Greetings from the Vodka Sea (25 page)

Mostly, Étienne had been able to keep Madrn at bay. The journalist had approached him several times with an interest in doing an article or book or something on the roots of French Canadian radicalism. Étienne demurred: he'd been a student only; he knew nothing of radical politics; having spent only a few years in Quebec, he had very little to add along the lines of cultural or social observations. Once, at a party for the Belgian consul, Madrn tried to bait Étienne into confessing . . . something or another. That he'd been a fascist or had befriended fascists or spoken to someone who knew a fascist, Étienne was never sure. The consul himself came to Étienne's defence, saying that he knew of the doctor's family, that they'd comported themselves during the war no less nobly than his own (the consul, a charter member of the Fellowship of the Veil, was being perfectly truthful). The Pole was playing the odds. He knew that every man, and certainly any man who'd safely come out of Europe in the last thirty years, had a shadow in his past, and he took it as a personal affront whenever anyone tried to keep his private business private.

“It was a long time ago, sir. I'm sure it's a time many would rather forget.”

“And you,
monsieur le docteur
? Would you rather forget? Hmm?”

“I, Mr. Madrn, I have nothing worth remembering.”

. . .

These are the facts as Étienne did not remember them, exactly as they were never reported to that journalist. In July of 1940, mere weeks after the aging Marshall Pétain had signed the armistice agreement (not out of cowardice or a particular fondness for Hitler and his politics, as some maintained, but because he very rightly perceived that capitulation under the Nazis would be vastly more palatable than defeat), Étienne and his family moved from Rhône, that ancient Roman city where his father had worked as a general physician, to Verrière, where his uncle was mayor and where his father was granted an administrative post with the local hospital council. Here, Étienne (nee Paul André Emmanuel Étienne Boussat-Antiphon; he'd added du Chatelait, rather uncleverly, because it was his grandmother's maiden name) began his internship, having already completed his formal studies. Here, at his uncle's insistence, he also took nominal membership in the Legion of French Volunteers against Bolshevism and, after that, the Legionnaire Security Service, pledging to fight democracy, Jews and the Resistance, in that order. Eventually, he was pressed into service of the Franc-Garde of the French Militia, a fervently anti-Gaullist organization whose main objective seemed to be the systematic denunciation of every French man, woman and child who was not a militia member (and many who were). Étienne satisfied the mandate by providing key militia officials with an endless supply of names taken from the hospital death rolls. That they were dead only enhanced Étienne's status; the militia appeared to be carrying out its mandate to a degree of efficiency rarely seen in France. In the waning hours of the war, as the Allied victory seemed imminent, Étienne's father sent him to Spain with a small collection of gold and a large assortment of false documents. While being tried
in absentia
for crimes against the state and sentenced to ten years of national disgrace, Étienne obtained a six-month student visa for Canada (that this twenty-year-old man had a high school student visa seemed not to disturb the immigration officials), and, following a ten-day voyage on a Cunard freighter, he landed in Montreal. He left immediately for Quebec City, where his uncle assured him he would find men not unsympathetic to the Cause. What that cause was, Étienne wasn't sure. But he hoped most emphatically that it had something to do with allowing him to get on with his life.

. . .

So you can see that Étienne's world was full of statues, which is perhaps why he found himself thinking of Medusa. A painting at the provincial gallery set this train of thought in motion, an avant-garde artist's depiction of the gorgon myth, an ugly head — nostrils splayed, asymmetrical eyes, wrinkled and hirsute skin, full, chapped lips, her hair a nest of serpents — set upon the beautiful body of young woman. She was surrounded by onlookers who, captured by either her hideousness or her beauty, had turned into marble statues in the Classic, Grecian style. Étienne had stood transfixed, considering the detail of each snake, and smiled when he recognized that Medusa, at least for a moment, had turned him to stone as well. He thought of Thérèse, for numerous reasons (most of them quite obvious), and returned to that image over and over again whenever she entered his mind. In fact, he began to think of her as Medusa, mentally transplanting her head onto the body the artist had rendered, and in his internal conversation he referred to Thérèse directly as Medusa. He even began to call the planned seduction the Medusa Project: his own little joke.

. . .

There were improprieties. In fact, Madrn's next article would expose a lot of them. Laporte's unseemly connections, for one. He had strong ties to organized crime in Montreal, and there were some, including prominent FLQ supporters, who believed that the Laporte kidnapping was actually the work of professional hit men. Perhaps they were even working with the tacit approval of Bourassa and the police. How else could you explain the fact that the kidnappers had managed to walk away — in broad daylight — with the deputy premier of the province, snatch him right from under the noses of the police and army? Even given the legendary ineptitude of Quebec's police force, this was a little too hard to believe. In allowing Laporte to be kidnapped, Bourassa had rid himself of a man who was at once a dangerous political rival and a potential embarrassment to his government.

“We should talk, comrade. I mean it. I have a lot of information. It could be useful.”

The driver did not respond. None of the men did. There were at least two kidnappers, Madrn believed, probably four. That's the way the FLQ operated: safety in numbers. They were just young guys really, punks, mostly politically unsophisticated, in the game for the thrill of it, the danger, the righteousness, the brotherhood. They bombed and kidnapped like other young men gang-banged.

“For instance, do you know about Operation Essay? Hmm? This is no accidental occurrence, my friends, this ‘crisis.' The government — Trudeau — has been planning this for months. A secret plan with the army and the cops. You guys think you're in the driver's seat, my friends. You're not. You're playing into their hands, I can tell you that right now . . .”

