THE
BOYS I MEAN
“The
boys I mean are not refined
They cannot chat of that and this
They do not give a fart for art
They kill like you would take a piss”
(e.e. cummings)
I
am sitting in an all-night restaurant, on the corner of Mont-Royal
and St-Denis, in Montreal; it is around 3:00 in the morning, and
I am having a coffee while counting my spare change. My rosary
is on the table, at my booth, and I have been off my medication
for many moons. A couple comes and sits diagonally across from
me, and the man is staring at me. He is Vietnamese, and she could
be French Canadian. He is staring and staring – so I turn
to him, look him straight in the eye, and say to him, “Bonjour,
how are you?”
He
replies, “Fuck off.”
The
normal thing to do would be to move to another seat in the restaurant,
to leave the restaurant or to just ignore this fellow. What I
do – I am off my medication – is that I go see the
manager of the restaurant, at the cash register, and I complain
that a customer told me to fuck off. He doesn’t pay attention.
He simply dismisses my complaint and tells me to leave him alone.
So I pay my bill and walk out of the restaurant. I go outside
– it is June 1984, and it is not cold. I go outside, and
wait for the Vietnamese guy to come out. He sees me in the window
of the restaurant, and understands that I want to fight with him.
He gestures, meaning, you and me, eh? And then he comes out of
the front door.
The
first thing he does is that he punches me in the mouth. He comes
out of the restaurant swinging. He connects and cuts my lip. There
are a few missed punches, we spar, and then I let out a god-awful
“kiai” yell, a type of yell I have learned in martial
arts, and I hit him with my right fist, with all my might, on
his left cheek. There is blood all over his face. And then his
girlfriend comes out of the restaurant and breaks up the fight.
She is frantic and screaming. She pulls her boyfriend away.
I
have a cut lip and a major cut on my right fist, where my little
finger is. So I phone for an ambulance, and they come, within
ten minutes. The paramedics take me to the Hôtel-Dieu hospital.
I wait for a few minutes at the Emergency ward, and then they
stitch up the cuts, on my face and my hand. It turns out I fractured
the little finger on my right hand, when I hit the guy. The doctors
put a cast on my right hand and wrist.
Then
a policewoman comes in and arrests me. She is wearing her uniform,
and she handcuffs me. Apparently, my Vietnamese opponent has charged
me with assault.
So
by 6:00 o’clock in the morning, I am in a cell at Parthenais
Detention Center, in the East end of Montreal. It is a little
room, with bars instead of a door, with a metal bunk bed, a writing
desk that I guess we eat from, as well as a toilet and a sink.
There is also a locker where I can hang my clothes. Some time
later, the guards bring us breakfast.
No
one is allowed to wear a watch here. So we do time, and soon enough,
I understand what is the penalty here: time. There is nothing
to do to pass the time. So I say my rosary. Soon, I borrow books
from the prison library. I start reading Pascal’s report
to a provincial superior about the Inquisition, Will Durant’s
history of philosophy, and some books of Leonard Cohen’s
poetry. I am cozy in my little cell, and in time, the authorities
find out that I am supposed to take medication, so they put me
back on my prescription of neuroleptics.
Meanwhile, I am hearing voices: I imagine I can hear God himself
speaking to me in my mind. I see things that aren’t there,
like the sink changing appearance, molding itself into various
faces. I get exalted feelings, which I think are mystical experiences,
as I pray. Basically, I am delusional. But this makes it easier
to endure this situation. But there are no women, no children,
no plants, and no animals. Everything is made of metal and cement.
I
spend a week or two in this institution, waiting for my court
appearance. I go to court within a couple of days, and am shipped
there in the paddy wagon. I remember telling a prison guard that
I am praying to get out of here, and I show him my rosary. He
laughs at me, and tells me that is not what is going to get me
out of there. While waiting in a holding cell, I talk to a longhaired
guy who is a pimp, and he is very uptight, pacing back and forth
in the cell. He is obviously very anxious to get out of here.
The
guards are pretty rough, and I don’t know whom I am most
afraid of: the guards or the inmates. The inmates tell the guards
racist jokes, and the guards laugh. One day, during a meal, I
ask a prison guard for some salt, and he yells back at me that
the Hilton hotel is downtown, not here. The inmates call the guards
“the screws.” Most of the inmates are French Canadians;
there are a few blacks, but they are English-speaking; then there
are a few more Anglos. There are no other minorities.
The
guy in the cell next to mine is a fortuneteller, so the inmates
ridicule him by calling him, “Boule de crystal (crystal
ball.)” One night, while we are in our cells, I think they
are picking on me, because the biggest guy in the ward is yelling
at Boule de crystal, and taunting him. I think I am Boule de crystal,
so I yell back at Mario, who is also the President of the Sector.
