Bilingual Being (13 page)

On the best winter afternoons of all, I was left alone with the cases of bottles fresh from the liquor store, while my mother and father went somewhere. That's when I played out my delightful ritual. I extracted one small box from the case, more or less at random. That is, if you don't count things like
eenie-meenie-minie-moe
, or thinking that one box is speaking to you. No matter. I opened it carefully on the dining room table, covered with its protective pad.

I needed to take my time with this part so that I didn't compromise the precise cardboard tongue on the lid that fit so tightly into the slender gap at the top of the box. Then, I took out the precious contents: the bag. Inevitably it was made of thick velvet in a powerful colour, usually a stately purple rubbing against the spectral edges of a bold burgundy. It was expertly sewn together, with virtually invisible seams and a calligraphed monogram in fine gold thread on the front. At the upper edge, a gathering of folds held the bottle enclosed with a fine braided rope.

It never occurred to me to open the drawstring, take out the bottle, and drink. If I really wanted alcohol, and I didn't, I wouldn't have needed to go through that much trouble. Open bottles were inches away on the buffet, in the cupboards, and pretty much everywhere. I just wanted to touch the soft, perfect velvet inside. I only did this once each afternoon, not to every bottle. It took quite a long time, all that being careful with the fragile flap, making sure it fit back snugly and left no marks. I confess that if there's one point in my life where I see my repetition compulsion more clearly than anywhere else – my trying over and over again to work out, with a young mind, the acts against me – this is it.

UNE P'TITE CHANDELLE

The second thing my father's numerous contracts with the hospitals required was his silence, to which his sullenness predisposed him. For his anti-religious, anti-God sentiments were infamous, always returning to the summative view that only idiots believe in God. My mother, the good wife, held fast to her values, snuck off to church, and lit a few candles for him on the sly. If he was in an overly watchful mood, she'd delegate one of her sisters to do it over the phone because it was, and still is, commonly accepted that this is just as effective.

«Vas-donc allumer une p'tite chandelle, oké? T'sais, c't'un temps dur d'ces jours-ci.» [Go light a small candle for me, okay? You know, these are hard times.] No other explanations needed. Everyone knew my father, knew husbands, and knew the routine – which also involved checking in after you'd done it. Still does. You call up the requester, like confirming a mission, and state that you did light the candle, and tell the listener/requester what colour it was. But never the cost. Money has no place in these affairs. The cost invested is left to the conscience of the delegated lighter.

For the colour of the candle, you had only three choices, no matter where the church was in Quebec. Maybe it's like that in other Roman Catholic churches around the world, but I wouldn't know. For me, the limits of the province and the church overlap completely. Bright red, royal blue, white. I have no idea why yellow candles weren't there – or were, at least, extremely rare. And I certainly have no hope at all for
purple, green, or orange – those questionable hybrids with no regard for purity. Those were questions – like the ones about the charges of various statues, or the eating of Jesus – that you didn't ask.

You picked a colour on instinct, on a feeling about which one best matched the theme of your request or your particular mood. Blue might be more likely when you needed a new job or house, white could be for mourning or inner strength, red for an emergency or a health matter. That's my own subjective interpretation. Another subscriber might well always go with red, say, except during holidays.

There was a selection of sizes – small, medium and large. The suggested offering was at the lighter's discretion, but of course a person felt compelled to give more to light a bigger candle. It was easily self-policed because you'd essentially be damning yourself to play it cheap, give only a quarter to light a big one. Besides, contributors had the clear idea that at some level the saint in question was watching. If you didn't believe that, why would you bother in the first place?

The colour was (is) so meaningful, in fact, that if someone requested that you light one for them and a candle wasn't available in that colour, you felt upset for that person – as if the request now had only the slightest chance of success. And how might a candle colour become unavailable? Two ways. First, every candle in that colour might already be lit. It's a popular practice, after all. And because of the association of shade and significance, at a particularly challenging time in society – the illness of a loved regional leader, for example – the white ones might be burning en masse when you got there.

Second, again because of popularity, the few unlit ones in your colour might actually be burned right down to the charred end of the wick. It happened easily enough then – and even more so these days, with cutbacks to church staffing and budgets, that sort of thing. You needed to come back another day if you were really stuck on a colour. Or (a riskier option), you could light an alternate colour. Better yet, you'd meander or drive a few blocks to another church and try to find the right one there. That was the decision the most determined lighters would make, without question.

Personally, I preferred the blue ones because when you lit them, the glow through the glass looked like neon – a modern look back then, clean, bright and bold. It also seemed more hopeful. Not like the white
ones. The glow through that glass seemed ordinary, pedestrian, like it hardly had any sacred mileage. A hopeless sort of candle. As for red, it was eerie. It glowed like bright blood, a cheap bar lamp, or the light on top of an ambulance or police car. I didn't care for it. So blue it was, and only the size varied with the cause for me – a treasured habit I kept for decades.

LES MÈRES SUPÉRIEURES

The third and final thing these backroom deals between my father and the hospitals took was high-level intervention by my grand-maman with the «Mères Supérieures» [Mothers Superior] and the priests under their near-military command, a thick network in the thousands. In fact, anyone who was anyone in Quebec – even or especially anglophones – couldn't be successful in commerce, however good the patent or plan, without financially supporting the French clergy.

Gifts were discreetly put in envelopes in the collection tray with a glance to the brother holding the long brass arm. There wasn't enough «eau bénite» [holy water] in the whole world to wash away this sorry mess. Meanwhile, religious officials sang the praises of their benefactors from the pulpit every Sunday, reading lists that became embarrassingly long in parishes where ownership needed to be renegotiated to allow new buildings to encroach on prime land set aside for religious orders by previous governments.

