Montreal

Let’s go walking, she says – oui on y va, on y va. Her strides are short because her legs are short. Bursts of lively conversation rise like bubbles into great expanses where nothing is said and all I can hear is the clip-clop of her boot heels on the pavement. We walk on. Much as I would like to say they, the silences, contain no awkwardness, are as natural to me as walking silently along with no-one, my gut feeling does not always support that claim. We round a bend and turn right onto Saint-Laurent. No physical intimacy can ever fully compensate for a language barrier- if it could the very purpose of verbal language would be undermined. And ours, though slight for me, is a gulf for her; how many times she must switch back to English and struggle to conceal the sigh! Those great expanses are therefore not born of some serene mutual silence but a basic void in understanding. The funky grocery store. Before stepping inside you are already drunk on the smell, seeping out onto the thoroughfare with an admixture of the horrid and the wonderful. She asks me about a trolley – I smile but give no answer.

There are a lot of beggars in Montreal. I have similar memories of Vancouver though it is a more temperate climate there and the homeless journey to its alleyways and underpasses to escape the frigid winters to be found in other parts of Canada. Here people show them little charity, even the man in rags who plays his recorder with such elegance. In her neighbourhood the street crowds are small, even on weekends, almost dismayingly small when compared to a similar area of inner Melbourne. There are also more trees. Hospitals look like castles, sports stores like boulangeries. In concert it all creates an atmosphere that is refined but also more organically human than can be found in most of the large cities I have visited, certainly all in North America.

Downtown, Old Montreal is greyer, more leaden. The buildings are bigger – though by no stretch as big as Melbourne’s – and people seem to shrink in their shadows. A block from the water’s edge, the legal and financial precinct feels at odds with the small-town atmosphere cultivated in her neighbourhood, but then I guess this bespeaks of good urban planning; the same comment could be made about dense industrial zones or power plants. There are more tourists and subsequently more kitschy souvenir shops. The clothes stores have less in them for a higher price. And with its stately mayoral chambers the town hall looms out over the street with a sort of Bram Stoker tremendousness.

On our way back from the river – an ugly section expanded for shipping, beside which runs a massive freight train line – we pass the Hotel St. James. It is Montreal’s most expensive and probably the one clad in the most ivy. “When I’m a famous writer,” she says, only half-joking, “I’ll have a tiny room there near the top with a maid and my own concierge, just like Francois Sagan”. She doesn’t understand when I tell her she is maddeningly capable and it is likely, though I can’t say for sure, that I have used these unusual words just to confuse her. The museum is only free after six, meaning we still have twenty minutes to kill. So with bags of groceries bought in the unimpressive Chinatown we sit on the white pebble steps facing the street, take in the enormity of space required for this museum and concert hall and ballet theatre while eating green tea flavoured balls of gelatinous goo, and she smiles wider with one of them between her teeth than I’ve ever seen her smile; postulating about our names and personalities had we been born the other gender – she’d have been gay, which I label a cop-out – I realise that not only would I rather go home and spend time with her than enter this Napoleon exhibition, but also that’s it’s been remiss of me not to have asked more questions about who she is, who she was, who she does or does not want to turn out like, instead of just looking at her face and wordlessly making to kiss it and breathe deeply on it. By now it is after six-thirty. Without my prompting she asks if I really want to go inside.

We walk home. Another hour and a half, mochi balls, snow peas and a few jars of Asian seasoning to show for our toils. I kiss her in the stairwell but she has turned inward and obliges evasively before hurrying up to the bedroom. Since arriving I have felt a strong desire to cook for her and do so again. Watching her as she eats, while creepy, gives me great pleasure. And for dessert we quarter an apple but leave the kiwi fruits as they are still hard as marbles.