Valentine in Montreal, page 1
Contents
Cover
Title Page
A Note from the Author
1. Berri
2. Snowdon
3. Place-d’Armes
4. Place-d’Armes
5. Place-Saint-Henri
6. Place-des-Arts
7. Vendôme
8. McGill
9. Sherbrooke
10. Angrignon
11. Côte-des-Neiges
12. Pie-IX
13. Jean-Drapeau
14. Jean-Drapeau
15. Jean-Talon
16. Bonaventure
17. Square-Victoria
18. Saint-Laurent
19. Crèmazie
20. Peel
21. Viau
22. Berri-UQAM
23. Mont-Royal
24. Beaubien
25. Lionel-Groulx
26. Place-des-Arts
27. Lucien-L’Allier
28. Acadie
29. Champ-de-Mars
30. Côte-Vertu
Acknowledgements
About the Author and Illustrator
Also by Heather O’Neill
Copyright
About the Publisher
A Note from the Author
The editor-in-chief of the Montreal Gazette, Bert Archer, contacted me and invited me for lunch one afternoon in the spring of 2023. He asked if I would like to write a serialized novel for the newspaper. I thought it was a terrible idea, one that might drive me mad, but I said yes immediately.
I had always been intrigued by serialized publication, which reached an apex in Victorian times. It was at a moment when the literary rate in England had exploded but novels were still prohibitively expensive. By publishing stories in chapters sold in green covers or in newspapers and magazines, fiction suddenly became available to all people from all walks of life. Books and literature were no longer for the elites and aristocrats.
Charles Dickens, who became the most popular writer of this genre, had had a poor and difficult childhood, and he brought readers scenes from the underclasses, giving them the dignity of the rich. I had read all his novels by the time I graduated high school, because I too had grown up with nothing, but considered myself an aristocrat with something to say.
I loved the idea of Victorian readers having access to the chapters as the writer was producing them. I liked stories of readers rioting because they wanted the next installment. When Charles Dickens was writing The Old Curiosity Shop, he had a character named Nell, a charming, pathetic child, whom readers adored. But she was getting sicker and sicker with each chapter. Readers begged him not to let Nell die. He was in spiritual agony when he murdered Nell, and readers rioted, of course.
Some writers of serial novels wrote their works first and chopped them into chapters. Some wrote them weekly and would later edit them in order to make it a more polished novel. I wanted to do it in a way where I would write each chapter the week before it was published. And not change anything when it came to publishing it as a whole. It seemed like more of a challenge, more ludicrous. And I liked mistakes in old serial novels, like how in Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders, the titular character pulls out a watch she had sold in a previous chapter.
I decided it would take place in the Montreal subway system. One of my favourite periods in Montreal history was the Quiet Revolution in the 1960s, when so many sculptors and painters and poets emerged from this working-class movement. It was around this time the métro was built, and each station was designed by a different artist. But I also chose the subway system because all the subscribers of the newspaper would have a chapter take place at their own métro stop.
Then Valentine came to me. In true Dickensian spirit, she is an orphan. She is a young woman who experienced a childhood characterized by neglect and poverty. But she loves life, even though no one has ever done anything for her. Valentine is a philosopher of the everyday. Despite having a sad childhood, her joy has survived intact. Strangers are Valentine’s family.
And that’s why she was the perfect protagonist to invite into people’s homes for breakfast. I was conscious that the chapters would be arriving Saturday morning. And would be read by families drinking coffee and eating eggs, and having a moment to themselves. There are some characters I would not let into people’s homes. Even the gangsters in this story are fun and will ask for a bite of your donut.
Each chapter also had to exist on its own, so that a reader who had not been following could read the chapter and enjoy it. I wrote chapters all over the world. I could never take a week off, so I found myself writing in hotels, on planes, in parks, in cafés. I would scribble the chapters wherever I was. I loved the urgency of it.
Jordan Zivitz was my editor at the Gazette, or, as we liked to call him, the Keeper of the Narrative. He would point out all the inconsistencies, which always made us laugh.
Because I was going to be working on the book non-stop for six months, I had to have a world that was fun to be in. So, I deliberately filled it with a circus-like atmosphere. It is a book filled with my favourite things: ballet and donkeys and luck and subway musicians and doppelgängers. There was really no time to doubt my choices. Once the chapters were published they were set in stone. I could not go back and change anything, as a writer usually does in a novel. Once a donkey danced into the book, there was no way to tell it to go.
In the original Gazette pieces, in the spirit of Victorian serials, Arizona O’Neill added little whimsical drawings to the text. For this edition, she expanded the illustrations.
This is the novel, as it was published.
1
Berri
MY NAME IS Valentine. I am twenty-three years old and I work at a little store at Berri-UQAM métro. I am very ordinary-looking and Barney, who works the same shift as me at the store, says I do not know how to dress. I have been working there for four years, and I have never missed a day. This is why sometimes I seem familiar to people, even though they can’t place me.
