For the prequel to this chapter, number 9, click here
The mantel clock gave out a metallic gasp, as Irène’s eyes burst open to the utter darkness of her dead father’s bedroom. There she had lain peacefully in his small, single, camp-like bed, lost in a deep sleep. She preferred the upstairs loft of the family home, as she was happy there, waking up well rested. That had not been so in the embrace of her dead mother’s room, despite Jeanne’s fine antique oak bed, and layer upon layer of voluptuous sheets and comforters and furs. To the first dismal, echoing chimes of the clock, Irène instinctively pulled her sheets up tight over her chin, a gust of icy wind throwing itself against her small, single paned and frost engraved window. It was January and the nights were still perilously long.
The life of the clock, made of cherry wood with a face in Roman numerals, animated her mother’s downstairs bedroom. The floor boards began their nightly creaking, to and fro, and back again. They were two tonight, which could be discerned by the overlap of every third step. Irène despaired of the house’s rituals; this one, most distressing of all. The confusion and anxiety of the house, responding to the clock’s rhythmic hammering out of the full cycle of 12, turned the coldish air to icy eye-stabbing razors. Her brown eyes remained open notwithstanding, fixed on the blackness, only phantom traces of shape and form danced before her, most likely, she thought, the mere creations of her weary soul, unable in this weakened state to restrain imagination. She counted out the latter chiming of the clock in an almost inaudible whisper, “10, 11, 12” and then let out an involuntary, deep pitched and plaintive moan, as the steps turned frantic, seeming to race about the first floor, to the kitchen, to the back door, to the front door and back again, searching for God knows what. “Please,” she thought. “Stay downstairs. Please.” There was a pause as a floor board by to the back door creaked, ever so slowly, ending in a thoughtful, interminable hesitation. The narrow, winding stairway up to her dead father’s room lay conveniently off the rear entrance, shielded only by a frayed, wilting, dark blue curtain. She clutched at her pillow. As the mantel clock returned to its customary and interim sleep, so did the house, and so did Irène, the dream always forgotten by morning.
The back door flew open, as if hit by a tornado, slapping violently into the wall, amid the screams and laughter of one, two, then five of Julie’s small to medium sized children, 12 in all, the five of whom had been playing in the snow-covered back yard, making forts and tunnels and pelting each other with snow balls. “Your boots!” yelled Julie, standing on a stool by the stove, a necessary measure given her short stature, barely five foot, as she stirred an immense pot of “bouilli”, literally boiled everything, rutabagas, carrots, onions, potatoes and beans, and including a full head of cabbage that had only just begun to soften. Irène, pressed herself, her arms full of laundry, against the wall to make room for the hoard, but was jostled violently nonetheless, her left side slamming hard. “Sorry, ma-tante,” said the littlest one. Coming the other way was Julie’s second oldest son, Marcel, a full 6 foot 2, a remarkable height for a French Canadian. His father was also over six feet, due to some Norwegian blood on his grandfather’s side. Black haired, dark brown eyes, a head, small and narrow, complimented by small, narrow-set eyes, plainly for all to see, a head one or two sizes too small for his body, and an intellect to match. Making no effort to avoid the still startled Irène, he sneered as he pressed his chest up against his prey, pinning her momentarily between his dirty, torn, work coat and the closed bathroom door, which shook on its hinges. “Hey, I’m in here!” came a high pitched voice inside the bathroom. Marcel smirked, but said nothing, as Irène averted her eyes. “Arrête!” she tore back as she forced herself away.
“Marcel! You’re late, and leave Irène alone.” The Boucher men all worked in the steel plants along the Lachine canal. “Mon Dieu, can you not be kind?” She added a screeching “Out!” as Marcel flew out the back door, slamming a second time, nodding back at this mother, in faint acknowledgment of her nominal authority over him, kicking the family beagle, “Princess” as he passed The animal’s pained howl mixing with Julie’s final screeching “Marcel!” —a perfect cacophony. Julie slowly wiped her hands and tossed a tea towel onto the kitchen table, making her way directly to Irène’s small makeshift room at the back of the house, a converted windowless storage closet. Irène had quickly locked the door, then sat down on the edge of her small bed, the exposed bulb in the ceiling beginning to flicker. She glanced over at the school books on her tiny pine desk in the corner.
