River City (2 page)

Just then, a word broke through the roaring and the static that drew his father’s disapproving attention back to the game. “Sticks?”

“Over-the-head swings—two!” Émile announced, spinning onto his derrière. He immediately updated himself with the announcer’s next words. “Three times! The Rocket! Three times he’s hit him with a stick! He’s got a teammate’s, Papa! He already broke his stick across that other guy’s back. He must be pretty damn mad!”

Dismayed, his father shook his head. Grown men, fighting, on skates. With sticks. Barbaric. Yet he plucked the pipe from his mouth and leaned in more closely to the radio. No ordinary punch-up. The game’s greatest player—for all Quebecers were agreed on that—the legendary Maurice “Rocket” Richard, had swung a stick three times across an opponent’s back, connecting with each fierce swipe.

“Don’t say damn,” he gently reproved his son.

“Sorry.”

“He’ll be thrown out,” Albert Cinq-Mars forewarned.

The boy made a chopping motion as though administering the blows himself.

Then the radio commentator announced that, in the melee, the Rocket had punched an official.

“A big fine,” the father persisted. “This will cost him. He’ll be suspended for a few games, you watch.” Attentive, he continued to lean forward, although he could never have reconnoitred that the political shape of a nation turned on these events.

“How can the Rocket miss a game? The scoring championship! He’s so close.”

“Kiss it goodbye now. Not that it matters. The Cup’s the main thing.”

“I guess so,” the boy relented. He felt dejected to think that the Rocket may have blown his chance at the scoring championship, the one feat that had eluded him throughout his career. Incapable of foretelling the future, he could not have guessed that the Cup was now lost also, or that history-making events would soon transpire. As the loss of an individual scoring title was rendered insignificant by the quest for the team trophy, so would that trophy, the glorious, mythic Stanley Cup, emblematic of hockey supremacy, be overshadowed by time’s conniving winds.

Young Émile, intently listening in, had assumed that the game was hockey—only hockey, and just a game. Over time, he would learn that he’d been eavesdropping on history in the making, that the fracas on the ice, of the sort that could erupt anytime, anywhere, among any number of players in the sport, would ignite the passions of a people, his people, never to be forgotten
over the course of his lifetime, that the cultural fabric of his society was being knit with each swing of the stick …

… in the year 1955.

On the first day of September, deeply inebriated and almost naked, the premier of the province of Quebec sat in a plush leather chair in the tower of an immense, elegant, Old World hotel, the Château Frontenac in Quebec City. He discussed with a young woman the matter of her virtue. Fetching, yet admirably hesitant, the young lady from the legislature’s secretarial pool presented a half-moon face to him, the hidden portion darkened by brown curls that sprang back to her scalp whenever he gave them a tug. When they’d met, he’d pulled a curl before saying hello, and she had looked at him through her one uncovered eye, revealing a half-smile. She’d not yet consented to the fulfillment of their liaison, and had declined to unfasten all her clothing—determined, it appeared, to remain perpetually in half-shadow.

In advance of her compliance, the young lady needed to ascertain the level of this man’s faithful interest. In the oratorical gusto for which he was renowned, the premier had roared back, “Not only do I
not
love you, my beauty, but I never shall, nor will I marry you! What else do you wish to hear, sweet girl, to be convinced of my fidelity in this matter? You are, I suppose, with your flashing green eyes and soft pink skin, a lovely creature. I am Maurice Duplessis—
le Chef!
The soul of the French people! I wish to sink my teeth into you—yet draw no blood, impart no serious impression. What more could you possibly need to know, Mademoiselle?”

“Sir. Yes. For instance, do you know who I am?” pleaded the young woman.

“Of course! You’re … Charlotte, no?”

“Charlene!”

“The green-eyed Charlene! Close enough, no?”

“Do you want to sleep with me, sir, because you like me, or do you want to sleep with me because you’re too drunk to care?”

Ah, so that was it, and a good question, one the intoxicated premier now had to worry his way through. Never before had he encountered an objection laced with such pert eloquence.

Just then came a frantic knocking at the door.

Unsteady on his feet, wearing only briefs and socks held in place by garters, Duplessis swung open the oversized door to confront his aide. “Imbecile! What is it? I forbade you to interrupt—”

“—except in the case of an emergency, sir.”

