He stirred to the dim realization of daybreak. But he was largely impermeable … almost completely protected against any incursion of sound or site. The White Raj had closed him down again. In fact he had to feel himself to make sure he was there at all…. It was not an entirely unpleasant sensation, to be impermeable — to be invulnerable and he thought of Blondebeeste. He almost luxuriated in the distant clatter of humanity, cars, buses (they would be going to Church), trains. Luxuriated in their detachment. That must be what those fraternity boys feel like — that is, they don’t feel anything at all. Impervious. He had been one once — what had he felt then … all he could remember is that any feeling was untoward — unmanly. Well, now, perforce, he could join the club. With the flu, he heard no evil, saw no evil, felt no evil. He was completely desensitized. (That is what it is like, then, to be a Cube — a condition of undeclared, subterranean flu!) He felt cocktit just to make sure…. It still purred: obviously there was a limit to what flu (and fraternities) could do to a man! Thank God.
He followed the purr — listened to it and as he did, as cocktit purred through to him the sounds of train clarified, and car … and the din of men — all these clarified … slowly, and then dangerously. He cut the purr — and the sounds died back…. He subsided into the comfortable anesthesia of his flu. And got up to shave for High Mass. Flu or no flu — there was still the Square. And if anything it was safer with this armament of desensitization.
He slouched down Notre Dame Street — waves of raw cold undulating in his wake. In the Square a demonstration had already started. Several hundred habitants in white berets placarded the central square. “Marie, Reine du Monde, priez pour nous,” “Michel Archange, aidez nous,” “25$ allocation familiale,” “les taxes sont un vol,” “Sacré coeur de Jésus …” … He watched with rising amazement this congregation of habitants. They were straight out of a Krieghoff painting, a century out of time…. Well-kempt peasants. Créditistes. They were the rag-tag ends of the old peasant-Church axis that had sustained Duplessis’ dictatorial power for nearly two decades. Behind them the Bank of Montreal rose significantly. The Bank had helped Duplessis too. In fact, symbolically enough, the marriage of English-speaking money and the French Catholic Church under Duplessis really meant the birth of the new skyscraping Banque Canadienne Nationale afronting the old Bank of Montreal. All this was foreshadowed in his mind before he turned away into the Church. He simply couldn’t deal with a pocket peasant revolution at the moment. There was High Mass to contend with.
As he wended his way down the unimpeded aisle to settle closer to the alter he was aware that the Church was once again unaccountably Bartlett. That is it was simply a cubicle, thoroughly overdecorated. A distanced cubicle. One that conveniently took place outside of him. Like the habitant demonstration — something he could take or leave. In fact something that he couldn’t “take,” but perforce found he had left. He was outside of this interior. And as in Bartlett’s print he could wander in leisure as though in some public mall. He tried again … to see the Church. It was still untouchable. He concentrated his mind on the finials pendant from the balcony. All he saw was upside-down knobs from a pinball machine. Could even hear the bells jangling as the ball careened amongst these obstacles … it was the bell of High Mass. He forced himself to look at the High Altar. They were already well on in their public performance of Resurrection. But all he could see was a cooking demonstration. He wondered if so many cooks were necessary … and then presto, it was done — head chef lifted the lid of soufflé pot … it was ready, and the class went up for a taste … himself included … lined up at the rail — It was a bad batch, clearly, tasteless … Corpus Christi … le corps du Christ … Corpus Christi … the assistant chefs kept chanting. The Body of Christ! It was the Body of Christ … and as he returned to his seat he saw that the pinballs were loaded, and so was he … the pinballs lowered onto him, swollen into life…. And then the little man in the greyflannelette suit was on stage for the left-overs of the Body — caretaker-undertaker … carting off the corpse…. And Hugh was out into the Square where the pilgrims were already assembling, singing, the entire Square singing…. He instinctively assembled beside them … as they marched down la rue Notre Dame….
