He awoke gingerly. What state was he in? Which state? Which of his estates? — it was better to put it that way. The answer was given when, at the same time, he asked himself if he shouldn’t get up immediately and go down to the Place. Make immediate reconnaissance tour.
He didn’t need to — the Place lurched ominously out of his gut — the place … the Church, the Greyway, the Great White Elephant … the whole caboodle in him … had obviously never left him that night, but remained couchant within him. It wasn’t a question of a memory, or a souvenir, of a recollection. Not in the slightest. It was the Place, the entire Quartier — old and new — that staggered forward in him. Plied every organ in his body. It tilted in him, and he rolled with it, over to his left. And then straightened out. He shuddered … the Place was clearly within his own inmost keep. He had taken the outposts, had even in part taken the Place … but it had equally taken him. It was tit for tat. He wondered if any victory then would be Pyrrhic. Or a stalemate. Either one was defeat for him.
He rolled over again … wondering how to extrude this presence in him. How to protect himself from it. He knew that once his lines had been breached this way he was endlessly vulnerable. And he felt vulnerable as he lay there. Utterly. Crunch of bones was railwayshunt was truck loading bottles in nearby alley was the Greyway vertebrate in him was his back cracking under the strain. Fart of carhorn, roar of motors … a jungle rumbling him. It was all amplified in him — and it all amplified. So that every sound was present in him the way the Place was … an invasion on all fronts. It all detonated inside him … and threatened to detonate him. Everything thus was immanent in him … immanent in the way disaster is immanent — one feels it pervasive, in every pore, every orifice — tickling one’s nostril that is one’s cunt that is one’s assoul that is cocktit is fingercock is toetip is kneedcapcocked is earcunt is — Immanent in the sense that the medieval men must have felt the immanence of God — awesome presence inescapably enveloping them. It was a state of being — it was one of those states, “estates,” he was reconnoitering here in the Place now. It was infinitely dangerous — if ever it ran amok in him, he was done for — had no line, no further defined line of desistance. So he clamped down. Asshole tight shut, cock shrunk like a boned aborigine dead head, ears muffled, nose clenched…. He closed the bulkheads.
But that was no solution — it simply achieved the stalemate he feared — the consecrated impasse. He groaned. No he would have to feel his way through (he nearly said “think his way through” — but it was in no sense a question of think-through … think-through was simply fall-out … it evaded the issue … any issue by eliminating the problem at the outset. Think-through was merely a proxy death — coward’s soft suicide!) — feel his way through. Hubnub now with cocktit he fingered ruminant — cocktit flaccid but candescent. At once perceptor and screen. At once receptive and defensive. Amplifier but not amplified now.
No munificence … no magnificence … merely acquiescence in the awesome immanent. But the words were irrelevant. Merely precise labels of the fact — prophets of the fait accompli: archaeological.
Groan. Another car shattered in him. Another driver burning himself out in him through his own exhaust pipe. God — another day. He wondered if he could stand it. Why not give in. His sensibility was ruptured. After all, one could suffer from a sprained sensibility as much as from a sprained ankle. He did. And it was just as explicit. Just as pangful.
Cockglower still flaccid — scared flaccid. When he used to be scared gloriously stiff. And he realized that his potence as a man was linked in some mysterious way with the Place itself, the Greyway, the Churchnave, the whole bag of tricks. Hubnub some more … burnish the lamp…. His whole relevance lay in the Place … his capacity to believe, to feel, to think anew, to be.
For a moment he envied his friends who lost themselves in business … thought of the trio he had seen last night in the Fournil — incredible: their entire communications system revolved about the politesse and the inner politics of business … they talked of boilers the way one might of women — if one were boiler-centred.
