Two Solitudes (8 page)

Behind him the chairman sat heavily in his seat and looked at the profile of the boy who was speaking, with amused interest. The chairman's name was A. Marchand; he had a shining bald head, a big paunch, lead-coloured skin, and the narrow eyes and lips of a professional politician. He was the one who had invited the university debating society to send
a speaker for this anti-conscription meeting. It was an improvisation; originally Marchand had hoped to get Henri Bourassa, the famous nationalist leader, but Bourassa had not been able to come. His chance idea about getting a student had turned out better than he expected. Marchand smiled. What a student! Who would have expected the son of Athanase Tallard to turn up here?

Marius was now launched on his peroration. “Here in Quebec,” he was saying, “beside our own great river, we French-Canadians are at home. We say it once. We say it twice. We will always say it. Perhaps if we say it enough the English will understand us. We are at home here with our families and our faith. We don't ask much. All we have ever asked is to be let alone. When we say ‘Down with Conscription' we do not say we fear to fight. We say ‘Down with foreign tyranny and interference!' We say…”

Marchand knew by heart what Marius would say. After all, he had previously said most of it himself earlier in the meeting. To him this was just a small gathering in a dirty hall in the east end of Montreal. There had been hundreds of other meetings like it all over the province through 1917 and 1918, all of them protesting the conscription act which the English-speaking provinces had forced on Quebec. If Bourassa had been able to speak tonight, the meeting would have been news, for he was a great orator and a symbol. Without him this hall was just one more place where oratory was being sprayed out like an anaesthetic to deaden the French-Canadians' bitterness because they were a minority in a country they considered their own; because the pressure of the eight English-speaking provinces east and west of them, and of the United States to the south, made them feel they were in a strait-jacket; because now, with the world gone crazy, they were almost powerless
against an alien people who called themselves countrymen but did not understand the peculiar value of the French and did not want to understand it.

Marchand felt all this sincerely. He knew the meeting would do little good. It was a safety valve, nothing more. But he was also a politician, and so he had identified himself with a whole series of such meetings because he knew it would not be forgotten after the war. He would be remembered as a man who had fought for his people during the bad times.

When Marius stopped talking the crowd rose and cheered him. He made his way slowly down from the platform, then down the aisle to the door while the crowd shouted and congratulated him. His face continued to flash quick, tight smiles. A few hours ago he had been nothing. Now, because he had discovered that he could speak, his future greatness leaped like a giant before his eyes.

At the door Marchand caught up with him. He took Marius by the arm and drew him aside into a small anteroom, then stopped and wiped his skull with his handkerchief. “My God,” he muttered. “Some of the bums they let in here stink when they sweat!” He grinned at Marius, his parted lips showing two gold teeth. “Never mind, young fella. The crowd that sweats is the only one that counts for a damn.”

He turned to wave through the open door to someone he knew. Beside him, seeing no one else, Marius said, “It's a crowd worth saving, anyway.”

An English voice, speaking English, sounded sharply behind him. “Save them from what, brother?”

Marius jerked around and found himself staring into a raw-boned face under a soldier's cap. The soldier stood leaning against the open door, sneering at him. Marius opened his mouth to speak but the words clogged in his mind and stuck.

“Never mind,” the soldier said in a flat voice. “You said plenty already.” He turned on his heel and went out the door.

Marius gave a forced laugh and looked at Marchand's back. He was talking to someone who had come in another door and had not heard the soldier. Anyway, what difference did it make what an Englishman said? He waited for Marchand to turn around, hoping for some word of praise from him, but the politician was taking his time. Through the open door of the vestibule Marius could see street lights and hear the noise of a tram rounding the corner of Saint-Denis Street.

Beyond the door Emilie was standing with his coat over her arm. He smiled at her and she smiled back. Her face still held awe of him. Marius knew she was only a simple girl, but knowledge of the emotion he had aroused in her filled him with excitement.

Marchand finished his talk and turned around, his jacket open and his thumbs hooked into the lower pockets of his waistcoat. “So you're Athanase Tallard's son, eh?”

Marius nodded, then added a reluctant, “Yes.”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-one this week.”

Marchand's thin lips parted to show the tops of his gold teeth. “You finishing at the university this year?”

“Yes. Next fall I start my law course.”

“You mean, you
hope
you start your law.” The heavy paunch shook in a sort of laugh. “Well, you made quite a speech, young fella. Too bad your father didn't hear it.”

As he went on talking, Marchand watched excitement dilate the pupils of Marius' eyes and tried to calculate just how much a face like that would be worth to him. Every year the classical colleges turned out hundreds of boys who seemed to be able to do nothing but talk. Yet every so often a boy was
thrown up with the intensity of a militant priest, but without a vocation for the Church. If you could get a boy like that into line you could certainly use him.

“The trouble with your father,” Marchand was saying, “is he can't touch an ignorant crowd. Not like you can.” Suddenly the man's mood changed and the paunch was still. “Listen,” he said, “what was the idea of all that stuff you said against the English capitalists? Bringing Huntly McQueen's name into it. Who told you he was profiteering in medical supplies?”

“But–but everyone knows he is!”

“Maybe they do. That isn't going to make him like reading what you said in the papers tomorrow.”

The fear of authority was endemic in Marius, and now it gripped him like a clenching hand. “I only said what's true,” he answered sullenly.

“You've got a lot to learn,” the politician said. “You'll find yourself in jail for slander if you don't watch out.”

Marius looked at the man and then away again. “You're the one that asked me to speak,” he said.

