Yesterday, at the Hotel Clarendon Page 10

  Later, at the sites in Karnak and in Bahrain, when touching the whiteness of time and bones with the tip of the soul was a necessity, Simone, already dealing with the ochre time of dusks and the mauve wind of dawns, had damned the god of her childhood and life who had taken Alice from her, her doctor, her learned woman of Sillery, who had never dared show anyone but Simone that amorous inclination which, when she surrendered to it, literally lifted her up from the ground and, in so doing, made her all the more desirable.

  The security guard’s steps have halted at the entrance of the exhibition hall. The man comes close enough to give the impression he wants a word with Simone. He greets her with a nod and then simply heads slowly back toward the silent La Débâcle to continue his rounds.

  Hotels were the site of the better part of Simone and Alice’s love life. There, each woman forgot her official life and their bodies sailed toward some elsewhere Simone sometimes regretted being unable to recount in a book. ‘Oh, this is so good. Everybody should know what we do and want to do it too,’ said Alice with such naïveté that it drew a smile from Simone. To preserve their anonymity, they had over the years constituted a bank of first names using the names of flowers and tried to match the number of stars given to a hotel with the number of syllables in the flower’s name. Four stars: Petunia. Three stars: Violet. Two stars: Iris and Lily. For the surnames, they used only common ones like Tremblay, Vézina or Richard. For five-star hotels, they changed the rule and signed Iris Stein and Lily Globenski.

  The ritual was always the same: hesitation, excitement, wild lust in the lobby, stolen kisses in the elevator, a guaranteed explosion of voices followed by a quiet river of tender words once the door had closed behind their coats, hats, gloves, dresses and jeans, their identities, with a multifaceted heat in the lower belly.

  Standing in front of a black-faced hydra, Simone lingers a moment watching her face reflected in the display case. If it’s true that when passing in front of a mirror we believe we can touch up our image by adjusting our hair, smoothing our eyebrows with a bit of saliva or licking our lips to redden them, it’s just as true that looking at oneself intensely for longer than a minute is risky, as ten seconds are more than enough to know that those eyes are going to stop sparkling one day. So it’s quite natural to think that an image of oneself is never identical to an image of oneself. And why stop? thinks Simone. Those who stop do it only to better refresh their life strategies, to rethink the management of their activities and assets or to detox from a heightened lust for life which has ended up marginalizing them. Nobody stops to forget. On the contrary, in order to forget one must charge ahead at top speed toward death like an athlete capable of setting any record. Thinking one’s face can only be done outside the mirror frame.

  Under the features of Simone’s face is the child, the daughter. Lorraine’s face. A birth. The pains have started. The belly is enormous. She can’t see her feet. The belly hides everything. The pain tears the brain like major matters of fact that nobody talks about and, even if they did, there would be nothing other to do than give birth. Make soul of this body, beget future with every cell.

  Behind a curtain a woman screams that she wants to die. The doctor says Simone is breathing well. Two men’s heads hover over her. She can feel a nurse’s reassuring gestures, then the gynecologist declares, ‘Caesarean.’ She says yes, anaesthesia, five, four, three. There was no two, no one, only a painful cough the next day and a Lorraine with jet-black hair and fists full of shadow and cosmic energy.

  Putting a date on an event means in part acknowledging it. Simone didn’t know anymore whether Lorraine was born at one in the morning, at 1:10 or at 1:20. From the depths of her artificial sleep, she couldn’t know at what precise moment in history her daughter was born; had she known, she might have forgotten it like her own mother, who had never been able to tell the exact hour of the arrival into this world of her fifth daughter, in a room on Rue Drolet fragrant with the thousand odours of life and death. The only known fact was that Simone was born in 1929, shortly before her father left for Detroit and never came back.

  The man could neither read nor write in French, but over the years he’d learned English, and when the war broke out, Simone, who must have been thirteen, remembered the mailman bringing long letters written by her dad about the year’s new car models and what opinion they should have of them. Sometimes he included leaflets and calendars he put together with pictures he’d taken of ‘big-shot’ cars. In time he’d become ‘calendar man’ and year in year out the calendar, coveted by Simone’s brothers and cousins, arrived via His Majesty’s Royal Mail, the very same monarch in whose name they would soon go to war.

  Over the years the Museum of the Automobile had made room for the work of Gustave Lambert, ‘the French Canadian.’ It included his first camera, a Kodak, and his last one, used mostly between 1945 and 1955. There were photos and newspaper articles about his collection. All the calendars from 1939 to 1954 were exhibited. To create a bit of ambience, they’d built a darkroom that had nothing dark about it but its name, the black walls papered with Coke and Camel posters as well as a postcard of Montréal. A life-size cardboard man stood holding a photograph in his right hand. The man wore black slacks, a white shirt and red suspenders. He was smiling. The picture of the cardboard man representing Gustave Lambert had been published several times in La Presse and Le Petit Journal. It was the only remaining image of him. Simone had a copy of it somewhere in a yellow calfskin suitcase, her memory box.

