The Secret Letters of the Monk Who Sold His Ferrari (16 page)

What she didn’t tell me was that I would come across history as well. About twenty minutes into my climb, a sign appeared at the side of the trail. It announced that on my left I would see the remains of one of the last five homes of Le Buttereau—a French-Canadian farming settlement. I peered down the side of the hill, and sure enough, there among the trees and thick vegetation was a rough stone square—the foundations of a tiny house.

I knew I was in French-Canadian territory—Mary had also suggested I stop in the small Acadian fishing village of Chéticamp before I entered the park to see it firsthand.

So an hour before I started this hike, I had pulled off the highway and parked my car next to a restaurant on the water side of the road. A few shops and other buildings were wedged within the narrow strip of land between the road and Chéticamp Bay. Mary thought I might want to check out the hooked rugs, which were an area specialty, or to sample some
tchaude,
the local fish stew, but I didn’t feel like being indoors. And I wasn’t hungry enough to want to stop for a meal. Instead, I walked down the wooden stairs that ran between the shops and followed a boardwalk to a series of small docks. Modest commercial fishing boats, not unlike the one that Ahmet owned, lined the jetty. One dock had a large sign announcing whale-watching cruises. Another small fishing vessel was secured below
the sign, near a Zodiac boat. Mary had suggested I might take a whale-watching tour in one of the old boats—the Zodiacs made noise and vibrations that disturbed the marine life. But I had decided that I would spend my time later on a hike instead.

Before I returned to my car, I walked back along the highway, until the restaurants and stores gave way to a line of modest wood-frame houses. A small stretch of sidewalk ran in front of them as the highway traffic sped by on the other side—almost on their doorsteps. Behind them I could see a narrow ribbon of green grass and then the water of the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

The Cabot Trail had once been a dirt road. It would have been a good deal narrower than it now was, and these homes would have perched precariously at its edge, the icy salt water lapping at their back doors. Mary had said that Chéticamp and the surrounding area was still French-speaking. The people were descendants of the Acadians who, in the mid-1700s, had been expelled by the British from the Annapolis Valley of mainland Nova Scotia. After the British seized the French settlement of Acadia in 1710, they demanded that the Acadians swear an oath of allegiance to Britain. Most of the Acadians, who had a thriving farming settlement, were not political—more than anything, they wanted to stay apart from the struggles between the French and British empires in North America. A few, however, helped supply the French military fortresses in present-day Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. So, although the vast majority of Acadians had lived peacefully under English rule for decades, the British decided that their presence posed a serious threat and began deporting the Acadians to Europe and to other British colonies. Many of the Acadians who were sent back to France later immigrated to French colonies in
North America. The most sizable portion went to Louisiana, their descendants becoming known as Cajuns. I knew that, but Mary also told me that a small number made their way to Cape Breton Island and settled along its northwestern shore. Walking along in front of these small houses, I was struck by how isolated the Acadian settlers of Chéticamp must have been—probably just a few hundred souls clinging to the sea and the rocky expanses of this mountainous island. What would that have been like? Coming from a rural community of thousands, this handful of families would have depended on each other for everything. But if Chéticamp was isolated, what would Le Buttereau have been like?

A
S
I
WALKED
around the foundations of Le Buttereau, so crumbled and deteriorated that they looked like stone outcroppings, I tried to picture how the large families survived in such tiny structures. Below the houses were open areas—the remains of farm fields—that stretched down toward the Chéticamp River. It was hard to imagine farming in such a rugged terrain, spending days on the water in flimsy fishing boats, the way the men of these families did. The signs along the path told me that when the waters were open, the men spent Sunday at home in Le Buttereau but returned to fishing shacks in Chéticamp or La Bloque during the week. In winter, the families might cross the frozen river to reach the town in order to buy supplies or, in later years, to go to school. In the warmer months, they would follow a cart path, the remains of which I had been walking, to get to town.

There could never have been many families on this tip of land. In 1936, there were two families named LeBlanc, along with the
Chiassons, the LeBruns and the Deveaus. Each had between nine and eleven children. Fifty people then.

How different my world was. Hundreds of coworkers, hundreds of friends, a neighborhood that stretched unbroken for miles and miles. There were eighty first-grade students at Adam’s school. So many people. I thought of Julian’s note: Choose the people in your life well. I
could
choose. So many people in the past wouldn’t have had that luxury. No real choice, yet so much would have depended on that handful of people they lived among.

