The Extinction Club (31 page)

I braced myself. “What’s that?”

“There’s someone living in the church.”

I was planning on going to the church anyway, it being Christmas and all, but I wasn’t planning on taking a Sig Sauer with me. Loaded, seven in the magazine. The first thing I noticed about carrying a pistol was how heavy the damn thing was. Céleste had shown me how to work the slide and snap the safety off. And how to press a button to pop the clip out of the bottom of the grip. All that was left, I suppose, was to pull the trigger.

Céleste was vague about who she had glimpsed through her telescope coming and going through the back door of the church. He was wearing a ski-mask, she said in her matter-of-fact way. And carrying a sleeping bag. How does she stay so calm? Did her grandmother keep a stash of Valium? Or Quaaludes?

With my back to the wall and gun raised beside my ear, as they do in the movies, I shot two glances through a side window of the church, one quick, one lingering. I saw nothing
but blackness the first time, two faint orange lights the second. And then heard something just as faint: a whistling sound. I paused to follow the melody. “Good King Wenceslas.” I shifted my gaze toward the rectory, and saw Céleste’s head sticking out the attic window.
Courage, show courage. The non-Dutch kind
. I peered through the window again. The orange lights were now extinguished and the whistling had stopped.

I was heading for the back door, my ring of keys in one hand, my revolver in the other, when the squeak of wood against metal made me jump. The sound of a resistant door being pushed open. Then a man stepping through it, with a black balaclava over his face.

“Mr. Nightingale, how are you this lovely afternoon? Enjoying Boxing Day? A good time to relax, they say, after all the hurly-burly. Not for me, though. I must remain active, even during the holidays, or else I go stark raving mad.” He slowly peeled off his mask.

I slipped the gun quickly into my parka’s side pocket. It was Myles Llewellyn. Wearing the same outfit, more or less, as the last time we met at the church: reddish tweed coat, reddish jogging pants, black galoshes over laceless shoes fastened with duct tape. “I’m fine, Mr. Llewellyn but …”

“Stop right there. Call me Myles.”

“But … today’s not Boxing Day. Myles.”

“No? There I go again. At my age all the days begin to blur, shuffle like decks in a card. I mean cards in a deck. Oh well, no damage done. I can come back tomorrow. Any day you like, in fact. Unless you’ve changed your mind—or perhaps forgotten—about our … agreement?”

“No, I … not at all.”

He was walking back toward the door. “Come with me,” he
said, crooking his finger and narrowing his eyes. “I’ll explain my plan to you. My vision.”

The church interior, I saw once my eyes adjusted to the light, was as stark and bleak as the first time I’d seen it. Not a single pew remained, let alone altar, crucifix or pulpit. Even the floor was bare, with only yellowing glue or rusty nails to suggest where the altar carpet and wide-slat pine flooring had been. There were partially frozen puddles here and there, fed from the holey roof. By the sacristy door were two space heaters and an unrolled sleeping bag. And on the pulpit steps was a large clock radio, which, I would soon find out, also housed a cassette player.

“I hope you don’t mind,” he said, following my gaze. “I’m setting up some sleeping quarters,
à l’improviste
. So I can get cracking first thing in the morning. Avoid the to and fro. I have to face facts: I’m getting old, I can no longer draw on reserves.”

I hadn’t noticed any vehicle outside. How did Llewellyn get here, with all this gear? And how did he get inside? With a skeleton key? “How did you get here, Mr. Llewellyn?”

He didn’t answer. He simply smiled and pointed up. “Look at those lights. The last time I saw that colour—peacock blue, I suppose you’d call it—was at Chartres. The most beautiful things in the world are the most useless: peacocks and lilies, for example. Ruskin said that, or something like that.”

He was pointing at some unremarkable side windows, or “lights” as they are called, which had been broken by children’s stones or bored hunters’ bullets and half-heartedly mended with masking tape. One displayed the familiar image of the Good Shepherd holding a sheep in his arms, the other Saint Davnet herself with a sword in her hand and fettered devil at her feet. The blue light shone through her.

I pointed. “That’s Saint Davnet, right?” I knew this because her name was inscribed along the bottom.

