Greetings from the Vodka Sea (24 page)

. . .

So he saw an old lover at a party, and now he was upset. It would be easy enough to dismiss the queasy feeling as Étienne's vanity, the dilemma of the middle-aged man who did not wish to acknowledge that time was conquering even him. But there were more practical concerns. After his arrival from France, Étienne hadn't just flirted with fascism, he embraced it whole-heartedly; they'd set up house together. Not out of a driving political sense, although that grew with time, but mostly because it so very much pleased the people around him. The students, the politicos, the priests (particularly the priests — Abbé Groulx even paid him the honour of a visit) all wanted to meet the elegant young man with the curious accent, almost Swiss, and the intimate ties with Vichy. They treated him as a true relic, a fingernail of Christ, and let's be clear: he was only twenty-five. It went to his head, of course it did. Thérèse was intimately tied to that moment of his life, and here lay the root of his greatest worry. While he was largely protected from the others, who cowered with him behind the same veil of secrecy, there were no guarantees with this woman. She had been attracted to him because he was handsome and silent and young and foreign and seemed to be a man of rank within the intelligent circles of Quebec City. But she herself had no political interest at the time and therefore was invulnerable today. Étienne could not say the same. If word of his past escaped, everything from his good name (bought and paid for from a Parisian passport forger) to his surgical practice to his Rosedale home, everything he'd struggled to acquire in the years since he'd come to Toronto could dissolve. He'd seen it happen before his very eyes. Himmel was head of cardiology when Étienne first arrived at the clinic back in 1958. Within a year, stories began to circulate about Himmel's activities during the war, eventually publicly confirmed by a woman who'd been his acquaintance in Austria. To hear Himmel tell it, he'd been some office functionary for the Nazi Party in Vienna, “collecting names for lists.” But the clinic, which depended heavily on the benevolence of the local Jewish community, could not tolerate the whisper of such scandal. A Nazi among us? Himmel lost his post and almost went bankrupt fighting the extradition case launched by overzealous immigration officials. Last Étienne heard, this doctor — a gifted surgeon, really — was working the night shift at a local asylum, dispensing tranquilizers and carrying the bedpans of lunatics.

It would be foolish to think that things had changed very much in ten years. Certainly the hair was fashionably longer, the clothing looser, and a vine of joyless sexual and moral liberation had crept through the garden of society, but Étienne would not to be fooled. Thérèse was to be wooed and seduced and thus her silence bought. It was a different sort of veil from his own but cut from the same cloth. This silence could be won.

But how to win her body?

. . .

One of Étienne's pet theories was that, while the fastest route to a man's heart was through his stomach (emotionally speaking, of course, although some of his experiments with less invasive surgical techniques suggested that the adage might have genuine medical applications), the fastest way to a woman's heart was through her husband's chequebook. The meeting was easy to arrange. A writer was always looking for commissions, and when Shulman, under Étienne's auspices, suggested that the board approach the alderwoman's husband to write a series of promotional articles on the cardiology clinic, the members immediately recognized the political and public relations benefits.

Lunch was at the Royal York. The writer came prepared. He opened his clipboard, clicked his pen and adjusted his tie in a manner that led Étienne to suspect he was not accustomed to wearing one.

“It's quite a coincidence, really. I've only just finished an article on heart disease for
Readers' Digest
.” His name was Wonnacott, and he was a likeable enough sort. A little dull, perhaps. But in another time and place, Étienne and he might have been friends, if there were no worthier company around. “I think the world of cardiology is about to explode — if you'll excuse a bad joke. And as I understand it, you folks here in Toronto are leading the advance guard . . .”

He needn't try so hard. The job was already his. But Étienne said nothing, it wasn't his place, and Dr. Baird of the board let the writer go on, contributing the odd encouraging interjection here and there. Perhaps even the writer knew that no one was interested in him.

The idea was simple enough. The
Globe
was a long-time supporter of the clinic. They had agreed to run a special eight-page insert to promote the clinic and its activities. Dr. Baird had even cooked up a title: “Heart to Heart.”

“Of course, there could be some travel involved.” It was the first time Étienne had spoken since the introductions.

“Of course.”

“A couple of weekenders: Ottawa, New York.”

“The Mayo Clinic?”

“Exactly. My office will make the arrangements. I'll have Shulman set it up.”

“Of course.”

“Excellent.”

“Excellent.”

The subject of money was tactfully broached, with Baird offering a sizable retainer with per diem. And there it was, before the coffee had even arrived, the husband was bought and paid for. The wife would soon follow.

. . .

Let us permit Étienne to indulge in a little fantasy. He has taken the train to Marseilles — it could have been yesterday (like any good fantasy, this one seamlessly blends past, present and future) — and, by chance, found himself alone in a compartment with Thérèse and her doddering grandmother. Of course, as far as he knew, Thérèse had never actually been to France, let alone Marseilles. But at seventeen, her chubby beauty and unsophisticated charm — a gorgeous, uninhibited hedgehog — would not have been out of place in the south. Of course, the grandmother would fall asleep some time into the trip, leaving the two teenagers virtually alone. They would have barely spoken up to this point, and both would be pretending to be engrossed in their reading material, when Thérèse would subtly shift her leg, offering Étienne a glimpse of her school-white panties. Of course, it could have been an accident, there was no way of knowing for sure, but Étienne found that if he moved in his seat just so, he could find a spot where a triangle of panties was in full view, and, with a slight tilt of his head, he could make out the line of her brassiere peeking through an undone button. And so they would continue for the rest of the train ride, Thérèse shifting ever so slightly (a small, planetary motion) and Étienne adjusting himself accordingly. Occasionally, her hand would brush up against herself here or there, seemingly signalling her desire, but nothing definitive. That was the attraction for him: the uncertainty, the endless erotic possibility of the uncertain.

