Greetings from the Vodka Sea (23 page)

Kevin took up his old quarters in the back bedroom. He brought word of Kate, who was doing well keeping the good people of Albuquerque connected, and a long, long letter from Rosalita, with whom he'd spent several wonderful months on a motor holiday in the south of France. Of course, psychologists suggested that Kevin's return to the family nest triggered the end of the big dog. But Kevin speculates that the dog had not disappeared and in fact had not stopped growing, and that perhaps she only reached a particular critical point at which volume and density and mass and light converged to render the object (the “dogject” as Kevin jokingly called it) too vast to contemplate, invisible to the naked eye, although perhaps visible through sophisticated X-ray, gamma-ray or ultraviolet-light sensing equipment. Paul, in keeping with his newfound respect for the intelligence and insight of his youngest, tended to agree, and at night, for months afterwards, he clung to his wife like death in case the big dog came back and tried to nuzzle her way between them again.

The Medusa Project

É
tienne's hands were trembling. He'd come to rely on their steadiness, his ability to control them. He was a heart surgeon, after all. And now he'd lost his composure like a stupid schoolgirl.

His hands had let him down.

. . .

Paul Antiphon says hello.

That was it. Nothing really, a trifle. And the Pole had trifled with him before. So why did it strike a chord this time? Perhaps it was the surgical precision with which he threw out the name. There was a Paul Antiphon, at least there had been (although the chance of his saying hello was negligible). Clearly the Pole just threw out the remark to see his reaction. He had a name, but at this point it was just a jumble of sounds. Madrn needed Étienne to translate. Madrn needed Étienne to make sense of the sounds.

They'd seen each other on and off for years, perhaps ever since Étienne had come to Toronto. There was something quite unlikable about this fellow, something mostly about the eyes. Small eyes, dark but not pleasantly so, placed too close together, lending the journalist an air of imbecility. They said Madrn had escaped his country through a daring midnight flight in a handmade hot air balloon; they said that, for a time, he'd worked for the Polish branch of the KGB, building up the confidence of the state as all the while he plotted his escape. None of this played in his favour. Étienne did not trust this cultivated air of mystery. A man with something to hide does not advertise.

“We should talk sometime, hmm? We should get together and talk about the old times in Quebec City. I'll bet you have some stories to tell . . .”

Étienne arched his eyebrows and smiled, feigning fond remembrance of those Quebec summers.

“I'm a very busy man, Mr. Madrn,” he said, in a perfectly modulated tone. But his hands — his hands were trembling and trembled still as he rode the subway home.

. . .

“Let's talk, hmm?” he says. His French is a tad too cultivated. “We can talk, comrade, can't we?”

He could smell jet fuel now, they must be near the airport, must be heading east.

He takes that to be a good sign.

The van brakes sharply, sending Madrn sliding forward to the front of the box. He can taste blood in his mouth and feels his lip with his tongue. He is cut, all right. But it is nothing.

He tries to peek out of one of the air holes to get a sense of where he might be. They were the first thing he'd noticed, the air holes. That meant they wanted to keep him alive.

He can see nothing outside his box. They are on the highway, that is clear. The road is too straight; they are moving too fast. He'd drifted in and out of sleep a couple of times, so it is impossible for him to tell how long they've been driving. But it is still dark. That is a good sign. They couldn't have gone too far, and it would be light soon.

. . .

In 1959, Maurice Duplessis, Quebec's autocratic premier, died after sixteen unbroken years in office. A Jew-hating, anti-union, anti-communist despot, Duplessis clung to his position by graft, patronage, and the support of a corrupt clergy that, in comparison, made him seem saintly. But he made the trains run on time, as the Italians say: the province's schools and roads doubled in number; hospital beds tripled; electricity was brought to even the most remote corner of Quebec. Besides, he was not so out of place. He came from an age where people still believed in gods, still entrusted themselves to marble men. People then were comfortable with demi-despots.

Within a year of Duplessis's death, the Liberal party slunk into power in Quebec, and the province became acquainted with an enlightened mix of young intellectuals — Quebec nationalists of a sort — and older, devoted federalists, who rejected the tyranny of Duplessis and the church, in that order. Étienne had known many of this second group personally, not that they would admit it now. After the war, they'd opened their homes to him, they'd sought his opinion of the Liberation, which they spoke of with more disdain than he could muster, Laurentia, the Terror (which they humourlessly parodied in their own vision of the Duplessis years as
La Grande Noirceur
, the Great Darkness) and the politics of Rome. As nationalists, they shared to a degree Étienne did not an ideological sympathy with fascism and, in particular, National Socialism of the Vichy variety. Looked at in its most charitable light, ultranationalism seemed the perfect antidote to the ills inherent in internationalism. These Quebec nationalists could never understand that for Étienne collaboration (a term, by the way, Étienne was comfortable with, although they would never use it) had been perfectly pragmatic. His uncle, a provincial mayor, had had friends in Vichy; Étienne's conversion was a matter of course, and, if not a pre-requisite to survival, it certainly offered the family a level of comfort and security scarce in those times.

No one mentioned Vichy anymore. The war years had been swallowed whole. Étienne was forgotten too, more or less, which suited him fine. Not long ago, he'd run into one of the
action français
men, a federal cabinet minister, at a fundraiser for the new clinic. Once they had regularly drunk together at the Kerhulu. Now they shook hands as impervious strangers — statues — and chit-chatted about sports. Their eyes twinkled a little, of course, although at this point in their lives, laughter was beyond either of them. Their joke, and quarrel, was with history, and there it would remain.

“Quebec City? I also spent some time there, after the war,” the minister said. He wore a silver chain around his neck that held a small medallion depicting St. Christopher, the patron saint of travellers.