  For years Simone had read up on the city of Detroit, its assembly plants, the famous Taylor Principle, which had inspired the model of the production line used in the factories: skills allocation, smallest combined expenditure of human effort, maximum utilization of tools and implements. And for a long time she had even used it herself on sites in order to manage her work teams.

  Far is not the faraway, thought Simone. Here in my museum, far from my Montréal childhood and from what my life once was elsewhere, always elsewhere, I’m so close to what I really am in my relay race among civilizations and their gold and stone remains. To disappear in the mouth of stones that never embrace any shape but the wind, the cold, the incandescent heat of great lava slides down inclines and inclinations.

  Despite their fragility, the urns have survived the centuries, protected by burial and lack of oxygen. Suddenly the title, Centuries So Far, that Simone had given the exhibition no longer seemed to apply to the past but indeed to the future, far-off centuries that would act as mirrors for other cultures belonging to our species. From the far reaches of these centuries, scholars would examine our ruins. Chernobyl and its children’s park now silent with radiation, the Barents Sea and its underwater cities – far-off centuries where time and space would be implanted in the body as if a second level of time-space comprehension existed. Thoughts would go without saying, no longer needing the lengthy processing via speech that so often complicates relationships. The notion of tomorrow, the sense of today. Desire, a lapse in time, a lapsus linguae folded underarm like a personal journal. Would the subjective time that resurfaces whenever a new technology outperforms an older one resemble a woman’s belly, against which one can set one’s own silence and certain notions about becoming among the stars? Whoever took the time today to see the ruins of tomorrow coming would guarantee their own financial future. The ruins of the ephemeral would grow in number. Henceforth, multidirectional time could change direction at any moment, turn on itself, bolt back to the past, return to same, morph into a hacker and neatly ruin our linear lives.

  Eight-oh-four and ten seconds in the evening. The news came via Simone’s cellphone like an axe blow to the ear. The news fell into her phone like a two-year-old from the fifth floor the news fell into her phone like a knife slash into the gums the news made a blackfly buzz in the phone the news spread through Simone’s body spilled tons of toxins into her brain left a trickle of saliva at the corner of her mouth unravelled the quiet thread of life the news sent shiv
ers down Simone’s spine nailed her to the front of Niche Number 7 of Centuries So Far. The security guard reappeared in the entrance, hesitating because of Simone’s haggard look. Fabrice Lacoste had just been found lifeless in a pine grove on one of the Princes Islands (Buyükada in Turkish, Prinkipos in Greek) not far from the Bosporus. His body had been discovered at dawn by a Turkish-delight vendor who happened to pass by. The corpse showed traces of violence, of origin currently unknown. The remains couldn’t be sent home before the end of the inquest. The Canadian Embassy had just phoned Fabrice’s sister. ‘Can I do something to help?’ asked Simone. ‘Not right now, thank you. I’d appreciate it if you’d pass the news on to the people who loved him. I’m leaving for Istanbul tomorrow with my husband. You can reach me at the Kybele Hotel. In Québec City, my sister Louise will provide you with more information as soon as she can.’

  Half an hour later, movement returns. Simone goes back to her office. She makes a few calls. It is still daylight on Rue Dalhousie when she leaves the museum. She takes Rue Saint-Pierre toward Rue Saint-Paul. In front of the Dominion Hotel, two senior civil servants from the culture ministry are talking and gesturing. A throng of tourists has gathered around a stone sculpture by Arnoldin, Hébert and Purdy. The fountain water flows gently under the impassive female figure bearing foodstuffs. Daylight is dimming. The smell of erasure, thinks Simone, who after turning back now takes Rue du Saut-au-Matelot to Côte de la Montagne. Up there, the cannons parked in rows look like great black wolves howling at the moon. She walks by the obsessive ghost of the Château Frontenac, heads for Dufferin Terrace, sits briefly under a belvedere that looks out over the river. Around her people are drinking soft drinks or licking ice cream cones and studding their speech with anglicisms. She notices a stain on her suit. She passes her hand automatically over her knees several times. Then, with an anxious look, she slowly heads toward the great wooden staircase leading to Cap Diamant. Then come the Plains of Abraham, where she walks round and round for an hour, feeling like an easy target. In the evening’s tenderness, she chooses to hang her head and concentrate on the pebbles lodging in her sandals and the dew-laden grass tickling her toes. Then, in the middle of a sentence obsessing her, she raises her head, retraces her steps. On Dufferin Terrace, a street clown is crooning to docile dogs heartily applauded by a crowd standing in a semicircle and blocking the way of people who, like Simone, don’t quite know where to go and whose hearts are as heavy as a dictionary full of useless words. Ten minutes later, just as Simone is about to hail a taxi, a woman brushes against her arm. Looking up at her, Simone notices that the lights of Lévis have started to glimmer like little monkeys with sparkly-bright eyes. The softness of the wind. The sudden fragrance of lilac season snaps her thoughts back to the past. May turns your head. Life. Simone doesn’t complete her movement, the taxi drives by. With a determined step she heads for the Hotel Clarendon like, so long ago, Lily Globenski breathlessly loved to do with Iris Stein.

