The Main

mixed but unblended cultures. The immigrants who did well, and most of the children, moved away to English- speaking west Montreal. But the old stayed, those who had spent their toil and money on the education of children who are now a little embarrassed by them. The old stayed; and the losers; and the lost.

Two young men sit in a steamy cafe, looking out onto the street through a window cleared of mist by a quick palm swipe. One is Portuguese, the other Italian; they speak a melange of Joual slang and mispronounced English. Both wear trendy suits of uncomfortable cut and unserviceable fabric. The Portuguese’s suit is gaudy and cheap; the Italian’s is gaudy and expensive.

“Hey, hey!” says the Portuguese. “What you think of that? Not bad, eh?”

The Italian leans over the table and catches a quick glimpse of a girl clopping past the cafe in a mini, platform boots, and a bunny jacket. “Not so bad! Beau petard, hein?”

“And what you think of those foufounes?”

“I could make her cry. I take one of those in each hand, eh? Eh?” In robust mime, the Italian holds one in each hand and moves them on his lap. “She would really cry, I’m tell you that.” He glances up at the clock above the counter. “Hey, I got to go.”

“You got something hot waiting for you?”

“Ain’t I always got something hot waiting?”

“Lucky son of a bitch.”

The Italian grins and runs a comb through his hair, patting down the sides with his palm. Yeah, maybe he’s lucky. He’s lucky to have the looks. But it takes talent, too. Not everybody’s got the talent.

In just over five hours, he will be kneeling in an alley off Rue Lozeau, his face pressed against the gravel. He will be dead.

There is a sudden block in the flow of pedestrians. Someone has vomited on the sidewalk. Chunks of white in a sauce of ochre. People veer to avoid it but there is a comma of smear where a heel skidded.

A cripple plunges down the Main against the flow of pedestrian traffic. Each foot slaps flat upon the pavement as he jerks his torso from side to side with excessive, erratic energy. He lurches forward, then plants a foot to prevent himself from falling. A lurch, a twist, the slack flap of a foot. He is young, his face abnormally bland, his head too large. A harelip contorts his mouth into something between a grin and a sneer. His eyes are huge behind thick iron-rimmed glasses which are twisted on his face so that one eye looks through the bottom of its lens, while the other pupil is bisected by the top of its lens. Coiled back against his chest is a withered, useless hand in a pale blue glove. An incongruous curved pipe is clenched between his teeth, and he sucks it moistly. Sweet aromatic smoke pours over his shoulder and disintegrates in the eddies of his lurching motion.

Pedestrians are startled out of their involute thoughts to see him barging toward them through the crowd. They move aside to make room, eager to avoid contact. Eyes are averted; there is something frightening and disgusting about the Gimp, who drives ahead in his determined, angry way. The human flood breaks at his prow, then blends back in his wake, and people forget him immediately he has passed. They have their own problems, their own plans; each is isolated in and insulated by the alien crowd.

Chez Pete’s Place is a bar for the street bommes; it is the only place that admits them, and their presence precludes any other clientele. Painted plywood has replaced glass in the window, so it is always night inside. The fat proprietor sits slumped behind the bar, his watery eyes fixed on a skin magazine in his lap. Around a table in the back sits a knot of ragged old men, their hands so filthy that the skin shines and crinkles. They are sharing a half-gallon bottle of wine, and one of the bommes, Dirtyshirt Red, is spiking his wine with whisky from a pint bottle screwed up in a brown paper bag. He doesn’t offer to share the whisky, and the others know better than to ask.

“Look at that stuck-up son of a bitch, won’t ya?” Dirtyshirt Red says, lifting his chin toward a tall, gaunt tramp sitting alone at a small table in the corner, out of the light, his concentration on his glass of wine.

“Potlickin’ bastard thinks he’s too good to sit with the rest of us,” Red pursues. “Thinks his shit don’t stink, but his farts give him away!”

The other tramps laugh ritually. Ridiculing the Vet is an old pastime for all of them. No one feels sorry for the Vet; he brings it on himself by bragging about a nice snug kip he’s got somewhere off the Main. No matter how cold it is, or how hard up a guy is, the Vet never offers to share his kip; he won’t even let anybody know where it is.

“Hey, what you dreamin’ about, Vet? Thinking about what a hero you was in the war?”

The Vet’s broad-brimmed floppy hat tilts up as he raises his head slowly and looks toward the table of jeering bommes. His eyebrows arch and his nostrils dilate in a caricature of superiority, then his musings return to his wine glass.

“Oh, yeah! Big hero he was! Captured by the Germans, he was. Left by the Limeys at Dunkirk ‘cause they didn’t want him stinkin’ up their boats. And you know what big hero thing he done when he was in prison camp? He lined his ass with ground glass so the Germans would get castrated when they cornholed him! Big hero! That’s why he walks funny! He claims he was wounded in the war, but I heard different!”

There are snickers and nudgings around the table, but the Vet does not deign to respond. Perhaps he no longer hears.

Lieutenant Claude LaPointe crosses Sherbrooke, leaving the somber mass of the Monastere du Bon Pasteur behind. His pace slows to the measured rhythm of the beat-walker. The Main has been his patch for thirty-two years, since the Depression was at its nadir and frightened people treated one another with humanity, even in Montreal, the most impolite city in the world.

LaPointe presses his fists deep into the pockets of his shapeless overcoat to tug the collar tighter down onto his neck. Over the years, that rumpled overcoat has become something of a uniform for him, known by everybody who works on the Main, or who works the Main. Young detectives down at the Quartier General make jokes about it, saying he sleeps in it at night, and in the summer uses it as a laundry bag. Feelings differ about the man in the overcoat; some recognize a friend and protector, others see a repressive enemy. It depends upon what you do for a living; and even more it depends on how LaPointe feels about you.

When he was young on the street, the Main was French and he its French cop. As the foreigners began to arrive in numbers, there was coolness and distance between them and LaPointe. He could not understand what they wanted, what they were saying, how they did things; and for their part they brought with them a deep distrust of authority and police. But with the wearing of time, the newcomers became a part of the street, and LaPointe became their cop: their protector, sometimes their punisher.

As he walks slowly up the street, LaPointe passes a bakery that is something of a symbol of the change the years have brought to the Main. Thirty-odd years ago, when the Main was French, the bakery was:

Patisserie St. Laurent

Ten years later, in response to the relentless pressure of English, one word was added to permit the French to use the first two-thirds of the sign and the Anglos the last two-thirds:

Patisserie St. Laurent Bakery

Now there are different breads in the window, breads with odd shapes and glazes. And the women waiting in line gossip in alien sounds. Now the sign reads: