From Madame Victoria. Published by Biblioasis in 2018. Translated from the French by Lazer Lederhendler. Catherine Leroux is a writer and translator. Her work has been shortlisted for the 2016 Scotiabank Giller Prize and the French-American Foundation Translation Prize, nominated for Le grand prix du livre de Montréal, and won the 2016 Governor General’s Award for Translation.

“Do you recognize this woman?”

The tired features, the jaws like a steel frame, the regal hair. Of course, they say. From Québec City to James Bay, from Gaspé to Nicolet, from Kapuskasing to La Patrie, from Prince Rupert to Niagara, from Miramichi to Slave Lake, from Yellowknife to Rigaud, hundreds have responded to the notice. Of course we know her. She is our grandmother, our sister. She is our neighbour, the mother of our children. She is the woman who taught us how to sew on a button. The one who stuffed us full of bread pudding, who tormented us with all those ghastly cigarette burns. She is the pensioner who slept all the time, who smoked too much, the traveller who came through our village every spring, the parishioner who didn’t pay her tithe from 1972 to 1987. She was the first Québécoise I ever kissed. She is the lady I didn’t help across the street, and you can see what that led to. She is the woman I had forgotten, that left too soon, that we hoped never to run into again. The one we’ve been searching for for years. It’s for her that we always keep the porch light on now, and no longer turn off our phones, our headlights, our heads. That’s her, that’s Madame Victoria.

Céleste is a member of the police team tasked with compiling all the calls. She listens to the voicemail messages and notes down names, numbers, and the sometimes scant, sometimes overabundant details provided. First she contacts the ones dubbed “marshmallow cases,” the people whose messages suggest they are not in full possession of their mental faculties. Before dismissing their accounts outright she must call everyone back and ask the routine questions. These conversations often take up half her day. It is not easy to cut off someone who is vulnerable, especially if, like Céleste, you wear your heart on your sleeve. If asked for statistics, she would say that forty per cent of marshmallow cases come under the heading of conspiracy theories; they are the most garrulous callers. They can spend two hours trying to convince whoever is listening that Madame Victoria was the victim of some machination of a) the government b) the Church c) a secret society—Freemasons are very popular culprits—or d) alien agents. Though it goes against the grain, Céleste is often obliged to put an abrupt end to such conversations.

Another twenty-five per cent of marshmallow cases are made up of people who, when called back, don’t remember having contacted the information line, nor do they have any idea who Madame Victoria might be. Then there are those who give very elaborate accounts that would be credible if they did not end up contradicting themselves, thereby betraying a type of mythomania. These represent fifteen per cent of marshmallow cases and can be quite difficult to unmask. Some ten per cent start berating Céleste as soon as they hear her voice, five per cent cry, and two per cent make lewd propositions. The rest remain a mystery. When she dials the numbers of this enigmatic three per cent, the line has been disconnected or she is told that no one with that name has ever lived there. Such occurrences are too numerous for Céleste to write them off as errors; for her, they are ghosts, witnesses as fugitive as Madame Victoria’s identity.

The second half of her day is devoted to the serious calls. These conversations are generally shorter. Céleste registers the places, dates, and all the particulars the caller is able to supply. In the vast majority of cases, the inconsistencies become apparent after only a few questions. Sometimes the time period fits but not the missing woman’s age. Sometimes the physical description is promising but not the location. Sometimes people end up admitting it’s a child, a man, or a young Haitian girl that they are looking for, but not an older white woman. When Céleste tells them, regretfully, that she must disregard their lead, they insist. Almost all of them, even the ones who obviously have no connection with Madame Victoria, stubbornly put forward far-fetched theories, loudly claiming to have some sort of proprietary right to the nameless woman. Patiently and as gently as possible, Céleste refutes their contentions. No, Victoria did not have a gold tooth. She was not club-footed. She may have had a tattoo with the image of a lynx, but there is no way of knowing. But that wasn’t her. It wasn’t her.

Initially, Céleste was convinced that uncovering Madame Victoria’s life story would be child’s play. Yet despite a sound investigation and the countrywide missing person alert, there has been no progress in the case. Céleste is starting to lose hope, and it shows in her exchanges with the callers. They have turned personal. Then, as if by a miracle, an answer arrives. Her name is Léa.

On the telephone, her manner is brusque, as though she had been reluctant to come forward. But the places and dates coincide. She is the right age to be Madame Victoria’s daughter. She sends Céleste photos of her mother. Same tired features, same athletic bone structure, same shock of hair as Madame Victoria’s. Ever since Léa was a little girl, her mother’s life was made up of lean times and wandering. Then, a few months before Madame Victoria’s death, she disappeared. Céleste is fired up. She summons Léa to Montréal to run some tests. A hair of the dead woman, a hair of the living woman. Then they wait. During their meetings, the young woman is self-possessed, like someone whose life has just reached an angle of repose after years of turmoil.

In Léa’s presence Céleste tries to rein in her excitement, but she can’t keep from asking questions; she wants to know everything about the woman who may well be the one everyone is looking for. Léa informs her, though not in so many words, that her mother was bipolar, that she led a nomadic life punctuated by intervals in the psychiatric hospital. Because Léa was placed with a foster family when she was very young, she never lived with her mother and sometimes went for years without seeing her. Céleste would like so much to find a name, a family, a location for Madame Victoria, a resolution that would release her from the silence she is trapped in. Now, however, she also wants to bring some closure to Léa’s quest.

The results arrive, and it falls on Céleste to convey them to Léa. The young woman receives the news dispassionately. Taken aback, Céleste reiterates: “I’m sorry, Léa. You’re not related to Madame Victoria.”

Léa has an obstinate expression as she stares at the wall behind Céleste.

“No,” she retorts.

Heavy-hearted, Céleste sets about explaining to her how the DNA tests are carried out, the markers that are examined, the margin of error, the meaning of the results. She repeats that Madame Victoria cannot possibly be her mother or even a distant aunt.

The young woman lifts a flame to the tip of her cigarette. The air catches fire. She blows the smoke skyward, invoking the spirits.

“I don’t care. She’s still my mother.”

Since then, Céleste has stopped distinguishing between the marshmallow cases and the others, the way you stop differentiating, when you reach a certain age, between good and evil, night and day. All these people are asking essentially the same question. How can someone vanish into thin air? How can an arrow never come down again? Victoria belongs to them now. After all, this could be anyone.