I remember my mother walking out a few times just after communion, when the long list of thank-you's to «Monsieur Tel-et-tel» [Mr Such-and-Such] would be weakly woven into some public notices – a thin cover for what everyone recognized as payoff doubling as pious erasure. After all those centuries, we still weren't far removed from the days of “indulgences” after all, sinners paying for absolution, with the most prolific sinners still being the best money generators. «Ah, c't'assez long ça» [that's long enough], my mother said on more than one occasion, as we stood up from the back pews to make our way out the front door into the rain outside, our cleansing.

Yet business in Quebec couldn't have been imagined without the French Roman Catholic Church, where language, culture, and power wound around each other tightly, constraining all that was inside from
all that was outside, and providing both the context and the limits of identity for all of us. Everyone knew it. Yet everyone kept playing their role, at least for now. After all, it was reasonably easy. All you had to do was sit close to the back of the church.

And finding a spot back wasn't difficult. It was locating a spot at the front that would have been rough. Seats there were reserved using tiny brass chains, sometimes even name plaques, for «Mr le Ministre» and his extended family, «Mr le Gérant de Banque» [bank manager] and his extended family, and so on. You couldn't miss their practised posturing – the best clothing, the most pious looks, and the slow walk back to their seats after communion, tough to do when they were so close to the front. But they managed it well, casting an indulgent glance to this or that duly appreciative parishioner in the seats right behind.

Families could actually buy the front seats, too, or permission to sit there. Sometimes the right to a bench was passed on hereditarily. I read in a history of medieval France that people had been killed over fights about whose right it was to sit in one front pew or another. But I didn't know that then. I just sat safely near the back.

What I did know then, and I extend this as a piece of friendly advice, is that if you ever need to put down the huge long piece of padded wood «pour s'agenouiller» [to kneel down], you'd better be slow and strong. That thing is extremely heavy in a Catholic Church, normally running the entire length of a long seat, easily six to eight feet. If you drop it even slightly from barely an inch above the pristine church floor, it will issue a bang loud enough to make the first families turn their heads, and the officiating priest give you an extremely critical look.

At that point, I might suggest, the best tactic is to get on your knees and look down as if you're praying earnestly. You will appear genuinely contrite while you hide your embarrassment. Quickly enough, folks will turn back towards the front and things will return to normal. No one will notice if a small tear trickles down your face. If they do, they'll assume that you are even more profoundly sorry and sincere. Your shame and sadness will remain, as they always do in this place, private.

__________

*
The first clinical trials for streptomycin were launched by the British Medical Research Council in 1947. My father was hospitalized at Laval University's research hospital, which apparently served as a satellite test site.

†
Frère Untel [Brother Such-and-Such] achieved popular acclaim (and clerical wrath) for eleven letters he wrote anonymously to
Le Devoir
in 1959–60 which insolently but patriotically took on the clerical hierarchy and education standards, and then became the linchpin for the Quiet Revolution. He and my father both lay dying in the isolation ward in 1946–47, aged nineteen and sixteen, respectively, and it's hard to say who affected whom more. But the good brother would end up longingly wishing for a Québécois Chesterton (his letter 7); and his letters 8 to 11 sound precisely like my father's daily diatribes against the church hierarchy and the incapacity of the average man (Desbiens, 1959–60; republished by Les Presses de l'Université Laval, 2010). My father was apparently released before him and spoke of him often to my mother when they were courting.

Pronoun

My mother tongue,

French,

is, in a word,

gracious.

It's the language

of the pronoun «on.»

«On» can mean “you.”

As in, «réaliser qu'on a un problème.»

Meaning, “to realize you have a problem.”

«On» can mean “we.”

As in, «On va règler le problème demain.»

Meaning, “We'll solve the problem tomorrow.”

«On» can mean “a nameless person.”

As in, «On m'a relié le problème.»

Meaning, “Someone (inconsequential) related the problem.”

«On» can mean “an omnipresent everyone.”

As in, «On oublie ce genre de problème facilement.»

Meaning, “This kind of problem is easily forgotten by all.”

«On» can even mean “no one.”

As in, «On ne m'a pas bien expliqué tout ça.»

Meaning, “No one really explained it to me.”

The pronoun, «on.»

A word that hides identities.

A word that sustains opacities.

A word that allows multiplicities.

A word that obscures responsibilities.

My mother tongue is,

in a word,

perfect.

7

INSIDERS AND OUTSIDERS

LES GENRES DE MONDE

And so it was that religion remained the pointer, the identifier that could be spoken of, the recognized “glue” between groups, the sameness everyone accepted as a given. Of course, looking back on what was brewing in Quebec in the 1950s and '60s, I realize now that attributes of individuals and groups that were publicly associated with religion were a thin cover for those that were actually considered to stem from language. In this way, the whole world (read “local geography,” or the only place that mattered) could be dichotomized as French Roman Catholic (read “French”), and
not
French Roman Catholic (read “English”).

Of course, the real world included all kinds of other takes on Catholicism, and all kinds of other faiths. But not this world. Not the core place from which we drew our meaning and sustenance – our water. Those who weren't Judeo-Christians weren't even inscribed on the public record. Seems they had a curious world no one cared to take seriously or learn about, theirs being an error that rendered them people of minor importance, non-existent.

The system of tidy graphic organizers worked out well, allowing everyone to talk openly about incompatibilities between people based on religion (completely understandable and historically witnessed, as was said) whereas the incompatibilities being experienced were actually assignable to language as a deep and ancient problem for the population of Quebec, these French transplants and their descendants. The
real issue wouldn't be spoken aloud – wouldn't have the right of speech, in fact – until 1976. That's when it finally became commonplace to look at language as a boundary between the people of Quebec, which it had always been, in fact.