In the pamphlets from the Automobile Club, the girl had read that the Royal Bank Plaza was made of glass panels dusted with gold. They took the subway to Union Station on Front Street, and as they came out of the station, there they saw the famous building in the light of the setting sun. Its two golden prisms soared into the sky amid the dull grey buildings.

They crossed the street like robots, not looking to see if any cars were coming, and approached the building so they could walk around it and study it from every angle. The light seemed to come from inside. The building looked as bright and warm as honey, and they couldn’t help thinking about the gold of the Incas and about the legend of Eldorado. It was as if every dream was still possible. And for Jack, in his heart of hearts, it was as if all the heroes of his past were still heroes.

VII

The Secret Life of the
Volkswagen Minibus

To become reconciled with herself.

That was what La Grande Sauterelle wanted, and to do so, she must sleep in the cemetery beside the grave of old Chief Thayendanegea.

At sunset, Jack drove the girl to the cemetery. He acted as if he thought her plan was the most normal thing in the world. He had not voiced the slightest protest when, after only a few hours on the road (they had got no farther than Kitchener), she asked him to leave the 401 again, this time to drive to Brantford, burial place of the famous chief whom the whites called Joseph Brant.

He knew that Joseph Brant had been a great Mohawk warrior, that he had fought beside the English and had remained loyal to the British Crown during the American Revolution. That was all he remembered, but La Grande Sauterelle knew far more than he; she had alluded to the important role of women in the Six Nations confederacy, of which the Mohawks were part, and she seemed to believe that one way or another, the old chief could help her come to know herself.

Jack pulled up outside the cemetery. The girl took off her boy’s outfit, put on a dress and took along her sleeping bag, the cat and a flashlight. The iron gate to the cemetery was closed with a chain and padlock, but they had no trouble jumping the fence. The main path led to a small white chapel with arched windows, around which about thirty graves were scattered among the trees and bushes. It was a very small cemetery. They moved cautiously among the tombstones, deciphering the inscriptions by the light of the flashlight. Right against the wall of the chapel, on the right-hand side, they found the grave of Thayendanegea; it was protected by an iron fence.

“Here it is,” the girl whispered.

In the enclosure where the old chief lay there were also the grave of his son Aheyouwehs and, off to one side, that of his wife (her name was not indicated). Not far from the fence, they saw the grave of the Mohawk poet Pauline Johnson. La Grande Sauterelle decided to spread her sleeping bag in the narrow space that separated the burial places of the old chief and the poet. She switched off the flashlight.