Volkswagen Blues
Originally published as Volkswagen Blues by éditions Québec/Amérique
Copyright © 1984 Jacques Poulin
First ePub edition © Cormorant Books Inc. May, 2011
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The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for its publishing program. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF) for our publishing activities, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation, an agency of the Ontario Ministry of Culture, and the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit Program.
National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Poulin, Jacques, 1937-
Volkswagen blues.
ISBN 978-1-77086-068-1
I. Fischman, Sheila II. Title.
PS8531.O82V6413 2002 c843’.54 c2002-900033-5
PQ3919.2.P59V6413 2002
Every reasonable attempt has been made to attribute copyright material used in this publication. Information regarding inadvertent errors or omissions of copyright information would be welcomed, and efforts will be made to correct same in future editions.
English translation of an excerpt from “Le Bateau espagnol,” by Leo Ferre, by Donald Winkler.
Cover design: Angel Guerra, Archetype
Cover image: Bildhuset AB/Photonica
based on a text design by Tannice Goddard, Soul Oasis Networking
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This translation is dedicated
to the memory of John Goodwin
“We are no longer the heroes of history.”
— EMMET GROGAN, RINGOLEVIO
I
Jacques Cartier
He was wakened by the meowing of a cat.
He sat up in his sleeping bag and drew aside the curtain that covered the back window of the Volkswagen minibus: he saw a tall thin girl in a white nightgown walking barefoot in the grass despite the cold; a black kitten was running behind her.
He tapped on the window, not too hard, and the kitten stopped dead, one paw in the air, then started running again. The girl’s hair was as black as coal and plaited into a long braid that hung to the middle of her back.
The man craned his neck and saw that she was heading for the section of the campground that was reserved for tents. He got out of his sleeping bag, pulled on his jeans and a heavy woollen sweater because he was sensitive to the cold, then he opened all the curtains in the old Volks. The sun was rising, and there were patches of fog over the Baie de Gaspé.
He went to the restroom to wash and shave. When he came back there was no one in the tent area; the girl had disappeared. He opened the sliding door of the van and carried his portable gas stove, his tank of propane and his plastic dishes to the picnic table. He prepared orange juice, cornflakes and toast, and boiled enough water for coffee and the dishes. When he’d got to the coffee he rose abruptly from the table and went to get his brother Théo’s old postcard from the glove compartment. He propped the card against the marmalade jar and slowly sipped his coffee.
When the man looked up, he saw that the fog had lifted and the Baie de Gaspé was flooded with light. He washed his dishes, then replaced everything in the minibus and slid back the roof.
Before he left, he made his customary three checks: the ice in the fridge, the motor oil, the fan belt. Everything was normal. Mechanically he gave the front tire on the driver’s side a kick, then got behind the wheel. He drove out of the campground and turned left: the town of Gaspé was about five kilometres away.
The hill was fairly steep so he had to gear down to third, then to second, and when he reached the top he spotted the tall thin girl walking along the side of the road. She was partly concealed by a huge knapsack with a tubular frame, but he recognized her at once by her very black hair and her bare feet. He deliberately stayed in second longer than necessary, and when she heard the rumbling of the motor, the girl stuck out her left thumb without turning around. He drove past her, stopped the Volks on the shoulder and flashed his emergency lights.
The girl opened the door.
She had a bony face, a dark complexion and very black, slightly slanted eyes. She wore a white cotton dress.
“Bonjour!” she said.
“I’m going to Gaspé,” said the man. “It’s not very far, but . . .”
He waved her inside.
She shrugged off her knapsack and hoisted it onto the passenger seat. The black kitten emerged from one of the pockets and climbed up on the back of the seat. He was all black with short hair and blue eyes. He started to explore the van. The man wedged the knapsack between the two seats. The girl got inside, but she left the door of the Volks open. She watched the kitten and waited until he had finished his exploration. Eventually he came and lay in her lap.
“It’s all right,” she said, and shut the door.
The man glanced in the rearview mirror, then started up.
The Volks was very old and covered with rust, but the motor ran well. It was a rebuilt motor. The girl was young. The man adjusted the heat so she would get some warm air on her feet. It was early May.
