Après Le Déluge - After the Flood

During a battle between Quebec separatists and Canadian soldiers, love breaks out!

Après Le Déluge

 

“Est-ce que ça fait mal?” Marie-Ève whispered softly touching one of the places where shrapnel had pierced his foot.

 

“It feels better now,” groaned the soldier, his voice weak. “But my hands are still throbbing.”

 

Propped up against the cold brick wall he tried hard not to cry. Fading daylight leaked into the room through a dirty windowpane.

 

“It is a miracle that you were not killed. Let me look at your hands again,” she murmured.

 

She had found him hiding, groaning, bleeding in the mud and rain under the bushes next to the abandoned church near where Dorchester Street becomes boulevard René-Lévesque.

 

“How ironic,” he had thought, “that I am a Canadian soldier and I am going to die at the crossroads of Dorchester, the British solider who had fought on the Plains of Abraham, and René Lévesque, founder and hero of the Quebec separatist movement!”

 

She had been on her way to volunteer at the hospital when she spotted the injured soldier. Lying on his side, he noticed her legs before he saw her cherubic face and her bobbing, dark ponytail. Quickly and with remarkable strength, for such a petite girl, Marie-Ève helped him hobble behind the church, down the stairs and through the broken back door of the deserted building.

 

Tanks and trucks rumbled in the distance. Sporadic gunshots could be heard. Smoke from explosions mingled with the dark, threatening storm clouds above. The acrid smell of spent gunpowder lingered.

 

His wounds had been cleansed with holy water from the stoup at the entrance of the church and she had bandaged his injured foot with the only cloth available at the time, a Quebec flag that Marie-Ève had found in the vestry. Some of his blood had already seeped through the makeshift bandage, staining the white fleur-de-lys crimson red.

 

The Canadian assault of Mount Royal had been ill conceived and poorly executed. With surprising speed the Quebec Patriot soldiers had stormed up the eastern side of the mountain from their rue St-Denis stronghold and they had quickly taken control of the armory. Lieutenant Jones, whose regiment had briefly secured the cross on the top of the mountain, had been forced to scramble through the forest and down the west side of the hill. The fall foliage, a vibrant blend of yellow, orange and red maple leaves, left the green camouflage soldiers quite exposed. It was here that his gun had been blown out of his hands by strafing gunfire from a Patriot helicopter. In the cemetery at the base of the mountain, between the crosses that mark the graves of fallen soldiers from previous wars, a wildly thrown grenade had exploded as it hit the ground, leaving Lieutenant Jones limping. The final and un-ceremonial retreat down Atwater Street took the troops past the old Montreal Canadiens’ forum that is still haunted by the ghosts of Jean Béliveau and Maurice Richard. From there, the few remaining soldiers from Christian Jones’ regiment forsook him and scattered. Each soldier sought a place to hide. For the wounded Lieutenant Jones, refuge was here in a cold, damp crypt.

 

Christian Jones had joined the armed forces out of desperation. Like many of his friends, he was fleeing the flatness of small-town, Saskatchewan. His options to escape the family farm were football, hockey or the army. Since he was built like prairie wheat, tall, thin and resilient, there really was no choice.

 

The poster had read, “An adventure of a lifetime. Join the Canadian Armed Forces.” The recruiter never mentioned the possibility of being posted in Hawksbury, Ontario with orders to be part of the “thin, red line” between Quebec and the rest of Canada. The last thing that Christian had expected was to be deployed to fight against his fellow Canadians. In October he had received a command to join a convoy of tanks and trucks on their way to Montreal to participate in a mission to quell a separatist uprising on the east side of the island. No one had anticipated that they would encounter a well-armed, well-trained army of Quebec Patriots. The French militia had just won what would later be called, “the massacre on Mount Royal.” CBC reported that there were, “two hundred and fifty dead Canadian soldiers and many more injured or taken as prisoners of war.”

 

“You are so young. Do you even know what you are fighting for?” mused Marie-Ève.

 

“You are not so old yourself,” grunted Lieutenant Jones. “I am a solider. I do as I am told. You are obviously French. Why are you helping me?”

