Combat Journal for Place d'Armes. Scott Symons
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Army recruitment: those earnest faces — firm (not forceful), clean cut (but not chiselled), accessible (but not frank). Hugh watched amazed at this performance. Surely there was a flaw somewhere. No — there was none. The young man helped a lady with her bag, carefully withdrawing from her extracted thanks. It was painfully embarrassing to Hugh. God — the kid is going through all the right motions … like someone from Whitby Ladies’ College — the complete Methodist Husband for the completed Methodist Lady. Everything was right about it. For a moment he thought that the only solution was prayer — real prayer. And then as the All-Canadian Good Boy carried himself firmly down the aisle (no organ playing — none could: the Kid would see to that!) Hugh felt an insufferable urge that he didn’t define … he couldn’t; he was in situ now — Montreal.
The station clamoured around him — he gazed into the noise, displaced suddenly … so different from Toronto, from the great thermal Roman Imperial Bath of Toronto Union … wherein no one talked — except the Highclass Hicks of Listen Hear on the billboardings … who yapped at the Permanent Commoners convening to their traintimes. These Hep Hicks — “everyone’s chum,” the pert alert Torontonian…. Well, here in Montreal, it was decisively and disconcertingly different. The station engulfed him now, and he weaved his way through the crowd — “the best-dressed peasants in the world,” he thought, as he warped and woofed his way to his baggage. And the best-behaved. And then he realized that while they were a crowd incoherent around him, engulfing him, yet they were no more than in comparable space in the Toronto station. But the whole experience was utterly different. He gazed around the station — it looked rather like a well-organized sequence of American wayside kiosks. There was a percentage of that, and a percentage of shopping centre, and a percentage of “better buy British” to it all. Around the ceiling, an immensely squalid frieze depicting Canada, apparently, because underneath it the words of “O Canada.” “Better buy Canadian … better belong to Canadian Club” — that was the subterranean message … “because Big Brother is encouraging you.” There was that — and the seethe of sound that was a seethe of people. Hugh was too tired to understand all of it now. He caught a cab to a three-buck tourist home near the station … run by a French couple from Provence — and battened himself down for the night. And as he locked his door and undressed the fissure opened him again and he realized where he was … remembered again, in deeper measure, why he was there. The train ride had in part veiled it all for him even as it exposed him to it. Had veiled his novel, just as his novel seemed to veil his real purpose. A process of interlocking amnesias. Well, now he couldn’t forget. Because he was within striking distance of La Place d’Armes. His rapid breathing as he lay abed informed him that his heart was racing. He reached into his brief case for his book — Boswell’s Life of Johnson … somehow he had never read it through. Ridiculous gap … so he had brought it along. And his hand fell on his Brief Biography. Why had he brought that? His curriculum vitae? What in truth was he doing in Montreal?
Brief Biography
Hugh Robert Anderson … born 1931 … Toronto … second son of Colonel and Mrs. … 117 Crescent Drive … Upper Canada College, Trinity College in the University of Toronto (History and Modern Languages — French and Russian), St. John’s College, Oxon., P.P.E. (of course!) … Four years with Montreal CBC special features (documentary), six years with the House of Johnson,Toronto, in charge of publications on Canadian history and literature … lecturer at the University of Toronto … author of Essays in Canadian Taste: a Study in the Relationship of the Arts and Politics from 1812 to 1914. Hobbies: bird-watching, Canadiana, conversation …
It was an impeccable cursus honorum canadensis. Completed by a wife, (Mary Joan, only daughter of Professor and Mrs. J. A. Robins) and two children, suitably divided between the sexes. In five years he would have been the effective head of the House of Johnson, Canada’s most respected and progressive publishing house. He was perfectly bilingual (four years in Montreal had seen to that) and thoroughly respected by French and English Canadian editors and authors.
Hugh eyed the biography quizzically, incredulously … almost as though he were hiring this man. He was suspicious: it was too good to be decent. Something was wrong somewhere. Then he remembered — it was him. Hugh Robert Anderson. He closed his eyes — the sweat stung in them. The thunder was his heart. It must all be a bad dream…. He farted, and the bland musk of debilitated Parliamentarian’s beef (almost rare) assured him that it was for real. He thought of the Rapido-ride down. It had been at once curiously flat, yet riddled with pitfalls. Now he was in Montreal. And he was there on schedule. He looked at his watch … after midnight … so it was already December 1 — the first day of his Adventure. That was as planned.
It was indeed for real. It was he, Hugh Robert Anderson who had been fired two months ago — conscientiously fired. It was he who had, quite casually, at lunch one day, finally ensured his firing. Lunch with the President of the House of Johnson … Richard Johnson, C.M.G., F.R.S.C., LL.D., Q.C. (he had the order wrong — but he could never remember this mutation from the Canadian Debrett’s listing really — it was so much easier to have a title, and be done with it — and not this subterranean alphabetic dignitarianism.) The lunch was at the York Club … ensconced in all those magnificent Italian Renaissance Revival Victorian carvings. Johnson was asking pointedly, “Why do you think we missed that contract with the university, Anderson?” And precisely between a bite of Camembert, that was still, alas chalky (the York Club should have known better — and for a horrible moment Anderson had also wondered if the carvings on the wall were merely plaster) and the happifying recollection that only the York Club served a Marc de Bourgogne, Hugh replied quite spontaneously, almost affectionately, “Because you’ve got no balls, Sir.” It had been so incredibly simple. He himself had heard this reply with interest and incredulity. Then, for one ghastly instant, Hugh thought that he had been wrong, that Johnson DID have balls, at least ONE ball … and that he was going to stab him, Hugh Anderson, with his steak knife. Hugh even hoped that this was so. It would have restored his faith. He waited, expectant virgin, for the thrust — and once again he even believed that the carvings on the walls were indeed wood. And then he was deceived. The cheese, the carvings, and Johnson, were all putty. The contortion of Johnson’s face that Hugh had taken for genuine militant rage (Johnson had been a brigadier), was merely that kind of tumescence that precedes tears. And the president’s only achievement had been to control his tears. Hugh looked up after a moment. Everything was in order again. The whole incident had simply blown over. But Johnson’s eyes had gone that bald greyblue … eyes from which one bounced with the false spring of tired broadloom … eyes that looked neither out nor in — the look of a defeated man who still wields power. A month later Hugh was caught out on a technicality. He received a letter from the president inviting his resignation. He didn’t even bother replying.
It was rather sad. He even liked Johnson. But once he was sure that Johnson had no balls, and was inordinately resentful of anyone who did, then the die was cast….
A truck squealed against the curb outside his window. Hugh’s flesh shrieked. He was outrageously alive now. Every pore audited the street sounds. He knew that he would get no sleep. What was worse a fever had set in … all the old signs of strain in him — fatigue, fever, sore throat. He dosed himself with cold pills, aspirins, and settled down to sleep on his fakir’s bed of goosepimples. He was still hopeful that he could accomplish his assignment … could place the Place d’Armes and thus his novel. If he could just rest a bit, shake off this damned flu bug.
NOTEBOOK
— awake at noon — pills have abated flu-fever. Lie abed, slowly draw me together
— read a little of Bozzy — just to place things a bit.
— Got La Place on my brain
& gingerly out of bed, palp embodiment for self-certification: all intact. Out pipes! Brunch in greasy spoon
down thru the city — Peel St — Dominion Square (is it true