He nodded. “Better known as Saint Dymphna. Davnet’s an Irish version of her name.”

“And who was she … exactly?”

“Patron saint of the insane.” He paused as we both gazed up at her. “And incest victims, runaways, that kind of thing. It’s over a hundred years old, that window—almost as old as I am. Robert McCausland is my guess.”

“The artist?”

“The firm in Toronto. The oldest stained-glass company in North America.”

I looked closer at the saint’s sad face. “Was she—Dymphna—insane?”

“No. Her father was the insane one.”

I waited for him to go on. “And … who was her father?”

“An Irish king—seventh century, pagan. When his wife died he scoured the countryside—not just in Ireland but all over Europe—for someone to replace her. Someone just as beautiful. But he couldn’t find anyone up to the mark so he, well … ‘turned his attentions,’ as they say, to his beautiful daughter. Who was fourteen. She fled to Belgium, trying to get away from him. But the king tracked her down, in Geel, and when she refused to go back with him he went into a blind rage and decapitated her.”

Good God, was any of this true? I was about to ask him more but was distracted by his arms, which he raised in a gesture that struck me as oddly papal.

“This project will immortalize my name in the annals of ecclesiastical architecture. How good is your imagination, Mr. Nightingale?”

“It’s … good. It’s beyond good, it’s out of control.”

“Rectangular plan. Raised pulpit, projecting chancel and vestry. A transept suggested by gables on the north and south elevations. Gothic influences, you see. Gabled roof clad with ribbed copper sheeting, double-ridge ventilation. The chancel—similar roof, but at a lower height, with a small section of clerestory. The vestry—skillion roof. The western elevation will have twin stone entrance porches, three lancet windows and a stone cross at the top of the gable. Dressed stone work around the windows and to the top of the gable, and an inscription reading
NUNC ET IN HORA MORTIS NOSTRAE
. Three lancets, two quatrefoils and a rose window on the chancel gable, surmounted by a vesica. The eastern nave gable—surmounted by a carved stone bell-cote from which a new bell will be hung.”

So far so good. But his words took a sharp turn, becoming harder and harder to follow. Links and linear logic fell by the wayside, and yet somehow, like an abstract painting or mosaic, it all made sense. And even had a certain beauty. His phrases, in any case, stayed with me for weeks on end, reverberating inside me like a … bell.

“You disagree?” he said.

“No no, I … it’s not that, it’s just that I’m no real expert in—”

“Do you remember the uproar over the Sistine Chapel? Or when they suggested the Earth was round? I am building you a dream emporium, Mr. Nightingale. I am meticulous—I believe in the absolute power of detail. A ladder-back chair and some kickshaws, that’s all we need for now. And we shall adopt the Walmart model: no unions, no grievances …

“This is not about handouts, about making money, this is about survival. This church is all I have left. Why? Because the love of my life left me after thirty-two years with a note of two lines. I will do this work
gratis
…

“Stop right there. I do not know the word no. I do not grasp its meaning. It impinges on my retina, it races into my auditory canal, but to my brain it is gibberish. No, I will not brook refusals, Mr. Nightingale, I am quite deaf to them you know …

“I showed myself, I thought, to be a man of oak and iron. I put my hand to the plow and did not look back. And yet …

“‘My name is Deborah,’ she said to me, holding out her hand. She came onto
me
, you see. I was cool as Labrador. I’m thinking, place the tennis ball back in her court …

“‘What-ho, my dear. This is a dashed rummy place for you to be living, what?’ I thought this sort of thing would impress her, you see. The accent. She was so young, so lovely. I thought it would charm her …

“She threw me over! For a younger man! I’m past retirement age—who’s going to look at me now?