Or of his acquaintances who had gone on the university — taken their Ph.ds … what a wonderful solution that was — everything labelled, organized, detached — or rather, in order stood: detached, organized, labelled…. It was such a neat solution to the problem. It offended no one. It touched no one. But it wouldn’t do — it was at best nature-morte, still-life … life absolutely immobilized. Any man who could in earnestness undertake a Ph.d. wasn’t a man … not a man at all — he was simply cataloguing, step by step, his own accredited impotence. He became a civil servant with facts as memos. A new kind of intellectual super-drone. The feat was a simple one … a coward’s martyrdom. Anesthetized martyrdom — painless.
No, the battlefront was right where he was now. In the Place. He dredged himself from bed — his flu had come back … he knew it was simply part of his vulnerability. He couldn’t cure himself by curing his flu. He would only cure his flu if he cured himself … and La Place d’Armes held the key to that cure.
15 push-ups; 15 toe-touches, palms flat to floor; a dozen knee-bends. Concession to the remnants of his body. And then the Combat Journal:
… am still transfixed — in no-man’s land … halfway between one estate and another. Unable to move. I realize now that I am still groping for the best mode of attack. And that up till now I have evaded the central issue. I have been too cautious — frozen flaccid by caution. There is no safe way. I will simply have to abandon caution. Abandon myself. Take the plunge. Realizing that I leave no escape route. Otherwise I risk all my forces in skirmishes. I’ll tidy up what is left in these next few days … and then make the central attack — must, or I am lost before I even have a chance to test my case.
10:20 a.m.
At noon he prepared to sortie again … he was to lunch with Norman Jameson, the head of a large Montreal publishing house. An extraordinary man … in every way. He was one of the few English Canadians, old line English Canadians, Hugh respected; respected infinitely. Norman was one of those bachelors who are devoted to their firm, their work…. Author of innumerable works (four of them) on old Montreal, he was one of the few men to remain faithful to the best values of old Montreal — Old English-Canadian Montreal. Despite the French-Canadian quiet revolution. It took some courage — moral courage. Hugh wondered how Norman would seem now … would relish him, the new demissionary … the Hell-bent Heaven-seeker. He wasn’t sure. And the uncertainty dazed his momentarily stable world. Down to remove his bowels before leaving — sleek majestic turd — 10" uncircumsized: what came out could always go back in he thought…. It was just a question of putting Humpty Dumpty together again … of putting the Cube together again, or the man … a question of circling the Cube.
The taxi took him through the Square … he had deliberately asked him to do so. “Voilà la Place, Monsieur.” … The Canayen presented it to him like a large patate frite. Hugh saw nothing. One never sees anything from a taxi. Except other taxis, and the backs of buses. It was like driving through a tunnel. He saw only the ankles of the buildings.
Norman was in good form — in his preferred setting, the old Queen’s Hotel! — listened to his tale patiently — and then for an hour they talked of Thomas Browne’s Religio Medici, of the Urn Burial, of his phrase “we live by an invisible sun within …” … of “the peace of God which passeth all understanding….” And Hugh flowed with the ritual…. He had forgotten all that. Forgotten St. Augustine’s two cities. He realized now that Norman was in effect a modern monk and saint. That these men still existed. They were eternal…. And by the time lunch had finished Hugh was, like Thomas Browne, bursting forth with serenity. That serenity he had forgotten. Yet had once known. Was re-armed with it.
