Twenty-One Cardinals

by Jocelyne Saucier

  ‘Shouldn’t you be at your mansion?’

  In that moment, all I could think of was defending my honour, and I answered:

  ‘Yeah, right! Spending two weeks licking gold doorknobs is not for me, no thank you!’

  He was feeling insecure in his position as leader. I was too keen on fighting, and he wanted to crush me before I threatened his fragile authority. That’s how I see it now, with almost forty years’ hindsight, but at the time, we were living on a knife edge, me more than the others because of my dual allegiance, and the only thing I could think then was every man for himself, forgetting the part of me that should have protected you.

  After having disowned you, how could I be close with you again?

  You always forgave me, for both my minor flaws and my major cowardice, the things that I confessed to and things that you couldn’t even suspect, and I continued to live my double life, protected by my boyish ways and your forgiveness, without realizing that one day I would have to choose.

  There were other humiliations, other betrayals. The McDougall woman’s short, fat husband came back to take you away every summer in mid-July. The departures and the home-comings were always just as painful, but I no longer took your absence quite so hard, because now I could imagine you at the McDougalls’ house.

  I knew the colour of the walls, the living room drapes, the kitchen linoleum and the quilt on your bed. I knew what a fainting couch was, a cheval glass, venetian blinds, white marble, jasper marble, English porcelain, pedestal ashtrays, step-on garbage cans – you explained it all to me, told me everything. I could imagine you in every room in the house.

  There were seventeen rooms, if you counted the maid’s quarters under the eaves, where sometimes you went to rest – ‘luxury can get exhausting’ – but I saw you most often in the big white bedroom, surrounded by curtains that billowed gently, with smiling images, elegant furniture and toys, each one stranger than the last, which you taught me about. Round, colourful dolls that disappeared one inside the other, ‘nesting dolls’; long slender dolls that you dressed and undressed, ‘Barbies’; dolls that talked, walked and peed, and everything needed to bring them to life: the carriage, the cradle, the little chrome table, the dishes and even a three-storey house, practically a miniature replica of the McDougalls’ house, which you redecorated every day, crouching between the two open halves, singing ‘Jack and Jill went up the hill’ to yourself.

  ‘“Jack and Jill”? How did you know I would sing “Jack and Jill”?’

  ‘Because I heard you singing it.’

  ‘How can you have heard me when you weren’t there?’

  I heard you, I saw you, I was there, with you, in that house that smelled like almond pastry and wilted roses. I just had to unlock the surface of my mind, and I was transported to West-mount, Lexington Avenue, to a house that had been described to me in minute detail, which I could inhabit with every fibre of my being. It was a trick that took some time to perfect and that consoled me during Angèle’s absences all those years she spent becoming part of the middle class at the McDougalls’, and, later, at boarding school.

  At first, Angèle didn’t believe me. ‘That’s impossible. You’re pulling my leg.’ She asked for details, specifics. She tried to catch me out on little things, a ring she had lost or the maid who had given her a gift. She would try to trip me up (‘the dog almost bit me, here, under my right eye’), offer counterfeit images (‘Mr. McDougall took Brandy to the SPCA’), but I knew what I had seen. ‘Her name is Candy, not Brandy. And she didn’t even touch you. She barely growled when you tried to take her dish away, and it was the maid who took her to the SPCA.’

  She had no choice but to believe me. I was there, with her, at the McDougalls’, leaving an empty shell in Norco, which my mother bent over during her nightly rounds. Our poor mother must have been puzzled by the little girl with eyes wide open in the dark. I often had to hurry back to reassure her and give her the sleepy smile she wanted as she shook me gently: ‘Carmelle, wake up. You’ve gone too far into your dream.’

  I was never so happy as in those moments when Angèle appeared to me at the outposts of my being. I stretched my mind as far as it would go, burrowing into the pain until there was nothing left of me, until the absolute emptiness became vertigo, and that’s when Angèle, lighthearted and smiling, appeared on the flat surface of my awareness and beckoned me to follow her.

