is stationary a moment as his eyes fix me: “Maintenant tu vas commencer vivre alors … ici.”
“Yes — I must start to live … I’ve just been born….” His eyes are my smile for me. I note for the first time that he has glasses and that the left lens is held in place by scotch tape. Bless him. And behind the scotch tape, those innumerable eyes of Luc, on me into mine, pervading us with unnamed joy. Luc — poet, cinéaste, Separatist … French Canadian!
“Yes, I am doing a novel … on La Place d’Armes….” And I try to explain again, for my own benefit what it is that I am doing, objectively … “I have come to sight La Place, for others … I never really saw it during my four years here. I always took it for granted … knew it was wonderful but never why … never probed my belief that….
“Attendez une seconde … M’mselle — votre vin … il est légèrement maderisé vous savez … essayons le rouge alors.” She is back moments later with a carafe of red — and we are refurbished.
Me — “I love it here … in the Vieux Quartier … I am at home…. It fulfils something in me … completely … demands a plenitude of response from me … forces me to flower (I could never say that in English you know … people would laugh!) I want to communicate that in the novel.”
“Je vois bien … eh, mon vieux — et ta femme?”
“She knows I must do this … that I must come alive before it is too late … I could not do it if she did not have faith in me, and I in her … if that went, then it wouldn’t be worth doing. It is a question of live or death … tu sais….”
“C’est évident! Mais combien des vôtres comprennent cela?”
“My wife — nearly. And one childhood friend who has been implicated in my life since I was twelve … and Jack Richards, because I pave a way for him now…. And Eric Newman — you know him from CBC.”
“Et ta famille … ton frère aîné? Peter?”
“No — he mustn’t understand what I am doing … or he is ruined. He is intelligent….”
“Mais sa sensibilité?”
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