Bluebeard's Seventh Door

By Andre Vecsei

Set in Canada and post-war Yugoslavia, Bluebeard’s Seventh Door begins with the celebrity funeral of Marie, the “Femme Fatale” of Westmount. The funeral is attended by a sensation-hungry crowd because the cause of death is suicide. Among the crowd is the novel’s main character, a womanizing musicologist. Conspicuously absent is Marie’s maid, Karin, an illegal immigrant who, like Scheherazade, has entertained the musicologist with sex and horror stories of World War II retributions.

The novel’s protagonist is a mass of contradictions: a philandering loner who can’t bear to be alone yet fears commitment; a social misanthrope entangled in other people’s lives; and a freelance intellectual who makes occasional forays into academia. Most of all and metaphorically, he is Bluebeard, opening “the seventh door of his castle” and facing the women from his past.

Bluebeard’s Seventh Door pokes fun at love, friendship and motherhood, at atrocities of history, success and failure. Author André Vecsei takes a probing look at our society and our souls, with a story that is rich in black humor and profoundly human.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Andre Vecsei
• Release date: Feb 7, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301862047

Andre Vecsei

Montreal architect André Vecsei (1926-2006) wrote this story during long sleepless nights. His abiding insomnia was brought on by ever-present memories of his Hungarian past, including imprisonment by the Gestapo and later by the AVO, the Hungarian KGB. From these experiences, he learned that life is never solely tragic nor comic; as in the Greek theatre mask, grief and laughter are always and forever omnipresent.

Book preview

Sex, guilt, music, Serbian-Croatian politics and the atrocities committed by the fascist Croatian Ustasha revolutionary movement during the Second World War figure prominently in Bluebeard’s Seventh Door, Andre Vecsei ‘s didactic novel which his wife has published posthumously. The title comes from one of the author’s favourite operas by Bartok in which pentatonic chords reminded him of The antagonism between men and women.

Alan Hustak, The Métropolitian

Andre Vecsei’s Bluebeard’s Seventh Door is set in 1970s Montreal and post WW II Yugoslavia. The novel begins with the protagonist, an accomplished musicologist, attending the funeral of the Femme Fatale – a Westmount socialite. This protagonist remains nameless throughout the novel which ads to his enigmatic charm. The story-telling emulates the structure of an unfolding musical opera – Bartok’s one act Bluebeard’s Castle – where Bluebeard is forced by his lover Judith to slowly open, one by one, seven forbidden castle doors – each a portal to a realm that explores a new facet of the human condition. In the end, Bluebeard is confronted with the ghosts and the wives of his past…

Mark A. Krupa, Montreal Serai

BLUEBEARD’S SEVENTH DOOR

by André Vecsei

Published by André and Eva Hollo Vecsei

Copyright 2013 Eva Hollo Vecsei

Smashwords Edition

Print edition available at http://bluebeard.micro.org/

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Cover page designed by Eva Vecsei & Catherine Vamos.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

TABLE OFCONTENTS

PRELUDE

The Funeral

CHAPTERS 1-26

A chronicle of love, lust and misadventure, set against the turbulence of early Seventies Montreal

And

The story of an execution in postwar Yugoslavia in 1945

Chapter One - Dinner with Ernie

Chapter Two - Never speak ill of the dead – but we beg to differ

Chapter Three - Dinner party in Westmount; loyalty and duplicity

Chapter Four - A foreboding follow-up

Chapter Five - Meet a girl handy with stalled cars and men

Chapter Six - A meeting of two conservative minds

Chapter Seven - A turbulent evening

Chapter Eight - The morning after, and the beginning of Gyoko’s story

Chapter Nine - The music and the foetus

Chapter Ten - A private sin is not so prejudicial in the world as a public indecency. Don Quixote

Chapter Eleven - In the age of wire-tapping

Chapter Twelve -A dream weekend encounters serious obstacles

Chapter Thirteen - More of Karin’s story: the camps, the Ultras, and Gyoko’s role

Chapter Fourteen - The Two Solitudes meet during an old-fashioned, lazy summer afternoon

Chapter Fifteen - A long-forgotten friend surfaces

Chapter Sixteen - History is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes. Voltaire

Chapter Seventeen - Liberation, repatriation and the road to incrimination

Chapter Eighteen - An abrupt end to Scheherazade’s nights

Chapter Nineteen - The beginning of a successful lecture tour

Chapter Twenty - Lust and long-distance longings

Chapter Twenty-One - Hope confounded— or, ethnic pride overcomes intellectual rigour

Chapter Twenty-Two - Ill luck seldom comes alone. Don Quixote

Chapter Twenty-Three - The story of the last will.

