From diary July
31 2004, Val-David,
Quebec
Setting : Montreal
Last revised
April 2 2008
I had
gone to the city for the day, and though some of my weekend trips to
Montreal
are wonderful, this wasn’t one of them. In the early evening when it was
time to take the bus back to Val-David I was already anxious to get out
of the city. Sometimes downtown I see so much decadence and decay and so
many broken or screwed up people that it makes me feel vaguely nauseous.
It is not a physical nausea, it is psychological, but it’s nausea all
the same.
To top
it off I was mistaken about the bus departure time, it was at 6:00 pm
and not 6:30, I had missed the bus. The next one was scheduled for
10:30, four hours to wait!
So I
had to make the best of it. After sitting in the station for a while in
the stifling humidity, hardly thinking, it finally occurred to me, and
it was remarkable how long it took, that I could go to the vegetarian
restaurant for supper, it was only a few blocks away, then linger there
and read some more of my book, to make the time pass pleasantly.
So I
did that, and it was all right, though on the walk to the restaurant the
city still looked a little like a freak circus to me. I’m sure it was
just my mood.
After
I returned to the station I was cheered by the sight of a woman and her
two little girls. The mother had kind and very sane eyes, and was gently
explaining something to the youngest girl who turned out to be only
four.
You
might think it is odd to describe someone as having sane eyes, for after
all aren’t most people’s eyes sane, and is there anything remarkable
about it? But then maybe you know what I mean - some people have a
regard that I can only think of describing as sane, and so much so that
I feel immediately drawn towards them, and even encouraged about people
in general.
I
ended up speaking with her, though for some reason I don’t remember who
ventured the first question or greeting. They had missed their bus too, they had been there several
hours already but still had longer to wait than I, for their bus
wouldn’t be there until 11:10 pm.
It turns out she is of Haitian
origin and now living in Joliette. She was evidently tired but it didn't seem to affect her
gracious social manners. She was of maybe thirty to thirty-five
years of age; and her two girls were 11 and going on 5, which I later
learned from the older daughter.
It
surprised me how quickly all three of them came to trust me, it must
have taken all of a minute. Maybe the little girls trusted me because
their mother did, I don’t know, but here I was a strange man approaching
them in a downtown bus terminal, and from the first moments mother and
daughters had the nicest smiles you can imagine, they were giving them
to me for free.
How
trusting? The mother left me to watch the youngest girl while she
accompanied the older one to the washroom.
Someone might reply that she wasn’t only trusting, she was
stupid or naive. And to this person I reply in turn : you obviously
weren’t there, you obviously didn’t see her eyes or her smile, or hear
the manner in which she spoke, to her daughters or to myself. Otherwise
you wouldn’t have said that.
The
youngest girl was too tired and too little for conversation, she was
lieing now on her side with her head on her mother’s lap. She was very
quiet but not sleeping, and she kept watching me, with her big round
sleepy eyes, all the while I spoke with her mother and sister, and every
single time I looked at her she gave me a silent and heart-melting
smile.
But
her older sister wasn’t too tired, and when the shyness that had held
her tongue but not her smile had worn off a little she spoke to me of
her own accord, without my having to coax her. She was bright and
articulate, she had a yellow bow in her hair.
She
told me she was looking forward to their trip that evening, because for
some reason she likes travelling on the bus at night. I told her I know
just what she means. And
she told me that she can count to ten in Japanese, she learned it in her
karate class. She knows a bit of Engish (from the outset we had all been
speaking French), but her mother knows four languages; French, English,
Spanish and Creole.
I
glanced at her mother; she looked proud, but not of her four languages;
she was watching her daughter and listening to her, and she was proud of
her.
I took
a little walk and bought a small toy for each of the little girls, to
help break the tedium of their long wait. When I surprised them with the
presents, the older girl thanked me at least four times, with disarming
earnestness. And her little sister was so sleepy and happy and quiet; as
she turned the toy in her hands, she kept looking at it and then looking
back at me. They were so nice.
But
before I knew it my bus had arrived, I had to quickly say goodbye and
reluctantly leave them behind. I should have given the mother my phone
number or something, and invited her to call me. She probably wouldn’t
have, but I should have left some kind of bridge.
I saw
her frown or flinch, briefly and almost imperceptibly, just once, and it
was when I said “à la prochaine” to them all as I left them to catch my
bus. I imagined I could hear the voice of her thought in my mind : why
give my little girls reason to think that they will see you again?
And I
thought she was right, I should have used another expression. But then
even “au revoir” has the same meaning, if you take it literally, I would
have had to say “adieu”. But adieu is way too sad and
final.
I
thought about them for a while as I rode in the bus in the darkness. For
some reason I like riding in the bus at night. And I could feel myself
smiling.
I
didn’t feel nauseous any more, it was gone a long time ago, from the
moment I had first seen the mother explaining something to her littlest
girl.
But
earlier in the day, scribbled on the wall of a public washroom in
Montreal, I had seen three extremely
hateful racist graffitis about “nègres”. It is rare that I see that kind of
thing in Montreal, it isn’t a place that is like
that, but this time I had seen it. In fact that was one of the
impressions that had brought on the nausea, and had made me want to go
back home.