Montreal Stories (28 page)

“I like the way you think,” he said. “If only you had been a man, Miss Carette, with your intellect, and your powers of synthesis, you might have gone …,” and he pointed to the glass bowl of blueberry trifle on the dessert trolley, as if to say, “even farther.”

The next day Berthe drew on her retirement savings account and made a down payment on a mink coat (pastel, fully let out) and wore the coat to work. That was her answer. Marie admired this counterstroke more than any feat of history. She wanted Mimi to admire it, too, but she was tired after the flight, and the shock of Raymond’s marriage, and the parched, disappointing meal. Halfway through the story her English thinned out.

“What’s she saying?” said Mimi. “This man gave her a coat?”

“It’s too bad it couldn’t have worked out better for Aunt Berthe,” said Raymond. “A widower on the executive level. Well, not exactly a widower, but objectively the same thing. Aunt Berthe still looks great. You heard what Mimi said.”

“Berthe doesn’t need a widower,” said Marie. “She can sit on her front balcony and watch widowers running in Parc Lafontaine any Sunday. There’s no room in the flat for a widower. All the closets are full. In the spare-room closet there are things belonging to you, Raymond. That beautiful white rodeo belt with the silver buckle Aunt Berthe gave you for your fourteenth birthday. It cost Berthe thirty dollars, in dollars of that time, when the Canadian was worth more than the American.”

“Ten cents more,” said Raymond.

“Ten cents of another era,” said Marie. “Like eighty cents today.”

“Aunt Berthe can move if she feels crowded,” he said. “Or she can just send me the belt.” He spoke to Mimi. “People in Montreal move more often than in any other city in the world. I can show you figures. My father wasn’t a Montrealer, so we always lived in just the one house.
Maman
sold it when he died.”

“I wouldn’t mind seeing that house,” said Mimi, as though challenging Marie to produce it.

“Why should Berthe move?” said Marie. “First you want to tie her up with a stranger, then you want to throw her out of her home. She’s got a three-bedroom place for a rent you wouldn’t believe. She’d be crazy to let it go. It’s easier to find a millionaire with clean habits than my sister’s kind of flat.”

“People don’t get married to have three bedrooms,” said Mimi, still holding Berthe’s picture. “They get married for love and company.”

“I am company,” said Marie. “I love my sister, and my sister loves me.”

“Do you think I married Raymond for
space
?” said Mimi.

Raymond said something in English. Marie did not know what it meant, but it sounded disgusting. “Raymond,” she said. “Apologize to your wife.”

“Don’t talk to him,” said Mimi. “You’re only working him up.”

“Don’t you dare knock your chair over,” said his mother. “Raymond! If you go out that door, I won’t be here when you get back.”

The two women sat quietly after the door slammed. Then Mimi picked up the fallen chair. “That’s the real Raymond,” she said. “That’s Raymond, in public and private. I don’t blame any man’s mother for the way the man turns out,”

“He had hair like wheat,” said Marie. “It turned that rusty color when he was three. He had the face of an angel. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen him like this. Of course, he has never been married before.”

“He’ll be lying on the bed now, sulking,” said Mimi. “I’m not used to that. I hadn’t been married before, either.” She began rinsing plates at the sink. The slit of a window overlooked cars and the stricken palms. Tears ran down her cheeks. She tried to blot them on her arm. “I think he wants to leave me.”

“So what if he does leave,” said Marie, looking in vain for a clean dish towel. “A bad, disobedient boy. He ran away to Vietnam. The last man in our family. He should have been thinking about having sons instead of traveling around. Raymond’s father was called Louis. My father’s name was Odilon. Odilon-Louis—that’s a nice name for a boy. It goes in any language.”

“In my family we just have girls,” said Mimi.

“Another thing Raymond did,” said Marie. “He stole his father’s gold watch. Then he lost it. Just took it and lost it.”

“Raymond never lost that watch,” said Mimi. “He probably sold it to two or three different people. Raymond will always be Raymond. I’m having a baby. Did he tell you that?”

“He didn’t have to,” said Marie. “I guessed it when we were in the car. Don’t cry anymore. They can hear. The baby can hear you.”

“He’s already heard plenty from Raymond.”

Marie’s English died. “Look,” she said, struggling. “This baby has a grandmother. He’s got Berthe.
You’ve
got Berthe. Never mind Raymond.”