Chapter Twenty-Four - An involuntary rescue mission

Chapter Twenty-Five - The importance of being Ernie

Chapter Twenty-Six - Delay always breeds danger. Cervantes

EPILOGUE

Winners and losers

PREFACE

Behind the seventh door of Bluebeard's Castle

are the memories of the women he loved.

PRELUDE

The Funeral.

Montreal, September 1975

The girl beside me watched attentively as two flies copulated on the shiny, bald sphere of the man sitting in front of us. She was totally absorbed by the spectacle, furrowing her eyebrows not to express disapproval, but to observe the action more clearly. She moved her face slightly forward, until her head was about a foot from it. Above us, the choir sang a Gregorian chant, creating surreal background music as if to accompany the love scene of the flies.

Intrigued by her curiosity, I leaned forward. This was perhaps the first time in my life that I had observed the copulation of flies so closely. Nearness magnified some details. The male, on top, kept changing position, zigzagging back and forth, never achieving total parallels with the female. His spasmodic movement was like the jerky motion of a cartoon character, the rapid rubbing together of wings following every quick change of position, a mocking pantomime of human satisfaction.

The spectacle couldn’t hold my attention for very long. The girl’s pleasantly irregular profile with its flaring nostrils attracted me far more than the mating of the insects. I watched the keen interest on her face for a few seconds, trying to find some appropriate witticism to start a conversation. She didn’t look like one of the mourning relatives, so I decided I would try a humorous approach. I would pull her back gently, whispering that the wind created by her breath could cause a cruel coitus interruptus. I would say it very seriously, so it would sound funny.

I turned toward her and was about to make my overture when the man in front of us suddenly sneezed. This unexpected elemental calamity of their insect universe blew the flies apart. One zoomed back, barely missing the girl’s face; the other flew toward the catafalque containing, under its richly carved lid, the embalmed mortal remains of the Femme Fatale. As the girl pulled her head back from the escaping insect’s path, our eyes met and we smiled at each other. Of course, she knew that I had been watching her.

The choir had finished. Father Cronaca climbed the few steps to the elevated platform and began to deliver one of his famous bilingual sermons. He talked about the superficial victory of the seemingly—I repeat, seemingly—dark, uncontrollable forces of life: blows and disasters which can upset the body, not the soul. I repeat, not the soul, only the chemical balance of the body. Seulement l’équilibre chimique des nerfs. We were warned in English and French that the momentary mental disorder was the consequence of the aforementioned disturbed chemical balance and could appear as the illusive triumph of Satan. God gave us a fallible body with a nervous system a thousand times more intricate than the circuits of a giant computer. Oui, mes amis, plus compliqué, mais aussi plus délicat, la tristesse et également le désespoir. God, who in His wisdom knew that a breakdown could occur in the fragile circuit system, forgave imperfection.

Ernie and Beverly sent a few reproachful glances in my direction, adding to my suspicion that Ernie had told Beverly about my brief appearance in the life of the departed. I wondered how much she knew of her husband’s role.

Father Cronaca finished the sermon with a quotation from the Book of Job, jumped to the letters of the Corinthians, and finished with the Epistle of Paul to the Ephesians: Awake thou that sleepest and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee the light. Soon we heard the tired but still beautiful silver flute-like voice of our famous tenor, who had come back from California just to sing the Kyrie at the Femme Fatale’s funeral because—as he informed the news media upon his arrival—he had made his début at a performance of Verdi’s Requiem, sponsored by the father of the deceased. The loose vocal cords still projected strongly:

Ingemisco tamquam Reus

Culpa rubes cultus meus

Suplicanti pace Deus…

Had she really staged her exit so cleverly, or had I overestimated her concern about whatever was supposed to happen to her remains after her death? Had she really cared? If she had, she could not have composed a better suicide note than the one she wrote on the dust cover of one of those best-sellers she despised, but perhaps found entertaining toward the end of her life, in the days of depression-induced alienation. She had been a good reader in her prime, always up to date, with a keen ability to appreciate value and quality. If she had secretly enjoyed novels written for the masses that she called the mental proletariat, this vice was well hidden from all of us; not even Ernie knew about it. In any event, her cleaning lady discovered the body in bed two days after she killed herself, with a few Jacqueline Suzanne novels on the floor, an empty barbiturate bottle on the night table, and the reversed dust cover of Hotel on her chest bearing the following hand-written message: Life is not worth a shit.

