Serafim and Claire (9 page)

He attended another event the following month, a meet for horse enthusiasts with a small parade and a few races, and wormed his way imperceptibly through the flanks of onlookers. This time he found himself eavesdropping more, becoming aware of the distinctions in speech among the privileged classes. He paid close attention to what the men were wearing, to the latest styles of suits and hats, the colours and patterns of their ties, the shapes and tones of their shoes.

The third invitation was the one he'd been waiting for.

He had already developed the photograph of Inês strolling in the park several times. But he'd been right about it needing a lot of technical attention in the darkroom, and he hadn't quite struck the perfect balance yet, of burning-in the sky and its wildly textured clouds while still maintaining the crisp emphasis on the two women in the foreground. He was getting close, though.

His uncle stepped into the darkroom one morning to watch him work, standing around as if something were weighing heavily on his mind. Serafim was busy dipping two more prints out of the fixer and hanging them up to dry under careful inspection, the smell of sulphur radiating through the air. He sighed, knowing he would have to discard these ones as well, and looked over at his uncle, who in the saturated green light had a set of uncommon creases etched into his forehead.

“Serafim,” his uncle began.

“Yes?” While the settings and timing for the new exposure were still fresh in his mind, Serafim placed another sheet of photographic paper in the easel beneath the enlarger and made some minor adjustments.

“I'm not . . . sure” — his uncle shifted his weight from one leg to the other — “that you have enough money.”

Serafim, puzzled, looked at the number of sheets in the rubbish bin, then thought of the new clothes he'd just bought, the price of the tie, slacks, and jacket. He gave a factual nod. “Yes, I do.”

His uncle seemed to want to say something more, fidgeted in the dimness while Serafim readied the equipment for another attempt. After a while his uncle slipped, wordlessly, back out the door.

On the night of the ball, Serafim was quite confident he would vomit. He was feverish with anticipation, cold sweat in his armpits, his stomach gnawing away at its own lining. A classical ensemble was playing music Serafim had never heard before. There were high chandeliers, red carpets, long velvet drapery hung in showy bows and columns of gentle folds. The men were self-assured and handsome. The women were beautiful, wearing white dresses embellished with elegant embroidery, their hair up, delicate necks strung with pearls.

Serafim couldn't dance to save his life, so he had to hover out of the way, taking pictures, trying to get as close to Inês as he could. He was discouraged to see that he wasn't the only one. Her attention was being sought by what seemed like the entire room, including other women. Serafim was beginning to lose faith, the night quickly drawing to a close, when she finally spotted him and approached as confidently as she had in the gardens. Part of Serafim wanted to turn and run from her, while the rest of him just froze.

“I see you have that devilish camera again. Stealing more photos, I presume.”

“I . . . have been commissioned to be the . . . club's photographer.”

“Really?”

“Yes. And I've brought something for you.” Serafim jerked round and dug into the leather satchel that was hanging from his shoulder. He pulled out a piece of folded cardboard, in which he had mounted the photo, and handed it to her. As Inês opened it, she drew in a quick breath. “Now do you see how, had you prepared for the picture, carefully posed for it, the image would never have captured your . . .
essence
the way this one does? Can you see that now?”

Her voice was far away, weakened. “Perhaps.”

“Well, it is yours to keep. And ponder, if you like.”

“Thank you, Mr. . . . ?”

“Vieira. Serafim.”

“Sá. Inês.” She offered her hand, which he leaned in to kiss, planting his lips on the tops of her fingers as if they were the sacred bones of an undisclosed queen.

It was a moment Serafim replayed in his mind much more, he supposed, than was healthy. Lying in his bed, his feet pressed tight against the wooden footboard, he was tense and agitated with a wanting so raw it corroded every one of his thoughts, infiltrated his every activity. He could scream at the injustices of courting rituals in Portugal. Every last humiliation and precarious manoeuvre was the onus of the man and the man alone. In direct contrast to the women, men had to lay bare their most private, physical desires for all of society to speculate upon. Serafim thought it ironic how the word for passion in Portuguese,
paixão
, had a braid of disparate meanings that somehow amounted to the same thing. Not only did it signify a corporal yearning, but it was also the word for fire, flame, the process of combustion, smoke trailing from a flare-up and dissipating into the dull sky; as well as being the word for the ordeal of Christ on the Cross. The sum total of all these meanings was how Serafim felt: strung up and naked for the world to see, his frailties exposed while his body slowly burned into a sorry heap of tepid ash. Unnerved, his hands would sink below the covers to tug out a grossly inadequate substitution that at least released him into a shallow and restless sleep.

