The same day, Monday, December 20, 1998
Sergeant-Detective Emile Cinq-Mars drove deep into the hinterland, through towns known to him as a child and across the hills, fields and woods of his youth. He was moving toward his family home, where his father continued to live, in the village where they had both been born, St.-Jacques-le-Majeur-de-Wolfestown. If the winter roads stayed clear, the trip would take less than two hours, driving west and north from Montreal. His heart was heavy, the journey a sad one, for he knew it might be his last trip home with anyone there to greet him. His father was dying.
The senior Cinq-Mars, Albert, had argued his way out of hospital, demanding the dignity of death in his own house, in his own bed. Imagining the scene did bring a rise to his son and caused the corners of his lips to curl upward. He sympathized with the doctors and administrators trying to reason with his father, only to be rebuffed in no uncertain terms. Albert Cinq-Mars held no illusions about his circumstances—in a short time he would die—but as a gesture of both courage and dignity, perhaps also as a tribute to his own life, he had insisted on choosing the environment for the great event. It was almost, his son was thinking as he drove— and this part did not cause him to smile—as though his father wanted to turn his passing into an occasion.
Albert had called his son to let him know that if they were to talk again it was now or never. If they had anything more to say to one another, this would be the moment. “Emile, leave the thieves to count their loot in peace. Let the murderers sleep unmolested for a night, it’ll give them time to reflect. Who’s not worthy of a day’s rest? Come on home, Detective, visit your old man.”
‘‘What’s up, Papa? You know how it goes. I’m kind of busy right now.”
“I’m busy too, Detective. My bags are packed. My passport’s been stamped. I’ve accepted an invitation to knock on St. Peter’s Gate, and apparently there is no time but the present. Christmas, you know, Christmas will be hectic. Even for those of us at death’s door. Come before. I don’t want to take chances.”
“Papa—?” He immediately felt burdened, by the impending loss, by his silly excuse to delay a visit.
“One month. Next month. I’m betting on the one after that. If I lose, how does the winner expect to collect? In other words, I can’t lose. For the time being, Emile, I’m home.”
“You’re home? The hospital discharged you?”
“I insisted. I have a nurse. I want to die in the house where I was born. You know me, I value symmetry.”
Symmetry. Wasn’t it just like his father to cling to modes and concepts even as his hold on life lapsed.
Driving into St.-Jacques-le-Majeur-de-Wolfestown, Emile Cinq-Mars braced himself. This was not yet the time for grief, he reasoned, that hour lay ahead of him. Obviously his father remained alert, as crafty and as philosophical as always. Tears later. Now, final words. Words from the heart.
Emile Cinq-Mars parked alongside the curb in front of his father’s house. The driveway, which ran along-side the cottage to a tumbledown garage in the back, had not been shovelled recently, and likely would not be again for the season. Certainly the old man had nowhere to go. Presumably a neighbour was keeping the short walk and the stairs clear. Typical of Quebec architecture, the steps started almost at the curb, for in this climate no one wanted to shovel much. The detective climbed the stairs of his childhood home, invaded by a sense of that distant time, a poignant memory of his father as a young man meandering inside him, and a sense also of their love for one another—patient father, rambunctious child; proud father, world-weary adult son—resting upon his shoulders, his sensibilities, his heart.
The detective went inside without knocking.
His first surprise, although he should have expected it, was that his father had had his bed moved down to the living room, the sunny space just off the small foyer. He would negotiate the stairs to the second landing no more, and here he benefited from heightened stimulus. The broad window onto the street kept him entertained, as did the nearby television, while fragrant aromas emanating from the kitchen were a short drift away. Down here, Albert had no ready access to a toilet, but if a nurse was attending to him full time he had probably been reduced to using a bedpan anyway.
Emile went in quietly, not wanting to wake him.
The old head lay softly upon its pillow, hardly making an impression. The face was thin now, the hair as white as the snow outside. He seemed calmly asleep, despite the clutter of an intravenous bag overhead and the oxygen tanks attached with precious lifelines to his nostrils. A step caused a noisy creak, and Emile stood still. His father’s head lolled to one side and the eyelids fluttered open. Before a word, before, it seemed, recognition, a smile appeared. No matter who had entered his vicinity, Albert would have a smile for the intruder. If Death arrived this noisily, Emile Cinq-Mars speculated, his dad would greet him with a grin.
His eyes blinked rapidly, as though to dispel a haze, or decipher conflicting information. “That you, Detective?” his father asked. “You’re about the right height.”
“It’s me, Papa. How are you?”
“Sleepy. Well. Come closer, Emile.”
At first, Albert could not lift his arm for a handshake. Emile leaned down and kissed his father’s cheek, then held his father’s hand. After a few minutes he felt the old man’s strength emerging from his sleep. The large, bony hand squeezed his, and they remained in that position for more than ten minutes until Emile stood and finally removed his winter coat.
He went through to the kitchen then and met the nurse, who was playing solitaire. She hadn’t heard him come in. Cards had never been allowed in his father’s house when Cinq-Mars was a boy, and he reflexively thought to object, catching himself in time. Not only would he sound silly voicing the prohibition, but his father would probably storm an objection, for not all the interdictions of his youth had withstood time’s test. Few, in fact. Cinq-Mars poured tea for himself and his father and brought the cups through to the living room on a silver tray, an activity that awakened a sadness of a different order, for it evoked the routine of his mother bringing the tea in to her husband on the same tray. She’d been gone now for almost a decade.
“Papa. Tea.”