“He’ll need a father image,” said Mimi. “Not just a lot of women.”

“Raymond had one,” said Marie. “He still joined the Marines.”

“He or she,” said Mimi. “I don’t want to know. I want the surprise. I hope he likes me. She. It feels like a girl.”

“It would be good to know in advance,” said Marie. “Just for the shopping—to know what to buy. Do you want to save the rest of the shrimp or throw it out?”

“Save it,” said Mimi. “Raymond hardly ate anything. He’ll be hungry later on.”

“That bad boy,” said Marie. “I don’t care if he never eats again. He’ll find out what it’s like, alone in the world. Without his mother. Without his aunt. Without his wife. Without his baby.”

“I don’t want him to be alone,” said Mimi, showing Marie her streaked face, the sad little curls stuck to her wet cheeks. “He hasn’t actually gone anywhere. I just said I thought he was thinking about it.”

Marie tried to remember some of the English Berthe used. When she was talking to people from her office, Berthe would say, “All in good time,” and “No way he can do that,” and “Count on me,” and “Not to worry.”

“He won’t leave you,” said Marie. “No way I’ll let him do that. Count on me.” Her elbow brushed against the handle of the refrigerator door; she felt a silvery spark through the chiffon sleeve. This was the first time such a thing had happened in Florida; it was like an approving message from
Berthe. Mimi wiped her hands on a paper towel and turned to Marie.

“Be careful,” said Marie, enfolding Raymond’s wife and Raymond’s baby. “Be careful the baby doesn’t get a shock. Everything around here is electric. I’m electric. We’ll have to be careful from now on. We’ve got to make sure we’re grounded.” She had gone into French, but it didn’t matter. The baby could hear, and knew what she meant.

W
ELL INTO HER
nineties, my aunt continues to send me news of people in Montreal I’ve had no trouble forgetting. When I open a letter of hers, a shower of clippings falls out, along with her reminders: “Steve! Mrs. Christopher Shrew was Nancy Pervious. Was dying to marry you. Good thing you got away.” Or “Peter Delorme. Nice boy until he got into politics. Leaves three fine sons.”

At some point she must have mentioned Carlotta Peel, the daughter of my former wife, but I’d no idea what the girl looked like or even what age she might be until she turned up on my doorstep, uninvited, in the South of France. It was an August day, in a season of drought. A layer of dust like fine salt covered the fading gardens. Brittle plane leaves blew into the corners of the terrace. The hotter the day, the grayer the sea. The sun beat through a thin grayish layer of haze that resembled the tail of a dust storm. I was reading a new book, which I had taken to be the secret diaries of General Georges Boulanger. He was the French Minister of War who might have thrown over the Third Republic, if he’d put his mind to it, and finally dismayed his admirers by committing suicide on his mistress’s grave. I had read steadily from the downfall of Louis Napoleon until about 1890, almost the end, surprised that someone I’d classed as a featherhead had shown so much wit and grace, when I looked again at the author’s notes and realized I was reading a work of fiction. I dropped the book face down and began composing letters to the
author and his publisher asking for the return of my hundred and sixty-nine francs. Someone called my name. By then I was asleep and dreaming. I was at a christening, and a stranger suddenly handed me about a dozen prayer books. The infant at the font began to wail, a sort of mewing. The clergyman rang a bell for silence. The child’s mother said, “Steve! Steve Burnet!” I said, “For Christ’s sake, I’m holding all these bloody books!”

I woke up and went round to the front of the house, and found a tall child (child to me; Carlotta considered herself a young woman) with sleepy dark eyes. She wore a kind of uniform of white cotton, with a long buttoned tunic, and with her narrow shoulders and cinnamon summer skin she could have been Indian. I remember that the first things she said were on a rising note: “Steve Burnet? You knew my mother?”—which meant nothing until she added, “My mother, Lily?” At that I saw a resemblance, though not to recollections of Lily; rather, to Carlotta’s maternal grandmother, my late, crazy mother-in-law, anchored in memory as Old Lady Quale. Between Carlotta and me arose Mrs. Quale’s owlish staring and head of sleek black hair. Lily’s girl was a fragment of that ancient lump of righteousness—saner, probably; certainly prettier; perhaps more commonplace. As for Lily, I had not set eyes on her since she was twenty-three.