“Irène, open the door.”
“I’m fine, I’ll be out in a minute. I am putting away my laundry.”
“I’ll make us some tea. Don’t mind Marcel, he means well.”
“Merci ma-tante,” said Irène softly, as Julie turned slowly and walked back to the kitchen and her bouilli, now overflowing from the pot. Julie rushed to turn down the element.
Ever since Irène was discharged from hospital, she had been staying with Julie Boucher, her mother’s sister, whom she called “ma tante Julie”, and whose home was nearby in the neighbourhood of Ville-Émard. The borough, some six miles from the centre of Montreal, bordered the Aqueduct Canal to the east as far north as Desmarchais Boulevard where it met Côte-Saint-Paul, after which the eastern boundary ran north along Monk Boulevard to the Lachine Canal, the community's northern edge. Julie had been a stunning and voluptuous beauty at 15, eliciting considerable and welcome attention, but then squaring out considerably in her later teens, as French Canadian girls are wont to do, adding some happy pounds with the birth of her first son, then adding muscle bulk in her extremities with the labours of motherhood and running a busy household. Her face retained a certain beauty, although handsome may have been a better description as she drifted into her 40s, especially when framed by a plain brown corduroy cap with ear flaps that she wore when it was cold out.
In deepest darkest winter, the wind howling outside, Julie would entertain and take pleasure in terrifying her youngest children, of which there always seemed to be more, telling them to gather round the fire, as she was sure she could make out the war cries of 1,500 Iroquois, the same ones who had massacred the inhabitants of nearby Lachine, New France, in 1689. “They are back!” taking pleasure in the ancestral memory. The Iroquois had traveled up the Saint Lawrence River by boat, crossed Lake Saint-Louis, and landed on the south shore of the Island of Montreal. While the colonists slept, the invaders surrounded their homes. The colonists awoke to those hideous cries. Within moments of the first terror, doors were broken in, colonists hacked to death on the spot or dragged outside to be tortured by fire or red hot necklaces of metal hatchet heads, or hauled off as prisoners. When some of the colonists barricaded themselves in the church and other structures, the attackers set fire to the buildings and killed those who hadn’t burnt to death as they emerged. Julie would then laugh and say that “non, pardon”, it was probably just the wind. Her maiden name was Giroux. One of her ancestors, Antoine Giroux, and his young pregnant wife, had managed by some miracle to escape the Iroquois by hiding from the flames in a deep, secluded well, only fleeing back to Montreal, to notify the authorities, as the last embers of what was left of Lachine died out. Julie also enjoyed walks in the Angrignon Park and attending mass at Notre-Dame-du-Perpétuel-Secours.
After tea, Irène sat quietly at her desk and returned to her studies, the reading lamp casting shadows on the door of her cell, which door she now left unlocked. She opened her small purple-coloured volume of Racine’s Britannicus, which was first performed December 13, 1669. The Emperor Nero had usurped the throne from its rightful heir, the son of Claudius, Britannicus. Now Nero was plotting to assassinate his adoptive brother, mostly out of lust for his fiance, Junia.
Acte V, Scène 1
Britannicus, JunieBRITANNICUS
Oui, madame, Néron, qui l'aurait pu penser ?
Dans son appartement m'attend pour m'embrasser.
…
JUNIE
Seigneur, ne jugez pas de son coeur par le vôtre :
Sur des pas différents vous marchez l'un et l'autre.
Je ne connais Néron et la cour que d'un jour ;
Mais, si j'ose le dire, hélas dans cette cour
Combien tout ce qu'on dit est loin de ce qu'on pense !
Que la bouche et le coeur sont peu d'intelligence !
Avec combien de joie on y trahit sa foi !
