Even so, they, those few, should remember how hard they had to fight to garner a few crumbs of the pie. When I was little, my father was constantly mouthing off at the “damned English”2 who would always snatch up the construction contracts thanks to their pull in the government or City Hall. Things were so bad we ate canned tomatoes three times a week in order to get by on the bit of money he was earning from the small company he’d founded after four years working as a foreman for a large West Island construction firm.
We lived farther west, on 1st Avenue near Masson, in a small second-floor flat with mice in the walls. My father worked non-stop and my mother helped him with the accounting. I liked to watch them work, day and night, despite my feeling lonesome. I knew it was for our good, to carve out our place in the sun. That’s what they would tell me, and I had no reason to doubt it. My father persevered until he finally got some small contracts, then bigger contracts, then more and more big ones.
That was when he was still a man, not just a successful businessman, when he was still my father, not just Taurus. Afterwards, things went sour. But he did get it, his place in the sun, that is. Only, it’s in Fort Lauderdale, Florida – that wasn’t how I’d imagined it.
So, you see, me and money... What’s more, I’m of the opinion that money numbs the neurons. And you know what they do in hospitals to stir numb neurons? They zap them with electroshocks. It’s the same thing for bombs – they’re collective electroshocks. You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do.
I ate my old pizza crust and played a Jinni Hendrix! record over the TV picture. The special report was finished, and they were showing a stupid soap opera, which I watched absentmindedly. There was still a lot of mescaline left in the fridge. I snorted some. I needed to air out my head a little so I could do some painless thinking.
Because the air, the wind, washes me, cleanses me inside and out, cools my attic. As if it were reminding me that I am my own cabin, that only within myself am I safe. No windows, barely a door, it’s so tiny even though it’s filled with everything you can imagine. It’s not open to just anyone: No Strangers Allowed. I’ve hung a huge padlock and no one knows the combination but me. The walls are as hard as reinforced concrete. They can’t be breached, even with five megatons of dynamite. When I go inside, I might as well be invisible. No one pays attention to me, and I pay no attention to anyone. You could knock on the door till your hands broke, I still wouldn’t answer. I play the man who doesn’t hear the knocking at the door.
At school, a lot of people lurk around my cabin, and I don’t like it. La Marquise and the others. Even Rag Bag sometimes slinks along the walls, looking for a crack to poke her nose in. She approaches, unobtrusively, as if she could avoid detection with that randy brontosaurus look of hers, and tries to get a glimpse of something. But she won’t see a thing, and neither will the others.
There are all kinds of folks who would love to put my cabin in order. The Suspicians first and foremost.
After all, that’s what Taurus and Virgo pay them a bundle for. Me, I refuse. Order is for priests, for the collared of every stripe, an invention of the powers-that-be. My cabin is too small and too cluttered to contain order on top of everything else. Anyway, order is not what’s needed to save the world.
Sometimes, when it’s hot, my cabin is skin-tight. When it’s cold, it swaddles me and keeps me warm. When the light is too strong, it covers my eyes. When it’s too dark, it lights up and I can see as plain as day. It’s my shell, my camouflage, my chameleon hide.
I’m often hit, assaulted, attacked. That’s because I love to disturb. Naturally, there’s hostility toward my mind, my way of looking at things, my way of seeing. Everybody dislikes it when you’re not like everybody. But they can’t get at me, because I have my cabin and my cabin is solid.
1. Front populaire de libération du Québec
2. “maudits Anglais”
Chapter Three
Kontum, 64-65
Life holds a special flavor for those who fight, that the protected shall never know.
Inscription on a Zippo lighter,
Unknown G.I.
It should have been expected. La Marquise has decided to lead the fight, at the college, against the language legislation. With the blessings of the Gentlemen, of course, who thereby avoid hotheads such as me breaking rank and taking advantage of the general unrest to blow the lid off the place. La Marquise, on the other hand, has class. There’s no mistaking her lineage or her opinions. Those priests are no fools: Melior est vir prudens quam fortis.1
By way of a communiqué printed on the Gestetner graciously put at her disposal by Pelvisius, La Marquise has announced the spontaneous establishment of the French Quebec Committee of the Seminary of Saint Suspicius (FQCSSS),2 appointing herself, in passing, provisional chair of the said committee, whose equally provisional mandate it is to “ensure coordination with the national leadership of the struggle against the language legislation.” Those interested are to come to the lounge tomorrow at 5 p.m. After classes, needless to say. It will then be determined how the student body may offer concrete support to the protest movement. The communiqué says there will even be a representative of the national committee. You don’t need to be a genius to figure out that he’ll try to enlist the flock in his great mass movement, even though the sheep it’s comprised of are not exactly the type that makes revolutions: the progeny of judges, doctors, and businessmen is ordinarily better suited for fashion parades and beauty contests than demonstrations.
Evidently even the wealthy can feel oppressed, or this cause must be especially just, seeing how the national committee representative – presto! – had them eating out of his hand. A full beard and all smiles, wears a turtleneck under a tweed jacket, speaks in a loud voice and knows how to make hearts throb to the rhythm of the correct line. Less than ten minutes is all he needs to secure a vote in favour of a twenty-four-hour walkout, just enough time for the troops of Saint Suspicius on the mountain to join the grand people’s army that will be marching through the downtown streets in three days.
He really has a way with daddy’s boys and girls:
“Your people needs you, don’t disappoint it. The fate of the nation is at stake. You must take part in the struggle. You’ve no right to remain outside the united front that’s now taking shape.”
Youououououour people! That’s nearly all it takes to get the flock involved in sedition with an almost unanimous vote by show of hands held amid the enthusiasm of year-end parties. Only, this is November and the Gentlemen of Saint Suspicius haven’t planned a holiday so early in the season. They’re as surprised as they are vexed that things could have gone so far. However much Pelvisius repeats and has his pawns repeat that he’s not sure it’s such a good idea, the following Friday, the college is as deserted as the desert of Judea. Non enim quod volo bonum, hoc facio; sed quod nolo malum hoc ago.3
I stayed on the sidelines, even though I was amused by the way things turned out. It was out of the question for me to march in La Marquise’s battalion. I perched myself