Et ab hoedis me sequestra

Statuens in parte clextra—

The priest nodded appreciatively following the successful delivery of the last high notes. He then looked at me, waiting for my approval. I nodded, agreeing with his judgement. We had almost become friends during the short period of his research. Yes, that is the word! It started as a series of routine interviews, but as he became fascinated by the personality of the deceased, his investigation became an obsessive research project involving the questioning of several character witnesses and at least two doctors—the family physician and a psychiatrist who knew her. It was obvious that he wanted to believe that the suicide was the consequence of temporary insanity, and he needed the testimony of more than one person.

He had an easy time with Dr. Cohen-McIntyre, who realized in a split second what the good priest wanted him to say to eradicate any religious misgivings. This high-IQ quack was more than cooperative with the clergyman. He delivered a short lecture about depression triggered by deceit, and suicide as the expression of hostility toward self-seeking men who took advantage of her loneliness, her naïve faith in her fellow human beings, and so on. He explained that in delirious moments, self-destruction is interpreted by the patient as the only possible punishment of those who had hurt her. The rest of it—the proof of temporary insanity—was child’s play: the patient took barbiturates regularly and in increasing quantities. If we substitute the notion of temporary insanity with a temporary but total loss of judgement induced by an overdose of sleeping pills, the clergyman had a foolproof case and the deceased was entitled to a regular funeral according to the service of her faith.

Father Cronaca must have been very impressed with Cohen-McIntyre’s reasoning, because he quoted every word of it before interrogating me. After talking to a well-known representative of the medical profession who specialises in finding and treating the darker impulses of our personalities, I would like to ask your opinion, as a layman who, according to her friends and according to Dr. Cohen-McIntyre, was once very close to her. I still don’t know whether the son-of-a-bitch was playing a morbid joke on me by offering my name to the priest as a person to interview, or whether he intended it as part of my punishment.

I said that I had not seen her for three or four years, that our previous relationship was not so much personal as social, that we had met through a mutual friend and that I saw her alone only once. I was about to pass the ball and recommend Ernie as the most reliable source of personal information about her when I discovered that the priest’s excessive tenacity had moved me. His eyes were begging for cooperation.

The text of her last note is one of the strongest proofs that she had lost her mental balance. At the bottom of the pit of one’s suffering, loss of judgement and self-control is inevitable. You knew her well. You know that someone who was admired for her civilized, urbane behaviour, her sensitivity, and the delicacy of her feelings could not possibly have used the word she wrote in her farewell message.

I had to agree. It sounds logical, I said.

Did she ever use scatological expressions during times of frustration or anger? Did she ever tell you, or anyone in your company, stories or jokes about urination, defecation, malfunction of the bowels or other similar Rabelaisian themes? You see, you said she did not. Then, is it not clear that if someone uses an expression so contrary to her upbringing and her social milieu, it is a sure sign of loss of mental control?

I agreed again. And her plain message, the insistence of a priest, Cohen-McIntyre’s supposed expertise and my indifference helped her to get a decent funeral, with all the trimmings, including the highlights of Verdi’s Requiem. Libera me Domine de morte aeterna I die illa tremenda... The soloist was not Leontyne Price, but she delivered the words clearly and accurately. She was a student of the Conservatoire, and singing with our famous tenor would improve her curriculum vitae.

Libera me, libera me… It sounded beautiful even with the poorly trained choir and the booming organ substituting for an orchestra.

My mood was gloomy as I drove to the cemetery, and I arrived late because a red traffic light separated me from the cortège. It was easy to find Maria’s resting place without following the caravan of cars; the crowd of quasi-beautiful people around the grave was clearly visible from the main gate. I walked slowly in their direction, trying to miss at least part of the sermon. I was planning to stay a few feet behind the last row of mourners, but as I stopped at a white marble headstone—just big enough to sit on while the rest of them listened to the indefatigable Father Cronaca—I was recognized by the ti-pédé who reported on social events for the newspaper where I once worked. He grabbed my arm and pulled me through the mass of people, right to the inside ring around the grave. It was easy for him to get close to the action: he simply whispered the word Press into the ears of the people in our way and the tight rows opened politely. A tearful woman stepped sideways automatically, without even looking at us, and I found myself facing the very group of people whose company I had been trying to avoid for the past few years.

