by Steve Weiner
‘The submarine dives,’ Erland said. ‘It sends the dead out in tiny boîtes de cadavres. Like torpedoes they shoot from the hatches. They tumble down in silver bubbles and crack in the weight of water. Souls exit, transparent as jellyfish, trailing sins and guilts. They hold their misshapen heads in agony, floating into deep canyons. A buoy’s bell screams. Some fall in the mud and are consumed by lamprey eels. But a few, a very few, travel up. Breaking water they rise in globes of mercury. They ride silver shafts to heaven.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ Etienne said.
Erland fumbled for a cigarette in the pack I tossed him.
‘Ask those who fish the deep,’ he said insolently.
I stood. I made my declaration.
‘Erland Szegy, the mortician’s son, is admitted,’ I said, ‘because he told the truth as though it were fiction!’
I became muddle-headed. I actually got lost. I walked in circles. I ended up at the Szegy mortuary.
‘What’s wrong, Erland?’ I asked.
‘You don’t know?’
He took me to his room. It had red curtains and a ceramic ballet dancer on a mantel. There was an armoire, a painting of Hungarian hussars. Fresh flowers grew in a maroon vase with painted carp swimming through orange reeds.
‘You are in love,’ Erland said.
‘Me?’
‘What is so strange about that?’
‘With you?’
‘Sure. I tell you, you arrogant bastard.’
Erland dug his boots into the carpet. The leather was worn, richly polished, with a reinforced steel toe.
‘One can die of love, Jean.’
‘One can die of the lack of it.’
He looked at me suddenly.
‘Jean, without love, what is the good of living?’
I had no answer.
A funeral cortège below rumbled out of the mortuary. Erland went to the window. It must have been a big-shot. Men in top hats and long black coats followed the hearse in the snow.
‘Well, all right,’ I mumbled. ‘Just don’t paw me.’
On 18 December, the Night of Moving Shadows, we put on black hoods, knocked on Catholic doors and asked for papists. Catholics pretended to hide. We dragged them out, made them recite the catechism, and were rewarded with fruit cake made with cherries, icing of the purest butter.
All night silhouettes flew up the harbour, invaded downtown, went through Prange’s men’s underwear, roosted on black wires.
The Dybs’ rooster escaped. Erland and I crawled out of our attic and chased him around the roof. I kicked the rooster over the lilacs. Norwegian freighters bellowed the low endless beeeeeee-o of the foghorns. The harbour lights flew on the wind. We tasted darkness that night, Erland and I.
* * *
I passed Etienne Bastide’s house. Something kept drawing me there. There was a wood fire and sharp, stinging smoke lay low on the stiff hedges. Frost sparkled on the walks. I banged into an oak tree.
‘Wake up, Jean,’ the oak said.
In the morning I received a dozen long-stemmed red roses from Etienne,
‘à ma belle fleur-’
Erland was terrified of the future. We snowshoed through la forêt, had hot chocolate at the Bon Sentiment Lodge above Rutherford. But nothing eased his anxiety.
We played blind man’s bluff. I stumbled blindfold across Clark Street, past the dry cleaner’s, and stumbled into a snowbank. Erland picked me up. He had turned into a deer. I became terrifically frightened. I ripped off my black bandana. Erland blinked shyly, snow in his delicate lashes, fur of the softest down.
‘Salut,’ he said.
Erland bought a roulette wheel. We gambled for Cokes, bubble-gum cards, American dollars. Whoever lost tied the other to the red chair. He got to do anything he liked. From downstairs I smelled formaldehyde, varnish, rubber tubing.
‘The smells stimulate you,’ Erland said. ‘They signify death.’
‘Pleasure is so close to pain,’ I said. ‘About an inch apart, sometimes.’
We swung in darkness, climbed endless ladders. Erland and I learned the art of slow love. We sweated in our ignorance. I tell you, we sweated those black nights on the steppes of Canada.
‘Is it true?’ I asked, bathing my face at his basin. ‘The dead rise in bubbles?’
‘No. I said that to snare you.’
At the Christmas pantomime Antoinette Hartmann played Aurore Gagnon in La Petite Aurore. We cried when she died. Antoinette ran backstage and reappeared in a tableau vivant: the Madonna of the Rocks. When the violins ceased and the bells played, the Virgin miraculously lowered her head.