He hadn't seen their faces, hadn't seen anything of them, in fact. When he felt the pistol on his neck, he'd gone without question. He raised his hands and said, “Just tell me what to do, boys.” At first, he thought — he hoped — that they would simply ask him to interview them, to get their side of the story out, and that they were merely going to extraordinary lengths to protect their identities and locations. But when they pushed him towards the box and directed him to get into it — well, that's when he knew he was in trouble.

Madrn pressed his lips to the holes and sucked in some fresh air. The van smelled new, a rental, no doubt. The air inside the box — a storage trunk or maybe a packing crate — was mouldy, with a more pleasant undertone of wood. Cedar, he thought. Yes, cedar.

“I also have a line on some guns, my friends. Kalashnikovs. Almost new. I can get them for you for a song . . .”

. . .

Not long after his visit to the gallery, Étienne received a package from Madrn. It arrived by regular post; Anna brought the unsealed envelope to him in his study. Inside was a draft manuscript for an article the journalist was writing for a leading English-language Quebec daily, an article that more or less accurately detailed, among other things, Étienne's flight from Europe and his rise within the rightist circles of New France. A typed note invited the doctor to correct any errors and craft, if he so desired, his own rebuttal. It ended with a short, handwritten addendum, underlined for emphasis.
“We should talk!
” Étienne read the article once, then, after cancelling a ten o'clock appointment, read it again. His first impulse was to write a stinging letter to the editor, defending himself and demanding, in advance of publication, an unequivocal retraction. His second impulse was to call a lawyer friend with intimate knowledge of Étienne's circumstances. His third impulse was to call a cabinet minister or two and ask them to apply the kind of pressure that could get a story like this killed. In the end, he read the article again; there was something about Madrn's prose that appealed to him. Emotionless, motionless, almost hypnotic, not charged, as Étienne would have expected, with political rhetoric or intent. The result was that Étienne came across as a calculating fiend, coldly detached from the events of the time, seeking only to protect and further himself. Was he really such a monster?

Étienne picked up the note and scrutinized it. The handwritten message was curious. Why should they talk? Was there something Madrn wanted to say that could not be entrusted to a note? Did he want, Étienne speculated, to offer a deal? Perhaps this was part of a primitive blackmail scheme, his present (as was always the case in blackmail) held hostage by the past? He could hear his wife puttering in the sitting room next door and wondered how the revelations would affect her. She could surprise him but didn't do it often. The story would no doubt devastate her. And now Étienne put the note down and, slumping deep into his chair, dropped his head into his hands. He thought again, almost speaking the words aloud:
Am I really this monster?

. . .

Étienne had grown up in the age of statues. In Rhône there were gods and statues everywhere. But now he lived in an age of radio, of television, of journalists and Marxists. Of politics. One couldn't even trust one's mistress anymore. Étienne could no longer tell who was having whom: was Sondra his mistress, or was he hers?

And now they were having lunch again, and she was playing the role of conciliator. Étienne was upset about the package he'd received. He left the precise details of the package vague and would only say that, despite the outward appearances of civility, his was a cutthroat profession.

Sondra ran her hand through her long hair, streaked with grey. She wasn't that old, really, thirty-four or thirty-five, he guessed (he'd never asked — a gentleman didn't — although he was certain she would tell him if he did), and could easily have coloured it. Most women of her age would.

“It's like anything. There's is only so much room at the top, there is always someone circling around to take your place. Anyway, enough of this business.” But this business did not leave his mind, and he came back to it several times over lunch and later, back in her apartment. They'd made love in the usual manner, after coffee and the radio news, on the bed in the spare room (neither of them felt comfortable doing it in her bed, with its ghosts and shadows). He'd only just finished when he rolled off and said, “You know, this business — it will kill her.”

“Kill who?”

“Anna. It will kill her. She always likes everything to be the same. She never wants anything to change. Of course, things change all the time, everything changes around her . . .”

His voice trailed off, and Sondra pulled the yellow sheet up to her neck. Étienne stood and picked up his shorts, which he'd neatly folded over the back of the armchair at the foot of the bed. He thought of how much more comfortable chairs were these days, less decorative and more utilitarian than when he was a boy. When he'd been growing up, his mother had chairs that no one was allowed to sit in. Étienne dressed in silence. These silences were beginning to define his life.

. . .

Madrn tried a different tack.

“Look, if it's money you're after, I can provide you with what you want. I'm not a rich man by any means, but I have some . . . resources.”

What these men failed to realize was that Madrn had been a hostage his entire life. Born in a country that did not exist, surrounded by invaders who looked like him, talked like him, ate like him, stank like him. And the secret was . . . the secret was that once you become a captor, you also become a hostage.

“I'm just thinking out loud, of course, but what's in my mind is some sort of negotiable commodity. I'm thinking specifically of heroin right now, but that can all be discussed. The point is, I'm willing to swing a deal. But you have to tell me what you want.”

In Poland, everything had been a negotiation. He'd negotiated his way out of the army and into the polytechnic institute, he'd negotiated himself in and out of bed, he'd negotiated for an ounce of caviar and for a loaf of bread. Once he'd traded cigarettes for toilet paper, only to trade it back again for more cigarettes. The What was never significant, it was what the What did for you that mattered. A man with something to trade has status, and that alone makes him a hostage.

“Do you know how I got to this country? I invented myself. That's right, comrades. I gave myself a mother and a father, I gave myself a wife and three small children. I bought my freedom on their backs, my little invented wife and our make-believe brats. They were my collateral. My money-back guarantee.”

Nothing. Silence still.

“Maybe you just want your freedom, a one-way ticket out of here? Where do you want to go? Cuba? Algeria? Hollywood? Just tell me. Getting you there — the documents, the contacts — that's the easy part. It's making up your fucking mind. That's the difficulty.”