He stared back with this renewed weapon, to the Place. And met an old school friend en route — Allan Nisbet … both products of the same Anglicanadian Cultural Establishment School. Allan nabbed him for coffee … they had never been friends. Obviously Allan was bored with life, or frightened, or both. Hugh accepted the coffee … and listened to him intently — watched him start in to talk … and then, suddenly aware of Hugh’s silence, of the fact that Hugh was listening intently, Allan stopped, stopped significantly short of himself. And Hugh was then aware of what it was he was really noting … this lack of the presence that he habitually found with the French Canadians … presence of body as presence of mind. Allan simply was not there … could not present himself…. It wasn’t that he evaded the issue. He simply stepped outside it, beyond it, by talking in terms of political reforms, or committees or renewed administration. He talked earnestly about these … but the significant thing was that they all fell outside the central question — the question of Allan’s very presence, the magnitude of his human fact. It was that which Hugh missed abruptly. And just as abruptly Hugh knew that Allan wouldn’t have it … no matter how long they talked. For another ten minutes he sat listening to this indifferent man talk about indifference … about the end of English-Canadian apathy — sat watching him limpidly mouth these truths that his own still-life falsified. They talked briefly about Jameson whom Allan had met on various occasions. “He’s not the man of the future,” said he…. “No,” mused Hugh aloud, “He’s timeless … ‘men of the future’ are all future men of the past.” As he left Allan swung out to give him a conscientiously virile handshake — it was like an awkward teenage sideblow in the boxing ring. Hugh caught it on the way past — saving Allan the immanent embarrassment of not having landed it in the right place at the right time (a blind blow meant to prove what it refuted — his vitality). And Hugh was en route back to the Square. He stopped in at the newspaper on the way — long enough to have undermined any superficial glow from Norman’s outburst of serenity … and then walked to the Square.
It was 5:35 p.m.Temp. 35° F. Already dark dusk…. The Square was there beyond any shadow of doubt. It was decisively there. He did not have to reach out to palp it, to feel it out — nor did he have to defend himself from it this time. Neither. It was simply there. Immutably there. It was there with a remarkable overall clarity, And he rejoiced in it. Rejoiced calmly in the lucidity of the buildings themselves — corporate presence in himself … unquestioned. And then suddenly he realized that there was something strange about it. Because what he was seeing was the complete Square, and seeing it in terms of the buildings — of the substance of the buildings. He couldn’t see any details. There were no details upon which his eye rested unbidden. Quite simply the totality of the Square was present. Concretely. All that he saw was everything. Secondly — equally strange — while what he saw was the solid format of the buildings, yet it was just this — just these forms that were least visible when he started to dissect the Square to detail it. In fact the sky was then more visible than the building forms — and in the buildings themselves the visible fact was the bright nightlit windows. Yet he had not seen either of these upon entry this time. He had seen and felt the deep calm substance of the buildings of the Square … and had seen them whole. Yet by all rights that was not what he ought to have seen. And then he realized what it was he saw … he had seen Norman there … it was that “outburst of serenity” — that deep serenity which he saw, which had depicted the Place to him. Which had dictated how and what he saw. “The peace of God which passeth all understanding….” He remembered Norman’s phrase in support of the world that he knew in his best moments.
He looked again at the Square — this time he saw the still candescent dusk limning the building tops, and the ignited windows. And at the same time he saw his first impression — the corporate presence of the Square itself in the buildings — the outburst of serenity.
He walked across the Square to the Church and entered. This morning he had phoned down to the hotel desk for some tea. “Pas de service aujourd’hui monsieur …”
“Comment donc? Pas de service?”
“C’est fête aujourd’hui …”
“Fête de qui et de quoi,” he had asked petulantly …
“Féte de l’Immaculée Conception …”
“Ah, oui, j’en avais entendu parlé de ça….” With a phrase he annulled the grenouilles de bénitier. Now he was at the Mass of the Immaculate Conception. And felt the privilege. He went in to the full Church, made his way to the front and sat down. He watched the priest at the altar … he was raising the Host. Hugh watched not daring to analyse what he was feeling … lest he lose it. And again it was the same thing … the complete corporeal presence of the Church…. When the priest moved the Host around the chalice he felt his own flank limned…. He sat — fragile but firm — knowing that so long as he did not think of what was happening to him it would continue to happen … that so long as he did not molest with words or thought this event, then it would continue to happen to him, and he continue to be an organic part of it. He would be, physically, part of the picture that was being painted. He held his breath…. Once again as on Sunday, the congregation sifted forward to the communion rail. He almost followed. But he didn’t want to fracture the porcelain precision of his own participation. People — ordinary people … with ordinary clothes. Kneeling. And then returning with God in their throats. What a startling, munificent victory it was…. He could feel it for them. And rejoice in it…. After the service he went up to the altar — in his duffle coat, Le Devoir tucked under his arm — and kneeled … the sheer luxury of kneeling, publically and simply, kneeling. Without being in “court dress” of Sunday Best. He eyed the altar that simply occurred in him. And again he realized that it was the “serene outburst” that he had received, intravenously from Norman, As he left, he noted that the forms, the ogival gorgeous gothic, reminded him of San Marco in Venice. While some of the work on the pavilion over the entry … including the clock, reminded him of Harrods of London. Data, mere data. The important thing was to know that in this building there was all the space, the movement, the munificence, that he needed to live … that he needed for fulfilment. Here space and time flowed together corporately … and not excorporately, as in the new buildings. At lunch Norman had said that modern society downgraded death … here death was upgraded again, because life was upgraded. Here the problem of resurrection was posed, and resolved, in palpable visual terms. The building defined the man it saved.