  I always saw her smiling. At the McDougalls’, in the downy comfort of money, and, later, at the Sisters of the Assumption, the Pensionnat Sainte-Marie, where the money paid for a classical education, and she was deliriously happy.

  It was different at the boarding school. There were all those black veils, long corridors, the uniformity of life, and Angèle’s smile would cloud over a little. In spite of the more discreet smile, I could see that she was happy in the austere setting, which was still much more pleasant than home.

  There were moments when I was afraid that she wouldn’t want to come back to us. The homecomings were so difficult and life at boarding school was so gentle for someone whose heart tended toward the finer things: Rosa, rosa, rosae, Romulus and Remus, Scipio Africanus, Zeus and Jupiter, classical culture, high culture, culture that unlocks the doors of respect and consideration. The keys to the world were handed to her with all the honours due to the first in the class. Why would she agree to leave that peaceful world for the den of the deranged, who started quarrelling over the scraps of her soul as soon as she set foot in the house?

  ‘Family is an encounter with the deepest parts of your soul.’

  When she would return each month from boarding school, after the snub of the homecoming, after they had unleashed enough wrath on the convent uniform, Angèle and I would find a quiet corner where we could pick up the previous month’s conversation. These moments alone were our only anchor, and it was during these secret conversations that I discovered her deep faith in happiness and, above all, her attachment to the family.

  ‘I’m a Cardinal and always will be, no matter what they do, or what I do.’

  Our time alone was constantly under threat from the malicious pleasure the others took in hunting us down. Geronimo couldn’t indulge in such childishness anymore – he was sixteen, seventeen, eighteen at the time. But his sneering smile watched over the younger ones, the ones he sent out to track us, normally El Toro, Zorro, Pester, sometimes one of the Weewuns too. He told them, ‘Your sister Angèle should recite something in Latin,’ or ‘It’s been a long time since she told us about good ol’ Caesar’s military campaigns,’ and the little brothers would set off on our heels. They would find us in a corner of the basement, in the laundry room hiding behind a mountain of clothes, sometimes even under a bed with all the dust bunnies, and they would bring us back to the living room, in front of the three-seater sofa, where Geronimo waited for us, the great lord and master of the game. ‘So, how are things with the Gauls? Last month, if I remember correctly, Vercingetorix was giving Caesar a pretty rough time.’ And Angèle, in front of the assembled family, had to spout off her bits of Latin culture. She was being shamed. It was the whole point of the game.

  In spite of the confusion and disorder of the rooms, the house offered no safe haven. They would always find us. The same for the town. Since the mine had closed, and particularly since the start of our bombardment, the town had become deserted. Only a dozen inhabited houses remained; the others had been ripped from their squares of concrete or left to our tender care, so there was no point in seeking refuge among the ruins. Norco had become Cardinal territory. There was not a carcass or a ruin of a house that wasn’t familiar, down to the tiniest creaks and moans.

  In the end it was at the church, under Father Prudhomme’s protection, that Angèle and I had these delicate, difficult conversations.

  Father Prudhomme left us to the devotions of our confidences, in front of the side altar dedicated to the Virgin Mary, and if a pack of little brothers appeared at the end of the nave or in a half-open
door, all he had to do was draw himself up to his full stature and invoke his power as a holy man of the woods, and they would run off without a peep. He was the only person in Norco who could do that.

  The faded little altar to the Virgin is where I most like to picture Angèle. It is bare, poorly decorated, but with nice light. A recess for contemplation in the vast emptiness of the church. The air is fresh, and you can hear the wind blow between the windows. And beside me, on the polished wooden bench, Angèle is there in her convent uniform, Angèle telling me about the dreams she dreamed at boarding school. Angèle who is certain that a big, beautiful life awaits her, Angèle who talks, thinks, wonders and keeps smiling and trying to convince me that there is nothing wrong with wanting to be happy.

  I can see us. I can hear us as clearly and surely as when you went sashaying about at the McDougalls’ or when you were being clever at the Sisters of the Assumption, and, when, left on my own, I followed you so I wouldn’t get lost. You never felt my presence? You never felt that I was there, beside you, among the students with starched collars reciting Lamartine and Rimbaud? I still ask, like I did so many times, ‘You didn’t sense my presence?’

