At the end of the summer of 1988, UIC where I was working, paid for me to go to the TeX Users Group conference in Montréal. This was my first time traveling alone and, as an added bonus, leaving the country as well, back in an era when it was possible to visit Canada without a passport. Today’s entry is a bit long as it includes the first few pages of a story (which I never finished).
Am American is alone in another country (why?) and does not speak the local vernacular. The basic idea of the story is his meeting another person who speaks English and being pulled into a web of street crime and the like. The other English speaker is a Jonathan Wild¹ type who helps the American with one hand while picking his pocket with the other. I think I’ll place the story in Montrèal simply because I’m here and can do research fairly easily. The title of the story will be the French word for “foreigner” whatever that would be. I’m goign to try to write out as much of the story as I can write now. Words and phrases to be translated into French will be enclosed in « and ». Notes on information to be added later will be enclosed in ⟦ and ⟧.
«Foreigner»
Randolph Hart stepped off the bus and surveyed the city around him. Behind him laid an empty lot used as a parking lot and before him lay the terminal. Over the tops of the buses he could see office buildings and hotels standing above the street.
He stepped into the terminal and looked around as he set down his bags. At the rental car booths there were large signs advertising $99.94 «three»² jour rtes. Even in Canadian dollars this was more than he could afford. ⟦Here we tell the reader some more about why Hart is in Montréal as well as why he could get by without a rental car.⟧
From his pocket he removed a piece of paper with the words “Auberge Château Candide—1680 rue St. Hubert, 514-598-4794”³ written on it. When he had called the hotel manager from Detroit, he had been told that the hotel was just one block from the bus station. “Easily walking distance,” he had been told.
Walking through the terminal he quickly found himself on Maissoneuve. He would want to turn either right or left at this point but he wasn’t sure which. It didn’t really matter though, he’d know if he picked wrong or right, and if he chose wrong it would only be a short block he would walk to correct his error.
He turned right and at the corner found he had been wrong. Setting down his bags for a moment, he found his attention drawn by a man being punched just two feet from where he stood. He stepped back somewhat tardily as the man staggered past him, stepping on his oot and knocking over Randolph’s suitcase.
«Hit him with the bottle!» a voice cried out from somewhere behind Randolph. At this point he became aware of the agressor in this fight as he ran in front of Randolph. He was older than the first fighter and looked to be about forty or fifty years old. His face was ruged and had a day’s worth of graying beard. Randolph watched as the older man grabbed his opponent around the neck and began to pummel him on the back with a beer bottle wrapped in a brown paper bag. There was still some beer in the bottle and with each blow it would foam up and overflow the bottle.
Randolph looked about to see if there was a police officer or someone else near who could stop the fight when the two men broke apart and the younger turned and walked hastily away.
“Some introduction to Montréal”, muttered Randolph to himself as he collected his bags and started towards rue St. Hubert.
⸻
Auberge Château Candide was by no means a luxury hotel. The sole amenities were a pay telephone inside the lobby and private bathrooms for $15 extra a night. Randolph decided to splurge and get a room with a private bathroom.
He was shown his room bny a teenage girl who didn’t understand a word of English, nor did she seem to want to learn. Every time he would ask her a question, she would simply shrug her shoulders and smile.It took nearly half an hour to convince her that he had indeed paid the extra money for a room with a private bath and that had only been accomplished by taking her back to the front desk and having the manager speak to her.
This definitely reads like first-draft writing and I can see some of my tendency to get caught up in meaningless details like the walk to the hotel from the bus station. Some of the details, like the fight and the auberge were based on what I encountered. The first couple nights I was in Montréal, I stayed in a cheap auberge near the bus station before moving to a more expensive hotel by McGill University where the conference was taking place (although as it turned out, it was easier to get to McGill from the cheaper lodging). The person who shouted “hit him with the bottle” also said it in English in the real encounter.
- I was on a Henry Fielding kick at the time.
- In the years since this, I began speaking French, mostly as a joke, since I had managed to acquire a modest amount of French grammar and vocabulary from an unknown source, but it’s startling to see how little French I knew at this stage in my life.
- I have no idea why I chose this number, although I feel confident that I didn’t pick it at random.
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