Marchand made an impatient gesture with one hand. “Listen. I'll tell you something. You can curse politicians all you want in public. That's okay. You can talk about our rights. That's okay, too. But the English part of this country is run by big business, even if they don't know it. And their big boys don't like their names thrown around in public, understand? Except maybe when they're on hospital committees and charity boards.” His eyes swivelled away and caught sight of Emilie standing by the door, passed quickly over her and turned back to Marius. “They'd a lot sooner have us curse their race than kick for higher wages. You remember that next time. And for Christ's sake remember that French-Canadian nationalism isn't Bolshevism–or anything like it.”

The elation was steadily being pumped out of Marius. Marchand shrugged his shoulders, and when Marius said nothing he went to the door and beckoned a taxi driver who was waiting for another fare. Then he turned to the boy again. “How's it you're not in the army?”

“I got my notice last week,” Marius said sullenly.

“Reported yet?”

“No.”

Marchand laughed. “They'll get you for sure now. You certainly asked for it tonight, young fella.”

Marius tasted bile as his rage mounted. He hated Marchand. The old men were all the same; they were all liars. None of them meant anything they said. But the inbred fear of authority choked his anger back to sullenness. “I only did what you wanted,” he said.

“Sure,” Marchand said. “Sure. You did all right, too. Come and see me if you keep out of jail and the army. You did fine.” Without waiting for an answer he went out the door, leaving Marius to stare after his back.

Suddenly the boy felt better. Maybe Marchand envied him because he had the courage to say what he thought? He turned to Emilie, took the coat from her arm and put it on. Her eyes were shining as she told him how wonderful he was, but Marius wasn't listening. He was wondering about the students who had come down to hear him speak. What had they thought? Were they jealous of his success? Or had they thought his speech was cheap? They might have waited to congratulate him.

He waited for Emilie to pass through the door to the street, and then before he could follow her he felt a hand on his elbow. “That bastard you was talking to. I heard him,” someone said. A tired, ageless face was beside him. The man wore a cloth
cap and a ragged overcoat and the unwashed smell of his body hit Marius' nostrils. “Don't you give a damn for that son of a bitch.” The earnest face came close. “You made the best speech I ever heard, and I haven't got much to do but listen. I heard Laurier. I heard Bourassa. And tonight I hear you.”

He held out a hand and Marius took it. Then the man was gone and Marius was out in the air, standing beside Emilie. He looked both ways up and down the street but he saw nothing. His eyes were incandescent. He had been compared to Laurier and Bourassa! It wasn't an educated man who had praised him. That would have meant nothing. What counted was to be able to reach the crowd made up of men like that. He passed a hand over his eyes. Holy Name, that was truly greatness!

He took Emilie's arm. “Come on,” he said. “It's nearly midnight. I'll take you home.”

As they went down the steps he noticed the English soldier who had interrupted his talk with Marchand still standing by the curb. Their stares met in the half-light and Marius felt the man's insolence in the pit of his stomach. The feeling passed when he and Emilie began walking east. He sucked in the spring air and looked up to the roofs opposite, his mind picturing hundreds of acres covered by similar buildings, all of them filled by helpless people who could not talk; empty people hungry for words; people waiting to be led. Marius was convinced that a man who could make a good political speech could have what he wanted of the world. Government and speeches seemed to him identical.

On the corner they passed three soldiers talking quietly together under an arc lamp. Marius looked them over with hostility. When he recognized the language they were speaking as French he was exasperated. One wore the ribbon of the Military Medal and the other two had wound stripes. They reminded
him that all French-Canada was not against the war. One of the finest regiments in the British Empire was French-Canadian.

Beside him Emilie was saying, “You feel good, Marius? You looked good up there. It made me shiver.”

He pressed her arm. “I feel all right. But I'm frightened, too.”

“Silly! Up there on the platform with all those famous men!”

“They weren't so much.”

“No? Well, you're awful smart, anyway.”

He laughed, pleased. Though Emilie was unconscious of the processes of his mind, she had re-established herself as a symbol by the remark. She was an ignorant country girl, but she was one of his people.

They walked steadily east through air moist and mild with the first warmth of spring. A fugginess hung between the dirty old buildings and the beams of light from the blue arc lamps looked thick and almost opaque through it.

Emilie had been going out with Marius ever since her family had brought her to Montreal two months before. She knew he was far above her class. She understood only part of what he talked about, for he used bigger words even than her village priest had done. Yet sometimes she dreamed that the difference between them was not so great. Marius might be educated, but he lived alone in a room so untidy she thought his landlady disgraceful. He often seemed as unhappy as a lost dog, and she understood about things like that. He needed her.

“I hope your father won't mind your being out so late,” Marius said. “I didn't think it would be as late as this.”

“That's all right. P'pa won't mind.”

Emilie did not add that what her father thought no longer made any difference to anyone. She knew it, but she
could never have explained the reasons. He had been a farmer all his life, working a strip of poor land on the lower Saint Lawrence and going up to the woods back of Lac Saint-Jean in the winters for the lumbering. He always got boils from the steady diet of pork and beans he lived on in the lumber camps and a few years ago his lungs had gone bad. His farm had to be sold for debt, and now he was a sweeper in a munitions factory in Montreal, a man with no status. Having lived all his life in a small place where he knew everyone, where his family might be poor but still counted as a family, he was now nothing. Every week he remarked that it was wonderful how much money they were making. But he was not happy about it. City prices ate it all up. They went to Mass every Sunday and put a tenth of all they earned on the plate, hoping God would bless them for it. Every week her father put a few coins in a box in the kitchen and counted up what they had saved. Then he would shake his head. At this rate he would have to live to be a hundred before they would have enough to buy land again. The knowledge was slowly crushing him.

Emilie found work in a small restaurant at the east end of Sainte-Catherine Street, and it was there she happened to meet Marius. An order had been given to her in English. She understood nothing of what was said, and Marius had interpreted for her when he saw her confusion. When the man who had ordered in English had gone, Marius made a date to meet her when she was finished working that evening.