Читать книгу Larry Volt - Pierre Tourangeau - Страница 11

Kontum, 64-65

Life holds a special flavor for those who fight, that the protected shall never know.

Inscription on a Zippo lighter,

Unknown G.I.

It should have been expected. La Marquise has decided to lead the fight, at the college, against the language legislation. With the blessings of the Gentlemen, of course, who thereby avoid hotheads such as me breaking rank and taking advantage of the general unrest to blow the lid off the place. La Marquise, on the other hand, has class. There’s no mistaking her lineage or her opinions. Those priests are no fools: Melior est vir prudens quam fortis.¹

By way of a communiqué printed on the Gestetner graciously put at her disposal by Pelvisius, La Marquise has announced the spontaneous establishment of the French Quebec Committee of the Seminary of Saint Suspicius (FQCSSS),² appointing herself, in passing, provisional chair of the said committee, whose equally provisional mandate it is to “ensure coordination with the national leadership of the struggle against the language legislation.” Those interested are to come to the lounge tomorrow at 5 p.m. After classes, needless to say. It will then be determined how the student body may offer concrete support to the protest movement. The communiqué says there will even be a representative of the national committee. You don’t need to be a genius to figure out that he’ll try to enlist the flock in his great mass movement, even though the sheep it’s comprised of are not exactly the type that makes revolutions: the progeny of judges, doctors, and businessmen is ordinarily better suited for fashion parades and beauty contests than demonstrations.

Evidently even the wealthy can feel oppressed, or this cause must be especially just, seeing how the national committee representative – presto! – had them eating out of his hand. A full beard and all smiles, wears a turtleneck under a tweed jacket, speaks in a loud voice and knows how to make hearts throb to the rhythm of the correct line. Less than ten minutes is all he needs to secure a vote in favour of a twenty-four-hour walkout, just enough time for the troops of Saint Suspicius on the mountain to join the grand people’s army that will be marching through the downtown streets in three days.

He really has a way with daddy’s boys and girls:

“Your people needs you, don’t disappoint it. The fate of the nation is at stake. You must take part in the struggle. You’ve no right to remain outside the united front that’s now taking shape.”

Youououououour people! That’s nearly all it takes to get the flock involved in sedition with an almost unanimous vote by show of hands held amid the enthusiasm of year-end parties. Only, this is November and the Gentlemen of Saint Suspicius haven’t planned a holiday so early in the season. They’re as surprised as they are vexed that things could have gone so far. However much Pelvisius repeats and has his pawns repeat that he’s not sure it’s such a good idea, the following Friday, the college is as deserted as the desert of Judea. Non enim quod volo bonum, hoc facio; sed quod nolo malum hoc ago.³

I stayed on the sidelines, even though I was amused by the way things turned out. It was out of the question for me to march in La Marquise’s battalion. I perched myself on the second floor of a small bar I’d spotted beforehand, knowing that from there I could see down the street for several hundred metres. Saint Catherine Street near Saint Denis. The demonstration would pass by there on the way to La Fontaine Park, its final destination. In just a moment, through the large window looking out on the street, I’ll be leisurely watching the first rows of demonstrators.

There are almost a hundred thousand of them according to the radio reporters. The cops are on edge, because gatherings like this are outlawed in Montreal, ever since the City Council banned them two months ago, having decided there were too many of them and that, while freedom of expression is just fine in principle, it ought not to be abused because then it disturbs everyone.

I sip on a beer and wait, warm and comfy, for the Saint Suspicius battalion to come into view. I’m eager to see what the flock looks like when it charges the barricades. La Marquise and her followers have designed a handsome red banner to clearly show the whole world that even the children of the bourgeoisie believe the language of the French Canadians is worth protecting. After all, it’s the one they know best. Stretched between two poles, the banner is one metre by ten, with No To Institutionalized Assimilation written on it in large, square, white letters and, underneath, the name of the college. Studying in an ivory tower doesn’t mean we’re insensitive to the lot of the masses swarming at our feet.