My parents died in a car crash when I was a baby. My grandmother said it was very common for children to die of the same ailments their parents suffered from when they got older. So it was very likely that I too would somehow be killed by a car. It was in my genes.
This was her reason for not letting me out of the building to go onto the street. My grandmother was a very sedentary woman. When she stood up, it was as though she were on the deck of a moving ship. My grandmother stayed inside because she remembered an outside world that didn’t exist anymore. She had lived during a time when there weren’t any métros running underneath her feet. She used to go out dancing all the time and took the bus. There were large dance halls everyone would crowd into. It was a beautiful time.
We lived in a big building downtown. You could get into a tunnel filled with stores and the métro without going outside. So even though I wasn’t allowed outside, I was allowed to walk underground. I would go into the dépanneur to pick up food and cigarettes and a copy of the newspaper.
My earliest memories were getting newspapers for my grandmother. There were newspapers everywhere in our apartment. My grandmother would clip out articles and put the clippings in different piles. She never looked at the piles again. But they seemed important just the same.
Once she cut out an article about a statue of a Virgin Mary that was crying in Laval of all places. She said she was cutting it not because a statue was crying, but because it had happened in Laval amused her. “The Lord has decided to come to Laval!” she couldn’t stop snickering.
My room was not really my own room. Because I had to share it with so much garbage: newspapers and magazines and old boxes of cereal and broken lamps and fans. I had to make place for the garbage, more than the garbage ever made place for me. I thought the garbage appeared the way mushrooms did in the forest, or flowers.
I had a mattress in my room that was once on the floor. But the garbage underneath the bed began to grow and grow. And the mattress rose up on it. And it was very close to the ceiling. I know because I was able to draw on it. I drew some stars in pencil.
My grandmother would yell at me that I was attracting the concierge’s attention too much. There was one year that I dressed up for Halloween as Zorro. I wore the black mask and cape almost every day for a month afterwards. I liked the feeling of doing handstands. But there was no wall in the apartment to do them against, so I would do them in the corridor.
Keeping me out of the building’s corridors was one of the reasons she let me ride the métro. I would pack myself a lunch and bring along a briefcase filled with magazines. It was nice to have somewhere to go during the day. I liked to ride around on the métro. It made me feel as though I was travelling across the whole city. I would see all the different people come in and out of the train doors.
I used to believe there were trolls that lived in the subway tunnels. I would kneel on the seat with my nose pressed against the window trying to catch them moving about. Tiny men with long beards and tuques that children had lost on their way to school.
I was wary of taking the yellow line at first because it went underneath the river. This seemed dangerous to me. I thought I would look out the métro windows and see marine animals. I wanted to see a school of belugas. They would look like a magic spell had been cast on a group of urinals. And there might be an octopus moving its arms around like an operator at a switchboard. But it felt just like an ordinary métro ride in the end.
I sometimes like a crowded subway. We are all squ
I love when the métro stops running and stalls inside the tunnel. Everyone begins talking to one another. But they get so panicked. I don’t know why. They are only in a métro tunnel, whether the train is moving or not. It isn’t as if they have to hold their breath. But I complain and panic with them, speculating what could possibly be happening, as though I have anywhere to be.
Most people have a mind-your-own-business policy in the métro. It is rather amazing how much you can get away with on a métro without anyone saying anything. I once saw a man open a suitcase on a moving train. He got undressed, and changed outfits in the middle of the crowd. I did not know which was stranger: a man changing his outfit in the subway, or the fact no one seemed to react or even notice it.
It was shortly after my grandmother died that I got the job working at the convenience store in Berri-UQAM métro. There was a piece of paper and the words NOUS EMBAUCHONS written on it in black marker. All I wanted was to be around magazines and newspapers. I couldn’t believe I got the career I wanted. Who else in the world could say such a thing?
The landlord said I could move into another apartment. He was going to fix up our old one and rent it for three times the price. The new apartment is on the thirty-eighth floor. It is so tiny, I am delighted. It is so cozy.
“Oh, you are here,” my co-worker Barney says when he arrives back from his break.
“Well, of course I am here,” I say. “It’s still my shift for another five minutes. Why would I leave the store unattended?”
“Were you not just standing on the platform downstairs?”
“No, I have not left my post since nine o’clock this morning. You should try it yourself one day. It’s very rewarding.”
“I just saw someone who looks exactly like you.” He walks to the back of the store, which has a large window that looks onto the platform below. Barney puts his fingertip to the glass.
“There you are,” he says.
I look down too. And there I am.
2
Snowdon
I RUN DOWN TO the métro platform to see this woman who looks so much like me from above.