Some relatives cried, an unknown woman blew her nose, and both Ernie and Cohen-McIntyre kept looking at me accusingly. The photographers flashed their lights, and Marie-Louise, the daughter of the deceased, looked at the coffin, turning her head slowly into half-profile position to offer her most advantageous angle to the reporters. She leaned against her husband, a tall sun-tanned young man in a conservative, double-breasted suit, and she held a bouquet of red roses in front of her stomach to hide her pregnancy from the readers of Chatelaine or Maclean’s. As I looked at Marie-Louise’s bent head, I was struck by the similarities between mother and daughter. The vertical gothic axis of the face, the rich and just slightly too-large, classically vampy lips, and the dark eyes framed by crescent-shaped eyebrows, were almost identical. But here the similarities ended: the gentle curve of her mother’s nasal bone was missing from Marie-Louise’s face. I am using the right expression: it was missing because her mother’s slightly bent aquiline nose, together with her curiously threatening dark eyes, made all the difference between the daughter’s ordinary beauty and the mysterious, almost menacing appeal of her mother.

Marie-Louise placed the bouquet of red roses on top of the flowers covering the coffin. Beverly, who had never been formally introduced to the deceased, grasped Ernie’s arm and began sobbing, while he tried to calm her by caressing her hand tenderly. The scene was so moving that the ti-pédé fell on his knees and took two more shots from a low angle against the background of the darkening sky. At that moment, the first lukewarm raindrops hit my head.

A wave of restlessness was heard from the outside ring of participants. We didn’t have raincoats or umbrellas because all of us had relied on the weather forecast. We were in our Sunday best. The light rain kept falling.

The inner circle—the relatives, the close friends and those who wanted to be seen with the close friends—bravely endured the change of weather. Beverly, who was weeping her way into the periphery of high society for the duration of the funeral, pulled Ernie’s elbow, whispering impatiently into his ear. Ernie, knowing that some of us were witnessing the scene, shook his head slowly, patted Beverly’s hand, and tried to follow Father Cronaca’s bilingual eulogy, which was again made up of quotations randomly chosen from the Old and New Testaments, perhaps as a gesture to the mixed ethnic origin of the departed. But Father Cronaca was also a man of the world. He was one of the best known among the liberal priests, and since he was also preacher to Montreal’s upper-middle class, he knew that the funeral of the Femme Fatale was an important social event. He also knew that the unprotected suits and dresses of the mourners came from expensive tailors and salons, and I am convinced that he had some idea of the prices they had paid for them. He finished the eulogy with the Book of Revelations: I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, and he began to pray.

The rain washed the tragic, melancholic expression from Ernie’s face. He glanced at his new pair of black suede shoes and looked disapprovingly at the clouds. He became visibly irritated. After a few more raindrops, his pose was ruined; how can one look mournful when one’s suit is getting soaked? Beverly pulled lightly on his elbow, and he nodded and looked around like someone ready to leave. No one had moved. He shook his head, indicating not yet. As I watched this scene, our eyes met. He recomposed his facial expression: he again became the man who was not only mourning the departure of a dear friend, but who also knew the dark secret, the explanation for this tragic event. He sent me a hostile glance, exaggerated almost to a grimace; he wanted to be sure that I had caught the meaning of it. To live up to the challenge, I pushed my chin forward and tried an indifferent smile. Ernie sent me a last scornful look, turned toward the grave and listened attentively to Father Cronaca’s prayer. The man with the dark secret decided to stay in spite of the rain. The forced idiotic smile was still on my face when I noticed the shocked looks of Beverly and Cohen-McIntyre. Both of them were standing slightly behind Ernie and hadn’t noticed his participation in the exchange of physiognomic messages between us. They simply took my grin as a sign of my ignorance and sick sense of humour.

Finally it was all over. The inner circle, including Ernie and Beverly, surrounded Marie-Louise to offer their condolences. The rest of the crowd hurried toward the cemetery gates. I followed at a distance, because I knew that Cohen-McIntyre would again use this occasion for a confrontation to provoke my guilt, and I didn’t want the others to overhear his lunatic insinuations about my partial responsibility.

In a way, you share the responsibility for her death. You know that, don’t you?