Quel séjour étranger et pour vous et pour moi !
…
BRITANNICUS
Vous pleurez ! Ah ! ma chère princesse !
Et pour moi jusque-là votre coeur s'intéresse !
…
Mais, madame, arrêtez ces précieuses larmes :
Mon retour va bientôt dissiper vos alarmes.
Je me rendrais suspect par un plus long séjour :
Adieu. Je vais, le coeur tout plein de mon amour,
Au milieu des transports d'une aveugle jeunesse,
Ne voir, n'entretenir que ma belle princesse.
Adieu.
She made a note in the margins, “Nero and Agrippina, his mother, are the protagonists. Britannicus is a minor character in his own story.” She paused then added, “He isn’t making any moral choices. He is just there to die. Aren’t they all?” Pressing hard with her pencil, “Nero is the victim of his passions with no remorse for his crimes. But the spectators know future events. The actors on the stage do not.” She added next to the line, “choisi la nuit pour cacher sa vengeance!” (‘choose the night to hide his vengeance’) “Junia is feeling doomed. We know what is happening.”
“Still studying?,” came the voice of Michel behind her at the door. “It’s late. I’ll take you to the club. My car’s outside.”
“Oh no, I can’t. I’m too young.”
“Not at the Faison Dore.”
“I have exams. Who let you in?” Irène rose from her chair.
“I did,” said Julie. “I told Michel he could wish you good night… so go ahead, wish her good night.” Julie looked up Michel, adding, “You’ve been good to Irène. Otherwise, I would have sent you away. But there are limits you know.” Julie then looked Irène up and down, Irène, who was wearing the red dress Michel had bought her, a dress which was almost imperceptibly too tight fitting, even for her slender frame, and immodest, which Julie did notice. She scowled, turned her back on both of them, and walked down the hall, with heavier steps than usual, down a hallway which now echoed with children’s voices and giggles, the littler ones sensing their auntie was involved in some adult drama.
“Very well,” added Michel as he shut the door behind him, slowly without making a sound. “She will notice I’ve closed it soon enough.” Michel took Irène in his arms, sensing no resistance whatsoever, if not collaborative forces, Britannicus falling a second time, now to the floor, his fragile spine ejecting two pages from Act V, which might well have a significant impact on the outcome.
“Wait,” Irène pushed him off, pressing the down the dress along her hips. She smiled. She turned her back, drew lipstick from her purse, bright red, and applied it slowly in front of the small wall mirror in the corner of the room. She then pinched both cheeks, and turned to face Michel, a strand of her black hair coiling down flirtatiously over the left eye. “Now, how do I look?”
Allain Courville was born into a large working class family in Montreal, making his name first as a professional wrestler, and then as the owner of a number of illegal gambling operations and speakeasies. The big money was in smuggling alcohol into the United states and running bookmaking and prostitution rackets in Montreal with his associates in the Cotroni crime family. Standing no more than 5-feet tall, Courville was described once in the papers as, “Proudly mustachioed with a head planted between two massive shoulders.” In 1941, he opened the Faison Dore, a favourite meeting spot for gangsters, intellectuals, lawyers and judges, doctors and civil servants, and politicians of all stripes. With a seating capacity of over 600, it also had its fair share of office workers, adulterers, students, layabouts and taxi drivers serving all of the above. Courville also made a name for himself with a baseball bat, not by playing the American game, but rather using one to keep political enemies of his party of choice in line, with threats and selective and indiscriminate beatings.
Michel put his fedora down on the table in front of Courville, lit a cigarette and sat down. Courville, in bowtie, returned a half smile under his thin black moustache, waving for the waiter. “Two scotch and sodas.” Turning to Michel, “You mind?”
“No, that’s fine. That’s how I like it.” He lied.
“How long will you be in Montreal this time?” added Courville.
“Not long, I’ve bought a place for my girl. I am just signing the papers. Then I’m off to Cairo, then Iraq if the Germans are accommodating.”
