Jocelyn looks like an Arthur Rackham fairy in blue jeans. Madeleine wishes she could be ethereal too, but she is stuck being strong instead. A gymnast’s body. The difference between a unicorn and a pony.
They enter and sit down; candles flicker in wax-withered Mateus bottles, on checkered tablecloths. Beneath the acrid smoke of Gauloises and Gitanes, an odour — Mike is wearing Hai Karate. It mingles with patchouli oil and incense. Oh God, why did we come here? People stare as they find a table and sit, Madeleine in the middle between Jocelyn and Mike.
Mike leans across and asks Joss, “Are you a women’s libber?”
Jocelyn doesn’t bother to look at him. “That depends,” she says, smoothing her straight blonde hair behind one ear. “Are you a male chauvinist pig?”
Mike grins. “Nope, I’m a hippie, I believe in free love.”
“You’re a Neanderthal,” says Madeleine. “Move over.” Shoving him away.
Mike looks up and says, “Can I get a beer?”
The guy serving them pauses before answering, “We’re not licensed.”
“No problem,” says Mike, “I’ll have a coffee.”
But the waiter lingers. He stares at Mike. “Do you enjoy killing people?” he asks.
Madeleine stiffens, can feel the wooden wheels of the cart rattling beneath her feet, how many more miles to the stake?
Mike chuckles. “I don’t know, I haven’t killed any.” And turns away, unbuttoning his tunic.
“But that’s what you’re trained to do,” says the waiter.
He has no discernible hairline or facial features, he is all black curly fly-away and pasty white skin. He stares at Mike. Mike smiles, big fist relaxed around the car keys.
Madeleine’s long dark hair is parted in the middle; her peace sign, her tie-dyed peasant blouse, faded bell-bottom jeans and water-buffalo sandals — the sartorial reflection of her belief in passive, non-violent resistance. She says to the waiter, “Why don’t you go fuck yourself and, when you’re done, bring us three coffees and a spoon so I can shove it up your ass.”
Mike bursts out laughing.
Jocelyn says, “God, Madeleine,” and sinks in her seat, crossing her arms.
Madeleine has never noticed Jocelyn’s breasts before but she does now, they are perfectly round under her saffron T-shirt.
Mike says to the waiter, “Don’t worry, we’re leaving. Thanks anyhow, what do I owe you for the table?”
“It’s okay,” says the guy, “I’ll get the coffees.”
Madeleine is possessed by remorse for her behaviour. As well as by a yearning to burn something down, blow something up. She often feels this way, and has no idea how to square it with her personal politics.
On the tiny stage, someone is playing bongos and a woman has started reading poetry in a slow downward cadence.
Madeleine’s sociology teacher sent her essay on Canada’s war guilt in Vietnam to the newspaper. In it, she calls for a boycott of Canadian companies that supply the American military-industrial complex, manufacturing everything from bullets to green berets, Agent Orange to ration packs, and employ one hundred and forty thousand Canadians. She entitled it “Workin’ for the Yankee Dollar.” It was published, and her father was proud, for even though he does not entirely agree with her point of view, “dissent is the well-spring of democracy.”
“‘The country beneath the earth has a green sun and the rivers flow backwards,’” reads the poet—
Burning huts and burning people, naked crying children. Her brother is going over there to do more of it.
—“‘the trees and rocks are the same as they are here, but shifted. Those who live there are always hungry—’”
He will participate in the obscenity of war, even though he will not participate in war crimes — but this war is criminal by its nature, so where is the line? She looks at his hands. Will he kill someone with them? Someone’s brother? She watches him sip his coffee and tilt his head the way Dad does, listening to the poetry. She is terrified for him. Disgusted. And envious. Nothing adds up.
—“‘from them you can learn wisdom and great power, if you can descend and return safely….’”
When the poet finishes, Mike applauds and turns to Madeleine. “That was great. I mean it.”
Life is a series of random events, there is no such thing as morality, there are only collective delusions, occasional leaps of faith, and feats of self-interested discipline that prevent people from exploiting one another all the time. This is what she and Jocelyn talk about on Friday nights while listening to Ladies of the Canyon. By three A.M. they have dug out The Beach Boys and are talking about sex. Jocelyn has gone all the way. Madeleine has not.
Jocelyn winds the beads of her choker around her finger and leans her ear close to Mike’s mouth to hear him above the bongos. She has a habit of covering her mouth when she laughs. She reminds Madeleine of Lisa Ridelle. There are really only about five people in the world.
“Is he your boyfriend?” the waiter asks Madeleine, appearing with a carafe of coffee.
“No, he’s my brother,” ready to go another round.
“Do you want to come home with me tonight?”
She looks at him. Guys are amazing. He’s giving her the look she has noticed lately. The one that gives her no room to look back.
“I’m around,” says the waiter, and moves off through the tables.
Mike takes Madeleine’s cup from its saucer, slides it under the table and tips a silver flask over it. He does the same with Jocelyn’s, then his own.
They wind up across the river in Hull. At two in the morning, on the Québec side, she jives with her brother to a rockabilly band howling James Brown in French accents. The lead singer is skinny with prematurely false teeth and a cowboy hat. He plays accordion—“Get up there and show ’im a thing or two,” says Mike.
No one in this bar gives them any attitude about Mike’s uniform, or raises an eyebrow at the sight of him with two underage hippie chicks. The clientele ranges in age from under to way over; guys from the pulp and paper mill, university students who chain-smoke and speak more intensely to one another than the students on the English side of the river — they’re messier and sexier too. There are secretaries and factory girls in low-cut polyester party dresses and slingbacks — they may have heard of women’s lib but they probably don’t care. Above the bar, a portrait of the King in uniform: Elvis as a GI.
On their table, a forest of “gros Mols”—tall brown quart bottles of Molson’s beer — and here and there an empty chaser of Jack Daniel’s, “dead soldiers,” Mike calls them. He doesn’t say another word in English all night. Jocelyn keeps hollering to Madeleine above the music, “What’s he saying?”
“He said, ‘My girdle’s killing me.’”
“No, come on, what did he say?”
Mike goes to the bar; the band plays “Havin’ Some Fun Tonight,” Madeleine grabs Jocelyn and they polka furiously.
Madeleine hollers over the music. “He said, ‘Join the Marines. Travel to exotic far-off lands, meet interesting people. And kill them.’” Jocelyn screams with laughter. They hurtle into the table of empties; tall bottles topple and roll like bowling pins; a waiter with a Brylcreemed bouffant and the face of Methuselah springs into action, scooping them up, and they order another round.
Jocelyn lounges at the table wearing Mike’s uniform hat as Madeleine jives with him, shooting at high speed between his ankles. He spools her back and forth to “Jailhouse Rock,” compliant spaghetti at the end of his grip.
Mike is a good dancer; always out of step with his own generation but popular at weddings, those Sunday afternoons with Maman have paid off. His tie is loose, shirt untucked at the back and patched with sweat, his face aglow.