Then there’s the fact that the people, well, they’re ours, not the Anglos’. Hence we might as well help them survive so we can make use of them once we get out of school.

While waiting, I smoke cigarettes. They say it’s bad for your health, but as far as I know most things are. Even life kills me. Which makes perfect sense, since everyone knows what happens at the end, of life, that is.

In any case, who can pretend to know what life is? Life – that’s life. If you listen to the Suspicians, there’s nothing more to it. Life – that’s life: a bald, fatheaded, blaring tautology. What is life? Life is a tautology. Tawtaw-luhdjimeans “life” in Southern Javanese. It’s when you can’t explain something that you resort to a tautology. Better to hold your tongue and not try to understand, like the Suspicians, than to spout a lot of crap in a foreign language.

I hear the hubbub of the crowd yelling the first slogans behind the roar of the motorcycle cops cruising fifty metres ahead of the demonstrators. I crane my neck and in the distance I can see the huge throng that fills the whole width of the street and stretches back to the vanishing point. There, in the front ranks, are the honchos of the national committee, including the bearded tweed jacket who enlisted the next generation of the ruling class. My heart is pounding. I feel I should do something with all this beautiful energy that may very well go to waste. When they’re through marching, all these numskulls, what will have changed?

They’re very close now. The bar employees have stepped up to the windows to see. For once, the press has told the truth: there really are a lot of people. They stream past endlessly, holding placards, shouting cheerfully in unison: Qué-bec-fran-çais! Qué-bec-fran-çais!

In the clamour and the surge of signs, I finally discern the flock’s banner, smartly spread out between two poles each held up by Allie Buy and Julie Horn, who are proud to play the part of flag-bearers. Beneath the standard, with a megaphone in her hand, snug and warm in her mink-collared pea jacket, La Marquise is doing her best to chant, “No-to-in-sti-tu-tion-al-ized-as-sim-i-lation.” The others take it up together, but it doesn’t sound like anything.

All at once I find myself pretty wimpish to be here doing nothing when just a slight effort on my part would be enough for all this useless agitation to really advance the cause. And it doesn’t matter much whether it’s this cause or another. A cause is first a cause before it becomes a good or bad one. The fools parading down there honestly believe these little group fitness walks repeated every week for the past month are going to make the powers-that-be change their minds. They’re very naive, and, what’s more, they have no sense of tragedy. Marches have never overthrown a government, except maybe the Long March, but, unlike Mao, I don’t have the patience to march for years. I tell myself that if I had a bit more courage, I could make their stupid little march-a-thons mean something.

I can see it from here: parked on the other side of the street, an old Renault 10 all of a sudden rises in the air, as if lifted by some supernatural force, before disappearing in a cloud of flames and smoke, as a tremendous explosion blows out the windows all around, including the one I’m sitting at. There’s glass and fire everywhere. Panic strikes. In the street, slogans give way to screams, and everybody is rushing in every direction. Evidently some people have been killed, others injured. Just imagine the consequences. The Anglos would be accused. Wrongly, of course, because it would be me. A total mess, I tell you. After all, as Marx said, you can’t make revolution without sending a little shit flying. You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do, right?

The entire procession has already gone by for some time. By now they must all have arrived at La Fontaine Park, where they’re being harangued by three or four lofty minds not in too great a hurry to make the revolution. As for me, I keep drinking, because of the vision I had which made me realize that the important thing isn’t so much a matter of planting bombs as knowing where to have them planted and by whom.

Basically, they’re not too bright, the little bums who’ve been playing at being terrorists for the past while by gleefully blowing up mailboxes and Anglos. OK, it’s true, they’ve disturbed the powers-that-be, though even that’s a moot point since it gives them a good reason to be repressive. But, above all, it’s the majority, which is French, that’s pleased and silently thinks: “Good for them, those dirty English creeps, they’ve been jerking us around for so long.” Whereas if their bombs were to kick French butts… I’d never realized before just how easy it would be to wreak havoc.