“I heard you are into art and antiquities. Any other interests?” Courville paused to sip his Scotch.
“The reason I asked you here is that Vincenzo and I have a project you might be interested in.” Courville and Cotroni needed to forge an alliance with an insider to smuggle heroin from Marseilles into Montreal, from where it could be shipped easily using existing networks to the much larger US market.
“You’ve heard of the Institute?”
“The what?” said Courville, perplexed. “You mean the hospital?”
Michel laughed. “The hospital? Sure, but it is no ordinary hospital. Let’s just say you and the Institute have a common interest here. I can make the connections, and in exchange I am sure we can work something out.”
“Share of profits you mean?”
“Allain, no need to talk details now,” laughed Michel. “It’s enough that we have an understanding. Do we?”
Courville let out one of his baseball-bat fueled, grand slam, laughs, that turned heads, and caused a few shivers, around the club. He laughed again as he nodded and Michel was soon flying out of the main entrance, fedora in hand and hailing a cab with the other.
Irène clutched the delicately carved rosewood beads of her grandmother’s rosary, the cross made of sterling silver, then completed an eighth Hail Mary of the second decade. She was sitting on the edge of her bed, her torso, like Daphne’s, transformed, seemingly draped to perfection over her knees. Compelled to reflect, she stopped suddenly, and leaned slowly back, her eyes opening to find herself looking up at what now seemed an immense, impossible wooden crucifix. It was her mother’s and had been nailed over the head board, from whence it had witnessed the difficult births of the three Beaudoin daughters. She placed the rosary in her purse and walked over to her desk and picked up her student copies of Racine’s Phèdre and Andromache, shuffling the two volumes nervously in her hands. She had told Michel she wanted to leave her Aunt Julie’s. She “missed” the family home, where she grew up. She needed to “get away”. Irène had misjudged Michel considerably. She had no idea her word was all Michel would need, like one of Henry II’s knights, to execute the command. “It’s yours!” he had told her, expecting joy. Instead, her face showed only despair. The place of the living and now of the dead was hers. She raised the issue of marriage. Michel smiled and said that of course there would be “time for that”, but he had to catch a plane. She would need to see the Doctor.
Irène ripped open the brown paper wrapping of a painting Michel had left for her. “What did it mean?” It was hideous. Michel left a note: “It is called the ‘Hungry Lion Throws Itself on the Antelope’. Be patient with it. I will explain. Love, Michel.”
Irène stood by the back door, in her Sunday coat, with its oversized round fur collar, and placed her Missal in her purse. Her aunt who stood nearby rinsing dishes, inquired, “Going to mass again?” raising her right eyebrow. Irène didn’t answer, but picked up her pace and trotted out the backdoor. She would make her way to the family parish in Lachine and attend mass at the church of her parents and ancestors. Two steepled in golden light, she rose the steps of Saints-Anges-Gardiens de Montréal. The first church built in 1676 at the direction of Pierre Gaudin dit Chatillon, had been of wood. It had been consumed by fire during the Lachine massacre, the same year the first Beaudoin had arrived in New France. A stone church was built on the site in 1702. Construction of the current structure, designed in the “néo-roman” style by architects Dalbe Viau and Alphonse Venne, had begun in 1919, inaugurated on Irène’s day of birth, December 21, 1920.
The priest spoke in slow, monotonous tones, which even for a confessional was strangely out of place. Irène responded, “But Matthew says, ‘Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.’”
“We’re not talking about Matthew,” came the faceless voice from behind the screen, only the torso in white vestments visible. “We’re talking about you. What to you think?”
“I think flesh is strong.”
“Yes. Flesh is not weak. It’s strong. Only the sacrament of marriage will contain it.”