Cohen-McIntyre must have been walking behind me all along, hoping that I would join a group so he would have a larger audience. And he must have waited for me patiently, because he whispered his crazy accusations into my ear just a few yards before we reached the gate.

There are allegations to which there is no short or intelligent answer. I tried to come up with a witty response, but all I could think was it isn’t true and that was not witty enough by far. The sudden surge of adrenaline in my body blanked out my mind. I realized at once that I should not have come to the funeral; a visit to the chapel would have been enough. My mouth was dry and I started to sweat. I gave him the only answer I could come up with: Fuck off before I kick your ass.

I must have convinced him, because my challenger was quick to leave. He minced away to take the arm of an elderly lady whose family had sponsored the new psychiatric wing of the university at which he taught. I heard her saying something about being disgusted that … here of all places. Cohen-McIntyre pulled her elbow closer in a reassuring, protective way, and whispered something into her ear. The witnesses of my vulgar behaviour looked back at me and accelerated their steps until they reached a grey Mercedes with an extended chassis and a uniformed chauffeur holding the door.

On my way home, I realized that my evening was spoiled. It was supposed to be my small, private celebration for finishing the proofreading of my essay about the influence of Nordic mythology on Wagnerian opera, rejected twice by the same editor. First, he disapproved of my dry style. Then, after rejecting it a second time, the moron said that the public expected something light and humorous from me, like my first—and probably last—success. (I couldn’t tell him that I was not responsible for that particular success, that the whole idea had been a farce, and that even the title had been a joke invented by the editorial staff.) So, after a few unsuccessful attempts to rewrite the essay, I withdrew the manuscript. But help came again from an unexpected source: one of the proofreaders—a frustrated poetess—proposed Original Music with Plagiarised Mythology as a new, catchier title. The publisher found the title superb; the essay was to be printed without any changes.

I wanted to celebrate this modest achievement with some wine, good food, a disconnected telephone, and the Symphony of Psalms (1930 London recording). I hoped that Stravinsky would help me forget that I had behaved like a fool. I took a shower, opened a bottle of cheap Italian wine, and prepared three smoked-salmon sandwiches with a lot of cream cheese on thin slices of rye bread. I ate and drank while listening to the radio. I didn’t want to start the Psalms yet, because I was listening to the last few bars of a Lily Boulanger record, and was anticipating the Kyrie after the Buddhist prayer. My brain relaxed, the tension was gone, and after the first burp I knew that this electronically-induced state of quasi-happiness would last for at least as long as the voice of the child soprano. I fell asleep with the cover of the Psalms on my knees. The radio programme must have been on twentieth-century music, because I awoke to the shrill voice of a mezzo who insisted on opening the Seventh Door, a favour that Bluebeard refused her for a while. It was the same BBC recording to which we were listening on the evening when it all began.

Suddenly, everything came back: the Femme Fatale who had chosen the record; Ernie, who had no idea that the bitch made him behave like a fool; Byron and the Immigration Office; the Woman of the Year I loved so much; and the certainty that she would never know how much I loved her.

ONE

Dinner with Ernie.

Montreal, April 1972

It all began one evening when I played back the day’s messages on my answering machine. One was from Ernie, urging me to call him as soon as you can, any time, in my office or at home. Beep.

I called his home. Beverly answered and told me that Ernie had a consultation at the Royal Victoria Hospital, and afterwards he was having dinner in town with a professor of oral surgery from the Université de Montréal. He would be late, but he had left a message for me to call him the next day at his office. It all sounded fishy; Ernie’s consultations were always right after or before his official hours. He couldn’t be meeting a professor of oral surgery from the U. of M., first because he was not connected with any teaching institution, and second because his French was so poor that he always tried to avoid the company of his Francophone confrères.

Next morning I called again. After a long wait, during which his secretary asked me three times to hold the line and be patient, Ernie picked up the phone and informed me that he was expecting me for lunch at his club at 12:45 p.m. My vague mumbled excuse about a meeting with my editor was cut short. It was urgent and of the utmost importance that he see me that day, he insisted. I postponed the meeting with my editor and cancelled a rendezvous with my second wife, who, ever since my book had been published, insisted on seeing me in the presence of her attorney.

I was in the club lounge at 12:40 p.m.; Ernie arrived at 1:00 p.m., tense, sweating, and apologetic. He explained in great detail that his patient had developed an allergic reaction to novocaine, and I recalled how he had once tried to prove (at the beginning of his practice) that, by being late by just a few minutes for each appointment, one could save an hour by the end of the day, a valuable hour that one could spend working and making money, relaxing, or being with one’s family.

