The Quebec Anthology: 1830-1990

"Back on April Eleventh" 1969

Hubert Aquin Translated by Alan Brown BACK onAPRIL ELEVENTH Hubert Aquin was born in Montreal on October 24, 1929. He attended the Universite de Montreal, where he studied philosophy, and then the Institut d'Etudes politiques in Paris, from 1948 to 1951, before returning to Montreal to work for Radio-Canada and the National Film Board. In the 1960s he helped found the political and literary journals Liberteznd Partipris, the latter a left-wing publication set up in opposition to the federalistjournal Cite libre, to which Pierre Elliott Trudeau was a principle contributor. Aquin was arrested in 1964 for carrying a gun—he was vice-president of the Rassemblement pour PIndependance Nationale at the time. While detained in a psychiatric hospital, he wrote his first novel, Prochain episode (1965), about a man detained in a psychiatric hospital. His other novels include Trou de memoire (1968; Blackout, 1974), for which he was awarded—and refused to accept—the Governor-General's Award; L'Antiphonaire (1969; The Antiphonary, 1973), and Neige noire (1974; Hamlet's Twin, 1979), for which he was awarded the Grand Prix de la ville de Montreal. He became literary editor of Les Editions la Presse in 1975, but resigned the following year. On March 15, 1977, he shot himself on the grounds of the Villa-Maria convent, in Montreal. "De retour le 11 avril," translated by Alan Brown as "Back on April Eleventh," first appeared in Liberte'in the March-April 1969 issue, and was later reprinted in Pointde fuite (1971) and in a posthumous collection of Aquin's writing , Blocs erratiques (1977). In this story, Aquin depicts the self-destructive element he sawin many of Quebec's intellectuals . "A dialogue of the deaf is taking place," he wrote in an essay entitled "La Fatigue culturelle du Canada fransais," "between thinkers who, by reducing their listeners to BACK ON APRIL ELEVENTH 255 conditioned products, disabuse them at the same time of any illusions concerning their own intellectual strength." "Back on April Eleventh" depicts this intellectual frustration pushed to a feverish extreme. It not only foretells Aquin's own death, but also warns against the death of independent thinking in modern Quebec. "Back on April Eleventh" is a translation of "De retour le 11 avril" published in Point defiihe (Montreal: Cercle du livre de France, 1971); first appeared in Liberte, 11, no. 2 (mars-avril 1969). 256 HUBERT AQUIN hen your letter came I was reading a Mickey Spillane. I'd already been interrupted twice, and was having trouble with the plot. There was this man Gardner, who for some reason always carted around the photo of a certain corpse. It's true I was reading to kill time. Now I'm not so interested in killing time. It seems you have no idea of what's been going on this winter. Perhaps you're afflicted with a strange, intermittent amnesia that wipes out me, my work, our apartment, the brown record-player . . . I assure you I can't so easily forget this season I've passed without you, these long, snowy months with you so far away. When you left, the first snow had just fallen on Montreal. It blocked the sidewalks, obscured the houses, and laid down great pale counterpanes in the heart of the city. The evening you left—on my way back from Dorval— I drove aimlessly through the slippery empty streets. Each time the car went into a skid I had the feeling of going on an endless voyage. The Mustang was transformed into a rudderless ship. I drove for a long time without the slightest accident, not even a bump. It was dangerous driving. I know. Punishable by law. But that night even the law had become a mere ghost of itself, as had the city and this damned mountain that we've tramped so often. So much whiteness made a strong impression on me. I remember feeling a kind of anguish. You, my love, probably think I'm exaggerating asusual and that I get some kind of satisfaction out of establishing these connections between your leaving and my states of mind. You may think I'm putting things together in retrospect in such a way as to explain what happened after that first fall of cerusian white. But you're wrong: I'm doing nothing of the kind. That night, I tell you, the night you left, I skidded and...