The view from the top of Le Chemin du Buttereau was indeed beautiful—the beach and shores curving down below, the blue waters stretching into the distance. But the stunning scenery was only beginning.

An hour later, as I climbed into the highlands in my rental car, the hairpin turns, the plummeting descents and the harrowing rises made me wonder how anyone without a modern six-cylinder vehicle could have made their way around this terrain. It was clear why this part of the world had stayed so sparsely populated. I stopped at numerous lookouts, gazing out across the ocean or looking back at the deep green mountains. I passed the whale museum in Pleasant Bay, making a mental note that I should come back to this place with Adam. I stopped to take a look at Alexander Graham Bell’s summer house near Ingonish Centre. I sat for a long time on the beach at Wreck Cove, watching the waves crash against the pebbly shore. It was late afternoon by the time I pulled into Mary and Angus’s driveway.

M
ARY’S DINNER PARTY PROVED TO BE
an extraordinary evening. There were mountains of fresh lobster, and after the table had been cleared, the air filled with the sounds of fiddles and harmonicas. Mary and Angus’s friends were energetic, engaged, funny, passionate. They talked about everything from politics to art, from world affairs to music. But perhaps my favorite conversation was a quiet one I had with Angus’s father before all the guests arrived.

I had offered to help Mary and Angus in the kitchen, but Mary shuffled me out into the living room. “Have a beer with Don,” she said. “Angus and I work faster if it’s just the two of us.”

Don was not a tall man, but he had the solid burliness of someone who spent his life doing physical labor. His hands were veined and calloused, his shoulders slightly stooped, but there was still a sparkle in his green eyes.

I got us each a bottle of beer from the kitchen. (Don’s only word was “tch” when I asked him if he wanted a glass.) Then we both retired to the deep living-room chairs and gazed out at the trees before us. Angus had already told me that his father had been a miner, but I was curious to know what that life had been like.

Don seemed delighted to provide the details.

He had gone down into the mines at thirteen.

“My dad, my uncles, those fellas went down when they was ten. By the time I come along they’d raised the age to fourteen. But we needed the money, eh? I wasn’t after waiting. I lied about my age, and my dad and his buddies backed me up.”

The boys weren’t allowed to dig coal. Instead, young Don sat for twelve hours a day, in the pitch black, waiting for a knock on the huge wooden doors that separated the digging areas
from the shafts. “I let the miners in. Let them back out with their full carts.”

Don said that once you were old enough to dig and haul coal, the days weren’t so lonely. Together the men found ways to make the time pass more quickly. They told jokes and stories. They sang together, folk songs and ballads. But the days were still long. In the winter, the miners went down in the dark and came up in the dark.

“Saw the sun only on Sundays, for months and months,” Don said with a laugh.

And then there were the “bumps.”

“I came through sixteen of them,” said Don, running his hand across his forehead. The explosions of coal dust and gases trapped in the mines had taken the lives of many, many of his friends and relatives.

“How did you do it?” I was shaking my head, baffled by the horror of working in the mines.

“Don’t get me wrong, b’ye,” said Don. Traces of his Gaelic heritage textured his voice. “It was hard work. But it was a good life.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “How can you say that?”

Don was silent for a few seconds. Then he tapped his other hand on the arm of the chair and said, “I don’t know that you’d be able to understand it. There’s just something about working with a group of fellas, fellas who hold your life in their hands every day. You come through that first explosion, you bring your buddies to the top, you bury others. Someone digs through the coal to find you, to pull you out. Or you sit trapped down there for hours. Maybe ten of you huddled together. When you go back down after the bump, you never look at these guys the
same again. You know you have a bond that will never break. You feel lucky. Blessed.”

“Wow,” I said, still in disbelief. “Even so, I think I’d rather have been a fisherman.”

“Blessed Mary and Joseph!” Don burst out. “You wouldn’t get me on one of those boats for love or money. You wanna talk about dangerous work. You talk to Joe, Mary’s dad.”

Don was shaking his head. “Now that’s a brave bunch of fellas, I’ll tell you that.”