“What emergency? Out with it!”

“The Germans, sir. Hitler. He’s invaded Poland.”

The premier stood in the doorway, swaying, assessing the news. “Young man,” he declared, after an interval of a half-minute, “Poland is not an emergency!” And slammed shut the door.

Turning back to the room and his consort for the evening, the most powerful man in the province remarked, “My dear, I am sleeping with you tonight, not because I love you or even know you, not because you are beautiful, although perhaps you are—who can tell under those delightful curls?—but I am sleeping with you because we’ve reached a moment in history that cannot pass without …” He burped, stalled, and swayed awhile. “What was I saying? … commemoration. In time you will recall this fateful day. When Germany invaded Poland, you were in bed with
Chef!
Is that not reason enough to stay the night?”

She considered his take on the matter a moment. Then the lady accepted that the justification met her standard.

Later, smoking, her limbs indelicately akimbo and her round, alabaster face aglow upon the pillow, her hair finally off her face, she inquired of him, “What will become of us, sir? The world?”

Duplessis stretched an arm to retrieve the Scotch. “That, Mademoiselle, remains to be seen.”

“I’m frightened.”

“My dear, why trouble yourself? We’re in greater danger of your cigarette igniting the mattress than we are from Hitler in Poland. Who is your premier?”

“You are, of course. Maurice Duplessis.”

“In whose arms do you lie tonight?”

“In yours, sir. Still, I worry. What will I do when you forget me tomorrow?”

“Don’t let that happen! Be unforgettable tonight!”

“Oh, sir. What’s a poor girl to do with you?”

“No one does anything
with
me, my child. If anything is to be done, I am the one to do it! But don’t despair about this war. A week ago, a speaker was quoted in the papers. He declared that, rather than fight on the battlefields of Europe, French-Canadians will fight on the streets of Montreal!”

“That’s why I’m frightened,” Charlene said. “The uproar.”

He sighed, and tousled her curls. He tugged a few and smiled as they snapped back. “That is why you must depend upon your premier. Now come closer, my pet. Let us drink this bottle down.”

“What about the war?” the young woman inquired. She inhaled smoke to the depths of her lungs. His penis was deformed. The sight still unnerved her.

“Poland is not a war! What about our bottle?”

In the morning, he’d more fully discover the news. Nations were declaring war, including his own, thanks to that wretched prime minister, Mackenzie King, who’d promised no war only to bound at the chance to declare. Politicians and their promises. They should all be hanged.

Except, of course, himself.

Lines were being drawn, outside the country and within …

… in the year 1939.

The English were coming. The English were coming. Again!
Les maudits anglais.

The bishop rarely uttered the words aloud, yet endlessly they’d drum in his head. His sleep had been fitful.
Damn English.
He woke to a new day muttering the phrase out of a dream in both languages. A report of fresh arrivals at the port in Montreal had reached him the night before. For a moment, as he opened his eyes, he yearned to believe that the news had visited him in a dream, that it was all some wretched nightmare, unreal. His perpetual frown
furled into a scowl. No dream. More damn English
were
coming. By his perspective the invasion had achieved epic proportions. Would it never stop?

A more troubling issue agitated him as well: what would be required of him before this human brush fire burned itself to ashes?

At the outset, the matter had been less problematic, the convenience of good choices apparent. Canada had oodles of room. Why did Upper Canada exist if not to accommodate the aggravating, infernal English? As well, New York State had agreed to accept stragglers. Americans, after all, were both infuriatingly friendly and encumbered by their own largesse. They spoke the same language, practised a retrograde quasi-Christianity similar to that of these pitiful migrants. Initially, the bishop’s conscience had not been disturbed as boatloads of suffering émigrés arrived. He had traipsed down to the docks with his entourage in tow, grand men in their illustrious capes and hefty rings and bejewelled crosses, accompanied by a pod of pale priests in black who’d help their superiors down from the carriages, open a gate, then sweep nosy riff-raff aside. Bishop Lartigue would sagely whisper in the ear of a ragged English representative, “New York, mmm?” And more often, with a knowing wink, “Upper Canada.” He’d smile, then shoo
les maudits
on their way.