I tell him I am not afraid of him, because I have friends in the
mafia and friends in the FLQ, a terrorist group. The other inmates
start asking each other, talking from one cell to the next, “What
is wrong with the new guy?” Another answers, “He thinks
he is Boule de crystal.” So the next day, one of the inmates
tell me I have earned the respect of the others, because they
could see “what I am made of.” I stood up to the President.
Parthenais
Detention Center at that time was a maximum-security prison where
people were held pending trial. So there were all kinds of people
in there: one guy who was a Raelian had stolen a Beethoven cassette
(he was sentenced to two years), whereas other people were in
there for murder. Most of them were drug addicts. One day, one
of the inmates nicknamed “Animal” describes how his
wife has been raped by some fellow; so he shot him full of dimes.
Apparently, when you shoot someone with a bullet full of ten-cent
pieces, it aggravates the pain. Well, he shot this guy in the
balls with a shotgun. And now he is sentenced to ten years in
the pen. Another inmate agrees, “When you do someone, you
should do him good.” And the others all agree.
Frankly,
I am terrified of these guys. I figure I will try to get accepted
by them, so in order to get extra peanut butter or extra rolling
tobacco, I do drawings for the inmates. I do their portraits,
I design tattoos, which a tattoo artist will recopy once they
go to Bordeaux jail. And they nickname me “L’Arabe,”
because I have a swarthy complexion.
They
can’t play cards or checkers or chess without arguing. They
watch television, and one night, there is a Michael Jackson show
called “Thriller,” and all the boys are gathered around
the TV set. Another popular show is Robert Charlebois’s
special for Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day. Either way, there is constant
noise in the Sector during recess time. The inmates chatter like
naked apes in a zoo. It reminds me of the movie Planet of the
Apes. Another source of irritation is the noise of the doors opening
and closing, by remote control, because the cell doors are made
of metal bars, which clang shut.
And
I wonder what I am doing there. One day, on Saturday morning,
we are in our cells, and one of the inmates begins to weep, loudly.
Nobody comments.
The
prisoners tell me that their girlfriends are topless dancers.
And they explain to me how to pick up strippers: you ask a lady
to dance at your table, and you tell her you have some cocaine
at home. So she comes to your house, and you seduce her. Most
of these guys have children.
I
ask them why they live a life of crime. They all tell me they
don’t want to work.
The
common practice is to bribe the judges, so that is what they do.
The inmates hate the system, but they play the capitalist game.
I ask them what lawyer to get, and they all recommend Leonard
Wiseman. He is expensive, but he is the best. His practice is
on McGill Street, down by the harbour, in the financial district.
So
time is going by. One day, a French-speaking prisoner covered
with tattoos takes me aside, and asks me, “The guys find
you are nervous. What is wrong?”
I
explain to him that I am not used to this type of people. He reminds
me that inmates are very sensitive people, and he believes they
are the most sensitive of all people. I ask him why he is in here,
and he says one day when he was a teenager, his girlfriend died
in a car crash; ever since, he has adopted a life of crime. He
tells me that he is blocked spiritually, and he can’t pray.
Finally,
a new guy is placed in the cell next to mine, and he tells me
that he is the son of a famous wrestler. He shows me that his
front teeth have been knocked out by his father. He tells me that
his dad used to beat him up until he was unconscious. So he is
in a rage. A couple of days later, things start to turn around.
The
son of the wrestler tells me his aunt died that day, so he wants
to kill himself. He is looking for a razor blade to slash his
wrists. So I don’t hesitate – the next time I see
him talking to a guard, I barge in and tell the guard to have
this guy put in the psychiatric ward, because he wants to kill
himself. And that is the last we see of him.
That
night, the inmate in the cell next to mine asks me, in French,
“Hey, L’Arabe, you are so cool with the guys…
How come you squealed on Vachon?” And I tell him, speaking
through the wall, that I did it to save the guy’s life.
He wanted to kill himself. The other guy answers me, “Sure,
sure. We know all about that.”
So
my life is now in danger, because the inmates consider me an informer.
But the next morning, the authorities let me out on bail. I have
a court appearance, and my parents are there, and so is my friend
Danny. They are ready to post bail.
That
summer, I am out of jail, and I have two more court appearances.
During the second court appearance, my accuser is supposed to
testify, but he doesn’t show up. Therefore, the charges
are dropped, and I am a free man.
Meanwhile,
I rent an apartment on Fullum Street, and I throw a party one
night for all my friends who came to visit me in jail. At least
while I was inside for a couple of weeks, they have put me back
on my medication, and I am back on track. Within a month, I go
back to doing translation, for the government. It takes a year
for the scars to heal and to recover from the ensuing depression.
Robert
Smith
© Robert Smith 2006
Written
with the financial assistance of the Conseil des arts et des lettres
du Québec.
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