“all these Victorian façades dancing, rippling to their chant…. Vers Demain — Towards Tomorrow. The pilasters clench and spring in me, greystone coils that Michelangel me … till City Hall crowns our march, embodying all of us…. Vers Demain … woman beside me strings her rosary that leaps the whole musdement of City Hall into our fingers. And then we are bundling down la rue Bonsecours to the Sailors’ Church … its hulk in fecund convolution under the façade of Victorian Blondebeeste classicism drawn eclectic from the Marché beside (Blondebeeste — ah, that is why I couldn’t see Notre Dame! Blondebeeste battered me last night)…. I do not know when we pass from out to in except that suddenly I am pewed as their chant sculpts me with the hewn precision of the consecrated woodcarver…. Each phrase kneading me…. They are all seated now…. Absolute habitants … across the aisle, and to the front, a high head, with snood of hair and phallicitous nose is a glory inciting my counterpoint … chant: Marie, Reine du monde, nous vous prions … Marie, Reine du Monde…. Overhead the suspended ships suspend us, converge on the High Altar that draws my eye into its body and thus indrawn suffuses my site back throughout the Church till my eyeballs blaze at me from the overall corpus of the Church of us and I am inside my own sight radiant from the altar that is the Church that is the nose of that giant habitant head across from me that shakes its mane of hair over all of us qui prions Marie Reine du Monde together in an act that is patently a celestial public obscenity of worship. Glory be to God — and to that habitant’s nose…. A woman who is mutation of all those early nineteenth century primitive French-Canadian portraits solos us from the altar-rail … her shrill voice laps the entire Church in me, laps all of us, laps the altar that shifts to the cadence — the habitant blows his nose. Oh Christ — Mary, keep praying for us … just the same way! The bench under me shudders, and I clasp my Holy Turd steep in me re-embowelled like some Amen…. Bell rings — and pilgrims file past reliquary of Marguerite Bourgeoys at front left … stoop and kiss … stoop and kiss. I want to go forward, in them, to stoop and kiss this arsewhole of the world, this rosegilt bone under glass … kiss this historic Christian cunt … but I feel that it would either drop my soufflé, or rise my Christ. I don’t dare either — not now. I’ve had enough. Surely it suffices to be reincarnate? …
Intermission at the restaurant in La Petite Place … des Gouverneurs … that sparrowlegged waitress … who hawks about, infinitesimal predator. Marie, Reine du monde … pray for her! And then to rendezvous at St. Joseph’s Oratory … 2 p.m. — to follow the pilgrims assembling for the return of their Cardinal from Vatican Deux. Why? Because I can’t desist me … can’t rebut the gut of them that has pricked me … can’t turn that inner life off … not now. Life that is … that is La Place d’Armes in me…. All this is La Place. The wooing of the Place….The siteseer…. At 2:05 p.m…. I am whipping the taxidriver to the Oratoire….
Up unending stairs, up into the deep cave … pressing forward along the left aisle to the Cardinal … and cocked to all ears hear … know instantly that that man is more important to me than any other man has ever been…. What he says … there now — talking publically of love — he dare stand there in front of our crowd and talk love … “il est plus difficile de se laisser aimer, que d’aimer mème….” I stand by the front pillar, leaning against it…. “It is more difficult to let oneself be loved even than to love….” In his virulent red cap and gown…. Talks love, openly — imagine the Prime Minister talking “love,” or the president of the University of Toronto (other than of a release into free love for Methodists; too late for him! — thanks be to God.) Imagine any of my people talking love to thousands — talking it, and giving it as they talk! There’s the nub…. “We must learn how to love … learn how to give ourselves in love … learn anew….” Head reels, and vault thunders … eardrum split…. Cardinal now making the Host — recreating our bodies in that of his Christ … strain to see him … to see this Resurrection for us … if only I can see…. Chalice raised … bells again — This will be the Christ. I must get closer … slide out to the aisle, eyes strain … and as I walk forward youth walk toward me, walk untrammelled into my eyes, walk straight through and out my cocked hearsay … will walk away with me strung between his eyes — batten down hatches … cock-kill. And then the veil is down again … I turn — the Host is dead, the youth gone. I have just killed the Christ! Kill one, kill the other, kill all. Manslaughter. And all I see, ominous lurching forth into me, the giant crucifix freestanding behind the altar, standing in space, in this space, in the very way that I have felt all space so often these past days as I stalked my prey in La Place…. Then they are gone … Leger is gone…. And gone that little man-of-God who must have been the representative of my own Anglicanadian Church mustered here, on deck, to welcome the Oecumenical Cardinal on his return … could tell at a glance — the red of his cloth (Red Ensign red) as contrasted with that of the Cardinal (the red of the New Canadian Flag — flag for all us New Canadians — but the Cardinal’s red was for real withal: he put blood in it!) … and I am alone, with several thousand others in the thundercave….