 

“It is my duty, or it will be my duty. I am studying medicine at McGill. I am attracted to the sick and wounded,” Marie-Ève replied playfully.

 

“McGill? But aren’t you French?” wondered a confused Christian aloud.

 

“Blood has no language. French and English blood both flow in the same direction �" down and onto the ground. This stupid war is keeping us all busy.”

 

“Do you mean that you don’t care who wins?”

 

“Nobody wins a war. There really is no need to fight. Why don’t you just let us go?” asked Marie-Ève applying some pressure to the wounds on his hands.

 

“Why don’t I let you go?” said Christian alarmed, misunderstanding the question. “Please don’t leave me. I need you.”

 

“Not me, mon beau. Quebec. Why don’t Canadians just let Quebec separate?”

 

“For the same reason I guess. Canada is made better with Quebec.”

 

“We should have known that it would come to this. The tsunami has been building since Confederation. Louis XV, the King of France before the French revolution, said, ‘Après moi, le déluge.’ We knew that the flood was coming. I used to be curious about what would it would look like after the flood. I guess this is it.”

 

 “When the hurly-burly's done, when the battle's lost and won,” recited Christian.

 

“What?”

 

“Oh, nothing. Just some Shakespeare that we had to memorize in school.”

 

They sat quietly in the darkening room, each sensing the other’s presence only by the sound of their breathing.

 

“What is it about the month of October that seems to put Quebec in crisis? Maybe it is the desperation of the shorter days or the falling leaves that remind us all of our mortality,” reflected Marie-Ève.

 

Suddenly the front door above them open and then slam shut. A series of heavy footsteps could be heard.

 

“Shh … what’s that noise upstairs?” demanded Christian hoarsely.

 

“Just a second,” whispered Marie-Ève. “I’ll go and have a look.”

 

Left in the dark, Lieutenant Jones reflected on his situation. Wounded and trapped behind enemy lines, what were his chances of survival? And, why was this Québécoise girl being so nice to him?

 

He heard the sound of her soft footsteps as she returned.

 

“Americans,” she spat.

 

“What do they want?”

 

“We are in a war zone. What do you think? They are probably looking for oil,” she replied sardonically.

 

Christian could not help but smile.

 

“They are gone now. You must try to eat something. I found a baguette and a bottle of wine in the office upstairs.”

 

Marie-Ève ripped the bread into pieces and uncorked the half-empty bottle.

“Cuvée Thomas 2013 from Lac Brome,” she muttered under her breath. “The father had divine tastes.”

 

“Bread and wine, is this our last supper?”

 

“Maybe.”

 

“Are you going to betray me?” he asked suspiciously.

 

“No, I am more of a Thomas than a Judas.”

 

The bread was stale and hard to chew.

 

“Here, let me dip it in some of the wine,” she offered. “Mieux?”

 

“Intinction! My pastor would be horrified.”

 

“You Protestants. You think that everything we Catholics do is wrong. In the end what does it matter if you take the hostie with the wine or alone? And would it kill you to agree with Le Pape every now and then?”

 

“Then what would we fight about?” replied Christian trying to break some of the tension.

 

They ate the remainder of the wine-soaked bread in silence.

 

“It’s late now. I still have some battery on my phone. Let me check my newsfeed, ” said Marie-Ève.

 

The light from her cell phone illuminated her face. Christian looked up at her and thought, “Could this girl, my savior, be an angel?”

 

“Le Devoir has published tomorrow’s edition on-line. The headline is “Notre Pays, mais à quel prix?” she read.

 

“What does it say in the Globe and Mail?”

 

“There is a picture of your premier ministre, the one we call ‘Le fils’ and a quote ‘Just watch me!’ I am afraid that this debacle is not over. Well, nothing is going to change tonight. You must rest. The wind is blowing right through that window now. Are you cold?”

 

“Just a little,” Christian said sleepily.

 

“Here, let me warm you.”

 

Marie-Ève curled up tightly against his side, on the cold, hard, wood floor.  Alone together, they waited for the sun to rise again.