Ethg will be disguised! Masked.
I’ll have to devise my own map … prerequisite for safe encounter with Target. Will be tricky — every foot of the way mined.
Can’t find right digs — ideally a small pension over the Square. Best facing the body of Target — bull’s eye!
Small hotels — five blocks East (Old Directions) … several — in a sub-Square: La Place Jacques Cartier (meaning?) What is relationship between Square & sub-Square — Big Place & Little Place.Conniving. I’m wary tho. Make sure to find out. Excellent proximity.
Question of hotel … which one? Comes down to two: one faces City Hall (Old Style) & the old Market & the belltower of Sailors’ Church. The other faces La Place — tho I can’t see it from here.I’ld rather face forward blind, than backwards visual. Moreover the seamstress on the second floor reminds me of … no matter
Hotel Nelson. Why? Aside from its relationship to Monument in the Little Place it confronts.
Kick me all day for choosing this hotel. Too much like an old hen. But it is the right one — the one that 1st engaged my attention, my loyalty. Besides, each time I go out I’ll interrogate the view from the other, wondering why I didn’t take it, & that way get best of each world.
If I’m wrong I’ll move (tho I never will! Besides it would attract too much attention.)
Installed by nightfall. Try to read; fail.
Why have I come? I would give anything to know & more not to know!
Squander remaining energy on this why for. Flee to dinner, across La Petite Place. Buy conscience off with spaghetti, soup. Slink to sleep.
Hugh awoke slowly — dredged himself from bed, and installed himself at his portable typewriter, duty-bound. It had been his faithful comrade-at-arms for eight years. An Olivetti Lettera 22; it had never failed. He had written his first book on it. And ever since. He opened his briefcase, reached in for his Journal, and started to type.
“The morning is deep downcast in me, numbskulled, and my brain bloats against greysky. Catch my dreams by the tail … reach out to prey upon them. But they are gone even as I reach … Well, if I can no longer feel, at least I do have time to think. I have reached shelter, a hide-in, and I think I am undetected. No one knows I am here. I’m not even sure I realize I’m here yet. And certainly no one knows why (I like to think that I don’t know why — but I know deep in my bone I do, that’s why I’m here.) If anyone did know then my Disaster would be disastered. The important thing now is to keep a meticulous record of the assault, so that if I fail at least the ground will have been broken. If I succeed then others can follow; the results will be self-evident. In either case a day-by-day account, in detail is essential. For the novel — and for the Real Thing. I’ll keep on taking notes. And then write them up as I can in this journal. Flesh them out … flesh me out!
Irony: I bought this journal six years ago, when I was still in Montreal, with CBC … meant to keep a daily record. Never did. And now I’m here, writing it, because I didn’t dare then … didn’t dare me. Serves me right. Remember the day I bought it — after lunch with George Carter, at Delmos Oyster Bar, walked along la rue Notre Dame and down-dropped in to an antique shop … one of his clients. All that Canadiana (little did I suspect then it was my culture in the raw). It was lying in the bargain pile on a gate-leg table. Picked it up unthinking, uninterested … perhaps to look interested, perhaps to protect me against other purchase — the redflare of cover caught my eye I guess, the red and black while George talked shop … balancing the book in my hand — an old-fashioned journal and notebook — my hand tested by its heft, substantial. With a good spine to it. None of that paperback stuff (a paperback culture has no tiger in its tank — must needs make one up). And open to the marbleized end-papers … curls my coil (there’s the rub).
Plus a pocket for papers … containing one reproduction map of old Montreal and a couple of postcards — one of the Bank of Montreal, the other of Notre Dame’s gut …
Bought for $1.
George laughed — “You’re a symbolist.”
“Why?”
“The date — 1867!”
I hadn’t even noticed … But I never wrote a word in it: fled to the respectability of Toronto instead.
Stop yapping and write!
7:46 a.m. Waking this morning and even last night I was aware once again that my novel is in fact some deeper assault on reality than I care to admit. It is … it is a war — between reality and me. Maybe it’s a Holy War. I can’t tell (stop lying — of course it’s a Holy War!) Alright — it is a Holy War — so this journal which is a diary which is my log-book is really a Combat Journal. It couldn’t be anything else. I should type it in red.
Must keep a duplicate. In the hotel strongbox to be forwarded to Eric in case of emergency. I know he’ll see to it that it is published. (Don’t let me down Eric — you have no right to. What I say belongs to my community — to what is left of it, that is. It is all I have to give. All! And if they don’t want it … well at least they can never say they weren’t told.)
Between my notebooks, my Combat Journal, and what I manage to write of my novel, the picture should be complete. As complete as I can make it. And if I succeed, then I’ll have my novel from it. Then the rest can be set aside….
But I’m not going to fail. I have no right to do that either. I am honour-bound to succeed … And I must bind me to my word. Screwed to the sticking point! I’ve rubiconned every river that ever ran, bombed every bridge — just to make sure I’ve cornered my cowardice. For the rest, ten years of meticulous preparation. Of training. Maybe fifteen, if I include those first years, at the University of Toronto … when I furtively, almost unwittingly, protected my counterpoint to the Amurrican Dream. Ten years anyhow. Ten years of tacking back and forth — but always to the same end. Always the same preoccupation. What subterfuge it has meant … I always the subterfugitive! No matter. What counts now is that I’ve reached my target. It is still here. That was the work of yesterday. I took few notes yesterday — even though it was the First Day. The First Day on the site. I just didn’t have the energy; it had all been consumed in getting to the hotel, into a striking position. I remember now that I had felt how dangerous my sense of calm was to the whole purpose of the expedition. Because it is war — and I realized already it was war, and that any placation was capitulation. Yet I persisted in feeling calm. And I had to keep telling myself that this adventure is essential. Of course I knew that it was — even if for some time yesterday I only knew abstractly and had to keep sending me mental telegrams, like “EXPEDITION URGENT STOP NO RETREAT STOP KEEP YOUR COCK UP STOP.” No, I knew well enough that it was essential. That was it: I was dangerously smug about the fact of the danger. That was what worried me. Lulled me into a security right in the face of absolute danger.
And then later yesterday — in the late afternoon, I harvested the exhilaration of recognized danger, and the whole thing was implicitly clear again. I could relent.
…