Erland sent me a note. I went up the fire escape, knocked at his door, and he opened it. His brown eyes brimmed. Hat boxes lay on his dresser, high heels, a muff. A coal fire burned in his grate. He had sprayed sparkle on his hair and looked awful. A Christmas fruit basket lay on his mantel.
‘Why don’t you see me any more?’ he asked.
‘As-tu une cigoune?’
He handed me a Gaulois.
‘I’ll put ginger in my hair,’ he said. ‘Pomade. Whatever you like.’
Erland lighted my Gaulois. Something must have hit the telephone wires outside because there was an electric racket, sparks, and shadows over Erland’s face.
‘It’s Antoinette Hartmann,’ he said. ‘You still love her.’
‘You’re hysterical.’
‘I am in love,’ he said.
‘Same thing.’
‘I’ll be feminine in public. But you – you pretend – it’s Antoinette!’
‘Well, it’s a question of anatomies, isn’t it?’
I stood up. Erland kicked a hat box. He looked strange. His hair was brushed straight up, like mine. Sometimes he imitated my speech impediment. The wind howled, the window rattled, and cold came in.
‘Look at our firelight,’ Erland pleaded. ‘Our Hungarian posters, our red chair, the pot-pourri! Who is Antoinette to you?’
‘You get on my nerves.’
‘I’ll kill myself.’
‘Awaye fort,’ I said. ‘Suit yourself.’
‘I will. I’ll splatter my brains over Grange Street.’
‘Oh, my little dictator,’ I said. ‘How you hate me.’
Erland’s lips trembled. A rose blotch appeared on his cheek. I was also sweating.
‘Jean, love -’
‘- is a rubbing of flesh. Nothing more.’
I went to the door.
‘Jean!’ he squealed.
I ran down the stairs.
‘Donkey!’ he yelled.
‘Egoist!’
‘Pervert!’
On 21 December 1954, Erland Szegy, my dear friend, loaded his father’s shotgun, went to the fire escape and blew his head off. The street crew steamed his ligaments off the parking meters. Manhole cover, hydrant, telephone pole, everything had to be steamed.
‘Le monde y meurt, le monde y meurt,’ I shrugged, telling the buveurs. ‘If people die, they die.’
I went into St Bonaventure’s boiler room, piled paper towels in a waste-basket and dropped in a lighted match. Smoke twirled up. I stepped on it, but it got too hot. I went outside, found Father Ybert and told him that the janitor must have dumped a cigarette in the waste-basket. Father Ybert ran in but the fire had jumped over the heating ducts. Father Ybert pulled the alarm, Sister Félice led girls down fire escapes, and St Bonaventure’s old wing burned down.
In the morning the black iron staircase smouldered in mud. Heaps of charred gym uniforms lay in jumbles of red brick. Father Przybilski presented my dossier to juvenile court. My father signed papers. I was remanded to reform school at Española near Sudbury.
‘Jean,’ my father said. ‘I taught you everything I know about prison. From now on you must teach yourself.’
I went home, depressed.
‘I told you, asshole,’ Ignace said.
Catholics crowded St Bonaventure Church. We went up past the frozen marsh, crossed through the ruin
s of St Bonaventure school. Ignace nudged me.
‘Ha ha, Jean,’ he said.
Catholics came from Crow Hill, Heron Bay, Gilbertsonville, the eastern regions. Father Leszek patrolled the pews. There was a mass for Estée, Bobo, Georges, Erland Szegy. Cradles had been brought in, trimmed in black ribbons. Yugoslavs carried Salvator Mundi, Hungarians brought bells, Poles their wreaths, from Czestochowicz. White tapers flickered in the Chapel des Enfants. There were maps with crosses where the children had drowned or been killed. The ange des berceaux was lighted. Orphans, all in blue, were herded in by their guardians.
Ignace led the procession.
‘Ignace comes – !’ my mother said.
Silver bells dangled from his surplice. His white hair glowed.
‘Like an angel – !’ my father said.
Father Ybert opened the winged mahogany doors of the triptych. People cried in the beauty of the Christmas vigil. We crawled on a red carpet. I must have gotten carried away because Father Leszek stuck ammonia salts in my face and hauled me back. I looked drowsily through the incense. Etienne Bastide waved. Antoinette Hartmann’s brown hair was held back by silver ribbons. Silver ice still melted at her galoshes. She was very beautiful. Fragments of her hands, eyes, red candles, circulated around the church. I was ugly, yes, with a speech impediment, but I felt like a genius. My father, brooding over Barrault, hit me.
