Read Online My October by Claire Holden Rothman - Free Book Online
Authors: Claire Holden Rothman
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too, on artists like Ozias Leduc and Paul-Ãmile Borduas. Sheâd also translated essays and publications about Quebec culture and history. And, of course, sheâd rendered her husbandâs entire oeuvre into English. Besides being Lucâs wife, she was his official English voice. None of this was even remotely mentionable in the presence of Alfred Stern. She could speak to her father about her son, provided she restricted herself to his health and schooling, but even school had become a difficult subject after Hugo started attending the Collège Saint-Jean-Baptiste.
Hannah dipped a spoon into the pot and stirred. The soup was a rich orange colour. She wiped bits of ginger skin and sprigsof coriander off the stovetop and retreated into the breakfast room overlooking the garden, where her parents frequently ate. This was where Connie had found him, on his back, wearing what looked like a grin.
Hannahâs laptop was on the table in the breakfast room. Her screen saver was a photograph of Hugo at age seven on a swing, his head thrown back, laughing. It was her favourite picture of him: happiness distilled.
She clicked an icon and a too-familiar file came up: Death of a Dreamer , Lucâs most recently published novel. The alliterative English title pleased her; little else about the book did.
This had never happened to Hannah before. She had always loved the books her husband wrote. Some more than others, of course, but every one of them had moved her. She loved Lucâs agility of mind, his intuitive skill at telling stories. It had never occurred to her that this might change. There were writers you liked and writers you didnât. Sometimes a writer was uneven, but mostly it was a question of chemistry. Like love.
Sheâd been young when she met Luc, not yet eighteen, but despite her age sheâd been neither blind nor stupid. She had always been a reader. Even as a child, sheâd known precisely what books she preferred. Luc was the first published writer she had met, apart from an aging poet who had read once at her high school and tried to grope the girls. Luc was her teacher, so it was natural she would go to the library in the early days of term and look up his work. Tanneur tanné was the first Quebec novel she ever read. It told of characters living in her own city, thinking thoughts Hannah herself had thought. The characters had troubles like she had. In their lives she discerned the outline of her own. They were poor. They spoke French. They lived inSaint-Henri, cultural light years from where she had grown up. Yet she inhabited their skin; they inhabited hers.
She and Luc became lovers that summer, a few weeks after she finished her first year at Dawson College. The following winter, she invited him to her familyâs annual New Yearâs Eve gathering. It was the end of 1976. René Lévesque and the Parti Québécois had just formed Quebecâs first separatist government. The antipathy between her long-haired nationalist boyfriend and Alfred Stern was instantaneous. The fact that Luc had been her teacher didnât help. Twenty years of marriage had done nothing to mitigate it.
On New Yearâs Day of 1977, the morning after that first meeting, Alfred Stern coined a nickname for the man who would become his son-in-law: the Pied Piper. He never again used Lucâs real name, with its echo of the new separatist premier. Her father was intransigent, and Luc did little to bridge the gap. He made no effort to be sensitive, never toned down his nationalist rhetoric.
Her father had gotten at least one thing right with the nickname. Luc Lévesque had enchanted her. The year they met, heâd just turned twenty-four. To a seventeen-year-old girl, that had seemed outrageously grown-up. Teaching at Dawson College was his first real job. He smoked cigarettes in class, tapping ashes onto the floor, because, of course, there were no ashtrays. The students watched,
Hannah dipped a spoon into the pot and stirred. The soup was a rich orange colour. She wiped bits of ginger skin and sprigsof coriander off the stovetop and retreated into the breakfast room overlooking the garden, where her parents frequently ate. This was where Connie had found him, on his back, wearing what looked like a grin.
Hannahâs laptop was on the table in the breakfast room. Her screen saver was a photograph of Hugo at age seven on a swing, his head thrown back, laughing. It was her favourite picture of him: happiness distilled.
She clicked an icon and a too-familiar file came up: Death of a Dreamer , Lucâs most recently published novel. The alliterative English title pleased her; little else about the book did.
This had never happened to Hannah before. She had always loved the books her husband wrote. Some more than others, of course, but every one of them had moved her. She loved Lucâs agility of mind, his intuitive skill at telling stories. It had never occurred to her that this might change. There were writers you liked and writers you didnât. Sometimes a writer was uneven, but mostly it was a question of chemistry. Like love.
Sheâd been young when she met Luc, not yet eighteen, but despite her age sheâd been neither blind nor stupid. She had always been a reader. Even as a child, sheâd known precisely what books she preferred. Luc was the first published writer she had met, apart from an aging poet who had read once at her high school and tried to grope the girls. Luc was her teacher, so it was natural she would go to the library in the early days of term and look up his work. Tanneur tanné was the first Quebec novel she ever read. It told of characters living in her own city, thinking thoughts Hannah herself had thought. The characters had troubles like she had. In their lives she discerned the outline of her own. They were poor. They spoke French. They lived inSaint-Henri, cultural light years from where she had grown up. Yet she inhabited their skin; they inhabited hers.
She and Luc became lovers that summer, a few weeks after she finished her first year at Dawson College. The following winter, she invited him to her familyâs annual New Yearâs Eve gathering. It was the end of 1976. René Lévesque and the Parti Québécois had just formed Quebecâs first separatist government. The antipathy between her long-haired nationalist boyfriend and Alfred Stern was instantaneous. The fact that Luc had been her teacher didnât help. Twenty years of marriage had done nothing to mitigate it.
On New Yearâs Day of 1977, the morning after that first meeting, Alfred Stern coined a nickname for the man who would become his son-in-law: the Pied Piper. He never again used Lucâs real name, with its echo of the new separatist premier. Her father was intransigent, and Luc did little to bridge the gap. He made no effort to be sensitive, never toned down his nationalist rhetoric.
Her father had gotten at least one thing right with the nickname. Luc Lévesque had enchanted her. The year they met, heâd just turned twenty-four. To a seventeen-year-old girl, that had seemed outrageously grown-up. Teaching at Dawson College was his first real job. He smoked cigarettes in class, tapping ashes onto the floor, because, of course, there were no ashtrays. The students watched,
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