We had no time for cocktails, but Ernie promised to make up for it by ordering a bottle of wine with our meal. We walked into the richly decorated dining room, recently refurbished with brand new antique furniture, as proof that the management had joined the postmodern trend. A table for two was reserved in one of the huge bay windows of the room, where a quiet discussion was possible because, although we could be seen by everyone, we could not be heard.

Ernie looked nervous. When he saw that I was looking at the menu for the à la carte page, he quickly suggested ordering the low-cholesterol daily special because it would be ready, and he wanted to talk to me only after we had finished eating. I noticed that his hand was shaking slightly when he dipped his celery into the dry, tasteless cottage cheese, yet he managed to talk calmly. He picked totally insignificant subjects, as though he were imitating the kind of literary small talk caricatured in an Evelyn Waugh novel. Even his accent was slightly different. Instead of singing over the long syllables, as he usually did, he carried on the conversation in a clipped British accent. So we talked about the weather and the silliness of those chaps in Washington, but only in generalities. I became more and more curious, knowing I would soon learn the reason for this latest pose. After dessert, Ernie ordered two Rémy Martin cognacs. He knew I was waiting for him to begin his story, but he was postponing the moment, enjoying my anticipation. He slowly filled a yet unbroken pipe from a small, soft pigskin tobacco pouch, lit it not too expertly, transformed a small cough into a throat clearing, blew the smoke toward me, and said, You know, I’ve met a woman.

I am glad to see you have become a pipe smoker, I said. A pipe is less dangerous than cigarettes and it provides you with the intellectual air I always knew you had. Keep up the habit, but never inhale. He ignored my interruption. I could see he needed an audience, but without audience participation.

Do you know who she is? he asked.

No idea.

Guess.

No idea. I give up.

Well, she is the woman you saw me with a few weeks ago in the Portuguese restaurant. You behaved very discreetly. You respected the fact that she is well known, yet you turned away and left. I might add that she found you attractive.

I didn’t want to spoil things by telling him that I had left because there were no empty tables. But I remembered now that I was somewhat astonished when I saw them together. I knew they moved in different circles, where it was almost a principle to avoid social contact with the other kind.

How did you meet her?

Marie’s physician had referred her to Ernie. He had seen her on TV talk shows and had read about her in Cosmopolitan while waiting for his turn at the barber. Beverly had told him that she was among the few Canadian women ever featured in Vogue. Ernie did three root canals, treated her gums, and scaled her teeth himself. He confessed that on several occasions his hands were shaking. Sometimes he had to wear a surgical mask because tension dried his mouth and he was afraid that his breath might be unpleasant. He asked her back for a totally unnecessary follow-up visit. He gave her his latest publication on the early decay of wisdom teeth. A few days later, she called him, and it was obvious that she had read the article; moreover, she remembered and understood it. When he realized that he was too timid to hit her with a bill, he knew he was in love. I asked about Beverly.

Thank God, at least her problems are solved. She has found her true vocation.

This sounded more surprising than Ernie’s story about his new philandering, for Beverly’s identity crisis had once been the talk of the town. Three times a week she was seeing one of the most analytically-oriented psychiatrists treating patients under Medicare. As they reached the third year of the treatment, word went around that Beverly had learned to accept her personal self, her social self, and her sexual self. The therapy continued because both Beverly and her mentor decided to zero in on her career self. At this point, Ernie proved to be a supportive husband. The search for a career self is a constructive idea, he told me, besides which, we could use the dough.

Beverly worked as a medical secretary for a short time, but she soon realized that she could not witness human suffering unless she could help. She took evening courses at Concordia University, and started to teach part-time in an elementary school. She quickly lost her illusions about teaching because she recognized the impossibility of using the limited tools of pedagogy to reform a whole generation. In order to widen her horizons, Beverly took new evening courses: the history of China, appreciation of the Impressionists, sexology. She changed her appearance. She wore boots, old baggy pants, a new frizzy hair-do, and no make-up. Beverly sometimes called me to save time while doing research for one of her papers, to find information about obscure poets and little-known composers of the early Romantic period. She began to talk, shyly, and was constantly ashamed about how little she knew. She hadn’t called me at all in the last few months.