Earroarings…. Everywhere I see sound … I reverberate endangered. Know my danger — know the signs. And as I turn, the great Crucifixion threatens to impale me, to engulf me — both at once … and I know I must save me from out this place — this Golgotha — save me at pain of … of instant (oh God, must I admit it again) … of instant life! And of that insanity that totters me like the crucifix now. At the back of the Basilica turn once more, to the site … to the insite, and then eject it from me, and bundle me down the escalator, only stopping at the distant bottom where I take respite in their Museum…. Exposition sur Saint Joseph … St. Joseph comes to Canada — St. Joseph and the Indians — St. Joseph everywhere — ad mare usque ad mare. All I can see is that Sainted Joseph. And — grace à Dieu — I don’t need to read the labels … because it is in front of my eyes: to see is to know. The Catholics are still object-centred. The written word hasn’t killed their sensibility — little do they know that plight of Protestants. Little do the young French Canadian anti-clerical revolutionaries yet know that it is their Church that has left them with the fingertits requisite for revolution … and then out … down all those steps, till I stand blinking in the snow, gazing back at this magniloquent udder clambering white up the mountainside. Like l’Eglise de Notre Dame de Bonsecours, it proclaims an external adhesion to arithmetic classicism … at the same time its body is rampant legerdemain in refutation of this. The Church is Christ’s body … incarnate.
Andrew returned to the Square … entered Notre Dame … and knew instinctively that the Oratoire St. Joseph had given him the key to the Place, to the Church here … but he didn’t say it, not even to himself … not yet. Because to have said it might destroy him in two ways — it might absolve him of the experience it described; or it might impose that experience now … and that he knew he could not sustain — not yet. The best he could do was dinner again Au Fournil. Where he joined up with a single man he had seen there before … the painter Michael Arnolid — they talked of meeting years before … of that German mistress he had had … and then Andrew felt able to broach his secret…. “I only see things if I hear them … and if I hear them they impinge upon me, predators, threaten to eat me … as I them. So that if I hear sufficient to see absolutely I am in danger of my life … absolute danger — so that to see is to touch, seeing becomes palpable, and everything palps me … the merest sight is insite is incest is love is threat of death that strikes brains as balls as it incites me to that expenditure of me which is fatal…. And now that I know, I know that not to hear is not to see, is to go blind, is to die inside me, is to be a living death.While to see — is to go mad….”
Michael knew what Andrew was saying … because all he said was “when I am like that I find a beautiful face, and I look at it! Otherwise I would go insane.” Andrew pondered that self-evident truth…. He remembered that night, going to George’s for impromptu dinner. And he knew now he had gone to gaze at a “beautiful face” — not a pretty face nor a handsome face — but a face that had beauty within itself…. And he looked at Michael’s face — an effeminate version of Humphrey Bogart — and knew that Michael’s soft, hurt, faceflesh was beautiful too … and that hurt — because here was someone else who commandeered his love … and he couldn’t give any more — not today. He had already been breached — wide-open — and then had clamped the gap closed when that youth had penetrated, shutting him out in a false prudence that abruptly ended his life there and then. Christkiller!
He thought of Michael’s art … of his sempiternal trees, and palpitant women…. And he knew that Michael had failed because somehow he had never quite confronted his cocktree. That failure was his success. His art.
The main thing was that Michael knew the world Andrew saw — took it for granted. It was a life-preserver … momentarily. And he remembered again the knife for his novel that he had never bought — and knew it was just as well….
“Have you ever had a Marc…?” And Andrew introduced Michael to his Marc — and felt absolved of the need to give that was implicit in their encounter. Only days later did he know that he should have given, more fully — and then he regretted it, too late….
After dinner he insinuated them into the company of an improbable couple behind them … a Lautrecian pair … d’un certain âge (so much better than merely “middle-aged”) — he hirsute silver hairless…. She like some aging prizefighter. Etienne Rivard … living his constant conspiracy of life … playwright-ordinary — human-extraordinary. More Marc … and converse. The story of Pierre Blais receiving the Governor-General’s award for literature, in Ottawa, saying that he was happy to receive this recognition as an accredited writer, from a foreign country. Of course the English-Canadian papers suppressed this pertinent lèse-majesté. And the bon-mot about Madame Vanier … the “soutient-George” … and Vanier as a “nouille.” But it was all so right — so hopelessly right; and once said seen … and once seen, irrevocable. He felt another iconospasm. Another God was ailing. Yes — insofar as Canada had a Crown it was a Queen Mommy … Victoria, Alexandra, Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth, mère et fille … Mme. Vanier: all Queen Mommies for the Anglo-Canadian Blandebeestie. Poor Pooh Bear! No wonder New Canadians champed at their bit.
… by 10 p.m. his perceptor set was jammed … he couldn’t receive another site. Photococky out of negatives. Blank.