Professeur Caron stacked the exam papers neatly on the corner of his grandfather’s desk. He was about a third of the way through and with few exceptions the students had done well. Evidently he wouldn’t need to re-teach the lesson on moral obligations, word for word as he had threatened. It is always difficult to gauge the quality of the students by their performance in class, especially in second year. The intellectual enthusiasm so characteristic of first year quickly wanes as is the enthusiasm for the front benches. In those days, only two types of student continued to participate in class discussion after the Christmas break, both belonging to parties of the ideologues. The rest sat quietly and took notes. Eventually, some didn’t bother taking notes or coming to his lessons at all, preferring to buy or share one of the circulating “canned notes” which were generally good enough for a good enough mark. The economic advancement and lifestyle benefits of the successful law student was the only surviving basis for a tepid enthusiasm.
Caron in the way of most French Canadians, as we then called them even in the province of Quebec, was small in stature and slight in build. His brown indistinct hair had receded prematurely, as was typical in his family. His father worked in a shoe store, which generated sufficient income to provide for a family of eight sons, of which Caron was the second youngest. All his brothers except one were now dead, most of heart disease in their 40s and one struck by a car after getting drunk and being deposited on a highway by a irritated taxi driver. Caron who had always refused to eat vegetables of any kind had recently taken to keeping a bowl of raw cut carrots on his desk, which he treated with indifference, preferring on most occasions to smoke. He was in the way of most lawyers above rudimentary intelligence but not exceedingly so. The difference in class was most reflected in his learning and he could recite the first sentence of Paradise Lost by heart, in English, and with a thick French accent, but preferred non-fiction, and books on New France and legal history of the civil law. He did have on his shelf Claude-Henri Grignon’s Un Homme et son péché, a leather bookmark visible at the quarter mark. A recent edition of Menaud by Felix-Antoine Savard, lay open face down on the wooden stand next to his Jindrich Halabala lounge chair, in black embroidered fabric, stained beech, the latter of which he had acquired in central Europe during his sabbatical and had shipped to Montreal at “exorbitant” cost. Also visible on the stand was the elegantly bound Trente arpents, shimmering green from a beam of light piercing through a gap in the curtains of his office window.
The McGill Faculty of Law was then situated in three graceful 19th century mansions nestled near the top of Peel Street, near Mount Royal Park and overlooking the rest of the campus and Montreal’s commercial hub. Caron’s office was in the oldest of the three former mansions, at the far, shadowy end of the third floor corridor. The elevator once served as a dumbwaiter for its previous now nameless and forgotten occupants and Caron, to avoid sharing the cramped quarters with anyone, preferred to take to the stairs, although he had no fondness for exercise. He preferred to read and smoke. He mostly chain lit cigarettes and reserved his cigar habit for his small, very private, apartment in the old city. He had never been married, which came as no surprise to anyone who knew him. Whatever moved him deeply was a secret he kept to himself. He did enjoy duck hunting, on occasion, to which he had been introduced by his father. He first recalled being taken when he was six but being more fascinated by the slithering of a garden snake near his small black rubber boots. It was not so much the killing he enjoyed so much as the shutter of ignited powder and the explosion of bird shot. If one took an interest in studying the man, which no one did, one would have noticed that Caron fidgeted constantly and if all else about him was still, you could still see a foot tapping to a silent rhythm beating inside him.
McGill University or Université McGill was an English-language university founded in 1821 by royal grant of King George IV. The university bore the name of James McGill before being renamed in recent times. McGill was a Scottish merchant whose bequest in 1813 formed the university's precursor, University of McGill College (or simply, McGill College); the name was officially changed to McGill University in 1885. McGill the man was born on Oct. 6, 1744, in Glasgow, Scotland, James McGill immigrated to North America in 1766 and engaged successfully in the fur trade. Once he made his fortune as a merchant, he moved to Montreal where he died in 1813. He was buried next to John Porteous, another adventurer and opportunist, in the Dufferin Square Cemetery, near present-day Place de l’Equite, formerly Place du Canada. The cemetery was eradication in 1875 and the bodies reinterred, and then reinterred a second time and misplaced. Ghosts notwithstanding, Caron did enjoy a walk in a cemetery, especially at Cote des Neiges, where his father was buried after the accident. He took the tram up the mountain, the latest edition Le Devoir in his brief case.
Caron slowly opened his desk drawer and removed his silver plated lighter, dropping it indifferently into his pocket. He left a pack of Du Maurier cigarettes on his desk. He rose slowly and glanced down, remained still an instant, but made no motion to retrieve them. It was a cold December evening but he left his black redingote on the rack. He placed his grey fedora on his head, paused and then removed it and tossed in onto a frail looking oak chair he kept by his office door for that purpose. He chuckled wryly to himself and walked back towards his desk, removed an unmarked letter sized manila envelope from his left brown jacket pocket, licked it, forcefully slid his fingers along the seal, grimaced and then tossed it on his desk. A gust of wind shook the pane of the only window in his office, and the slim beam of light that had ignited the green book extinguished. Caron paused again and retired to his small private wash room and closed the door, and locked it behind him, as was his habit even when alone. He turned on the faucet and one could hear, if one had been there to listen and listen carefully, the sound of a razer doing its work. The tap sprang on again, briefly, and Caron re-emerged drying his now clean shaven cheeks and distinctively carved side burns, and tossed the white hand towel back behind him to the floor, rather uncharacteristically, but perhaps he was in a rush.
After locking the door, Caron made his way down the empty hallway to the creaking of the floor boards. It was well passed midnight. The carpet had been removed the day before and the workers had not yet returned to replace it. Caron stopped abruptly and turned, but he was of course alone. A loose bulb did flicker on cue, which was only the second thing that would always make him smile. He picked up his pace and made his way down the stairs. As he reached the exit, he stopped to a sudden burst of laughter. He opened the door to hear the voices fading. A elegantly dressed couple, no more than shadows now, disappeared down Peel Street. He moved swiftly the opposite direction toward the underground parking , where he always parked his beloved blue 1935 Peugeot. He picked his spot with care, searching for three empty spaces and parking in the middle one, front end first. That morning was different. He had backed into a single stall between two occupied spaces at the far end of the dimly lit lot. He retrieved his car key from his left pant pocket, opened and shut the door quickly and sat down, pressing his body firmly into the worn leather. He made no effort to start the engine, but remained motionless staring ahead toward the grey wall at the opposite end of the lot. He remained, still, inanimate, in the darkness.
Then as if spurred by a silent command to action, he lurched violently back to retrieve something from the rear seats. It was of sufficient weight to force a groan from him as he pulled it over and onto the front passenger seat beside him. He paused again as he caught his breath, but only briefly. The grey gasoline canister seemed out of place and Caron soon corrected that by unscrewing the cap, lifting the canister with some awkwardness and dousing himself with the full contents, gasoline vapour sucking the oxygen out of the the enclosed vehicle. He reached into his pocket for the lighter, but then seemed to think otherwise, released it with some difficulty from his sopping pocket and retrieved the keys from the floor mat where he had dropped them. He placed the car key in the ignition, and put his lovely Peugeot in drive. Accelerating, at first gently, Caron drove the vehicle straight ahead, then headlong , gunning as the far wall closed in. The impact, explosion and concussion seemed to evaporate both car and driver in a ball of flame, although there were sufficient remains to identify the owner and for the police to complete its report: “suicide”.
This is a work of fiction. Although its form and narrative may at time suggest real people, 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 coincidental. The opinions expressed are those of the characters and should not be confused with the author’s.
To be continued …