A
LL DAY I HAD DRIVEN
through tiny fishing villages. Mining and fishing—those were essentially the only career choices for generations of men in this corner of the world. And they were communal activities, risky work undertaken by small clusters of souls. In Japan, on one of the most crowded islands in the world, I had been reminded about the importance of treating others well. Here I could see the preciousness of human relationships. Here the people you lived and worked with mattered. Here it could mean life and death.

At first blush, this seemed very different from my life. Other than Adam, who depended on me the way Don had depended on the men in the mines? But then I thought of Juan. Maybe my world wasn’t so different after all. There was a moment, maybe more than one, when I had held Juan’s life in my hands. And I had not brought him up to the surface.

A
FTER MY TIME
with Mary and Angus, I flew from Sydney to Halifax, where I spent the night in a hotel. I needed to be at the airport early in the morning for the flight to my next destination—Shanghai. It looked, from the note that Julian had sent, like I would have less than a full day there. My pre-trip self would have thought it an extravagant waste of airfare—flying halfway around the world only to turn around and come back—but I was becoming positively nonchalant about this business of international travel. From my connection in Newark to Shanghai I was able to sleep for a while. I arrived in Shanghai at two in the afternoon (three in the morning Halifax time) and was met by Yu Feng, an earnest young man who announced that he would be my interpreter and guide. He took
my bags and hustled me outside the terminal, where a shiny black Bentley was waiting for us. After stowing my luggage, Yu Feng got in the backseat with me.

“Mr. Gao sends his sincerest apologies, but he is in a meeting he could not reschedule. He is hoping that you will meet him at his office at six p.m. He will then take you to his home for dinner. In the meantime, I can show you whatever you would like to see of Shanghai.”

I looked at my watch. It had taken me a while to get my luggage and work my way through customs and immigration. I had a few hours I could use to see the city, but the thought of a hot shower and short nap was the most appealing thing I could think of. I thanked Yu Feng for his offer and asked if I could just check into my hotel.

Yu Feng exchanged a few words with our driver, and before I knew it we were speeding into the dense urban landscape of Shanghai.

“Would you care for drink?” Yu Feng asked, pulling on a small door at the back of the seat in front of him. It swung out to reveal a compartment kitted out with a small bar. He then pulled down a tiny table from the leather seat between us.

“Just water,” I said. “Thanks.” It seemed a pity not to take advantage of this luxury, but I wasn’t in the mood for a mixed drink.

We climbed a bridge that stretched across an expanse of dark water. “Huangpu River,” said Yu Feng. Then he said, “Mr. Gao’s office is downtown, but we have booked you a hotel just a few blocks from the Bund.”

I looked at Yu Feng blankly.

Yu Feng explained that the Bund was a broad avenue that
ran along the western bank of the Huangpu River. It was an area where European ex-pats had built many grand buildings during the twenties and thirties.

“Very popular with American and European tourists. Very beautiful at night also,” Mr. Yu concluded.

I nodded but didn’t say anything. I was thinking about that cascade of hot water and sudsy shampoo.

W
HEN
I
WALKED THROUGH
the door of my room, I stopped short and wondered if there had been some sort of mistake. As soon as we had pulled up at the hotel, I knew this would be the most splendid of my accommodations. The lobby, its roof three or four stories high, had black marble floors that gleamed like glass, elegant furnishings and towering palm trees. But hotel lobbies can be a bit deceptive. I’ve been to places where the lobby looks like a five-star resort, while the rooms remind me of those roadside motels my parents used to pull into on family car trips. So I was expecting a nice room but really wasn’t sure.

But this! This was so far beyond “nice” that it left me gasping. I turned to look at Yu Feng, who had insisted on escorting me up. He was frowning and speaking in rapid and angry Mandarin to the bellhop.

“Please accept my humblest apologies,” he said to me after he had finished with the unfortunate fellow. “I was just letting him know that there was supposed to be fruit, champagne, a small buffet set out for you in the room. He promises it will all be sent up immediately.”

I stood in the foyer of my room, gazing at a space that was substantially bigger than my apartment. I was faced with
floor-to-ceiling windows that ran the length of the room. As I moved in, I could see that I not only had a spacious living room, but also a formal dining room. I wandered down the hall to a bedroom that was as big as any hotel room I had ever stayed in. It had its own seating area as well as a study alcove with a desk. The bathroom was a bright, marble-clad wonderland. I walked back into the living room in a daze. Feng looked at me curiously.

