Appropriate Place (14 page)

In the kitchen of the Montreal clinic where the plan had first
taken shape, there had been just one volunteer at first, a fat little woman
nobody listened to though they left it to her to assist the dying; she had
pointed out that there was no equivalence between the pictures of Ethiopian
babies dying at the breasts of their emaciated mothers — sublime modern version
of the massacre of the innocents — and the rare photos of those dying of
AIDS
, with their sores suppurating from an excess of
accursed sperm, a disturbing modern version of the punishment of Sodom. They
told her that Montreal, along with San Francisco, was one of the rare sites of
gay liberation in North America and that women's ability to empathize with
homosexuals was higher there, for reasons having to do with the kind of
matriarchy long since in effect among old-stock Quebeckers. A good many mothers
preferred to imagine their sons quickly coupling and uncoupling at the baths
rather than clinging for long nights to the curves of another woman and worse,
combining love with ejaculation. It was possible and even probable that they
could count on these middle-aged women — who formed public opinion by
monopolizing the radio phone-in shows — to create a climate of forgiveness,
another Québécois specialty, in this case stemming from the ancestral masochism
of a colonized people. And the climate of forgiveness was the necessary
ingredient, the key to a reversal of the situation, that is access to the public
funds controlled by those gentlemen whose own sexual orientation was, in
appearance at least, the furthest thing from deviant.

Having put the fat little woman in her place, a young doctor sure
of his psychosociological facts had approached television stations about
broadcasting the show, but he'd had to choke back his arrogance almost at the
outset. The biggest public station, the federal one, had turned him down
politely with references to administrative policies that had no room for medical
research among the good works it agreed to support. The danger of creating a
precedent was too great, they'd be overwhelmed with requests from associations
that support victims of breast cancer or heart disease or childhood disorders
far more unbearable than this
AIDS
business which,
after all, affects only a minute segment of their audience. As for the biggest
private station, the one that seemed to print so easily millions of dollars for
various telethons, its brass had sent a very dynamic and understanding
spokesperson who had assured him of the warmest welcome at a future appointment
if in the meantime he could come up with a few solid sponsors. He was well aware
without having to consult the fat little woman that he wouldn't even get through
the door of the
PR
department of a financial
institution or even a pharmaceutical company. They'd be happy enough to take the
money for research, but would refuse to display any sympathy for the plague
victims, as their science ought to go instead to making them disappear.

He'd had to fall back on the limited circles of friends. The only
openly gay member of the legislature and two or three of his more discreet but
obliging colleagues had been able eventually to reach an agreement with
Radio-Québec, whose educational mandate had always been interpreted flexibly.
The program managers, while reacting favourably to the plan after a week of
resistance inside the institution, had however insisted on a delayed broadcast,
ostensibly because the fall schedule was full, but in fact so they could
maintain the possibility of censorship. The performers who had agreed to appear
for the benefit of
AIDS
research were minor stars,
and the risk of going live, even with scripts approved in advance, was too high.
Families would be watching.

And so they had to resign themselves to Radio-Québec, which was
after all better than nothing. Next came the rounds of the big auditoriums whose
vast size was a handicap in such a situation. Without the excitement created by
a major broadcaster, and with just a handful of so-so performers, they couldn't
expect to sell thousands of tickets. The doctor came back sheepishly to the
clinic kitchen and the fat little woman, who was as modest as she was
magnanimous, suggested they choose one of the maisons de la culture. They're
popular with the penniless and have the right values, and they'd provide a
positive audience that would get the struggle off to a good start. Of course the
admission would barely cover expenses, practically nothing would be left for
research, but would it be better to cancel?

Silence around the table, where the fat little woman had set down
a bowl of the season's magnificent black cherries, none of the six dared to
touch: to touch something that was round, red, garnet, flesh — breasts, nipples,
lips to be swallowed mindlessly, lying down with another, for an hour or for
life. From now on that would be their ordeal. Between them and the taste of
things was a constantly thickening skin, a viscous cataract that kept them from
gazing deeply into the eyes of their patients, patients who were submissive,
resigned, humiliated by their sores.

As if she were attached to that silent wire, a nurse began a
monologue. “Still, a lot of them defy the people around them.” There was one who
during his lifetime had organized a farewell ceremony to which he'd invited all
the relatives and friends he could think of, greeting them from a wheelchair as
they paraded in, his withered limbs nearly naked under a loincloth. Only two
teenage girls, braving their families' terrified looks, had dared to kiss him.
He'd stood up for a minute, leaning against the buffet where the gathering
comforted themselves with cold cuts and wine, and announced that he was leaving
them for Hell. His voice was reedy, no one had protested. They believed him.
Another had orchestrated an impressive funeral for himself in an Outremont
church attended by Quebec's rich and powerful. A number of them seemed to be
fixated on giving in to death while spitting in the faces of others.

Rather than put on a show, the literary type among them had
ventured to say, what they should do is write an old-fashioned mystery play that
would deal with present-day passions.