“Yes. After the war.”

“That was a long time ago.”

“A long time.”

“You were a student too?”

“I was an . . . émigré.”

“Ah, yes. A long time.”

For a split second they stood frozen, partially impressed with their own shadow play and partially afraid to go on lest they say something they might regret. They shook hands and parted, but the exchange was not lost on Anna. Exchanges never were.

“Who was that?”

“A cabinet minister, I think.”

“You didn't know him?”

“No.”

“You seemed to know him quite well.”

“How so?”

“I don't know. There was something in your manner. It seemed familiar.”

“We might have met before, at Laval. We could not be certain.”

Anna knew there was more to the story — there was always more. But she did not push it. She never did. She was the perfect wife. An afterthought.

. . .

Étienne saw another statue at the fundraiser, posing by the artist's rendering of the new Toronto Cardiology Clinic, talking to Dr. Blair, chairman of the hospital board, and that slithering journalist Madrn, holding on to her champagne glass with one hand while girlishly tracing a line in the condensation with a free finger. She may have been flirting with one of the men, or both. It had been twenty-five years. Predictably, Thérèse's wonderful, youthful voluptuousness had lost the battle to time and gravity. She was still pretty, he supposed. Handsome. But the size . . .

Étienne ducked into the atrium. He did not want to see her, or rather, he did not want her to know that she had been seen by him. It would be embarrassing for both of them. He'd aged well enough: slim for fifty, greying in a distinguished way, like an actor or an existential philosopher. But Thérèse would no doubt be self-conscious about her weight; how could she not? He would be looking at her through the eyes of youth, and she would feel naked and ashamed for having transformed, in an instant of sorts, into a very old, very large woman. Étienne positioned himself behind a potted palm and peeked again. Had he really been in love with her? Had she really been as beautiful as he remembered? They'd been together only months or weeks and made love eight or nine times. But Étienne had revisited each encounter a thousand times. Could he ever go back to it?

“Tell me, who is that woman there, talking to Blair?” Étienne had grabbed Shulman's elbow. The intern apologized for not having his glasses and strained to see.

“That's what's-her-name, the alderwoman.”

“Alderwoman?”

“Yes, I think.”

“Thérèse?”

“Yes. That's it. Her husband's a writer or something. Lefty, you know — a socialist.”

Shulman said something else to continue the conversation, but Étienne had moved on. A kind of panic had seized him, and he decided that he and his wife should leave at once. Anna was standing where he'd left her, talking to the reeve about flowers. A passionless man, the reeve had ensnared Anna in a Gregorian monotone that barely subsided as Étienne took his wife's arm and led her in the general direction of the door.

“We really must be going . . . tremendous event . . . the clinic . . .”

Étienne tried to think of some triviality to add but could not. So he smiled and nodded, implying something deeper.

Anna came quietly. Parties she could take or leave. If her husband was ready to go, she was ready to go with him. She was so uncomplicated, this sturdy Upper Canadian.

Then the statue appeared again, placed now by the doorway, talking loudly to the director, who was holding her coat. The sleeve was inside out, and had tangled. The slack muscle and fat of Thérèse's arm had bound with the fabric somehow and pinned one arm behind her back. She did not stop talking. This was the last thing Étienne wanted — to come face- to-face with this former lover at the doorway, his wife in tow. It would have been too horrible, too awkward. They would have to be introduced and coyly remember each other, then Thérèse would see Anna, already so much younger than Étienne, and start to feel self-conscious, and that,
that
would be enough to let everyone know (the director, Anna) that he and Thérèse had once slept together. It was an embarrassment they could all do without.

“Drink, my dear?” He piloted Anna toward the bar counter, and not a moment too soon, as he heard the director calling his name from behind.

“Dr. du Chatelait? Doctor?”

“I thought you wanted to leave.” Anna was perplexed.

“No, my dear. I was merely saving you from that awful drone.”

“He can go on.”

“He certainly can, my dear. He certainly can.”

Étienne signalled the bartender with one finger, then called for two gin and tonics. They'd barely started their drinks when he had the curious thought of making Thérèse his lover again. He smiled a little, and Anna, thinking he was smiling at her in that adoring way husbands sometimes did in laundry commercials, smiled back. It was a private joke, of course: Thérèse did nothing for him. Anna was vastly more attractive, not to mention Dr. Cole. An occasional affair was one thing a wife could always forgive. But to cheat on Dr. Cole . . . to cheat on his mistress? It seemed almost too wicked to contemplate.

. . .

Every negotiation is a shared lie that starts when one party tells the other, “I will not negotiate.” Every negotiation, every marriage vow, every death begins this way.

How did they know? No doubt someone in the RCMP had ratted him out. It was never a good idea to make deals with the cops, it was never a good idea to make deals with anyone. But life was a series of deals and deals within deals, with new ones coming up always to replace the broken promises and lies. That was the nature of his business: survival. Information was Madrn's currency, and it required considerable investment to keep him going.

That he'd double-crossed the Front — the FLQ — well, it was expected of him. Now they would want something in return. Madrn was ready to negotiate.

The van turned sharply, sending Madrn and his box skidding across the floor. The crate jammed into the side panel, smashing Madrn's ring finger. He swore quickly in Polish, realizing that this was the first time he had spoken his mother tongue in — what? — four years?

“You should be a little more careful,” he said, good naturedly. He could tell now they were off the highway. The road was bumpier and had many curves. He folded his arms across his chest as the crate skidded around this way and that. “Maybe I should drive,” he said, laughing to stress that his remark was a joke. He wanted to show them he was a good guy. He wanted to show them that he was on their side.