“Splendid!”
Cinq-Mars worked the crank that raised the top of the bed, bringing his father up to a sitting position, and pulled up a chair for himself. He poured the tea and the two men drank quietly in the familiar, warm comfort of the house.
“Emile,” Albert Cinq-Mars began. “I’ve been meaning to tell you something.”
The French language had always been vital to Albert. While he was familiar with the local dialect, he had been very particular about proper diction, exact pronunciation, and the correct use of words. That lifelong discipline now stood him in good stead. Although his voice was frail and dry, and he was obliged to pause at length to catch a deeper breath, not once did he slur a word. His lips and tongue found the precise elocution for each sound. His diction alone, Cinq-Mars was thinking to himself, could grease his way into Heaven.
“I’ve been meaning to tell you something myself,” he said to his father.
“I will go first,” the old man announced. “I’ve been thinking about this since your mother died. You were so sad at the funeral, Emile. As devastated, I would say, as I was. Rarely does one think of oneself in these terms, but I realized then that some day my own passing would cause you grief. It is the way of the world, but when you are a father, it is easy to forget what that means to the son.”
“I will grieve for you, Papa. I’m grieving now. I can’t help that. Nor will I resist it. But you understand grief, you’ve grieved for others. I’ll come out of it. I won’t forget you, but I’ll emerge from my sorrow.”
“Yes, yes,” Albert recited impatiently, “but you are jumping to conclusions, Detective, always one of your faults.”
Cinq-Mars smiled. The soul endures, he was thinking. This soul is no more near death than one yet to be born. “Go ahead. I promise not to interrupt again.”
“Thank you. I used to tell you, Emile, that I had wanted to be a priest. I used to encourage you to be a priest yourself. I wanted you to have the life that was denied me.”
Cinq-Mars knew the story well. War had interfered with his father’s vocation. He had decided to go to war, that was his moral choice in response to the conflagration in Europe, although it was not the popular one in Quebec. By the time he returned, which was before the war’s end due to an injury which had not occurred in battle, his younger brother was enrolled in a seminary, his own father was ailing, and he had to assume the mantle of the family provider. Before he knew what was happening to him, Albert had fallen in love and married, and had a child on the way.
“I realized, at the time of your mother’s passing, and I don’t know why I did not see this sooner, that all my life I had been saying a cruel thing to you.”
“Papa—”
“You promised,” Albert shot back.
“Sorry. Go ahead.”
“Saying that I would rather have been a priest—how was that understood? Did my wife think that my marriage to her was, for me, a poor substitute for the Church? Did my son think that I would rather he had not been born?”
Cinq-Mars gazed into the eyes of his father then, until his father was the one who turned away.
“The life I lived,” Albert Cinq-Mars stated once he had again found the strength, “was the life I was meant to live, one far richer than the one I had imagined for myself. I have been blessed. My wife. My son. I was never deserving of such riches.”
With his hand on his father’s cheek, Cinq-Mars wiped a tear away with his thumb. He leaned forward when he felt that he had attained sufficient emotional control, for he knew that he wanted to tell him something, and not lose the force of his words to either grief or sentiment. He whispered in his father’s ear. “You are the father of my being. I have lived a life very different from yours, but you have always been my pilot. I love you. Thank you.”
Minutes later, after the nurse had taken away the cups, Albert beckoned for his son’s attention once again. “I need a favour, Detective.”
“What would you like, Papa?”
“I need you to be a detective for me.”
Cinq-Mars was understandably puzzled. “Why? Is something missing? Have you been robbed?”
“Emile, I thank God that you did not become a priest. The Church finds itself in disrepair these days. I am glad, that you, like me, remain with the Mother Church, to keep her upright, but what a depressing place it can be for a priest! Around here, there are so few priests. Many parishes are vacant. Others are inhabited by nincompoops. Emile, my time is close at hand. When I receive extreme unction I want the words spoken by a man who believes them. I want them spoken by a priest who is a man of God, not some molester of infants. Emile, be my detective. Travel about the countryside. Find the nearest priest who will be adequate.”
“Adequate?” the son asked.
“Who will not offend me. I do not wish to spend my last moments alive obliged to berate a priest. Or to bite my tongue to keep myself from doing so. I’d prefer to be comforted by a good man’s sincerity than made furious by his ineptitude.”
Cinq-Mars nodded. He understood. “I will find you a priest, Papa.”
“Thank you, Detective. It won’t be easy. If anyone can, it’s you. You know, don’t you, that I am proud of my detective son?”
Cinq-Mars held his father’s hand in both of his. “When you first started calling me ‘Detective,’ Papa, I sensed a certain disdain in your voice. Don’t worry. You haven’t fooled me. As the years went by, I heard the change of tone. I know that you’ve been proud of me.”
The old man shrugged, wanting, Cinq-Mars could tell, one last jibe. “Who could not be proud? You were on television.”
They both chuckled, but what saddened Cinq-Mars, what caused the tears in his eyes to flow freely, was the realization that they had said what they had intended to say, and their conversation was over. Their words had been spoken. At least his father, always his pilot, had given him work to do. His father had delivered him from the helplessness of idly waiting for a loved one to die and given him an important chore.
He grabbed a sandwich in the kitchen and questioned the nurse on his father’s condition. She assured him that his pain and discomfort were being managed. Grateful for that, Emile Cinq-Mars left to track down a worthy priest. He brought to the assignment the same determination he’d have employed in chasing down a notorious criminal, and before the day was out, he had found his man.