Edward Seymour gently unscrewed his
black fountain pen, the metal threads issuing a sound so familiar to
him, it was like a Pavlovian stimulus to write. He smoothed the pages
of his journal with the heel of his hand, and slowly swept the fine
nib along the blank paper, indigo ink etchings connecting the past
scribblings with the blank pages of tomorrow.
Monday October 29, 2012.
Isabelle Cloutier met me today. My
letter from Friday was successful. After meeting in the park, she
accompanied me back to the house for a quick cup of lemon ginger tea
and we sat in my office and talked for a few minutes before she had
to return to work. (Mary was on her way to a hair appointment and
dropped Isabelle off.) It has been a few years since we last met. She
looks well. Still strong-willed, ambitious, determined.
A photograph my old friend at Clark
University sent me many years ago caught Isabelle's eye. Having lived
with it for so long, it had become but another piece of furniture to
me; I hadn't truly looked at it for years. She was fascinated by the
gathering of the distinguished academics and psychologists standing
on the Clark University steps for the photograph. It was taken during
Freud's first and only visit to America, 1909. She of course
recognized the Viennese cigar smoker in the centre front row, the
eminence grise, but I pointed out Franz Boas, Edward Tichener,
William James, G. Stanley Hall, Ernest Jones and a tall, stalwart
looking fellow in a sharp modern-cut suit with modern tie and collar
standing to Freud's left. She didn't recognize him. Carl Gustav Jung
I said. She was taken aback not realizing he had been so big, so
robust. She'd only seen images of him as an old man sitting in a
chair with his pipe and reading glasses, one size down in his
two-piece suit. It is a remarkable photograph. Jung is very
relaxed in his pose: a wide stance, arms to his sides, his right
shoulder ever so slightly leaning down towards Freud as if in
deference. Jung stares at the photographer/viewer with seemingly
bemused patience. (Body of a football player like Penfield or Ernest
Rutherford). And William James in his old style clothes, with one
foot projected in front of him seemingly in a demand for attention.
Perhaps he thought the gathering could be traced back to his being
the teacher of G. Stanley Hall, who became the first PhD in
psychology and then president of Clark University and organizer of
the event.. James's eyes look quite faded and almost blurry in the
photograph. He only had a year to live. I wonder if he knew. And
Franz Boas on the end of the first row, a twinkle in his eye, like a
trickster. Perhaps he'd just been having a casual conversation
concerning psychical research with James. Oh, to have been a fly on
the wall. (A multi-lingual fly).
To think of Freud initiating a
disturbance of the sexual forces underneath the staid uptight New
England society of the day with its scientific bias, seems strangely
akin to Nabokov's in the late 1950s—and yet Nabokov, I seem to
remember, dismissed Freud as a . . . fraud. A twisted paradox for a
literary scholar no doubt.
Isabelle's revelations concerning
Ashemore plus this reanimated photograph stirred up a great deal in
me. She informed me that Ashemore had been monitoring the abuses of
scientific discoveries, methods of manipulation, and mind control,
the abuse of biochemical and acoustic antagonists. All very
reminiscent of the cold war efforts I lived through. I recalled my
early work under William Sargeant at St. Thomas's in London, and
later here at McGill, learning of Donald Ewen Cameron's work at the
Allan, the electroconvulsive therapies and paralytic drugs . . . No
wonder I decided to break away and start my own practice. It's
disheartening to learn such experiments are still being pursued, but
not unexpected. The other side of the moon. La face cachée. (I see
from my journal calendar it is a full moon this very night).
Isabelle is very sharp and capable,
and is rising in the organization—Marcel would be proud—but she
senses there are glass ceilings ahead. Progress, regress. Subject,
object. Those moments when the narrative of one's life reveals the
seam lines, plot structures and weaknesses, the figure in the carpet
fading, the disillusion in the dénouement.
She asked after Amelia. As I write
in this diary I wonder what Amelia will make of so many years of
these private journals with their private meanings and allusive
references. My acquaintances, friends, and patients often listed with
initials. Would she even risk reading them? I don't think I could
destroy the volumes after so much spirit expended. Perhaps she will
simply leave them on the shelves as decorative dust collectors. Or
would she box and store them away? I may have to broach the subject
or make a request attached to my will. Their ultimate fate . . . ? I
could imagine Amelia reading these words many years from now. It
might very well read like a Gothic novel. The professional cases, the
personal life, the musings, the mundane. Perhaps she'll use them as
sources for fictional endeavours.
Arthur Roquebrune will be bringing
Thérèse to see her Mother this afternoon. I instructed him and her
partner Jerome to be patient. I also mentioned that odours would be
excellent triggers to stimulate episodic memories, suggesting to
Arthur that a stop at a gas station might prove useful, the smell of
gasoline being such a powerful odour. Fried onions, bacon, brewed
coffee, pine scent, spices, vanilla , furniture polish . . . Perhaps
they will arrive to the odours of Thérèse's favourite recipe baked
or cooked by her Mother. The unique smell of her parent's home will
be significant in itself.
