Their third blackout occurred when they tried to kiss each other on the cheek in a university hallway. After waiting for them to come around, a medical student who had witnessed the scene checked their vital signs and advised them to consult a specialist, which they did the following week. The doctors were hard put to offer an explanation other than a mysterious form of simultaneous epilepsy, a hypothesis that none of the test results supported. On paper they appeared to be absolutely normal.
The fainting spells grew less frequent and less intense only when they began to make love. When they moved in together a few months after the first episode the manifestations of their amorous epilepsy entirely vanished. But traces of it remained each time they touched, however slightly. A sort of quivering that stirred their cells like a tiny, invisible earthquake.
“The strong showing early on in the campaign makes it hard not to see Ariel Goldstein as the Labour Party’s long-awaited saviour,” the radio voice murmurs from the four cardinal points. “Will this be enough for the party to take back the reins of government, which have eluded it for twenty years? Canadians have three more weeks to decide.”
Marc turns the receiver off with a wave of his hand and silence descends like a curtain all around them. He raises his glass:
“To our saviour!”
The gathering erupts in laughter and then follows his lead. Seeing the former military man make such a lighthearted toast has lifted everyone’s spirits. For the small team that has been working without letup since the election was called, this friendly brunch is like a break in the clouds. Ariel looks proudly at each one of them and, though he would never admit it, feels relieved to have them by his side. Thanks to them the beginner’s blunders that the National Party was counting on never occurred. During his first weeks in the House of Commons he was able to consolidate his reputation and increase his support among voters. After the election campaign was launched his confidence grew. Working a crowd, mixing with “ordinary folks”—that is what he does best, and he knows it.
To his right, Marie’s head is spinning and her thoughts are buoyant. She is not in the habit of drinking wine before noon, but something in the room’s geometry, in the colour of the walls and the perfectly cooked pumpkin soufflé prompts her to overdo it. Marc and Emmanuelle’s home is the picture of perfection. The house, standing on the slopes of Mount Royal, the minimalist furniture, their hi-tech sound system, and the organic champagne are at once extravagant and sublimely necessary.
“Shit!” the publicist blurts out, disrupting the tranquil mood of the meal. “The evangelist media have fished out some Biblical passages warning against the arrival of an ungodly prophet. It’s all over the blogs.”
“Because Ariel is Jewish? That’s ridiculous! No one’s going to take it seriously!” Emmanuelle exclaims.
“Not in your progressive bubble, no. But in the rest of the world, absolutely,” Marc snaps back.
Marie gets up and steps toward the window. Their hosts’ altercations weary her. She knows how fond Ariel is of Marc, but Emmanuelle, the fiery artist, makes her uncomfortable. She can’t understand their way of behaving more like adversaries than lovers or their tendency to lock horns in public. Whenever the subject is politics, Marc attacks Emmanuelle; she, on the other hand, takes pains to appear utterly ingenuous, as if she were honour-bound to remain ignorant of the world her husband is part of.
Evidently delighted at finding an excuse to leave the table, Emmanuelle goes to join Marie at the window.
“Election campaigns — they’re such a nuisance, don’t you think? You must miss Ariel…”
Marie, her thoughts scattered around her, agrees. She desperately misses Ariel. But what she hasn’t the strength to explain to Emmanuelle is that she misses him even when she accompanies him to party events, even when she appears beside him as they climb down from the campaign bus, when she hands him a pastry offered by a pro-Labour shop owner, or when she listens to him rehearsing a new speech. To find herself alone with him, by the sea or at a lake, far from everything — that is what she’d like. Nighttime, of course, is still theirs, the opaque cloth where they nestle for a few hours before going out into the world again, but it’s not enough. Marie would like to dig wells, tunnels, underground warrens, to dive down into the depths of their love and resurface, breathless, holding in their hands a treasure or an unknown animal. But the campaign monopolizes everything.
After standing next to Marie for a while munching on grapes, Emmanuelle goes away, no doubt vexed by the other’s silence. Marie contemplates the landscape spread out below the house. Seen from this angle, the city always makes her feel slightly dizzy. Thousands of dogs and their owners stroll along the paths of Mount Royal, carving ruts into the mountain’s back. Canada geese execute Pythagorean manoeuvres in preparation for their departure. The St. Lawrence rumbles like an ogre. Centimetre by centimetre it eats away at the banks. Soon the city will be nothing but a vast bed for a sterile river. Each time she thinks about the rising waters, Marie wants to cry. Ariel comes over and wraps her in his arms.
“We’ll learn to breathe under water,” he whispers.
Nothing in Canada is colder than a Northern Ontario highway in the middle of the night. It’s already winter here. A thin, chalky sheet covers the roadway, where the wind is etching scraggly arabesques. With rhythmic regularity, the icy brightness from the lampposts bleaches the interior of the election campaign bus, a light so harsh it seems audible to Ariel, a caustic whistle close to his ear.
The convoy has already been travelling for six hours. The team is scheduled to reach Kapuskasing at dawn for a tour of a former mine that has been converted into a movie theatre. Because many towns in the region have been closed down over the past few decades, Ariel must reassure the residents, although the bulky folder he is studying provides no reason to be hopeful. He sighs. Around him, Marc and the other advisers are drowsing, their bodies bent in ridiculous postures. Sitting in his huge velvet seat at the front of the vehicle, the driver is invisible. The bus might as well be driving itself.
Through the window, a few moribund hamlets can be seen flashing by with a feeble glow and some wisps of smoke. Misery has nowhere to hide here, nor do Ariel’s thoughts. It is far easier to be persuaded one can change things when sitting in Ottawa or Montreal or Toronto. But in the light of these areas left behind by progress and stripped of the amenities they were promised, their decline appears to be unstoppable. Ariel searches almost haphazardly through the database prepared by his team. Despite all the serious research that has been done on poverty-related issues, nothing has gotten to the heart of the matter; no term, no definition is close enough, straightforward enough, incisive enough.
He stands up and shakes out his stiff limbs. The convoy enters an unlit stretch of road, and it’s as if the bus had plunged into deep water and were diving toward an abyss where heavy, fearful fossils lie sleeping. As slowly as a mime, Ariel passes his hand in front of his colleagues’ faces to verify that they are indeed asleep. He smiles at the childhood trick. Then he tiptoes to the back of the vehicle, where a private nook has been set up for him. His personal effects are there: the old Andreï Markov sweater, his lucky charm, a biography of Pierre Elliott Trudeau that his father gave him a few days ago, and a slim, triangular case. Smiling, he pops open the clasps, which crack like two tiny whips. Nestled inside the padded box is a miniature guitar. A gift received from Marie at the start of the tour. To stave off boredom while you’re on the road. So you don’t lose your way, the card said.
Ariel lovingly lifts the delicate instrument out of its case and presses his tired lips against the neck of the guitar. The kiss leaves a taste of varnish that pricks his tongue. Then, ensconced in his seat, he strokes the strings, muting the sound so as not to wake anyone. A melody rises in a minor key, the scale that never finds happiness yet does not despair.