The more bored he became the more inhuman was the beauty of the brass. It was too bright to look at. You needed goggles. It was too hot to stand close to. You needed an apron. Many times a day he watched the metal being poured, feeling the heat even where he sat. The arch of liquid came to represent an intensity he would never achieve.
He punched the clock every morning for a year.
16
H is friend was leaving Montreal to study in England.
“But, Krantz, it’s Montreal you’re leaving, Montreal on the very threshold of greatness, like Athens, like New Orleans.”
“The Frogs are vicious,” he said, “the Jews are vicious, the English are absurd.”
“That’s why we’re great, Krantz. The cross-fertilization.”
“Okay, Breavman, you stay here to chronicle the Renaissance.”
It was an early summer evening on Stanley Street. Breavman had been in the foundry for a month. The strolling girls had their bare arms on.
“Krantz, the arms, the bosoms, the buttocks, O lovely catalogue!”
“They’ve certainly come out.”
“Krantz, do you know why Sherbrooke Street is so bloody beautiful?”
“Because you want to get laid.”
Breavman thought for a second.
“You’re right, Krantz.”
It was great to be back in the dialogue with Krantz; he hadn’t seen him very much in the past few weeks.
But he knew the street was beautiful for other reasons. Because you’ve stores and people living in the same buildings. When you’ve got only stores, especially modern-fronted ones, there is a terrible stink of cold money-grabbing. When you’ve got only houses, or rather when the houses get too far from the stores, they exude some poisonous secret, like a plantation or an abattoir.
But what Krantz said was true. No, not laid. Beauty at close quarters.
A half-block up, a girl turned down to Sherbrooke. She was strolling alone.
“Remember, Krantz, three years ago we would have followed her with all kinds of fleshly dreams.”
“And fled if she ever looked back.”
The girl ahead of them walked under a lamplight, the light sliding down the folds of her hair. Breavman began to whistle “Lili Marlene.”
“Krantz, we’re walking into a European movie. You and me are old officers walking along to something important. Sherbrooke is a ruin. Why does it feel like a war just ended?”
“Because you want to get laid.”
“C’mon, Krantz, give me a chance.”
“Breavman, if I gave you a chance, you’d weep through every summer night.”
“Do you know what I’m going to do, Krantz? I’m going to walk up to that girl and be very gentle and polite and ask her to join us for a small walk over the world.”
“You do that, Breavman.”
He quickened his pace and moved beside her. This would be it. All the compassion of strangers. She turned her face and looked at him.
“Excuse me,” he said and stopped. “Mistake.”
She walked away and he waited for Krantz to catch up.
“She was a beast, Krantz. We couldn’t have toasted her. She wasn’t all that is beautiful in women.”
“It’s not our night.”
“There’s lots of night left.”
“I’ve got to get up early for the boat.”
But they did not go right back to Stanley. They walked slowly up the streets towards home: University, Metcalfe, Peel, MacTavish. Named for the distinguished from the British Isles. They passed by the stone houses and the black iron fences. Many of the houses had been taken over by the university or turned into boarding-houses, but here and there a colonel or a lady still lived, manicured the lawns and bushes, still climbed the stone steps as if all the neighbours were peers. They wandered through the campus of the university. Night, like time, gave all the buildings a deep dignity. There was the library with its crushing cargo of words, dark and stone.
“Krantz, let’s get out of here. The buildings are starting to claim me.”
“I know what you mean, Breavman.”
As they walked back to Stanley, Breavman was no longer in a movie. All he wanted to do was turn to Krantz and wish him luck, all the luck in the world. There was nothing else to say to a person.
The taxis were beginning to pile up in front of the tourist houses. Half a block down you could get whisky in coffee cups at a blind pig disguised as a bridge club. They watched the taximen making U-turns in the one-way street: friends of the police. They knew all the landladies and store owners and waitresses. They were citizens of downtown. And Krantz was taking off like a big bird.
“You know, Breavman, you’re not Montreal’s suffering servant.”
“Of course I am. Can’t you see me, crucified on a maple tree at the top of Mount Royal? The miracles are just beginning to happen. I have just enough breath to tell them, ‘I told you so, you cruel bastards.’ ”
“Breavman, you’re a schmuck.”
And soon their dialogue would be broken. They stood on the balcony in silence, watching the night-doings get into gear.
“Krantz, do I have anything to do with you leaving?”
“A little.”
“I’m sorry.”
“We’ve got to stop interpreting the world for one another.”
“Yes … yes.”
The buildings were so familiar and the street so well known. Even Gautama wept when he lost a friend. Nothing would be the same tomorrow. He could hardly bear to understand that. Krantz wouldn’t be there. That would be like a bulldozer turned loose in the heart of the city. They weren’t the kind of people that wrote letters to each other.
Krantz took a long glance around him. “Yup,” he said, like an old farmer in a rocking chair.
“Yup,” Breavman agreed over nothing.
“Just about time,” said Krantz.
“Good night, Krantz.”
“Good night, old Breavman.”
He smiled and clasped his friend’s hand.
“Good night, old Krantz,” and they joined four hands and then went into their separate rooms.
17
Montreal was madly buying records of
