I’VE COME THROUGH MONTREAL by train. Things have finally settled down on the health front, and I’m going up to our summer cabin to get some concentrated work done. Brian will drive the car and catch up with me on the weekend. It’s been a while since I’ve visited the city, and I’m curious to see Casey’s new place.
The apartment is back in Mile End, a few blocks from where he used to live on Jeanne-Mance. A neighbourhood full of beautiful girls on bicycles. He’s sharing with two women his age with messy bedrooms who have painted the kitchen a great shade of red. It’s only a sublet, but that might change.
His new room is long and spacious, with blond wood floors and tall windows that open wide and have no screens. He demonstrates, standing on the ledge.
“Montrealers don’t worry about suicide,” he says merrily.
I haven’t seen him since Christmas. He’s been following a post-breakup health and sanity program—swimming, biking, working on various job proposals. He’s got a contract doing some archiving for a film company downtown. It’s heavy on the data-processing but leaves him lots of freedom.
He looks good, clear-eyed. New jeans, too, I notice, for the office. He has some money in the bank now and has bought a bottle of wine for my arrival,which we open.
A tour of his room: the main feature is an organized cockpit of turntable, amplifier, recording stuff, beside a clean desk. His headphones hang neatly from a nail in the wall.
“The whole thing about work, I’ve figured out, is appearances,” he says. “When the job has no actual content, which mine currently doesn’t, all that matters is that you look busy and dress appropriately.”
Before I left Toronto, I had resorted to a diagnostic tool I don’t often use these days. I consulted the I Ching. Very 1971 of me, I realize. And yes, it’s a military-minded text with antique views on gender, but I’ve always found something useful in the readings. They tend to throw a fresh light on whatever is uppermost in my mind, regardless of what question I ask. Usually my question is “What’s going on here?”
I tossed the coins six times and arrived at the 48th hexagram, The Well, with two “moving” lines. It’s always good to get moving lines, because they offer more specific commentary and indicate change.
The reading described a situation where a communal well was under construction but couldn’t be used until the town around it became more organized and the well was properly cared for. I read the text for the first moving line:
The well is cleaned, but no one drinks from it.
This is my heart’s sorrow, For one might draw from it.
If the king were clear-minded, Good fortune might be enjoyed in common.
Then the second moving line:
True, if a well is being lined with stone, it cannot be used while the work is going on. But the work is not in vain; the result is that the water stays clear.
In life also there are times when a man must put himself in order. During such a time he can do nothing for others, but his work is nonetheless valuable, because by enhancing his powers and abilities through inner development, he can accomplish all the more later on.
I sit down at his desk and look out the window, through the rain that is falling, at the grey stone apartments across the street and the spring garbage on the wet lawns. The curl of the black balconies down to the street, like diagrams of DNA. Montreal is so Montreal. Ten frames of a movie and you can recognize that it was shot here. Long ago Montreal imagined itself as bigger, more urban, more ambitious, and the mood lingers on. One block over is Saint-Urbain, Mordecai Richler’s turf. All the fireworks of Brian’s twenties took place here, a few streets away. It’s a city that asks to be written about, that makes you feel as if you’re in a story.
Casey calls up some of his music files on the computer and plays me some of the tunes he has been recording.
“They’re mostly quiet ones because I have to record them at night when there are people around. I’ll burn you a CD to take up to the cottage,” he says, pointing out the tall, handy stack of blanks. He starts scrolling through his list, choosing recent songs of his own. “I’m trying to sort out some of the more bitter ones,”he jokes.
He plays one, a spooky late-night blues called “Blessing in Disguise.” About the bad taking you into the vicinity of something new and good.
“Check this out,” he says, switching to some whirling Turkish numbers with an ululating female vocal. He turns and gives me one of his wide, blazing smiles as we both listen to the woman sing, riding the crazy waves of the music like someone on a Jet Ski.
It is raining hard outside, but we put on our jackets and walk a few blocks over to find somewhere to eat. People are in the streets despite the weather. On the corner is an Indonesian restaurant with white tablecloths, its windows rectangles of warmth and light in the rain. We step inside.