River City Read Free

lie tonight?”
    “In yours, sir. Still, I worry. What will I do when you forget me tomorrow?”
    “Don’t let that happen! Be unforgettable tonight!”
    “Oh, sir. What’s a poor girl to do with you?”
    “No one does anything with me, my child. If anything is to be done, I am the one to do it! But don’t despair about this war. A week ago, a speaker was quoted in the papers. He declared that, rather than fight on the battlefields of Europe, French-Canadians will fight on the streets of Montreal!”
    “That’s why I’m frightened,” Charlene said. “The uproar.”
    He sighed, and tousled her curls. He tugged a few and smiled as they snapped back. “That is why you must depend upon your premier. Now come closer, my pet. Let us drink this bottle down.”
    “What about the war?” the young woman inquired. She inhaled smoke to the depths of her lungs. His penis was deformed. The sight still unnerved her.
    “Poland is not a war! What about our bottle?”
    In the morning, he’d more fully discover the news. Nations were declaring war, including his own, thanks to that wretched prime minister, Mackenzie King, who’d promised no war only to bound at the chance to declare. Politicians and their promises. They should all be hanged.
    Except, of course, himself.
    Lines were being drawn, outside the country and within …
    … in the year 1939.
    The English were coming. The English were coming. Again! Les maudits anglais.
    The bishop rarely uttered the words aloud, yet endlessly they’d drum in his head. His sleep had been fitful. Damn English. He woke to a new day muttering the phrase out of a dream in both languages. A report of fresh arrivals at the port in Montreal had reached him the night before. For a moment, as he opened his eyes, he yearned to believe that the news had visited him in a dream, that it was all some wretched nightmare, unreal. His perpetual frownfurled into a scowl. No dream. More damn English were coming. By his perspective the invasion had achieved epic proportions. Would it never stop?
    A more troubling issue agitated him as well: what would be required of him before this human brush fire burned itself to ashes?
    At the outset, the matter had been less problematic, the convenience of good choices apparent. Canada had oodles of room. Why did Upper Canada exist if not to accommodate the aggravating, infernal English? As well, New York State had agreed to accept stragglers. Americans, after all, were both infuriatingly friendly and encumbered by their own largesse. They spoke the same language, practised a retrograde quasi-Christianity similar to that of these pitiful migrants. Initially, the bishop’s conscience had not been disturbed as boatloads of suffering émigrés arrived. He had traipsed down to the docks with his entourage in tow, grand men in their illustrious capes and hefty rings and bejewelled crosses, accompanied by a pod of pale priests in black who’d help their superiors down from the carriages, open a gate, then sweep nosy riff-raff aside. Bishop Lartigue would sagely whisper in the ear of a ragged English representative, “New York, mmm?” And more often, with a knowing wink, “Upper Canada.” He’d smile, then shoo les maudits on their way.
    Quebec was to remain forever French. Any astute interpretation of the terms of surrender dictated that obligation. Yet with the passage of time, the bishop had had to confess that his conscience was growing muddled. The new travellers were not being welcomed into the established societies to the west and south. Malnourished as they emerged from famine in the Lake District of England, they boarded ships to the Canadas. Assailed by illness and catastrophe throughout the crossing, many travellers lost their lives. The survivors who disembarked at the port of Montreal were wretched, exhausted, recently bereft of husbands or wives, abruptly childless. They slumped on the pier in their misery and in their stinking rags and upon their knees