic figures of the Talmud, is proof that the traitors are unmasked’. I didn’t exactly understand the editor’s learned language, but I could only be convinced.
I hadn’t managed to see any Communists in Saint-Georges-de-Beauce but there were some Jews. One had a clothing store on Deuxième Avenue. I persuaded my friend Lapin to come and take a close look at the enemy of the entire world. Trembling, we walked into the little shop: the ceiling was low; articles of clothing were jumbled on a large table, suits were hanging on the walls and others were suspended from long tubes attached to the ceiling.
‘What do you want?’ asked a man who appeared amidst the suits, with an accent that didn’t come from the Beauce.
I couldn’t tell him I’d come to contemplate the enemy; I was trembling, but deep down I knew that I was brave. I dreamed up a lie:
‘We came for a suit.’
‘Take whatever you want, for you today, half-price!’
My friend Lapin looked around, felt the cloth, compared the colours. (He didn’t want a suit.)
‘That one’, said the Jew with his strange accent, ‘you’d look real smart in it. I don’t sell schmattas here.’
The Jew handed him the jacket.
‘A jacket for that price they don’t make any more. And today, for the seminarians, I don’t charge you the tax.’
Lapin looked at himself in a mirror on the door, a yellowed mirror, then said to me:
‘Give me two bucks, I want to leave a down-payment. It’s a bargain!’
Back at the seminary I reread the little paper that told all the great truths, then I lent it to Lapin, asking him to read in particular an article entitled ‘Buy from French Canadians, not from agents of the international Jewish plot.’
Next day, my friend Lapin asked me if I’d go into town with him; together we went to return the jacket to the Jewish storekeeper on Deuxième Avenue. When we walked out of the disturbing shop after receiving our refund, my friend Lapin and I were dazzled for a moment by the bright light of May, already as beautiful as summer holidays. We had just gallantly brought down an enemy, but at thirteen we still had many more battles against many other enemies before us, until the good people triumphed over the bad.
Do Medals Float on the Ocean?
No GENERAL, not even the most intrepid, is decorated with the number of medals worn by the Catholic child I once was. They hung in a cluster about my neck, bringing together most of the saints in Heaven. They were at my service: one protected me against the flu, another against impurity; one would help me find lost objects, another to regret my sins; one would be with me at the hour of my death, another would help me obey my parents. The saints suspended about my neck were ambassadors too, who reported to God my words, my actions and my slightest thoughts.
The bouquet of medals gradually became a weight around my neck. One evening I threw them up towards Heaven, one by one. They didn’t fall down to earth; that was the explanation I gave the overseer of my school who made me hunt in the fields, on my knees, for the medals I had profaned by tossing them around like pebbles.
Several years later, I was leaving for France where I would spend several years. This journey troubled my mother. France was so far away and I was leaving with so little money. France was a country without religion and I had so little. I was going for so long — what would happen to her grown-up child? She didn’t want to let me go without protection. That was why, in the middle of the Atlantic, when the sky was low and the waves were churning furiously, I found, sewn into the lining of my jacket, a sheaf of medals.
‘Chçre maman!’
How concerned she must have been about my fate, to have, without my knowledge, sewn these medals inside my jacket! I went into my cabin and wrote: ‘Chçre maman, You sewed so many medals inside my jacket that our boat’s listing to the side I’m standing on …’ I felt no desire to throw the medals into the raging sea.
Clinging fast to the guardrail so I could resist the powerful wind, and dizzy before the watery abysses that opened, closed and collided, I thought of a story I had heard. It overwhelmed me, for it was the first time I’d heard anyone doubt the value of the medals we all wore around our necks.
In the summer my father used to sit on the gallery that went around the house, facing the setting sun. The men who went by, at loose ends after their day at work, would stop to have a smoke with him. I listened with the ears of an astonished child to the remarks of these men who knew so many things that I was ignorant of. That was where I heard the story I remembered on the freighter tossed about on a stormy sea between Quebec and France, between adolescence and manhood. I thought of the men from my village sitting with my father, smoking. One of them said:
‘In this life two things are important: arithmetic and catechism’.
The other replied:
‘In modern life nowadays I think you oughtta know more arithmetic than catechism’.
My father added:
‘Too much arithmetic and not enough catechism doesn’t make for a good life’.
Then Monsieur Veilleux said:
‘Us French Canadians, we know the catechism better than anybody in the world. But are we the richest or the happiest?’
Monsieur Veilleux’s words carried a lot of weight; he had travelled to several cities in Quebec and even to Ontario; his experience was broader than that of the others: he had seen the world.
‘Man’, Monsieur Veilleux went on, ‘has to know arithmetic better than anything else. Because arithmetic’s education’.
One of the men protested:
‘If everybody’s got an education
the land’ll be covered with priests and lawyers and notaries and doctors. Then who’ll grow the carrots and potatoes?’
Monsieur Veilleux replied:
‘I’ll give you proof that education’s better than religion. Now you take two men: one of them’s got an education, always going around with a pencil in his pocket. The other man, all he knows is his catechism; so he hasn’t got no pencil in his pocket but he’s got a load of medals around his neck. Now let’s just say these two men, one with a pencil and the other one with the medals, they fall down a well. Both of them land at the bottom. The medals too. But that pencil’s gonna come up to the surface and float. And when you see that pencil floating you’re gonna say: “Arthur fell down the well.” And you’ll go and rescue him. Now Albert, he’s gonna stay at the bottom, with his medals. So there’s your proof that a pencil’s worth more than medals and education’s worth more than religion.’
After this story my father and his friends smoked for a long time, saying nothing, while before their eyes the sun rolled behind the mountain.
Looking at the sea that was deeper than the well in Monsieur Veilleux’s story, I mechanically put my hand in my jacket pocket to check whether I had a pencil. If all the saints on the medals my mother had sewn inside my jacket were powerless, from now on I could count on my pencil.
Grandfather’s Fear
GRANDFATHER was a strong man. Grandfather liked physical strength. His entire life had been a hand-to-hand combat, a test of strength. Grandfather knew only what he had conquered through the strength of his arms. When he was young, almost a child, he was a lumberjack; as a young man he already had children; in the midst of the great frozen silence he could hear them crying off in the distance, in his little frame house. Then he would tackle the giant spruce trees, striking with all his muscles tense, battling the hard wood; and the forest would move back. I’ve seen a photograph of him from that period: among the other lumberjacks, with his face of an adolescent turned prematurely old, he was as proud as a king. I look at his eyes; because I am his grandson I know: he’s thinking that he’s the strongest.
