tales and a cabbie

I went to listen to stories tonight. A friend invited me yesterday. The event took place at the Sergent Recruteur brewery, one of Montreal’s several micro-brewery-cum-bars. I guess the word “tales” better translates “contes” than “stories” does. These tales were told by a French-Canadian man named Denis, who’s last name I don’t remember. He told mostly funny tales set a few hundred years back in rural Quebec. They involved men that go by the name of Fanfan, Jean-Guy or René Angelo, and most of them featured the Catholic god-fearing French-Canadian’s most threatening menace and enemy: le Yâble, known in English as The Devil. Going there, I was expecting to have Quebec folk-tales told me, some of which I know well but only because I’ve read them, my French-Canadian side not being peppered with story-telling uncles, though my mon’onque Jean-Guy could liven up family reunions with his accordion. I guess you can say that my roots are more musical than literary.

The friends I was with are French, and they claimed to perfectly understand the teller’s New France jargon, or rather old French Normand accent. I found it special because Denis spoke almost exactly like Ben’s father: the same tone, the same speech, the same facial expressions, and the same accent. It felt like I was sitting there listening to my boyfriend’s dad, though a more versed and long-winded version him. I had half a mind to ask the teller if he comes from the Bas St-Laurent region, but thought better of it. By the end of the show I started having stomach burns (due to my meager supper, I’m sure) and being uncomfortably hot (due to the heater next to which I was sitting). When the encore set was done, we quickly left, and I jumped into a taxi with several other girls.

The taxi driver was a large black man, quite dark of skin and with thick lips. He sat in a stoop, leaning towards me who left the back seats to the three other girls. We discussed the evening while the driver occasionally interrupted us. He asked one of the girls if she was French. He made a joke about the French being the audible minority. He was friendly though maybe a bit unrefined and I had the impression the girls did not particularly welcome his comments and interruptions.

When the two last girls were dropped off, who had paid the entire fair up to their place, the man continued towards my stop, the last one. He didn’t re-set the meter and I, always doubting others’ sincerity, asked him about it. He told me not to worry about it and that when we get to my place I’ll just pay the difference of the fair. He said that if he starts the meter again I’ll then be charged an extra 3,75$, and that he understands that I can’t pay it. The man had assumed, rather correctly, that I am a student. He said how he understands what it’s like to be a student seeing that he had been one for so long. I asked him what he studied. “Fine arts.” “What fine art? Painting?” Turns out he studied literature and afterwards got a degree in fine arts. He paints and sculpts. He said he then did a DEP, which is Quebec’s high school professional diplomat, in graphic design, but that he found the courses unsatisfactory because they did not delve into the subjects with enough depth. To this I agreed. Now he is working towards a college degree in graphic web work. At this point he asked me about myself, seeing that he was doing all the talking. So I said that I just finished my MA in English Literature.

“So you have read Shakespeare.”

“Yes.”

“And Edgar Allen Poe.”

“Yes.”

“And Stephen King.”

“Uuhh, no. But I do know of him.”

“Ah! You read the big names! Yes, I was told to read Shakespeare when I was a kid, but I never did. I was too busy reading Voltaire. But you know, that has been my downfall. I never learned English and if I would have learnt it, I wouldn’t have so many troubles as I do today.”

By this time we had reached my place but my cab driver, who’s mother, surely wanting to make a polite man of her son without any suspicions of his later trade, always told him not to leave a girl standing on the corner, found that we got there too quickly. So he talked on. He told me that if he knew English, he wouldn’t be stuck driving a cab to pay off his 35 000$ student loan. I replied that though knowing both languages in Montreal certainly helps, it is by all means not an easy ticket to a job.

“Well then what is the point of all this studying? It is purely for our own pleasure. To know more for our own intellectual advancements. But surely now, with your English and your MA, employers see that you are educated and want to give you work.”

“That’s actually not the case. Employers see my MA in Literature and wonder how I can possibly want to work a 9 to 5 good paying job. Surely I would rather be doing something more… literary.”

By now I was out the door and he was stooping lower in his seat to keep his eye on me while we talked. He told me how it is horrible that I can’t find a job, but that he is sure I’ll find something. When I suggested that the problem is that our values are off-track, he told me that he respects me. And then he said, “Quand tu te respecte et que tu trouve quelqu’un qui te respecte, là, tu deviens poète;” “When you respect yourself and when you find someone who respects you, then, you become a poet.” Of course I prefer hushing that voice in my head that might hear more in his comments of his respect for me than what honest propriety calls for, and prefer attributing these last wise words from a Montreal cab driver to Ben. That way I know that if I ever come to be called a poet, it will be in large part thanks to him.