Two weeks after the ball, at the beginning of the day's
sesta
, a quarter after twelve, Monday, February 8, 1926 (Serafim would later recall with precision), he received an invitation by post, cordially inviting him to a dinner party at the Sá residence. In the art of hosting such evenings, the note read, one must strive to strike a perfect balance of company, of common-grained views and dispositions; and no evening would be complete without at least one aspiring artist. RSVP. Yours, Mr. Abilio Sá.

That Wednesday, Álvaro left for Lisbon.

On Friday, the day before the dinner party, Serafim had a single flower sent to Inês's house. He had spoken with the florist for quite some time to find the proper symbolism for the sentiment he wanted to convey, finally settling on a gardenia, which stood for purity. It was a delicate flower of the richest, most lavish white, but when touched, it turned an acrid yellow wherever a person's fingers had been. Sullied, tarnished, stained. Women, Serafim had been told, valued their own purity as much as men desired it.

Ville de Québec, le 2 octobre 1919

Ma tendre et douce petite sœur,

I'm so glad to have told you. Though it was ridiculous that, just to meet for a coffee, you had to skip your dance classes; while you tell me it's a miracle they've agreed to let you out for them at all, that your contract stipulates you can only leave their house two days a year. I honestly don't know what Maman was thinking when she signed you on. A little extra money for the family in exchange for a daughter in shackles is how I see it.

At any rate, now you know. Though I didn't tell you that I'd intended to end it with him, once I actually got around to marrying Gilles, once his familial chaperones would finally let us be. But the truth of the matter is that, though Gilles certainly pleases me in many, many ways, lasciviously, he could not begin to compare. They were in two different cities, two separate realities, which I soon found afforded me the possibility of being two women: one, a wife, who was upright and proper, and the other, whenever back for a brief visit in Montreal, who was suggestive and daring, and could balk at our inane and staid traditions.

So I know well what you are playing with. I urge you, only, to be prudent. Utilize your bit of freedom to keep a supply from the pharmacy. I use both cocoa butter and quinine before, and vinegar after, secrets I only came across by working with the wayward women who come to the YWCA for help; and who have taught me that our bodies and the concept of virtue are not inextricably bound. I believe there is more to us than that.

Un gros câlin pour toi, petite sœur,

Cécile

W
hen Cécile finished
her public
schooling, she had great ambitions to go on to university, but both financially and as a French-Canadian woman, the only feasible option was to sit in on lectures and classes as an unregistered pupil. This was what she settled for in the end, and she was soon coming home with new ideas that she'd managed to pluck out of the most old-boy setting imaginable.

She would describe to Claire in great detail how, as the only woman in a room that was stuffy with suited men, everything she did was constantly observed, as if she were a bizarre imposter from some distant planet, brazenly infiltrating their ranks in broad classroom light. She would sit strong and straight, and try to appear oblivious to their non-stop, dumbstruck gawking, focusing on the professor, who would also pause to observe each minuscule change in her manner — when she re-folded her hands, or opened her books, turned their pages, dabbed the tip of her pen into her inkwell. It all, somehow, proved endlessly riveting to them, as if they were all motherless, had never seen a female before in their lives. And it was astounding to think, Cécile would say, that this very herd of oxen would be running the country in a few short years.

Though the possibility that might be changing did appear to be drawing closer. Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan had just granted women the right to vote in provincial elections, and much work was under way to win the right nationally. There was even ardent lobbying for women to be able to run in politics, and the notion was gaining surprising ground. Caught up in the momentum, Cécile volunteered most of her free time to the Fédération nationale St-Jean-Baptiste, one of the only francophone organizations bent on furthering women's rights in the city. And, as she was still living at home, she would report every success and bit of progress to her grandmother — who would, in response, give a single elated clap, or lightly thump the arm of her chair with her palm, as if it were the anvil at the closing remarks of some righteous proceeding — Cécile reading
La Bonne Parole
aloud to her in the boudoir, a magazine written not only for women but by them.

Cécile met a man at a suffragist rally who had come all the way from Quebec City to participate. He was mild and calm, but stood his ground with firm integrity. A bank manager who dabbled in politics, Gilles Taillefer had made his affections known to Cécile in a timely and respectable manner, and they were soon travelling between the cities to visit each other, in the reputable ways one might expect of a banker dabbling in politics. At an assembly near the end of 1918, in the midst of a crowd gathered to celebrate the announcement of not only the national vote being granted to women but the passing of an act that permitted them to run in federal elections, he got down on one knee and asked for her hand in marriage. She assented, on the condition that he continue to support her while she fought to win women's suffrage in Quebec's provincial vote, as well as a few other provisos. He agreed, and they were married early the next year, with Cécile moving to his modest townhouse in Quebec City.