“Are you going far?” he asked.
“I’ve no idea,” she said. “First I have to go to the Gaspé museum. I know someone there I want to say hello to.”
“I’m going to Gaspé myself, but I don’t know where exactly . . .”
He gestured broadly with his right hand.
“I’m looking for my brother,” he said at last.
He had not seen his brother for a very long time: fifteen years, maybe twenty — he couldn’t remember exactly. The last time he’d seen him was at Mont-Tremblant, where they had watched a car race. Formula Ones. Then his brother had gone on a trip. At first he had sent postcards. He must have been moving around a lot because the cards had come from all sorts of places; one was from Key West, another from James Bay. Then, some years later, he had stopped writing. There had been no word from him. The last postcard was very peculiar and the stamp had been canceled at Gaspé.
“Look in the glove compartment,” he said.
The girl took out the postcard and examined it closely. The man watched out of the corner of his eye to see her reaction. The card showed a typical Gaspé landscape: a small fishing village in the hollow of a cove; the message on the back was totally illegible except for the signature: “Your brother Théo.”
Camille Pouliot, La grande avenutre de Jacques Cartier, p. 42.
“Obviously it’s old handwriting,” said the girl.
“Obviously,” said the man, holding his breath.
“Old texts are always hard to read,” she said very calmly. “Is your brother Théo a historian or something like that?”
“He studied history, but he’s never worked in the field. Or any other field. He didn’t like to work. What he liked was trips and cars. He’d do odd jobs and when he got a bit of money he’d travel.”
The girl smiled faintly.
“And what did he look like?”
“The opposite of me: tall, almost six feet, and his hair was . . . black, like yours, and he wouldn’t work himself into a state over nothing.”
“But, if you don’t mind my asking, why are you looking for him now? After all, the postcard’s very old.”
“That’s true. I stuck it in a book and forgot it. I mean, I couldn’t remember what book it was in.”
He thought for a moment.
“Of course that doesn’t answer your question.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I know.”
The man was driving the Volks very slowly, in third gear. From time to time he looked in the rearview mirror to see if anyone behind him was getting impatient. Then eventually he stopped by the side of the road and switched off the ignition.
“I turned forty last week and . . .”
He shook his head.
“Actually it has nothing to do with age . . . Some days you feel as if everything’s falling apart . . . inside you and all around you,” he said, searching for the right words. “So then you try to figure out what you can hang on to . . . I thought of my brother. He used to be my best friend. I wondered why I’d stopped hearing from him, and I looked for the last card he’d sent me. And finally I found it. It was in a book with a gold cover called The Golden Dream. By Walker Chapman. Have you read it?”
“No,” said the girl.
“Anyway, that’s where I found the card. And since it had been mailed in Gaspé, even though it was a long time ago . . .”
“I understand.”
“Today I feel old and ridiculous.”
The girl resumed her scrutiny of the postcard. She absentmindedly stroked the head of the kitten, who was asleep in her lap.
“Is your name Jack?” she asked, reading the name and address to the right of the message.
“That’s what my brother used to call me. When we were little we gave ourselves English names; we thought they suited us much better!”
“People call me La Grande Sauterelle. They say it’s because my legs are way too long, like a grasshopper’s.”
She pulled her dress up to her thighs to show him. Her legs really were very long and very thin. Then she turned to the postcard again.
“The last word looks as if it might be cross,” she said.
She handed him the card.
“You may be right,” he said, “but couldn’t it be loss?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because it has five letters.”
He started to laugh and she looked at him, uncomprehending.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “but I think we look like a couple of zouaves trying to decipher some old buried treasure map!”
“We are, in a way,” she said, her manner still serious. “If your brother has taken the trouble to have an old text printed on a postcard, there must have been a reason. He was sending a message, don’t you think?”
She spoke calmly, and it was very pleasant to hear her thinking out loud.
“Unless it’s a joke,” she added.
“It’s hard to know,” he said. “Théo didn’t do things like other people.”
He switched on the motor again.
“If I were you,” said the girl, “I’d go to the museum and show this card to the curator.”