I begin to approach her. I am not entirely sure why. Of course I am curious. But there is something else. It is like my heart is a magnet and it is pulling me to her. I can’t make out her face. But I want to get a glimpse of it. She is the same lanky height and build as me. Her clothes are so different than anything I would wear. She has a long black tailored coat that she must have bought brand new at one of the fancy, expensive stores on Sherbrooke Street. She is wearing a pair of leather boots with heels. Her hair looks perfect and smooth.
Whenever I take my tuque off, my hair always stands straight up over my head. I have a condition I like to refer to as Permanent Static Cling.
The métro starts approaching. I can feel the wind coming down the tunnel. It rushes ahead of the métro like the baton twirler that leads the marching band. Her hair lifts right off her head and reveals her face. And there I am, looking at my own face, as though I have come up against a mirror. As though I am no longer myself, but instead this person. And who is this person?
I open my mouth to call to her but at that moment the métro rushes up behind us. The sound of the métro comes up on me like a wave that breaks and crashes against a beach. My words are drowned. I might just as well be calling out “au secours” on the deck of the Titanic.
The métro doors slide open and she steps inside. Without even thinking, I hop into the door closest to me.
The métro fills up with people. It is hard to get a glimpse of her. Other heads and bodies keep moving in the way. I cannot speak to her on the métro, so I will have to wait for her to get off. I sit down at the opposite end of the car from her. When she suddenly gets off at Snowdon, I jump up and get off at the stop too.
I know I should stop following the woman. But I am too curious. She looks so much like me!
But as I stand on the platform at Snowdon, looking around, I cannot find her. It’s as if she has disappeared. I hurry up the escalators, thinking I can catch up with her, wherever she is. I find myself by the turnstiles, not knowing where to go.
“There you are!” says a voice in a heavy Russian accent. I turn. There is a very large middle-aged man, dressed in a sheepskin coat that does not seem as though it could fit around his belly, and holding a briefcase in his hand. “Am I ever glad to see you! Come on.”
I follow along behind him as he leads me out onto the street. The sunlight hits me at the same time the noise does. The noise outside is so different. The cars are so loud. There are too many sounds at once. It is like someone pulled out a drawer of utensils and dumped them on the ground. Everybody is standing around yelling at each other to be heard over the cars and traffic. I have to remind myself they are not at all angry. They are all in a good mood, but this is the way people communicate when they are above ground. And everybody is in everybody else’s business. The quiet and distance they give each other in the métro is gone. I would be terrified if it were not for the man I’m following.
I do not know what to say. He is breathing so heavily, I am worried the effort of making conversation might push him over the edge and he will have a heart attack. And I don’t know if I am strong enough to give him CPR.
He steps into a bakery. They seem to know him in there. He orders donuts and coffee in a cup so tiny, it makes him look like a giant. He sits at a small round table, and I take the chair across from him.
“What is this you are wearing today?” he asks as we move on. “I usually find you quite elegant.”
“I just put it on. This is my lucky jacket.”
He delicately shakes a pink sachet of Sweet’N Low into the cup.
“I need this for my heart. Gives me a little bit of a will to live. I’m on a diet,” he says.
He daintily stirs the coffee with the spoon. He puckers his lips as though he is going to kiss an absolutely beautiful baby, and sips it. “You will take this briefcase up to apartment 561 in that building across the street. You will need a special knock for the door.” He makes a special knock on the table. He repeats it.
“That is a pretty tune,” I say. “You should write it down. You could have an entire orchestra play it. It could be performed by a xylophone player who could travel the world playing it in sick children’s hospitals.”
“Sure,” he says, rolling his eyes. “You are in such an interesting mood.”
“Why can’t you deliver the briefcase yourself?” I inquire.
He pulls a pill container out of his inside pocket. There is a tiny painting of yellow flowers on the ivory lid. “It will kill me to go up those stairs.” I understand because I lived so many years with my grandmother, who was also convinced stairs were actively out to kill her.
“When I was a child,” he says, “I was on the gymnastic team. Hard to believe, but I looked magnificent in leotards. I would practise in my backyard. I wanted to travel.”
“Do you miss it?”
“Sometimes I dream I am in my leotards and they are suffocating me. And I wake up screaming.”
I take a sip of my own cup of coffee.
“A girl should never drink black coffee. It is terrible luck. It means you will never marry.”
“I don’t think I will get married. I can’t even get a boyfriend.”
“What are you talking about? You have so many boyfriends.”
He starts choking on one of the donuts. He pulls a silk handkerchief out of his inside pocket. He shakes it in the air as if he is going to perform a magic trick. And then he wipes his mouth with it.
“Who knows. Maybe you will do for me what you do for all the other men one day,” he says, and winks. I am unsettled by his words. I pick up the briefcase and head off, accepting the assignment only in order to move on.
I carry the briefcase into the high-rise. The elevator has an Hors Service sign, and I have to walk to the fifth floor. I peek out the door of the stairwell. The hallway is empty and is lined with doors. I pass a dentist’s office. Then I arrive in front of 561. I knock the magical knock and stand there, not knowing what to expect.
