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Authors: Nino Ricci
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finally, with his little frown. “So.” And that would be the end of it.
They got onto literature once—Alex ought to have been grateful, someone actually literate for a change—but very quickly Alex ended up in the usual cul-de-sac: all of Félix’s background was in the classics, and in French texts Alex had never heard of, or had only gazed at on library shelves.
“It’s normal,” Félix said, in what seemed his idea of making allowances. “The schools now, they don’t teach these things. At my school it was different. You’ve heard of it, I suppose, Jean de Brébeuf, it wasTrudeau’s school, but they were all the same, those schools, very rigorous. I don’t think you have that on your own side.”
Arrogant nob
, Alex had thought. He hadn’t missed Félix’s ploy of mentioning Trudeau only to dismiss him, so he could have his pedigree and eat it too—they were all the same, these bloody nationalists, always playing both sides, damning the priests and then naming the metro stops after them, holding Trudeau up as a proof of their worldliness and then deriding him as a sellout.
“Of course, my own son, he’s like you,” Félix said, adding salt to the thing. “Latin, Greek, it doesn’t matter to him, only TV and sports.”
Alex doubted, indeed, that Leamington High, where he’d spent most of his time mooning over girls he’d never had a hope in hell with and working hard to keep his marks below the eighties, had come anywhere near the rigors of a classical lycée. What he remembered most about high school now, in fact, were the stupid fights he used to get into, over every minor insult. He’d had the rage back then as well: someone would cross him and he’d feel the blackness rise up, the sense he’d do anything to cause harm, although the instant he’d struck the first blow something would recoil in him and the fight would be lost. Somehow he couldn’t picture Félix in fights back at Brébeuf—he was probably one of those swanners who belonged to the tennis club and thought of themselves as the elite-in-waiting. Alex had managed to get out of Hertz that he was some sort of big wheel over at the Alcan head office: part of the
maîtres chez nous
generation, Alex figured, all those Quebecois technocrats and middle managers who’d seen getting ahead in the system as a way of sticking it to the English.
No doubt Félix came to Berlitz just to sharpen up his pronoun agreements for his business junkets to Toronto and New York, lest the Anglos get one over on him. It was not for Alex to pass judgment, of course, not in the Method, not over Félix’s thin-skinned nationalism or his Reaganite socialism or his perorations on Latin and Greek. But that didn’t mean he had to pander to him. He would sit there in stoic forbearance, ceding nothing, hoping language rights didn’t come up or native land claims or how to divvy up the national debt.
Alex hadn’t waited long, however, before putting a bit of distance between him and the Anglos by slipping in a mention of his own Latin roots.
“
Ah, vous êtes italien
,” Félix said, as if registering a mental correction.
Afterward, Alex wished he had left Félix to keep imagining him an Alex Brown or an Alex McPhee—Mme Hertz didn’t like to advertise surnames, given that ones like his own didn’t exactly trumpet competence in English—because Félix, it turned out, knew Florence, and now Alex had to put up with being bested on his own turf, Piero della Francesca this and Santa Croce that. The closest Alex had ever got to Florence was a short stop in the dingy outskirts for gas during a family trip when he was twelve, some spindly tower rising up in the hazy distance that to this day he couldn’t give a name to.
“But you must go, of course,” Félix said gravely, as if Alex’s humanity depended on it. “Or perhaps you are not so interested in art and so on.”
“No, no, it’s not that, my last girlfriend was an artist.” Why had he
They got onto literature once—Alex ought to have been grateful, someone actually literate for a change—but very quickly Alex ended up in the usual cul-de-sac: all of Félix’s background was in the classics, and in French texts Alex had never heard of, or had only gazed at on library shelves.
“It’s normal,” Félix said, in what seemed his idea of making allowances. “The schools now, they don’t teach these things. At my school it was different. You’ve heard of it, I suppose, Jean de Brébeuf, it wasTrudeau’s school, but they were all the same, those schools, very rigorous. I don’t think you have that on your own side.”
Arrogant nob
, Alex had thought. He hadn’t missed Félix’s ploy of mentioning Trudeau only to dismiss him, so he could have his pedigree and eat it too—they were all the same, these bloody nationalists, always playing both sides, damning the priests and then naming the metro stops after them, holding Trudeau up as a proof of their worldliness and then deriding him as a sellout.
“Of course, my own son, he’s like you,” Félix said, adding salt to the thing. “Latin, Greek, it doesn’t matter to him, only TV and sports.”
Alex doubted, indeed, that Leamington High, where he’d spent most of his time mooning over girls he’d never had a hope in hell with and working hard to keep his marks below the eighties, had come anywhere near the rigors of a classical lycée. What he remembered most about high school now, in fact, were the stupid fights he used to get into, over every minor insult. He’d had the rage back then as well: someone would cross him and he’d feel the blackness rise up, the sense he’d do anything to cause harm, although the instant he’d struck the first blow something would recoil in him and the fight would be lost. Somehow he couldn’t picture Félix in fights back at Brébeuf—he was probably one of those swanners who belonged to the tennis club and thought of themselves as the elite-in-waiting. Alex had managed to get out of Hertz that he was some sort of big wheel over at the Alcan head office: part of the
maîtres chez nous
generation, Alex figured, all those Quebecois technocrats and middle managers who’d seen getting ahead in the system as a way of sticking it to the English.
No doubt Félix came to Berlitz just to sharpen up his pronoun agreements for his business junkets to Toronto and New York, lest the Anglos get one over on him. It was not for Alex to pass judgment, of course, not in the Method, not over Félix’s thin-skinned nationalism or his Reaganite socialism or his perorations on Latin and Greek. But that didn’t mean he had to pander to him. He would sit there in stoic forbearance, ceding nothing, hoping language rights didn’t come up or native land claims or how to divvy up the national debt.
Alex hadn’t waited long, however, before putting a bit of distance between him and the Anglos by slipping in a mention of his own Latin roots.
“
Ah, vous êtes italien
,” Félix said, as if registering a mental correction.
Afterward, Alex wished he had left Félix to keep imagining him an Alex Brown or an Alex McPhee—Mme Hertz didn’t like to advertise surnames, given that ones like his own didn’t exactly trumpet competence in English—because Félix, it turned out, knew Florence, and now Alex had to put up with being bested on his own turf, Piero della Francesca this and Santa Croce that. The closest Alex had ever got to Florence was a short stop in the dingy outskirts for gas during a family trip when he was twelve, some spindly tower rising up in the hazy distance that to this day he couldn’t give a name to.
“But you must go, of course,” Félix said gravely, as if Alex’s humanity depended on it. “Or perhaps you are not so interested in art and so on.”
“No, no, it’s not that, my last girlfriend was an artist.” Why had he
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