I forgot to note that Thérèse's
partner, the painter Jerome van Starke—an interesting young man who
seems familiar— provided an estimate for the cleaning of the old
portrait of my forbear hanging on the stairwell landing. He
mentioned how my distant relative resembled a friend of his, a writer
named Loveridge. We must all have our multiple doppelgangers roaming
the world at one time or another. Our quantum doubles in different
dimensions.
As Edward
closed his diary and leaned back in his chair, relinquishing reason
for the immaterial mysteries of his imagination, Mélisande Bramente
stood on a library stool helping a student locate a copy of
Eleusis: Archetypal Image of Mother and Daughter by Kerényi,
while trying not to cover herself in
residual dust from the shelves. A humdrum Monday had been transformed
by the half carat clarity of a diamond engagement ring into a day of
restless thoughts and inattention. She couldn't concentrate. She
couldn't settle down. When she had slipped that small platinum circle
onto to her finger she'd felt like the still point of a labyrinth
with the world spinning around her. Her co-worker, Manon, having
found her staring off into the near distance oblivious to the
questions of students, had suggested she go for a short walk to clear
her thoughts, but she had resisted, Eleusis, she
had said, required
locating. As she approached the circulation desk with the
mysteriously misshelved volume, Pavor Loveridge, safely in
his own apartment, was positioning the stylus over the second song of
a dark reflective record—his copy of Ultravox's Lament—ready
to touch the slow release and watch it descend upon the subtle
undulations of the vinyl like an enchanted snake. Adjusting
his headphones, he leaned against the window frame and stared through
the leafless branches and rested his eyes on the late autumn colour
of the climbing ivy wrapped around one of the old towers of the Grand
Séminaire de Montreal across the street. A camouflage embrace. Cars,
trucks and bicyclists made their ways east and west in a seemingly
endless stream of desire and necessity, and he wondered if he'd find
the strength to return to Italy. Mélisande had accepted his proposal
and now he wanted nothing more than to stay. The fact of having met
Jerome and Thérèse at the airport only reinforced this desire, as
if the two planes that had circled the airport with the three of them
as passengers, had set in motion an indeterminate fate. The
fact that Pascal Tessier (the art gallery owner) no longer required Pavor's apartment, having mended
his wayward ways and returned to his wife, had also seemed
fortuitous, (An African violet—a gift—had been the only
casualty.) He was relaxed, reluctant to travel.
What would he tell Fig at their meeting
at Schwartz's on Wednesday? He could almost see him turn the
colour of the smoked meat with the news. Perhaps he could arrange to
return to Italy in January. Have Mélisande visit for three or four
weeks in April or May.
As the music swept Pavor's thoughts off
their feet, Arthur Roquebrune was in the process of driving Thérèse
and Jerome towards Varennes to visit with her Mother. He'd been
anticipating the meeting with apprehension. Like witnesses to an
accident, they would have differing perspectives. Mrs. Laflamme would
likely experience anger towards him, a milder reproach towards
Jerome, and likely mixed feelings of guilt and frustration towards
herself in her relationship with her daughter. Jerome would likely
feel a sense of guilt and regret with a revived anger towards him.
Roquebrune felt only too deserving of his daily self-reproach, so
much so that it had beleaguered his dreams, a recurring nightmare of
rowing a small boat from one shore to another, but frustrated by the
weight of too many passengers aboard, Thérèse and Jerome among
them. He was barely able to move the oars. Passengers in he way,
walking from stern to bow, rocking the boat. He generally awoke with
the sense of taking on water. Restless nights leading to unsettled
days.
He wondered what Thérèse was thinking
or feeling as she sat beside him looking out the window. He looked in
the rear view mirror and noticed Jerome was transfixed by Thérèse's
reflection in the side mirror. A triangulation of loss.
Edward Seymour had suggested a
leisurely drive past areas she was familiar with, in silence, without
questions or prodding. Let her do the work naturally he had said. Let
her memory mend itself. So, Arthur had chosen to drive along
Boulevard Saint-Joseph past the duplexes and triplexes with their
exterior staircases reaching out like welcoming arms, then south on
rue St. Denis past the older buildings with their retail
establishments.
Thérèse raised her finger to the
glass. “Ah, Le Rideau Vert,” she said, remembering images
from a one woman play, Madame Louis 14, Jerome by her side.
When they drove past the bookshops of Guerin, Renaud-Bray,
and Ulysses, memories arose of browsing for travel guides,
biographies and presents for her Mother. Passing the Theatre
d'Aujourd'hui, the title of a play, La Liste, was roused,
a play she had attended with her girlfriends (white wine at the
intermission, long line to the bathroom). A blur of boutiques,
restaurants, and dépanneurs lacked familiarity yet stirred a
semblance of ones she must have visited. She nodded her head slowly
towards Carré St. Louis, its park bench denizens diminished
by the cooler temperatures. Down they drove and turned east onto
Sherbrooke Street, coming to rest, due to a red light, in front of the
Maison Arthur-Dubuc with its vibrant late Victorian eclectic
architecture. She stared at the three story bay window topped by a
Dutch gable, the Neo-Romanesque entrance porch with its polished
columns the colour of burnt orange, and the corner turret with its
pointed tower roof like a French Château and said “Dandurand,
Monsieur Dandurand once lived there. The wealthy businessman, real
estate developer. He named the area of Rosemont after his Mother,
Rose Phillips.”
