“And you? Will they put a halo on you, Golden Boy?”
Ariel smiles, kisses his wife’s pale forehead perpetually aflutter with nervous little wings. Just then, the telephone rings. The committee has ended its deliberations. As though sensing the momentous news has arrived, the cameras move in closer, like jaws tightening around the house, still slightly parted before biting into the apple.
Marie is choking. She feels as though she’s been plunged into water, as though she is watching the celebrations going on around her through a crude glass jar. She leans against a pillar and focuses on her breathing; her lungs don’t fill up with water, and the smells of victory are enough to subdue the muddy vortex whistling in her chest. Groping in her handbag, she finds a small candy box. She swallows a tablet that leaves a bitter trail as it slides down her throat. Then she waits a moment and from another container pulls out a menthol lozenge. A wholesome chill inundates her mouth. She is ready to go back and mingle with the crowd, in the middle of which Ariel stands beaming.
He grabs his wife’s cool hand and squeezes it. Her bony fist seems to shrink inside his palm and grow hard and dense, a hidden gemstone granting him access to a silent, unaltered region of his being in which he left behind everything he had to give up to get where he is. Marie, with her pure heart, her unshakable integrity, her undisguised idealism. If it is true these qualities are at odds with political life, then to have such an open-hearted woman at his side convinces Ariel he has not abandoned what led him to take up this profession. He notices her arm is trembling. She isn’t feeling well. He turns toward her, but her eyes reassure him. It will soon pass.
The air in the two-hundred-year-old house where Ariel grew up is tinged with the fragrance of jonquils. Some people, when holding a party, make it a point of honour to ensure there is enough alcohol for the guests to drink themselves into oblivion. Ariel’s parents stake their reputation on flower arrangements. Bouquets the size of Cadillacs have pride of place in every corner, nearly overshadowing the platters stacked high with petits fours and sweets. Never before have the Goldsteins had such an extraordinary opportunity to fête their only son and show him how immensely proud they are of him. From the moment he entered their lives they knew he was destined for great things. Granted, the road has been full of twists and turns — the underground art scene where Ariel performed as a slammer, his unpalatable girlfriends and his even more dubious hairstyles — but as soon as he entered law school they were reassured. His adolescence was simply the forge in which their son’s talents were tempered.
Amid the toasts of uncles, aunts, and old friends, Ariel receives the praise with the same magnanimous pride he displayed at his bar mitzvah. His old high school buddies taunt him with teasing grins.
“Real politics will get the better of you, Goldstein the Good. You’ll crack as soon as you’re offered your first bribe!”
“Come now, my son is above all that!” Mrs. Goldstein protests.
“No need to cheat when you’re the best,” his father adds, giving Ariel an affectionate pat on the back.
Marie smiles. Goldstein family gatherings invariably throw her into a state of melancholic delight. Her husband grew up surrounded by a munificence of finer feelings. No wonder he’s endowed with an unshakable confidence in the future and in himself. There’s no comparison with her own childhood, which was spent under the yoke of powerful clan where she was so glaringly out of place. In many ways it was her meeting with Ariel that drew her out of her acute shyness and her vocational dithering. If he hadn’t been there to encourage her, she would never have dared to found a humanitarian organization, nor would she have had the strength to deal with powerful men, of which her husband, ironically, was now one.
A strong hand has just settled on her shoulder. Even before Marie turns around, she senses that the hand belongs to Rachel, her sister. From atop her warrior-like stature, Rachel rattles off her congratulations and then laconically apologizes for their parents’ absence. Marie cuts her short. She knows perfectly well why they haven’t come. It’s already hard enough for her father to have a confirmed federalist for a son-in-law; to be seen at a Labour celebration would finish him off. Marie kisses her sister, her ruddy cheeks and the powerful muscles of her canine jaws. Rachel is half a head taller than most of the guests.
Circulating among his own people, Ariel continues to shake hands. Ordinarily, the well-honed gesture is an automatic reflex, but this morning, after officially addressing the party membership, he finds the handshaking intensely satisfying. At last, he’s no longer the one who’s striving, trying his luck, begging for trust, working behind the scenes. He has fulfilled the hopes his parents had placed in him; he has proven his pre-eminence beyond the shadow of a doubt, and everyone — including the husky guys who, fifteen years ago, demolished him on the ice rink — has to acknowledge this. Savouring the moment, he forces himself not to think of the colossal task that awaits him. He will get to work tomorrow. Right now he ad-libs a little speech reminding his familiars of the days when, with the help of an out-of-tune guitar, he made up lines and rhymes for an intoxicated audience.
When he thanks Marie, she lifts her hand to her chest. Her head is spinning, perhaps from exhaustion or because of the pills; she feels the ground giving way beneath her feet. Or maybe it’s the smell of the jonquils going to her head. She hears the sap rumbling in their stems, their stamens launching vague messages into the air. For a fraction of a second she is convinced she understands them. Then, like everything else, the sensation passes.
The first thing to do. Given the widespread public cynicism, given the five wars the country is mired in, given the shantytowns burgeoning on the outskirts of Canada’s largest cities and the epidemic of environmental cancers, the first thing to do is neither to consider withdrawing the military nor to discuss social programs and air pollution. The dossiers that Ariel has prepared in recent months are put on the back burner by his director of public relations.
“The first thing to do,” she announces, “is to establish you as a normal person. Faithful husband. Good son. Amiable neighbour. Future father. In a word, the antithesis of Lambert. We must offset your predecessor’s indiscretions — and your young age — with an image of integrity.”
“An image? So what’s the current perception? That I’m a corrupt old satrap?”
“No, but the public has no idea. You need to show people who you are.”
“Am I going to wear a badge: Good Boy Goldstein?”
Ariel taps on his desk impatiently. He knew very well that once he became leader he would have to submit to some window dressing, but he dislikes it. For years now, he has attended to his image. He yearns to move on to issues of substance, to plunge his hands into the inaccessible matter that he has wanted to mould ever since he took his first steps inside the party. Unaffected by her leader’s mood, the publicist continues to lay out her ideas.
“Everything centres on you and Marie. Over the coming weeks we’ll need to follow you as much as possible, so people can see you at the restaurant or catch you off guard when you’re shopping. In interviews, you’ll joke about your domesticity. You have to be approachable and look like Mr. Average.”