In truth, she'd been twenty or so when they'd met and he twenty-five, already a veteran of the sexual wars. But where he was reserved in his advance, she went on the attack (they
did
meet on a train, a train from Montreal, and she did wordlessly seduce him across a crowded compartment in a manner not dissimilar to his fantasy) as only colonial Catholic girls — convinced they were protected by God and society — could do. She'd come to Quebec City that summer to stay with her widowed aunt (a vivacious teacher in her early thirties; Étienne had made a play for her too) but wound up spending most of her time — sleeping, eating, drinking and making love — in Étienne's bedroom. There were tears when she left to go back to her parents, but not too many. Pleasure was the only stake; that they were doomed from the start only sweetened the pot. Still, Étienne preferred the Marseilles fantasy, the endless tease in a train that would never reach its destination, to the real-life memory. He tried to imagine how things would work out with his newly rediscovered Thérèse and what sort of effect this would have on his fantasies. Would the experience of the present erase the memory of his non-existent past? And how would it all transpire? Perhaps he would telephone her when her husband was away (the telephone was the perfect tool of seduction for Étienne: no eye contact, no body language, every nuance of intent packed into the voice), suggest they go for a drink or a walk in the park (she'd been something of an exhibitionist, and on one occasion had pleased him forcefully in the grassy moat surrounding the Citadel as dozens of tourists wandered close by). Perhaps he could arrange an accidental encounter (women were pushovers when they believed fate was involved); this might take some doing, but it was easy enough to imagine them running into one another on the subway. The symmetry was appealing.

The How was one thing, the How Could He was another. It wasn't Anna; she barely concerned herself in his affairs beyond the usual social and domestic duties. As long as the social order wasn't challenged, Anna, the good old Canadian, remained docile. But Dr. Cole — Sondra really, but he loved the pretentiousness of her full title, and it underscored that she was a professional, a New Woman in the New World — she kept him on a short leash and seemed to know everyone in the city. He had to be discrete, or word would get back to his mistress. Of course, discretion was just what he wanted. Discretion turned him on. The other part of the equation, though, was difficult to work through. How could he bring himself to kiss her? How could he bring himself to make love to a woman so old and so . . . expansive? It may seem a vanity, but he was certain of his powers of seduction, particularly in this case. He was well kept, again for his age, sophisticated and successful — these things mattered more than almost anything to a woman. But most of all, he would represent for Thérèse that moment in time when she had been so much more than she is now (in being much less), when she had been (and this is critical) an object of desire. Here lay the key to the whole seduction. Whereas in a man's fantasy, the woman was the subject of desire (the subject, that is, of erotic fulfillment), in her own mind, she needed to feel like a sexual object. Not in the utilitarian sense, something to be used and discarded (that came afterwards), but almost in an iconographical sense: something greater than what it was; something steeped in meaning; something venerated and desired, but always with the understanding that while it could be approached, it could never be fully possessed. There was something mythic about this kind of love — about seduction. Something very Greek. So, from that point of view, the seduction was easy. But what about him? How could he do it? How could he love her again? How could he make love to her again?

. . .

He almost blew it. Sunday morning, and Anna had asked him to walk along Lakeshore. The weather was unusually temperate for this time of year, and Étienne thought nothing of it. Of course, just past the public pool (still open this late in the season), who should the fates decree would walk towards them but Thérèse and her husband with a young child, no more than a toddler, whom Étienne concluded must be their grandson. Étienne considered leading Anna off the pathway down toward the water, on the pretext of looking for birds. But the writer had already seen them. An encounter was unavoidable.

“We have to stop meeting like this. People are starting to talk.”

“Mr. Wonnacott, how good to see you. I was just telling my wife about your work. Anna, this is the author I was telling you about. He's going to be helping the clinic . . .”

Introductions were made all round, and when it came time for Thérèse to shake his hand she played the scene perfectly. Barely a flash of recognition in her eyes, but when he permitted his hand to linger a moment in hers, she did not repel it. He could feel the warmth transferring between them. And that was it. A moment of doting upon the child (whose particulars were never fully explained), some pleasant “good afternoons,” and the meeting was terminated. It could not have lasted more than three minutes. But Étienne believed he'd turned what might have been a small disaster to his advantage. He'd definitely made a connection with Thérèse, reinforced by their spontaneous pact of secrecy. Perhaps she'd been embarrassed — no doubt she had — but kept it to herself well. Another woman might have been flustered, which would have aroused suspicions in the husband, even a dullard such as this. But she conceded nothing. She was better at this than Étienne ever expected. So potential disaster was turned into gain. The gods had brought them together and tickled her interest. The next time they met, she would be ready.

. . .

It was not who he thought. When the receptionist told him there was a writer in his office, he expected to find Wonnacott waiting there. But it was that journalist. The Pole. Madrn.

“Just a few questions,
monsieur le docteur
. If I may . . .”

He always had just a few questions. He'd always bring up names: Georges-Benoit Montel; Raymond Chouinard; Abbé Pierre Gravel. Antiphon.

“I'm just trying to put together the facts,
monsieur le docteur
. There are so many missing pieces to the puzzle, yes?”

You'd think Madrn (a dissident himself with a dubious past who still courted extremists of both the right and the left) would let well enough alone. He had been one of the first people in Canada to write about Oswald Mosely's Blackshirts and had also interviewed key members of the FLQ and even introduced them to visiting celebrity radicals and rock stars. When Pierre Valliers showed up at John and Yoko's Bed-In for Peace at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal, Madrn was there, slouching in the background.