  You looked at the flames of the votive candles burning in front of the statue of Mary, and you said no, you were sorry, and the smell of burnt wax became unbearable. I haven’t set foot in a church since Norco.

  You told me that at the convent you had discovered pure beauty, and that my voice didn’t reach you because there was always music playing in your head. The music of Mauriac, Giraudoux, De Montherlant, all the great bards of the French language, and Gide above all, André Gide and The Fruits of the Earth, from which you quoted entire passages, passages that heightened the pleasure of life, your desire for it, and that left me speechless. Do you remember? You told me not to worry, that the rich girls I saw you laughing with and talking to at the convent weren’t your friends, that your soul was here, with me, with all of us, your brothers and sisters, in spite of your longing for another life.

  We were fifteen, sixteen. We were swept up in dreams that were urging us to leave adolescence behind. We didn’t doubt that one day we would achieve our personal glory, you reigning over exquisite pleasures, somewhere on cloud nine, and me … ‘And what exactly will you reign over? Over the gold you despise? Over the love you’ll deny?’ You could be so harsh.

  We could have stayed there, having the searching conversations of teenagers. We could have lasted a long time against the diabolical cycle of indignities, humiliations and betrayals that we ended up getting used to, and one day we would have left Norco, intact, with our cache of hopes. We would have gotten what we wanted out of life. Instead I am haunted by a vision of you crushed under tons of rock, broken, destroyed, gone forever.

  And now I have to save the day? I have to slip into your grace and your smile, and take your likeness for a walk down the hallways of the Quatre-Temps, the image of you alive, so that they can keep up appearances?

  No, I won’t pretend anymore. Only at home, in Kangiqsujuaq, in our cracked bathroom mirror, will I bring you back to life. I do it for me, just for me, to feel the pleasure and the pain. I settle in at the mirror. I stare into it hard, my lips stretch, my eyes start to shine, and I watch you appear, as you were, a little girl with the dancing eyes, an excited teenager, a dreamer, and I see you as you would be now, at forty-seven, the companion and friend with whom I would share the pleasures of my marriage, large and small, my anxiety as a mother about the future of my three mixed-race boys, and my solitude. I would entrust you with my solitude, my profound solitude. Angèle, wherever you are, can’t you feel my presence?

  Sometimes the metamorphosis happens without my meaning it to. During long solitary walks by the bay, to the landing strip and beyond, almost to the edge of the hinterland. Hours and hours of fresh air, walking at a steady pace, with a limitless horizon, and, little by little, in the middle of my humdrum thoughts, I feel my step lighten, my muscles becoming graceful and supple. That’s when I know that the miracle will happen inside me, that my entire being will reach toward you, that I will take on your eyes, your smile, the swing of your arms and your legs. And soon, in the icy solitude of Nunavik, it isn’t the nurse from the Kangiqsujuaq clinic that the rock ptarmigan is watching go by, but Angèle Cardinal, little Angèle who walks with a lighter step to meet her happiness.

  Like when we were in Norco and the desire suddenly came over me to be you, do you remember? I transformed before your eyes in an instant. You laughed and asked me, ‘Do I really look like a lost doll?’ I liked hearing you laugh.

  I was wearing your sky-blue dress the first time I felt my body slip into yours. You never knew it. I never told you. I didn’t want you to know that I was drawn to all those sparkling, shimmering dresses I tried to save you from. In spite of my bravado, inside me there was a little girl who didn’t dare admit that she was attracted to the fickle charms of femininity. I knew what it had cost you.

  But one day, I found myself alone with one of your dresses and I couldn’t resist. It was laid out on the bed, puffed up with flounces and lace, sparkling with light, the picture of pride. A blue organdy dress with little white flower accents embroidered in a crisscross pattern, and it sparkled in a sunbeam under the only window in the bedroom. It made my head spin.

  I was alone in the bedroom, alone on the whole second floor, or at least that’s what I thought, and I put on the dress without thinking.