Ernie lit his pipe again, blew the smoke of the sweetened tobacco on my coffee mug, and continued. One of our close friends offered Beverly a part-time job, one for which she is really cut out! She is now teaching ‘intellectually challenged’ children.

I had the vague feeling that I had heard this news already, but I was not sure of the source. Ernie looked above my head behind me, addressing the gypsum mouldings at the far corner of the room. The expression on his face became reflective, as if he were about to share a significant thought. It is a rewarding but painful experience for her. At first I was worried that she was too sensitive and vulnerable to be exposed to so much human suffering without damaging emotional consequences, but a few weeks after she began to work for the organization, I realized that her warm heart and intellectual curiosity gave her enough strength to cope with this sort of thing. Some saliva got mixed with the tobacco in the bowl of his pipe, and it started to gurgle. After a few unsuccessful suctions, he gave up, put the pipe back into his pocket, and continued with a proud smile. You know Beverly, don’t you? She is shy and touchy, but when she succeeds in defining her goal, she becomes like a tank, no one can stop her from reaching it—I mean her fulfillment and self-actualization.

I noticed with some surprise that although Ernie was now deeply in love with another woman, the modest professional achievements of his wife still delighted him. He bent forward, put his elbow on the table, pointed at me, and said, Do you know who is responsible for the ‘Attack Against Apathy’ campaign? He leaned back in his chair, looking at me expectantly.

I have no idea, I said.

Well, I will tell you who’s responsible. It’s my wife! The entire project was initiated by Beverly, and she was the organizer of the raid as well.

I was not impressed. Everything I had heard and read about the campaign disturbed me profoundly, and now it all started to come back. I had met Beverly and her younger daughter in the lobby of the Théâtre de Maisonneuve (Poor Ernie was dying to come, but again one of his patients, at the last minute…), when she informed me of the first phase of their offensive.

Now we want to go much further than teaching, she had said. We have realized that this society ignores the problems these children have and our efforts to help them. So we became noisy! We let the public know about our activities and about us.

Beverly knew that if she really wanted to be heard, a frontal attack was needed against smugness and ignorance. The president of one of the best-known public relations firms, who insisted on remaining anonymous, wrote a confidential strategy formulating paper for them, in which he advised the non-profit organization to base its campaign on the guilt of the healthy part of the population. He recommended door-to-door canvassing, always in the company of selected children who had visible signs like Down syndrome. The success of the three-day Attack Against Apathy campaign succeeded beyond expectations. It provoked interviews and panel discussions, and even those who found the campaign strategy repulsive could not help but contribute, with their outcry, to the publicity for the good cause.

I learned about the big event from Miss Hermione Fotheringham, the retired timpanist of the McGill Chamber Orchestra, who lives in one of the targeted areas. She swore to me that the scene she witnessed could only be compared to an illustration of The Night on Bald Mountain; it had, in fact, provoked her second stroke. She was watching Uri Geller and a well-known telepathic medium on a television programme called Supernatural, when her doorbell rang. When she answered, she saw a tall, gothic, ghost-like creature with an identification number on her neck and a flashlight in her hand, pushing in front of her a small, stocky gnome, whose illuminated face was alarmingly similar to the star child in Kubrick’s 2001. Miss Fotheringham banged the door shut, ran back to her living room, and called the police. While waiting for them to arrive, she summoned her courage and glanced outside through the blinds. The street scene resembled a Halloween night of trolls: a grotesque procession of adults, with name tags on their overcoats and flashlights in their hands, were going from door to door, pulling after them small children with deformed heads holding metal piggy banks in their hands (remember the promotional value of the visible symptoms!). When the door opened, the flashlight was focussed on the child’s face, who mumbled the few words taught to him or her during the training period to soften the hearts of the homeowners. The indignation of the residents in some of the targeted areas was expressed the next day in the local newspapers. The spokesman of the organization, in his response, grandiloquently called the memorable evening the second children’s crusade.

I recalled Miss Fotheringham’s vivid description of the scene and felt slightly shocked. Ernie kept talking. She is doing a heroic job. Now that she has become the assistant deputy section head, she puts even more energy into it. Meanwhile, I am supervising the children’s studies. I try to take over as much as I can.

I knew that their eldest daughter had left home to live with the owner of a small advertising agency and that the younger one was a superb student at a local high school, winning prizes and scholarships without any tutorial help. She was a dangerously competent kid, the terror of her parents’ friends, who insisted on giving intelligent answers to insipid questions and, in return, felt she had a right to expect intelligent answers to her own intelligent questions. I liked her, and I was afraid of her. His son passed the entrance exam to McGill’s Faculty of Engineering with flying colours. Who needed Ernie’s help?