Roquebrune felt a warmth flow through
him as he recognized the name as the wealthy businessman who owned
the house for many years. “Yes, the first owner of an automobile in
Montreal, 18 . . . ?”
Thérèse turned to him smiling,
“1899,” she said. He smiled back. There was hope.
Jerome was smiling too. “Yes, I
remember you wrote that article about the history of the Rosemont
District for the local newspaper. Your Mother must have all your
articles in a clipping file. They should help you remember.”
Thérèse turned to face him, smiling.
“Yes she does. Her bragging file.”
Passing the original main branch of the
Montreal Public Library across from Lafontaine Park brought up memories, thought images like old-fashioned slides upon a dining room
wall: walking in the park, feeding the ducks, the squirrels and
pigeons, listening to summer concerts, Saturday afternoon picnics,
children with toy sailing ships, an adult manipulating a replica of
the Bluenose by remote control; and the library, the silence,
the calm, the shadowed light—a Neoclassical building that now
housed a city arts administration centre named after the poet Gaston
Miron, whose book L'homme rapaillé she remembered reading but
not identifying with or completely understanding.
Duplexes, triplexes, restaurants, small
apartment blocks, stores, gas stations passed without a thought until
they came to rest at a red light beside the Chateau Dufresne.
“Do you remember our visits?” she
asked Jerome.
He leaned forward as much as the
seat belt would allow and touched her shoulder with his hand. “Yes,
yes, the opulent interiors, yes, of course. We wanted to live there,
sit in the chairs, at the desks, look out the windows, breath the
air. Those stain-glass windows and frieze's by Guido Nincheri, the
fine woodwork panels and floors, the furniture, the bronzes, that
oriental style smoking room and its double in Gothic. What an
extraordinary place. Two brothers living in a perfectly symmetrical
double Beaux Arts home divided by a common wall. We have to visit
again. We can relive it together.”
The light turned green and as they
advanced, they each glimpsed the leaning concrete tower of the Olympic
stadium in the near distance and Thérèse thought the observation
windows above the large rectangle retractable roof storage space made
it resemble a three eyed howling ghost, such a contrast with the turn
of the century mirrored mansion they had just passed.
Low rise commercial buildings dominated
as the neared the expansive Place Versailles shopping mall
where Thérèse had worked as a sales clerk in a clothing store for
many summers while a student. While she was remembering details of
her time there, Arthur realized he would have to make a series of
manoeuvres to gain access to the expressway that would take him south
on the Trans-Canada Highway leading to the Louis-Hyppolite Fontaine
tunnel under the St. Lawrence river to the south shore, manoeuvres
that would make it appear to Thérèse and Jerome he was lost and
making absurd choices, for he had to continue on Sherbrooke Street,
cross over the highway, take the first right south and circle back
north and make another circle and go back in the direction they came,
only to make but another circle and finally come round to the access
ramp to the highway, and at each turn, he would see the Loblaws on
the far corner and the retirement home complex behind where an old
friend of his had indeed retired, a pleasant apartment and
well-placed near shopping venues, but an end-of-life dwelling he
hoped he would never find himself having to surrender to, and here he
was circling and facing it like a sign from the future, retirement
home, retirement home, retirement home.
It was his desire to emulate Edward
Seymour in his hold upon independence. He'd rather die at his desk in
the home he'd lived in for thirty years than succumb to resignation.
It was also his hope he would die first. His dear wife would be
provided for and an upscale retirement home with excellent social
activities and quality meals would suit her well. Freedom from a
large house and its concerns.
As he took the final circle, Arthur
noticed the anxious looks from his passengers. “Don't worry, I know
where I'm going,” he said.
Jerome looked up towards the new
buildings of the retirement home and realised they were located
behind the old asylum where the poet Émile Nelligan had lived out
the last years of his life, now the modern Institut Universitaire
en santé mentale de Montréal. What
had caused the poet's breakdown? Was it a family dynamic? A Dublin
born father, David Nelligan and a French-Canadian Mother creating
emotional stresses? Or was it the unromantic chemical imbalance? The
expressways and highways hadn't scarred the landscape when he lived
there. There must have been fields, trees, church steeples, views of
the river and Ile Charron. The name of the small island always
brought to mind the mythological character of Charon, the ferryman of
the underworld. The thought that his childhood friend was drawn by
the frigid currents of the river past this island towards Varennes
seemed miraculous. Almost twenty years have passed since he leaped to
his death. Pierre. Pierre Sable. Had he been in love with Thérèse as
well?
As
they entered the tunnel, Jerome eased himself back into the seat and
closed his eyes, imagining Pierre's body floating above them,
watching their progress, following their path.
© ralph patrick mackay
No comments:
Post a Comment