Quebec was to remain forever French. Any astute interpretation of the terms of surrender dictated that obligation. Yet with the passage of time, the bishop had had to confess that his conscience was growing muddled. The new travellers were not being welcomed into the established societies to the west and south. Malnourished as they emerged from famine in the Lake District of England, they boarded ships to the Canadas. Assailed by illness and catastrophe throughout the crossing, many travellers lost their lives. The survivors who disembarked at the port of Montreal were wretched, exhausted, recently bereft of husbands or wives, abruptly childless. They slumped on the pier in their misery and in their stinking rags and upon their knees begged for a sliver of hope. As if hope had proved to be a commodity only Bishop Lartigue could properly dispense.

“Your Grace,” they pleaded. “Your Grace.”

As if they were Catholics themselves. Were they Irish? If they weren’t Irish, they weren’t Catholics in the Bishop’s eyes, and if they weren’t Catholics they
should not be begging food or land from him, much less be pleading for their lives.

Still, word had come back on the fate of the first arrivals he’d dispatched up the St. Lawrence River. A number had perished, including children, the journey too difficult for indigents in their condition. Of those who had arrived alive, so sorry had been their state that they were maltreated at their destination. At the time, the solution seemed perfectly reasonable: point the way to
English
Canada. Move them along, a few shiploads initially, an appropriate response to a regrettable problem. And yet, more shiploads were coming, still more were expected.

In the past, the English had arrived on these shores as soldiers, flaming in the arrogance of their red coats, claiming victories across the continent—including here, in Lower Canada, where trickery, or so those defeated in battle claimed, had earned the day. Who could doubt it? The English were fiendish, arrogant, dour, dim-witted, pompous, dull, foul-smelling and, with striking exceptions, infuriatingly victorious. Who could not despise them? Until this latest foray. Now they were arriving in tatters, skinny, dismayed, their mouths bleeding, their teeth falling out if they spoke too rapidly, their eyes sunken to the backs of their heads like the most pathetic ghouls of hell. Their children—if alive, and often a few had just been born, bred in the holds of ships where rats fed upon the placenta—so sickly that to gaze into their suffering eyes was tantamount to enduring the Lord’s own passion. What was he to do with these
English
children?

The new migration altered the political compact, which had been partially adversarial, so that Bishop Lartigue was unsure how to consider the new arrivals or how to conduct himself among them. In his heart he could no longer think of them as
les maudit anglais
with an abiding conviction.

He pushed himself out of bed and carried the immensity of his girth to the door, where, languidly, he scratched his belly and, stretching, indulged in a flagrant yawn. He wore only his white nightdress and the small gold cross on a chain that hung from his neck. In sleep he would lie modestly attired, secure in his humility should death find him in the night, although five rings sparkled upon his fingers. Over the years his flesh had expanded everywhere
and he had long since forsaken the idea of slipping any ring loose again. The door opened from its centre. He thrust its two halves apart and snapped his fingers. Young priests scurried, as they should, one to draw his bath, another to attend to his breakfast. Another brushed past him to prepare for his grooming and the formality of his dress. A fourth priest, this one not young but grey-haired and sallow, a year from seventy but closer to death, approached with his eyes downcast and kissed the archiepiscopal ring on his right hand, which the bishop extended while gazing absently elsewhere.

“Your Grace,” the skinny old priest dutifully, somewhat fearfully, informed him. “More English have arrived. A ship—”

“Yes yes yes,” Bishop Lartigue, in early-morning temper, snarled back. “May I not take my bath in peace? Must you besiege me before my eyes have fully opened!” He took a step toward the man, as though to flail him with an invisible whip.

“Your Grace.”

“You fool!”

Bowing, the secretary-priest retreated, his eyes downcast in supplication … … in the year 1821.

Drawn by a light nor’easter, pitched against a fair current on the bow, the
Émérillon
plied the river waters cautiously, gaining little more than a half-knot an hour towards the hilly island ahead. Indians at Stadacona had foretold this place, and the French mariner Jacques Cartier knew that he was soon to be confronted by the limit of his exploration for the summer. Cold weather approached, and the Indians had impressed upon him that the island lay surrounded by treacherous rapids. Only the exceptionally brave or the ardently reckless need persevere beyond this threshold, and none by ship.