  Once the cotton muslin touched my legs, I wanted to dance and twirl, like a fairy-tale princess, the picture of happiness – like you did every time you put on a dress for the first time. It was pure pleasure. I was light, graceful, delicate, a china doll on a high wire, and life opened its arms to me. Everything around me was goodness and smiles. I was dancing on a cloud. And I was swept up in a gentle whirlpool until I felt El Toro’s sharp, mocking eyes, and I realized that the euphoria of the dress had swept me out of the bedroom, into what we called the study, and that I had been exposed.

  El Toro didn’t waste a second. He was convinced he was looking at Angèle. He was excited to have you in his power, alone, without the entire pack behind him while he cut his teeth on you. You were older than him, but so soft and tender, the ideal prey for a young wolf looking for an easy kill.

  He puffed himself up with all the toughness he could find, and he said something nasty, the first thing that came to mind.

  ‘Well, if it isn’t McDougall. I’m surprised your head can get through the door.’

  I turned back into Tommy.

  He was about to go on, when he realized something was wrong. I felt his eyes change; he had figured it out. He wanted to come closer to get a good look at what he could hardly believe, but I was faster.

  ‘You, if you ever …’

  My fist was cocked, and my face was flushed. I would have beaten the crap out of him, kicking and punching, if necessary, I was so terrified by the idea that he was going to tell the others what he had seen.

  Luckily, he retreated into a corner, and I didn’t have to fight him. I went back to the bedroom, determined to deny it if it got out, and, more importantly, determined never to give in to the temptation of your dresses again.

  The desire didn’t go away, though. The desire for silky fabric on my skin, the puff of the crinoline on my legs, the desire to walk with small winged steps, to feel the ground drop from under me, to fly, lifted by the weightlessness of the dress, and the desire to shimmer in the sun. These mad ideas stayed with me, and I often found myself walking like a ballerina, arms outstretched as if held aloft by layers of crinoline and flounces, my body poised to take flight. I think I would have lifted off if I had been discovered, in pants and two layers of shirts, in a pantomime that anyone could stumble on at any moment.

  I grew cautious and learned to transform at will, discreetly, without risk, just to make you laugh. It was our little secret.

  Now I do it only in my white woman’s solitude, a Qallunaaq lost in the North.


  On the runway, just before the plane took off, Noah asked me: ‘Qarinniik aullaqatiqalarpik?’

  I answered no, I wasn’t bringing my sister with me. But words hide nothing between us; we are connected by something much more important than lovers’ chitchat, and he instinctively recognized your presence: ‘Iiq! Takunnataugnnuk.’

  So I turned off that look in my eye so you wouldn’t be seen. When I walked into the Quatre-Temps, no one recognized Tommy or Angèle in the solemn, hunched woman I manoeuvred slowly toward the front desk. It took El Toro and his booming voice announcing my arrival from the other end of the lobby for them to turn when I passed.

  I see or talk to El Toro every three or four years, when he comes to do a report on the North or phones me for information or an introduction to a Makivik official. I am his source for all things Inuit and the Great North. But I hadn’t seen the others – who were looking at me as if I had emerged from the depths of their consciousness – since I left Norco.

  The Old Maid can follow me with that overbearing look of hers, the Caboose can circle me like a starved animal and the others can signal their distress, but it’s too late for miracles. It’s too late, do you hear me? Too late for regrets, too late for pain. Angèle is dead. The only place she will come back to life is inside me, and I won’t give her back to you. I won’t conjure her with my eyes, with my smile, to create the illusion of a big happy family.

  The days are gone when I would sacrifice myself for the good of the family. The days are gone when they could ask me to convince Bibi, poor Bibi, who was in love with a Boissonneault and who watched her stomach swelling, to get it taken care of by a backstreet abortionist that the Big Kids had dug up in Montreal. I never felt right about the speech I gave her about the wrong mix of chromosomes. Poor Bibi, the poor girl, alone and isolated in a family of boys, the poor girl to whom I never paid more than passing attention.

  The days are gone when they could ask me for whatever they wanted, provided they left me alone.