Claire, who had just finished school, was the only child left in the household. She hadn't really been fazed by all this excitable suffragist rhetoric that had quivered through the house, having been much more absorbed in her classes at the École de Danse Lacasse-Morenoff. She eagerly mastered the dances they taught her — traditional and folk dances, ballroom, some exotic Spanish steps, the hop-trot, one-step Peabody, and even a little rudimentary ballet — warming up on the barre in front of the admiring mirrors that climbed the high walls with their reflections, stretching clear up to the ceiling with flattery.

When she was fifteen, through a friend from her classes, she landed a contract to work weekends at one of the city's cinemas — even if it was one of the more out-of-the-way and shabby ones — as an adagio dancer, part of a troupe that entertained in front of the screen between short movies, or when the reels were being changed for a feature film. Many of the girls were younger than Claire, most of them thirteen, and together they made up an eye-catching line of sixteen showgirls, dancing in unison to lively ragtime. It was the first applause she had ever received that wasn't coming from a family member or someone she knew, and she noticed how the clapping sounded all the more raucous and sincere because of it. Sometimes, looking out beyond the blaring lights into the darkness of the audience, she wondered how many people had come just for the dancers, whose act was always disappointingly interrupted by the moving pictures. The piano and trumpet players who helped them to entertain often told them at the end of the day how spectacular they'd been, sensational really, their hands brushing the small of the girls' waists as they filed out the back door to return to their unsequined civilian lives and another dusty week of school.

The limits of how evocative things could be onstage were just beginning to be tested in earnest by the cabarets and revues, the burlesque theatres, vaudeville, and musical comedies, all of which were nudging the envelope forward. Claire's parents had been to see two of her acts when she first got the job as an adagio dancer, and had reluctantly agreed to let her continue, glad of the extra revenue added to the household. But the moment she was finished school, sixteen years old and eager to move up and on from her inconsequential cinema job, they went to see her again, this time unannounced, and sat near the back of the theatre. In only one year, things had changed significantly. To their befuddled dismay, what they saw was their daughter, undeniably a young woman now, in a costume that revealed her legs in their entirety, as well as the white spans of her arms, and even a hint of her cleavage, all while she danced back and forth on the stage in what was (as chance would have it) the most risqué number she had ever performed. They left hushed and affronted.

A week later, her mother gave her the good news: she had found a real job for Claire. It was a job in which she could contribute, decently, to the family's income, and to her grandmother's burgeoning medical bills in particular. It had come from one of the well-dressed men who sometimes sauntered in from the opulent English-speaking wards, to walk the length of a working-class francophone street — Montcalm, Wolfe, Visitation — just to recruit a
jeune fille
for some affluent household to the west. A
jeune fille
was a kind of live-in maid, a position that offered an (often welcome) elimination of freedom for the teenage girl involved while paying entirely for her (assumed) lavish room and board, as well as sending a dependable cheque for her services directly to the family's mailbox every month, for between eight and twenty dollars. Claire's mother was elated to tell her that she'd been hired out for seventeen dollars. Just think of the way Claire would be helping her grandmother, she'd said.

A showy touring car picked Claire up and drove her across town, to the other side of the Main, into another world, one where people spoke another language entirely, held other customs, and had very different expectations. They pulled up in front of a stout brick mansion on Sherbrooke Street with classical white columns and a tight shield of lawn. She was given a brief tour of the interior, massive salons with oriental rugs and posh furniture, many of the rooms guarded by the low and swirling citadels of marble fireplaces. She was then led to a small room in the basement, her very own, next to the laundry facilities. It smelled of bleached mildew. That first evening, the woman of the house came down to make sure she was settling in all right. She was excessively cordial, and before bidding her a “simply spl
en
did, mag
ni
ficent first sleep,” she handed Claire a welcome gift. A textbook on advanced English from France.

Claire spent the next days being schooled in her duties and responsibilities, straining to understand the exhaustive instructions in English. The woman was patient with Claire, and tirelessly repeated herself. Eventually, Claire knew enough to be left on her own to work, though the tasks were much harder than she'd imagined. She was barred from contact with people, cleaning unused rooms to a sheen, passing carpet sweepers over the endless rugs, lathering expensive clothes across a washboard. In the first forty-eight hours she thought of running away several times, but on top of letting her father and grandmother down, she knew several girls her own age, other adagio dancers, who had run away from home and were now struggling to make it on their own in an unforgiving city, joining the ranks of the desperate and impoverished majority. These girls tended to show up to work less and dance less, as their obligations to establishments in
le Red Light
persistently increased. Claire reasoned that, while working as a
jeune fille
was only temporary, before she left her post she would have to have at least some kind of plan or assurance in place. Besides, she reasoned, at least she still had her Wednesday evening dance classes to look forward to.