Outside it was dark. The traffic roared harmlessly by the Church front, shadows on the wall of the vaulted Square…. He turned east down Notre Dame Street following the roaring shadows into the spectral limestone of court house, City Hall and Nelson’s Monument…. His sore throat had completely vanished. Till he thought about it.
I’m still flubuggered. It’s been chasing me for a month now. Lying in wait for my vulnerabilities. Can’t afford to let it get me now. It would completely uprootle my campaign. The danger lies in this fact: the more capable I am of really seeing La Place … of really penetrating it, the more I seem vulnerable to everything — including flu: everything penetrates me at the moment I penetrate everything.
— my visit to the Square was successful again today. Thank God — I was beginning to fear that the veil might have descended with permanent results. As it is I seem able to thrust it aside. But it is hard — each time I feel rent … over-exposed, endangered.
— returned to my hotel after dark (I no longer have anything other than a mechanical knowledge of time … hours elide) — and tried to rest. Studied the Bartlett print of the Interior of Notre Dame “Cathedral,” ca. 1835. I’ve had it for nearly a week now. My “tourist map” of the innards of the Church. An inner eye available at need. Less a question of looking at it … or even into it, than of its presence in me … learning by exposure.
I have known about the print for a long time — at least ten years. But now I realize how bad it is — at least in terms of the Church. (Bartlett’s publisher was mistaken — it never was a ‘Cathedral’) as it is today. I realized this as I entered the picture, oblivious of the preacher in the high pulpit, on the left side, made my way to the altar, turned at right angles across it, and came back down the right side of the nave, to turn again at right angles, now confronting the preacher. I never looked up at the vault. In fact my experience in Bartlett’s Notre Dame nave was a cubicular one. A rectilinear one. I was in essence entering an Anglican eighteenth-century Gibbsean church dressed up with cardboard Gothic. Bartlett had failed to insite the Church. The proof, quite aside from any changes in decor that there may have been since, is that the essential experience of the nave insofar as it is cubicular at all, is one of vertical upthrust. But even more important, the experience I feel more and more with it is one of warm liberation. While in Bartlett’s church I feel cameo constraint….
Dinner in the Cave again. It is deceptive in its habitant decor. Scraped pine chairs, coal-oil lamps without coal-oil. (I didn’t notice that until I went to pee — and standing at the bowl missed, in the lamp beside me, that oily sweat that inevitably gathers on coal-oiled lamps.) Out again to skirt the Great White Elephant … same effect as last night; but I’m still not prepared to cope with it.
Unable to sleep … lie enmeshed in the soundscape that blares and bleats around me. Absolutely vulnerable. Increasingly aware of the danger in these sounds. They take place in me … burgeon unmistakeably from this world around La Place that I eat into me…. So that any noise is knife or bludgeon, or pression in my gut. The noises come from within me — unexpected: any one could hara kiri me. It is terrifying. Yet I see no way to exorcize this reality. It is — after all — at once the reality I seek and against which I defend me. Two-edged sword … Damoclean!