‘Sit down!’
Father Przybilski came to the altar. Christmas mass began. The kyrie was sung.
‘Save us,’ I prayed.
Father Leszek’s tenor filled the brick vaults.
‘For the sake of your orphans.’
‘Deus, cui soli competit medicinam praestare post mortem – ’
‘Save me from Espanola.’
- praestra, quaesumus, ut animae famulorum, famularumque tuarum, terrenis exutae contagiis – ’
‘Where the British lads will surely kill me.’
‘- in tuae redemptionis parte numerentur – ’
Suddenly Ynez Pic stood up. Father Elmo pushed her down. But Zena Courennes rose, fought him off and screamed, ‘Le bon Dieu!’
Old Woman Dyb shrieked.
‘LE BON DIEU!’
Frédéric Ybert, foreman of the defunct Galtieau Cement Works, weaved up and down the aisles.
‘GRACE A DIEU! GRACE A DIEU!’
Old Man Dyb banged into a pillar and fell through Hungarian bells.
‘MERCI AU BON DIEU!’
‘LE BON DIEU!’ the congregation yelled.
‘LE BON DIEU!’
Catholics trouped confusedly out of the church. Father Leszek and Father Elmo also stumbled into the street. Bill Aubourg, limping badly, whirled past the pine trees, sending snow flying.
‘LE SEIGNEUR!’ he shouted.
Father Przybilski led the cortège down La Belle Dormière Street, holding the Host high. The women of the decency crusade loped down La Belle Dormière Street.
‘LE SEIGNEUR!’ they shouted.
Ignace ran after them, skirt held high. Christmas lights trembled. Pine needles flew into town, green bullets through the black. Lutheran faces craned out their windows, impossibly extended, like balloons on sausages, all the way across La Belle Dormiére Street. Our mother danced down the ice past Prange’s and sang:
‘Le bon Dieu vien, vien, vien
Ce soir, àminuit, ce soir
Voici’l vien, vien, vien.’
‘God comes, comes, comes
This evening, at midnight.
Look, he comes, comes, comes.’
We herded on to the wharf, under yellow sulphur lights, over black sloshing water. I looked for my father. He was by the warehouse, caught in the lighthouse beam. His hair blew up from his ears, white, blinded, a French caricature. My mother’s head kept snapping back. Ignace and I carried her home. Once inside she walked around and around in dreamy half-steps. The Christmas cortège must have broken up, because we could see silhouettes going home over the black trestle bridge. I bathed her hands. Ignace massaged her neck.
We watched her for a while, Ignace and I.
‘Maybe we should undress her,’ he said.
‘And Papa?’
‘With luck he’s fallen in the lake.’
I helped my mother upstairs and covered her in a pink quilt. It was cold. I closed the window. I got a blanket from the closet and covered her with that, too. Her pretty hand wavered up in the air, as though trying to touch something.
‘Jean -’
‘I am here, Mama.’
A few minutes later our father stumbled into the kitchen. I went downstairs.
‘Where is she?’
‘She sleeps, Papa,’ I said.
‘I want her.’
‘Don’t you want a drink?’ I asked.
‘Who has some? At this hour?’
‘The Dybs. They make brandy.’
‘The cocksuckers.’
Snow melted on his red hair. He must have fallen. There was snow on his coat, and on his knees. I went to the Dybs to get brandy. Old Woman Dyb sat heavily in her red chair. The windows rattled in the storm. Suddenly her legs shot out and her arms flew up over her head. I wrestled her back.
‘Oh, he is tough,’ Old Woman Dyb said.
‘Who?’
‘Le bon Dieu.’
I took the brandy home. My father slumped at our kitchen table mouthing the kyrie.
‘I have seen death tonight,’ he said. ‘I have a nail in my forehead.’
‘It was a lot of praying.’
‘I need brandy.’
‘You’ve drunk it.’
‘I have?’
‘Ignace came back hours ago,’ I said. ‘He sleeps.’
‘My God. I don’t remember a thing.’
‘No.’
‘And Yvonne?’
‘You gave it to her like a donkey.’
‘I did?’
‘Why do you think she sleeps so hard?’ I asked.
‘Ha.’
‘Even her feet curled.’