My pondering was interrupted. Suddenly revived, Ernie the Protector disappeared and Ernie the Lover reappeared. He told me how his feelings toward that other woman had changed his life; he had rediscovered the value of genuine emotional involvement. From now on, he could not imagine having a sexual relationship without commitment. His previous occasional infidelities, compared to the depth and intensity of this new involvement, were like target shooting to a flame-thrower.

You are the only person I can share this secret with. I know you are surprised. I also know you can’t understand what a sophisticated woman like her wants with a fellow like me. Please, don’t say anything. I know how you feel about me, but I also know what you think of me. For your information, I am becoming a changed person. I have started reading again. This summer, Beverly and I will attend the Shaw Festival. We bought season tickets to the Gala Concerts. We are improving the quality of our cultural life.

Beverly should be grateful to your new friend, I said. At least now the two of you go out more often. Remember the time she was complaining about the lack of events in her life?

I regretted this remark as soon as I said it, but I had no reason to worry; Ernie didn’t even hear it. He gazed again at the gypsum mouldings above my head and kept on talking, no longer to me but to himself, because by now he had become his own audience and I was just an outsider. He enjoyed his own words and the happenings and details of his beautiful story. He admired her and was impressed by himself. He wanted me to meet her, and she wanted to meet me because Ernie had talked so much and so kindly about me. She would be expecting both of us next Friday evening, sometime after 8:00 p.m. Ernie assured me it would just be a small, informal dinner, but still, I should wear a decent jacket.

TWO

Never speak ill of the dead–

but we beg to differ!

It is about time to explain why she was called the Femme Fatale. Marie-Myriam’s birth date is unknown. Brought up in Quebec, Switzerland, and the United States, she came from an ethnically and socially mixed background. Her mother was a little-known Jewish actress who had lived with her parents in peace and harmony until her marriage to a non-Jew caused them to disinherit her. Marie-Myriam’s father was a French-Canadian loan shark who became a millionaire during the Korean War.

Marie-Myriam married a British diplomat, divorced, and kept their two children, who were brought up in Quebec, Switzerland and the United States. After her divorce, she attempted to maintain, or rather to improve, the social position she had attained during her marriage. She donated to the right causes and gave interviews (always about current but never controversial topics) to the right magazines. She served on the boards of directors of two small theatres, opened art exhibitions and patronized young artists. Immediately after the October Crisis of 1970, she donated a modest but well-publicized sum to the restoration of an old farmhouse in the Eastern Townships, which was to become a permanent museum for French Canadian pottery.

Yes, but how did she become the Femme Fatale?

Here is how it happened. The divorced husband (the British diplomat) was an avid collector of antique cars. During the year of their divorce, he participated in the Collectors’ Congress and Beauty Competition held every year in New Hampshire, with his 1931 Duesenberg Derham convertible. He had bought the car with a consortium of other private collectors for an incredible price, but it was restored, under his supervision, with authentic factory-made parts from a dismantled model built by Bohman & Schwartz.

On the day of the parade, the husband—who was wearing the striped jacket and Girardi hat of the era in which the car was built—made a last inspection of the restored body and water-cooler originally built by Derham Body Co., Rosemont, Pennsylvania. He was in the elevated driver’s seat when a messenger handed him a telegram from his lawyer, informing him of the judgement of his divorce. The sum of alimony he was ordered to pay was beyond his expectations. He told his mechanic that a chapter in his life had ended with the judgement, and he could no longer dream of buying and restoring the 1934 Packard Twelve, once owned by Busby Berkeley. He asked for a brandy, which was poured for him into a snifter from a crystal flask. The rest of the anecdote is a mystery. Later, the mechanic told reporters that, after reading the telegram again, the husband sat in a stupor on the elevated pigskin front seat, mumbling something about malfunctioning dashboard selectors and the necessity of selling his collection of Christian primitives.

The parade was starting. The mechanic suggested giving up the idea of participating in the parade. He was about to leave the seat when another car, a cabriolet with shining new chrome bumpers and five layers of high-quality ducco-satin non-acrylic finish over its streamlined body, rolled slowly by him. It was the Packard that had once belonged to Busby Berkeley, restored, obviously, by vulgar, uninitiated hands. The husband looked at the spoiled