October 1970 Read Online Free PDF Page B

held the Beard back for a quiet word.
    â€œI don’t want to see him here again,” he said. “And for fuck’s sake, find us another place to hide out.”

CHEVALIER BRANLEQUEUE
(1932–1999)
    Where else in the world would you find churches almost the size of cathedrals in villages with populations, including idiots and rubes who rarely came in from the fields, that never exceeded 3,000 souls?
    THAT WAS TYPICAL OF CHEVALIER’S style. Sam had come upon this passage the previous night, while flipping through his annotated, dog-eared copy of Letters from a Chevalier in Good, Plain Joual , which had first been published by Top Flight Editions before being reprinted by the prestigious BQ. It was classic Chevalier — vigorously apostrophizing, facetiously pamphleteering — even from beyond the grave he did his best to thumb his nose at authority, whether political or ecclesiastic.
    The man who had styled himself Chevalier Branlequeue was born on the historic Chemin du Roy, the King’s Road, a few steps from the river that runs through Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pérade, and within sight of the marvellous neo-Gothic cathedral with its twin hundred-and-ten-foot steeples imitating those on Notre-Dame Basilica in Montreal. Branlequeue was still in his room in the palliative-care ward of Notre-Dame Hospital, barely a few minutes dead — brought down by lungs as thoroughly coated in tar, he said, as a provincial road at election time, as well as by a few other failed organs — when sundry representatives of Quebec’s provincial government began talking through their hats about a state funeral.
    They hadn’t reckoned, however, on the old codger’s last will and testament, which gave instructions for his funeral arrangements: his body was to be dropped through a hole in the ice with the Patriot flag as a shroud, while an academic lecture was being delivered from an ice-fishing hut from his native village, which was famous for its small fish. Chevalier wanted his remains to be wrapped in the national emblem, transported to their final resting place on a gun carriage, and delivered to the shrimp and the sharks. In a typical passage, the testator added: For once they’ll have the whole bull to eat, instead of just the liver  . . . By “they,” of course, he meant tomcod, or frostfish, which constitute the basis of the local economy in Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pérade and are traditionally baited with a piece of cow’s liver.
    The lawyer had suggested incineration. Afterward, the ashes could be spread anywhere, all over the Mouk-Mouk Islands, no problem. But Branlequeue had been adamant. His father was a lawyer and he himself was a Freudian guerrilla-fighter who expected to win. He had therefore prepared two wills: the official, specifying that the grisly remains be deposited in a quiet, out-of-the-way plot in the local cemetery; and the officious, apocryphal and drawn up in the hand of the principal player.
    That opened the door to La Grosse Éléonore and the vultures in three-piece suits. The Catholic-politico machinery was set in recuperation mode, beginning with the under-secretary in charge of protocol in the Quebec government who, walking the tightrope between the undeniable importance of the man’s work and the potential for controversy, slackened the already intentionally ambiguous formula for “state funerals but not really,” which was then picked up by the literary editor and obituary columnist for the Trois-Rivières Nouvelliste — a man better known, as it happened, for his odes to the dead than for his literary criticism.
    Good old human nature took over from there. From his observation point in the choir loft, had Samuel not seen, just a second before, the premier of what was still the province of Quebec advancing up the long centre aisle under the priceless pre-Conquest pascal chandelier and the famous sculpture in oak representing the