‘Ha ha ha.’
He tried to rise.
‘The glory of the French race,’ he said.
He fell forward and his head crashed against the blue Formica of our table.
‘How many will you kill?’ he mumbled.
I went to my bedroom and brought back a blanket. He was already snoring.
‘Mon beau petit,’ my father said, sleeping. ‘Ma belle petite.’
I drank it all. I woke later. There were no lights on. Pippi had a cold. He snuffled on the kitchen floor. My father was sprawled on two chairs. I went upstairs to bed. I heard voices in my mother’s bedroom.
‘No, Mama. Jesu already came tonight!’ Ignace said.
‘Feel my heart – how it pounds!’
‘Like a meadowlark!’
‘So sweet – like wine – I am swept downriver – ’
Pippi licked my face. I must have gone back downstairs. I found dog food, ate some, gave Pippi the rest, and drank cooking wine. Two hours later it was Christmas morning. Ignace and I found our presents, still unwrapped, in the pantry. He got a black locomotive. I got a breviary.
Old Woman Dyb invited us inside for cocoa. We swept her porch. Then we went down to the Petit Croix to look for hibernating turtles.
‘What was she saying?’ I asked Ignace.
‘Nothing.’
‘I don’t hallucinate, Ignace.’
‘Yes you do. You hallucinate all the time.’
I punched Ignace and shoved him against a birch tree.
‘Swear on the Body and Wounds,’ I said.
‘Okay. She was hallucinating.’
Ignace started to cry, so we went back home. Our father woke and went to the state liquor store. He came back with two bottles of gin and spent the day in the basement. Our mother woke at noon and with black eyes that saw nothing on earth watched birds flying.
She pointed.
‘Jean … Look …’
Over St Bonaventure’s steeple, str
eams of brains and viscera trailed up after Erland Szegy, rising in silver sun-shafts to the skies.
Eight
I packed my black duffel bag. Mr Gregg, the discipline authority, talked to my parents. My father signed more papers and then took me aside.
‘Jean,’ he said. ‘Make a knife of a pie plate. The British will leave you alone.’
Mr Gregg drove me toward Sudbury. The reform school, a grey building, was on the mud plain outside Espanola. It had neither barbed wire nor guards, but inside it looked like St Bonaventure. I lived in the south wing. The hard-liners lived in the north. Between the wings was the asphalt basketball court.
I looked out at the bleak British landscape. I wondered how anybody could bear it. Granite mounds, blotched with black lichen, fed no birds or trees. The British earth was uninhabitable. The smouldering ruins of St Bonaventure were far away.
We woke at six-thirty. The shower turned to scalding because of the broken boiler. We observed ourselves. So many were deformed: a club foot, a curved spine, hammer-toes, a claw thumb. We went to the cafeteria for breakfast of wheat porridge and bacon bits.
I learned to operate a book machine. I glued the backs on, forced the pages and cover into rounding rollers, and cut the threads. We stacked them in boxes and I carried the boxes on to pallets and rolled the pallets to the Espanola van. I bandworked with a shuttle needle until my right leg cramped from the pedal. These were instructional manuals for the army. We also made leather mailbags, electric cable, and machine parts.
In the twilight we played basketball. The night comes so quickly in January. By three-thirty the air was black. Espanola seemed to float on a frozen granite plain. It was like playing on the moon.
We were in a death coma. We put pine boughs on the walls, pictures of hockey players, nude girls, but nothing worked. We lived in torpor, in a grey paralysis.
They sent us to farm houses to fix toilets and drainpipes. The houses were small with black tar-shingled roofs, vermilion wallpaper, clapboard houses with Elizabeth’s coronation still on the doors, peeling from rain. Back at Espanola we listened to the radio. Sudbury lost a steel mill. The dredging of the St Lawrence Seaway continued. Lampreys still infested the Great Lakes. There was rock and roll. The north-shore town of St Croix had cracked open after a methane explosion. The bluffs were crumbling.
I worked out in the weight room. I could press my weight. I wore a black sweatshirt and black sweatpants and did sit-ups on the diagonal bench. I did one-armed pull-ups. I kept staring at the Union Jack on the wall and pulled but the numbness in my right leg grew worse. Mr Warner, the gymnasium technician, weighed me and measured me. He applied battery shocks and linaments to my right foot. It was no good. The nerve had died in my foot. My right leg had stopped growing.