That Wednesday, after washing the dishes and eating her dinner (at her station, on a stool at the kitchen counter), she changed her clothes and asked for something she thought was quite reasonable, a dime for a return trip on the tram that ran the length of Sherbrooke Street, to where her dance school was located in the east end. She stood before the couple, in her clothes for going out, a small bag containing her dance attire on her shoulder. The man and woman looked at each other, shocked. Finally the woman, stuttering to start off, explained that no, Claire could not leave the house on Wednesday evenings, or ever, really, except for the twelve hours on Easter and on Christmas Day that had been agreed to in the contract.

As this sank in, Claire's mouth dropped open. Her bag fell from her shoulder. With water welling in her eyes, she cupped her hands over her nose and tried to hold back the wave of hysteria that was surging through her. She was visibly shaking, convulsing now with voluble sobs, gripping onto her hair in fists, buckling at the waist.

It wasn't the woman who went to Claire but her husband, a mild and relatively soft-spoken man. But when she saw him approaching, Claire screamed into his face, “
Me touche pa
s
!” Then her hands, as if of their own volition, were suddenly out in front of her, towing her body to one of the marble fireplaces, where she grabbed a hefty candlestick from the mantel, spun round, and hurled it at the wide-eyed man, whom it narrowly missed as he dropped to the ground on all fours. The silver candlestick clanged onto the floor behind him, rolling into a wall, and when it stopped, Claire scurried back down to her quarters and collapsed on her bed to weep.

She cried for quite some time, and when she suddenly stopped, she turned and faced the ceiling with solid resolution. She would not be defeated, not be denied. She would get to her dance classes because she willed it to happen. She willed it so forcefully that she wondered if something might transpire to get her there that evening. Her only problem in achieving her aim was that she didn't have any allies, didn't have anyone who actually understood her plight. This, she strategized, was the only thing she required. So, then, all that was left was to will this to happen. Claire clamped her eyes shut, stiffened her body, and bent all her concentration and strength and focus on this one thing. An ally. An ally now. Now. Now.

There was a timid knock on the door. She breathed a soundless sigh, and propped herself up on her elbow. “You can enter, please.”

It was the husband again, his wife being apparently a little weak in the knees after such an outburst of emotion. “I . . . I would like very much to apologize, miss. I do believe the gentleman with whom I made the arrangement wasn't entirely forthcoming as to some of the details of the contract. And I —”

“Please, sir,” Claire interrupted, “please come in. I wish for you to understand something.”

The man hesitated, cast a glance at the open door behind him, and then sheepishly stepped forward, towards the bed. She grabbed onto his wrist and pulled it up to her chest, opened his hand and placed it flat on her bosom. Her heart was thumping to a measure he could clearly feel in the bones of his hand.

“Look at me. Please,” asked Claire, waiting until he did so. “Now. I.
Need
. To dance.” She drew a heaving breath into her lungs. “If not. I will die.”

The husband searched her expression. “I . . . I see . . .” he murmured, clearing his throat. “Well, . . . . I will . . . discuss this with my wife and —”

Claire shook her head. “No. I don't want you to discuss it. I want you to say to me, now, promise, that I can dance.”

“I . . .” The man tried to pull his hand away from her grip, but she wrestled it back into place, onto the centre of her chest. Finally, “Okay. All right, I promise, you can . . . next Wednesday — and every . . . Wednesday — you can . . . you can dance.”

Claire closed her eyes in gratitude. “Thank you. Thank you. Much.” But when she opened them, she wasn't quite met with an expression that mirrored her own clear and steadfast resolve. It occurred to her that she might have to give something in return. Yes, now that she was calm enough to think, surely, in exchange for a long-term ally,
something
would be expected. Such things weren't acquired for free.

Claire reached a hesitant hand out to his neck, her cold fingers sliding into his collar. She paused, tugged him closer, waiting for him to pull back and resist. He did not. With his face close to hers, there was nothing else to do but kiss him, at first with a closed pucker, but soon with a teary, open-mouthed softness, until she'd begun a slow and brave exploration with her tongue. Their breathing swelled. She moved his hand from the centre of her chest and into her dress's collar, then down, to cup one of her breasts. They leaned farther back, tipping onto the bed.