My life since that early capsizal had been sparsely and prudently occupied by married women in no hurry to leave their husbands. Indeed, the introduction of divorce into Italy had caused me to close down a six-year-old story. (It was managed without racking debate. A Canadian diplomat, evenhanded by nature, one of the rare foreigners to whom the French have not taken immediate and weighty dislike, I was invited to observe voting practices in the Society Islands. I obtained a long leave of absence, rented my summer house in France to a Belgian opposite number, loitered in the South Pacific as long as my means allowed, and spent an undue amount of time
drawing up my conclusions. When eventually one summer I returned to Europe, it was to find Sandra dismissing men as a form of
agitazione
and studying to become a breeder of white Pekinese.)

My aunt believed that a distaste for restless and unclaimed women had me moored in a careful system of ways and means, keeping a blameless married woman friend around to act as hostess and accompany me to concerts and funerals, and pursuing invisible affairs with other men’s wives. In other words (this is still my aunt speaking), I was no different from any trifling, piffling male with a wife and girlfriends and a deck of ready stories. No woman was supposed to bring me more than she could pack and remove on short notice. It was my aunt’s opinion that I had too much regard for what was likely to happen. I thought she was wrong, and that I expected nearly nothing.

No matter where I was posted, whether abroad or back in Ottawa, I usually managed to spend a brief summer vacation in France. There I dispensed with women altogether, caught up on my reading, and tried to write a book. I meant it to be a summary of recent times, with my experiences and judgment used tactfully, never intrusively, as a binding thread. I would have called it “My Century,” but the title had already been employed by a celebrated Polish poet. Every year at high summer, I was driven to unpack my Hermes, set it on the marble table in the shadiest part of the terrace, roll in a sheet of Extra Strong, and type “Chapter 1.” I could see a tamed and orderly design of streams and rivulets (early youth, intellectual awakening) feeding a tranquil river that debouched into a limpid sea. Unfortunately, it wanted only a few minutes for the sea to churn up and disgorge a ton of dead fish. Most people considered great were in reality only average; middling masters I held in contempt; as for amateurs in any field, I saw no reason why they should not be airlifted to Mongolia and left to forage. Obviously, this was of no interest
to anyone except cranks; yet I felt no spite, no disappointment, no envy of younger men. I had done nearly everything I wanted, and had been as successful as my aunt had hoped.

After half an hour I would push the typewriter aside, open a thick notebook, uncap the gold Parker I was given years ago for having passed, unexpectedly well, an examination in political science, and write, “Chapter 1.” Then I would cap the pen and stare at the Mediterranean, wondering if the wisp of darkness on the horizon could be a mirage projection of Corsica.

Apart from this activity I ate breakfast and lunch at home, went down for a swim early, when no one was around, played some tennis at a court up near the railway station, and dined with elderly neighbors. At the end of a few weeks I bolted the window shutters, disconnected and locked up the telephone (so that burglars would not be tempted to make long-distance calls), and returned to the wrack and low tide of my profession.

Not long ago, I sold the house where Carlotta came to look for me. The wreckers may have saved some of the tiles from the terrace floor, with their worn pattern of olive leaves. It used to be reached by a downhill flight of steps from a noisy highway. The steps continued almost all the way to the sea and came to a stop at a hedge of scarred cactus, bounding a narrow and stony public beach. Prewar cottages and villas descended the slope, with the stairs as common thoroughfare. My terrace overlooked a particularly ugly and derelict cottage; for years I had tried to buy it from its greedy absentee owner, so that I might have it razed and a garden put there instead. Unfortunately, while I was lingering in the Tuamotu Archipelago, trying to give Sandra enough rope, my Belgian tenant had met the asking price, and now maintained the wreck as a picturesque eyesore. That summer, it was occupied
by his niece, Irma Baes, an amateur artist of great stamina and enthusiasm.

There was a gate at the top of the steps, kept locked. The postman no longer included us in his rounds. This, and the shape and variety of aerials on every rooftop, and the installation of Irma Baes, were the most remarkable changes on my side of the gate. Beyond it nearly everything had altered.

“I just jiggled the lock,” said Carlotta, when I asked how she’d got inside. There was a taxi up on the road, with an eight-kilometer fare on its meter, which was still ticking over. She had no money, she said—no cash, that is; just a lot of traveler’s checks. She talked in the accents of modern Montreal—accents that render the speaker unplaceable except within vast regional boundaries. One would have guessed she was not from Mississippi or California, not much else. Lily had had the old Quebec-Irish inflection.