“You want to rest. I will leave you now,” he said with a little bow of his head. “I shall return at five-thirty to take you to Mr. Gao.”

A
FTER
Y
U
F
ENG LEFT
, I began to explore the suite a little more. In the bathroom, I found a cabinet directly across from the tub. I slid the mahogany door to the side, revealing an enormous television screen. I immediately moved to the bath, turned on the taps and then retreated to the dining room, which had now been set up with the buffet. There I filled a plate with Venezuelan chocolate, Brie cheese, crackers and grapes. Then I uncorked a small bottle of cabernet sauvignon and poured myself a glass. I brought everything into the bathroom on a tray and set the whole business down on the marble ledge that surrounded the huge tub. I located the remote in a small drawer beneath the TV cabinet. I flipped through the movie selections and found one of my favorite action thrillers.

With the Jacuzzi jets pulsing against my body, fine wine and good food filling me with warmth, I soon lost interest in the movie. I used the remote to turn off the television and turn on the sound system. An hour later, I emerged from the tub
relaxed, refreshed and marveling at my good fortune. I slipped into a plush cotton robe. As music drifted through the suite, I retrieved my journal and headed into the living room. I stretched out on the deep, soft sectional sofa and opened the journal to a fresh page.
What a great way to live,
I wrote.
I could get used to this!
Then I snapped the book shut.

Y
U
F
ENG AND THE DRIVER
picked me up in the Bentley, this time whisking me to Mr. Gao’s glittering office tower. After the driver dropped us off, Yu Feng led me through a glass-and fountain-filled lobby, up to the penthouse office.

Yu Feng pushed through the glass doors, and a lovely young woman sitting at reception immediately stood up behind the desk.

“Mr. Yu, Mr. Landry,” she said. “I am so sorry. Mr. Gao was certain the meeting would be over by six, but they are still here. I’ve let Mr. Gao know you have arrived.”

Just then a door down the hallway burst open and men began filing out. The sound of loud voices and laughter engulfed them like a wave. As they began to spill into the lobby area, I noticed a familiar face. I thought I was seeing things. And then the voice.

“Mr. Gao, I’m glad you agree with us. I mean, this really is one of the best scripts that’s ever been sent to me.” It was an actor—a movie star. I’d seen him in dozens of thrillers, the occasional romantic comedy. And he was walking toward me. Beside him was another man I thought I recognized. I couldn’t come up with a name, but I had seen him interviewed, or accepting an award or something. A director, maybe; or perhaps a famous producer. And beside them, a tall Asian man who was staring
directly at me. He put his hand on the shoulder of the actor, and said something quietly to him. Then he parted from the group and walked over to me.

“Jonathan Landry,” the man said, warmly extending his hand. “Gao Li. So sorry to have made you wait. Let me introduce you to some new business partners of mine.”

It turned out that Gao Li was a venture capitalist. One of his most recent investments was in a new Hollywood production company started by a group that included the actor and the other man—a director, I learned. They had been signing the final papers in that day’s meeting.

“You’re in for a real treat,” the actor said to me. He was smiling and thumping Mr. Gao on the back.

People say that when you meet famous people, they are smaller than you’d expect. But this guy was every bit as tall and muscled as he looked on the big screen. His clothes were casual, but they didn’t look like anything I owned. I wondered if that was what designer clothes looked like, if truly expensive shirts and jeans just had a certain flash to them. Sunglasses were perched on his forehead. It looked as if they had been there all day, clinging to his temples, ready to slide down over his eyes in case he needed to go incognito in a hurry.

“Get Mr. Gao to take you to his yacht,” the actor was saying to me. He gestured toward Gao Li. “What a party we had there last night. Crazy. Seriously, Mr. Gao, she is one beautiful boat. And you throw one hell of a bash. Thanks. Thanks for everything.” As Gao Li and the actor shook hands, a serious-looking young man leaned toward Mr. Gao, speaking quietly.

Gao Li then said, “Gentlemen, the helicopter is here. Shall we head up?” Then he turned to me.

“Jonathan, would you like to join me to see my friends off?”

I had never before been to a helipad. We headed through a door on the other side of the penthouse and took an elevator just one floor up. The doors opened onto the wide, flat roof. There, some distance away, was a helicopter, its blades spinning. It was a surreal feeling—to stand on top of a building, over a hundred stories off the ground, the air rushing above our heads, a strangely open sky stretching into the distance. The rooftops of other skyscrapers looked like floating platforms dotting the concrete canyon that surrounded us.