“You’re only saying that to make me feel better, Mr. Nightingale. Nobody wants me now, not at my age. I’m on the scrap heap …

“It’s all a bit of a hot stove. Best not touched. I’ll be fine. It doesn’t do us any good, does it, to wring our hands over the far-off things. What can’t be cured must be endured. Look at that stained glass …

“Sublimate, I must sublimate. I must keep active. I am one of those organisms that never want to go to bed and never want to get up …

“Music, we must have music! Hang on …

“Ah yes.
Yes
, listen … Da duh-duh-duh da … Inexplicable longings surge within me whenever I hear this. I base my life on its form, in fact, and I advise you to do the same. Allegro, Andante, Waltz, Allegro. I’m now in the Waltz, and shall end my days
allegro con vivace
…

“I’m a bit of a dinosaur, I know. But the music is still good. It has not been surpassed by rock and roll or hip-hop …

“People everywhere seem to want to live in the past, and when you stop and think about it, who can blame them?

“I’m willing to pay for my blunders, but in a single lump sum, not on the instalment plan …

“I cut all ties with my family, you see. With blunt scissors. And now, now I cultivate the inner garden …

“Listen to this bit … Yes, I know, I’m too old to whistle, I haven’t the breath for it. But you know, I don’t
feel
old. Inside, I mean. I feel like I’ve got the youngest part of my life still ahead …

“A little excess weight will help you live longer, according to the studies …

“I asked the doctor how much time I had to live. ‘Let me put it this way,’ he said. ‘Don’t buy any green bananas.’ A little joke of mine …

“Most people go on living long after they ought to be dead, don’t you think? We lounge around and then die. That’s all the Earth is, really—a big extinction lounge, an extinction club, membership awarded posthumously …

“There are too many of us, anyway. A tiger is worth ten thousand humans. Read Blake.”

A long silence followed, broken only by the papery rustlings of mice, the scampering of cats, Llewellyn’s sighs.

“Not faulting the company, Mr. Nightingale, but I’d best be alone now. Retire into the kingdom of my mind. I’ll see you tomorrow, then?” He winked. “On St. Stephen’s Day?”

I invited him to the rectory for Christmas dinner, even to sleep there, but he declined. He had a place on Lac St-Nicolas, he said. So I closed the door and left him there, to retire into the kingdom of his mind.

Neither Céleste nor I saw any lights on in the church that night, and we did not see Mr. Llewellyn the following day. Or the day, week or month after that. I never saw him again, in fact. But Céleste did.

XX

It’s New Year’s Eve & I’m looking out the window with my telescope at the ice-cream hills of the Laurentians, the oldest mountain range in the world. People from out west or Europe might not think they’re very high, but as I say, they’re older.

I wish there was such a thing as a time telescope, so I could see how they looked when the first Europeans arrived, when they were the home of Algonquin Indians. When the forest was 30 to 50 metres high, with some areas nearly 80 metres. In other words, between 12 & 15 storeys high & in some places as high as 25 storeys! The first settlers — the French, Irish, Scottish & American homesteaders — basically saw this forest as something to get rid of. They cut down the trees like weeds. Today it’s 4 storeys high.

The Laurentians got their name from Saint Lawrence. This is because when Jacques Cartier arrived in the Gulf in 1534, it was on this saint’s day, August 10th. But he only named one small bay after Saint Lawrence. The river was called the Saint Lawrence when Cartier’s maps were translated into Spanish. Why did the translator change the name? Because the saint was born in Spain.

Lawrence was responsible for the church property in Rome & was promoted to Keeper of the Treasures in 258 after Emperor Valerian cut the heads off the rest of the officials. But Saint
Lawrence didn’t exactly keep the treasures — he shared them. When he was asked to come forward with the church’s valuables, he produced the blind, the crippled & the sick. “These are the treasures of the church,” he said. Probably in Latin. For this he was roasted to death on a gridiron. As he was being grilled, he asked to be turned over, saying he was underdone on the other side. This is why he is the saint of laughter.

A few kilometres from where I live, south of the Bogs & Ravenwood Pond, is the Rivière du Diable. It runs for about 70 kilometres through a valley formed by the Laurentide Ice Sheet. This glacier was about 2,000 metres high, a gigantic wall of ice that would dwarf a city like Montreal or even New York, towering over their skyscrapers. A thousand years ago, if Nile & I had stood on Mont Binoche, which is the high ground around here, we would have looked WAY up to the icy mountains to the north, higher than the Swiss Alps.