  THE HOTEL CLARENDON

  The bar (or a festive occasion) as setting always fuels expectations. The alcohol served can at any moment loosen tongues and incite them to the delirium of truth. All conflicts are possible, they just need to be framed, revived, sometimes left to burn onstage like a pile of debris. How to fan a conflict so as to render it exemplary is a matter that doesn’t concern us here.

  We are in front of four female characters. There is a family tie between the youngest one (Axelle) and the oldest one (Simone), a work relationship exists between the latter and the narrator, and a circumstantial relation based on affinities has developed between Carla and the narrator.

  The fact that there is no conflict-generating factor (competition, antagonism, discord) between these women makes it particularly difficult to provide the script with moments of extreme tension, even of the verbal violence on which theatre is generally predicated. Indeed, there are no couples here, no visceral connections nor passion-driven ties. No jealousy, hatred, love. No intimacy, no daily life between the characters. In addition, one may wonder when, at which degree of intimacy, major conflicts, meaning those whose scope is symbolic, are born.

  Talking is an activity that helps overcome solitude. In the theatre, talking goes without saying and is never quite useless. Certainly, there is a kind of theatre in which, under the guise of trivial sentences, there is allowed to smoulder a powerful fire that can blow into a terrifying explosion at any moment.

  The lighting: as in museums, lighting plays a major role here. In the bar it can be a translucent white but also that yellow reminiscent of the tiny holes of city lights glimmering in a room, a living room or a kitchen. It’s the magic of lighting that brings the landscape of reality into existence. Here, reality is absolutely theatrical. That is the wager made. On the faces, the lighting can be either blunt or caressing.

  The sound: a digital soundtrack composed of murmurs, whispers, breathing and heartbeats. A few isolated words, repeated like serial patterns. Jazz tunes hang in the air, now and then a melody.

  The last notes of ‘Sophisticated Lady’ are heard. The art deco–style bar of the Hotel Clarendon, renowned for its jazz evenings. Depending on the night, performers are jolly old musicians, hot young composers and, occasionally, female singers whose voices waft like cicadas and the blues. In the middle of the room, a piano surrounded by a semicircular counter and four stools. Tables, chairs. Very little smoke. One of the tables is occupied by the narrator and Carla Carlson, deep in conversation. For the moment it is impossible to hear their words. People arrive and sit at the other tables.

  Axelle Carnavale enters the bar. All the tables are occupied. She hesitates a moment, then heads for the narrator and Carla’s table where, after a brief exchange, she sits down discreetly, as far away as possible in order not to disturb. The narrator and Carla continue their conversation. Axelle cannot hear what is being said, for the words get lost here and there in the fluid brouhaha of the music and of the fluted resonance of clattering glasses and silverware.

  SCENE ONE

  CARLA: You can never know what’s going to happen to a character. What fiction will make him say or not. All we know is that the character’s life is always in peril. That danger lurks and that it organizes his destiny, designs his gestures, stokes his desire. The character often talks loudly because he absolutely must attract attention to himself, stand out from those who are going their own sweet way, life size, simple size.

  NARRATOR: And if the character is a woman – does it make any difference if the character is a woman?

  CARLA: Nothing obliges us to think that a feminine character is necessarily a woman.

  NARRATOR: You’ve got to be kidding!

  CARLA: Absolutely not. It’s quite possible to live in the feminine and hate women. To love one’s mother like a god and find other women unbearable. Pardon the expression, but a lot of philosophers spend all their time sucking on this subject as if it had a special flavour. It’s both simple and complicated. Take me, for example: I work with the idea that Father my papa the old man the lassoed one is a feminine character. Any character who lives at the heart of his childhood can be said to be feminine. As soon as he leaves there he starts getting on in age, in dullness as well as in the dust of adulthood and dailiness. You see, this is the contradiction that works on us like a bad spell. Everybody is moved by the feminine’s infinite tenderness, but nobody is interested in women.

  (Simone enters, sits at the bar. Nods to the people around her. The audience can hear the conversation between Carla and the narrator, but not Simone.)

  CARLA: The obligation to make a character speak transforms his nature. We don’t know anything about a character until we’ve seen him exist in his body, until we’ve heard him talk, made him talk, seen him smile, cry, scream, breathe. Mince and swallow his words.

  NARRATOR: All of that can be described, no?

  CARLA: I know, but it’s not the same. A character never pretends to be alive: he is alive. He can die in front of you at any t
ime.

  NARRATOR: I’ve always imagined theatre characters as tender beings capable of adapting to any game of smoke and mirrors, and even to false embraces, while reality coils round them like exuberant ivy or an inescapable story.

  CARLA: Theatre characters are often violent because they’re under constant threat. Their violence is proportionate to their fragility. The more they attempt to escape fiction, the harder and more merciless they become. You still refuse to read my manuscript?

  NARRATOR: Yes, Carla. For the moment, I don’t want to read anything.

  SCENE TWO

  (Simone gets up to make a phone call. Spotting the narrator, she absent-mindedly nods to her. When she returns, the narrator approaches Simone. We understand that she is inviting her to sit at their table. Simone accepts.)