The actor, the director and another couple of men bent over and started a slow run to the helicopter. They looked as if they did this sort of thing every day. Once they climbed on board and settled themselves, the chopper began to lift away slowly from the building. Gao Li and I waved. I could see the actor at the window waving back. Then Mr. Gao and I headed down to the office.

“I am sorry that I couldn’t send the helicopter to bring you from the airport, but I’m afraid we needed to do another safety check for this flight today, so the timing did not work.”

I didn’t know what to say. It hadn’t occurred to me that I might have the benefit of this sort of transportation.

As we rode the elevator and made our way to Mr. Gao’s office, my thoughts raced. Gao Li’s life was rewriting all my standards of luxury. I had never ridden in a Bentley before, but it was now something I might long for. And a driver. Then there was the suite at the hotel, this swanky office, the helicopter. And the actor. How glamorous was that? It all reminded me of the grand plan I had formulated after high school.

L
IKE SO MANY KIDS
, I found high school and the teen years something of a trial. It wasn’t because I was unpopular, or struggled in school, or was plagued by some deep insecurity. Instead, my adolescent self existed in a relentless state of dissatisfaction. While I knew there were plenty of kids who had things worse than I did, all I could really see were those who seemed to have it better. When spring break or the summer holidays came around, I made a mental list of the kids who were setting off on fabulous holidays—the Caribbean or ski trips in March, a cottage or Europe in July. I noticed who had the best bike, the newest ice skates, the most spending money. I made note of the houses they lived in and the cars their parents drove. And the kids who had their own cars—their good fortune was like a flashing neon sign above a shop I couldn’t enter. I decided during those covetous years that I wasn’t going to accept my parents’ life of coupon-cutting, second-hand vehicles and low-rent vacations. I was going to make big money when I finished college. And I was going to live in style.

Of course, there’s nothing like a little reality to make you recalibrate your expectations. But while I hadn’t managed to buy a Bentley, I had acquired a house considerably bigger than the one I grew up in, and I had been working my way up the corporate ladder toward a more luxurious life. During this trip for Julian, however, I had been loosening my grip on that goal. I was beginning to question some of my priorities and to look at the “good life” in a whole new light. This visit was reminding me of why I had set myself those targets in the first place. Gao Li’s life looked pretty great. There was just no getting around it. Unlike Julian, I had no Ferrari to sell. But was I ready to sell my
dream
of a Ferrari?

Gao Li led me into his office. It was, of course, an enormous corner suite with wraparound windows. Antique lacquered furniture punctuated the room. In one corner was what appeared to be a silk brocade couch and chairs; in another, an extravagant ebony desk. A bottle of champagne sat in an ice bucket on the coffee table in front of us.

“Left over from the meeting,” Gao Li said, looking at it. “Would you care for a glass or shall we head to my home for a drink before dinner?”

As much as I would have liked to linger in that elegant place, sipping champagne and gazing at the Shanghai skyline, I was even more curious to see where—and how—Gao Li lived.

“I’d be happy to head out,” I said.

“Very good,” Gao Li replied. “I am a little anxious to get home myself. I’ve been busy the last few days entertaining the production company people, and I am missing my home and my wife and daughter.”

“Ah yes, I heard about the yacht,” I said.

“Yes, I hope you don’t mind that I can’t take you on a ride this trip,” said Gao Li. “Julian tells me your time is limited, and the crew is still cleaning up from last night.”

“No worries,” I said, perhaps with too much insistence. I
was
a little disappointed not to see a trophy that had impressed a Hollywood giant who no doubt had been on his share of good-sized yachts.

Gao Li walked over to his desk and pressed a button on his phone.

“Yang Jing-we,” he said into the speaker, “can you have Sung Hao bring my car around? Jonathan and I are ready to leave.” Then he turned to me.

“I brought my own car this morning since I wanted to keep the company car and driver free to take you around today.”

As we headed down the elevator to the lobby, I found myself wondering what kind of car a fellow like Gao Li would choose. Would he go for a sedan like a Mercedes, or would he have a sportier vehicle? Maybe a Maserati or a Porsche? Perhaps a Lamborghini. Or even a Ferrari.