Anot. 2.01

From Accordéon. Published by ARP Books in 2016. Kaie Kellough is the author of two books of poetry, Lettricity and Maple Leaf Rag. He lives in Montreal.

Any person might be an undercover operative: the security guard in the Concordia University lobby, the disaffected art student with an asymmetrical haircut smoking outside Café Myriade. That bus driver, steering the 24 down Sherbrooke street, with her teased bangs, drinking a Cott grape soda, she could be observing the culture and reporting back. That homeless man asking for change inside McGill metro, insulting the students as they hurry to class, nursing a can of Pabst at nine in the morning, he could be undercover. General Montcalm might well have been one of the earliest operatives, clandestine even to himself. You, turning slowly down Union street and passing The People’s Church, getting into your Volkswagen and driving out to the suburbs, you could be reporting on what you hear at PTA meetings, on what your children learn at school, on who they play with and what video games their friends enjoy.

Undercovers operate in the blind zone of their own consciousness. Every six months they are picked up while walking alone down a quiet street, or exiting the McCord museum, where they saw a boring exhibit titled Sublime Cities. They are taken to Ministry headquarters, located inside the mountain that rises from the centre of the city. They are questioned, secretly administered an amnesiac, and finally they are returned to the exact location from which they were picked up.

I could be a Ministry operative without knowing it, but I know that I am not, I am certain that I am not. I am certain because I have been taken up in the flying canoe, and no Ministry operative has ever been taken up in the flying canoe. It is not possible for a person to be a member of the Ministry and to be a passenger in the canoe. It is not possible.