The Search for Joyful Read Online Free PDF Page B

world had to dissolve in chaos, blow itself apart. Clark and Iba Airfields in the Philippines had to be taken out, British air power in Hongkong destroyed, Bangkok occupied, Malaya invaded, Burma seized, Canadian boys in Hongkong made to surrender to the Japanese, and of course Pearl Harbor—for me to be sitting primly in a coach of the Canadian Pacific, looking out the window while the silver train streaked by farms, forests, lakes, and towns, the speed flattening the earth and carrying me into my dream.
    I was convinced Papa knew about the dream. At the moment of death you must see things, know things that otherwise you don’t.
    Classes started in less than a week. The future was open as it never had been. Connie was right, it had become a different world, where girls were encouraged to go into the workplace, share in opportunities. A career as a nurse allowed me to be on my own, take charge of my life. It was time.
    I straightened in my seat, while the Canadian countryside framed itself in my window, and investigated the box lunch Mama Kathy had packed. She must have used her own ration coupons because there was a chicken sandwich. I munched with a sense of well-being.
    That night I went to sleep in a reclined Pullman chair with a white doily under my head and my shoes kicked off. The porter came by with a pillow and a thin gray blanket. The engines pulsed through me; I fell asleep and woke to the sound of the rails. Sleepily I put up the window blind and was shocked to see a pressing blackness.
    We had entered a tunnel. Across from me two women exchanged stories about the tunnels they hated all over the world, the worst being the New York subway under the East River. The one we were in was under Mont-Royal, a long way from fresh air and blue sky. I also did not care for tunnels.
    We emerged, and there it was, stretching in every direction . . . Montreal. I looked out on broad streets, which, in spite of gas rationing, were crowded with automobiles and stolid horses pulling ice wagons, milk carts, and bread trucks. Mainly it was alive with people. I had never seen so many people. A sense of energy seemed to fill them, and they moved to a quick rhythm.
    A porter came through the cars singing out, “Montreal, Montreal! Ladies and gentlemen, mesdames et messieurs. ” I was thrilled by the French even though it was all I could do to count to twenty and puzzle my way through irregular verbs. We circled the city, approaching the station through Ouest Montreal.
    The train slowed. With a last look to make sure I hadn’t left anything, I squeezed into the crowded aisle and moved forward. We pulled in to Windsor Station. I stepped down portable iron stairs and caught my breath.
    In school I’d pored over illustrations of the Taj Mahal and St. Peter’s in Rome, but this was the most magnificent building I’d ever seen with my own eyes. A palace for trains. Elegant covered sheds for embarking and disembarking. Lofty ceilings. Commodious waiting rooms, spacious restaurants, busy offices. The concourse was like a Roman temple, with fluted columns and ornamented capitals.
    And people, people everywhere, rushing, strolling, pushing, waiting in line, talking, yelling in a dozen languages. Soldiers, sailors, officers of every rank and service. Young women being kissed and kissing, both hello and goodbye. Nuns and priests robed in brown, white, gray, some wearing scarlet sashes. Children racing around, playing improvised games in all this turmoil, one lost and shrieking for his parents, another methodically banging her brother’s head on the marble floor.
    Some of the women were clearly not passengers. With carmine lips and matching fingernails they approached unattached males. Sin city.
    I was looking for the exit, when the crowd carried me to a cigarette stand, an edifice with its own fake Roman columns and cornices. It purveyed nuts, dried fruit, gum, candy, cigarettes, cigars, pipe tobacco, knickknacks,