The curtain would go up. A child would open a large illustrated
book in a red cover with gold lettering, like the sacred histories of our youth,
and try to study the lives that end well and those that end badly. The grace of
a clean, white death, barely morphined so there could be one last smile, would
be depicted there as one that is usually reserved for those who have lived lives
of renunciation. It would evoke the lives of young parents with one or two
children, who drove used sedans, cooked green vegetables, worked their fingers
to the bone to pay for daycare, took in the free concerts at the jazz festival,
gave to Centraide, committed adultery occasionally and responsibly, their
consciences not at rest but without excess; it would be a celebration of the
just of our time, when saintliness is no longer what it used to be. But — and
this would be the magnificent lesson presented by the tableau — the disgrace of
a disgusting, contaminated death, of truncated bodies from which the soul is
driven long before the end, would not be reserved for the wicked. On the
right-hand page, between the illuminations, the child would read aloud the
musical bubbles, the comic book of existences scattered and light as pistils,
that settle on their neighbour and touch him and touch him again, sometimes to
the point of fiery black orgasm, the kind that brings death amid pus and horror.
And that, as an androgynous choir would tell the assembled crowd, was the life
of other just men of the present day. As they hadn't known pleasure, those who
chose a white death take their leave surrounded by regret, while those condemned
to a sullied death experience none of it.

The child would proceed from page to page without choosing, the
choir would recite a metallic Kyrie, then he would turn to the crowd and ask
them to list their fears. In the hall the long-haired, the cool, the
open-minded, the sexu- ally liberated could boo, mock, walk out, convinced that
they belong to the circle of the brave, that they've finished with celestial
punishments and drivel about the apocalypse. But most wouldn't dare to make love
that night and maybe in nights to come. Not all orgasms are worth dying
from.

Obviously that was unacceptable, the notion of a grand tragic
script and a stripped-down production. The cause that the clinic wanted to serve
threatened to end the festival of a generation and of its laid-back progeny,
instead they should lighten the atmosphere. Suggest lots of songs, both
harmonious and angry, on the model of Live Aid, invite a few poets who can
always be counted on to break down cynicism, and banish speeches except for one
by a great actor who had agreed to serve as spokesperson and who would read, at
the end, a few stanzas by an unknown.

Around the table people breathed more easily. Hands reached out to
the bowl of black cherries. Someone mentioned a sensitization device that was
spreading across the United States. During demonstrations of solidarity, a big
quilt was spread out, each section bearing the name of someone who had died of
AIDS
— often a pseudonym, because a number of
families didn't want the publicity. The effect was gripping but reassuring too,
the quilt being a symbol of the prodigal child's return to the lap of the
grandmother who rocks her memories of the child and frees him from the shadows.
Who but the Americans could invent something so ridiculous, said a French
trainee who had read Lacan and who refused outright to mask the depths of human
despair. They could do better, and he suggested as a background anonymous photos
of some of the dead. Others would be able to identify them or not, but at least
they'd be looking death in the face. Which was accepted.

So it was that Simon, the out politician, agreed to the scenario
and suggested putting Gabrielle Perron on the committee of honour for the
evening. Having left politics after fine service in the Ministry of Cultural
Affairs, her name could now be one of those that give nonprofit organizations
credibility because their connections are wide-ranging and they can't be
suspected of serving personal ambition. What's more, she was a woman and her sex
was underrepresented in the circles concerned about the advance of
AIDS
, which was wreaking havoc among males.

Among her former colleagues, Simon was one of the few Gabrielle
wanted to see again. Homosexuals freed from clandestinity are, at least in
adulthood, rather exquisite creatures. Simon had a talent for the frivolous, he
could read, understand and interpret all the constitutional theses but avoid the
tiresome people who draw them up, a distance those same tiresome people were
glad to respect in return, so insecure was their own sexuality and so fearful
were they of debates with an unpredictable speaker whose superior civility would
emphasize their stuffy awkwardness. Simon also had a genius for friendship, he
bestowed it far and wide and had some left over for absorbing confidences, from
both the suffering and the superficial. You had only to embrace him and already
you'd feel relieved of some turmoil or doubt, for in his company, lightness was
a duty. Yet neither Gabrielle nor the rest of her delegation had ever solved the
mystery surrounding his companion, an American who raised Arabian horses near
Trois-Rivières, who didn't appear in public and of whom Simon revealed nothing,
not even during the most alcoholic tête-à-têtes with his closest women friends.
Some said he was crippled and violent, but that was simply ignorant speculation
to comfort those who were jealous of so much beauty. Because Simon was also the
handsomest boy in the National Assembly, tall, slim, radiant and dark, the kind
that sensual women like. “You're a loss to humanity,” Gabrielle often joked,
though she appreciated the absence of desire between them. They spoke frankly to
one another. In fact Simon had often told her that he disagreed with her leaving
politics, something he couldn't — or wouldn't — understand.

They'd got together then, for old times' sake, at the Continental
where Gabrielle Perron's return to Quebec City, even for just a few hours, had
turned a few heads and started some rumours. Over glasses of Brouilly, how could
she resist the straightforward but provocative request by her favourite? She got
busy as in the good old days, drawing up a list of people to approach,
suggesting the course of events, estimating sources of funds or exchanges of
services. She also played sociologist. The disease, she said, was emerging just
as homosexuals seemed to be settling down, starting to demand the right to
marriage and even to have children, dreaming of normality. It would be
interesting to see how this new behaviour would be reconciled with the sordid
life on the fringes to which
AIDS
was consigning
them. The political calculations by the various groups may have explained why it
was hard to plan their evening, when powerful images were liable to confirm the
confusion between homosexuality and depravity. Still, she missed the motivating
forces that could be sensed in depravity. “How do you feel now, as a member of
the gay community? As if you were living in the cocoon of a religious order,
following a rule and performing your rituals to tunes by the Singing Nun?” Simon
said she was more or less right, but in his opinion an obsession with community
was the price to pay for making the system bend. He reminded her of the assembly
debates on including sexual orientation among the grounds for nondiscrimination
to be inscribed in the charter of human rights. She sighed again at the
depressing prospect of chipping away that was always imposed by any search for
the common good. She'd been right to move away from it.