He turned around to look at her. She still had the same grave, thoughtful expression, but her head was bent to one side because the kitten had climbed up on her shoulder and settled against her neck.
“HERE WE ARE,” said La Grande Sauterelle. “Turn left.”
Jack turned off the road and parked the old Volks beside the museum. It was a frame structure with several sections arranged in a star. Beyond it, on a sort of platform, stood a group of black metal sculptures that resembled menhirs and bore inscriptions; there was also a tall granite cross that stood at least nine metres high.
They got out of the Volks. The girl left her cat inside, but she opened a window so he could go outside if he wanted.
“Won’t he get lost?” the man worried.
“No,” she said. “He likes to walk around, but he never goes far.”
In the museum lobby an old woman was washing the floor with a mop and a bucket of water. The young girl approached her and spoke to her in a low voice. Jack walked around the soapy puddles and headed for the information counter, behind which was seated a young man who seemed absorbed in a book.
“Sorry to bother you.”
“Huh?” said the young man, looking up.
“I’d like some information, please.”
“What kind of information?”
“About this,” said Jack, showing him the postcard.
The young man peered at the text for a moment, glanced at the other side of the card, then looked again at the text.
“I don’t understand a word,” he declared.
“I know, but . . .”
“If you already knew, why did you show me the card?” the young man interrupted impatiently.
“It’s old writing.”
“So what?”
Just then La Grande Sauterelle and the cleaning woman came over to the counter. Without raising his voice, the man tried to explain: “I wanted to ask for information about the source of the text . . .”
“I’m not an expert on old texts,” said the young man curtly.
He handed back the postcard with a shrug and returned to his reading. It was a Superman comic.
La Grande Sauterelle asked, “Do you know if the curator’s in his office?”
“Who?” asked the young man without looking up.
“The director of the museum.”
“He’s away.”
The cleaning woman tried to look at the card over Jack’s shoulder. She was short and plump, and the colour of her skin, as well as her features, showed that she was an Indian.
“May I look?” she asked.
He said nothing, so she wiped her fingers on her white smock and took the card from his hands.
“It looks to me exactly like Jacques Cartier’s handwriting,” she said.
There was a long moment’s silence. When she realized that no one had anything to say, the woman laid the postcard on the counter and returned to the bucket of water she had left in the middle of the lobby.
“Jacques Cartier’s handwriting? Why do you say that?” asked the man, who had followed her step by step.
“It’s simple,” she said. “Your old text is exactly the same as the one in the main hall, and I couldn’t be wrong about it because every day when I do the cleaning I have to dust the two placards.”
“Two placards? So there are two texts?”
“Not at all. It’s the same text on both placards, except that on one it’s written in old writing like yours and on the other in . . . ordinary writing.”
“Would you be so kind as to show us?” he asked briskly.
“Certainly. Come this way, but watch your step.”
Jack and the girl followed the cleaning woman into the main hall. They walked along a sort of corridor marked off by parallel cables that snaked past a variety of objects that were scattered on the floor, hung on the wall or exhibited in glass cases: tools, articles of clothing, weapons, transport vehicles, navigational instruments, cards and posters, all arranged in chronological order, from the early days of America to the present time.
At the back of the main hall the cleaning woman stopped in front of two huge posters. She took a cloth from her pocket and automatically dusted them.
“Here it is,” she said straightforwardly. They saw at once that the text on the poster on the left was the same as that on the postcard, and they immediately turned to thank the woman, but she had already gone.
The right-hand poster read: “Excerpt from the original account of Jacques Cartier’s first voyage.” And the text, in block letters, was as follows:
On the twenty-fourth day of the said month, we had a cross made thirty feet high, which was put together in the presence of a number of the Indians on the point at the entrance to this harbour, under the cross-bar of which we fixed a shield with three fleur-de-lys in relief, and above it a wooden board, engraved in large Gothic characters, where was written long live the King of France. We erected this cross on the point in their presence and they watched it being put together and set up. And when it had been raised in the air, we all knelt down with our hands joined, worshipping it before them; and made signs to them, looking up and pointing towards heaven, that by means of this we had our redemption, at which they showed many marks of admiration, at the same time turning and looking at the cross.