Irène was still unpacking her things, as well as the boxes of her parents and sister’s possessions that had been stored in anticipation of their liquidation, before the stay of execution. The Doctor had reassured her that her “feelings were treatable”. She shouldn’t worry. He increased her dosages and she would now be seeing him at the Hill Clinic every week. There were some new and exciting new therapies available that he was sure would help. She found herself thinking about the doctor and worrying that she was disappointing him. It was taking so long and she seemed to be getting worse, her life more complicated. He reassured her that she was not disappointing him in the least. Quite the opposite. He was “very very pleased with her progress. Very pleased indeed.”
Irène froze, overtaken by the unmistakable sensation she was not alone. She turned and there stood Marcel not six feet from her in her parents kitchen, surrounded by those boxes. “What are you doing here?” Marcel made some faint abysmal attempts at small talk that degraded very quickly into touching. Irène tried to swat him away, but Marcel responded more and more aggressively, then by catching her right arm in his massive left hand, then her waist with his right, and then lurching towards her. She screamed.
Michel had Marcel by the collar and turned him around, kicked out the back of his left knee and let gravity do the rest. “What?” was all Marcel could utter before his mass of dense flesh crashed to the floor, knocking over a stack of boxes.
“Get out of here and don’t come back.”
Marcel grabbed his cap off the floor and made for the back yard, without uttering another word. This went far easier than it could have, thought Michel, given the height and weight differential.
“What was that all about,” Michel asked Irène, with a certain tone of anger in his voice, not necessarily directed at her. “He’s Julie’s son. I don’t know what he has in his head.” The cherry wood clock began chiming out the hour, while Michel took the time to try to explain to Irène the painting he had acquired by the artist Henri Rousseau, who was either a gifted painter or a lunatic, but whose primitavist creations, if that is a fair description, have a certain something. “They are a riddle of the dreamworld,” said Irène. “It scared me at first and I hid it under the bed. I ran to open the window, to let it outside.”
“And now?”
“I feel better. I talked to the …”
“To who?”
“Oh, I mean I feel better. That’s the important thing.”
Michel recalled that he still had to bring in his luggage and ran back to his car, which was parked in the back alley. As he reached the gate, everything went black and he found himself face down on the dirt path. He rolled over to see Marcel standing over him, both fists clenched. “How do you like that, little man? Get up.”
Michel reached into his jacket pocket, found what he needed and gripped hard. Michel drove his Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum Revolver into Marcel’s face with such force that the blood was gushing from his nose with the first blow and the ivory grip on the left side broke in two on the third or fourth. Michel pistol whipped Marcel a few more times for good measure to insure Goliath was incapable of anything else but bleeding.
“If you ever come within a 100 yards of Irène again, my friends Courville and Cotroni will be dumping pieces of you from buckets into the Lachine Canal? Understand?”
“Yes sir, don’t hurt me,” Marcel whimpered, as he staggered to his feet.
“Remember, this never happened. You are clumsy and fell face first into a brick wall, right?” Marcel meandered away down the lane, oozing blood from multiple gashes. “Get out of here.”
Irène screamed as Michel walked in the back door covered in blood and dirt. “Don’t worry. The blood isn’t mine, but Marcel will live. He may not look so pretty, but he will live. If he comes near you again, he is dead.”
Irène was too stunned to talk. “Take this.” Michel placed the bloody gun in her right hand. “Hide it for me would you? That Marcel is stupid enough to talk and I don’t need any complications at the moment. I better get out of here.” Irène stared down at the bloody gun in her hand with the broken ivory handle. She felt as if she was about to cry, but somehow she did not. She collected herself, wrapped the gun in a rag and walked slowly up the stairs to her father’s old room, the dark blue curtain draping behind her; the cherry wood clock on the mantel began chiming out the hour, to the kitchen, to the back door, to the front door and back again; the back door that Michel had left open, swayed gently left and right on its hinges, to and fro, until the clock went silent again, and the house was still once more.
This is a work of fiction. Although its form, content and narrative may at times suggest real people, real documents and records, autobiography or that the work is historical non-fiction, it is a product of the imagination. Space and time have been rearranged to suit the convenience of the book, and with the exception of public figures, any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental. The opinions expressed are those of the characters and should not be confused with the author’s.